Somehow a few of us Asian bloggers have made it onto an exclusive list of outstanding expat/TESL blogs, apparently for use by English teachers to show their students what blogs are and how to create their own. Did they really mean to include my blog here? Poor kids….

(It’s hardly an exclusive list; you can apparently nominate your own blog for inclusion.)

China’s media are certainly making awesome strides when it comes to cultural/societal/sexual issues. You have simply got to see this. Amazing.

Related Post: Gays in China

Above is a photo of me and my new friend, The Splint at my office today. It’s now Day 12, leaving about 40 to go, and the only time I can take this sucker off is during physical therapy. At least with this new model I can tilt my right hand down to the keyboard and type with only minimal pain.

It’s an amazing experience. I hate it, but I know that if the day ever comes when I get rid of this albatross, I will appreciate my freedom and health more than I ever have before. 40 more days; it seems like a lifetime.

This is an interesting story for those wondering how much freer the media in China really are. Maybe it’s getting better, but those who go to press without permission had better be prepared to answer to the prosecutors.

An editor whose newspaper broke the news of China’s first new SARS case was detained and questioned by prosecutors, a human rights center reported.

Cheng Yizhong, editor in chief of the Southern Metropolitan Daily, declined to comment on his reported questioning, but appeared to indicate the issue may have been resolved.

“It’s inconvenient for me to speak right now, but this matter should be over,” said Cheng, reached at the newspaper’s offices.

[….]

Chinese journalists who anger local authorities often find themselves accused of corruption or other unrelated crimes. Some have been jailed after exposing embezzlement and other official abuses.

“Provincial party leaders are extremely unhappy that the Southern Daily failed to get the approval from the provincial party committee to print the SARS story,” the Information Center said.

It really does look like the government is being much more responsible this year about confronting SARS. But language like this tells us they still want to control whatever the people see or hear about the disease, and that once again opens the door for deception and denial.

Why do Chinese activists continue to demand justice when it it comes to the Tiananmen Square protests? They know what’s coming, right? Is it a death wish, a martyrdom complex, or an idealistic belief that they may be able to change things? I opt for the latter, and I have huge respect for those who would put themselves in such jeopardy to speak out against repression, even though the government reaction continues to be knee-jerk:

Veteran dissident Sang Jiancheng has been jailed for three years for subversion after distributing a letter calling on the government to reassess its verdict on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, a US-based human rights group says.

The Shanghai Intermediate People’s Court handed down the sentence on Tuesday for the offence of “incitement to subvert state power” more than a year after Sang was arrested, Human Rights in China said.

Prosecutors said Sang distributed an “open letter” in the western city of Xian in 2002 that was addressed to the 16th Communist Party Congress and signed by several political activists.

Several people who signed the letter have also been jailed. One of the writers of the letter, Ouyang Yi, is waiting to learn his sentence after being tried recently for posting pro-democracy material on the internet, rights groups said.

The letter, signed by 192 people, urged the government to reassess its condemnation of the June 4, 1989 protests, release political prisoners and expand democratic elections.

I read Longbow Papers every day, and I always have a reaction to what Joseph Bosco says, sometimes good, sometimes not so good, but he always gets me to think.

On US domestic politics we see pretty much eye to eye, and on the CCP and other Communism-related topics we disagree completely. All that said, I immensely enjoyed his piece today on the hypocrisy of US politics (ab)using god and religion to garner votes. Great insights, and a deeply disturbing issue to those of us who see this as a sort of quicksand. After all the pandering, how will guilty politicians like Bush and Dean get out of the mess? Already, Bush is beholden to the religious right and it’s not pretty.

On the other hand, I disagreed with his recent assault on Andrew Sullivan, much as I love poking holes in Sully’s arguments.

I have to say that Sullivan is correct in slamming Arthur Miller for dining and socializing with Fidel Castro. As much as I revered Castro and Che back in college, after learning of the misery Castro has inflicted on so many of his people I can no longer see him as the somewhat cuddly, daring revolutionary of past impressions.

The litany of Castro’s sins is no secret, so I’m not sure why someone as brilliant as Joseph would just let it go. We are talking about a Very Bad Man here, and for Miller to hang out with him gives liberals an even worse name than they’ve already got (fairly or unfairly).

The other point where I definitely take issue with Joseph is on the greatness of Arthur Miller, of whom he writes, “Long after Sullivan passes from this rock, Mr. Miller will be revered as one of the greatest writers America produced in the 20th Century! Perhaps only a dozen writers in that century belong in the strata of wordsmanship that Miller inhabits.”

Sorry, but in my mind Miller was, is and always will be a second-rate writer who wrote one or two excellent plays, in particular Death of a Salesman. The Crucible is a great shocker and very powerful, but I don’t believe it will be remembered as a great play by those less intimately familiar with the McCarthy Era. He is dwarfed by truly great playwrights like Eugene O’Neill and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s all but forgotten over the next couple of generations.

Lastly, I agree with Joseph that Sullivan’s “tick-tock” bullshit is weird and tasteless. But I don’t believe he is actively wishing death upon anyone. He is saying that one day this generation will pass on and its Vietnam-mentality will perish with them. Bad news is, Andrew, that one day your neo-con generation will pass on and be replaced by another breed of liberal or whatever. Tick-tock. Again, it’s weird and tasteless, but it’s typical Sullivan.

