Liao Yiwu has been arrived in July in my hometown here in Tübingen, Germany.
The translator of his books to German language is living in the near of Tübingen, so I think he has a good friend here.

Hope to meet him here soon. I´m just reading his book “The corpse walker” (German Title: Fräulein Hallo und der Bauernkaiser)

Thank you for the blog information!

September 16, 2011 @ 5:26 am | Comment

After all Liao Yiwu had previously interviewed individuals who escaped south via Yunnan province, if people have taken the time to read The Corpse Walkers. He undoubtedly had more deep contacts than the retrievers who would have been alerted about his disappearance.

Actually, Beijing was left looking less than omnipotent in this instance.

@Richard. Weibo and whack a mole. Obviously.

I would accept you vibe assessment if it included some feedback from rural and migrant worker folk, but it didn’t. The latter could be feeling less than resigned on a number of fronts. Who really knows about their state of mind vis a vis the party and cadres who control their lives.

September 16, 2011 @ 5:58 am | Comment

(I’m a big fan of your blog for long time, though this is my first comment!)

Your observation of the “sea change” resonates with mine as well (I’m a Chinese working in the US). Wondering if you’ll write a more comprehensive article on this phenomenon.

I do think a tipping point is nearing us, especially after the 7.23 train crash. Pasting my thoughts (which may seem a little overly optimistic now) on the train crash here (https://plus.google.com/103666330728285663839/posts/Vdof4gVgghV):

The 7.23 Wenzhou train crash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wenzhou_train_collision) is a turning point for China.

– feel-good GDP propaganda loses its efficacy – the high speed train systems, heralded as the icon of China economic “miracle”, turn out to be just another mega tofu-dreg project.

– the authority loses its control on media – directives from Minitrue to “harmonize” the situation are wide spread and taunted online; spokesman from the authority lost its awe.

– the survival of the 2.5-year-old girl Weiyi (saved hours after official rescuing effort stopped and brutal “cleanup” began), will become the symbol of the strength of humanity, boosting the confidence that human values will eventually prevail in this land.

September 16, 2011 @ 7:53 am | Comment

Was a piece in the Torygraph about Weibo
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/100102881/weibo-chinas-answer-to-twitter-is-causing-sleepless-nights-for-the-countrys-control-freak-security-establishment/#dsq-content
Of course, many comments afterwards telling us that it’s actually worse in the West (I htink one commenter lives in China – Englishman married to a Chinese lass, apparently).
Many commenters in the mainstream press also mention that the CCP has an 80-something % approval rating. Of course, given the fact that there’s only a choice of 1 and once there was loud dissatisfaction expressed before the tanks were sent in is neither here nor there….
Most of my wife’s friends were not overly happy but for different reasons. OK, prices irked, accommodation was so damn expensive but the main thing appeared to be the children – there’s just so much competition. Even my niece failed to get to the top school of her parents’ choice which caused a bit of grief (though all was OK in the end – mum called in a few favours and the headmaster reviewed his original decision and decided the young lass was, after all that, clever enough to enter).
Hard for me, here in a Pacific island, to make up my mind – s’why I read the blogs. Is there an actual sea change? 1930s Europe or another, bigger, Japanese dominance style angst-filled western hype of an Asian power?

September 16, 2011 @ 9:51 am | Comment

It seems everybody is complaining. Exceptions are government-controlled media, hired scribblers, well-paid officials in the office, as well as children who don’t worry about clothing and food.

September 16, 2011 @ 10:12 am | Comment

Great essay, Richard, but tying the actions of a relatively extreme dissident to the attitudes of modern Chinese might be a stretch. The dissent-vs-cooption streak has always and will always continue to run through Chinese intelligentsia, but for the vast majority of people, the choice is more survival vs survival.

September 16, 2011 @ 10:13 am | Comment

I’m only tying the two because both are topical examples of reaction to government censorship. And i reject the notion that Liao is a “relatively extreme dissident” for criticizing his government. Being an “extreme” dissident” is not writing a poem about Tiananmen Square or challenging your government’s suppression of basic freedoms. An extreme dissident is advocating violent revolution or terrorism.

September 16, 2011 @ 11:19 am | Comment

t_co, a fair point, perhaps, although phrased very stupidly (“extreme dissidents”). you, on the other hand, seem less than interested in criticizing the far more common tendency to tie extremely extreme state-ist/ propaganda rhetoric to the attitudes of modern Chinese.
in my opinion, tying Liao Yiwu to common sentiment would be overestimating people’s intelligence. however, those who portray government rhetoric/ ideals as the goals/ sentiments of average people, actually imagine the people of China to be far stupider than they actually are! which side are you on?

September 16, 2011 @ 12:44 pm | Comment

[…] Duck is back with another great post, inspired by the ‘Liao Yiwu escaping from China’ story that came out yesterday. It […]

September 16, 2011 @ 12:55 pm | Pingback

Re: Telegraph article.
Never have understood Zhanglan’s dislike for “the West”/love of all things China, but yep…he’s there day in and day out telling us how awful things are “back home” and how great things are in Shenzhen (where I’m fairly sure he lives.)

Oh…apropos of nothing…was it confirmed if Math passed?

September 16, 2011 @ 12:59 pm | Comment

Things started to go downhill after the Olympics, when it is going to hit the bottom and how deep will it be?

September 16, 2011 @ 1:09 pm | Comment

“…outrage mixed with resignation…” For what it’s worth, I hear the same sentiment down in Guangdong(pretty sure you’re normally visiting Beijing).

September 16, 2011 @ 3:29 pm | Comment

Excellent post. I agree about things changing. I lived in China from ’06 until this summer and I’ve been asking similar questions the entire time – friends and strangers alike.
I don’t have much time for a in depth comment, but I’d like to add that one thing that strikes me as truly indicative of fundamental resentment and mistrust of the government is that how much support extreme and violent behavior gets when it’s aimed agains the government. For example, the recent triple bombings, the kindergarten killings (children of the rich and officials btw) – regardless of the violence, most Chinese people tend to side with attackers. Of course, supporting something on Weibo is different than taking to the streets on a murderer’s behalf, but even then, I think many, if not most, people are at the point that they can truly relate to, if not at least understand, extreme violence as a last means of recourse. Telling indeed…

September 16, 2011 @ 6:02 pm | Comment

@Canrun – As best we can work out, thee is no evidence that anyone matching Math’s description died. Since Maths is generally agreed to most likely be Chen Bihong, who is still alive, the greatest likelihood is that we were lied to, probably in an attempt to excuse the sudden disappearance of his posts.

Regarding Liao Yiwu, he now faces the challenge of all exiled dissidents – irrelevance. The longer he is out of the country, the less his writings will resonate with those Chinese people who do have the opportunity to read his work. Liu Xiaobo deserves respect for staying in China when he could have fled.

September 16, 2011 @ 6:44 pm | Comment

Hhhhmmm….. when relevance means detention, at home or somewhere else, and quite probably no access to Internet, phone, mobile, twitter, etc. And additionaly some special tea ceremonies….

Better go west man! 🙂

September 16, 2011 @ 10:50 pm | Comment

I began to have the same feeling about China around the time of the Olympics. Not only did the Olympics not herald a new embrace universal values, it was actually used by the Party to rally the country under the banner of xenophobia while simultaneously increasing repression on dissidents, petitioners, and netizens. I was one of the Hong Kong residents who was hit by the six-month suspension of multiple entry visas at that time. Then there was the farce of the Green Dam, the blocking of you Tube, Facebook and Twitter etc. Political reform in China came to a halt about five years ago so urban public opinion is just catching up with what dissidents were saying for years, until they were shut up. I’m not sure what you mean by claim by China’s rules; but then I guess nobody really does know exactly what the rules are in China, because the law is there just for reference purposes, and can be overruled by the Party when required.
@King Tubby
People in the countryside or from the countryside are usually more resentful in my experience. They are treated as second-class citizens by the hukou residency system. There are less compliant with family planning, and are often forced to have late term abortions. Rule of law is also less in the countryside.

