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The fact that the Chinese people think the world loves China helps explain why it is so difficult to persuade Beijing to address human rights and other issues. The Chinese people, after all, see no need for changes to improve the country's image. In contrast, polls have shown that Americans are aware that the United States' image overseas has been badly damaged in recent years, and there is widespread agreement that work must be done to improve that image. In China, the Communist Party controls most of the information to which people have access, and that information does not include material showing how unpopular the country has become.

The people in developed countries who think it was a mistake to award the Olympics to Beijing (43 percent of Americans, vs. 41 percent who told Pew it was the correct decision) are less likely to watch.

Three in four Chinese think the world likes China, while only one in 10 thinks foreigners don't like the country. More than 80 percent believe China takes other countries' interests into account when formulating foreign policy. Just 3 percent think China's economic growth has a negative effect on other countries. Only 1 percent knew a lot about the recall of Chinese products for quality and safety reasons. if ( show_doubleclick_ad && ( adTemplate & INLINE_ARTICLE_AD ) == INLINE_ARTICLE_AD && inlineAdGraf ) { placeAd('ARTICLE',commercialNode,20,'inline=y;',true) ; } Pew's Global Attitudes Survey of public opinion in 24 countries, released in June, makes clear that international opinion toward China is very different from what people in China think it is.

他的电脑是Windows XP工作站，鉴于工作需要经常要启动Symantec杀毒软件、Zone Alarm Pro和Spybot检查系统安全。他从奥运会官网的fun page页面上下载了墙纸和屏保The Spring of BEIJING(exe文件)，一个基于flash的屏保程序。他将屏保设置为自动锁住控制台，即运行时需要输入密码。开始正常，但不久后出现了小问题，不得不用ctrl-alt-del强制关闭。结果他随后发现Zone Alarm进程被关闭了，一个消息窗口报告屏保中发现键击监控程序。作者表示他并非是flash程序员，因此结论只是推测，只是想提醒其他人注意。

In July, 2001, after arriving in Beijing, Adelson and Weidner saw Olympic banners flying along the streets. They soon learned that the country was waiting to find out whether it would be selected as the site for the 2008 Summer Games. In addition to seeing the Vice-Premier, Adelson and Weidner met with the mayor of Beijing, who asked Adelson for help with a matter pending in the U.S. House of Representatives, which he believed was threatening China’s chance to host the Olympics. (In the United States, China was widely perceived as the frontrunner, and it is not clear that Congress’s position would have had any impact on its chances.) Adelson said in court that he immediately made calls on his cell phone to Republican friends in Congress—including Tom DeLay, then the majority whip—who had received generous support from Adelson. DeLay told him that there was indeed a resolution pending about China and the Olympics. (Representative Tom Lantos, then the highest-ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, had introduced a resolution opposing China’s Olympic bid, saying, “China’s abominable human rights record violates the spirit of the games and should disqualify Beijing from consideration.”)

So apparently the controversies in international media this summer over China and the Olympics came as a bit of a shock to the Chinese people. While the government's retained tight control over its own media, it's been less able to harmonize those pesky news outlets abroad. Not one to take perceived insults to its national image lying down, Beijing is now throwing RMB 45 billion into targeting global audiences.

As a key element of the revival of Chairman Mao Zedong's "people's warfare," Beijing and a number of other cities have revived the vigilante and spying functions of neighborhood committees. Municipal administrations along the coast -- and in the autonomous regions of Tibet and Xinjiang -- have recently earmarked additional budget to maintain the "spying" functions of neighborhood committees and similar vigilante outfits after the Olympics. Moreover, the Politburo's Central Political and Legal Commission, China's highest law-enforcement agency, has urged the courts and prosecutors to do more in fulfilling the party's priority task of thwarting anti-Beijing conspiracies and upholding sociopolitical stability. That the courts will comply in this is evident from a just-released article by the President of the Supreme People's Court, Wang Shengjun. Writing in this week's edition of the official Seeking Truth journal, Mr. Wang said: "We must pay more attention to maintaining state security and social stability. . . We must boost our consciousness of [safeguarding] the power of the regime . . . and fully develop our functions as a department for [proletarian] dictatorship."

Differences over a wide range of issues — from limits on live coverage in Tiananmen Square to allegations that freight shipments of TV broadcasting equipment are being held up in Chinese ports — surfaced in a contentious meeting late last month between Beijing organizers and high-ranking International Olympic Committee officials and TV executives — including those from NBC.In response to the complaints from broadcasters, Sun Weijia, head of media operations for the Beijing organizers, asked them to put it in writing, only to draw protests about mounting paperwork.

"I just wish to have a kind of document to help me identify the key points," he said, drawing immediate protest."How many times do we have to do that?" asked Manolo Romero, an Olympic broadcasting official.

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.

In all these cases, it is tempting to conclude that the regime is worried about its own survival, and, in order to rally nationalist passions, feels compelled to portray the country as a global victim.

The strongest evidence to support the theory of insecurity at the highest levels of Chinese society is the practice of the “princelings” (wealthy children of the ruling elites) to buy homes in places such as the United States, Canada and Australia. These are not luxury homes of the sort favored by wealthy businessman and officials from the oil-rich countries of the Middle East. Rather they are typically “normal” homes of the sort a potential émigré might want to have in reserve in case things went bad back home.

