Richard, I see you’re beginning to get worried, including (apparently, so one can infer from your post) worried about your own welfare as you continue to serve the Dragon as a Foreigner whose welfare and safety in China is totally “at sufferance” of the CCP, totally within their arbitrary discretion.

But you’re not worried enough. As long as you (and other Western (especially professionals and businessmen) expats in China) continue to spread the meme of China’s “economic miracle”, and continue to promote the (over 200 year old, mostly American) Western fantasy of “China the Rising Power”, then you will just continue to feed the Dragon who, in the long run, will simply regard you as just another morsel in its maw.

“China shaking the world?” Yes and No; and it’s more “no” than “yes”. Yes, China IS “shaking the world”, but that condition is mostly a consequence and an effect of the willfully unthinking fantasies which so many Westerners (especially Americans) have been projecting upon China for over 200 years. And “No”, China is NOT shaking the world in the way most Westerners (especially Americans) believe…

…because China cannot and does not “shake the world” without collaboration from Westerners (especially Americans) who delude themselves into believing that China is on the way to becoming a “Great Power” and an “economic miracle.” And with all due respect to you, Richard, in my opinion, you are one of them; you are one in a long, over 200 year old line of Americans who have willfully deluded themselves about China being a “Great Power” – and such willful fantasists OF THE WEST have been feeding China’s opium dreams of itself as a “Great Power” for over 200 years.

No, I do NOT agree with Nanhe, that China should be quarantined and punished. (Richard, you know me better than that.) I do not want to see China become any weaker than it is now.
I think China is TOO WEAK! And that is precisely why I think all of those Western boosters of the
“China miracle” are just harming China and putting China in danger of a new outbreak of anarchy (cf the Tai Ping and Boxer outbursts of anarchy) – because, in sum, we TRUE friends of China are just making China’s problems worse whenever we prate and prattle in fantastic, opium-dream ways about China’s “power” or, even worse, any China “miracle.”

China is not experiencing any “miracle” today. China’s problem is that China NEEDS a “miracle”, the kind of miracle which can only come from the heart, and from belief in Compassion and Charity and Love instead of belief in “economic development.” If (as I hope and pray), the people of China ever experience major growth in TRUTHFULNESS and COMPASSION, THEN it will really be a miracle.

But until then, there is no “miracle” in China – nothing more than the predictable effects of Man’s tendency to be willfully stupid.

November 21, 2007 @ 6:53 pm | Comment

interesting, i was semi-threatened just the other day while taking pictures in a condemned ‘chai’ neighbourhood. not really threatened at all, but just after talking to the residents (who were planning a protest) i walked around the corner and a black car slowed, 5 men inside, window rolled down and ‘hello, where you from.’ not helloooooooooooooo ridiculous foreigner. but quiet, menacing.

the residents had said they were threatened the day before by the ‘black society’ who they believed the local government had hired. and then later that day the mayor of Xi’an had rode in to save the day, telling them they would be protected.

all sounds like the old good cop bad cop routine to me.

you can see some pics at this piece of shit blog: http://www.photoblog/christoph

November 21, 2007 @ 9:48 pm | Comment

Ivan, go re-read my review of China Shakes the World. I make a clear point that China is not now and perhaps never will be a superpower. China is shaking the world, that cannot be denied – manhole covers really did disappear in Sao Paolo to fuel the construction in Beijing. Whether this is sustainable and whether it is to a large extent based on misguided foreign investment remains to be seen, but I put in plenty of doubt:

But for all of China’s ruthlessness and seemingly unstoppable growth, crushing anything that gets in its path, Kynge leaves us more with a sense of doubt than of fear (though there’s plenty of fear, too). Doubt, because China’s problems (and here comes another hackneyed clichee) are so immense, so overwhelming that its ascension to the status of a global superpower still remains in question. And if it does join the superpower club, surely it will be the strangest member. There has never been a superpower quite like it.

I have never backed down from my criticisms of China’s government, but I have witnessed for myself many examples of people living a better life than they did under Mao. It’s not so simple as good or evil. All government has some evil, and China has way more than its fair share. But no one who really has lived here and talked with the workers and heard their stories can say that the masses have not benefitted over the past 20 years. At what cost is another question, and I raise it all the time, as in this post. Maybe it would make you feel better if I simply put up one horror story about China after another – those stories are true. But they are not the whole picture. If you choose to see only the negative, more power to you, but you are only fooling yourself. I don’t give the CCP much if any credit for this advancement. The only thing they did was get out of the way of their very industrious and inherently capitalistic people. But even within the party I have met people who I believe do have China’s best interests at heart – painting them all with the same brush of evil isn’t accurate and it isn’t fair. As with most things in life, like my own government, there are many sides to the equation, and anyone who speaks in absolutes discredits himself because the situation isn’t black and white. Just like America. No matter how much I detest my government I know it is not evil, or at least not entirely so. I wish I could tell you about some of the magnificent people I’ve met here whose lives have become meaningful, whose dignity has been restored to them thanks to the opportunities made available to the today – again, not because of the CCP but perhaps in spite of it. Peasants and factory workers and yuppie white collars, I have met them all, and I am truly touched to see their irrepressible optimism and new-found place in the world. I have deep, deep doubts and fears about China’s future and worry that much of the “economic miracle” may be built on sand, but I hope to god I am wrong because these are beautiful people and 20 years ago they would never have dreamed of such opportunities. Meanwhile, I remain more optimistic than you about the fate of China precisely because I know these people and have seen what they can do. I want to believe that no matter how dreadful their rulers and the thugs they protect, they will still succeed and prosper. And for now, I have every reason to think they will. Even if there is a crash or a catastrophe, they have tasted economic freedom and there’s no going back. We’ll just have to wait and see. I have been hearing of “the coming collapse of China” for nearly a decade now, and while it may well be imminent I see little credible evidence to support the argument. Dire outlooks on the environment, yes, and an impossible situation with 700 million people dirt-poor and hungry. But all in all, and considering the monstrous legacy of Mao and his criminal gang, I think China is doing as well as can be expected, and then some.

November 21, 2007 @ 10:06 pm | Comment

dylan, nice to see you back recently. Let me know if/when you are in Beijing!

November 21, 2007 @ 10:07 pm | Comment

Sorry for the bad experiences of the reporters. Although I can see one upside from a Chinese angle: At least we treat foreigners and own people more equally now.

November 21, 2007 @ 10:26 pm | Comment

eh? don’t think its the same dylan richard. or else you’re the ultra-friendly type!

November 21, 2007 @ 10:43 pm | Comment

oh, sorry – we had a frequent commenter here back in 2005-6 named Dylan. Guess he’s not you.

November 21, 2007 @ 11:15 pm | Comment

@ Richard,

“I have been hearing of “the coming collapse of China” for nearly a decade now, and while it may well be imminent I see little credible evidence to support the argument”

Neither did Empress Catherine the Great when she saw the Potemkin villages.

November 22, 2007 @ 12:41 am | Comment

fatbrick

I know. Most foreigners who go to China never realise how much pressure poorer Chinese are put under – they only tend to know the richer ones. I’ll be honest and say that my friends are well-off, rather than the sort that get hassled by the authorities.

richard

I have a nasty feeling that this will blow up in the faces of the Chinese authorities. Some foreign media won’t care about anything but the sport, but a lot of European journalists are used to operating in hostile areas and in reporting “the real story”. They won’t back off – I’m sure the same will apply to those from North America and elsewhere.

The more the Police/Secret Police/hired goons caused trouble for foreign reporters, the more that will get reported and China’s image will be trashed. The Olympics was a chance for China to show that it was changing, but true to form the old men in suits appear to be reverting to what they understand – when in doubt, threaten GBH.

November 22, 2007 @ 6:28 am | Comment

One reason that local bosses/party members may be using thugs on foreign journalists is that reading the reports of foreign journalists is another way for zhongnanhai to know what is going on in the countryside and the locals know this. The locals who are bullied want to tell their story to the white-eyes, the local bosses want all forms of information controlled/stifled.

China must be isolated so its infections cannot spread.

November 22, 2007 @ 8:56 am | Comment

“Neither did Empress Catherine the Great when she saw the Potemkin villages.”

http://www.straightdope.com

Did “Potemkin villages” really exist?

“These tall tales originated with the Saxon envoy to Catherine’s court, Georg von Helbig, who was not, safe to say, Potemkin’s bud. Von Helbig did not make the trip to the Crimea, but in his diplomatic dispatches (and in a Potemkin biography completed almost a decade after the man’s death in 1791) he evidently passed along gossip circulating in the Russian capital at Saint Petersburg. Shows you the power of the written word. Though Potemkin may have tarted up reality a bit, he did in fact build the fleet, arsenal, ports, and so on that dazzled Catherine’s court. But thanks to von Helbig’s coinage Potemkinsche D�rfer (“Potemkin villages”), the prince’s name is known to posterity as a synonym for sham. “Cecil Adams

November 22, 2007 @ 9:27 am | Comment

Well, Ivan, if you instantly paint any scene of people’s progress and prosperity as a Potemkin Village there’s really little point in arguing. It’s an easy way to dismiss any evidece as BS. President Bush does this with the phrase, “They’rejust playing politics” when proof of his condoning torture arises or infringing on our civil liberties. It’s an esy out – you don’t need to adress the evidence, you simply dismiss it as politics or a Potemkin Village. Again, if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy to do this that’s fine. There’s a lot to slam about China. To deny that the quality of life for vast numbers of Chinese citizens has improved is an exercise in self-denial. Now, the same was true for Hitler’s Germany before 1939, and later on that prosperity was partially (but not totally) exposed as a fraud based on obscene state spending that made it ever more imperative to go to war. But the prosperity there was real and measurable and even Hitler’s most outspoke detractors (i.e., every sane person on the planet) acknowledge that Germany’s economy improved from 1933 to 1939, whether it was puffed up artificially or not.

