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feng37

John Kamm - Blinded By the Firewall - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2008080602512.html

shared by feng37 on 07 Aug 08 - Cached
  • 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.
  • feng37 on 07 Aug 08
     
    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.
feng37

RConversation: Silicon Valley's benevolent dictatorship - 0 views

rconversation.blogs.com/...silicon-valleys.html

shared by feng37 on 30 Jul 08 - Cached
  • As author Rebecca Fannin pointed out on the Huffington Post, even China was barely mentioned: "Why was China ignored in the panel discussions? First, it's far away. Second, and more importantly, Silicon Valley is in a state of denial."  She thinks that the Silicon Valley patrons of the Fortune Brainstorm are failing to take China seriously, and that this denial will cause them to be "blindsided" by a "truly disruptive force."
  • "The capitalists aren't really that helpful, generally," he said. It depends on the business model deployed which really depends on the social intentions of the people running the business, and how much they care about long-term social and political repercussions. "We're forgetting that we had to fight to create an open Internet." Venture capitalists, he said, "assume that the Internet just works... that's very irresponsible," and they're not thinking about how specific business decisions impact overall levels of freedom, openness, and inclusion. "We have to do more than just run around chasing deals."
  • feng37 on 30 Jul 08
     
    As author Rebecca Fannin pointed out on the Huffington Post, even China was barely mentioned: "Why was China ignored in the panel discussions? First, it's far away. Second, and more importantly, Silicon Valley is in a state of denial." She thinks that the Silicon Valley patrons of the Fortune Brainstorm are failing to take China seriously, and that this denial will cause them to be "blindsided" by a "truly disruptive force."
arden dzx

Cover story: 'China's new intelligentsia' by Mark Leonard | Prospect Magazine March 200... - 0 views

www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php

china intellectual

shared by arden dzx on 28 Feb 08 - Cached
  • 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."
feng37

Joho the Blog » McCain models tech policy on our oh-so-successful energy policy - 0 views

www.hyperorg.com/...oh-so-successful-energy-policy

shared by feng37 on 19 Aug 08 - Cached
  • THE MCCAIN NEGATIVE WORDCLOUDWords Not in McCain’s Tech Policy | blog |social network | collaboration | hyperlink | democracy | google | wikipedia | open access | open source | standards | gnu | linux | | BitTorrent | anonymity | facebook | wiki | free speech | games | comcast | media concentration | media | lolcats |
  • Even if we ignore the cultural, social, and democratic aspects of the Net, even if we consider the Net to be nothing but a way to move content to “consumers” (his word), McCain still gets it wrong. There’s nothing in his policy about encouraging the free flow of ideas. Instead, when McCain thinks about ideas, he thinks about how to increase the walls around them by cracking down on “pirates” and ensuring ” fair rewards to intellectual property” (which, technically speaking, I think isn’t even English). Ideas and culture are, to John McCain, business commodities. He totally misses the dramatic and startling success of the Web in generating new value via open access to ideas and cultural products. The two candidates’ visions of the Internet could not be clearer. We can have a national LAN designed first and foremost to benefit business, and delivered to passive consumers for whom the Net is a type of cable TV. Or, we can have an Internet that is of the people, by the people, for the people. Is it going to be our Internet or theirs?
  • “Senator McCain’s technology plan doesn’t put Americans first—it is a rehash of tax breaks and giveaways to the big corporations and their lobbyists who advise the McCain campaign. This plan won’t do enough for hardworking Americans who are still waiting for competitive and affordable broadband service at their homes and businesses. It won’t do enough to ensure a free and open Internet that guarantees freedom of speech. It won’t do anything to ensure that we use technology to bring transparency to government and free Washington from the grip of lobbyists and special interests. Senator McCain’s plan would continue George Bush’s neglect of this critical sector and relegate America’s communications infrastructure to second-class status. That’s not acceptable,” said William Kennard, Former Chairman, Federal Communications Commission.
Roger Chen

Is Web 2.0 Living on Thin Air? - Tom Davenport - 0 views

discussionleader.hbsp.com/...web_20_living_on_thin_air.html

internetwatch reading thinking web2.0

shared by Roger Chen on 15 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Did you wonder whether our economy had grown a little overly precious? How can we really be producing value if we're all sitting around blogging and Facebook-friending each other?
  • 1999 the British think-tanker Charles Leadbeater published the book Living on Thin Air. It was both an appealing notion and a scary one: that we no longer have to produce anything but ideas. And that was even before Web 2.0--a platform for everyone to share their ideas, opinions, favorite tunes, and relationship statuses with each other. It was all a lot of fun, but I occasionally wondered whether it was really good for economic productivity.
  • it wouldn't be a bad outcome if the current crisis led to a more diligent, industrious economic climate. Chatting and socializing are important things, but they're not the only things.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • But it seems to me that many of the activities, business models, and assumptions behind social media are a bit fluffy, and that fluffiness is going to be difficult to maintain in the post-bubble environment we now find ourselves in.
  • Socializing as a distraction has always existed. Though there are more ways to do this now, people still have the ability to recognize that which produces real value in their life, both economically and socially. Balance between these has always been a challenge.
  • A few years from now, only the successful, profitable, and useful will survive.
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.
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.
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
evawoo

