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isaac Mao

Internet Helps Liberate, Create Music in China : NPR Music - 0 views

www.npr.org/...story.php

2 music

shared by isaac Mao on 26 Jun 08 - Cached
  • When America was rocking to the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, the airwaves in China were dominated by songs with lyrics from Chairman Mao's Little Red Book.
  • isaac Mao on 26 Jun 08
     
    Internet Helps Liberate, Create Music in China By Laura Sydell Listen Now [7 min 48 sec] add to playlist Chinese electronic musician B6 B6, a Shanghai-based electronic musician, explored Western music first on pirated CDs and then at music-sharing sites on the Web. Now he collaborates online with other performers. B6's studio equipment -- a jumble of keyboards, etc. Enlarge B6 works out of a home studio in a Shanghai high-rise. Above, some of his musical arsenal. Discover China's Indie Music Neocha Web site image Neocha.com With Sean Leow, B6 co-founded the music-sharing site Neocha.com, an ad-supported service that lets listeners discover music and pays musicians a share of advertising revenue. * Neocha.com * Neocha's "Next" Player Morning Edition, June 25, 2008 - Second in a three-part series. When America was rocking to the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, the airwaves in China were dominated by songs with lyrics from Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. It's more open today, but the Communist government still bans anything that mentions sex or violence, or that has "low class humor" - which bans an awful lot of American music. So the music most likely to come pouring out of the radio in China is syrupy ballads usually produced in Hong Kong or Taiwan. But Chinese musicians and fans are finding a whole new universe of sound on the Internet. And it's helping to create and nourish a new generation of independent artists in China. From Black-Market Discs to Napster and Beyond One of them is B6, a 27-year-old electronic musician. He lives and works on the first floor of a high-rise on the outskirts of Shanghai. He's part of China's burgeoning electronic-music scene. Growing up, the CDs B6 listened to were mostly sold on the black market. "When I was in high school, I used to listen to rock 'n' roll music," he says. "At that time, it was very difficult to get foreign or Western music." And then, in 1999, the Internet came to China - and B6 and his fr
feng37

Mutant Palm » Blog Archive » Chinese & Western Overreactions to Charter 08 - 0 views

www.mutantpalm.org/...erreactions-to-charter-08.html

shared by feng37 on 05 Feb 09 - Cached
  • On the other hand, I’ve seen no one addressing the questions of actual political and bureaucratic process. What comes first? Elections in major urban centers like Shanghai, a sort of Special Democratic Zone? Loosening of Internet controls? Judiciary reform? Privatization of state media? Releasing political prisoners? Local officials already abuse existing structures, how much more will they abuse transitional processes? If you don’t want a revolution, then there has to be some sort of proposed process that the current government can work with and Chinese citizens can feel both moves reform forward and doesn’t threaten to unravel society. If you don’t say anything about how you might accomplish such a thing, but simply describe the end result in which the government becomes something unrecognizable from the existing one, you may not have explicitly called for its overthrow but you sure didn’t call for something else instead. Not to mention its difficult not to see it as just a wish list. Anybody can make a wishlist - who’s going to do the real work?
  • I think the commenter who asks whether Charter 08 is really calling for a revolution has a point, and it’s not fair to riposte “well, if this all happened it would be revolutionary”. It wouldn’t be if the changes happened gradually or in a controlled and orderly way (as they did in other countries). The party itself, after all, keeps promising political reform, and many of the people who support it so heartily do so on the assumption that it is serious about eventually keeping that promise. The people I spoke to (and quoted) did not think this was a substitute for tackling concrete real life issues, but thought it important to have a framework within which to do so.
  • Notice, also that I said a “revolution of the system of government”. Not the government, the system. The problems I’m referring to is that when the system, the way things are done, from paying your electricity bill to detemining holders of public office, changes radically, 180 degrees, then there can be terrible consequences. How should one try to avoid those consequences? How can you make the transition smoothly? These are the things that ought to be discussed, and these are the things that will persuade people that your ideals can actually be realized. That might get you a groundswell of demand for change - abstract philosophical manifestos, though, don’t cut it.
feng37

