A poignant interview with some of China’s last surviving victims of this practice, the termination of which is perhaps the one good thing for which Mao will be remembered.

AT ages 84 and 83, Wang Zaiban and Wu Xiuzhen are old women, and their feet are historical artifacts. They are among the dwindling number of women in China from the era when bound feet were considered a prerequisite for landing a husband.

No available man, custom held, could resist the picture of vulnerability presented by a young girl tottering atop tiny, pointed feet. But Mrs. Wang and Mrs. Wu have tottered past vulnerability. They have outlived their husbands and also outlived civil war, mass starvation and the disastrous ideological experiments by Mao that almost killed China itself.

…Mrs. Wang said she was married at 15. Asked about her feet, she laughed, slipped off a blue, canvas slipper and flapped the top half of her stunted foot back and forth like a swinging door. ‘My feet were wrapped when I was 5 years old,’ she said. ‘No one wanted you unless you bound your feet. That is what my mother told me.’

‘A woman with very small feet was considered a very desirable wife,’ Mrs. Wang added.

They are just feet to her now.

It also offers a bitter-sweet (but mostly bitter) view of the women’s lives in their farm village, always on the periphery of the great economic boom – a boom that they never even knew had taken place, and that still affects them only minimally. So interesting to read their reflections on the Cultural Revolution, and on the ways life has changed since then. The one uplifting aspect of the story is the women themselves – they still have their sense of humor and don’t seem angry or bitter or regretful. Their story is a sad one, but the way they handled the cards they were dealt is ultimately inspiring.

Rich dares to ask the question many of us are wondering about but would rather brush aside, as its implications are too grim: Is President Bush in his right mind? (Word doc.) The parallels with the crazed Richard Nixon in 1974 are valid. A brief snippet (because I am such a big Paul Fussell fan):

In his classic study, The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell wrote of how World War I shattered and remade literature, for only a new language of irony could convey the trauma and waste. Under the auspices of Mr. Bush, the Iraq war is having a comparable, if different, linguistic impact: the more he loses his hold on reality, the more language is severed from its meaning altogether.

When the president persists in talking about staying until ‘the mission is complete’ even though there is no definable military mission, let alone one that can be completed, he is indulging in pure absurdity. The same goes for his talk of ‘victory,’ another concept robbed of any definition when the prime minister we are trying to prop up is allied with Mr. Sadr, a man who wants Americans dead and has many scalps to prove it. The newest hollowed-out Bush word to mask the endgame in Iraq is ‘phase,’ as if the increasing violence were as transitional as the growing pains of a surly teenager. ‘Phase’ is meant to drown out all the unsettling debate about two words the president doesn’t want to hear, ‘civil war.’

What an odd spectacle, to watch as America is ruled by a man who admits no mistakes, accepts no blame and whose sole mantra is “stay the course,” even though no one knows what that course is and why we are dying for it. History will judge this harshly. There is simply no precedent I know of since Hitler told his generals in a Berlin bunker in 1945 that WWII could be won if they just showed greater “willpower.” (And no, that is not an example of Godwin’s Law, perhaps the most annoying, most abused and misunderstood “law” to grace the Internet. In any case, it is usurped by an older and far more reliable law: If the shoe fits, wear it.)

No big surprise there. The report doesn’t find China wholly blameless, either, in terms of capitalizing on the story for propaganda purposes.

The United States has been exaggerating China’s nuclear clout in a process that could lock the two into a Cold War-style arms race, two arms-control advocacy groups said in a report on Thursday.

The Defense Department and U.S. intelligence agencies have portrayed Chinese weapons developments as more threatening than warranted, to justify building a new generation of weapons, according to the study by the Federation of American Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“The report’s main finding is that the Pentagon and others routinely highlight specific incidents out of context that inaccurately portray a looming Chinese threat,” the groups said in a statement.

Specifically, they said, the Defense Department and U.S. intelligence agencies had been “embellishing China’s submarine and long-range missile capabilities.”

….”With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which occupied that role for almost 50 years, the United States has turned its attention to China to help fill the vacuum,” it said.

The report faulted China for cloaking its nuclear forces in secrecy amid what it portrayed as a U.S. government scare campaign bolstered by conservative media and think tanks.

Everybody needs an enemy. James Bond needed SMERSH and SPECTRE; we need Al Qaeda and China. And no, I’m not saying that Al Qaeda and China don’t pose threats (or in China’s case at least a potential threat) – just that our government has blown up the dimensions of these threats into scare-mongering nightmare scenarios that are nothing less than absurd.

This is a hot topic today. The best two articles I’ve seen so far are this one and this one (the latter via ESWN). Both are superb.

I think you could open a very active blog dedicated solely to the subject of scams in China. This piece on click-fraud tells how Baidu is employing legions of ad-clickers to puff up the numbers, raising serious questions about whether the company, lavishly praised in the media as the Chinese search engine that triumphed over Google, can be taken seriously. It comes to a sobering conclusion:

So you see, with an entire system that’s basically open to temptation, you have desperate salesmen clicking furiously away in their offices. So this is what E-commerce with Chinese Characteristics is all about. Count us out….

And, we have to ask — is this surprising in a country known for everything from fake Pradas and Guccis to fake eggs and even fake milk powder (which killed a few babies!)?

No, I’m afraid it’s not surprising.

Why, you take the test, of course!

