These two examples just scratch the surface of the boycott battles that took place in China's Year of the Olympics and are occurring again during 2009, its Year of Anniversaries. Thinking about this range of dizhi duels inspired me to write a piece on dizhi of various sorts of boycotts playing out in and affecting China, past and present, for the excellent British openDemocracy website, which has carried some of the best online coverage of recent PRC developments, ranging from the Tibetan unrest of last spring to the circulation of a dissident manifesto known as "Charter 08". Here's an excerpt from that piece, which opens with references to some Chinese intellectuals calling for a boycotting of PRC state television (to draw attention to the distortions and lies that it broadcasts) and one Beijing law school calling on its students to dizhi Charter 08. I'm offering up an excerpt from that piece here for two reasons: I'm hoping that doing so will provide some context for readers of this site as tey think about the latest news from the PRC and prepare for stories likely to come out of China later this year; and that doing so will encourage some readers of this blog who aren't yet aware of openDemocracy to bookmark that site as well as the Huffington Post:
