First-off, go see this excellent post over at the excellent blog China Geeks about CNN’s controversial cooperation with actor Christian Bale as he sought to interview blind activist Chen Guangcheng. I happen to agree with Charlie that whether CNN crossed an ethical line or not (and I’m not convinced they did), the ends in this case justified the means: the video was released and the world has learned about this inexcusable crime against humanity. If you want to talk about ethics, talk about the way the CCP has treated this man whose crime was exposing forced abortions in the countryside. And keeping his six-year-old daughter under house arrest, too. How noble.

Two wrongs don’t make a right, and if CNN violated journalistic ethics they deserve to be called on it. But as Charlie says, at the end of the day who cares? The story is Chen Guangcheng and the fact that thugs are holding him, his wife and his daughter under house arrest for his being a whistle-blower. Aside from some indignant Chinese bloggers and microbloggers, CNN hasn’t taken a lot of flak for breaching journalistic ethics, nor should they. (See the China Geeks thread for journalist Adam Minter’s complaints about the story.)

Watch the video and see the “unethical” journalism for yourself. What Bale has to say is pretty spot-on.

Of course, there’s one pundit who is aghast at CNN’s sins, and is getting all Anti-CNN about it. From the Harvard graduate who married into a rich Chinese family and goes fishing with high-ranking CCP officials and runs a marketing company and has written a new book on China, we get the following:

CNN’s China team, in a complete failure of journalistic integrity, decided last week to become the news rather than just report it. The actor Christian Bale called CNN to follow him as he drove for eight hours to confront police to try to see Chen Guangcheng, a blind legal activist being held in his home in the eastern Chinese village of Linyi. Bale was in China to promote his movie about the Rape of Nanking by Japanese troops in 1937.

CNN did Bale one better. It became complicit in Bale’s activism by actually planning the trip and driving him to Linyi. CNN reporter Steven Jiang then translated for Bale as he argued with Chinese police officers and refused to comply with their directives to leave. CNN posted video of the trip on its website, calling it exclusive, showing police forcing Bale to leave while Bale chastised the government, saying its treatment of Chen ”represents the power structure and their attitude towards their own citizens, which is disgusting.”

So they drove him to his destination and translated for him. I understand that this is perhaps (big perhaps) questionable journalism, but only borderline, and like Charlie said, “Who cares?” They didn’t lie or trick anyone, but they followed what sounded like a great story, a celebrity confronting thugs holding a blind man and his family under house arrest. Would it have been okay if they followed him in a taxi and he brought his own translator? Those are very small things. And Bale’s calling the treatment of Chen “disgusting” was, to say the least, justified. An understatement, really.

But Shaun Rein can see only treachery. In Shaun’s eyes, by working with Bale, CNN is facilitating the (false) notion held by many Chinese that the US media works in cahoots with the CIA and the NED and intentionally manipulates the facts they report on.

Shaun gives his cards away pretty early on:

My issue here is not with Bale. In general, I believe one should follow the laws of nations that one visits, and that Bale should do so, but I also generally believe in free speech, no matter how misguided.

Ah. He believes in free speech, no matter how misguided. You see, what Bale was trying to do is misguided. Exposing the inhumane detention of a blind activist is misguided, a publicity stunt. Note the “I generally believe in free speech” as well. That puts him in the clear to decide when to be for it and when not to. A smart thing to do if you’re going to cozy up to the powers that be in China.

In order to get why I bother to write about Shaun Rein’s columns at all, you must think very seriously about his next remark:

I have no idea about Chen’s detention, and if he is being wronged or not, but if there are issues with his case, I am not convinced that calling the entire political class “disgusting,” as Bale does, can help.

He has no idea. Wait. Stop. Fail. Unless you are willfully ignorant there is no way on earth you don’t know about the plight of Chen Guangcheng. Especially if you live in China and write for at least two media organizations. Yes, this speaks volumes. He can banter on about all the good the CCP does and cite example after example of things that prove his point. But here, he knows nothing. Nothing. No idea. And he’s writing a column in Forbes about it.