November 22, 2007 @ 9:56 am | Comment

Just read an interesting article by an Australian journalist called the China Model (HT to CLB). In-depth and nuanced.

November 22, 2007 @ 11:29 am | Comment

I saw that article, Lisa, and meant to blog it. Required reading.

November 22, 2007 @ 1:32 pm | Comment

Just watched “Bobby” on DVD (lots of real footages and original speeches of Senator Robert F. Kennedy to remind what America could have been.)

@ Lisa,

Crippled by slavery, corruption, indebtedness, crime, and cruel civil war that comprise most of Africa’s long sordid history of encounters with the West….The China Model : “China is canceling its debts due from the least developed countries in Africa, setting up a $5.5 billion fund to subsidize Chinese companies’ investments in the continent, and increasing from 190 to 440 the number of items that Africa’s poorest countries can export to China tariff-free. Already, by a large margin, China is the biggest lender to Africa, providing $8.9 billion this year to Angola, Mozambique, and Nigeria alone. The Western requirement that good-governance medicine must be consumed in return for modest aid as far as many African leaders are concerned, is outdated. (The World Bank, by contrast, is lending $2.6 billion to all of sub-Saharan Africa.) They are no longer cornered without options. Now they’ve got China, which is offering trade and investment, big time, as well as aid. And more than that, they’ve got the China Model itself.”

November 22, 2007 @ 1:36 pm | Comment

Good god. Another mainland Chinese incapable of basic logic. The tendentious article you cited actually reaffirms the historical principle of Potemkin villages; whether the showpieces were actually “villages” is irrelevant.

Another reason to be alarmed about China’s future. Mao and the Communists exterminated logic. Combine that condition with the American China-booster capacity for self-delusion (even worse, a kind of self-delusion which is contemptuous of non-believers; such cultish contempt correlates with the believer’s almost pornographic worship of assertions of raw power), and the combination is a hell of a toxic brew.

November 22, 2007 @ 1:37 pm | Comment

Calm down, Ivan – you’re raving.
Logic? Ha! Just busting the myth, but if you feel it in your balls then you are not using enuff of your brain, dude. “even worse, a kind of self-delusion which is contemptuous of non-believers,” That would be the feeling of most folks here towards you and your toxic brew.

“Another mainland Chinese incapable of basic logic. ” Sorry…WRONG again! Hate to bust your balls and your prick as well…

November 22, 2007 @ 2:04 pm | Comment

“China is canceling its debts due from the least developed countries in Africa, setting up a $5.5 billion fund to subsidize Chinese companies’ investments in the continent”

Note that these “debt cancellations” come in return for access to raw materials, which those countries need themselves for economic development. Not exactly a generous freebee. And why isn’t China investing in local companies instead of propping up Chinese companies, who predominantly hire Chinese labor and set up China towns in a very bold form of colonialism.

November 22, 2007 @ 2:51 pm | Comment

@C.K.,

Do you speak for a specific stakeholder or are you just being stupid when you openly pay tribute to China’s irresponsible economic activities in Africa?

I just told my friend from Sierra Leone about your comment and she was furious. My friend (and most educated African that I know) identifies corruption within their civil service as the biggest impediment to future growth for most African nations. She wonders how a “China Model” of development that legitimizes and encourages repressive regimes could help combat corruption in her native country? A politically volatile Africa is not only bad for Africans and people in the rest of the world. In the long run, it is also bad for Chinese companies that do business in Africa.

So can you honestly tell me what is so good about this so-called “China Model”?

November 22, 2007 @ 6:24 pm | Comment

“And more than that, they’ve got the China Model itself.”

Just what the doctor ordered for impoverished Africans – blind support for oppressive and corrupt dictatorships. Now that’s brotherhood!

November 22, 2007 @ 10:21 pm | Comment

@Fat Cat,

Actually NEITHER….Just stating the facts and selectively quoting what was written for a reason.

Sounds really Stupid doesn’t it?

Well,…. that’s exactly what some of the folks here (y’all know who you/ they are) sounds like too. Are you stupid, perhaps, I dunno, but certainly PREDICTABLE! Ever wondered how brain-washed you and some of your countrymen are? Why, y’all sound alike (Arrogant, angry, verbally abusive….etc, etc, etc; pretty obvious signs aren’t they? ) with the exception of Richard and Lisa from the few comments I’ve read anyway.

Honesty? Who, with the likes of you? LOL, Fat chance.

November 22, 2007 @ 10:57 pm | Comment

Beyond the red wall, Canadian documentary:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=n6gWg6sbSZw&feature=related

Actually this is very interesting because in Canada there was a lot of controversy, the station that broadcast this documentary is gov’t owned, and it was supposed to be a free opinion type, they aired it on this kind of program that they aired farenheit 911 etc, so it is not supposed to reflect the views of the station. BUT….. Then the communist party had something to say about it (which it always does cause it cant stay out of other peoples pursuit for truth) Then, because the Canadian gov’t and tv station is sucking up to China business and the Olympics, they cancelled the program hours before it was supposed to air, then they cut it up and played it two weeks later and basically every paper in Canada reported on their suck buttiness in crumbling under the demands of the ccp fascist regime.

That is to say the whole world is caught up in this deprivation of press freedom by the CCP. There are countless examples around the world.

November 22, 2007 @ 11:16 pm | Comment

CK said, “Actually NEITHER….Just stating the facts and selectively quoting what was written for a reason.”

Thanks for showing what a jerk you are. You can’t read or write. Why don’t you simply go back to that black hole where you belong and hallucinate about your “harmonious society” in which harmony means beating the shit out of foreign journalists.

Don’t pretend that you know anything about who I am and whom I would call my countrymen because you’d be ever so disappointed if you knew the truth.

November 22, 2007 @ 11:39 pm | Comment

Same to you Fat Cat.

“AND don’t pretend that you know anything about who I am and whom I would call my countrymen because you’d disappointed if you knew the truth.”

Zzzz……

Gimme a break. Who cares., jesus….

So, I can’t read & write, so what? You can’t read between the lines, but you are the one who’s losing it, and showing your true colors.

Indeed, I think I’ll go back to the hole where loud mouth biggots and racists don’t go while you should go back to your dark void where the sound of war, death and destructions grow ever louder to the tune of “Onward Christian soldiers,” under the banner of “All man are created equal, Liberty and justice to all.”

November 23, 2007 @ 12:24 am | Comment

Unlike Everyone Here, I Of Course Am Very Optimistic on China’s Future

If you like money, you will know that there are many investment funds in the world. For example, there are stock funds, mutual funds, etc etc etc. This post wants to discuss the Chinese Communist Party from a financial investment viewpoint.

If you are not good in finance, let me teach you some things. First, to judge if an investment is good, there are three ways

1) comparing it to a standard, average index
2) look at its ranking among other similar investments
3) look at its short term, medium term, and long term performance.

Number 1 is very important. Usually for a stock fund, it is usually compared with the index of SP500. If it is stronger than Sp500, then it is considered a good investment.

Second, it is important to compare the stock only to other similar investments. If you compare a money market fund to a stock fund, it is stupid. Even in the best years, the best money market fund is worse than the worst stock funds.

Lastly, only a fund that performs well in short, medium, and long terms alltogether is consiered a good fund. Usually long and medium term performance is more important than short term performance.

Using these standards, it is not hard to discover that:

1) Under the leadership of CCP, China avoided civil wars or internal splitting. In the past 57 years, there was no civil war in China. This is not something every government can do. Just look at the number of internal splitting or civil wars in the past 57 years in the world.

2)The economic performance of the “Communist Party Fund” in the past 10, 5, and 1 years all exceed world average performance. So it is a fund that performs well in short, medium, and long terms.

3) The speed of reduction of China’s poor population and illiterate population (both absolute numbers and proportion to population) far exceeds world averages.

4) The speed of increase in quality of life and life expectancy of Chinese population far exceeds world averages.

5) The speed of increase in Chinese people’s degree of freedom (both nominal and effective) far exceeds world averages. Many of you may not know this, but 35 years ago, any tea house in Beijing would have a bulletin board written by the government that said “Do Not Discuss Politics”. Today, no such bulletin board is there, and people can discuss politics much more freely. And today’s ratio of political prisoners to population is only a fraction of the number in 1949.

6) The increase of China’s status and image in the world exceeds world averages. In the ten biggest world news agencies (does not include China’s xinhua news), there is a 30% increase in articles about China from 2005 to 2006. In those articles, 75% of them are overall positive about China. In fact, China is the second most frequently mentioned country in world news, only after the US. In world news agencies, positive articles about China far exceeds positive articles about America, Europe or Japan. If you look at the situation in 1949, China was very rarely mentioned in world news articles, and the mentions were 75% negative.