Transcript: James Miles interview on Tibet - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...tibet.miles.interview

tibet

shared by evawoo on 21 Mar 08 - Cached
  • BEIJING, China (CNN) -- James Miles, of The Economist, has just returned from Lhasa, Tibet. The following is a transcript of an interview he gave to CNN. James Miles
  • So in effect what they did was sacrifice the livelihoods of many, many ethnic Han Chinese in the city for the sake of letting the rioters vent their anger. And then being able to move in gradually with troops with rifles that they occasionally let off with single shots, apparently warning shots, in order to scare everybody back into their homes and put an end to this.
  • Well the Chinese response to this was very interesting. B
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • What I saw was calculated targeted violence against an ethnic group, or I should say two ethnic groups, primarily ethnic Han Chinese living in Lhasa, but also members of the Muslim Hui minority in Lhasa.
  • Well we didn't see any evidence of any organized activity, at least there was nothing in what I sensed and saw during those couple of days of unrest in Lhasa, there was anything organized behind it.
  • Now numerous Hans that I spoke to say that they are so afraid they may leave the city, which may have very damaging consequences for Lhasa's economy, Tibet's economy.
  • But their fear now is that Tibetans will blow up the railway line. That it is now actually safer to fly out of Tibet than to go by railway.
  • And also many troops there whose uniforms were distinctly lacking in the usual insignia of either the police or the riot police. So my very, very strong suspicion is that the army is out there and is in control in Lhasa. A
  • I've been a journalist in China now for 15 years altogether. This is the first time that I've ever got official approval to go to Tibet. And it's remarkable I think that they decided to let me stay there and probably they felt that it was a bit of a gamble. But as the protests went on I think they also probably felt that having me there would help to get across the scale of the ethnically-targeted violence that the Chinese themselves have also been trying to highlight.
  • And the authorities were responding to these occasional clashes with Tibetans not by moving forward rapidly with either riot police and truncheons and shields, or indeed troops with rifles. But for a long time, just with occasional, with the very occasional round of tear gas
  • evawoo on 21 Mar 08
     
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Roger Chen

继承传统,不能脱离时代_谢泳的BLOG_新浪博客 - 0 views

blog.sina.com.cn/...blog_49bc0c890100ax9x.html

china reading thinking

shared by Roger Chen on 14 Oct 08 - Cached
  • 钱穆过去讲，一个本国公民对于自己本国以往的历史应具温情与敬意，现在人们大体可以做到这一点。
  • 一种文化的产生，不能脱离它的时代。中国文化是在农耕时代这个背景下产生的，并达到了这个历史条件下所能达到的最高程度。在面对当时可能产生的所有问题时，中国文化基本都有高明的理解和解释，同时也寻找到了承传这种文化的最佳方式。
  • 今天提倡背《四书》，在知识的承传上，它本身已经没有意义，因为现代保存知识的手段非常丰富，就个人获得知识和养成人格来说，简单背诵只是第一步，但在现代社会，它所要付出的成本却很高，这个成本还不是一个简单时间问题，而是这种背诵的实际意义
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • 在传统时代，中国文化在事实上寻找到的继承方式所以可行，并能产生作用，主要是没有脱离时代，那种知识，在当时的历史条件下，可以达到经世治用的目的，半部《论语》治天下，在事实上也是一种经验表述和总结，但在今天，这一切就未必能有这样的功效了。也就是说，那时代读经就够用，而现在不够用了，或者说在道德上够用，而在知识上早已不够了
  • 管理现代国家，控制现代社会的知识，传统经典中所能提供的东西毕竟有限。重视传统文化没有借，提倡全民读经，总比“批林批孔”好，背诵十三经，肯定比背诵“老三篇”好，但一切文化继承，绝对不能脱离时代。
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
arden dzx

Opening gala wins raves, raises questions | Sports | 2008 Summer Olympics | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSPEK23967120080809

olympics 奥运

shared by arden dzx on 09 Aug 08 - Cached
  • "The heavy presence of Chinese (People's) Liberation Army officers throughout the proceedings left many wondering exactly what image the hosts were intending to project to the international community...," the newspaper said. "At a time when Tibet, Darfur and China's broader human rights record are proving delicate issues for Beijing organizers, the move to present thousands of drilled, sobersided army officers ... was surprising for its brazenness; a none too subtle projection of strength," it said. Asked about the military theme, Zhang Jigang, chief of the People's Liberation Army dance troupe, told reporters there were "excellent performers and directors" in the military. "I think this is a Chinese characteristic," he said. "All of the military arms have ... have wonderful acrobats and opera troupes. We should make use of such resources."
feng37