September 17, 2011 @ 3:21 am | Comment

@FOARP “Regarding Liao Yiwu”

I agree with you. That’s not to say I think he ought to consider returning to China. Anytime soon. However, it is the oppressiveness and injustices endured that call attention to themselves (dissidents/activists/artists) and their views (works), often to the point of reverence, in this case, those living outside China.

I’ve read most, maybe all, of Liao’s works, and I’ve yet to figure out what all the fuss is about. The Public Toilet Manager (Voices from the Bottom Rung of Society) is, to me, hilarious, as are many other stories by Liao.. And, the harm to the CCP is negligible, insignificant, except of course, to the government whose abuse serves only to make themselves more susceptible to criticism. Which promotes the assailed.

“Massacre,” (Tiananmen) notwithstanding, I find his writings to be quite tame compared to others. Humorous stories, told by the writer with the interviewee voicing at times an attitude of displeasure with the government.

I think he will come to realize in the future that quite a lot of his fame is due in no small part to his defamation of the Chinese government. The West loves martyrs.

Truly, I never fully understood all the attention devoted to Liao Yiwu by the CCP. My opinion is, perhaps, flawed due to my not understanding completely, the Chinese.

September 17, 2011 @ 4:41 am | Comment

What are the rules in China? The rules are the rulers.

September 17, 2011 @ 5:03 am | Comment

Or better said. The rulers are the rules

September 17, 2011 @ 5:05 am | Comment

@William Box, it seems to me that there is no consistent “rule” by which the China authority deals with “dissidents”. It appears to me that there are many writers who write equally or more “provoking” than Liao Yiwu, but do not receive as harsh treatment as Liao. It is probably all judgment calls by a few individual Party Propaganda officials.

September 17, 2011 @ 7:04 am | Comment

@Tom Zhang

You are right, I agree with you.

However, there is one thing I, yourself, and the dissidents know for sure; they will come. Soon.

And, they are unforgiving.

September 17, 2011 @ 8:30 am | Comment

Hi Richard! My experience here in Shanghai echoes yours. The reaction to the Wenzhou train crash has been such that I wonder if it wasn’t some kind of threshold-crossing event

I think the reaction has been due to a combination of factors, most especially the discovery of the little girl *after* the official search was hurriedly declared over, and the amazing public spectacle of the gov’t ordering the rail carriages smashed and buried, immediately, right there at the crash site.

The icing on the cake was the rail ministry spokesman’s declaration, “Whether you believe it or not, *I* believe it.” The message seemed clear: “we government officials could not care less what you think.”

To cite one anecdotal example of the impact on local opinion, in a recent class, the topic was politics. I asked the students (young white collars) to each name an achievement that made them proud of their country. One young woman bitterly declared that she had nothing to be proud of, because she had lost all confidence in her gov’t as of July 23rd. Several other students openly agreed with her sentiments.

September 17, 2011 @ 10:15 am | Comment

Slim, that’s absolutely amazing, compared to the xenophobia of just three years earlier. Maybe it really is a sea change. The powers that be must be pulling their hair. How will they get the genie of public outrage and distrust back into the bottle?

September 17, 2011 @ 10:54 am | Comment

Richard, I was bringing up Liao as extreme relative to other dissenting voices in Chinese society. The phrasing is a little off but the point still stands.

That being said, the second point about survival is what really brings the 7.23 incident into sharper focus, as large chunks of the Chinese middle class now think the government doesn’t care about their well-being, which is a gross violation of the Hobbesian social contract which the Party and the upwardly mobile middle class have signed since SOE reforms in the late 90s. (Remember that “year of the rabbit” video? The bunnies only revolt when the tigers are directly harming them–not because the tigers muzzle speech or lock up a few radicals.)

In retrospect, 7.23 comes as basically the last straw after a long litany of incidents (melamine, Li Gang, even, paradoxically, the subdued government response to the Tibet riots).

In terms of what the PRC government will do, this pretty much boils down to whether Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang want to tackle the Gordian knot of rewriting the social contract (maybe make the government less responsible for welfare in exchange for more freedom of expression? although that tradeoff would probably smell too much like perestroika for the Party to digest).

Alternatively, Xi and Li can just take the easier road of trying to muddle through, but in their terms, China will need to do a macroeconomic adjustment, and trying to do that with a scarred social contract is flat out insane in terms of political stability. Jiang and Zhu built up political capital with 9 years of steady growth and calm between Tiananmen and the SOE shakeups of ’98, and even then they needed the tailwind from ’97 IMF crises to make their actions more popular. Unfortunately for Xi and Li, the next set of global financial crises (probably Eurozone) won’t happen late enough for them to pull off the same trick.

September 18, 2011 @ 12:55 am | Comment

When I meant that in their terms China will need a macro adjustment, I meant in their terms of office, not in their terms of speech.

September 18, 2011 @ 12:56 am | Comment

To be quite honest, I refuse to believe that the effect of the Wenzhou train-crash will be so long-lasting. Countries go through these kinds of things all the time – this is not the same as Hurricane Katrina or Chernobyl. Most likely the next spat with Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan, the US, India, or South Korea (etc.) will put people back in the CCP camp.

And if Weibo ever becomes too much of a problem, the CCP will simply pull the plug on it.

September 18, 2011 @ 5:42 am | Comment

http://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e5501561a18834012875ba5ff2970c/post/compose

September 18, 2011 @ 6:15 am | Comment

FOARP is right. The negative consequences of Wenzhou will dissipate soon enough. A nationalist drum roll is a good possibility, but I vote for a province wide food poisoning incident as the next thing to piss off the public. This is the party’s Achilles Heel:

This story still has a life it appears.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-china-elite-farm-20110917,0,681885.story?page=2

Simply can buy the argument that the CCP could totally shutdown Weibo however.

However, Supergirl gets it in the craw for the second time:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-09/17/c_131144299.htm

September 18, 2011 @ 6:27 am | Comment

Apologies. I should have included a major league damn collapse as the next incident to occupy public attention.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jBVTNKwqMn1y53nbzDt6MtBpehbQ?docId=CNG.58e18012e54d238eb6e8a9a6e82b6b4e.7e1

Mostly stuff built in the ’50s which was described by one Chinese think tank expert recently as “crap”.

September 18, 2011 @ 6:35 am | Comment

http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/09/15/chinese-dissidents-descriptions-of-abuse-in-detention-emerge/

http://topics.scmp.com/news/china-news-watch/article/Lawyer-reveals-detention-ordeal

Lots of detention ordeals released today. Pressure still onl

September 18, 2011 @ 6:49 am | Comment

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/09/17/idINIndia-59400620110917

#27 was a screw up. This is the URL for the Ai Weiwei article. Sorry.

September 18, 2011 @ 8:30 am | Comment

I wouldn’t say that the CCP is under any pressure from these releases. Very few Chinese will read these reports, and few of those who read them will be surprised by what they read.

It is surprising, given that the present crack-down started back in 2008, to see the newspapers feeding the idea that it was triggered by the Arab spring, something that merely gave added urgency to it.

I think those who think that disclosures via Weibo, the activities of dissidents, the displeasure of the people etc. will loosen or threaten the CCP’s rule over the country are treating the CCP as if it were a democratic party. In truth there is no mechanism by which the CCP can be threatened by the mere displeasure of the people, even were it 10 times worse than it was in the immediate aftermath of the train disaster.

Sorry to return to an old argument, but it is here that we see an example of why the CCP is a totalitarian dictatorship, in which every element of society may be controlled by the party, and in which the people have no say in how things are done. Let us be clear on this, if the PRC’s political system was merely an example of an authoritarian system, like apartheid-era South Africa or Argentina under Galtieri, one would expect there to be some mechanism by which the people could make their voice heard within the political system. There is no such mechanism. Protest and dissidence, which may be brutally suppressed, are the only outlets for the angered Chinese citizen.

