Part of the reason I thought Jon Huntsman made for a strange presidential candidate -- if not an outright bad one -- is the same reason, in retrospect, Al Gore didn't win: he was too sensible. And as a result -- like Gore -- Huntsman is much better suited for a position that doesn't require egomania, knavery, and lies. Taking nothing away from Gary Locke, but Huntsman should be the US ambassador to China forever.
In a 3,600-word piece, Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy of Britain’s The Sunday Times lay bare the myth of Neil Heywood. They argue that far from being an intrepid power broker living astutely within the inner circles of China’s elite, the murdered Briton was a “failed businessman,” a “chancer,” an “irritant,” and a liar who... Read more »
Winston Lord, who served under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush as ambassador to China from 1985-89, recently spoke to Asia Society about this country's current leadership transition. The three-part interview is on Asia Society's blog. The first part is embedded above, in which Lord offers this soundbite:
Yesterday, China took down Google, the decision of a Net Nanny who gets off by watching Internet users like you squirm and suffer. But the collective howl of pain and rage that emanated from behind the Great Firewall was actually heard, because this morning, authorities unblocked Google’s services, including Gmail. So what happened? The website GreatFire.org – which... Read more »
Organizers of an auto show in Guiyang, Guizhou province has decided hiring topless models isn’t enough to attract attention, since everyone is doing it. They’ve upped the ante with snakes. We have no idea what cars are being displayed, but Car News China does. Pictures taken Thursday; more after the jump.
This interview never gets off on the right foot: the lag between the anchor and the reporter is a full five seconds, causing the anchor to make a “Why haven’t you acknowledged my greeting?” face. Reporter Feng Yuxian, live from Dubai (that’s the Dubai Tower Burj Al-Arab Hotel in the background), then delivers her correspondence... Read more »
Knowing that kids say the damnedest things, CPC organizers probably should have thought twice before letting a preteen saunter into their conference room and drop a bombshell of a question. At an 18th Party Congress event, 11-year-old reporter Sun Luyuan, representing Chinese Teenagers News, posed this to a group of high-level ministers: “I love snacks, but I don’t... Read more »
The latest Global Times column penned by an expat under a Chinese pseudonym is all about how to find a mate in the ‘Jing. (Ed’s note: Credit where it’s due if it’s actually a young Chinese writer, per comment; Yin Lu, you have our apologies.) It features lines such as, “If you see a beautiful... Read more »
Nerds of 20th-century Chinese history will love this. Brought to us by the good folks of Tea Leaf Nation, this image on Sina Weibo imagines what would happen in an election between Mao Zedong’s Communist Party of China (red, obviously) and Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, which fled for Taiwan in 1949. Via TLN: The “election” began in... Read more »
![How A Letter From China Decrying Slave Labor Ended Up In Portland, Oregon [UPDATE]](http://beijingcream.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Letter-on-toilet-seat-150x150.jpeg "How A Letter From China Decrying Slave Labor Ended Up In Portland, Oregon [UPDATE]")