Absoutely hilarious, and it reminds me that many things in China haven’t changed that much since I left in 2003.

Anyone whoever steps into an Internet cafe in China knows within seconds that few if any of the patrons are sitting there spewing bile over the Great Firewall and anxiously seeking the latest solutions to circumvent it. In general, the hysteria over the censored Internet resides outside of China, though we all know friends in China who have expressed their frustration over the blocked site you want them to visit. Yes, they express it, but their tone is more one of resignation and “well, what can you do?” as opposed to indignation followed by a call to arms. It’s just accepted as fact of life that’s hardly worth dwelling on.

So after that “duh” introduction, I want to encourage you to read this post and its comments on how/why the Chinese are so apathetic toward media/Internet censorship. It’s funny and frustrating at the same time, and it keeps raising the same question, with which the article ends: “One wonders why the government bothers to censor the Internet at all.” It’s another must-read.

Many thanks to ESWN for providing the link (in today’s list of Recommended Readings) to this site. Head over there and watch the movie, or click on some of the links. I would say it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a snuff site disguised as a history site. The anti-Japanese rhetoric of the film sounds exactly like CCP propaganda (and yes, I know and have discussed many times how wicked and disgusting the Japanese were toward the Chinese in WWII).

The site is mainly an ad for the Rape of Nanking movie, which also comes with a second movie as a bonus. From the link they provide to tell you about the second movie:

Viewers should beware: Hitler’s Diaries is also incredibly violent and horribly graphic. Unlike other films which attempt to sanitize Nazi atrocities and the horrors of war, Hitler’s Diaries is reality to the extreme: Soldiers are killed in battle. Civilians are bombed and machine gunned as they run through burning cities and down dusty roads. Men, women, and children are stripped naked and shot. Women and men are dragged to the scaffolds and hung by the neck. Jews are rounded up, herded into ditches and executed by Nazi firing squads. Murder and death is everywhere, for that is the reality of the horrors of war and the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. And, its all real!

Yes, it’s real, and you can see it all! Gouged-out eyeballs and naked children, shot before your very eyes! That’s what this entire site is about: lurid, depraved, voyeuristic obsession with seeing people tortured, mutilated and killed. Take a look at the graphics and photos and watch the movie, and then decide for yourself.

I love ESWN (though not unconditionally). I read him first thing every day. So I am totally bewildered why he would refer his readers to such blatant pornography.

UPDATE: Roland explains how he came to link to this site here. All is forgiven.

CNN is giving huge play to the story of the release of Psiphon, the tool that seems to work better than any other at getting under the Cyber Nanny’s skirt – provided the user has a contact in “the free world” to set up the account for them.

Canadian university researchers have developed software that will let users hop over governments’ Internet firewalls, raising the prospect of unfettered Internet access in countries that have long tried to control how residents use the Web.

The Psiphon program, developed by computer experts at the University of Toronto, allows an Internet user in a country with no online curbs to set up an account for someone in a country that censors Web content, and that person can then surf the Web without restrictions.

“The communities that we’re helping to connect to each other have a legitimate right to exercise their human rights within this governance regime,” said Ron Deibert, director of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which studies the interaction between human rights, technology and security issues.

He admitted Psiphon, which is set to launch Friday as a free download, could become a thorn in the side of governments that already monitor, limit and control what people read, watch, listen to and post on the Internet, with varying degrees of sophistication.

“It does conflict with some sovereign states’ values, but there are competing legal norms at work.”

…Deibert said Psiphon works by first allowing a person in a country like Canada that does not censor Internet content to set up a user name and a password for a person in a country that does — China, for example.

The Canadian user would then pass on the information to the Chinese user, who would log on to the Canadian’s computer and effectively use it as a server to browse the Internet without being censored by the Chinese government.

The Web traffic between the two users is encrypted and secure, so China would have difficulty tracing the usage, he said.

China has worked with admirable diligence to counter technology that puts cracks in the Firewall, but this one sounds relatively foolproof. The big challenge, in my eyes, is finding the willing “partner.” If anyone in China wants help from me in setting up an account, you know my email address.

Update: And now CNN is interviewing IT/political experts who say there are risks attached to using Psiphon. The government could easily use its famous brigade of 30,000-or-so Internet mischief makers as plants, offering to set up overseas accounts for gullible Chinese Netizens. They lure them in and then turn them over to the security police. The analyst said this is not far-fetched at all, as use of Psiphon will certainly be illegal in China and those who use it are breaking the law. So the only way to use it safely is to find a trusted “accomplice” in countries with a free Internet. Maybe we bloggers who don’t live in China can offer up our services.

Out of curiosity, is this story appearing on CNN in China, or is it being blacked out? I’d put my money on the latter.

China may make bloggers give ID

China is considering forcing internet users to provide their real names and ID card numbers when opening a blog. Advocates of the idea argue that blog anonymity has encouraged widespread libel and slander. Opponents say blogging is flourishing for the very reason that people are free to express themselves.

There have been some very interesting cases of “mob justice” in China resulting from blogging. However I think the real motivation of the authorities (if they did do this) could be easily discerned.

Under the proposed scheme, bloggers will still be free to write under pseudonyms. Their identity would remain protected as long as they did “nothing illegal or harmful to the public”, officials said.

Translation – they’d be free to continue blogging, unless they criticised the authorities and/or caused trouble for them.

Chinese officials are so transparent……….