7) The understanding of China by world’s people. In 1949, a typical image of Chinese in world’s people’s minds was someone with a long pigtail and slant eyes and looks very weak and clownish and can be pushed around easily. In 2006, 2/3 of all Chinese depicted in movies, tv, and books were in a positive light. Very ironically, the influence of FLG in America is due to the CCP. CCP created China’s strength, and China’s strength made American people be intersted in China, FLG is only one of the thousands of points of interest about China.

Overall, the Communist Party fund exceeds the market average, and and the CCP is a legendary manager of China’s development. We believe in this manager, and we believe its future performance can be sustained and increased. So my recommendation for this fund is: BUY.

November 23, 2007 @ 12:34 am | Comment

Richard, Yvan,

I thought your posts were pretty interesting. Richard, in my mind I was reading your post and just about to think “but Richard, the advancement in the past 20 years is not due to the CCP efficiency or caring” But then you said it as well, so its cool that you get that. There are a lot of people in China who have really busted their butts to keep life in progress in China, Chinese people have strong abilities actually.

But I think the two of you are looking at different dimensions of the same situation. Richard seems to look at economic progress as the key to success, and Yvan seems to look more at the less tangible issues like spiritual civilization.

I find Raj usually has a good sense of balance…

Personally I think you cant look at the economic progress without looking at the consequences to the environment at the same time, so China has pulled off no miracle, they have just gone all out, they stop at nothing, anyone can do that, its like if I sold all my stuff right now, maybe I would be a millionaire, but I would have no place to live and couldnt carry on my lineage whatsoever…

And then theres the spiritual aspect of the Chinese society, and I agree with Yvan that if it lags at the level that the party demands be maintained, the Chinese civilization will just be materialist animals within a short time, killing and eating eachother and whatnnot.

I dont think this will happen, I think a change will take place, but I do not think the CCP can change spiritually, I just dont think they can be open to truthfullness and dignity.

November 23, 2007 @ 3:18 am | Comment

Thanks CK again for trying so hard to use that worn out racist brush to paint me (and other commenters here) as white supremacists. You are not the first troll to try this trick. Regretably, however, you’ve got the colour completely wrong this time around.

Talking about reading between the lines, let me quote a short passage from Diana Preston’s historical novel “The Boxer Rebellion”. You can count this as my formal reply to Richard’s post:

“Standing together as the sun rose fully, the little remaining band, all Europeans, met death stubbornly … As one man fell others advanced, and finally, overcome by overwhelming odds, every one of the Europeans remaining was put to the sword in a most atrocious manner.” So read a dramatic dispatch in the London Daily Mail of 16 July 1900 from its special correspondent in Shanghai. Under the headline “The Pekin (sic) Massacre” … The news flew around the world, gaining in horrific detail … In the event, these reports proved false. They might so easily have been true. The summer of 1900 witnessed a pivotal episode in China’s fractured relationship with the West – the Boxer rising. It was an event that left tens of thousands dead and touched the lives of millions more. It precipitated the end of the ruling Manchu dynasty. It tainted China’s relationship with the wider world, and continues to do so even today …

November 23, 2007 @ 9:32 am | Comment

Nice try with the troll bit….typical of the your kind. It’s sad to see folks like you going on and on about nothing—- so hopelessly conceited that you take every word in rebuttals personally as if anybody cares who or what you are.
“Sorry for the bad experiences of the reporters. Although I can see one upside from a Chinese angle: At least we treat foreigners and own people more equally now.” Posted by: fatbrick at November 21, 2007 10:26 PM

IN any case I Never thought you were the color you thought I thought you thought I thought you were. Did I call you a racist? You’re still not reading between the lines, dude. Lighten up boy, the world is not against you.

November 23, 2007 @ 10:09 am | Comment

“Sorry for the bad experiences of the reporters. Although I can see one upside from a Chinese angle: At least we treat foreigners and own people more equally now.” Posted by: fatbrick at November 21, 2007 10:26 PM

Yes, injustice is injustice.

November 23, 2007 @ 10:12 am | Comment

Again thanks Richard for this blog. I enjoyed most of your comments. It’s been enlightening. Keep up the good work.

This is my Last entry. (Vacation’s up)

Cheers & so long.
CK

November 23, 2007 @ 10:22 am | Comment

Ah yes, CK has done the old “declare victory and run away”, just like Nixon did in Viet Nam.

November 23, 2007 @ 12:15 pm | Comment

@Math:

did you ever think that splitting up might be better for the people of China? Get rid of that stupid macromanaging CCP and overarching bureaucracy.

November 23, 2007 @ 3:09 pm | Comment

Nanhe,

You are out of your mind. Are you seriously expecting Math to respond to your question?

What’s happening to your blog? It’s as dead as a dodo. There are many things to blog about. What do think about China’s reaction to the BHP and Rio Tinto merger.

November 23, 2007 @ 6:00 pm | Comment

I think we will only know from the 08/08/08.. but the dog and ponny show would have been funny!

November 23, 2007 @ 10:48 pm | Comment

@ Fat Cat;

I don’t expect him to respond, just as long as he reads the question and ponders the possibility. Others should do the same.

I’ve been too busy to actually blog. I’ll whip up something soon, though.

November 24, 2007 @ 12:42 am | Comment

…meanwhile, while the next Boxer Rebellion of 2008 looms, the Western expats in China continue to indulge in their opium dreams…

November 24, 2007 @ 12:50 am | Comment

@Ivan;

So true…

@Fat Cat;

Blog updated, indulge yourself!

November 24, 2007 @ 1:28 am | Comment

Here’s an email reply from an African friend to
HKonger:
As a South African and a Chinese, I am very angry when I hear people say the economic investments of China to Africa is counter productive.
China is the only country not treating Africa like a charity case. It’s offering trade and cancelling debt. It’s giving Africa a chance to be self supporting and not just a treating it like a black hole of aid.

Is there going to be corruption still? Yes there will always be corruption in Africa but what are we going to do about it? Mention it now and then in a UN meeting and step up more aid. Africa need to solve its own problem and needs to stop acting like a victim. Japan managed to pick itself up after WW2. China ’s investments will help raise the quality of life and will provide jobs for people. The investment will improve infrastructure, build skills. This is an improvement. Will the Chinese be the new ‘man’? This is up to the Africans to decide. China is taking a risk for its own profit but also giving back something to the people of Africa . You don’t like this. Well welcome to the world. It’s business. The China model is better than no model.

Irresponsible economic activity is better than no activity. It’s better than the current western policies of doing nothing. A mention now and then in the UN will not help Africa . Sending more aid to Africa does not help, it tells African’s ‘you are dependant on us’ Africa needs to solve it own problems.
Rgds,
R

November 24, 2007 @ 2:52 am | Comment

“A mention now and then in the UN will not help Africa.”

Actually the UN can help Africa. However, when China threatens to use its UNSC veto to block peacekeeping operations to countries that need it, unless they change diplomatic relations from Taipei to Beijing, clearly that is China not acting in Africa’s best interests – that’s blackmail.

November 24, 2007 @ 3:15 am | Comment

@HKonger;

Your friend is not a black African, they are the ones being slaughtered, stepped on and ignored. The Chinese (and HKers) there are just plundering and abusing.
The last UN administration was African, all it did was line its own pockets, which is what African leadership does.

“Irresponsible economic activity is better than no activity.”

What an ignorant statement, that logic doesn’t apply in economics or medicine either.

November 24, 2007 @ 4:11 am | Comment

Eh, I don’t know why I bother, but Math’s long posting about how to pick a stock is wrong. That’s how investment “salesmen” tell you how to pick a stock. By his reasoning, Enron would have been a fantastic investment. And if you start to think about it, you could draw a lot of comparisons between Enron and the CCP…

Next summer is going to be fun. The Republicans are going to start railing on Hilary for all her Chinese funny money and reporters from all over the world are going to get closer to Chinese truncheons than they ever wanted. That might put a damper on the Ponzi scheme.

Of course, its more likely that MNC’s are going to call up Mr. Murdoch and his ilk to quiet things down. Like nanhe says we are all complicit in this. Chinese banks would have drowned in insolvent loans a long time ago if it wasn’t for big foreign money that won’t let them. Wal-mart would collapse and then you would see some American protests.

I was thinking of going to Beijing to watch the mess from a cafe, but wouldn’t want to catch an errant backhand from the man. Or the mob. Because Beijing really is a big Potemkin village, and nowadays most people are going to side with power there, because they have benefited from all the resources that have been diverted from everywhere else..

nanhe, don’t you just love it when you’ve got Businessmen, Urban hipster-bohemians, China Scholars, and locals whose sole experience is with first tier cities and tourist traps like Lijiang and Xian that all think China is rock solid stable?

On second thought, maybe Math is onto something. Government and Money are really synonymous now. There is no difference. Believe the statistics they give you.

I think there is a lesson to be learned from a particular piece of Chinese logic. Have you seen how the gov’t often declares dissidents and petitioners insane and institutionalizes them? They’re right you see: Because if you know what is going to happen to you if you speak up, you must be insane to do so.

