A guest post from Jerome Keating.
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The Ma Ying-jeou Shuffle: How Long Can He Keep It Up?

“You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Abraham Lincoln’s words indicate the growing pressure on the Kuomintang (KMT) and its front-runner Ma Ying-jeou.

Politically speaking, Taiwan’s 2008 Presidential Election is still a long ways off, nevertheless Ma the Chairman of the KMT and current Mayor of Taipei is already running hard.

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You can’t fault them for lack of innovation.

The menu at Beijing’s latest venue for its growing army of gourmets is eye-watering rather than mouth-watering.

China’s cuisine is renowned for being “in your face” – from the skinned dogs displayed at food markets to the kebabbed scorpions sold on street stalls – and there is no polite way of describing Guo-li-zhuang.

Situated in an elegantly restored house beside Beijing’s West Lake, it is China’s first speciality penis restaurant.

Here, businessmen and government officials can sample the organs of yaks, donkeys, oxen and even seals. In fact, they have to, since they form part of every dish – except for those containing testicles.

“This is my third visit,” said one customer, Liu Qiang. “Of course, there are other restaurants that serve the bian of individual animals. But this is the first that brings them all together.”

Not much else I can say. Dig in.

Update: Unrelated except for the fact that it belongs in the “News of the Weird” category: The dangers of playing mah jong in Malaysia.

A 56-year-old man spent six days in hospital after his friend shoved a spoon up his nose in an argument over a mahjong game.

He was also hit with a chair during the incident in a coffee shop in Lorong Baru off Jalan Macalister here last Thursday.

Northeast district police chief Assistant Commissioner Hamzah Md Jamil said the victim lodged a report after being discharged from the hospital yesterday.

The man said he was playing mahjong with two friends when an argument started.

The argument turned violent when one of the men grabbed a spoon and shoved it up his nose.

Mugabe wasn’t evil enough; now China is going for the gold, rescuing the sorry ass of Iran’s slimy new president as the world prepares to impose economic sanctions.

China and Iran are close to setting plans to develop Iran’s Yadavaran oil field, according to published reports, in a multibillion-dollar deal that comes as Tehran faces the prospect of sanctions over its nuclear program.

The deal is thought potentially to be worth about $100 billion.

According to Caijing, a respected financial magazine, a Chinese government delegation is due to visit Iran as early as March to formally sign an agreement allowing China Petrochemical Corp., also known as Sinopec, to develop Yadavaran.

The Wall Street Journal also reported in Friday’s editions that the two sides are trying to conclude the deal in coming weeks before potential sanctions are imposed on Iran for its nuclear ambitions. The report cited unnamed Iranian oil ministry officials familiar with the talks.

And this proves it’s true:

Chinese and Iranian officials in Beijing said they could not confirm the report.

“I know nothing about this. I can’t answer your questions,” said Ma Li, a spokeswoman for the National Development and Reform Commission, the planning agency in charge of China’s energy and resources industries that Caijing said would dispatch officials to Iran.

Staff at Iran’s embassy in Beijing said they were aware of the report but had not heard Mou’s remarks, which Caijing said were made at a recent embassy event.

China’s wise and munificent leaders sure know how to pick ’em. (President Ahmadinejad, for those who might be living in a cave, has denied the existence of the Holocaust and is playting Russian roulette – no offense, Ivan – with his uranium enrichment program.)

This is really alarming. A scientist is saying the world as we know it may well end due to global warming far faster than any of us imagine. Is Jim Hansen a liberal socialist moonbat repeating alarmist cliches? You decide; his title is Director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and he’s Bush’s top climate modeller. (Don’t ask me what a “climate modeller” does all day.) His words are remarkable, considering his high title. Here’s how he starts.

A satellite study of the Greenland ice cap shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared – twice as much ice is going into the sea as it was five years ago. The implications for rising sea levels – and climate change – could be dramatic.