I made a promise to myself not to go after Shaun Rein any more because I don’t want to hurt his feelings, and I’ve been pretty quiet even though he keeps doling out lots of ammunition. But this is inexcusable. It’s like looking at an MRI of the Anti-CNN mentality. Oh, and note how he plugs his book throughout the column.

More vintage Shaun drivel:

Far too many in the West indict China’s whole governing class and system when a single local official does something stupid or brutish. Yet they criticized only a lone thuggish police officer in New York for pepper-spraying Occupy Wall Street protesters. They didn’t called President Obama evil for what that one officer did, or call for an overthrow of all of America. Yet Bale did that in China’s case, and, worse, CNN helped him.

False. The national outrage over the Oakland pepper-spraying was NOT directed only at one officer. It was directed at the abuse of authority in America. Scroll down a few posts to see my own story about it, where I direct my shame at “my country.” And this wasn’t an isolated incident, we saw just as bad in NYC a few weeks earlier, and the rage has never been solely at the individual sprayer but at the system that allows them to brutalize innocents. Really, this paragraph is among the dumbest yet. As if one lone local official is behind this detention, and the poor little CCP off in Beijing is powerless to take charge, all they can do is watch, knowing it’s atrocious, but, you know, what the hell, it’s just a local official doing it and he’s a few hours away so, like, what can we do? “A single local official.” Think about that. The CCP can be off the hook for anything that doesn’t happen within walking distance of the Great Hall of the People.

And then he puts up another of his signature straw men: “They didn’t called President Obama evil for what that one officer did, or call for an overthrow of all of America. Yet Bale did that in China’s case….” Did Bale call Hu JIntao evil? Did he call anyone evil? Did he call for the overthrow of an evil Chinese government? Did we watch the same video? Shaun, as usual, is simply making things up so he can get on his moral high horse. This is straight out of the Anti-CNN playbook.

He closes sanctimoniously:

The last thing the world needs is increased tension between the world’s two superpowers. CNN should be ashamed for becoming more like a tabloid and inserting itself into the story rather than maintaining journalistic integrity and providing an objective view of its subjects.

So there we have it; calling China to the carpet for its shit threatens fragile global relationships so we should shut the fuck up and keep things status quo so marketing companies can keep making money. Sorry, but I’ll take CNN’s journalism over this any time.

Again, go to China Geeks and see how Charlie replies to the criticisms of CNN one by one. No need for me to repeat them here.

Shaun, do you really have “no idea” they are holding a six-year-old girl under house arrest? Look into your heart and tell us the truth, do you really not know? Really? Whether the answer is yes or no, you are the one who should feel ashamed. Hear no evil, see no evil….

A six-year-old girl.

(Correction. The six-year-old girl is now being allowed to go to school, under police escort, of course. How good of them.)

UPDATE: Please be sure to check out China Geek’s post on the same article. And note the comment below. The commenter dared to ask Shaun if he really had “no idea” about this story — Shaun immediately blocked him on Twitter. The maturity of a five-year-old.

Note: If you are new to this site, you will want to see my other posts about Shaun Rein, most notable this one and this one. Don’t miss those comments. Nothing seems to light up the discussion like this subject.

In 2008 I annoyed some of my readers by predicting China would weather the economic crisis better than the US would. I know, the US fundamentals are stronger and China has all these really bad problems, but my argument was relatively simple: China had enough money in the bank to buy itself out of the recession, at least for a few years, while the US, mired in debt, would be in a far less enviable position.

Then I wrote four months ago:

The bottom-line prediction: things will continue more or less the same, with a sharp, painful drop in property prices at some point and a steady decrease in GDP as domestic consumption fails to live up to expectations and deficit spending clogs China’s economic arteries. As always, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Two years earlier I wrote:

Friends have been telling me about the deranged property prices in Beijing, and once again, as with the malls, it just strikes me as common sense that this is not sustainable. And you have to consider all the ripple effects a housing bust would foment – all those migrant workers on construction sites, all the construction machinery makers, the cement and lumber providers, all the ancillary businesses, door-knob makers and house painters.