To reiterate, I enjoy reading Joseph’s blog immensely and he’s one of the bloggers I am hoping to meet personally before I head back home for good. With respect, I take issue too with his beautifully written essay on “The greatness of China,” but that discussion will have to wait until I’ve got a little more stamina.

I went to work and really wasn’t ready for it. I’m afraid I’ve got to lie low again for a while; sitting up straight is just not an option at the moment. Hopefully I’ll blog again soon, but not until tomorrow at the earliest…..

Fred as I remember him

Among the very great and lucky experiences I’ve had was the opportunity to work for nearly three years alongside Fred Hoar in Silicon Valley. Fred died yesterday, a living legend, at the age of 77.

Everyone who knew Fred will agree on one thing: no one could ever replace him, no one could ever even appraoch him. Looking at his life one can only wonder how he did it, postioning Apple Computer and introducing the Macintosh and being right in the forefront of everything Silicon Valley, from Fairchild Semiconductors in the 70s right up through the dot-com craze. He was one of the true pioneers, but more than that, he was a kind and decent man, incredibly generous and brilliant, yet humble and self-effacing. Witty and funny, too.

Fred used to emcee countless Silicon Valley events, always introducing himself with his signature line, “Good evening, I’m Fred Hoar.” Then he’d pause a few seconds and clarify, “That’s spelled F-R-E-D.” And it was hilarious everytime. Once I head him add, “If you think having that last name has been a pain for me, just ask one of my four daughters what she thinks.”

I know there must be many like me who looked up to Fred as a mentor and as a father figure. I learned more about writing from him than from anyone else. I treasure the many evenings after work when we would meet in his office and talk about poetry and literature; he would recite from memory Yeats’ entire “Sailing to Byzantium,” and I’d recite the intro to “Paradise Lost.” Or we’d recite lines from books and see if the other could guess the author.

My friend Jeremy, founder of up-and-coming Pop! Public Relations, has written a moving tribute to Fred as well. I suspect by tomorrow, many more will be all over the Internet.

My Thai-made splint basically shattered yesterday, and I got fitted for a snazzy new one this morning. It will only cost me $500. (At this point I’ve given up worrying about how I’m going to pay for this fiasco, which is now topping $6,000, despite the low-cost Thai surgery.) This one has swivel controls and is all cloth and plastic and very chic. It still hurts like hell to wear the thing, but at least it’s fashionable. I call it my portable torture chamber.

I’ve been splinted for 10 days now. That leaves, oh, about 40 more days to go. One day I’ll look back at this and laugh. Right?

[Update: Drucker’s statistics have been disputed and are probably incorrect. (See Adam’s post about this.) The problem is, it’s out in Fortune and now mainstreamers like Josh Marshall plan to write about it as a matter of fact. Marshall ends his post by saying he’s going to write more about Drucker’s observations soon. Problem is, they apparently weren’t observations, but mistakes.]

Josh Marshall today quotes from an unlinkable interview with Peter Drucker, author of all those management books clogging up the bookstore shelves (though Drucker’s are better than most). The topic is essentially how China and India stand in the world economy, especially relation to the US. Drucker seems to think India may have the upper hand.

DRUCKER: In contrast [to India], the greatest weakness of China is its incredibly small proportion of educated people. China has only 1.5 million college students, out of a total population of over 1.3 billion. If they had the American proportion, they’d have 12 million or more in college. Those who are educated are well trained, but there are so few of them. And then there is the enormous undeveloped hinterland with excess rural population. Yes, that means there is enormous manufacturing potential. In China, however, the likelihood of the absorption of rural workers into the cities without upheaval seems very dubious. You don’t have that problem in India because they have already done an amazing job of absorbing excess rural population into the cities–its rural population has gone from 90% to 54% without any upheaval.

Everybody says China has 8% growth and India only 3%, but that is a total misconception. We don’t really know. I think India’s progress is far more impressive than China’s.

Marshall comments:

If Drucker is right (and I’ve always been in the camp that agrees with his general point with regards to India and China), that has vast and in most cases positive implications for America’s posture across the globe. With respect to China. With respect to Pakistan. And in many other places as well.

Think how much of our broad, long-range foreign policy thinking rests on the premise that China is the rising economic and military power? What if the premise is wrong? Or what if India, nearly as large a country in population terms, is another rising behemoth? Then consider too that India is a democracy, albeit an imperfect one. It’s also a rule of law based society — again, if an imperfect one. And it’s a country with hundreds of millions of English speakers and, according to Drucker, 150 million speak it as their primary language. (Update: As this page shows, Drucker’s statement in this case is certainly incorrect. Only about 20 million Indians speak English as their native language. A number between 150 and 200 million properly refers to fluent English speakers.)

This is not a partisan issue in American politics, or needn’t be. President Clinton began an opening to India in the 1990s and it’s been continued under President Bush.

This is an intriguing discussion, and I won’t be able to offer any viewpoint on it until the end of the day today. No matter; I’m sure this is already stirring up debate in the China-India blog communities.