Olympics: How does Nike feel about conspiracy theories? No comment | Sport | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...olympics2008.olympicsathletics

shared by feng37 on 22 Aug 08 - Cached
  • They announced: "We have immediately asked relevant government departments to investigate those that started the rumour." Relevant government departments? But how enchanting to find Nike speaking like the foreign office of an independent republic, almost as if the sportswear firm has an extradition treaty with the Chinese government. It hasn't, of course, so the rather more salient question is whether Nike has any qualms about getting the famously gossamer-touched Chinese government to leave no stone unturned in the hunt for - and let's keep stressing it - an anonymous internet poster."We want to act to protect our brand reputation in the same way as any corporation would want to if people were posting or writing false accusations," the Nike spokesman Charlie Brooks told the Guardian yesterday. "This isn't about a debate on freedom of speech. It's simply helping us to identify the person who posted it."
arden dzx

A Reflection of Power | Newsweek International | Newsweek.com - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/2

hongkong media

shared by arden dzx on 03 Jul 08 - Cached
  • When you moved into Taiwan's media market, some people saw it as a vote of no confidence against Hong Kong.You're suggesting it was an insurance policy? That was the intention. I couldn't go to the United States and say: "Can you protect me?" Nobody would care. But I knew Beijing was thinking very much about Taiwan, and that they don't want bad press there. So we built the Taiwan business as leverage. If they do anything to us, our Taiwanese readers will know what happened. And Beijing knows that [should they move against us] we will do everything we can to make them pay on Taiwan.
  • Some experts argue that China does not intend to Westernize or liberalize, but only to modernize. Do you think people in China understand what democracy is and want it?Not at this moment. But anyone who would differentiate between Westernization and modernization is just talking rubbish. Take out the western culture and what else is modern? Nothing. The technology is Western, the trendy culture is Western, all this modernization is Westernization. China is prosperous today because it deals and interacts with the West. No, democracy isn't on normal people's radars yet. China will be open to it only when the economic cycle turns down. And when that happens, China will be in chaos. How so? In other countries, when there is a recession, you have churches, temples, charities, NGOs, civic organizations, unions and other institutions reaching out to help each other. They are shock absorbers. In China, you don't have any of this. Organizations that are not governmental are not allowed. In China, you have two pillars: the market and the government. If the market fails, the government will be dragged down because there is nothing in the middle.
  • How so? In other countries, when there is a recession, you have churches, temples, charities, NGOs, civic organizations, unions and other institutions reaching out to help each other. They are shock absorbers. In China, you don't have any of this. Organizations that are not governmental are not allowed. In China, you have two pillars: the market and the government. If the market fails, the government will be dragged down because there is nothing in the middle.
evawoo

The earthquake in Sichuan | China helps itself | Economist.com - 0 views

www.economist.com/...displaystory.cfm

shared by evawoo on 23 May 08 - Cached
  • Much of the volunteer effort has involved individuals or small groups. China is still wary of large NGOs and has none that is truly independent of the government specialising in disaster relief. But in recent years the party has begun to acknowledge more openly that there may a role for them. Official press coverage of the earthquake, although careful to highlight the party's contributions, has also paid rare tribute to the unofficial volunteers. The government has been encouraging firms to give more generously to worthy causes. From this year it has increased tax incentives for corporate donations to charities. But this applies to only a small number of government-approved organisations. For the sake of earthquake relief the authorities are letting down their guard. But the government gives little encouragement to new NGOs and often treats the small existing ones as potential germs of political opposition. The response to this disaster might ease its fears.
Kenyth Zeng