WERBLOG » Blog Archive » Note to John McCain: Technology Matters - 0 views

werblog.com/...john-mccain-technology-matters

shared by feng37 on 19 Aug 08 - Cached
  • In an interview last week, Powell asserts that issues like Network Neutrality in Obama’s agenda are “in the weeds,” because “[a] lot of the FCC’s issues aren’t ‘president of the United States’ issues.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Reasonable minds can differ over the right policies to preserve the open Internet, promote next-generation broadband, safeguard online privacy, and create a connected digital democracy. Supporters of Obama (like me) can think he made a mistake in his handling of the FISA telecom immunity legislation (as I do). The absolute worst approach is to label these as insignificant technical matters that the President need not address. That’s been the mindset, with disastrous results, the past eight years. As chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, John McCain was exposed to a wide range of tech policy issues. On the other hand, he admits he’s “computer illiterate.” Ask yourself how you’d feel about working for a corporation where the CEO doesn’t know how to use a computer. No matter how smart, someone who can’t open a web page, type a letter on a word processor, or compose an email message, is going to be fundamentally out of touch with the daily experience of every member of the knowledge economy.
arden dzx

China Journal : China Internet Research Conference: Two Views of Chinese Internet Users - 0 views

blogs.wsj.com/...iews-of-chinese-internet-users

free-expression internet

shared by arden dzx on 14 Jun 08 - Cached
  • The result was a challenge to the prevalent thinking that the Internet in China is all about entertainment, and that Chinese users will stay complacent under Internet control and management, since greater freedom of expression was allowed right after the quake. But now it remains to be seen whether these changes will have a lasting impact on Internet use in China. With the state returning to its tight pre-quake controls over the Internet, users may resist giving up their recent freedoms.
  • arden dzx on 14 Jun 08
     
    面对地震突如其来的灾难，言论自由表达本身未必是公众焦点，更重要的是有效的组织和迅速行动能力。
Roger Chen

Off The Record » Blog Archive » Singing a Different Song in China - 0 views

www.accapital-blogs.com/offtherecord

china

shared by Roger Chen on 29 Jun 08 - Cached
  • while most karaoke evenings might be innocent affairs, the risk of finding yourself in a compromising situation was not worth it. He advised me to make a polite excuse to avoid them.
  • By contrast it is precisely when you ignore your own culture and principles that you risk losing face or risk your Chinese partners thinking you are so weak you can easily be taken advantage of.
feng37

Obama's support for the FISA "compromise" - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views

www.salon.com/...index.html

shared by feng37 on 22 Jun 08 - Cached
  • This bill doesn't legalize every part of Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program but it takes a large step beyond FISA towards what Bush did. There was absolutely no reason to destroy the FISA framework, which is already an extraordinarily pro-Executive instrument that vests vast eavesdropping powers in the President, in order to empower the President to spy on large parts of our international communications with no warrants at all. This was all done by invoking the scary spectre of Terrorism -- "you must give up your privacy and constitutional rights to us if you want us to keep you safe" -- and it is Obama's willingness to embrace that rancid framework, the defining mindset of the Bush years, that is most deserving of intense criticism here.
  • Beyond that, this attitude that we should uncritically support Obama in everything he does and refrain from criticizing him is unhealthy in the extreme. No political leader merits uncritical devotion -- neither when they are running for office nor when they occupy it -- and there are few things more dangerous than announcing that you so deeply believe in the Core Goodness of a political leader, or that we face such extreme political crises that you trust and support whatever your Leader does, even when you don't understand it or think that it's wrong. That's precisely the warped authoritarian mindset that defined the Bush Movement and led to the insanity of the post-9/11 Era, and that uncritical reverence is no more attractive or healthy when it's shifted to a new Leader.
  • feng37 on 22 Jun 08
     
    This bill doesn't legalize every part of Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program but it takes a large step beyond FISA towards what Bush did. There was absolutely no reason to destroy the FISA framework, which is already an extraordinarily pro-Executive instrument that vests vast eavesdropping powers in the President, in order to empower the President to spy on large parts of our international communications with no warrants at all. This was all done by invoking the scary spectre of Terrorism -- "you must give up your privacy and constitutional rights to us if you want us to keep you safe" -- and it is Obama's willingness to embrace that rancid framework, the defining mindset of the Bush years, that is most deserving of intense criticism here.
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