Yet, a few weeks ago, when I – a Nasa climate scientist – tried to talk to the media about these issues following a lecture I had given calling for prompt reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases, the Nasa public affairs team – staffed by political appointees from the Bush administration – tried to stop me doing so. I was not happy with that, and I ignored the restrictions. The first line of Nasa’s mission is to understand and protect the planet.

Got that? He’s a Nasa official, and the Bush people tried to gag him? Hansen goes on to paint a surreal picture of what’s in store for the planet based on current trends and world history. Here’s his scary conclusion.

How far can it go? The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today – which is what we expect later this century – sea levels were 25m higher. So that is what we can look forward to if we don’t act soon. None of the current climate and ice models predict this. But I prefer the evidence from the Earth’s history and my own eyes. I think sea-level rise is going to be the big issue soon, more even than warming itself.

It’s hard to say what the world will be like if this happens. It would be another planet. You could imagine great armadas of icebergs breaking off Greenland and melting as they float south. And, of course, huge areas being flooded.

How long have we got? We have to stabilise emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree. That will be warmer than it has been for half a million years, and many things could become unstoppable. If we are to stop that, we cannot wait for new technologies like capturing emissions from burning coal. We have to act with what we have. This decade, that means focusing on energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy that do not burn carbon. We don’t have much time left.

I usually don’t often write about this sort of thing, as I can’t speak with much knowledge about it. But if there’s even a modicum of truth to what this guy is saying, our planet could be in danger unprecedented since the end of the last ice age. A decade is a very short amount of time; the debate on this topic has been going on for longer than that. Sounds like it’s time to finally take an issue Bush will barely even acknowledge with a new degree of seriousness.

Freedom Fries, the Freedom Tower, and now the Global Online Freedom Act. I get nervous whenever you have officials writing legislation for the Internet, because usually it’s about less freedom, not more. The news about the proposed law targeting tech companies in China sounds like no exception:

Nearly every U.S. company with a Web site located in China will have to move it elsewhere or its executives would face prison terms of up to a year, according to proposed legislation expected to be introduced this week in the U.S. Congress.

A draft version of the bill reviewed by CNET News.com represents the first serious attempt to rewrite the ground rules controlling how U.S. Internet companies may interact with foreign governments. If enacted, it would dramatically change the business practices of corporations with operations in China, Iran, Vietnam and other nations deemed to be overly “Internet-restricting.”

The highly anticipated proposal, created by Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) in response to recent reports about censorship in China by Google, Yahoo and others, also makes it unlawful to filter search results or turn over information about users to certain governments unless the U.S. Justice Department approves. It would also impose new export restrictions to those nations.

Well, I guess it all deppends on what your definition of “freedom” is. Liveblogging the hearings, Rebecca Mackinnon writes,

So now what? I hope that this draft legislation will be the beginning of a long and constructive process. I would like to see detailed analysis from all potentially affected U.S. technology companies as to whether they think this legislation would enable them to continue doing business in China, but more ethically. Several companies have said they would welcome legislation that would hold U.S. companies to common ethical standards. So now I hope that American corporations will engage with lawmakers to craft the most effective legislation that enables them to do good while still doing business. I agree, it is better for them to be engaged with China and doing business there rather than not. The issue is with the specifics of their businesses and business conduct.

I hope the noble goal Rebecca envisages is truly viable. Unfortunately, the sad fact is that adhering to an American code of ethics and doing business in China is like trying to mix oil and water. You simply have to bite the bullet and pay the bribes and deal with the corruption and facilitate the censorship if you plan to set up shop there. I can’t see how this can be legislated away by a piece of paper in Washington. I can’t see how this piece of paper will be the soap that makes the oil and water mix. I’ll try to keep an open mind, but looking at the preliminary descriptions of the “Global Online Freedom Act” doesn’t make me any more optimistic.