What Epstein [of Forbes] is describing mirrors to the letter what we saw in the US five years ago, and is even more reckless: flipping properties and creating massive pools of debt and the same insane mass hypnosis: “Property values can only increase!” We all know how that goes.

I do not want to see this happen… But again, my common sense tells me there’s no way he can be wrong. Any student of bubbles, from tulips to dot-coms, can see the gathering storm. I wouldn’t want to be owning any property in China when it meets land.

Now, I’m getting the distinct feeling that the inevitable may not be too far away: China’s real estate bubble really may pop. From Foreign affairs today:

For years analysts have warned of a looming real estate bubble in China, but the predicted downturn, the bursting of that bubble, never occurred — that is, until now. In a telling scene two months ago, Shanghai property developers started slashing prices on their latest luxury condos by up to one-third. Crowds of owners who had recently bought apartments at full price converged on sales offices throughout the city, demanding refunds. Some angry investors went on a rampage, breaking windows and smashing showrooms.

Shanghai homeowners are hardly the only ones getting nervous. Sudden, steep price reductions are upending real estate markets across China. According to the property agency Homelink, new home prices in Beijing dropped 35 percent in November alone. And the free fall may continue for some time. Centaline, another leading property agency, estimates that developers have built up 22 months’ worth of unsold inventory in Beijing and 21 months’ worth in Shanghai. Everyone from local landowners to Chinese speculators and international investors are now worrying that these discounts indicate that “the biggest bubble of the century,” as it was called earlier this year, has just popped, with serious consequences not only for one of the world’s most promising economies — but internationally as well.

The biggest unanswered question is whether existing investors — the people holding all those sold but empty “ghost” condos and villas — will join in the sell-off, which could turn the market’s retreat into a rout.

What makes the future look particularly bleak is the lack of escape routes. If Chinese investors panic and rush for the exits, they will discover that in a market awash with developer discounts, buyers are very hard to find. The next three months will be a watershed moment for a Chinese investor class that has been flush with cash for years but lacking a place to put it. Instead of developing a more balanced, consumer-based economy, an entire regime of Beijing technocrats — drunk on investment-led growth — let the real estate market run red hot for too long and, when forced to act, lacked the credibility to cool the sector down. That failure threatens to undermine the country’s continued economic rise.

Hours after I read that, Paul Krugman’s latest column came out and it is even more pessimistic.

The obvious question is, with consumer demand [in China] relatively weak, what motivated all that investment? And the answer, to an important extent, is that it depended on an ever-inflating real estate bubble. Real estate investment has roughly doubled as a share of G.D.P. since 2000, accounting directly for more than half of the overall rise in investment. And surely much of the rest of the increase was from firms expanding to sell to the burgeoning construction industry.

Do we actually know that real estate was a bubble? It exhibited all the signs: not just rising prices, but also the kind of speculative fever all too familiar from our own experiences just a few years back — think coastal Florida….

Now the bubble is visibly bursting. How much damage will it do to the Chinese economy — and the world?

Some commentators say not to worry, that China has strong, smart leaders who will do whatever is necessary to cope with a downturn. Implied though not often stated is the thought that China can do what it takes because it doesn’t have to worry about democratic niceties.

To me, however, these sound like famous last words. After all, I remember very well getting similar assurances about Japan in the 1980s, where the brilliant bureaucrats at the Ministry of Finance supposedly had everything under control. And later, there were assurances that America would never, ever, repeat the mistakes that led to Japan’s lost decade — when we are, in reality, doing even worse than Japan did.

Let me be clear: I don’t want to see China’s economy slow down, let alone fall into serious recession. There are too many people I love in China and I hate the thought of them, and the rest of the Chinese people, suffering the consequences of such a catastrophe. But I think, especially at the level of local government, that officials are playing with fire, counting on ever-rising property prices to pay for insanely huge development projects. That is a house of cards. It sounds like the US and Ireland and Greece all over again.

