One aspect of contemporary Sino-American scholarship largely overlooked is the notion that both China and the United States contain a notion of ‘exceptionalism’ that largely doesn’t exist elsewhere in the world. The most immediate explanation I can think of for why is the enormous size of the two countries as well as their relative insularity [...]
Like Chris I’ve hesitated to weigh in on the latest Google news, though needless to say I consider the company’s brinkmanship with the Chinese government troubling news indeed. James Fallows of the Atlantic and Sky Canaves of the Wall Street Journal have provided a useful summary of what is and isn’t happening with the search [...]
On November 16 US President Barack Obama held an American-style town hall meeting with a group of university students in Shanghai. During the event, the camera panned toward a pretty female student dressed stylishly in black who was seated near the president.
Naturally, the identity of this girl elicited the attention of the Chinese internet community, [...]
The venerable China Daily has announced that our very own Yunnan Provincial Government has become the first in China to use Twitter, perhaps unaware of the irony that Twitter is tucked snugly behind the Great Firewall of China and is thus unavailable- without a proxy- to the general public.
The big news in China these days is the ongoing visit of President Barack Obama, who met with students in Shanghai Monday and with President Hu Jintao in Beijing yesterday. Nothing earth-shattering is expected to happen during Obama’s visit and in all likelihood both sides will simply utter the same platitudes that have characterized recent [...]
I’ve long been skeptical about the role of Twitter in fomenting political change. Skeptical until this Xinjiang uprising, that is.
Before the Chinese government blocked the service midday Monday, I read two eyewitness reports, saw several photographs, and read several articles about what had happened. Keep in mind that I follow only about 100 people. The [...]
By the time I started listening to music, roughly 20 years ago, Michael Jackson was already past his prime. He was still a major star and a darling of MTV, but he had already begun his transition from the ‘King of Pop’ to ‘Wacko Jacko’. Within a few years would come the first charges of [...]
Iran is presently holding a presidential campaign, in which the current president finds himself trailing in the polls. Recent accounts indicate that opprobrium between the two camps- those of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his challenger Mir Hussein Moussavi- is high. The two men have been campaigning feverishly across the country, with one holding the support [...]
What is China’s role in the horrifying story of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two US journalists who have been sentenced to 12 years in a hard labor camp for illegally entering North Korean territory?
The journalists insist they were on the Chinese side of the border, something that shouldn’t really be a matter of [...]
One of Andrew Sullivan’s correspondents today, an English teacher in Shenzhen, wrote the following about how the recession is playing out in China:
…it’s surprising how well China’s Maoist legacy acts as a safety net inside a capitalist economy. Shenzhen and cities like it, effectively, have half of their population living not as citizens, but as [...]