You don’t care about any of that, though. You want to know about this:

Yes, that is Donald Trump in a PLA uniform.

No, that is not a real photograph — we have People’s Daily, a Chinese government publication, to thank for it, as they recently released a fun meme-maker that lets people upload photos (of themselves, I think is the point) that are then superimposed onto PLA uniforms from different eras. For example, I uploaded the picture of the Donald above onto a uniform from World War II.

Naturally, we wanted to see how the Donald looks throughout all the eras. Let’s start from the beginning and move forward:

There he is, a spry young man, during the Nanchang Uprising, the first major engagement in the Chinese Civil War on August 1, 1927. What a moment in history, when the Donald, full of theory and idealism, and blessed with ignorance, entered the fray as the ultimate underdog in a campaign to upset the established order.

Of course, there would be much hardship in the coming years, as he and his fellow politically ostracized “bandits” were driven into the heart of the country, where humble, family-oriented, salt-of-the-earth villagers welcomed him with a fervor and passion which his opponents could not understand.

The “Red Army” marched across the country, rallying the underclass to their cause while evading a better-stocked, more experienced and “refined” enemy. For the Donald to have any chance at victory, certain… tactics would need to be employed.

But guerrilla warfare suited the Donald just fine.

The conclusion of the internecine conflict saw the founding of the People’s Republic of China, with Mao, modestly dressed in a woolen jacket, declaring it so on October 1, 1949 from the rostrum of Tiananmen. If you squint really hard at some of the footage from that time, you can see, to Mao’s left as he faces the crowd, the unmistakeable smirk of this figure:

But the rigors of bureaucracy proved difficult for the Donald, who demanded loyalty above all else — to himself, not the country. He formed unholy alliances with oligarchs and despots. He set traps for the intellectual class, which he hated with all his lifeblood, for he himself had been rejected by them. He made speeches, albeit infrequently, to consolidate his power. He had his stooge call an enemy “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac.” He turned his countrymen against one another, and would have gladly destroyed a once-proud culture to preserve his legacy. All the while, he held the expression of one who is unable to find the letter Q on a Write and Learn Touch Tablet.

Who could he turn to in times of need? Who would, as he so often does in front of a personal ornate embossed antique gold framed mirror, pucker up at his every glance, and execute with incurious resolve the duties of the true patriot?

The years wore on the Donald.

His eyes sagged underneath the weight of his responsibilities. He lost the ability to give proper physical response to natural stimuli. His every bodily movement became a simulacrum of basic human behavior. His smiles became squints. His words became grunts. Standing over the toilet, pinching the squat end of his prune, he shat when he meant to pee.

He lost his smile.

Gaze long upon his eyes, and you might glimpse the abyss.

Lord have mercy on us all.

Oh, bother. https://t.co/KZBz255r0c

— Dissident Pooh (@DissidentPooh) July 17, 2017

I really hope the person behind this account has “Pooh” and “Tigger” on Google Alerts, if only to run an experiment to see how many times characters from Winnie the Pooh will be mentioned in relation to China:

Let this be the start of a beautiful thing… and not one of those two-week Twitter fads.

Follow @DissidentPooh now.

Today was a good day in Beijing, weather-wise, if not a bit on the hot side, and humid. There were blue skies and white clouds. Moments after Liu Xiaobo’s death, this was the scene:

Liu Xiaobo will be remembered by the Chinese people — someday, even if it’s not today or in the near future — as a man of immense dignity and unyielding grace, whose unshakeable conscience caused him much suffering, but in the end elevated all those who understood what he stood for and why he persisted. He will be celebrated.

240 years, American friends! Longer than the Yuan. Longer than the Sui. Not as long as any of the good dynasties, but still a good run!

— The Relevant Organs (@relevantorgans) November 9, 2016

Protestors in Hong Kong clashed with police in the early morning hours today, reportedly over the removal of illegal street food vendors in Mong Kok. The AP says the violence was the worst in the city since the pro-democracy protests of 2014.

In the nearly 10-minute video above, protesters are seen hurling bricks, glass bottles, and other objects at police. Something gets lit on fire around the 5:30 mark.

SCMP reports that running street battles lasted about six hours, and that police fired two warning shots into the air.

Even as late as 8am, an angry mob could be spotted at the intersection of Sai Yee Street and Shantung Street, continuing to hurl bricks and glass bottles into the police lines as curious residents watched from the bleachers and commuters walked to work.