The Foreign Affairs article at least ends with a note of optimism:

While frightening, the popping of China’s real estate bubble is not all bad news. Cheaper, more affordable housing could also unlock the savings of China’s working-class families, unleashing greater consumer demand and helping to rebalance the global economy. Investment long bottled up in idle real estate could flow to more productive pursuits. These adjustments have been put off too long. This is why at least some of China’s leaders appear determined to force a correction despite the risks. But they know they are walking a razor’s edge.

I hope he’s right, but wonder if China could pick itself up off its feet so easily if it has a hard landing. I am just hoping the central government has enough control to let the bubble slowly deflate as opposed to popping. This has been the consensus among the more optimistic China pundits, that the central powers can navigate the economy through the most treacherous waters because they control all the levers. Authoritarianism, the argument goes, can get things done, and I agree to a point — but sometimes, as America learned in 2008, forces can gather that simply can’t be controlled and then take on a life of their own. I hope the optimists right.

You absolutely must see the new Next Media Animation’s great video on Kim Jong Il’s passing. Go there now.

You should also see the Global Times’ special page on what China’s Foreign Minister calls “the unfortunate passing of Kim Jong Il.” They also print the reactions of Chinese netizens, my favorite of which makes a plea to Kim’s successor, “Don’t abuse the people by stripping them of democracy and imposing authoritarian rule.” Because, as we all know, the utopia of North Korea enjoyed a thriving democracy.

It’s not good to speak ill of the dead, but this is a glaring exception. Kim, I hope you enjoy the flames of hell for all eternity.

This is an open thread.

Because the one below is driving me nuts, and I can’t put up a new post right now.

One commenter below linked to this intriguing article. I think it’s well worth discussing.

For months, the 20,000 villagers who live in Wukan, near Shanwei city in Guangdong province, have protested first at having nearly £100 million of their land seized and sold off by the local government, and then at the brutal tactics used by police to regain control of the village.

The latest protests began on Sunday, when police attempting to arrest a villager were repelled by villagers armed with sticks. The police fired tear gas before retreating.

At the same time, the local government brought the village’s simmering anger to a boil by admitting that Xue Jinbo, a 43-year-old butcher who had represented the villagers in their negotiations with the government, had died in police custody of “cardiac failure”.

Mr Xue was taken into custody last week and accused of inciting riots. Mr Xue was widely believed to have been tortured, perhaps to death, and his family were rumoured to have found several of his bones broken when receiving his corpse.

I know, we do this sort of thing — and much worse — in America every day.
[Update – that closing line is strictly for my trolls, who feel compelled always to make this comparison.]

I want to apologize to everyone for the mess the comments have become. I’ve never seen it quite this bad. I am closing the two threads below, and if you have anything else to say you can leave it here. It’s difficult finding a balance; I want Chinese people to comment here, but obviously I don’t want the threads to deteriorate into shouting matches or worse. Deciding what is or isn’t a troll comment is difficult when they don’t break specific rules, but it’s also obvious certain commenters want to take over threads and wreak havoc.

I am working on a huge project that will demand my full-time attention through the end of February (and yes, it’s China-related). So I can only check on the comments intermittently. But I will do everything I can to keep the comments from deteriorating. If anyone has any ideas on how best to moderate the comments let me know.

Happy Thanksgiving, even to my trolls who, of course all live in the US, and who should be grateful for what they have here, even if all they can express is scorn for America. Deep inside they must like it here, or else they’d vote by foot. Happy Holidays.

Below is a contributed post from my friend in Taiwan Bill Stimson. This post was printed yesterday in the Taipei Times.

Taiwan Matters

by William R. Stimson

For the U.S. to stop defending democratic Taiwan from China’s military in return for the $1.14 trillion of America’s debt that China holds? That so harebrained a scheme made it onto the op-ed page of the New York Times this past week shows that there are those who really believe the myth that with China looming ever bigger on the horizon, Taiwan assumes less and less strategic importance. Nothing could be further from the truth.