What does the world think of the U.S. and China? - 0 views

cnreviews.com/...the_us_and_china_20080415.html

bbc blog china influence survey us

shared by Kenyth Zeng on 16 Apr 08 - Cached
  • An exception to this is Germany, which gave the most negative of all the European assessments. China, on the other hand, was quite positive towards Germany. It probably isn’t anymore.
  • Danwei posted on Who is winning the Olympic PR War? Jeremy’s conclusion: In the West, Free Tibet organizers. In China, the Chinese government.
  • Chinese people are not “brainwashed” by the government but carefully considering Western sources and see them as being just biased as their own sources.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • the world still doesn’t like the US government. In fact they like China’s government more.
  • Overall: China. 47% for China vs. 35% for U.S. (excluding subject country) Latin America: China. 45% for China vs 32% for U.S. Europe: China. 39% for China vs 31% for U.S. Middle East: China. 63% for China vs. 34% for U.S. Africa: United States. 66% for China, 70% for U.S. Asia (ex-China): China again. 40% for China vs 39% for U.S.
  • In fact, only 9 of 23 countries rated the U.S. higher than China
evawoo

Quake shakes Beijing's grip on media « Peace and Freedom '08 - 0 views

johnibiii.wordpress.com/...-shakes-beijings-grip-on-media

shared by evawoo on 24 May 08 - Cached
  • The government now faces a tricky predicament: Having loosened its restraints on information flow this time, a return to its old ways at the next sign of difficulty could backfire. “The government should learn a positive lesson: When it allows freer information flow it is better for its image and legitimacy,” Mr. Xiao said. “But this will not always be a case, especially if the next crisis is man-made
  • China’s online censors can be merciless in their deletion of blog postings or forum comments that are deemed “too sensitive,” particularly involving anything to do with the so-called “Three T’s”: Tiananmen, Tibet and Taiwan. Post-earthquake negativity, though, has been tolerated. “Nine billion yuan [$1.3 billion] has been raised but how much will actually get to the disaster zone?” one skeptical commenter asked on a forum on Baidu, China’s leading search engine. Discussions focusing on discrepancies between the amount of donations declared by the Chinese Red Cross and the corresponding numbers issued by the Ministry of Civil Affairs also have met with minimal interference, Mr. Kennedy said. However, the government has not turned a blind eye. More than a dozen people have been arrested for “spreading rumors” online, and political blogger Guo Quan was detained for questioning the risks posed by cracked dams and damaged nuclear facilities.
evawoo

RGE - Adapting to the state's growing role in global equity markets - 0 views

www.rgemonitor.com/...-role-in-global-equity-markets

shared by evawoo on 26 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Central bank purchases of traditional reserve assets still dwarf sovereign wealth fund purchases of riskier assets -- as well as central bank purchases of equities. But over time, it is reasonable to expect that many over-reserved sovereigns will diversify their portfolios. The recent decision to increase the share of the CIC's initial $205-210 billion in capital that it can invest abroad and SAFE's increased willingness to purchase equities as well as bonds are examples.
  • A far more challenging issue is how the huge increase in financial assets managed by potentially non-economic agents will affect the efficiency of the global capital market and the allocation of risk and resources. ….
  • And then there is China. China enormous foreign asset growth in the first quarter implies that it might be able to add more to its reserves and sovereign fund in 2008 than all the oil-exporters combined even if oil stays at its current levels.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • China consequently has an enormous latent capacity to alter the composition of global capital flows by changing the composition of its portfolio:
  • The offsetting risk is that state owners of assets will in some sense abuse their ownership rights, and use their rights to promote “state” objectives.
  • Qatar’s advertising in Forbes says as much: the QIA's evaluation criteria include “added value to the State of Qatar" such as "economic synergies or benefits for Qatar and its people."  Mubadala has made a string of investments (Ferrari, the “National”) designed to elevate the profile of Abu Dhabi.
  • China’s fund, like Singapore’s fund, reports directly to the top levels of China’s state. It has yet to build up enough of a track record to show how it will be used. However, China’s management of its state stakes in domestic industries suggests the need for some caution. One example: Three of China's four large state commercial banks have been listed, but they still aren’t managed in a fully commercial manner.
  • The Peterson Institute’s Ted Truman recently updated his “sovereign wealth fund scorecard.” His impressive and detailed work is worth reading carefully. Truman’s latest scorecard illustrates how the practices of many large existing sovereign funds – particularly those originating in non-democratic countries – differ from the practices of US state pension funds as well as Norway's government fund.
  • Kjaer’s framing implicitly raises a third issue, one that I don’t think has gotten enough attention. The surge in sovereign investment in safe government bonds that accompanied the surge in global reserve growth likely contributed to a “bond market bubble” – one that pushed down the real yields on government bonds in both the US. That contributed to a host of additional market distortions, as private investors scrambled to find higher returns.
  • evawoo on 26 Apr 08
     
