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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."

是的，中国领导人的直觉非常准确。在一场历时三十年的资本主义狂欢之后，中国可能的确正在进入一个前途诡谲的时期。

正如最近几年已经被广泛揭示的那样，在过去三十年沸腾的资本主义实验中，中国不仅缔造经济史上无与伦比的增长纪录，但也为此付出了高昂的成本。这些成本虽然无法像GDP一样反映在国民经济核算体系之中，但却是加诸于中国社会的实实在在的债务。长期以来，这些成本被转移、隐匿起来，不仅没有得到很好的消化，反而跟中国的GDP一样处于高速积累之中。如果说我们在以前更多的是看到并快乐的享受高速增长之红利的话，那么在未来的很多年中，我们将为过去三十年中积累的巨额债务痛苦地埋单。在这个意义上，中国其实正在进入一个还债高峰期。中国经济在2007年所发生的种种诡异症状，其实就是这个债务洪峰即将到来的明确信号。

由索尔仁尼琴和贾植芳，我又想到，他们的遭际命运在非宪政社会或许具有某种普遍性和必然性。以我们生活的这个社会而言，一个正直的有良知的知识分子，你想以知识分子的情怀关注当下中国现代化的现状，你恐怕就不能不在世俗生活中历经磨练，且难以摆脱各种痛苦的纠缠，这种痛苦很可能会伴随你一辈子，其根由正在于充满良知的知识分子的自我救赎，总是同专横和虚伪的统治者格格不入，也同更为功利和现实的民众（他们往往会自觉或不自觉地被收买和收编）产生距离，而缩小这种距离需要漫长的过程，痛苦的过程。所以贾老多次说过，真正的知识分子总是背负着沉重的十字架，即以近代中国论，又岂止一个鲁迅。

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."

A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous.

The Chinese author of the document, Huirong Tian, did not respond to repeated interview requests. Neither did Jiayong Chen of China's state-owned ZTE Corporation, the vice chairman of the Q6/17's parent group who suggested in an April 2007 meeting that it address IP traceback.

Another technologist, Jacob Appelbaum, one of the developers of the Tor anonymity system, also was alarmed. "The technical nature of this 'feature' is such a beast that it cannot and will not see the light of day on the Internet," Appelbaum said. "If such a system was deployed, it would be heavily abused by precisely those people that it would supposedly trace. No blackhat would ever be caught by this."

The State Administration for Radio, Film and Television has already issued five licences for mobile television services to a privileged group of state-owned broadcasters, including China Central Television (CCTV), the Shanghai Media Group and the Southern Media Group. These will sell content to the mobile operators, ensuring political censorship over the free flow of multimedia content. Whatever the format, the Communist party has given no sign it intends to relax its vigilance over what Chinese viewers can watch.

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.

深刻领会了胡主席“以人为本”和温总理那句“是人民在养活你们”的精髓后，已经开始觉醒，并逐渐在向公民蝉变！

老毛同志早就找到了，不是发动文革，利用民众来排除异己和贪官污吏，而是让人民起来监督他自己和他的政府，实行真正的民主。

Both China and the Dalai Lama exaggerate, and the historical evidence about Tibet is contradictory. One can make a good case that Tibet has been a part of China at least since 1720. One can also make a good case that Tibet became independent around 1911. The evidence is simply mixed. A deal to resolve the Tibet question is still attainable. The Dalai Lama would have to put aside claims to vast areas outside the present “Tibet Autonomous Region,” and he would have to accept much less political autonomy than he wants. China would have to ease religious controls and allow the Dalai Lama to return as a spiritual leader. Most important, Beijing would have to end Han Chinese migration to all Tibetan areas, to preserve their Tibetan character.

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.

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.

The Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal search and seizure made it into the U.S. Constitution precisely because its drafters understood that the power to snoop is addictive. Even if we happen to trust in the good intentions of the snoopers, the nature of any government can change rapidly — which is why the Constitution places limits on the tools available to any regime. But the drafters could never have imagined the commercial pressures at play today. The global homeland-security business is now worth an estimated $200 billion — more than Hollywood and the music industry combined. Any sector of that size inevitably takes on its own momentum. New markets must be found — which, in the Big Brother business, means an endless procession of new enemies and new emergencies: crime, immigration, terrorism.

here is a large and powerful country that, when it comes to human rights and democracy, is so much worse than Bush's America. But during my time in Shenzhen, China's youngest and most modern city, I often have the feeling that I am witnessing not some rogue police state but a global middle ground, the place where more and more countries are converging. China is becoming more like us in very visible ways (Starbucks, Hooters, cellphones that are cooler than ours), and we are becoming more like China in less visible ones (torture, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, though not nearly on the Chinese scale).

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.”)

“文革”期间来华访问的外国人，有几个地方是必被安排“参观”的，哪怕不去天坛、长城，这几个地方一定要让老外看。比如，上海江南造船厂制造的万吨水压机。那时的宣传称，这台设备赶上并超过了国际先进水平。

那时来中国的外国人，大多是有特殊背景的，基本都是中国政府的官方客人。接待者总要宣传这台水压机是如何“在毛泽东思想指引、在无产阶级文化大革命的鼓舞下，赶上或超过世界水平”。

终于一次，一位外国客人实在忍不住了，就问解说员：你知道当今世界上，水压机的先进水平是怎样的，你有技术参数吗？ 这个老外估计是搞工程技术的，他的问题一下让中国讲解员楞了，“不知道。”“不知道？那你怎么说这台一万吨的就是赶上和超过了世界先进水平啊？”后来，我们才知道，一万吨的水压机，外国在19世纪末就造出来了。

在 中国， 一场突如其来的民间抵制行动，又以人们已经熟悉的渠道和方式──MSN、QQ或手机短信──高调启动，此番，是法国超市品牌“家乐福”成为选中的敌人。因为有传言称，家乐福的主要股东，有资助藏独的行为。

印度昨日戒备森严，采取了大规模的安保措施，以确保奥运火炬安全通过新德里(New Delhi)。印度沿着缩短后的火炬传递路线，部署了逾1.5万名保安人员。火炬传递路线没有对公众开放。

尽管新德里火炬传递最终没有发生严重事件，但高度的安全措施突显出，对中国而言，奥运火炬接力成了一联串的公关灾难，并使许多人怀疑主要赞助商能从中获取多少益处。

可口可乐(Coca-Cola)印度高层管理人士为该公司赞助火炬接力进行辩护，并否认该公司后悔参与此项活动。本周三，可口可乐首席执行官内维尔•艾斯戴尔(Neville Isdell)在集团年会上也表达了类似观点。