No doubt some will respond by saying ” . . . but the leadership does listen”. To which the answer must be that they do, occasionally, but the simple fact is that there is no circumstance under which they have to listen.

September 18, 2011 @ 4:54 pm | Comment

I’m amazed how quickly people forget who is ruling China. I’m not referring to Mao’s war on his own people, but rather to 1989. Maybe the next crackdown will be smaller than 1989, maybe it will be larger.

But one thing for sure: the party will take the measures it takes to get “the genie of public outrage and distrust back into the bottle”, so long as they are the ones who control the “People’s Liberation Army”. If trust can’t be earned, fear will rule the non-believers.

September 18, 2011 @ 6:11 pm | Comment

Agree with Foarp and KT here.

September 18, 2011 @ 6:12 pm | Comment

@JR – Right. 1989 is what people need to keep in mind here. ’89 was the whole-sale smashing of people who thought mere displeasure at corruption – corruption which is now ten times worse – could be harnessed to force political change. No softening in attitude of the kind which the CPSU underwent between 1968 and 1989 has happened to the CCP. If anything, the determination to smash opposition has hardened in the last ten years.

For the CPSU, you could point to numerous indicators showing that it had changed following the selection of Gorbachev – the forbearance in Poland, the aftermath of Chernobyl, the ‘Sinatra doctrine’, Glasnost and Perestroika.All of this showed that a replay of 1968 was not a certainty in 1989.

But when we look for evidence of such a change in China since 1989, what have we seen?

– the tour of the south in ’92, which hastened economic change.

– The Taiwan Strait crisis in ’96

– Partial privatisation in ’97

– The rise of Hu and Wen over the ‘princelings’ in ’97

– The crack-down on FLG in ’99

– The Hainan Island incident in ’01

– WTO accession in ’02

– Hu and Wen enter government in ’02-’03

– The SARS crisis in ’03

– The Anti-Secession Law in ’05

– The interpretation of the HK basic law to block the introduction of universal suffrage in ’04

– The crackdown in Tibet in ’08

– Crackdown on protests associated with the Olympics in ’08

– Suppression of Charter ’08 and its drafters

– Crackdown in Xinjiang in ’09

– Return of the princelings in ’09

– The arrest of Ai Weiwei and many others in 2010-11

Note that I’ve left out those incidents where the PRC government was only responding to events (the melamine scandal, the Wenchuan earthquake, the bombing of the Belgrade embassy).

Wheat we’ve seen since 1989 is not a softening in attitude, instead we’ve seen the end of meaningful political reform, the funeral rites for which were read last year.

September 18, 2011 @ 10:56 pm | Comment

Farmers are the group that singularly influenced a fragmented CCP leadership and put the country on the road to capitalism. Deng had no choice in the matter. The farmers, numbering in the tens of millions were leaderless and therefore impervious to dissection. They brought food to the villages, sold it, relieving hunger and began the free market society in China. The head could not be cut off. Deng could do nothing but turn his head and take credit for something he could not control.

In my opinion, little has changed: the farmers still hold the key. People have to eat. The middle class will not risk their hard earned wealth nor will the rich. Farmers are still leaderless and even the million man army cannot put down nationwide uprisings by the farmers. China is just too damn big.

Any movement towards democracy will eventually lie in the hands of the farmer and will be decided by them.

September 19, 2011 @ 12:30 am | Comment

The Hua / Deng years were a time where things in China were hanging in the balance. One could say the same thing about any other totalitarian country, past or present: if the groups which contribute most to an economy went on strike, or are crucial for other reasons, even the army could become inefficient. Could – if those crucial groups weren’t leaderless, which is no coincidence.

If the farmers will be crucial in whatever change may be in the pipeline – be it in the nearer, be it in the distant future – will depend on China’s level of development at that time. If the farming population and the arable land will continue to shrink as they have been for decades, China may depend on food imports, rather than on its own farmers.

September 19, 2011 @ 1:24 am | Comment

Can we just let the future come already? I have cheeked the history books already and the future wins 100% of the time.

And the longer it is resisted, the more chaotic the change

September 19, 2011 @ 4:02 am | Comment

As I said in the post, the mood is one of resignation (not revolution). Still, it’s a huge headache for the CCP and it has no good options.

In a totalitarian system, by the way, Weibo would not exist. You won’t see people microblogging in North Korea.

September 19, 2011 @ 4:39 am | Comment

While you don’t see people microblogging in North Korea, also remember that in China, you also often won’t see microblogs that people have written… because they fail to abide by the “relevant regulations.”
I see the obvious differences between North Korea and China, of course, but there are also some similarities- more like points on a spectrum than completely different systems. Sometimes they actually come closer together, like the insanity of arrests this past spring.

September 19, 2011 @ 7:59 am | Comment

I am a big smoker, as most Chinese on the US east cost know. Usually, at around 10, 11pm I would stand by the parking lot of my one bed room apartment, next to the garage bin, and have a smoke, either Da Qianmeng or 777. One day, a white girl walked by me, and looked at me, and said “Are you OK?”. From her expression and her posture, I could tell that she was sending me a signal. I told her, humorously, “I would be more OK if we have a drink together”. The girl, unaccustomed to being interacted by an Oriental man, and charmed by the mystique of the Orient, started laughing and giggling uncontrollable, her swaying body moving back and forth under the bright Mid-Autumn moonlight. I did not relent, and said “how about come upstairs and have a cup of wine with me?”. She came up, and we had a good few drinks of the Sauvignon Cabernet. I walked her out of my apartment afterwards, and told her that tomorrow, we’ll go to lunch at a very luxurious Chinese buffet.

It’s not hard to socialize with white girls, as long as you are daring and bold.

September 19, 2011 @ 9:06 am | Comment

“It’s not hard to socialize with white girls, as long as you are daring and bold.”
You’ll find the same method works for Indians, Chinese, African, Polynesian, etc, etc, etc. It’s how normal humans interact.

September 19, 2011 @ 12:53 pm | Comment

#41 Obviously an escapee from chinasmack personals.

September 19, 2011 @ 1:20 pm | Comment

Well this is the problem with the one party state. With a democratic system, the population can vent their frustrations and let off steam by booting the official out and electing another one. In fact, China’s academic interest in democracy is concentrating on this issue in particular. There will be deomcracy in China at some stage, but it’ll be limited I feel to this cosmestic and feel good factor rather than any wholesale sweeping introduction of freedoms. – Chris

September 19, 2011 @ 3:13 pm | Comment

It’s not hard to socialize with white girls, as long as you are daring and bold.

I’ve never actually met a girl (of any background, swaying style or with unconventional uses of English phrases) who makes approaches to suspicious looking guys hanging around garbage bins in the middle of the night, so, I’m not sure I’d know.

September 19, 2011 @ 3:18 pm | Comment

In a totalitarian system, by the way, Weibo would not exist. You won’t see people microblogging in North Korea.

Germany and Italy had the catholic church during the 1930s and 1940s, Richard. And the church weighed in several times, sometimes successfully. All the same, there has never been much of an argument about the totalitarian nature of both the German and the Italian state – after the war, that is.

Quite the contrary. Weibo is a mere technicality, and deemed basically useful for now. in terms of modernization. When it is deemed rather harmful by the CCP, they’ll pull the plug – easier to do when Weibo, rather than the catholic church, is the “problem”, btw.

I sometimes feel reminded of the British Italy-loving people who lived in Firenze and Rome during the 1930s and wouldn’t see a problem either – until things went wrong with Malta and Tobruk.

September 19, 2011 @ 3:45 pm | Comment

@JR –

“I sometimes feel reminded of the British Italy-loving people who lived in Firenze and Rome during the 1930s and wouldn’t see a problem either – until things went wrong with Malta and Tobruk.”

Quite. The instinct to say “well, things aren’t always great, but so long as we are not living in Soviet Russia/DPRK/Nazi Germany/Fascist Italy etc. things cannot be all that bad” when living in, and perhaps working with, a totalitarian state, is natural but not necessarily excusable. It is drawing distinctions when the totality of the piece adds up to the same thing.

