One thing I always notice when I go to Shanghai is how difficult is is to follow conversations. In Beijing, I can listen in on the table behind me and at least understand a decent chunk of the conversation. And I always hear little kids telling their parents on the street about the approaching laowai.

But not in Shanghai. The first time I went there, I could have sworn they were speaking a separate language, and indeed, Fudan and other universities offer courses in Putonghua and Shanghainese Chinese. Now it seems the government wants to curb the use of Shanghai-hua (is that what it’s called?) and improve their Putonghua — at least until the 2010 World Expo is over.

Residents of China’s richest and most cosmopolitan city, Shanghai, have been told to brush up their command of the national language ahead of the 2010 World Expo to avoid confusing visitors, state media said Wednesday.

The Shanghai government will require people who speak bad Mandarin to attend remedial classes in the run up to the exposition “to end the confusion,” the China Daily said.

Many Shanghainese prefer using their own dialect, unintelligible to other Chinese, and speak Mandarin with a thick accent hard to understand to other speakers.

“Chinese see Shanghainese as a foreign language,” Shanghai government spokeswoman Jiao Yang told reporters. “As we open up to the world, especially for the Expo, it’s vital to promote Mandarin.”

All service industry workers would also have to pass a Mandarin test before 2010 and greet customers in Mandarin, the newspaper added, though they can then chat to customers in Shanghainese.

China has been promoting Mandarin for decades to ensure national cohesion in a country where dialects as different as French and Spanish share a similar written form.

Regional television and radio stations — including those in Shanghai — produce some programs in dialects to meet local demand, though the vast majority of programming is in Mandarin, which is based on the language spoken in capital city Beijing.

Now, the government is demanding that hosts and news anchors avoid slang words, speak only in standard Mandarin and drop any affected Taiwan or Hong Kong accents, according to rules posted on the State Administration of Film, Radio, Television’s Web site.

Some presenters deliberately adjust their pronunciation to sound more like natives of Hong Kong or Taiwan, the cultures of which, if not the politics, are fashionable across the mainland.

The rules are a new fold to the Chinese government’s vice-like grip over the media, meant to prevent anything too racy or politically sensitive from making it to screens or into print.

Only just over half China’s 1.3 billion people can communicate in Mandarin, the official Xinhua news agency cited a national survey as showing last year, while almost 90 percent can speak dialects ranging from Cantonese to Hokkien and Hakka.

Can they do it? Can the Shanghainese get up to speed on Mandarin, and will they resent this rather odd request?

It’s a topic we’ve discussed a lot, but one that won’t go away, especially with the Shi Tao verdict, which hinged on information supplied to China’s secret police by Yahoo.

There are a lot of people who maintain that despite the arrests, the crackdowns, the growing list of forbidden words and the mandatory site registrations, the Interent will still lead China toward openness, greater awareness and, eventually, democracy. I still believe that myself, because I’ve seen how much a difference the Internet has made when it comes to spreading news throughout China like wiodfire. At least, I think I still believe it.

This disturbing article, however, rains heavily on the Chinese Internet’s parade, and leaves me wondering whether the Party might eventually be able to shape it into a docile, fully controllable tool.

So much for the promise that the internet would liberate the oppressed. This theory was most clearly formulated in 1999 by the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. In his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman argues that two great democratising forces – global communications and global finance – will sweep away any regime which is not open, transparent and democratic.

“Thanks to satellite dishes, the internet and television,” he asserts, “we can now see through, hear through and look through almost every conceivable wall. … no one owns the internet, it is totally decentralised, no one can turn it off … China’s going to have a free press … Oh, China’s leaders don’t know it yet, but they are being pushed straight in that direction.” The same thing, he claims, is happening all over the world. In Iran he saw people ogling Baywatch on illegal satellite dishes. As a result, he claims, “within a few years, every citizen of the world will be able to comparison shop between his own … government and the one next door”.

He is partly right. The internet at least has helped to promote revolutions of varying degrees of authenticity in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Argentina and Bolivia. But the flaw in Friedman’s theory is that he forgets the intermediaries. The technology which runs the internet did not sprout from the ground. It is provided by people with a commercial interest in its development. Their interest will favour freedom in some places and control in others. And they can and do turn it off.

In 2002 Yahoo! signed the Chinese government’s pledge of “self-regulation”: it promised not to allow “pernicious information that may jeopardise state security” to be posted. Last year Google published a statement admitting that it would not be showing links to material banned by the authorities on computers stationed in China. If Chinese users of Microsoft’s internet service MSN try to send a message containing the words “democracy”, “liberty” or “human rights”, they are warned that “This message includes forbidden language. Please delete the prohibited expression.”

A study earlier this year by a group of scholars called the OpenNet Initiative revealed what no one had thought possible: that the Chinese government is succeeding in censoring the net. Its most powerful tool is its control of the routers – the devices through which data is moved from one place to another. With the right filtering systems, these routers can block messages containing forbidden words. Human-rights groups allege that western corporations – in particular Cisco Systems – have provided the technology and the expertise. Cisco is repeatedly cited by Thomas Friedman as one of the facilitators of his global revolution.