That China is on course to becoming tomorrow’s superpower is not the issue at all. The issue is that if this super-powerful China of tomorrow thinks and acts anywhere near the way it does today, it is on a collision course with the interests of the rest of the world – and, as we can already see beginning to happen today, the rest of the world can very easily come out the loser. China does not play by the same rules as everybody else. It cheats on everything, bullies everybody, and demands that far and wide the lies it defines as truth be seen as true. Its Nobel Peace Prize winner sits in jail – as do so many of its noblest spirits who have dared to fight illegally polluted lakes, censorship, official corruption, and the like. The line we hear from China’s leaders, not too different from what we hear from dictators everywhere, is that these reformers and protestors seek to impose on China alien outside ideas and norms that have no place in a Chinese society or a Chinese culture. Taiwan’s existence as a real free market Chinese economy, thriving Chinese democracy and two-party Chinese system – a sovereign and independent Chinese republic whose Chinese people enjoy all the basic human rights and freedoms as do those who live in America or Western Europe shows China’s party line to be a lie and by doing so lights the way for another path of development China might pursue. For this reason, Taiwan matters.

It is very much in the world’s and in America’s strategic interest to protect Taiwan’s right to determine its own destiny. Whether Taiwan becomes part of China or not is much less important than that the Taiwanese themselves, and only the Taiwanese, make that decision. This is what China actually fears more than Taiwan’s independence – that the example might be made, the idea might get out, to the far-flung corners of the People’s Republic that the power can come, should come, and deserves to come from the people themselves. This idea very badly needs to get out if the culture, economy, and political system of tomorrow’s super-powerful China is to more closely resemble a global leader that can be a co-operating partner and friend to the world and to America, not a more powerful, selfish, and conniving adversary than it is today. And so Taiwan’s strategic importance is out of all proportion to its small size and unfairly marginalized role in today’s world. Like a catalyst, it has the power to change everything all around it.

Trade this possibility in for a piddling $1.14 trillion? The idea of ditching Taiwan for money is absurd. By publishing the piece the New York Times did us all a wonderful service by showing the festering depths of the economic determinism that has crept into and corrupted America. Were America to ditch Taiwan, it would be ditching just about the only thing it has left – its core values. Because of a narrow-minded focus on material gain on the part of more than a few, it has already ditched its own economy and that of the free world, ditched the future of the promising young men and women pouring out of its universities and universities everywhere, ditched its worker’s jobs and with them its competitive edge in so many manufacturing technologies, and even ditched the pretense that it is a democracy as the very bankers it bailed out spend the billions given them to buy up its elected officials.

It’s time Americans as a whole stood back and took a look at their currency. The faces on it are those of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln. The vision of these men, not money, is what America primarily stands for, and what America has to give, not just to the disenfranchised and downtrodden in China and everywhere – but, as the Occupy movement demonstrates, to those at home as well.

In Asia, Taiwan stands in a unique way for everything America’s founding fathers believed in and it deserves America’s support, today and in the future.

* * *

William R. Stimson is an American writer who has lived in Taiwan for nine years now.

I know, the story and the photo and the video are everywhere. But I have to express my horror.

A friend in China tells me CCTV is playing this again and again, and I don’t blame them. They want to make the US look bad, and in this case they don’t have to try very bad; the US hasn’t looked this awful since Abu Ghraib. Heads should roll over this atrocity.

Only a few weeks ago it looked like the Confucius Peace Prize was going to be scrapped by the government. This would have been a fine idea, since the prize had attracted only ridicule ever since its first recipient, former Taiwanese Vice President Lien Chan, refused to accept his prize.

Now, apparently in defiance of the CCP’s order not to award the prize again, the Confucius Peace Prize organizers are at it again, awarding their equivalent (in their eyes) to the Nobel Peace Prize to Vladimir Putin who, they say, “brought remarkable enhancement to the military might and political status of Russia.”