November 24, 2007 @ 6:43 am | Comment

Another response from another country:

I seem to detect traces of African concern from the excerpt. I also seem to detect a hint of ambivalence when attention was turned to focus on reported incidents involving the treatment of several western European journalists there in China.

How I wish people can be a little bit more consistent with what I seem to detect as a sense of African indentification by including reports of how African journalists from Africa have been treated in China not just a reported incident that tend to focus on how several western European journalists have been treated. There’s no lack of coverage in the megacorp media on how western journalists are treated in China
but there’s hardly any reports focusing on the
treatment of African journalists. Perhaps our African friends will able to enlighten us.
………..
“Your friend is not a black African, they are the ones being slaughtered, stepped on and ignored. The Chinese there are just plundering and abusing. ”
…………..

Wow, I wonder what you or any fair minded people would think if I wrote something totally stupid like: “You are not Chinese, they are the ones victimised. The foreigners and expats here in China are just plundering and abusing.” ?????

Indeed the UN can help….Yeah, right. Just like it did with Iraq. It was on the verge of becoming a first world country until western sanction caused the death toll of Iraqis greater than the Allied wars that followed. Now it is a broken Western occupied nation.

“Concepts aside, actions in the real world all too often reinforce the maxim of Thucydides that “The strong do as they can, while the weak suffer what they must” — which is not only indisputably unjust, but at the present stage of human civilisation, a literal threat to the survival of the species. ” A Prof w/over 20 honorary degrees and the author of over 35 books on Western tyranny.
The west has for hundreds of years been the purveyor of lies & atrocities – it has always been the case of *they can’t do to us, not even a fraction of, what we’ve always done to them.

In the wording of the Nuremberg Tribunal, aggression is “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” — all the evil in the tortured land of Iraq that flowed from the US-UK invasion, for example.

How very true…!

November 24, 2007 @ 11:49 am | Comment

@ Hkonger: “Irresponsible economic activity is better than no activity.”

That’s analogous to saying, “Handing an automatic pistol to a monkey and setting him loose in a shopping mall is better than keeping the monkey unarmed and in a cage.”

What a testament to the appalling depths of stupidity to which the Chinese have sunk, and become anchored by the Communist Party at the bottom of that sea of ignorance and superstition.
You think the word “economic” is categorically good, so that anything activity that is called “economic” has at least some value. It doesn’t.
“Activity” is value-neutral and simply calling it “economic” doesn’t make it good.

Hey, if someone would charge money for making a movie of that monkey-with-a-pistol on a rampage, then the monkey’s “activity” would be “economic!”

Idiot.

November 24, 2007 @ 12:31 pm | Comment

Or how about this: Japan’s invasion of China was an “economic activity” too. So it was better than no activity, right?

November 24, 2007 @ 12:39 pm | Comment

“nanhe, don’t you just love it when you’ve got Businessmen, Urban hipster-bohemians, China Scholars, and locals whose sole experience is with first tier cities and tourist traps like Lijiang and Xian that all think China is rock solid stable?”

Oh, I love it and detest it at the same time. The anger of sexually frustrated male min gong, the abusiveness ignorance of the police, the mob enjoying the suffering of individuals. The rotten organic and caustic chemical smells, China is just a hole that justifies doing stupid, reckless or just plain bad things because someone else did it in the past (and if you go back far enough, that bad behavior again includes China).

I want to be in Beijing, to catch it all on video, it’ll be a circus maximus of filth, ultranationalism, sexual tension and just plain anger.

“We don’t need no water let the mutha f*a burn!
BURN muthaf*a, BURN!”

November 24, 2007 @ 12:42 pm | Comment

Wow, what apalling depths of social delinquency some folks have sunk into in the grown-up world of calm cool headed political discussion. And lovely analogy too. So Africans are monkeys, huh? Ivan’s words not mine. I think I’ve heard enough. I am sorry I walked in this room – no reflection on you, Richard. Your comments are good.

I’m outta here for good.

November 24, 2007 @ 12:53 pm | Comment

“So Africans are monkeys, huh?”

Oh no. If anything the Chinese look more like monkeys than any Africans do. Monkeys have small noses, you see.

But (just slightly) more seriously, here is a film clip of some Chinese Communist “friends” of Africa, stationed in Nairobi:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoLTFQsFswM

November 24, 2007 @ 1:08 pm | Comment

And on that note, China’s best friend in Africa, Robert Mugabe, has just devalued Zimbabwe’s currency by 99.9 percent. In other words, the currency is now worth 1/1000 of what it was a few days ago.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,,2216357,00.html

Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party – ie, the pigs on Animal Farm – are still playing footsie with Mugabe while the people of his benighted country starve under Mugabe’s insane policies. Story dated Nov 13:

“A visiting Chinese delegation – which is exploring investment opportunities in Zimbabwe – yesterday met President Mugabe and the First Lady, Amai Grace Mugabe, at Zimbabwe House.”

http://allafrica.com/stories/200711130791.html

Query: If the Chinese Communists represent the interests of the oppressed working classes and peasants all around the world, then why the hell don’t they assist the Zimbabweans in holding a revolution and shooting Mugabe?

November 24, 2007 @ 1:24 pm | Comment

Maybe we would make more sense if we tried a little harder to relate to the topic? I know it can seem that we do not have something to say about the topic, but if we push ourselves to relate to it then maybe we can have a more intelligent discussion where issues are adressed, well, more intelligently… It sorta seems like the fact that we can’t stick to the topic means that we are not aware enough about the issue and have limited things to comment on it. Media freedom is a pretty major issue in China, so maybe we can do something to make a difference.

Personally, I think most people know the surface of the situation, but there are a lot of Chinese who are brainwahsed and who think these insane restrictions are for valid reasons.

There are also a lot of western and Chinese people who know that media freedom is restricted but they dont get the scope of terrorism inflicted on the people by the party.

I find around here its like a game of ‘no, I’m right’, but whats the point? If your not clear and you are mean and you dont sound too smart, then no one really cares if you are right. Like some of you are right sometimes but then you go and insult people and say really crude stuff so then it doesnt matter if you are right cause you are also very wrong… Actually this just gives the communists a good excuse, they may say, ‘those dissident critics at Peking Duck are often right about our country, but they are also dicks, so it doesnt matter which one is better’, anyway, thats an extreme example, its just to illustrate the principle

Like if you criticise China issues constructively and wish for positive changes, thats great, but if you criticise and then say you want to watch it go down in chaos for entertainment, well, how do you think the Chinese people would react to you, will they want to accept the criticism?

Thats why I always say that its no good to lump the CCP and Chinese people (China) together, the country can be fine and the people are fine, they are just under a really brutal regime that controls waaay too much…

November 24, 2007 @ 3:00 pm | Comment

Well Said, Snow. Thank You

richard wrote: “Well, Ivan, if you instantly paint any scene of people’s progress and prosperity as a Potemkin Village there’s really little point in arguing. It’s an easy way to dismiss any evidece as BS. President Bush does this with the phrase, “They’re just playing politics” when proof of his condoning torture arises or infringing on our civil liberties. It’s an esy out – you don’t need to address the evidence, you simply dismiss it as politics or a Potemkin Village. ”

I’d prefer to see the world: Africa, China, India, Latin America, etc not in terms of colored folks vs white folks vs colored folks vs other colored folks.
But that’s not how it is. Take the racial economic gap in America, for example, is growing, with whites moving ahead more quickly than Blacks.
Even more damning to African American prospects, AFTER so many years of “civil rights movements & revolutions,” a new study shows that nearly half the children of the Black “middle class” are worse off than their parents. Decades of accumulated, systemic assaults on Black upward mobility are definitively taking their toll, making a lie of the vaunted “American Dream.”
There is no mystery behind the disaster: “If big business destroys entire industries that provide well paid employment, poverty is not far behind. If black AMERICANS are targeted for prison, low marriage rates and lower incomes will be the result.”
“Forty-five percent of black Americans whose parents were classified as ‘middle class’ are now worse off than their parents.”
If a group of people were enslaved, terrorized, and legally excluded from all routes to improvement and prosperity, how would they fare? If they somehow managed to better their lot but then lost jobs, and were incarcerated in high numbers would they succeed or would they fail? If those economic and social changes were accompanied by political and economic decisions that put more money in the hands of the wealthy, would it be possible for that group to emerge from its awful predicament? The answers are obvious. That group of people would move backwards economically, politically, culturally, and spiritually. The decline would be certain and it would be awful.
Of course the people in question are black Americans. The state of disarray and regression observed by anyone with common sense was proven recently by a Pew Charitable Trust study, Economic Mobility for Black and White Families.

The study indicated that 45 % of black Americans whose parents were classified as “middle class” are now worse off than their parents. In other words, they are now poor.

The propaganda that America is always the land of opportunity is manifestly untrue and particularly damaging to black Americans. If America is good and perfect, then any who fail are themselves to blame for their plight. Black people are by these terrible definitions inherently more blameworthy than any other American group. After all, they were grudgingly given a break or two in the Sixties and Seventies. Because America is great and good, the redress of centuries of injustice was seen as a favor, not as the righting of many great wrongs. If the undeserving group doesn’t thrive, then obviously that group is populated by lazy, ungrateful, inferior beings, entirely responsible for their plight.