And here’s AP again on the early fallout:

Acting District Commander Yau Siu-kei said 23 men and one woman were arrested on suspicion of assaulting and obstructing officers, resisting arrest and public disorder. The arrested were as young as 17 and as old as 70. Police said 48 officers were hurt by glass and flying objects and confirmed that two warnings shots were fired.

Monday was the first full day of the lunar new year. The street vendors of Hong Kong, even those operating without licenses, have traditionally been ignored during the holidays, and it’s unclear the reasons for the crackdown this year.

Hong Kong’s annual Chinese New Year Victoria Harbor fireworks show is scheduled for tonight. It’ll continue as planned, with extra security.

CNN has some photos of the Mong Kok riots:

Ursula Gauthier exiting China from Beijing Capital International Airport (photo via Fred Dufour, @freddufour_afp)

Ursula Gauthier, erstwhile Beijing correspondent for the French newsweekly L’Obs, left China for good in the early hours of January 1. It was not, as they say, of her own volition.

When the clock struck midnight on 2015, Gauthier’s press visa expired and was not up for renewal. According to official organs, she had offended the Chinese people with her November 18 article written in the aftermath of the November 13 terrorist attacks on Paris. Gauthier’s refusal to publicly apologize for remarks concerning China’s attempts to link Paris with its own problems in Xinjiang was taken as the final straw.

But her departure merely concluded a weeks-long saga of intimidation and mudslinging directed from the highest reaches of China’s propaganda and foreign affairs departments (a typical example here). In a statement, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) summarized the campaign against Gauthier, in which her photograph and address were published on a military forum, and expressed its unqualified disgust: “Insinuating that Ms. Gauthier supports terrorism is a particularly egregious personal and professional affront with no basis in fact.”

Indeed, on the basis of this (to say the least) unbecoming treatment of an accredited journalist, foreign correspondents have presented a united front, whatever they might have thought – and privately grumbled about – the substance of Gauthier’s piece. So let us be as similarly bold, so there’s no confusion: China’s official response to Ursula Gauthier’s piece in L’Obs is puerile, petty, and idiotic.

It can’t be said enough: expelling journalists for their work is not only a bad look – puerile, petty, idiotic, one might say – but terrible policy. As this excellent China Law and Policy blog post explains, Beijing has used the typically broad strokes of its Foreign Media Regulations to libel Gauthier as “championing terrorism,” offering a pathetic veneer of legality to its shit fit, and signaling a re-hardening of attitudes toward any who dare approach the invisible red lines of China reportage (ethnic policy, finances of the leadership, etc). It’s interesting to wonder whether Gauthier’s visa would have been affected if her article came out in June – six months before she needed an extension – as China renews all press credentials at the end of the calendar year; certainly, the timing benefitted her critics. Still, if Gauthier’s expulsion was meant to be a warning, it’s not likely it’ll rattle journalists worth their salt: within days of the announcement came a New York Times report entitled “Xinjiang Seethes Under Chinese Crackdown.”

But nor is any journalist willing to ask serious questions of Gauthier’s reporting, for fear of validating the response. Unfortunately, this code of silence – though broken quite frankly in private – is not only sketchy ethics (“We always report fairly and objectively – unless it’s one of us”), it’s a gift to Chinese propagandists who prefer their critics to be a homogenous, hostile mass – “Western media” – than an independent and wholly diverse group of earnest scrutineers.

Gauthier’s article – her English translation can be found here, via China Digital Times – was fatally flawed in one way: she failed to differentiate between terrorism – defined as the violent targeting of innocent civilians for political purposes – and Terrorism™, the post-9/11 brand, which is an empty shell of counterproductive rhetoric.

China wanting in on Terrorism’s™ endless war should not surprise anybody, because that “war” – for all its ceaseless costs and stupidity – is a stirring political success. Of course China’s ruthlessly savvy and shrewd politicians would like to be a recognized component of a globally legitimized campaign against Extremism. And naturally, when a journalist calls them out, they call her a hypocrite, kick her out of the country, and create a poll that asks, “Do you support expelling the China-based French journalist who championed terrorism,” then relish in the fact that 94% of respondents said yes. The War on Terror™ in the United States, by the way, has led to discrimination, censorship, lunacy, nationally televised bigotry, forfeited civil liberties, increased militarism, violence, and a real war that cost trillions and radicalized countless. But who cares, right? TERRORISM.™

In attacking China’s rhetoric on Terror™, Gauthier could have done herself a service by pointing out that this rhetoric is US-born and incredibly dumb. It’s not about using different yardsticks for China vs. “The West” – those yardsticks all suck. How is China’s War on Terror™ different than any other country’s? It’s not – it’s equally pathetic.