@Richard – The thing is, I remember people saying the same kind of things about the internet in general back in ’05.

Remember how people used to talk about how the government had basically accepted that it could not completely block all dissenting blogs etc., how getting around the GFW was child’s play and “everyone” knew this? How people who complained about the GFW were just behaving like “whining” foreigners?

It then transpired that, far from their being any tacit understanding that the government could not block everything, the government had not accepted any such thing. As soon as it had the technical means to do so, all dissent on the the internet becomes rapidly blocked or moderated out of existance. To access some websites you now need to used a couple of VPNs, and it may only be a matter of time before these can no longer be used.

As soon as the technical means to do the same on Weibo exist, the CCP will do the same. If they are not found, and if Weibo becomes a problem, the CCP will simply pull the plug on it. Look at what happened in Xinjiang in 2009 – all internet access dropped.

I do not believe that

@Chris – Raj asked a question on the other thread:

“Chris

I’m interested, though. Did you or did you not hire a private investigator called “Charles”?”

Are you going to answer?

September 19, 2011 @ 4:30 pm | Comment

Ooops, unfinsihed sentence – I do not believe that anyone could look at the control the CCP has over the internet in China and say that it did not aim to be total.

September 19, 2011 @ 4:33 pm | Comment

I think the other major factor in this is the Governments role in media. Take those ‘spot interviews’ you mentioned in which people were critical of the government. It’d be both a brave individual and a brave newspaper who dared publish those, and there may well be repercussions. Yet compare with India (I’m in Delhi right now) where government criticism is on the front pages, and any wrong doing is followed up. It can get a bit sensationaist at times, but it keeps politicans on their toes and a free media helps prevent the worst excesses. You’d never have that sort of coverage in China. The Communist system has it all sewn up, and has a monopoly on speech. – Chris

September 19, 2011 @ 8:34 pm | Comment

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8773715/Chinese-blogger-points-to-luxury-watches-as-sign-of-corruption.html
“Originally Huaguoshan Zongshuji had uploaded a 48-page PowerPoint presentation of the officials and their watches onto his Weibo account, but he said that access to the files had since been blocked by Sina’s censors.

“Strictly speaking, they were not deleted, but just shielded from public view,” he said, “I myself can still see them, but others cannot.” The censorship is at odds with the sentiment of a commentary published by the official Xinhua news agency last weekend which appeared to encourage Huaguoshan Zongshuji, arguing that the fight against corruption “should follow” his method.

“A simple watch can reveal the hidden corruption of some greedy officials and it shows that corruption leaves its mark,” it warned.”

“Huaguoshan Zongshuji, like many other online activists in China, complained about the ‘asymmetry’ of information, in which the Chinese state holds vast amounts of information on private citizens but gives little away about its own spending and personal wealth of officials. “

September 20, 2011 @ 5:50 am | Comment

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/19/china-citizen-candidates-clampdown

Stand in for election and get arrested….

September 20, 2011 @ 6:21 am | Comment

Liao Yiwu is a big han jian with no power. The CCP is a not as big han jian with too much power. Good riddance to Liao Yiwu. If only the CCP could be gotten rid of as easily.

September 20, 2011 @ 6:27 am | Comment

Well you don’t want a top down revolution, that would be a disaster. What is required is a bottom up revolution. – Chris

September 20, 2011 @ 10:04 am | Comment

or those who are pessimistic about China’s future, I recommend the following article by Peng Xiaoyun. It argues that consciousness of the journalists and economical interest will encourage more Chinese media to defy censorship orders.

“新闻管制的路径依赖面临挑战”
my rough translation: “Mechanism of press control faces challenge”
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_6780dfbb0100xek1.html
(It is in Chinese though.)

September 21, 2011 @ 6:54 am | Comment

I tend to agree with you. I don’t think China can or will totally control all media as in the old days. They have the means to do it, but to exercise it now, after so much of its citizenry is educated and media savvy, would be a disaster that could only lead to more havoc. Xinjiang is isolated and most of the Chinese people supported the information blackout because the demonstrators all were, as we know, separatist terrorist Uyghurs. Shutting down the Internet in Beijing and Shanghai and taking total control would be quite another thing, and I believe we would never see it happen except in the very most extreme situation. For all the banned books and censored poets and blocked sites, there is still a huge amount of information out there that doesn’t put the government in a good light, much of it printed in the media. To try to squelch and control it now is pretty much mission impossible.

September 21, 2011 @ 9:44 am | Comment

So we’re going to have a 2 tier China? Rich eastern seaboard with free press and savvy workers and a repressed inland with very tight censorship and workers fed information on a “need to know” basis?
I see one popular Hunan station has had its wings clipped….http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/18/chinese-talent-show-housework-programme

September 21, 2011 @ 10:43 am | Comment

Mike, we already have a two-tier China. In Tibet, you can’t make photocopies without government permission, something that would be unthinkable on the eastern seaboard. But that’s okay, China accepts this as necessary to make sure the Dalai Lama clique, the jackals, don’t try to subvert the nation, just like the terrorist Uyghurs. Like it or not, that’s how things are. The Chinese will accept these restriction in Tibet and Xinjiang. They’re necessary. And these places haven’t known otherwise for decades. Now, try to do that on the eastern seaboard and see how the population reacts…. Look at how they reacted to the censorship on one site, Weibo, and you get the picture.

September 21, 2011 @ 11:48 am | Comment

@Richard –

“I tend to agree with you. I don’t think China can or will totally control all media as in the old days. They have the means to do it, but to exercise it now, after so much of its citizenry is educated and media savvy, would be a disaster that could only lead to more havoc.”

And do you think this is a price they would be unwilling to pay, even to achieve fairly unessential goals? Imagine Bo Xilai’s “Red Chongqing” campaign played out on a national level – would you say that this is impossible?

“Look at how they reacted to the censorship on one site, Weibo”

Reluctant acceptance? Asking “What is Weibo?” (I still meet people who don’t know what Twitter is)

September 21, 2011 @ 1:55 pm | Comment

Richard, aren’t you describing a 3 tiered China? Tibet, Xinjiang – heck, even Mongolia – they’re all part of China but have un-Chinese people in them. China is Han, isn’t it? Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongols – they’re not really Chinese, they’re “nationalities”….hardly count.
No, I meant, I guess, split between the China the west sees and the China that supports the showcase China that the west sees. So not a 2 tiered China but a 3, or more, tiered China. Keep the seaboard happy, censor the inland, suppress the minorities (or swamp them and really make them the “inland”).

September 21, 2011 @ 4:43 pm | Comment

@Mike – lifting the censorship on the seaboard won’t simply make the people there “happy”, with freer press and speech, they will demand real political reform and ask for more human rights and democracy!

@Mike – Note that people move around *a lot* between “inland” and “seaboard”, or between rural areas to urban areas – except for the minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang who do not move as much. So, I don’t think the “3-tiered” China (regarding censorship rules) would happen.

One note though – many of the “censorship” rulings are by local authorities, but they are generally much weaker than directives from “Zhong Yang” (the central committee of the Party).

September 22, 2011 @ 6:33 am | Comment

Mike, it could definitely be a 4- or 5-tiered China. I thought that as soon as I posted my last comment.

FOARP, yes there was resignation over the censoring of Weibo, but also a huge wave of anger, as I described in this post. I’d never seen anything like it. A complete about-face in their reaction to censorship. All they need are a few more shoves to move from reluctant acceptance to taking action, like demonstrations we saw recently in Guangzhou over a NIMBY issue. That may never happen, I know, but it’s not inconceivable.

Take a look at how anger is mounting over the train crash – this is a must-read article. (I may blog about it if I get the energy.) We haven’t seen anything like it in many years. I’m not making predictions that millions of demonstrators are on the verge of crowding into Tiananmen Square, just that things there are delicate and containing public outrage increasingly difficult. I don’t believe they will impose silence, because that comes with its own serious risks. We’ll see.