“We had the dream that the internet would free the world, that all the dictatorships would collapse,” says Julien Pain of Reporters Without Borders. “We see it was just a dream.”

The article also explores how moguls like Rupert Murdoch accommodate the CCP’s censorship machine, as do (even worse) the multinational advertisers trying to reach consumers in China:

In 1994 he [Murdoch] dropped BBC world news from his Star satellite feeds after it broadcast an unflattering portrait of Mao Zedong. In 1997 he ordered his publishing house HarperCollins to drop a book by Chris Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong. He slagged off the Dalai Lama and his son James attacked the dissident cult Falun Gong. His grovelling paid off, and in 2002 he was able to start broadcasting into Guangdong. “We won’t do programmes that are offensive in China,” Murdoch’s spokesman Wang Yukui admitted. “If you call this self-censorship then of course we’re doing a kind of self-censorship.”

This is creepy. So we’ll fill their airwaves with mindless crap and strip out anything even potentially controversial to make some bucks. As the writer lamentably concludes, “So instead of democracy we get Baywatch.”

Interesting; Tom Friedman compares the governance of the US with that of city-state Singapore, especially in light of Hurrican Katrina, and reminds us what real accountability and responsibility look like.

Friedman concludes with some obervations of the storm’s handling by Singapore journalists.

Speaking of Katrina, Sumiko Tan, a columnist for the Sunday edition of The Straits Times in Singapore, wrote: “We were shocked at what we saw. Death and destruction from natural disaster is par for the course. But the pictures of dead people left uncollected on the streets, armed looters ransacking shops, survivors desperate to be rescued, racial divisions – these were truly out of sync with what we’d imagined the land of the free to be, even if we had encountered homelessness and violence on visits there. … If America becomes so unglued when bad things happen in its own backyard, how can it fulfill its role as leader of the world?”

Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. “Today’s conservatives,” he wrote, “differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday’s conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.

“The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. … [But] it is not only government that doesn’t show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn’t show up either, sacrifice doesn’t show up, pulling together doesn’t show up, ‘we’re all in this together’ doesn’t show up.”

Read it all(especially if you live in Singapore or it’s a place of interest to you).

But victory is right around the corner.

I have no problem pledging allegiance to my country, except when that pledge forces me to acknowledge the existence of God. That part always bothered me intensely, even as a child. It looks like some judges realize this crosses the boundaries of church and state.

Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools was ruled unconstitutional Wednesday by a federal judge who granted legal standing to two families represented by an atheist who lost his previous battle before the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge’s reference to one nation “under God” violates school children’s right to be “free from a coercive requirement to affirm God.”

Karlton said he was bound by precedent of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in 2002 ruled in favor of Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow that the pledge is unconstitutional when recited in public schools.

No, it’s not final, just the start of a new showdown. But it’ll spark a new debate, and brace yourself for accusations of “activist judges.”

Plenty of blame to go around, that’s for sure. There’s no question helluva-job Brown was the wrong man at the wrong time and that he screwed up mightily. But new evidence proves the real screw-up started with our Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff.

The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the “principal federal official” in charge of the storm.

As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina’s early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.

But Chertoff – not Brown – was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government’s blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn’t shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.

Just a cesspool of incompetence. And now they get to dole out billions in juicy contracts to their friends. The rich get richer, and no one’s ever responsible. Even slimeball Brown never got fired; instead, he said he was quitting to be the fall guy for the president (his own words), though he had done nothing wrong.

In a brilliant analysis, TomDisptch notes how New Orleans has morphed neatly into Iraq — same incompetence, same destruction, same helmsman, same victims (the “little people”) and the same recipients of the goodies, the contractors with close ties to Bush.

Reports have been trickling in that the private security firms — call them mercenary corporations like Blackwater USA — which have flooded Iraq with an estimated twenty to twenty-five thousand hired guns (some paid up to $1,000 a day), have been taking the same route back to New Orleans and the Mississippi coast as KBR, Bechtel, and the Shaw Group.

They first arrived in the employ of private corporations and local millionaires who wanted their property protected. A week or so into September, however, Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo of Democracy Now! found the hired-guns of Blackwater cruising the streets of New Orleans, carrying assault weapons, claiming to have been deputized, insisting that they were working for the Homeland Security Department and that they were sleeping in camps the Department had organized. (“‘When they told me New Orleans, I said, “What country is that in?,”‘ said one of the Blackwater men.”) Then, on September 13, the Washington Post reported that “Blackwater USA, known for its work supporting military operations in Iraq, said it would provide 164 armed guards to help provide security at FEMA sites in Louisiana.”

Today, New Orleans’ streets are under military occupation; its property is guarded by hired guns; and the corporations of the whirlwind are pouring into town. All that’s missing is the insurgency.

Boss Tweed is back, and this time they’re going to leave America bankrupt and broken for generations. Please, please read the whole article to see just how the contracting swindle works, and to see just how blatant the criminality is. Read about the “iron triangle” of Bush cohorts who exist only to enrich one another as the “little people’s” lives are ruined. More good reason to feel deeply ashamed of being an American in the Age of Bush.