No, America is not good nor altruistic. Not the government anyway. On the other hand, most American & Aussie, Kiwi, European or Canadian people and friends I know, white or colored are fine folks though. This much I know.

November 24, 2007 @ 4:27 pm | Comment

So you really wanna get back to “the topic”? Okay.
It seems this story about the Chinese Communist propaganda organs bullying foreign journalist has been picked up by a number of other media, but they all seem to cite Richard as the original source.

So what was this story, really, Richard? A “press release” you received from the Central Propaganda Department, as their way of planting the story? Their way of indirectly (and thus, more effectively) instilling some fear into foreign journalists?

Very smooth tactic, that would be.

November 24, 2007 @ 4:42 pm | Comment

@Ivan,

I can’t believe you’ve finally said that. You are practically telling the Emperor that he has no clothes on. You are dead, man.

November 24, 2007 @ 5:52 pm | Comment

Nanhe said, “Blog updated, indulge yourself!”

Thanks a billion, mate.

Please check my comment.

November 24, 2007 @ 5:55 pm | Comment

truth is like a beggar
who comes up to you and says
“hey man, would you like to contribute to a fund for alcoholics”

November 24, 2007 @ 6:34 pm | Comment

Don’t be so silly. Today’s world is a global world. It is globalization and commercialization. If you can make money and attract investment, you will be number one. Look at how fast the foreign firnancial companies are moving to China, like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, Credit Suisse, Barclays, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Deustche Bank, ABN. Technology companies like Microsoft, Intel, Motorola, Google, Yahoo, Sun, AMD, Cisco, Oracle, Linksys, Netgear, etc. Car companies like GM, Ford, Toyota, Daimler-Chrysler, BMW, Benz, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubushi.

November 25, 2007 @ 5:06 am | Comment

Ivan, that comment about this being a CCP “press release” designed to frighten reporters reaches new heights of ignorance. The FCCC is made up of foreign journalists, and they sent this email, which could only infuriate the CCP, which wants these stories contained, not publicized. It will do nothing to frighten or stop reporters from doing their jobs. Most good reporters like to go after stories with an element of risk, as it often leads to better scoops (think of all the embedded reporters in Iraq despite the many deaths). So your labeling this as a tactic designed by the party to make reporters more timid is simply false. I know many members of the FCCC and there’s not much love lost between them and the party – this email only makes the Party look bad, while giving reporters lots of ideas for stories.

Maybe I should end comments on this site altogether. When the participants are so deranged with a point of view that they invent fantasies and surrender self control we know the conversation isn’t going to go anywhere.

November 25, 2007 @ 11:37 am | Comment

Richard, I remember you used to agree with Ivan, Fat Cat, Nanhe, snow, etc. You used to be in their group, that is the reason to start this blog. But after you spent time in China and with the gentle and kind Chinese people and experienced the Chinese society deeply. You developed love for China, just like Lisa, and love for its people, culture, history, food, society, etc. And now you are a friend of China just like Lisa. Ivan and Fat Cat and Snow and Nanhe are not friends of China. Richard, now you understand that “anti-China” is not a lie by brainswashed Chinese, there are really anti-China people that exist in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinophobia

Ivan, Fat Cat, Nanhe, Snow: I asked you guys seek medication before for the above condition, why delay it? I have a number for a famous doctor that treats this sickness.

November 25, 2007 @ 7:04 pm | Comment

Hongxing, I have plenty of problems with China and I will always hate any one-party system. Unfortunately, they (the CCP) aren’t going away, and if they were there is nothing to replace them, so we had better make do with what we have, while calling them out on their sins as they are committed. Meanwhile, I can never, ever forgive you, HX, for your slander of Sun Zhigong and your eagerness to propagandize for evil causes, like smearing a victim when the party commits atrocities.

November 25, 2007 @ 7:12 pm | Comment

@ Richard, “Hongxing, I have plenty of problems with China and I will always hate any one-party system. Unfortunately, they (the CCP) aren’t going away, and if they were there is nothing to replace them, so we had better make do with what we have”

…yeah, but Richard, as you live in Beijing and work under the power of the CCP, you don’t just “have” them. They “have” YOU!

November 25, 2007 @ 9:34 pm | Comment

PS, Richard wrote:

“Maybe I should end comments on this site altogether”

Yep. Sounds like the CCP have really made you afraid. Go ahead, Richard, go ahead and end all comments on your site, and then you will never need to be afraid of the CCP Propaganda Department who – at this time – control your career and everything you write, as long as you are their guest (and their servant) in Beijing.

November 25, 2007 @ 9:39 pm | Comment

Ivan, what’s up? I didn’t end comments, everyone still has his soapbox here. I just hate to hear so much hostility, especially from people who have literally no idea what they are talking about. Look at the post attached to this thread. Yes, it’s quite clear that I am shaking in fear of the CCP, and they totally control me. If that were the case, I would have closed this site a year ago. You have literally no idea what you are talking about. I also want to politely request that you desist from making hostile personal comments about me.

November 25, 2007 @ 9:47 pm | Comment

Yes, I am a true puppet of the CCP:

t’s a nice place to live over on on this side of the tracks. But it’s still China, it’s still a thugocracy, and there are still huge holes in the legal system that let goons, plunderers and murderers off the hook. It really is getting better (I’ve been tracking these stories for years, and since 2003 there’s been a steady drop in the number), which means it’s maybe gone from zero to three on a scale of zero to ten. Or maybe it just means the media’s gotten complacent.

No wonder they’ve appointed me Minister of English-language Blog Propaganda.

November 25, 2007 @ 9:49 pm | Comment

Richard wrote, sarcastically:

“Yes, it’s quite clear that I am shaking in fear of the CCP, and they totally control me. If that were the case, I would have closed this site a year ago.”

No. That’s not how the Communist Party works, and you know it. The sign of their successful campaign of putting fear into you, is not to silence you, but instead to compromise you into self-censorship, going through superficial motions of “criticising” the CCP (and even in Stalin’s Russia, a small zone of acceptable “criticism” was PROMOTED!) – while you carry on propagandising for them and their so-called “China Miracle” in EXACTLY the way they want you to do.

You see, Richard, I DO understand the Communist Party all too well, even more than you do. (Remember, I have lived in Communist and post-Communist countries for a lot longer than you, Richard.) I DO understand their subtleties, all too well. And that is how and why I can see that you have become one of their willing tools, all the more so as you have convinced yourself that your understanding of the Communist Party is more “subtle” and “sophisticated” than others.

But Richard, I have spent far more time in Communist and post-Communist nations than you, so you can’t cop out and say I have no idea of what I’m talking about, when I talk about the ways of Leninist-Communist propaganda.

November 25, 2007 @ 10:09 pm | Comment

Snow said,

“Thats why I always say that its no good to lump the CCP and Chinese people (China) together, the country can be fine and the people are fine, they are just under a really brutal regime that controls waaay too much…”

I agree but it is difficult when brainwashed Chinese lump themselves and the CCP together.

November 25, 2007 @ 10:41 pm | Comment

Ivan, you may have lived in a Communist country, but so have millions of others, many for much longer than you have. Does that make them all scholars on Communism? Meanwhile, I still hate Communism. I still dislike most aspects of the CCP. But China is doing better today despite the CCP, and no matter how many temper tantrums and fits you throw, China’s success is here to stay, in all likelihood for many, many decades to come. Again, not because of the party but because of the irrepressible Chinese people. In all seriousness, would you like to put money down on it? And why can’t you see that saying this is not an endorsement of communism? It is simply the reality of China today, and I know that many close and personal friends of mine – some of them virulently opposed to their government – are doing way better than they were even 5 years ago when I first met them, lifted up in the rising tide of China’s progress. It’s like you’re seeing a horse cross a finish line and insisting that horse didn’t really win. I think it’s safe to say that no one – literally no one – who has lived here for many years and who really knows a braod swath of Chinese people, both in the big cities and the smaller towns, would say China has not improved amazingly in recent years. I know about the imprisoned web essayists and the brutality against the disenfranchised. None of that changes the simple factual statement that the vast majority of people’s lives have greatly improved. But now I’m just repeating the same points I made earlier in this thread, which for some reason you can’t acknowledge although they are a matter of fact and not perception. I hate communism. China has done better in recent years. Why can’t I say that without being called a shill for the CCP?

November 25, 2007 @ 11:11 pm | Comment

Or how about this: Japan’s invasion of China was an “economic activity” too. So it was better than no activity, right?

Posted by: Ivan at November 24, 2007 12:39 PM

—————————————
then 911 must be another “economic activity”.

November 26, 2007 @ 12:46 am | Comment

@Richard:

The CCP may have being doing better for a while, but now there is a lot of backsliding into totalitarian behavior, amplified nationalism and the utter catastrophe that is the environmental situation.

@ HongXing:

There is nothing gentle about Chinese people, they are a mob looking for blood on the street for entertainment. Gangs of Chinese men attack one foreigner to prove “superiority” and due to jealousy because Chinese girls prefer foreign men.