September 22, 2011 @ 6:35 am | Comment

Tom: many of the “censorship” rulings are by local authorities, but they are generally much weaker than directives from “Zhong Yang” (the central committee of the Party)

Very true. That’s why I say there are multiple tiers to censorship in China, even if the Central Party has the biggest say in the matter.

September 22, 2011 @ 6:57 am | Comment

@Tom
I dare say lifting censorship will make people angrier rather that happier….leading to asking for reform, etc…

I do realise that there is a lot of movement in China – wife complains that no one speaks Nantong dialect in Nantong, etc. I even know of Chinese not in China who have access to all the free press they can possibly want and the ability to tell folks back at home via MSN etc. I’m not so sure there won’t be a tiering (is that a word? Hmmm…is now) of China – you yourself say “except for the minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang who do not move as much” which suggests some form of separation along ethnic lines. Here’s an article/interview from the Asia Times http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/MI22Ad01.html
There was also something in the NYT about Han in Xinjiang, buying homes. Brochures were only in Chinese as, according to the reporter, the estate agent said Uyghurs don’t or can’t afford the flats.

September 22, 2011 @ 9:07 am | Comment

For the Chinese who naively follow people like this author, wake up. If you had been in the West and are bombarded with the Jewish controlled media preaching freedom of the speech/press, and possess certain intellect, you would not have believed what the western/Jewish elites.

Human rights RECORDS? Those shameless people need to look at their own history in the mirror and at what they and the big money bankers/blood suckers are doing to the average people across both the west and the east.

I don’t have any trust in those people, especially when they open their big mouths preaching those ideals.

They are using these tools to subvert China, pure and simple. The Jewish and white men desire and plan to dominate China.

September 22, 2011 @ 9:49 am | Comment

Riiiiiight.

Foil hat, anyone?

September 22, 2011 @ 11:23 am | Comment

Unschooled idiocy like #64 flourishes exactly in the absence of freedom of speech.

September 22, 2011 @ 11:28 am | Comment

@Slim – Yup. Although it can be found anywhere, nowhere I’ve ever lived did paranoid rumours spread so quickly as in Mainland China. Each of the following rumours was something I heard first hand from at least two people in China who genuinely believed them:

– the Belgrade bombing was ‘definitely’ on purpose
– FLG is ‘real’ and does give you special powers
– FLG is a CIA plot
– SARS was a CIA weapons program
– America is planning to invade China after Iraq
– Taiwan will have a civil war
– the Wenquan earthquake was caused by the Americans using HAARP
– the Tibet/Xinjiang riots were caused by the CIA
– France had already decided to boycott the Olympics (both claimed it was true because they had ‘read it on the internet’, and then castigated the perceived innaccuracy of BBC, CNN etc.).

And more other garbage rumours than I can remember. Some of the rumours were likely true though, not least the Song Zuying/Jiang Zemin rumour that was flying around back in ’03.

September 22, 2011 @ 4:12 pm | Comment

I guess I should also say, when people like Roland Soong castigate Weibo as a source of information because of its rumour-laden content, they should recognise that Weibo, within the limitations of censorship, is simply a fairly close electronic representation of what most Chinese people think and say.

September 22, 2011 @ 4:19 pm | Comment

Speaking of paranoia? Don’t look beyond your own backyard. In the US, almost every men with Muslim background are treated as a terrorist, and every Chinaman a s p y. And about freedom of speech/expression? It is pretty much reserved for Jews/White than anyone else. Don’t preach human rights/equality to me–blacks had not been treated as Man for hundreds of years and natives are nowhere to be found except in the so called “reservations.”

If you don’t believe that the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was bombed intentionally by the Clintons and his subordinates, you are brainwashed by your CNN/FoxNews and other Jewish controlled media.

I don’t have so much paranoia but rather I do a lot of “unschooled” reading.

Say what ever you want, I don’t really care. I don’t think my “freedom of expression” on this forum will be respected for sure.

September 22, 2011 @ 7:52 pm | Comment

The ministry is indeed a fief, says the NY Times article you linked to, Richard, and “The ministry is a monster, half government agency, half for-profit company,”, it quotes a lawyer.
Tell you what: everything that requires a license of one or another kind in China is a fief. That’s to say, everything you do for a living is a fief, because, in case of a doubt, no independent judiciary will make it a right. Why should it be a must-read? Because it suggests that China’s political system weren’t totalitarian?

It’s interesting how an ostensibly critical article is, in the end, just another variation of the “China-is-different-from-what-you-think-it-is” tune. Confucius tried to rectify the names, but that was long ago.

Foarp, I think Roland is frustrated because he has been one of the most prolific annalist of Chinese affairs on the internet for many years (I believe he still is, even if he’s slowed down somewhat), and probably would see a lot of potential for a more immediate and more undistorted insights, if Weibo wasn’t so “rumorous”.

But indeed, Weibo reflects moods, rather than hard facts – especially when facts would become crucial. Social media may have the potential to turn into an intolerable challenge to totalitarian rule (in which case they’d be discontinued), but they can’t replace free, competing newsmedia. Neither in China, nor elsewhere, btw, when inquests and verifiable information is what you are looking for.

September 22, 2011 @ 8:57 pm | Comment

@JR – Correct. Pretty much everything they say about the Ministry of Rail goes for every other ministry, and the Chinese government as a whole. The rpoblems described are systemic, and are nothing, really, to do with the size of the Ministry of Rail, or its dual-role as regulator and owner.

To make a comparison, look at the NHS, according to the Economist, the world’s 7th largest employer, largest employer in Europe, and biggest unitary healthcare provider. Yes, the NHS runs both the hospitals and the inspectorate. Yes the NHS can be large, inefficient, and bureaucratic (although not nearly so bureaucratic and wasteful as, for example, Blue Cross). However, do you see nearly the same kind of behaviour coming out of the NHS? The answer is no. The difference is dictatorship.

September 22, 2011 @ 9:21 pm | Comment

“I don’t have so much paranoia but rather I do a lot of “unschooled” reading.”

Read smarter, better work. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion may count as scholarly work in China but it won’t get you very far in the real world.

The only truthful thing about your posts, Don, is your well-chosen surname.

China seems to have an inexhaustible pool of brazen dimwits.

September 23, 2011 @ 12:06 am | Comment

The Dumb-ster seems to be confusing this forum for one that focuses on the US, since that’s what he seems to like to talk about first and foremost.

There seems to be no shortage of people who like to talk about the US, rather than China. You’d think they’d get their heads together and make their own blog in order to suit their own unique purposes.

And it’s always funny when they assert their “freedom of expression”, yet seem to have no problem supporting a regime that expressly denies it to 1.3 billion people. Yeah, there’s no hypocrisy there.

September 23, 2011 @ 12:55 am | Comment

Speaking of Weibo and China, the recent interview of Han Han on NewsAsia
(shanghaiist.com/2011/09/21/han-han-channel-news-asia.php) is a good one.

September 23, 2011 @ 1:49 am | Comment

At one level, I welcome the unintended comic relief of a Dumb Dude where I am here at the United Nations, with Gaddafy gone and Chavez ailing, leaving only Ahmadinejad to carry the looney-toon flame.

At the same time, I pity these Patriotic Education Victims who populate these comment boards. Somebody took empty heads and filled them up with the intellectual equivalent of raw sewage.

September 23, 2011 @ 5:13 am | Comment

@Slim – Raw sewage is rather too positive a term. Sewage will eventually turn into fertiliser.

September 23, 2011 @ 6:55 am | Comment

@FOARP and Slim
You mean there might actually be something between those ears?

September 23, 2011 @ 7:36 am | Comment

The United Nations is a cesspit of kleptocratic turd world elites and delusional bolshevik eurocrats. Nothing would please me more than if that whore of whores were reduced to smoldering cinders.

Don Dumbo is fundamentally on the right path though going in the opposite direction. The liberal elites of the West are hell bent on the subversion of functional societies and engaged in a treasonous war of attrition against their own co-ethnics rather in service to non-whites.