Update: Don’t ask questions!

Senate Republicans on Wednesday scuttled an attempt by Sen. Hillary Clinton to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments’ response to Hurricane Katrina.

That’s the most popular search item today on Technorati. It has a nice ring to it. What the heck – let’s just do it!

My friend Ben in Beijing has put up a couple of photos of our August 28 dinner in Beijing, including a shot of me idiotically gaping at the sky as though I had just seen God. The photos will remain nameless for now, until I’m sure all attendees are comfortable being identified.

While you’re there, be sure to check out Ben’s beautiful photos of Chinese children, flowers, Yunnan landscapes and a Beijing rock band.

Posted by Martyn (titled by Richard).

One of the most bizarre reports I’ve read in a long time. Hat-tip to commenter Keir for the link. The title of this UK Guardian Special Report says it all: The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners:

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered.

Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company’s products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is “traditional” and nothing to “make such a big fuss about.”

The report is partly based on anecdotal evidence collected by a researcher posing as a potential customer which claims that the company in question is trying to develop beauty products using tissue from executed prisoners and aborted foetuses. Also, no specific products are mentioned only that the Chinese company has ‘exported collagen products before to the UK, US and Europe’.

The investigation was launched following rumours among UK and US plastic surgeons, some of who have visited China to observe transplant techniques, regarding the use of tissue harvested from executed prisoners.

In addition, in 2001, Dr. Wang Guoqi, a Chinese former military physician, told US congressmen that he had worked at execution grounds helping surgeons to harvest the organs of executed prisoners, without prior consent. At the time, the Chinese government publicly called Dr. Wang a liar.

I will remain slightly skeptical until I see some hard evidence rather than just the words of a Chinese company sales rep and a Chinese exile reporting to a Congressional Human R1ghts committee. The investigation lacks any of the evidence necessary to make the report as damning as the title suggests.

Posted by Martyn

Visitors to one of Guangzhou’s oldest 5-star hotels, The White Swan, on Shamian Island, where the old British trade concession used to be located and the current location of the US Embassy and the office of the China Centre for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) are able to witness another thriving Chinese industry. Dozens of Caucasian, mainly American, couples coo over and gurgle at their latest Made in China items, a snip at around US$7,000: Chinese baby girls.

China is now the country of choice for thousands of affluent couples worldwide seeking to adopt a child. As in so many other things, China has bucked the world trend. Legal changes and moratoriums were recently applied in Russia, Romania recently banned international adoptions in January this year, Ukraine stopped new applications in June; South Korea, Guatemala, Cambodia and Thailand have all tightened existing legislation on adoptions. However, although China has applied some selective restrictions, the CCAA scrapped quotas (except for single parents) in 2003. The percentage of single parents adopting in China was arbitrarily reduced from 40% down to 8% of the total.

Prior to 1994 there were only a negligible amount of international adoptions out of China. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) recorded 787 children adopted from China in 1994; this number climbed to 4,263 in 1998 and now stands at 7,044 in 2004. A total of over 50,000 babies have gone to the US since 1992. Another interesting statistic: 95% are girls.

The Chinese government, which began its controversial One-Child Policy in 1979, is relatively open as to why so many female babies are abandoned and end up in orphanages. The typical profile of an abandoned child is a healthy newborn girl who has one or more older sisters but no brothers:

The Chinese government enforces the one-child policy through heavy fines, pressure from employers and communist officials, and other means. Human rights activists have documented forced abortions and sterilizations, even infanticide. And in combination with ingrained cultural preferences for male children in China, the one-child policy has created a wave of abandoned girls in orphanages, as families get rid of “illegal” girls so that they can fill their one-child quota with a son.

Between 1 and 3 million Chinese children, mostly girls and disabled boys, fill over 40,000 orphanages. Conditions have improved considerably since 1996 when Dr. Zhung, a Chinese paediatrician living in exile, helped Amn3sty 1nternational compile a report ‘Death by Default’ which in turn inspired the secretly filmed UK documentary ‘Dying Rooms’ that showed evidence of appalling conditions and neglect together with a shockingly high mortality rate in China’s orphanages. These allegations were also strongly refuted by the Chinese government at the time.

It’s clear that the One-Child Policy lies at the heart of the problem of abandonment, gender-based abortions and even female infanticide. Critics accuse the government of profiting out of this policy (the adoption process includes a fixed “donation” of around US$3000-$4000 to the Children’s Welfare Institute). Time Asia, this week, also provides an in-depth report on the practice of forced sterilization, closely connected to the One-Child Policy.

Despite the consequences of the One-Child Policy, if over 7,000 children per year can receive another chance to have a real family then that should be welcomed. In addition, I’m sure the life chances of the children improve considerably in their new adoptive countries compared to growing up in an orphanage. If 7,000 loving potential parents can be matched with 7,000 children who needs homes and families, then that is a real “win-win” situation as far as I’m concerned.