November 26, 2007 @ 12:48 am | Comment

Bert,

I agree with you, and that’s why it has gotten to be the way it is. Most people are “brainwashed” And I don’t mean that each person has been tied to a tiger bench and tortured and had their eye balls stuck open with bamboo stickes forced to watch CCP shows, BUT, the essence is what I’m talking about… This type of things HAS happened to ALOT of people. Also, when the party owns all the media, well, you can imagine peoples thinking will be controlled if the owner wants to control the people (and all smart people realize they do)

Maybe you know what I’m getting at… I’m trying to say that the communist propaganda machine is spread far and wide. First, the party contrives that it is somehow legitimate and totally covers up for its crimes by either justifying them or pretending that they never occured (usually both), Then the party pushes out the false propaganda to communities all over the world and media all over the world and political etc leaders all ovwr the world.

That is why for example the PARTY LINE: TO LOVE THE PARTY IS TO LOVE CHINABert,

I agree with you, and that’s why it has gotten to be the way it is. Most people are “brainwashed” And I don’t mean that each person has been tied to a tiger bench and tortured and had their eye balls stuck open with bamboo stickes forced to watch CCP shows, BUT, the essence is what I’m talking about… This type of things HAS happened to ALOT of people. Also, when the party owns all the media, well, you can imagine peoples thinking will be controlled if the owner wants to control the people (and all smart people realize they do)

Maybe you know what I’m getting at… I’m trying to say that the communist propaganda machine is spread far and wide. First, the party contrives that it is somehow legitimate and totally covers up for its crimes by either justifying them or pretending that they never occured (usually both), Then the party pushes out the false propaganda to communities all over the world and media all over the world and political etc leaders all ovwr the world.

That is why for example the PARTY LINE: TO LOVE THE PARTY IS TO LOVE CHINA< TO LOVE CHINA IS TO LOVE THE PARTY, has so widely been drilled into peoples minds everywhere. People do not understand the process of getting people to think that, they just accept it. Yo uknow in brainwash labour camps the people have to watch all osrts of programs, I saw on a documentary, the women prisoners were being "reformed" by singing songs like 'without the party there would be no new China' and people made to believe that if the party is sustained and propped up for a hundred or so more years, then China will be well off, and they are made to believe that if the party falls, there will be chaos, as if it werent bad enough! Anyway, gotta go... Down with the CCP, why the heck not???? Richard would you say the same about North Koreas Kim Jong "Unfortunately, they (the CCP) aren't going away, and if they were there is nothing to replace them, so we had better make do with what we have, while calling them out on their sins as they are committed." Calling people on their sins is great. but theres more to it then just that right? Peace

November 26, 2007 @ 2:25 am | Comment

“Most people are “brainwashed” And I don’t mean that each person …This type of things HAS happened to ALOT of people. Also, when the [government] owns all the media,”

Totally agree with you…”Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserv’d us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave. O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave… paid for with our truth embargo, economic sanctions, and carpet bombings….Everybody can see it, except for the brainwashed self righteous people who dare ignorantly preach of bravery, freedom, justice and with gungho indignation, finger point at the sins of others.

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly becomes any one of us to talk about the rest of us.

November 26, 2007 @ 7:25 am | Comment

1) Richard? A “press release” you received from the Central Propaganda Department, as their way of planting the story? (You know this idiot? Why does he keeps calling you his friend?)

2) Gangs of Chinese men attack one foreigner to prove “superiority” (Poetic justice? Nah, we are Still light years from what White America do to the colored folks worldwide)

3) Chinese girls prefer foreign men (Percentage wise, you don’t have a chance.)

4) Africans are caged monkeys(That was exactly how the America slave traders treated Africans)

5) Chinese look more like monkeys (you either are indoctrinated against Yellow Fever or you’re impotent or already married.)

6) Chinese people are brainwashed (no more/worse than westerners I dare say.)

7)Beijing really is a big Potemkin village（Using a hackneyed busted myth – stop exhibiting your ignorance, it’s embarrassing!)

8) No, I do NOT agree with Nanhe,that China should be quarantined and punished. (about the sanest thing written so far, but then) … I do not want to see China become any weaker than it is now.[talk about 猫哭老鼠-pure hipocrasy]

Diagnosis and remedy: Richard, now you understand that “anti-China” is not a lie by brainswashed Chinese, there are really anti-China people that exist in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinophobia

Ivan, Fat Cat, Nanhe, xiaonanhe, Snow: I asked you guys seek medication before for the above condition, why delay it? I have a number for a famous doctor that treats this sickness.
HongXing at November 25, 2007 07:04 PM

November 26, 2007 @ 9:44 am | Comment

China is doing so well that Wen Jiabao has to keep asking Beijing citizens whether they can afford eating meat lately.

This indisputable reality of China’s “success” has triggered a deluge of complaints at an online forum dedicated to the Prime Minister’s comment.

Let’s have a look at what these ungrateful netizens want to say:

“It’s a show!!! I get 800RMB a month, so after paying for the rent, I can hardly afford the regular meals!!! How can I think of meat!??? I am a university graduate!!~”

“Why is that the consumer prices are almost the same in different regions, but the salary gap is so large? The minimum pension is more than 1000RMB in big cities but in the small and medium cities it would be only 600 or 700RMB. It’s so unfair.”

“We workers of enterprises in Xinjiang province are on a salary of 700-900RMB a month. Even though the consumer prices are soaring, our wages do not increase any more. How can we live a life now? The only choice is only eating vegetables. Meat? We can think of it in the night dreams.”

(English translation c/o Global Voices Online)

Solution to this problem: take the Internet away from those trouble-making city dwellers. They can’t be that poor if they can afford to use computers. I didn’t hear any farmer making any complaint at any online forums. So the farmers must be doing OK. In any case, if a Beijing citizen can’t afford to eat meat, he can always pick up a double cheeese burger from McDonald’s and wash it down with a cappuccino from Starbuck. Problems solved.

November 26, 2007 @ 10:23 am | Comment

There is just so much to read here I don’t even know where to end it.

NOBODY LIKES REPORTER PERIOD. If a reporter started to howl at ma for some retarted reason I would say “sooh sooh Newspaper monkey. Look a man having sex with a woman and one of them is below voting age”

Japan never got of it’s feet as somebody here mentioned. Right now China is expriencing what Japan went threw…..becoming a society that is not theres…. and there was many suicides over the way things was turning out in Japan over this.

Japan as everybody knows dislikes outsiders and
thinks too big of it’s self for years. They were forced into trade and went threw a post apocolyptic state which is now there present state.

The turth is Japan aviods change and prevent outsides ” the enemy ” from enlisting change.

CHINA NEEDS TO PRESERVE ITSELF WHILE ADOPTING FOREIGN IDEALS.

I believe we need more people inside who will actually tell what is going on.

I am just speaking out of context but…..

WE NEED TOURIST. We need the parents going on tours with there children, the guy who is looking for some underage nook nook, The college students going on a world tour, Ryu and Ken, the photo jounalists, the sickos, the fat cat women who is buying the apartments where “villages” is being torned down. We need them all.

STOP BUYING FROM THE WESTERN SCUM. We make the stuff they buy. They know it and the worst thing anybody can do is buy the stuff you make.

WE NEED TO HAVE A CLEAN IMAGE AND BE OURSELVES.

Right now when i think of china I am not going to think about the yellow river, the great wall, the monks, and so forth but the images of a aged woman lying on a matress in the streets with a Hello Kitty shirt on and the daugther crying next to her.

The burning of the black hotel form cell phones images along with the 3d art from newpapers.

Then miles and miles of ” villagers ” going to work in bright orange uniforms putting together celluar phones and game controllers.

Then a gang of children attacking people is not new. I would just fight it out being that hey it is normal and hey they come out like cockroaches when one is threathened.

Westerners are so brainwashed they spend there whole lives in sadness living for nothing while only a few live for there families sake.

Africans are not monkies but the British long arm there is. If you could ask anybody from Hong Kong who grewed up with barely anything I am sure they will tell you about how all the jobs was giving to europeans and even if they did hard jobs they get paided lower.

About African human monkies the only black skinned ones are in the USA. What is even worst is that they have nothing into there adult years so terribley that they will still be lower bottom feeding trash in there old years.

EASTERN ASIAN PEOPLE excluding Russia and Japan treat there own like crap. If you treat somebody like crap they are going to be crap. In China it is literrally a dog eat dog world.

I have no idea what China and the rest of the Jackie Chan Gang is going to about the current situtation all I can say is that you need to become the source to do anything.

I see a big brother/sister picking on little brother/sister situtation. That is all I can really see and Mother China is this woman on the death bed. Little brother/sister is going to punch big brother/sister one day and mother China can’t say or do anything about it while watching her life go down the drain.

China is not dead. China is great place and all it needs is to look at it’s strenghts and use them like anywhere else.

All I hope is that China will not turn into this exprimental metropolis where money talks and bullshite walks or whatever the saying is.

About American bieng concerned. Hey the Twin Towers thing along with you know what from 2001-2005 of massive confusion and then to see not only China but India and places in Africa be in a Westernized state rather then there true commercial like state is a shock………………………………Then most Americans still think that Mexico is mules and chickens and not Universities and Malls.

Then in another five year they will forget everything like they do while some will die off and
life will continue on. The thing is life especially with the crap you intake can be short and to be honest the best fun was and is when you was 12-25 and after that everything we call fun is a mere joke.

I say we all go back to our lives and if anybody can do anything about the China bulldozerization problem or whatever anybody like to call it then do it.