    中国外储投资对于世界资本市场的终极影响
feng37

Their Own Worst Enemy - The Atlantic (November 2008) - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...3

shared by feng37 on 17 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Why does a society that, like America, impresses most people who spend time here project such a poor image and scare people as much as it attracts them? Why do China’s leaders, who survive partly by listening to their own people, develop such tin ears when dealing with the outside world?
  • Of course, most official voices of China now have the opposite effect. Their minor, provable lies—the sky is blue, no one wants to protest—inevitably build mistrust of larger claims that are closer to being true. And those are the claims the government most wants the world to listen to: that the country is moving forward and is less repressive and more open than official actions and explanations (or lack of them) make China seem. Many Chinese who have seen the world are very canny about it, and have just the skills government spokesmen lack—for instance, understanding the root of foreign concerns and addressing them not with special pleading (“This is China…”) but on their own terms. Worldly Chinese demonstrate this every day in the businesses, universities, and nongovernmental organizations where they generally work. But the closer Chinese officials are to centers of political power, the less they know what they don’t know about the world.
feng37

freedomhouse.org: Press Release - 0 views

www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm

shared by feng37 on 13 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Thirteen years ago in Beijing, you spoke eloquently about the duty of all governments to respect the fundamental human rights of women and men. Respect for human rights, you said, means “not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions.” In recent years, however, human rights concerns have been pushed progressively further to the margins of the U.S.-China relationship. The Chinese government’s growing financial, diplomatic, and military strength, coupled with its hostility to reforms that challenge the Chinese Communist Party’s grip on power, make China a difficult country in which to effect change. But the advancement of human rights in, and with, China is arguably more central to U.S. interests than ever before. Press censorship in China makes it possible for toxic food and public health crises to spread globally. Suppression of dissent removes internal checks against environmental damage that has global impact. Abuses of low-wage labor implicate international firms operating inside China and compromise goods that come into the United States. The government’s control of mass media and the internet allow it to stoke nationalist anger against the United States in moments of crisis. The export from China of internet-censoring technologies and its provision of unconditional aid to repressive regimes increases the United States' burdens in fighting censorship and human rights crises worldwide. As much as the Chinese government appears to resist outside pressure to improve its record, experience suggests that it does respond to such pressure.
feng37

Unrestricted Warfare | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters - 0 views

www.adbusters.org/...unrestricted_warfare.html

shared by feng37 on 07 Feb 09 - Cached
  • The most interesting thesis is the idea that China could use international law as a weapon, or “lawfare” for short. The authors argue that citizens of democracies increasingly demand that their countries uphold international rules, particularly ones that govern human rights and the conduct of war. Governments are, therefore, constrained by regional or worldwide organizations, such as the European Union, ASEAN, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the WTO and the United Nations. The authors argue that China should copy the European model of using international law to pin down the USA: “there are far-sighted big powers which have clearly already begun to borrow the power of supra-national, multinational, and non-state players to redouble and expand their own influence.” They think that China could turn the United Nations and regional organizations into an amplifier of the Chinese worldview – discouraging the USA from using its might in campaigns like the Iraq War.
  • Beijing has been willing to allow the Organization of Islamic States to take the lead in weakening the new Human Rights Council. This subtle diplomacy has been devastatingly effective – contributing to a massive fall in US influence: in 1995 the USA won 50.6 percent of the votes in the United Nations general assembly; by 2006, the figure had fallen to just 23.6 percent. On human rights, the results are even more dramatic: China’s win-rate has rocketed from 43 percent to 82 percent, while the USA’s has tumbled from 57 per cent to 22 percent. The New York Times’ UN correspondent James Traub has detected a paradigm shift in the United Nations’ operations: “it’s a truism that the Security Council can function only insofar as the United States lets it. The adage may soon be applied to China as well.” Traub may be right. China’s capacity to influence the United Nations is increasing, and soon we may be complaining about Chinese behavior on big policy issues
feng37