September 23, 2011 @ 7:54 am | Comment

Wow Jing, that’s a lot of really cool words strung together. But what do they all mean? What on earth is a bolshevik eurocrat? Is that a Leninist paper-pusher?

Which functional societies are these liberal elites trying to subvert?

Where is the war of attrition? Who is trying to out-wait whom? If it’s “co-ethnics” rather than “co-nationals”, why is that necessarily “treasonous”?

It’s like somebody saved up a bunch of “words of the day”, and decided to throw them all into one post.

September 23, 2011 @ 12:19 pm | Comment

“It’s like somebody saved up a bunch of “words of the day”, and decided to throw them all into one post.”

Lol. Or a random garbage comment generator.

September 23, 2011 @ 1:30 pm | Comment

I know you understand full well the meaning of my message but are too addle-brained by self-deception and would rather shy away from the burning truth. Let me spell it out for those too dense to understand. A de-racinated elite is executing a population replacement agenda against the functional developed societies of the West (and elsewhere too for that matter) by importing millions of hostile non-white aliens. It is a traitorous act because it undermines the wealth and welfare of the host societies by the deliberate degradation of it’s demographic profile. It is the vilest form of treason because it is race treason. All of this is done in the name of a nihilistic and totalitarian Marxist ideology, which will brook no heresies and use every weapon in its arsenal to annihilate dissenters and subvert their populations into sheep like compliance in the face of the coming disaster. Look what happened to Enoch Powell. You two are just another pair of liberal useful idiots who use snark and deflection when they cannot refute the fundamental logic of my position.

September 23, 2011 @ 9:40 pm | Comment

Lots of allegations, Jing. How about some evidence, for a change?

September 23, 2011 @ 10:39 pm | Comment

To Jing,
you write well…as far as words go. But you sound like someone in need of medication or hospitalization, as far as content goes. Fortunately, in 2011, medical science has progressed far. Hopefully for you, it has progressed far enough.

After wading through what amounts to excessive albeit well-written verbiage, are you simply an American wailing against immigration? Is there any more substance to “your position” than that?

We can’t refute your “fundamental logic”, since you’ve yet to establish it. Give a basis for this logic of yours, then I imagine people will gladly deconstruct it for you.

September 23, 2011 @ 10:51 pm | Comment

“Look what happened to Enoch Powell.”

Biggest laugh of the day there. Seriously, I’m actually one of those who believes that Powell meant what he said in the Rivers Of Blood speech, but he was a racist all the same, and his predition has not and never will come true.

” it undermines the wealth and welfare of the host societies”

Yet by all measures we are much better off because of immigration. No evidence shows otherwise.

“hostile non-white aliens”

Strange, they don’t seem that hostile, not unless you’re going to totally ignore opinion polls which show, for example, 2nd and 3rd Asian Britons as being very similar to their white counterparts, and concentrate only only the acitivities of a crazed few. Moreover, I guess it wouldn’t be a problem if they were white in your view – otherwise wy mention that they are non-white?

And when did “White” become a culture?

“vilest form of treason because it is race treason”

By this ‘logic’, we British should have allied with our Nordic brothers in Germany to oppose the Soviets during WW2, and Chinese should have allied with their fellow East-Asians in Japan against America – because race trumps all, right?

Seriously, stay away from guns and semtex, because the shit your spewing on this site is little different to that the Norwegian terrorist and traitor Anders Breivik wrote in his manifesto.

No doubt you’ll try to come back with some of Mark Steyn’s Eurabia nonsense – thoroughly debunked by all available statistics. My advice is – don’t.

September 23, 2011 @ 11:03 pm | Comment

Jargon-laden writing is not good writing. And, yes, there is no “fundamental logic” to ponder. Simple racialist/racist thinking, dressed up in pseudo-intellectual rhetoric and half-digested terminology. Immigration is driven mainly by capitalism’s need for labor, and partly by humanitarian reasons. Marxism, schmarxism.

There once was a Jing posting on various blogs who came off as an angry young Chinese-American Han chauvinist. Now he sounds like a KKK wannabe with a better, if stilted, vocabulary.

September 23, 2011 @ 11:31 pm | Comment

To be a racist in today’s West is akin to being a class enemy in the Soviet Union or Maoist China. Just look at what Satoshi Kanazawa suffered for merely stating the black females were objectively less attractive on a blog. A humiliating public struggle session at the hands of party apparatchiks until his thinking was properly “rectified”. So what if Powell was racist? It is natural to be a racist, it is natural to fear and mistrust the outsider. What is unnatural is to invite him into your communities, to invite him into your homes, and then avert your eyes and deny everything as your family is ravished and your possessions purloined. What is unnatural is the decade long barrage of statist propaganda directed against children about how their natural instincts are wrong.

You want to know what negative externalities the west faces from third world immigration (primarily afro-islamic and mestizo)? Fact one, immigrants are more prone to criminality than white natives, blacks doubly so. Fact two, immigrants are a net drain on the exchequer contributing little to tax revenue but drawing an undue amount of benefits. Fact three, immigrant children lower the quality of public schools. Fact four, immigrants increase housing costs and lower affordable family formation for natives due to ghettoization as natives flee neighborhoods where they congregate and seek out ever increasingly rarer good neighborhoods, read white neighborhoods. Fact five, immigrants bring with them a whole host of social pathologies from their urheimat that are not simply abandoned at the airport terminal (honor killings anyone?). Fact six, Immigrants bring biological pathogens too, with disease reintroduced again after they were originally destroyed in the developed West. Fact seven, democratic politics becomes ever more clientelist as “minority” groups use electoral power to grant themselves ever greater privileges (see affirmative action, I.e. underqualified blacks receiving temporal indulgences from the state). Fact eight, a continuous slide in net human capital as the ever growing profile of cognitively inadequate peoples jeopardizes the ability of a society to maintain an industrial state (yes most immigrants are inherently not as intelligent as the natives and this is racial not cultural). Do you want to learn any more facts or will you dismiss all these realities with a wave of a hand and a recitation of the mantra “diversity is double plus good”.

England should have sided with Germany during the second world war against the Soviets. If you want to play the game of counterfactuals, this would not have been necessary had that bastard Wilson not entered the first world war. A German victory there (And it was coming. Despite the generations of allied propaganda to the contrary, France and England were gradually losing the stalemate) would have changed everything. The English and the Germans are

Powell’s dystopian future is already coming into fruition from the coast of Mexifornia to the heart of London. That orgy of looting, rioting, and banditry wasn’t the first sign of the collapse and it won’t be the last. Even more risible was the shameless attempt by the owned press to spin it as “youths” run amuck and cherry pick the few non black bandits as somehow representative.

Breivik saw himself as a member of the (counter) revolutionary vanguard yet he himself was blind to the reality, blaming everything on mohammedans while simultaneously performing servile obeisance to international Jewry. Breivik was a fool because he failed to understand that this war is being waged on a subaltern level pioneered by the subversive left and it is there where they must be rolled back.

Mark steyn is an imbecile, a Jew, and not to be trusted.

September 24, 2011 @ 1:42 am | Comment

Whatever educational system Jing went through – it was apparently quite effective. I’m wondering how they managed to teach him reading and writing.

September 24, 2011 @ 2:12 am | Comment

Seriously, is there ever good time to be a racist? If you don’t want to be frowned upon by mainstream society, don’t be racist. Not that hard if you put your mind to it. On the other hand, you sound like you’re only one or two burning crosses short of being a full-on Aryan Nationalist, so eschewing racism might be a bit more challenging for you. It would be yet another one of those delicious ironies in life if Slim is correct and you’re in fact Chinese-American.

Racism isn’t instinctual. It is learned. You seem to have been a good student. You must have had good teachers. Birds of a feather, i suppose. I guess that applies even to the most base echelons of humankind.

What the heck is an “externality”? Like Slim points out, this is just jingo-ism.

