March 2012
57 posts
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“In recent years, the southwestern metropolis [of Chongqing] has earned a...”
– From contributor Christina Larson’s “The Dams of Chonqing,” a post for Foreign Policy’s “Passport” blog.
Marketplace's Rob Schmitz with the Latest on... →
“Wen Jiabao and Bo Xilai have long stood out for their striking capacity to...”
– Chinese Characters focuses on individuals outside the halls of power, but in the provocative and much buzzed about piece from which this quote is taken, “The Princelings Fight for China’s Crown,” Australian journalist John Garnaut shows the value of bringing discussion of...
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The History China's New Leaders Won't Confront →
Damien Ma, writing for the online edition of The Atlantic, looks at the legacy of the traumas of the Cultural Revolution, the theme addressed by Xujun Eberlein in her contribution to Chinese Characters.
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“If you want to understand what kind of dramatis personae we’re confronting in...”
– Contributor Evan Osnos brings us up to date with a blog post on the latest twists and turns in the strange saga of Bo Xilai.
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WatchCC contributor Michelle Dammon Loyalka discusses urban migration in China — and the approximately 66 percent of migrant laborers who don’t work in factories — on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show.
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“At the very same moment that the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) top...”
– From CC contributor Ananth Krishnan’s “Activist’s ‘Disappearance’ Exposes China’s Legal Limits.” Below: Liu Ping
Letter from Little Lhasa →
The Hindustan Times’ Reshma Patil (formerly the paper’s Beijing bureau chief) looks at the different way stories related to Tibet play out in India as opposed to China; from the “China Beat” blog, which has ties to many CC contributors; particularly interesting reading as Hu Jintao heads across the Himalayas for a summit.
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“Chinese workers are not forced into factories because of our insatiable desire...”
– CC contributor Leslie T. Chang in a blog post for the New Yorker on factory conditions and factory workers in China.
Scholar Posts 10-Year Plan for Social and... →
A fascinating document, just the latest that first appeared on the Chinese Internet and then was given wider international audience by the good people at the China Media Project, who have reposted it in both the original language and an English translation with a short gloss at the start.
“Next month, Chinese writers will be under the spotlight as 2012’s Market...”
– From Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore’s “Cultural Exchange: Chinese Science Fiction’s Subversive Politics,” in the Los Angeles Times.
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Two CC Contributors, Loyalka and Wasserstrom, at... →
Watch(via Ask the Economist: China | The Economist)
“If people can get away with making up more or less any story they like about...”
– From Brendan O’Kane’s take on the Daisey affair, Thar Be Dragons in the new China blig Rectified.name 正名.
Latest Code Words and Puns Chinese Microbloggers... →
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“Stepping back, this has been quite a year for Weibo. From rumors of Jiang...”
– From CC contributor Christina Larson’s “Still the People’s Republic of Rumors” post for Foreign Policy’s ”Passport” blog.
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A Collage of Chinese Values →
Evan Osnos on Chinese youth; interview with a photographer and some memorable photos.
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“(G)etting things wrong makes it easier than it should be for the Chinese...”
– Jeff Wasserstrom weighs in on L’Affaire Daisey, Chinese factory conditions, “This American Life,” and past cases when Western reports got some facts right but some others wrong. From the Los Angeles Review of Books blog.
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Behind Bo Xilai's Halo →
Xujun Eberlein, who is originally from Chongqing, where Bo Xilai gained fame as Party Secretary, looks at the local meaning of his fall.
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“But China, it turns out, is not so far away. Daisey’s fiction was predicated on...”
– CC contributor Evan Osnos, in his blog post “Apple, China, and the Truth,” which explores the meaning of Mike Daisey’s “This American Life” fabrications and the value of Rob Schmitz’s digging that exposed them.
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Red Songs, Black Boxes and the Tale of Bo Xilai →
A Chinese Characters co-editor weighs in on the Bo Xilai Story.
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“[T]he 2002 shift from party boss Jiang Zemin and his premier, Zhu Rongji, to Hu...”
– CC contributor Ian Johnson on Bo Xilai’s downward trajectory and what is says about the looming leadership transition; from “China’s Falling Star,” which appeared in the New York Review of Books blog
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Knight News Challenge: Filling Foreign News Gaps... →
Chinese Characters editors Angilee Shah and Jeff Wasserstrom have a proposal in the Knight Digital News Challenge. Reactions? Thoughts? Please leave some feedback.
newschallenge:
1. What do you propose to do? [20 words]
Fill gaps in foreign news by encouraging scholars on Asia to engage in social media and public discourse.
2. Is anyone doing something like this now and how is your project...
“Sigh. Still the same thing,” wrote another microblogger. It’s just power, the...”
– A Chinese user of the Twitter-like weibo service on the blocking of “leftish” websites around the time of Bo Xilai’s fall; quoted in the Wall Street Journal piece: “Did Bo’s Ouster Knock Out China’s ‘Red’ Sites.”
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The Liu Wen Express →
Christina Larson, who profiles an environmentalist in Chinese Characters, shows her range with this New York Times Sunday Magazine profile of “China’s first bona fide supermodel.”
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“But as everyone is pouncing on this story [of Bo Xilai’s fall] as an...”