Digital Resistance and the Orange Revolution « iRevolution - 0 views

irevolution.wordpress.com/...ance-and-the-orange-revolution

shared by feng37 on 19 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Maidan was a group of tech-savvy pro-democracy activists who used the Internet as a tool to support their movement. Maidan in Ukranian means public square and Maidan’s website features the slogal “You CAN chnage the world you live in. And you can do it now. In Ukraine.”
    • feng37
      feng37 on 19 Feb 09
       
      买单？
  • The main activity of Maidan was election monitoring and networking with other pro-democracy organizations around Eastern Europe.
  • “websites cannot produce an activist organization.”
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • it was crucial for Maidan to frequently host real world meetings as their membership base increased. The human element was particularly important. This explains why Maidan encouraged users to disclose their identity whenever possible.
  • The community benefited from centralized leadership that developed the organization’s culture, controlled its assets and provided the strategy to achieve desired goals. The Maidan experience thus demonstrates a hybrid organization.
  • Pora, meaning “It’s Time” in Ukranian, was a well-organized group of  pro-democracy volunteers that “emerged as an information sharing campaign and during the elections morphed into coordinators of mass protest centered around tent cities in towns throughout Ukraine. The grassroots movement took its inspiration from Serbia’s Otpor movements as well as “older civic movements in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.”
  • “the active use of modern communication systems in the campaign’s management,” and “mobile phones played an important role for mobile fleet of activists.”
  • “a ssytem of immedate dissemination of information by SMS was put in place and proved important.” In addition, “some groups provided the phones themselves, while others provided SIM cards, and most provided airtime.”
  • roviding rapid reporting in a way that no other medium could. As tent cities across the Ukraine became the sign of the revolution,
  • The news feed from the regions [became] vitally important. Every 10 to 15 minutes another tent city appeared in some town or other, and the fact was soon reported on the air.
  • While the government certainly saw the Internet as a threat, the government had not come to consensus regarding the “legal and political frameworks it would use to silence journalists that published openly on this new medium.”
  • many online journalists unlike mainstream journalists were free from the threat of defamation charges.
  • one of the earliest examples of what Steven Mann calls “sousveillance,” meaning, “the monitoring of authority figures by grassroots groups, using the technologies and techniques of surveillance.”
  • Technology certainly does not make possible a direct democracy, where everyone can participate in a decision, nor representative democracy where decision makers are elected; nor is it really a one-person-one-vote referendum style democracy. Instead it is a consultative process known as ‘rough consensus and running code.’
  • the real power of traditional media. Natalia Dmytruk worked for the Ukraine’s state-run television news program as an interpreter of sign language for the hearing-impaired. As the revolution picked up momentum, she decided she couldn’t lie anymore and broke from the script with the following message: I am addressing everybody who is deaf in the Ukraine. Our president is Victor Yushchenko. Do not trust the results of the central election committee. They are all lies. . . . And I am very ashamed to translate such lies to you. Maybe you will see me again…
  • “Dmytruk’s live silent signal helped spread the news, and more people began spilling into the streets to contest the vote.”
  • itizen journalists and digital activists participated in civil resistance trainings across the country, courtesy of Otpor. The use of humor and puns directed at the regime is a classic civil resistance tactic.
  • one of key reasons that explains the success of the revolution has to do with the fact that “the protesters were very well trained and very good at protesting… very, very good.”
  • Digital activists need to acquire the tactical and strategic know-how developed over decades of civil resistance movements. Otherwise, tactical victories by digital activists may never translate into overall strategic victory for a civil resistance movement.
Oliver Ding