“immigrants are more prone to criminality than white natives”
—you’ve committed the most juvenile of errors. Is it the status of being an immigrant that correlates to criminal behaviour, or is it the socio-economic class? And as suggested, you’re confusing correlation with causation.

“immigrants are a net drain on the exchequer contributing little to tax revenue but drawing an undue amount of benefits”
—and is that any different from “natives” of a similar socio-economic class?

Same goes for your other idiotic “facts”. I’ll grant you the “honor killing” stuff. But the pathogen bit is particularly stupid. You don’t have to be an immigrant to carry pathogens; you merely need to be a traveler, of any nationality or race.

So before you spew more “facts” (why is it that the more lunancy in a commenter, the more keen they are to share “facts”?), give some foundation or basis for them, and learn the difference between correlation and causation.

There have been some full-on retards commenting on this site before, but you are at the head of that dubious class. Congratulations.

September 24, 2011 @ 2:40 am | Comment

Cheung, I admire your patience & optimism, but Jing needs professional help. If a guy runs down a street calling people names or hitting at them, and then complains about the, umm, complications this naturally leads to, he’s out of his mind.

September 24, 2011 @ 3:16 am | Comment

Autodidactic learning is the best kind. I managed to de-program myself of 16 years worth Government sponsored Marxist garbage by accepting facts no matter their provenance and using reasoning to lead me to reality.

Let’s see, in the past few posts I have been called another Breivik, a member of the KKK, and now a Neo-Nazi Aryan Nationalist. Do you want me to admit to eating sweet sweet succulent babies too? Men of softer conviction and weaker wills would have bowed underneath such slander but fortunately I am made of sterner stuff. I am an admitted Han racialist and see no shame in it. I recognize that the Bolshevik cabal that calls itself a government is perpetrating an armed genocide in my homeland against my race, the Han race, for its own traitorous ends. This is not irony, this is tragedy.

I call you Marxist tools which is what you are by your own account. The foundation of your logic is based on a materialist conception of history and class struggle. You can think of no other way to conceptualize reality besides what has been spoon fed you.

See this is what you are unwilling to accept, even controlling for socio-economic status, Afro-Islamic immigrants to the West are more likely to commit crimes. Just as when controlling for the socio-economic status of their parents, their children are still lower performing than the white mean.

So you admit that immigrants are a net financial negative. The difference between them and lumpen-proletariat natives is that for the natives, it is the land of their fathers and forefathers. If you admit that they are of no financial benefit, why allow more to enter?

September 24, 2011 @ 3:26 am | Comment

“Autodidactic”
—isn’t that an oxymoron?

Let’s be clear about one thing. Your reasoning has led you to YOUR new reality. And to that you are entitled, as much as but no more than the next guy. However, at least for now, your new reality has no relevance to mine, and that’s a good thing. Hope it stays that way. If it doesn’t, I will be sure to seek medical advice.

There’s an “armed genocide” against the Han race? Perhaps you can show me when, where, and how this is occuring.

What on earth is a “materialist conception”? You are full of terminology that sounds high-flown but is in essence meaningless. Is this what your “autodidactic” learning has taught you – a large reservoir of meaningless verbiage?

“even controlling for socio-economic status, Afro-Islamic immigrants to the West are more likely to commit crimes. Just as when controlling for the socio-economic status of their parents, their children are still lower performing than the white mean.”
—I think this is the part where some data or evidence would be nice. And it looks like, with a minimum of effort, your eight “facts” have been whittled down to 2.

“So you admit that immigrants are a net financial negative.”
—huh, when has anyone done that? It seems you’ve added creative reading to your enviable repertoire.

Sounds like you apparently hit reset on your brain at some point. Looks like you’re due for another.

September 24, 2011 @ 4:21 am | Comment

Seriously people, why bother responding to this drivelling idiot Jing.

Don’t be surprised if you are being hoaxed.

September 24, 2011 @ 5:09 am | Comment

@KT – It had crossed my mind, but if that’s the case, then it’s one of those hoaxes
that totally back-fires – a hoax where the ‘joke’ is that the hoaxer is trying to make himself look like a moron and succeeding.

September 24, 2011 @ 6:01 am | Comment

FOARP. A hoax only becomes so when people respond/react.

Don Dumdo (sic)…I have similar suspicions.

Both sound like an extreme version of Aryan Nation on bad LSD and should simply be ignored.

Probably Hongjian in another guise.

September 24, 2011 @ 6:08 am | Comment

Call me a simple materialist, but I’m beginning to think good old fashioned raw sewage is preferable to whatever is flowing from our persecuted autodidact.

September 24, 2011 @ 7:21 am | Comment

Autodidactic learning is the best kind.
Yes – because the “self-learner” can choose his sources by himself, and nothing and nobody will contradict his worldview. The dark side of it: it leads to a feeling of (well-deserved, btw) loneliness, and inevitably to trolling.

September 24, 2011 @ 3:05 pm | Comment

OK, KT – if nobody else responds to that learned troll anymore, I won’t, either. Promised.

September 24, 2011 @ 3:07 pm | Comment

There’s loons everywhere with odd opinions…
Funnily enough, come across this, which is a lonn related piece… http://www.rense.com/general85/China'sPlanToConquer.htm
Should stop cyber-skiving while working…but one does find juicy nuggets on teh old internet, eh?

September 26, 2011 @ 8:07 am | Comment

On a totally unrelated note, did you all see the post on Language Log about the CCP’s use of the phrase “hurt the feelings.” If not, go there now. I’ll just paste the graf showing, in terms of google hits, how many times China uses this phrase compared to other nations:

“hurts the feelings of the Chinese people” 17,000
“hurts the feelings of the Japanese people” 178
“hurts the feelings of the American people” 5
“hurts the feelings of the German people” 2
“hurts the feelings of the Jewish people” 2
“hurts the feelings of the Indian people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Russian people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Italian people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the British people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Swedish people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the French people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Spanish people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Turkish people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Greek people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Israeli people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Vietnamese people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Thai people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Egyptian people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Tibetan people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Uighur people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Uyghur people” 0
“hurts the feelings of the Mongolian people” 0

Lots more in the post.

September 26, 2011 @ 11:50 am | Comment

LOL. China: world leader in claims of hurt feelings. Not actual hurt feelings, mind you; just what the CCP claims, and what the CCP apparently would like you to believe.

September 26, 2011 @ 12:19 pm | Comment

Crybaby one moment, bully the next.
The many faces of ccp Face.
F$%#%^ pathetic.
The economic hegenom of the 21st century. Forget it. Manufacture for export is slowly constricting. Land reclamations for r/e are accelerating in order to pay off provincial debt….increasingly pissed off peasantry. Obstreperous social media. Massive income divide. Fearful neighbours.Food supply a few steps from croaking a province. Infrastructure with a very short term life span.

Crikey, I though Europe had problems.

September 26, 2011 @ 2:02 pm | Comment

Shit. Reading this blog it’s like being in a bar argument in Harlem. The knives gonna come out prutty soon. Nasty.

September 26, 2011 @ 6:26 pm | Comment

“bar argument in Harlem”

Random and fascinating at the same time. Please, tell me exactly what a bar argument in Harlem is really like.

September 26, 2011 @ 11:26 pm | Comment

a bar argument in Harlem

Don’t know either – but I think John Lee knows, and would like to turn this thread into one.

September 27, 2011 @ 12:01 am | Comment

Is a bar argument in Harlem fundamentally different from a bar argument anywhere else? I was not aware of that.

September 27, 2011 @ 12:52 am | Comment

It’s more relaxed in most Dutch coffee shops. Have a reefer, John Lee. Should be good for you.

September 27, 2011 @ 1:01 am | Comment

Ha ha now yo talking. See, yall need some black mutha come sort yo guys shiit out. Yowsa!

September 27, 2011 @ 1:52 am | Comment

An thats John Lee as in Hooker, not some fortune cookie my ass chow mein yellow Lee. Tho Yao Ming he cool. Harlem y’dig. Where Globetrators comming from y’all.