Wow a country in 20XX actually ran people over with tanks who was protesting quote “Shoot Right Here” “Freedom or Death”

November 26, 2007 @ 12:31 pm | Comment

1) Richard? A “press release” you received from the Central Propaganda Department, as their way of planting the story? (You know this idiot? Why does he keeps calling you his friend?)

Richard is a conduit for frustrated Chinese in MinTruth.

2) Gangs of Chinese men attack one foreigner to prove “superiority” (Poetic justice? Nah, we are Still light years from what White America do to the colored folks worldwide)

And what about what non-Americans were doing to each other before the US? Before western Europe? China has certainly killed more than its share of eastern, southern and central Asians during the past 5000 years. And why do you assume the foreigner is American? Why not European, African (they certainly their share of attacks from angry, frustrated Chinese men), or THE JAPANESE!

3) Chinese girls prefer foreign men (Percentage wise, you don’t have a chance.)

Cause there aren’t enough foreign men in China to scoop up the singles and not enough foreign couples to adopt all of the baby girls at any one time. But we’re working on it.

4) Africans are caged monkeys(That was exactly how the America slave traders treated Africans)

So you as a Chinese consider Africans to be monkeys? Typical. And now it is China’s turn to plunder Africa.

5) Chinese look more like monkeys (you either are indoctrinated against Yellow Fever or you’re impotent or already married.)

?Que?

6) Chinese people are brainwashed (no more/worse than westerners I dare say.)

I can google lots of sites about how bad Cheney, Bush, corporations, Big Oil, etc are. Lots of western TV shows make fun of their own societies. No such shows in thin-skinned China.

7)Beijing really is a big Potemkin village（Using a hackneyed busted myth – stop exhibiting your ignorance, it’s embarrassing!)

Beijing is a big pile of smelly crap and car exhaust. I find it amusingly ironic that Beijing plunged HeBei province into a pollution nightmare to clean the city up for foreingers 20 years ago and now chokes on that same wind-blown pollution plus car exhaust.

8) No, I do NOT agree with Nanhe,that China should be quarantined and punished. (about the sanest thing written so far, but then) … I do not want to see China become any weaker than it is now.[talk about 猫哭老鼠-pure hipocrasy]

Punish China with a rubber hose. China.

November 26, 2007 @ 1:58 pm | Comment

here’s how much Africans like China:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7111206.stm

November 26, 2007 @ 2:09 pm | Comment

@Mutton-on-a-stick,

Learn to read first before commenting will ya?

Typical indeed.

Posted by: Ivan at November 24, 2007 12:31 PM
“That’s analogous to saying, “Handing an automatic pistol to a monkey and setting him loose in a shopping mall is better than keeping the monkey unarmed and in a cage.”
Hey, if someone would charge money for making a movie of that monkey-with-a-pistol on a rampage, then the monkey’s “activity” would be “economic!”Posted by this idiot: Ivan at November 24, 2007 12:31 PM

November 26, 2007 @ 10:20 pm | Comment

Learn to read first before commenting will ya, redneck?

“These tall tales originated with the Saxon envoy to Catherine’s court, Georg von Helbig, who was not, safe to say, Potemkin’s bud. Von Helbig did not make the trip to the Crimea, but in his diplomatic dispatches (and in a Potemkin biography completed almost a decade after the man’s death in 1791) he evidently passed along gossip circulating in the Russian capital at Saint Petersburg.

Shows you the power of the written word.

In reality Potemkin did in fact build the fleet, arsenal, ports, and so on that dazzled Catherine’s court. But thanks to von Helbig’s coinage “Potemkin villages”, the prince’s name is known to posterity as a synonym for sham. “Cecil Adams

November 26, 2007 @ 10:33 pm | Comment

They say third time lucky. Maybe I can get thru your thick skull this time….but I seriously doubt it.

“I can google lots of sites about how bad Cheney, Bush, corporations, Big Oil, etc are. Lots of western TV shows make fun of their own societies.”Posted by: nanheyangrouchuan at November 26, 2007 01:58 PM

“By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, [journalism] keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”
–Oscar Wilde

“You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time. So open up the floodgate of information and let the people swim, struggle & drown in the torrents while we tend to the plundering of mines & fields of earth’s fortune.”

“Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.”

“The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.”
–G. K. Chesterton

November 26, 2007 @ 11:23 pm | Comment

HKonger:

Apparently you didn’t read the whole article, which is not surprising consider who you are.

November 26, 2007 @ 11:47 pm | Comment

@nanheyangrouchuan ,

Wrong, wrong and wrong again.
I not only have read the whole article, I have discussed it with my journalist friend. I even commented on it. Furthermore, I agree with richard that it was unjust and also with Raj that the foreign media won’t back off but at the same time I disagree with the over zealous linking of an incident in Hebei or anything in this country for that matter to the Beijing Olympics. Richard and Raj are fair-minded and smart people unlike China-baiters like you & your mindless delinquent lot who, out of spite, slander and wish only to see China fail. FYI, there are many more who don’t. Many whom, like me, have come to know, understand and appreciate China & its people. And no, that doesn’t automatically mean that we’ve been bought; its call being human and being real.

Here we don’t preach freedom, we actually enjoy freedom. I feel a lot safer in China then I did in LA, NYC, Sydney or London.

Incidentally, the west is not your friend, protector nor emancipator; not even for most people born there where power lies in “the wealth of the nation,” the more capable class of men so to speak, the elites – the top 4% – just not the people anyway.

November 27, 2007 @ 6:27 am | Comment

Hkonger,

I challenge you to find a comment on this thread that’s related to the Olympic Games.

Richard is the first one who is linking the Swiss journalists’ incident to the Games. If you read his original post, this is how it reads, “The Olympics are a stone’s throw away, and stories like this could turn what the government plans to be the most spectacular dog and pony show of all time into a global media roast of heavy-handed old-fashioned communist thuggery. Nine more months. Tick-tock, tick-tock….”

I can’t speak for others, but I’ve discussed Richard’s post with Ivan over private email exchange. We both agreed that this association was not only over the top but would possibly backfire badly. That’s the main reason why we are throwing out baits of all kinds to see how far and for how long we can stop commenters from making the association. Apart from Raj, HKonger, you are the only one who is attempting to make this association.

And of course we received the usual name-calling ritual from the pathetic utra-nationalists. Nothing new under the sun, really. I think by now many regular TPD readers would have worked out this vilification pattern. So there’s no need for me to explain.

Read my comment where I quote from Diana Preston’s book on the Boxer Rebellion. Read also Ivan’s comment that starts with this sentence: “So you really wanna get back to “the topic”? ” Meditate on them and perhaps one day you’ll have a better idea who is spreading propaganda, who are the wilful collaborators and who is telling the truth.

November 27, 2007 @ 9:49 am | Comment

Fat Cat, you think my association with press beatings and how China will be perceived during the Olympics is “over the top”? I think it is totally rational – this is why they are supposedly lifting media restrictions for the big event, so that the world sees how bright and sunny and freedom-loving China is. That’s why I call it a dog and pony show. Don’t you think that’s exactly what it is, a rather cynical bid to show the world China is serene and harmonious? Reporters beaten to a pulp can mar this lovely image. Do you agree with me or do you think I am being over the top?

Thank God I am the only one here who is over the top. Everyone else is so polite and respectful and realistic. Richard really is a fanatical nutcase.

November 27, 2007 @ 11:17 am | Comment

@ Richard, “Reporters beaten to a pulp can mar this lovely image”

That’s exactly why the Central Propaganda Department is using this tactic of instilling fear in reporters, many months before August 2008, as a prophylactic against needing to beat up reporters during the games. It’s most effective to make maximum use of just a few beatings, well in advance of the time – and part of maximising that use is to disseminate the story through the Party propaganda machine’s own special American Public Relations man in Beijing.

“Prophylactica”, oldest trick in the Leninist book of information control.

November 27, 2007 @ 11:34 am | Comment

I would actually look at this situation as yet another example of the fractured authority of political power in China – the central government versus the provinces – but maybe that’s just crazy Oprah-talk.

Speaking of fractured authority, check out this New York Times article on the difficulties of enforcing national environmental laws on the provincial level.

November 27, 2007 @ 11:50 am | Comment

@ richard;

You are not alone in being over the top or right on target!

@HKonger:

“Here we don’t preach freedom, we actually enjoy freedom. I feel a lot safer in China then I did in LA, NYC, Sydney or London.”

You really didn’t right that in the same thread about the beatings of foreign journalists by local bosses?! If you are Asian, you are pretty safe anywhere, if you are not Asian, hanging out in the foreign bubble doesn’t mean you are safe, it means you are enjoying apartheid with Chinese characteristics. Tell you what, if you are non-asian, walk down the street with a local girl (coworker, manager, friend, whomever), walk by a construction site and stand your ground when the workers bury her with insults for walking with a foreigner. Or show alot of bling around a talking bar…

November 27, 2007 @ 12:14 pm | Comment

Richard asked, “Do you agree with me or do you think I am being over the top?” That is a false dilemma. Of course beating up reporters can mar China’s image. But you were the one who related it to the Olympics as if the Olympics OUGHT to be what China is most concerned about. So what I perceive to be “over the top” is the way your perception of China’s practical priorities is exactly like that of the CCP.