China Petrochemical Project Opposed - New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...06china.html

chengdu movements

shared by Oliver Ding on 05 May 08 - Cached
  • It was the latest in a series of rare but increasingly ambitious organized movements in Chinese cities aimed at derailing government-backed industrial projects that the protesters said could damage the environment and people’s health. The protest Sunday, like its predecessors, was organized through Web sites, blogs and cellphone text messages, showing how some Chinese are using digital technology, despite government attempts to control the Internet, to spur on the kind of civic movements that officials strongly discourage.
isaac Mao

胡哥, 这墙拆了得了 - 0 views

blog.wensheng.com/...on-gfw-of-china.html

GFW

shared by isaac Mao on 26 Dec 08 - Cached
  • I can read Wikipedia, but I heard from other people it's hit & miss. I had no problem with porn sites though. I always thought this censoring by Chinese government is really stupid. Today I read a excellent column on NY Times by World-is-flat author Tom Friedman, towards the end of the article, it struck a chord with me:
  • For the benefit of the China and Chinese people's future, Mr. Hu, Tear down this great fire-wall. (tear down this wall). 胡哥, 这墙拆了得了.
isaac Mao

China: Blogger Zhou Shuguang a.k.a. "Zola" barred from leaving country, "potential thre... - 0 views

www.boingboing.net/...china-blogger-zhou-s.html

Zola Zuola 周曙光

shared by isaac Mao on 25 Nov 08 - Cached
  • Rebecca McKinnon reports on 27 year-old blogger Zhou Shuguang, aka "Zola," whom the Chinese government have banned from leaving the country as a "potential threat to state security." Snip:
feng37

Global Neighbourhoods: China's Web 2.0 & Censorship - 0 views

redcouch.typepad.com/...next-china-post.html

shared by feng37 on 26 Nov 08 - Cached
  • Kai-Fu Lee, co-president for Google Greater China told us there will be no GMail in the foreseeable future, because Google would be unable to protect user data from the government.
feng37

Chinese IT Firm Accused of Links to Cyberwarfare :: InfoWar Monitor :: Tracking Cyberpower - 0 views

www.infowar-monitor.net/modules.php

shared by feng37 on 24 Feb 09 - Cached
  • The firm’s founder, Yan “Jane” Wang Jia, is an IT legend and former beauty queen who has parlayed her business success into political power. Referred to as the “Mother of the Great Firewall of China” by several Chinese IT Web sites, she sits on the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which guides political policy in all areas of government and society.

  • feng37 on 24 Feb 09
isaac Mao

Giant database plan 'Orwellian' - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7671046.stm

gfw

shared by isaac Mao on 17 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Proposals for a central database of all mobile phone and internet traffic have been condemned as "Orwellian".
  • But the Lib Dems slammed the idea as "incompatible with a free country", while the Tories called on the government to justify its plans.
  • "Ministers claim the database will only be used in terrorist cases, but there is now a long list of cases, from the arrest of Walter Wolfgang for heckling at a Labour conference to the freezing of Icelandic assets, where anti-terrorism law has been used for purposes for which it was not intended."
feng37

Their Own Worst Enemy - The Atlantic (November 2008) - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...chinese-progress

shared by feng37 on 17 Oct 08 - Cached
  • How can official China possibly do such a clumsy and self-defeating job of presenting itself to the world? China, like any big, complex country, is a mixture of goods and bads. But I have rarely seen a governing and “communications” structure as consistent in hiding the good sides and highlighting the bad.
feng37

NSA Whistleblower: Grill the CEOs on Illegal Spying | Threat Level from Wired.com - 0 views

blog.wired.com/...nsa-whistlebl-2.html

shared by feng37 on 27 Jan 09 - Cached
  • credit card companies and banks gave the same kind of cooperation to the government that phone companies did
  • in 2006 that the NSA obtained access to financial records in the international SWIFT database
  • the agency may have obtained bulk data on domestic credit card transactions as well from U.S. financial institutions -- all without a warrant
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