This is different: China has tried and failed to build sophisticated auto engines, so they’re buying a huge engine factory in Brazil, which they will break into bits and ship back to China, where it will be rebuilt. And voila, China can lay claim to building state-of-the-art car engines.

China is pursuing a novel way to catapult its automaking into a global force: buy one of the world’s most sophisticated engine plants, take it apart, piece by piece, transport it halfway around the globe and put it back together again at home.

In the latest sign of this country’s manufacturing ambitions, a major Chinese company, hand-in-hand with the Communist Party, is bidding to buy from DaimlerChrysler and BMW a car engine plant in Brazil.

Because the plant is so sophisticated, it is far more feasible for the Chinese carmaker, the Lifan Group, to go through such an effort to move it 8,300 miles, rather than to develop its own technology in this industrial hub in western China, the company’s president said Thursday.

If the purchase succeeds — and it is early in the process — China could leapfrog competitors like South Korea to catch up with Japan, Germany and the United States in selling some of the most fuel-efficient yet comfortable cars on the market, like the Honda Civic or the Toyota Corolla.

You can never fault the Chinese for lack of ingenuity or business acumen. I give them credit for recognizing their shortcomings and finding an innovative solution. Read the article for details on why the cars they’re building hold such strong appeal, and why carmakers everywhere else should be sweating bullets as the Chinese manufacturing juggernaut prepares to pulverize them.

Funny, how Bill Gertz of the Washington Times always seems to take the lead in pointing out new evidence of China’s dire threat to America. Now he’s telling us commercial photos indicate the magnitude of China’s nuclear build-up.

Commercial satellite photos made public recently provide a new look at China’s nuclear forces and bases — images that include the first view of a secret underwater submarine tunnel.

A Pentagon official said the photograph of the tunnel entrance reveals for the first time a key element of China’s hidden military buildup. Similar but more detailed intelligence photos of the entrance are highly classified within the U.S. government, the official said.

“The Chinese have a whole network of secret facilities that the U.S. government understands but cannot make public,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “This is the first public revelation of China’s secret buildup.”

The photographs, taken from 2000 to 2004, show China’s Xia-class ballistic missile submarine docked at the Jianggezhuang base, located on the Yellow Sea in Shandong province.

It’s a slick piece, bringing up ominous quotes Rumsfeld made some months ago about China’s secret military buuldup. As usual, it seems designed to fan the flames of fear, mostly based on an anonymous Pentagon quote and old photos.

I’ve written about Gertz’s hysteria before.

Has anyone noticed that the groundswell of condemnation of China’s censorship machine appears to be reaching critical mass? There were so many articles today about the rising discontent within China – not just among bleeding heart Western bloggers – that I felt overwhelmed. On all fronts, new articles and blog posts on the topic are bomabarding us. Rebecca MacKinnon is doing a remarkable job live-blogging the congressional hearings into US Internet companies doing business in China. The CCP actually held a media briefing to defend its policies earlier this week. A media briefing!

For the first time, the American blogosphere seems to have picked up this issue with a passion hereto unseen. Where, if anywhere, tnis might lead remains to be seen; maybe it’ll all just fizzle out. But I’ve certainly never seen anything quite like it.

Just now the London Times has added to the noise, likening the phenomenon to the Cultural Revolution.

CHINA IS IN the grip of a new “cultural revolution”. This revolution differs from Mao Zedong’s calculated mobilisation of Red Guards against the hierarchy in two vitally important respects. It is welling up from below as a culture of outspokenness takes hold; and, although the spread of this revolution, in chat rooms, text messages, mass e-mails and as many as 13.3 million blogs, can be slowed by thousands of cyberplods sent in hot pursuit, it cannot be stopped. After months of smouldering arguments within the Communist Party about how best to handle it, the volcano of discord at the top has begun to erupt in full view. These arguments about how much freedom to allow — or indeed, whether the floods opened by technology can be dammed — go to the heart of the debate about China’s future direction. The leadership’s dilemma is acute, and harder and harder to hide.