– David Bandurski of China Media Project on Bo Xilai’s fall as covered in the Chinese press—and how the story related to arguments about historical issues (the same ones highlighted in Xujun Eberlein’s chapter in Chinese Characters)
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India, China, and the Importance of Storytelling →
Chinese Characters co-editor Angilee Shah discusses Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers and why great stories are so important for Miller-McCune.
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“China Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang has replaced Bo Xilai as the Communist Party...”
– Breaking news report by the Wall Street Journal, relevant to Xujun Eberlein’s chapter in Chinese Characters; changing of the guard in Chongqing.
The Slang Chinese Bloggers Use to Subvert... →
The Atlantic offers a nice primer, drawn from the invaluable China Digital Times, which takes the uninitiated through some choice word play (typically involving homonyms) that is used in Internet cat and mouse games between PRC netizens and those trying to rein in the net.
“Mandarin is an artificial construct that developed over time so that people in...”
– From a good Browser Q & A with Chris Livacarri of the Asia Society about “Chinese characters” (and language in general) that emphasizes diversity within the country and interconnections between China and other parts of the world (past and present), with 5 suggested books all worth...
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“Water in the twenty-first century could easily become what oil was to the...”
– Contributor Christina Larson writes of water politics in China (a theme of her chapter) and other parts of Asia in “Not a Drop to Drink,” an essay in the latest issue of the Washington Monthly.
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Michelle Dammon Loyalka on the Radio 3/13 →
“The short story is the ideal literary form for a country suffering so acutely...”
– Julia Lovell, a gifted translator and prolific writer on Chinese culture, in her Prospect essay “The Key to China,” which tracks changes in literary life since Mao’s time and claims less can be more when it comes to current Chinese fiction.
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“China’s troubled Railway Ministry on Monday lowered the top operating speed for...”
– From a New York Times report by Chinese Characters contributor Ian Johnson on the latest twists in the high-speed rail story—with comments at the end about a related “rare protest in tightly controlled central Beijing,” triggered by complaints about corruption in railway ministry...
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Kids, Your Great-Granddad Was 70% Right →
Chinese Characters deals in various chapters with the challenge of coming to terms with events of the past (including the traumas of the Cultural Revolution, the theme of Xujun Eberlein’s chapter); this Wall Street Journal blog post looks at the distinctive issue historical legacy present to the parents of Chairman Mao’s great-grand-children.
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“A final then and now contrast has to do with U.S. views of China. In the late...”
– From text by Jeff Wasserstrom accompanying a series of photos of a changing China by Tom Carter.
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Fender To Bring More Clapton to China with IPO →
What would Vic Trigger (whose efforts to teach young Chinese how to “shred” are discussed in James Millward’s chapter) say about this story of a famous rock-and-roll brand trying to get the most out of the China market?
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“More reforms are needed to China’s judicial system to overcome lingering...”
– Concerns about China’s legal system (from the lack of judicial independence to concern about how much is done to limit civil liberties) loom large in Jeffrey Prescott’s chapter for Chinese Characters; mixed signals on the topic keeping coming out of the country; the Associated Press...
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This Friday: Chinese Characters Co-Editors' and... →
(Though info on the web that needs updating suggests that Jeff, Angilee and Christina will all be on the Friday and Saturday panels, in fact the only one with all three will be the Friday morning one—the Saturday session will just feature Angilee and Christina…and a host of other smart and interesting people, of course!)
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“For Party leaders, re-visiting the spirit of Lei Feng is apropos in 2012 not...”
– From the invaluable China Media Project’s “Old Propaganda for a New Era,” a March 1 post worth checking out if you missed it—as we did—when it first appeared.
“Most of the people who have immolated themselves were in their teens or 20s, a...”
– From Barbara Demick’s “Self-Immolations in Tibet Show No Sign of Slowing” (Los Angeles Times).
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CC Contributor Michelle Dammon Loyalka's... →
A webpage devoted to her new book on migrant workers, includes information on her book tour and a blog focusing on the topic of the book.
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Sinica Podcast on Historical Analogies and Today's... →
Sinica’s host Kaiser Kuo—a man of many talents, who makes a cameo in Chinese Characters, in James Millward’s chapter on guitar teachers in China—and Danwei’s Jeremy Goldkorn (someone whose comments on Chinese culture are always worth listening to) are joined by one of CC’s co-editors who was in Beijing in part to do a panel related to the book at Capital...
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Michelle Dammon Loyalka answers questions about... →
A quick Q and A between a CC co-editor and CC contributor.
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“To encourage self-immolations, they even offer a price of compensation for the...”
– The Communist Party chief of the Aba Tibetan prefecture in Sichuan speaks out about spate of Tibetan self-immolations. CC contributor Ananth Krishnan reports for The Hindu: Chinese officials hit out at as Tibetan self-immolations continue
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“Why all the interest [in the US Republican primaries]? Well, China has its own...”
– From CC contributor Evan Osnos’s “The Communist Party and the Republicans” post.
In Chinese village that revolted, two former... →
Politics in China never ceases to amaze. A report by Tom Lasseter from Wukan for McClatchy.
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In China, reporting on Tibetan and Uighur unrest... →
Chinese Characters has chapters by Alec Ash and Ananth Krishnan that introduce a Tibetan and Uyghur, and the reasons why reporting on Tibet and Xinjiang is so difficult.