西藏的事，陰謀/迷霧太多，大家都不清楚真相。可是，胡佳被囚是完全沒有正當理由的。如果有人高呼要推翻共產黨，那麼拘捕他還可以理解(儘管以言入罪仍屬不當)。但如果連關注人權也竟然可以被控「顛覆國家」，這個政權真的是「癲」的。中國共產黨示範了甚麼叫「色厲內荏」，告訴全世界它的本質就是「反人權」(於是「反反人權」才等於「反它」)。現在合法的維權、暴力的騷亂(不是說藏疆)越來越多，因為它的本質早已「路人皆見」，遲早會迫到人民對它說這句話﹕「時日曷喪，予與汝偕亡﹗」

我們可以選擇﹕1. 不觀看任何奧運項目，2. 不參與任何為奧運助勢的活動。3. 如果有奧運教材送到我手上，我會連同胡佳案的片段播放。如果你是教師，你希望下一代對人的尊嚴還有一點點尊重，請不要一味為北京粉飾太平。

你大可以罵我不愛國。我愛國，才會這樣忿怒，我愛的是我的國家，不是這個法西斯政權。延伸閱讀：胡佳 (wikipedia)中國維權律師關注組聲明以言入罪 (tommyjonk)

维基百科(en.wikipedia.org) 可以直接访问了！今晨我偶然点击了一个通往维基百科的链接（当时没有意识到这是维基百科，要不然可能直接用代理了），居然顺利的登录了。我又试验了“china”（如上图所示）、“beijing”、“beijing olympic”等几个词条，都可以顺利访问。当然，敏感性的词条依然不能访问，访问之后还会出现暂时的站点不能访问，不过只有很短的时间，这真是一个好消息。 另外，落户在blogspot.com上的网站也可以访问了，比如google的官方网站。但是落户在wordpress.com上的网站还是不能访问，twitter的官方网站也还是不能访问。 还有什么站点过去不能直接访问而现在可以了？如果你碰到了的话，请在留言中告诉大家。

I will never forget my first visit, in 2003, to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing. I was welcomed by Wang Luolin, the academy's vice-president, whose grandfather had translated Marx's Das Kapital into Chinese, and Huang Ping, a former Red Guard. Sitting in oversized armchairs, we sipped ceremonial tea and introduced ourselves. Wang Luolin nodded politely and smiled, then told me that his academy had 50 research centres covering 260 disciplines with 4,000 full-time researchers. As he said this, I could feel myself shrink into the seams of my vast chair: Britain's entire think tank community is numbered in the hundreds, Europe's in the low thousands; even the think-tank heaven of the US cannot have more than 10,000. But here in China, a single institution—and there are another dozen or so think tanks in Beijing alone—had 4,000 researchers. Admittedly, the people at CASS think that many of the researchers are not up to scratch, but the raw figures were enough.

China, according to the new political thinkers, will do things the other way around: using elections in the margins but making public consultations, expert meetings and surveys a central part of decision-making. This idea was described pithily by Fang Ning, a political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He compared democracy in the west to a fixed-menu restaurant where customers can select the identity of their chef, but have no say in what dishes he chooses to cook for them. Chinese democracy, on the other hand, always involves the same chef—the Communist party—but the policy dishes which are served up can be chosen "à la carte."

1989年「六四」事件19周年即将来临，旅居英国伦敦的知名华裔作家马建「10年铸一剑」，推出最新出版的长篇小说《肉之土》英文版《Beijing Coma》，又名《北京植物人》。这是一部记述六四事件和社会动态的小说，其版权已经被英国、美国、加拿大、意大利、法国等出版社购买，中文版将于明年「六四」20周年前出版。

谈及此书创作动机及社会背景，马建说，「六四」事件的题材迄今鲜有人写。如果有人要把这段历史抹掉的话，身为作家必须要把这段历史保留下来。六四后，北京当局把赖以回忆的一切痕迹都摧毁了，人们渐渐地变成了「只会赚钱的植物人」。「1989年出生的孩子已经开始上大学了，但他却不知道当年的六四屠杀。这不仅仅是政治危机，也是一种道德危机。中国人有句古语：在哪儿摔倒在哪儿爬起来。把历史砸在原地。可是历史正被中共有意的掩埋，彷佛这惊天动地的历史事件从未发生过一样。

China prepared for the Olympics. Is the world prepared for China? Over 5 nights leading up to the opening ceremony, we revealed the controversial politics, history and culture of the world’s newest superpower and host of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. WATCH THE EPISODES HERE! Naked China: Busting Out Naked China: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Naked China: Out of Control Naked China: Fighting for FreedomNaked China: Let the Party Begin

《华尔街日报》网站报道中央电视台附楼着火的新闻标题是Inferno Engulfs Beijing Tower 。虽然Inferno没有再次在正文中出现，不过Inferno这个词似乎是编辑刻意挑选的。我记得这个词主要和旦丁神曲中的炼狱有关。换言之，这个标题说：地狱之火吞噬了北京高楼。

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.

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