As the article notes, China’s leaders are concerned, knowing how “small sparks cause big fires.” (Believe me, they wouldn’t hold a media briefing if they weren’t scared to death.) There’s no doubt, Google was the catalyst behind this firestorm. Where it will end is anyone’s guess, but I’d have to say we haven’t seen this kind of universal criticism of the CCP since the SARS scandal of 2002-3, and the other big scandal before that (sometime back in 1989). Quite amazing.

That was the name of an earlier post I did on the Vagina Monologues being banned in China. Now I’m using it in reference to a funny article by a foreign correspondence lamenting his poor Mandarin.

As my erudite predecessor the classical scholar John Gittings put it: Chinese is rich in vocabulary but phonetically impoverished.” To distinguish between identical phonemes, Mandarin uses tones – four of them. And as a foreigner who struggles to hit the right note even in karaoke, it is the tones that get me every time.

Although locals make allowances for foreigners, a mistaken tone can be humiliating and expensive. I could never be a broker: depending on the tone, “mai” can mean “buy” or “sell”. A tiny slip and billions could be lost.

Face, too, can be lost. In one of my first lessons, I was studying colours, and to practise my new vocabulary I asked my teacher what was the colour of her pen (one of the only other words I knew at the time). She blushed crimson, laughed, and quickly moved on to the next page of the textbook. The reason, I found out later, was that I had slipped from the third tone to the first – which had turned “pen” into a sensitive anatomical term.

At least I am not alone. Even the best foreign speakers of Mandarin sometimes get their rising tones mixed up with their undulating tones. “If I were emperor of China, my first act would be to abolish the second tone,” said Ed Lanfranco, correspondent for UPI and one of the best linguists among the foreign journalist community of Beijing. “I just can’t pick the second tone.”

By comparison, learning the characters is easy. This merely involves constant repetition rather than musical talent (which I suspect is something you have to be born with in order to master tones).

“Read the whole thing.” It’s the only article I’ve ever seen that has the phrase “cow’s vagina” in its headline.

Stupid twit.

Readers have been e-mailing all day the question the MSM needs to answer:

Why the Abu Ghraib photos, but not the Mohammed Cartoons?

We’re listening…

Another blogger answers it way better than I can:

BECAUSE IT’S A FUCKING CARTOON, YOU DIZZY SKANK. Do you understand the concept of a cartoon? It’s a picture somebody drew of make-pretend. Do you get confused when you read the Sunday funnies, and think it’s really happening? Do you ever find yourself yelling at the newspaper “don’t do it, Charlie Brown! Lucy’s gonna pull the ball away!” Do you understand the difference between “really happening” and “a drawing”? Am I eliciting blank stares from all around Wingnuttia right now?

God help us. God get me a beer.

Of course, when cartoons generate global riots, they become more than mere cartoons and need to be discussed in the news. But like all highly controversial and inflammatory material, it needs to be handled with care. As one of the more level-headed bloggers puts it,

[M]y cautionary notes advocating that we don’t cheerlead cartoon depictions of Mohammed as a ticking bomb are not some Munich-like appeasement redux, but rather an attempt to advocate judicious and responsible editorial judgment in the context of a wide-ranging ideological struggle against radical Islam–one being fought, not only in the Islamic world, but also very much in a West grappling with how best to integrate their Muslim minorities. Part of this battle means trying not to gratuitously humiliate religious minorities living within your midst.

The new photos of Abu Ghraib have never been seen before and have been long anticipated. They are imminently newsworthy. I believe they should be shown, though it is up to the media to decide whether to do so, and whether to show them pixilated and censored in the name of good taste. Just as it’s their right to show or not show the Mohammed cartoons.

The photos depict real events, crimes that Americans aren’t supposed to commit, and are important for understanding why we are where we are today in Iraq. To not understand that these photos are major news, especially when the administration assures us we do not have a policy of torture…. Well, what can one say, except that it’s vintage Malkin.