You really can’t fault the prize’s sponsors for lack of courage:

The award’s sponsors are professors and academics who say they are independent of the government.

The authorities’ hostility to the prize appears rooted in its desire to retain control over civil society and prevent independent players from seeking a role in Beijing’s foreign relations.

While the government has enthusiastically embraced the need for more robust cultural links to enhance China’s “soft power,” it wants that charm campaign to stay under the firm direction of the ruling Communist Party.

The group hopes to present a gold statue of Confucius, the ancient Chinese sage, at next month’s ceremony, but if forced to call it off, will simply begin planning for next year’s prize…

It should be interesting to see how the party reacts, and even more interesting to see whether Putin accepts his statue (why do I suspect the winner’s seat will be as empty as that in Oslo?). As the article notes, Putin is a rather bizarre choice for the award given his repressive tactics and willingness to throw political enemies in jail.

Paul V. Kane is a former international security fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of government, and a Marine who served in Iraq. His op-ed in today’s NY Times is a stunner. No, really. A stunner.

WITH a single bold act, President Obama could correct the country’s course, help assure his re-election, and preserve our children’s future.

He needs to redefine America’s mindset about national security away from the old defense mentality that American power derives predominantly from our military might, rather than from the strength, agility and competitiveness of our economy. He should make it clear that today American jobs and wealth matter more than military prowess….

There are dozens of initiatives President Obama could undertake to strengthen our economic security. Here is one: He should enter into closed-door negotiations with Chinese leaders to write off the $1.14 trillion of American debt currently held by China in exchange for a deal to end American military assistance and arms sales to Taiwan and terminate the current United States-Taiwan defense arrangement by 2015.

This would be a most precious prize to the cautious men in Beijing, one they would give dearly to achieve. After all, our relationship with Taiwan, as revised in 1979, is a vestige of the cold war.

Today, America has little strategic interest in Taiwan, which is gradually integrating with China economically by investing in and forming joint ventures with mainland Chinese firms. The island’s absorption into mainland China is inevitable.

But the status quo is dangerous; if Taiwanese nationalist politicians decided to declare independence or if Beijing’s hawks tired of waiting for integration and moved to take Taiwan by force, America could suddenly be drawn into a multitrillion-dollar war.

There will be “China hawks” who denounce any deal on Taiwan as American capitulation, but their fear of a Red China menacing Asia is anachronistic. Portraying the United States as a democratic Athens threatened by China’s autocratic Sparta makes for sensational imagery, but nothing could be further from reality.

The way this Harvard scholar talks you’d think Taiwan is on an inevitable track to integrate with mainland China. I see it differently; I think they’re going to grow a lot closer, but “reunification” is not in the stars. Not for many years, if ever.

This is an extraordinary piece. The author believes that ditching Taiwan (“slowly and gradually”) will help turn the US around and boost Obama’s standing everywhere. It would, he said, immediately eliminate 10 percent of the US’s national debt (which could well be true.) Taiwan would be a super-bargaining chip, giving us leverage to get China to agree to stop supporting terrorist states and to write off our $1.4 trillion debt owned by China.

The only thing missing from this op-ed: the Taiwanese. I lived there for nearly two years. This “solution” would be met by abject horror, and not just by the Green fanatics. (And not all Greens are fanatics; I know some splendid ones. But I also know a few fanatics. And when I say fanatics….) I know plenty of politically apathetic Chinese who emphatically say Taiwan will never accept being ruled by the CCP. And they really mean it.

Read the whole column. You can’t criticize him for not being bold enough. But does bold equal bright?

Update: James Fallows goes after Kane, and you have to go there.

If you’re curious, you’ll find everything you need to know here. Yes, it quotes me, and also Jeremy Goldkorn, Michael Anti and others. I especially like the headline. But doesn’t it apply to nearly all Chinese media?

Update: Wow, we’re on a roll today. Don’t miss this follow-up.