But Gauthier’s other, bigger mistake was the following passage, which – and many reporters, even those who vehemently support Gauthier’s cause, will admit this – veers too far from any factual basis to be considered good journalism:

But, bloody though it was, the Baicheng attack had nothing in common with the 13^th November attacks. In fact it was an explosion of local rage such as have blown up more and more often in this distant province whose inhabitants, turcophone and Muslim Uyghurs, face pitiless repression. Pushed to the limit, a small group of Uyghurs armed with cleavers set upon a coal mine and its Han Chinese workers, probably in revenge for an abuse, an injustice or an expropriation.

“Probably in revenge for an abuse, an injustice or an expropriation” is a sentence that will flunk you out of Journalism 101. (And how could these coal miners, among the most disenfranchised and vulnerable group of workers in China, possibly have it coming?) Even if this was a magazine column, where there’s room for occasional editorializing, the speculation probably outreaches the research. Ignoring this simply reinforces the “Us and Them” dynamic so beloved of state media’s criticism of the “Western media.”

And Gauthier’s kicker:

China is unlikely to win the sort of cooperation from the US and Europe that it garnered after September 11^th. Given the smothering control over Chinese society and territory that the authorities enjoy, it is equally unlikely that Islamic State jihadists will link up with infuriated Xinjiang residents. But so long as the Uyghurs’ situation continues to get worse, China’s magnificent mega-cities will be vulnerable to the risk of machete attacks.

Seen in light of the Baicheng attacks – in which scores of coal miners were knifed to death – the phrase “China’s magnificent mega-cities will be vulnerable to the risk of machete attacks” reads as tone-deaf, and dangerously close to the sentiment, Maybe they deserved it. (Gauthier doesn’t say those words, and maybe she would never try to imply it, but it’s a sentiment that some people hold, and that disembodied sentiment lurks in the context of what Gauthier did write.) For the record, there’s a way to say “repression can radicalize the marginalized” without sounding callous.

Should Gauthier have been expelled for publishing this? Absolutely not. Xinjiang is a place of swirling ethnic tension, where many Uyghurs have legitimate fears of “being labeled ‘a terrorist,’” as BJC columnist Beige Wind wrote last month. But the issue is with the label itself, and the War on Terror.™

China is not the first – and won’t be the last – country to politicize a tragedy. (They certainly could have picked a better time than post-Paris to point at their own terrorism problem, particularly a massacre they were more than happy to suppress at the time.) Then again, they didn’t come up with the original terms for the War on Terror™, and seem to have only the faintest understanding of what it entails. Blame them roundly for expelling Gauthier, yes. But let’s remember that they’re merely parroting a flawed rhetoric, one that a significant number of leaders probably don’t believe themselves, except for the political benefits that they deem theirs to share.

Happy holidays, everybody!

The worst possible intrusion of commerce, at the service of a fake commercial holiday, in the guise of cleverness.

(Video via People’s Daily)

Xi Jinping, David Cameron, and … Sergio Aguero. What the heck?

China’s president looks like a real human being. David Cameron looks like he has FOMO. Forget “selfie of the year,” which many have proclaimed. This is a Picture of the Year candidate, and it was taken by an Argentine footballer.

The backstory is that Xi Jinping is visiting Manchester as part of his UK tour, where he’ll talk about capital investments and direct flights from Beijing to Manchester. But who cares. Look at this!:

.@aguerosergiokun: “Thank you for the selfie, President Xi” 感谢能与您自拍，习主席！#CFAStateVisit pic.twitter.com/4du2zIaacY

— Manchester City FC (@MCFC) October 23, 2015

Like watching a badger nip on the ankle of an unaware stag. Segways, man. Here’s another look:

Usain Bolt wins the 200m at the World Championships, then gets taken out by a photographer on a Segway… pic.twitter.com/cjMXIFJEMl @NBCDFW

— Pat Doney (@PatDoneyNBC5) August 27, 2015

(H/T Deadspin)

You may think you’ve seen them all, but this one has that little something extra. It’s worth watching from the beginning, but go to the 30-second mark for a mushroom cloud of commentary. Noooooooo fucking way.