But something else bothers me even more about this whole blog post of yours, Richard.
Your target audience is not the CCP. The central government does not take advice from your blog, and that applies even more to the local officials. In other words the only people who will be influenced by this post are foreigners including foreign journalists. And basically you’re just telling them to be afraid.
That’s exactly what the CCP want them to do, and all you’re doing is acting as the CCP’s Lao Lai mouthpiece so that they don’t have to embarass themselves by terrorising foreigners directly. It’s more convenient to get a foreigner to do it for them.

If you really want to persuade China’s government to change its policies and actions toward foreigners, why don’t you conduct an online petition directed at the government? Because simply doing a blog post telling foreigners to beware just helps the CCP to enforce their reign of terror.

November 27, 2007 @ 12:54 pm | Comment

@Ivan,

Yeah, that was over the top. “Reporters beaten to a pulp”????

I thought so too but then he explains….”Thank God I am the only one here who is over the top.”

@otherlisa,

Thanks for the link.

@nanheyangrouchuan,

“the foreign bubble doesn’t mean you are safe…”

That’s “us against them” nonesense…My buddy, an asian american have picked fights almost weekly from Chicago to Taipei to Tokyo to Shenzhen with both local asians and expats alike. You make a bubble someone’s gonna want to pop it, and that’s anywhere in the world.

“it means you are enjoying apartheid with Chinese characteristics.”

Yes, you are right about that. But no, I hate race and caste segregation; so serves whoever right for insisting on being a Roman when in China.

“Tell you what, walk down the street with a local girl (coworker, manager, friend, whomever), walk by a construction site and stand your ground when the workers bury her with insults for walking with a foreigner. Or show alot of bling around a talking bar…”

Didn’t your sunday school teacher ever tell ya, “Do not provoke your brother to sin.” ?

I’m for hiding the bling. (Don’t believe in,”If you got it flaunt it,” stupidity. Well, for one, the only accessory I wear is my 50 dollar Seiko. And when it comes to construction sites, it’s the same anywhere. Can’t really blame the redblooded horny guys from feeling jealous. However, if visiting construction sites is part of your job, well, I’ve never heard my construction engineer buddy and his knockout chinese wife, who occasionally visits him on sites, ever complain about it. He speaks very good chinese and knows how to use it politely without the “I understand chinese, so don’t fxxk with me, rednecks!” attitude,though.

It’s been enlightening folks. Thank you.

November 27, 2007 @ 1:26 pm | Comment

Well,

I think your suggestion of starting a patition and stuff is good fat cat… But theres two sides to the coin of telling the truth about the beating of journalists.

If the big media all reported on this type of thing, do you think the result would be that everyone would be afraid of the CCP? If your answer is yes, then we are all f@#*ed because they do beat journalists and much much worse!!!

So we ought not hide this fact, BUT, what is really important is that people get the whole story, not just about people being beaten, but the fact that they are beaten in order to scare others into coplacency, that is so bad…

If all people knew that the party would do these awful things to teach people to be afraid and crumble under fear, I dont think people would just roll over and obey, they would be utterly indignant, so I hope (-:

If no one stands up to this beast, well, they will get what they want, so I think if we really stand up and dredge up all the facts about the vile tactics used to control people (absolute terrorism), then I think people will wake up…

Peace

by the way, I love China and the culture, and, even the people (-;

Just cause I am against the party doesnt mean I am anti China (as the party would say (of course)) Actually the way I see it is that people who want that despot controlling things in China is totally anti China, but the brainwashing has reversed reality in the minds of the people, how utterly sad, stupid mind control, China ruinning party…

November 27, 2007 @ 1:48 pm | Comment

comment deleted by myself. written in a moment of passion.

November 27, 2007 @ 2:08 pm | Comment

Look what they have made out of a nice slice of Peking Duck!

Richard – I can feel your frustration.

Yet I still like the piece of roast in its original flavor, and choose to chew in silence, occasionally amuse myself with the manifestation of self-righteous stupidities by some of the diners, and watch out for some sparks of wisdom by some others.

Keep the feast going, although it might not be the one you had in mind …

November 28, 2007 @ 5:42 pm | Comment

Thanks JC. Of all the threads on this blog, this is one of the most maddening. Yes, I am a paid shill of the CCP. Anyone reading this blog can see that in a flash. Right.

November 28, 2007 @ 6:30 pm | Comment

Richard, I don’t know what happened. I just can’t get what Ivan’s and Fat Cat’s problem with this post is. I appreciate your posting this kind of information, simply because I want to know what’s going on in China. This is one of the reasons I make reading the Peking Duck a regular routine. You are a shill paid by the CCP? Yeah, and I’m a member of the Communist Youth League now.

November 29, 2007 @ 1:02 am | Comment

Guys, the bad treatment of reporters will neither result into the destroyment of china nor the corrosion of existing democracies around the world.
China always had a bad reputation among the west press, but this didnt hinder it from developing, or diminish west investment.
Chinese r well aware of the shits the CP is doing, but that does not mean they are going into revolution or civil war. This is just some wishful thinking of the west.
As long as the majority of chinese are still trying to crawl out of the poverty, they wont rebel. Wait until they have gained more wealth.
Just have a look at the bbc forums like TIANYA. Educated young r already openly expressing their dissatisfaction with the Cp. I lie my hope in the hands of the often bashed 1990s generation. They gonna rock China for sure.

November 29, 2007 @ 1:10 am | Comment

Richard,
Don’t worry about this too much, but think about it. I got into a riff with Ivan around a year ago when he misinterpreted a new commenter’s comments and called them a CCP shill (quite unpredictable and original comment, huh?). He has a penchant for conspiracy theories as well as an ego large beyond all conspiracies. All of the sudden the fact that I was married to a Chinese woman became a matter of utmost importance (of course, he had no idea about my wife’s political stances, and did nothing but assume, thus making an ass out of not u and me, but him). Anyway, I had no beef with him before, and actually quite liked him, but once you get on his bad side (for whatever reason, no matter how innocent) he can be unnecessarily negative and inflammatory. He will cling to the most ridiculous argument solely for the sake of clinging to it. That’s unfortunate, but that’s how things are. This led me to think, and to be honest, despite his self-aggrandizing claims to the contrary, this blog would be a lot better without Ivan around.
After criticizing Ivan’s extravagancies, however, I must say that I have also been concerned about some hesitancies on your part to portray the truth of contemporary Chinese society. I used to come here to get news about these truths, and have been slightly disappointed as of late. Not to be antagonistic, just telling you. Maybe you’re busy, but some things do suggest a certain hesitancy on your part.
One issue which is of particular concern to me is the Tiananmen Massacre. While this tragedy is being incorporated into Chinese historiography as a “necessary and resolute move” to “preserve stability,” the victims of this senseless and self-interested massacre by the CCP and its “honey” the PLA continue to suffer imprisonment, abuse, and harassment.
I remember that over the years you have always posted a photograph of the tanks rolling down the “Avenue of Everlasting Peace,” but I was disappointed to see that this was not posted this year, probably on account of your location…. I can maybe understand. However, I would recommend that you continue to remember all those who have been killed and abused by this regime, continuing through today, because if everyone backs down and says “I won’t discuss this” or “I won’t upload this picture this year,” then the sad state of Chinese politics and society will never change. I am thousands of miles away in New York, but when I was in Shanghai, my entire company’s Internet was shut down because of comments I made on this blog, and despite my initial concern, I did not want to stop and did not stop. I encourage you, despite your position in Beijing, to continue to pursue the kind of work that you did when I started reading this blog oh so many years ago, and to do all that you can to effect change in the self-colonizing and self-destructive Chinese political and social systems.
This might be too long, and probably no one will like me after reading it… but oh well… just what was on my mind.
Kevin

November 29, 2007 @ 8:05 am | Comment

Kevin, I agree, sadly, about Ivan – he can be brilliant and a splendid person, but then….

I didn’t even think about Tiananmen Square this year. Honestly, my lif is like this: Go towork from 9 until 9, go home and get on global calls with America and Europe until past midnght whicle eating take-out food, then to bed and up again. Seriously, it’s like that and it can be just as bad on weekends. As for the stories on the CCP’s excesses and sins – I still write about them but not as much for one ain reason – there are next to none being reported because, no matter what their motivation, the CCP has done something over hte past 18 months. I’m not sure exactly what they did, but the news has trickled to nothing – so either they’ve gotten better or figured out how to block the news pipeline, or the global media have gone to sleep. I don’t think it’s the latter – the WSJ this yer won a Pulitzer for its exposure of lead poisoning from drinking water in por Chinese villages. But somehow the bad strories aren’ t there the way they were in 2004,. Maybe it’s a good thing, or maybe it’s a sign of a more sinister censorship. Either way, without the articles to comment on there’s not much for me to work with. Combine that with my schedule and you have a very limited ability to put out daily dramatic posts about the sins of the government. I’ve got much more to work with when it comes to America.

November 29, 2007 @ 8:43 am | Comment

I see what your saying, and despite my objection above, I think that this was a case of you pointing out an unfortunate incident, and I think that the objections that some others have raised are, to say the least, off mark. Just maintain a critical stance… and that’s what I see, and something I don’t really doubt.

November 29, 2007 @ 9:22 am | Comment