September 27, 2011 @ 1:58 am | Comment

I think JR has mistaken Harlem for Haarlem. JLH was a great musician, never bettered although I’m sure KT has his own views on this.

September 27, 2011 @ 2:41 am | Comment

@FOARP. Woke up, made coffee, turned on the medium and confronted by a JLH connundrum.Well, just can’t help it, but the four metres of rare vinyl I sold off in a hurry a few years ago to a specialist collector included twenty or so JLH slabs going back to his first in 1948.

Despite the critics negative views, my favourite was the double acoustic album on Ralp J Gleason’s Fantasy label produced in the mid 60s. Incredibly strong songs, my favourites being Declaration Day and You’r So Nice and Kind Della Lou.

Other than listening to silver/gold age reggae/dub (thus KT), The Who and trashy mid-sixties Garage bands, I take a post-modernist position today, preferring to read about music than listening to it.

Have you been spying on my I Spy for the FBI piece?

@ JR. With the new legislation going thru the Dutch parliament, your days of tripping over the border to destabilise your mind are coming to and end. Smiley.

@Mr John Lee. I’d trade your three posts in for a visit to the Appollo Theatre anyday.

Say a 1963 big bill. Jackie Wilson (for the ladies), Lorraine Ellison (because she was hot) and Bobby Bland (because he is my favourite vocalist with a massively diverse discography).

Thanks FOARP.

September 27, 2011 @ 3:44 am | Comment

@ Richard, comment 99
😀
Loved it! I’ll put that in my “Bingo” list with “5000 year history” and “the Opium War”

@KT – read this?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/100107181/the-workings-of-chinas-mafia-state-laid-bare/
Loved this reply
“zhanglan

Today 02:08 PM

This incident certainly did really happen, it is an outrage, wholly inexcusable and is correctly condemned by all right thinking people the world over. Unfortunately, it’s not just China where the authorities can get heavy handed with the wrong guy, as a certain Brazilian electrician could perhaps tell you, if it weren’t for the fact that he rather inconveniently had 7 hollow-point bullets pumped into his head at point blank range. In the instance nobody lost their job at all, and the officers involved were prosecuted for Health & Safety breaches.

This is an ugly story, and rightly condemned. It is not, however, evidence of a mafia state any more than is Rupert Murdoch controlling both the Metropolitan Police and the Government of the day. Fortunately the guy appears to have survived the ordeal, and – far from “nobody batting an eyelid” – the perpetrators have at least been called to account. I certainly agree that the punishments meted out appear ridiculously lenient in the context of a crime of this nature.

“So when you read about rising levels of “social unrest” in China, this kind of business is part of the reason why”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t make the allegations of increasing unrest true; there is simply no evidence of this whatsoever, no matter how much some people might like it to be the case, and Peter Foster’s attempt to extrapolate from a specific incident to a wider generalisation is simply lame. The stats he refers to include every reported breach of the peace – including domestic incidents, brawls in pub carparks, drunk & disordely arrests, and car accidents involving vehicles registered outside of the area where the collision took place.

His concluding remark typifies the agenda underlying this report – the story (and indeed the ultimate fate of the unfortunate victim) is subsidiary to the more important message – China is uniquely and uniformly bad. It’s simply not the case.

September 27, 2011 @ 4:47 am | Comment

@ JR. With the new legislation going thru the Dutch parliament, your days of tripping over the border to destabilise your mind are coming to and end. Smiley.

@ KT. Just to clarify, I do smoke an extra cigarette once in a while, but I’ve never smoked one in the Flatlands. Pepernoten are fine with me (the season is nearing again), but I distrust their greenhouses and farms.

September 27, 2011 @ 4:56 am | Comment

Can’t resist here.

The Robin Hood syndrome hits Sino land.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-09/26/content_13789420.htm

And for those who cut their teeth on CS:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2042028/Chinese-internet-laughingstock-moves-hunt-perfect-man-Brooklyn.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

The US may be in the cart financially, but Sister Feng, now a manicurist in Brooklyn, has yet to get the message.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2042028/Chinese-internet-laughingstock-moves-hunt-perfect-man-Brooklyn.html#ixzz1Z5x0IXY0

‘America is still a place where anyone can succeed. I can open a small business, develop into a big business, take it public and then global,’ she continued.

@JR. The old Clinton did not inhale alibi.

Look, lets be honest for once. China would be a much happier social formation if all manner of drugs were readily available at the corner kiosk, plus providing a major boost to rural family incomes.

September 27, 2011 @ 5:20 am | Comment

Deleted – this guy is a serious troll and has a potty-mouth to boot.

Richard

September 27, 2011 @ 12:27 pm | Comment

@ KT

@JR. The old Clinton did not inhale alibi.
No. It’s about quality. You wouldn’t inhale Dutch tomatoes either.

China would be a much happier social formation if all manner of drugs were readily available at the corner kiosk, plus providing a major boost to rural family incomes.
Yes. But that would weaken the motherland. The only aim by the East Indian Company was to weaken the motherland. After all, they weakened Britain too – prior to 1868, anyone could legally trade in opium products.

The US may be in the cart financially, but Sister Feng, now a manicurist in Brooklyn, has yet to get the message.
At least, Sister Feng’s demands are transparent. Besides, there will always be people with an Ivy-league degrees in America.

My educated guess: John Lee had issues with your links, KT. Yo needle him too much.

September 27, 2011 @ 12:59 pm | Comment

@JR – Be careful, I do not want to read about a teacher being arrested crossing the border with a a shipment of pepernoten!

@KT – Saw it, read it, spent a morning hooked on Motown as a result. Still don’t buy the conspiracy theories though.

As an avid collector of books, I’ve always seen collectors selling off their collections as something of a betrayal, however, my bro, who is a vinyl fanatic, freely engages in it. If I had some JLH rares you’d have to drag them from my cold, dead hands though, even though all I’ve got is a Best Of and The Healer. Do you have the name of the acoustic album BTW?

On a random tangent, my old stomping grounds of Brighton and London always were the best both for second hand vinyl and books, Amsterdam is the only place outside the UK I’ve ever been that was close to that. Does anyone have any tips as to where’s good in Oz or elsewhere to get second hand books/vinyl? I dearly hoped that HK would have somewhere like that, but in this area, as with a few others, HK was a disappointment.

September 27, 2011 @ 8:00 pm | Comment

You been in China too long, Foarp. When I say pepernoten, I mean pepernoten.

September 27, 2011 @ 9:41 pm | Comment

@FOARP Don’t comment on the fire sale of my vinyl or I will publicly off myself on this forum, okay. Circumstances beyond my control.

Re JLH. Look up his discography. There is only one double disc on Fantasy label. Also get Bring me your pillow to cry on….great obscure one.

Now, outside the States, the best city in the world was Melbourne. Probably something to do with the crap weather. I notice that vinyl prices have exploded in the last few months as has the sale of high end turntables.

Analogue is unquestionably a superior sound. Digital does crap things to piano and saxaphones.

If of course you are collecting jazz (nyself 56 to 66 inclusive), you obviously buy japanese pressings for their superior pressings (or laser cutting now) and cover art.

Desirable vinyl is now a very expensive habit.

Re. Conspiracy. See my second latest on Custers site.

Having seen The Who, Bob Marley, Led Zep and others when they were at the peak of their power, and mostly front row seats alongside the grouperatti, I can comment with a vastly superior smirk on my face.

O/T Thanks Richard.

September 28, 2011 @ 4:25 am | Comment

Aaah, jazz. Have my father’s old collection – bought a turntable to play the stuff I used to buy when at uni. Was listening to the Dave Brubeck Quartet last night – 1958 Newport Jazz Festival http://jazzbluesclub.com/uploads/posts/thumbs/1196242576_cover.jpg
Nice, mellow sounds 🙂 And all the records made in England.
I’ll be having a look to see what my fair city of Auckland has to offer in vinyl – probably not much.

September 28, 2011 @ 7:00 am | Comment