Explanation here.

Here is what we all should do: Tomorrow, take a little time out of your day and go leave flowers and/or positive messages on the ground where it happened. We have to change the mentality here, enough with this “If I help, I’ll get in trouble” or “China doesn’t value people’s life” excuses. You can be black, white, yellow red or blue it doesn’t matter, bottom line is this, if you are in China YOU are CHINESE, you want to make China a better place then make it happen. 

 

Sina Weibo’s watershed came in 2011 after two high-speed trains crashed in Wenzhou: as officials bungled the response, and then censored news stories, netizens stormed onto Sina’s microblogging platform to voice their outrage and fill gaps of knowledge with educated speculation. Four years later, just as Weibo has seemingly run its course, a different program is stepping into its place as the prime facilitator of unfettered discussion in this country of shackled exchange.

As far as watershed moments go, WeChat’s was notably less newsworthy in the classic sense: it was a sex scandal. Yet it was significant because the sex only became a scandal after — or the exact moment when — a message was transferred from one man’s phone onto another’s via this Tencent chatting platform. By the time the now-infamous Uniqlo sex video reached traditional media — traditional, these days, referring to the Internet — practically everyone who cared had seen it, or knew it existed.

This brings us to the horrific stabbing yesterday morning — outside, of all places, the Sanlitun Uniqlo that nestled into our collective consciousness only a month prior — details of which revealed itself almost exclusively on WeChat. Perhaps this seems unextraordinary, considering how fully WeChat has uplinked with most of our lives. But let’s pretend, for a moment, it were not possible to dart in and out of six separate chat rooms, to easily compare discrepancies in different tellings of the same story, to pose questions to dozens of people at the same time. How many instant messaging windows would you have opened? How many text messages sent? Phone numbers dialed? There was a time not long ago when we’d have to go to the scene to sniff for answers, if that’s what we wanted. Upon being stonewalled by official sources, you’d have to inquire of strangers, and then you would still only have a small piece of the puzzle.

Consider how many of us learned about the victim, the Chinese woman who was stabbed in the back (and how did we know it was the back?). It was likely from the following message, currently going around WeChat, sent from a person who knows both the woman and the foreigner who knelt over her:

Guys, it is very bad news. Our captain roro s wife has been killed by a crazy guy using a 1 meter long knife (“sabre” in french) a few hours ago in sanlitun. They were coming out of the embassy to officialize their wedding when they came accross this crazy chinese guy who told roro he did not like american people. He replied he was french. They left and he inserted his long knife inside isabelle s back.. Trying to defend her, the knife went inside roro s belly twice…. Isabelle died right after she made it to the hospital. Romain is going through an operation now because it was bleeding inside his body..This happened exactly 2 years after the murder of an american citizen in joyce city..
I can t find the words… Huge shock

Hours earlier, “My friend knows someone who knows the girl,” someone may have said in a group you’re in.

And those videos from the aftermath of the attack? Found on WeChat, of course.

As human beings we are inclined to gossip, and WeChat is currently the best tool for our time and place. It has tapped into our instinct to share and learn. Once upon a time, in a bygone age, we would gather around TVs for the 6 o’clock news, thus was our instinct to know and to know collectively. Well, China doesn’t air real news — nothing we can trust, I mean – and who has time for the television anymore? With WeChat, we get all the angles, sometimes simultaneously. We gather sources that we deem credible, and ignore those a bit too eager to forward rumors. We build a story, confirm or deny that story against the observations of others, and pass it into other groups. The transference of knowledge, from one bubble to the next, is seamless and swift. If we thought print media was slow before, print journalists are practically tablet engravers in this age of the intranet. No story published tomorrow will contain information that a smart and plugged-in smartphone user won’t have already obtained from multiple sources tonight.

The service won’t render the Internet obsolete, but it makes certain parts of it less vital: Sina Weibo, with all its ghosts and overseers? Who needs it. Twitter, that echo chamber with character limits? It’s fast becoming a place where the oldest of old-media hang out, those who haven’t ingratiated themselves into enough group chats. Facebook? LOL.

But WeChat, of course, did not rise out of pure innovation. Sure, it’s faster than microblogs (which are faster than blogs, etc.), and more tailored – you can choose who to follow, what groups to join or leave — but it would be much less useful if it were restrictive. That is, if messages were routinely censored, and certain topics disallowed. In other words, if it were a mobile version of Sina Weibo, which has been punished often enough that it will gladly stifle user participation to avoid offending sensibilities.

