Those are the words that seem to be glued on the back of every other car in America right now. But that’s all they are, words. Just ask the troops who are coming home about the support they’re getting. How do they feel to hear about the super-rich living off the fat of the land while they sleep on the street? What a tragedy.

This is really odd. Not even the financial analysts covering Sina.com had any idea that a massive chunk of its revenues were coming from fortune-telling and horoscopes.

Shares of Sina are down 18 percent at $22.45.

Heretofore, Sina – which makes money when mobile users access content – referred to such services in an ambiguous way by calling them “usage-based” or “value-added.” It was a business that grew 56 percent in the fourth quarter, faster than the 49-percent increase in overall sales. Moreover, the mobile services accounted for 63 percent of the $56.9 million in total sales in that period.

The problem was that no one really asked what “usage based” meant.

James Mitchell, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, conceded in a note to his clients that he didn’t know that “fortune telling” made up nearly one-third of Sina’s value-added services.

This lack of knowledge about Sina “should be seen as a failure of research on our part,” he said.

Indeed, even Mitchell intimates that if he’d known that fortune-telling services were driving Sina’s business, he wouldn’t have been so optimistic, given that that type of business isn’t exactly a service that can give Sina a sustainable competitive advantage over other portals.

This discovery of Sina’s business came about late Monday, after Sina warned that the Chinese government clamped down on “fortune telling” advertising.

Unfortunately for Sina, it was the advertising on radio and TV that helped the company attract customers who wanted to get mobile-phone text messages about astrology and horoscopes.

The company is now poised to lose tens of millions of dollars. Why didn’t they see this coming in the tea leaves?

A reader pointed out that China Daily is allowing a thread on Zhao’s death to continue uncensored (for now). All other threads on Zhao were promptly zapped last week, so this is a rarity. The forum moderator, “hanlei,” has put in his own 2 cents, referring to Zhao by name, which I haven’t seen on the bbs before.

It’s a great discussion in that it’s a microcosm of different Chinese and Western perspectives. Some of the posters talk about the Tinanamen Square protestors as though they were criminals and traitors, others say they were misguided and stupid. The adulation over the CCP is palpable, and some claim that we Americans only criticize China because we are “jealous.”

If the thread gets zapped before you get to read it, my apologies. (And I’m jealous that my government never zaps my posts.) Also, it takes a long time for the page to open, but stick it out.

Update: As a reader pointed out, this thread was started many months ago on an unrelated topic, but there are now 10 or so new posts about Zhao on page 4 of the thread, which is very unexpected.

We have ourselves an American Demosthenes. In response to how his plan can fix Social Security:

Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There’s a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to what has been promised.

Does that make any sense to you? It’s kind of muddled. Look, there’s a series of things that cause the — like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate — the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those — if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.

Okay, better? I’ll keep working on it.

And this man is emperor of the universe. Arghhh.

Via Atrios.

So there’s going to be very little news out of China for the next week. Don’t be upset if my posts on China dwindle to a trickle. Maybe I’ll use this week to try to get focused again on US politics, but don’t worry, I’m always watching out for stories from Asia. Happy New Year.

Leave this blog now and go watch this sizzling video clip of Vanity Fair’s Judy Bacharach giving Fox News its comeuppance on the topic of Bush’s lavish inauguration. It’s refreshing — no exhiliarating — when the tables turn and the usual demagogues get demagogued themselves. You can feel the “reporter’s” blood pressure rise as she strives unsuccessfully to get back control of the interview. If only more Fox interviewees’ would show this kind of strength and not let the the Fox gang walk all over them.

Absolutely amazing. The squishy Kodak moment when Bush played America’s heartstrings like a fine violin was, in large part, a hoax, a sham, a set-up. This is a great example of blogger sleuthing and I wonder why the story isn’t everywhere. How cynical can our leaders be? (No, don’t answer; it was strictly a rhetorical question.) A great example of the conspiratorial nature of this presidency.

I want to urge readers to head over to We Observe the World for a bird’s-eye view into the thinking of today’s Chinese university students. In particular, there is a series of posts on the recent arrest of Zhao Yan, the man who allegedly broke the news in September of Jiang Zemin’s impending retirement, that is absolutely intriguing. I am struck by the way the students interpret this incident, and by what seems to be an automatic tendency to try to defend the arrest and the CCP. There is also quite a bit of criticism of foreign journalists who have condemned the arrest, and a particularly angry reaction to Nicholas Kristof’s article about the incident, which bore the title China’s Donkey Droppings.

This reaction by the students is not an unusual or bad thing. As an American, when I hear foreigners level charges against my country I often feel a knee-jerk response at work, and I get somewhat defensive. (Much as I loathe our president, I am not of the school that America is the source of all the world’s evils.) So I can understand their impulse to defend their government and their country. (Don’t all of us feel that way at least to some extent?)

The similarities and subtle differences in the students’ logic and perspective on this one issue is quite fascinating. I am always cautious against generalizations like, “Chinese people think this way” and “Jewish people think this way.” And yet, there are some striking similarities in their thought processes and they all seem to reach similar conclusions.

As I read their posts, I had to wonder just how open they felt they could be. Were they afraid that if they were too critical of the government they’d get in trouble? Do they truly believe it’s the government’s duty to control the news that’s reported? Did they feel peer pressure to conform to one another’s opinions? Whatever the answers, it’s an interesting if at times frustrating read (and some of them write better than a lot of native English-speaking bloggers I know).

Please check it out.

It’s a possibility.

RSF has voiced outrage over the charge of “illegally exposing state secrets abroad” that was brought against journalist and poet Shi Tao on 28 January 2005 for posting an official document relating to the June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre on a foreign website. Shi, who has been detained since November 2004, faces a sentence of between three years and life imprisonment if convicted.

The organisation said it was “absolutely scandalous” that China has imprisoned a journalist for trying to inform people around the world about Tiananmen at a moment when the European Union (EU) is considering lifting the arms embargo that was imposed after the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators. This shows the extent to which the Chinese Communist Party opposes any democratic opening, RSF said.

He shouldn’t worry. According to a recent commenter, the laogai isn’t so bad, although “the CCP need to add more check and balances into the system.” I hope Mr. Shi has a pleasant stay.

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