Finally, WeChat has the ability to create action, similar to 2009-11 Twitter (before Twitter became suddenly dead). A person — any person — can propose an action, and if it makes enough sense, creates enough momentum and gains enough support – all organically, of course, like a snowball — it will translate into movement. Ultimately, for as comfortable as virtual spaces have become, users still seek to translate their virtual conversations into real-world activity. For an example, check out this message currently making the WeChat rounds:

Here is what we all should do: Tomorrow, take a little time out of your day and go leave flowers and/or positive messages on the ground where it happened. We have to change the mentality here, enough with this “If I help, I’ll get in trouble” or “China doesn’t value people’s life” excuses. You can be black, white, yellow red or blue it doesn’t matter, bottom line is this, if you are in China YOU are CHINESE, you want to make China a better place then make it happen. So tomorrow let’s all show that we care, that life matters and that we are concerned by deposing flowers. People might look at you, judge you, ask you to leave but keep in mind that it is because you are doing the right thing. Let’s all make sure that tomorrow by the end of the day, all wechat moments are filled with pictures of flowers, and trust me, by night, people will light candles all over the place. This is how you change mentality, this is how you show you care about something, by doing something as simple as deposing a flower. So what’s your excuse?

I’m not saying there will be “candles all over the place” by nightfall tomorrow, but I’m willing to believe a few people will lay flowers. We’re just talking flowers, by the way, but authorities will notice. They’ll think, Next time, what if it’s not just flowers commemorating the innocent victim of a random attack? What if it’s, say, to commemorate a self-immolation at Tianamen? (Guess where I learned about the man who purportedly set himself on fire at Tiananmen last night?) What if it’s… something bigger?

It seems almost impossible that WeChat escapes official censure. It’s too easy to use, and thereby too dangerous. And this is how an innovative piece of technology that’s born in the People’s Republic of China dies there. Eventually, the only thing left to destroy will be censorship itself.

UPDATE, 4:16 pm: Flowers.

Tianjin was woken last night by a massive warehouse explosion that killed at least 44 and injured 500 others — numbers which will surely rise in the coming days. As authorities investigate the cause — was it arson? — we sit here sifting through some amazing photos and videos of the incident. You may have seen some of these already. But they’re worth another look.

From social media:

Full video of drone footage showing destruction from #TianjinBlast – http://t.co/FPSRfkL5ea | Updates: @GrasswireNow pic.twitter.com/wy6wW2Wp17

— Grasswire (@grasswire) August 13, 2015

From BBC:   Seattle PI: Globe and Mail:

214 soldiers form a nat’l nuclear biochemical emergency rescue team, leave Beijing for rescue work in #Tianjin Thu pic.twitter.com/UmqpWVPWyZ — People’s Daily,China (@PDChina) August 13, 2015

An article titled Tianjin Journalists, Pls Wake Up is deleted on WeChat. Chinese public angry at the media silence. pic.twitter.com/bQPgK78pX6 — Li Yuan (@LiYuan6) August 13, 2015

UPDATE, 8/16, 4:56 pm: One of the crazier explosion videos yet:

We have two videos from the stabbing this morning, in which a man wielding a meter-long sword attacked — seemingly at random — two people outside Uniqlo in Sanlitun, Beijing. The first video, above, is graphic, and I wouldn’t recommend it if you’d rather not watch a woman bleeding from stab wounds.

We’d like to point out this guy, casually strolling by the scene of two bloody stabbings:

In the video below, the attacker, when approached by police, simply gives himself up by laying down his sword and getting on his stomach.

UPDATE, 8/14, 10:54 am: How this story unfolded on WeChat.

The man is said to be a 25-year-old named Mr. Gao. Via Guardian:

Police said the attacker was from Tonghua, a city in the north-eastern province of Jilin.

Friends of the woman, who is thought to work as a tattoo artist in Beijing, posted messages on social media expressing their shock. Addressing the female victim one wrote: “You have to wake up and make me a tattoo, bless, my thought is with you.”

@prchovanec @zhongnanhai Victim was friend’s friend’s fiancee. Motivation was apparently nationalist — “Chinese who sleep w/ 老外 should die.”

— Jordan Phillips (@jordanp) August 14, 2015