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.

Residents gather next to burnt-out tanks in the aftermath of the crackdown (via CNN)

Last year was the 25th anniversary of the “June 4 Incident,” as it is officially known. State security went full bore over the ultra-sensitive date, harassing journalists and activists, detaining anyone who sneezed on the subject.

They succeeded in maintaining the collective amnesia in-house, earned their bonuses and overtime, but in doing so, trolled foreign media so hard that the blowback was intense. I don’t know how much coverage was originally intended, but several journalist friends indicated they’d been so royally pissed off with the constant intimidation, their editors were all but sounding the bugle on the topic. Coverage was wall to wall, with stories everywhere.

This year, of course, will be much quieter: 26 isn’t as catchy as 25. But Global Times hasn’t forgotten, and duly produces a bungled editorial on the subject, attacking – and casually libeling – a group of overseas students for writing an open letter, requesting transparency over the crackdown. Here’s the closing paragraph:

Chinese society has reached a consensus on not debating the 1989 incident. Students born in the 1980s and 1990s have become the new targets of overseas hostile forces. When China is moving forward, some are trying to drag up history in an attempt to tear apart society. It’s a meaningless attempt and is unlikely to be realized.

Frankly, the rest of the rant isn’t worth the click. Moreover, there is really little point to GT’s article (even less so than usual, that is). No mainstream outlet had even reported on the letter prior to the editorial. The first was the Guardian, which published its article shortly before midnight a day later, referencing GT in the third graf.

If Streisand Effect was the intention of the trolling, so be it. There aren’t any other logical reasons for flagging the date by turning the full glare of the Batshit Signal on this group of 11 Chinese students while accusing them, ad hominem, of being “brainwashed” by a “paranoid minority” in an “attempt to tear society apart.” (Just because they’re “paranoid,” GT, doesn’t mean the government isn’t out to get them.)

It’s telling how an authoritarian apparatus that has engineered a culture of amnesia and self-censorship is, itself, quite incapable of either. Like a sinner with a guilty conscience, GT can’t help running its own mouth. An annual hit-piece on Tiananmen has become almost as symbolic and ritualistic as the candlelit gathering in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park. Rather than memorializing the victims, though, it simply serves to shame the perpetrators.

UPDATE: The shambles continues with an order from the goon squad to “urgently delete the Global Times commentary.” So dignified.

If you’ve read a story about China in the last couple of years that seemed just too good to be true – that smelled, in fact, a lot more like horse manure – it probably came from the Augean stables of Central European News (CEN), a Vienna-based “news agency” whose bluff just got called in exhaustive length by BuzzFeed UK investigative reporters.

Although their offices and staff are in Austria, CEN’s scope is worldwide, with stories from Russia, Argentina, India, Macedonia and the PRC, where it regularly elbows Xinhua aside to publish the least likely version of events.

According to numerous examples cited by BuzzFeed, CEN was the dealer first pushing the “walking cabbages to cure depression” hoax from 2013 (it was, as the Chinese sources originally noted, a long-running piece of performance art that happened to occur at a music festival), as well as the Mail’s story of a tapeworm infestation in Guangzhou caused by a sashimi binge (the accompanying images, according to Snopes, were actually lifted from X-rays published in the British Medical Journal depicting the “aftermath of a parasitic tapeworm infection caused by… undercooked pork”) and, of course, that ridiculous piece of click-bait about an attractive backpacker sofa-surfing through China looking for “temporary boyfriends.”

What appears to be the House Special at CEN is Bobbiting – tortuous tales of todgers lost, ideally accompanied by graphically pixelated photographs. If it has “(NSFW)” in the headline and no penis, CEN is all over it like Loretta on John Wayne: an aunt who castrated her nephew in Henan, “a 26-year-old Chinese man named Yang Hu who had allegedly chopped off his own penis due to frustration with his nonexistent love life,” or, most recently, a “man whose penis was chopped off twice in the span of a few hours.” And it helps that those pixels, sparing fragile readers the gorier details, also cover up any pesky watermarks.

The agency’s MO, as BuzzFeed describes, appears to be guileless – CEN accepts any viral social-media story it sells as de facto, no questions – and, of course, profitable (translate, sell, screw the hat-tip) but is actually disingenuous, often materializing eyewitnesses and juicy quotes for that added value. When CEN reports from China, helpful “police spokesmen,” hospital staff and garrulous bystanders are always on hand to offer the Austria-based press agency the straight dope.

Example: an underwear thief is taught a righteous lesson when his victim catches him, and forces him to parade on camera covered with his loot. Victim posts the pix on Weibo, the story appears on Xinhua and, sure enough, gets picked up by CEN – except their enterprising stringer manages to interview a neighbour and jimmies the following pearl from the cops: “We don’t condone vigilante activity but in this case it seems to have turned out OK.” Certainly it did for CEN, who also marketed another story involving a Shandong farmer whose goat birthed a two-headed kid, which came complete with “digitally enhanced” pictures. BuzzFeed says CEN also sourced this from an uncredited Xinhua. The farmer wouldn’t talk to the state agency for some reason but was happy to mouth off at length to a Croatian Times reporter, “despite the story taking place in a remote rural community a six-hour train ride from Beijing.” (The CT reporter forgoes any byline for this modest scoop.)

CEN is run by Michael Leidig, journalism’s answer to Grant Shapps, an Internet spiv who’s his own greatest online cheerleader. Like Shapps, Leidig has a “frequently updated” Wikipedia entry (sources include the Austria Times, owned by Leidig) and enthusiastically doctored edited by a user called Bylinebandit, who has the same handle as the Twitter account of one “Michael Leidig.” Its sole tweet asks a cromulent question:

But don’t ask this self-powered hamster wheel of bullshit: if you want to be certain of anything CEN reports, check it with Xinhua first.

The King of Bullsh*t News (Buzzfeed)

From left to right: Sima Nan, Zhou Xiaoping, and Fang Zhouzi

Until this week, the social critic Sima Nan was best known for getting his head stuck in an escalator at Dulles Airport. That moment was particularly precious because Nan, a devoted neo-Maoist, had just posted another of his anti-America screeds on Sina Weibo before flying to DC.

But China’s most famous wumao is now back in the news for a more impressive reason: as an impassioned defender of free speech.

The wumao, or 50-centers, are patriotic Web commenters who sing the praises of big government, whether for a paycheck or genuine nationalism – the latter have a special name, Ziganwu, “wumao who runs on his own fuel.” (Indeed, this very site has lately been enjoying their considerable insight –Ed.)

The talk of the Chinese Internet has been the overnight elevation of a new leader to the wumao ranks, “online writer” Zhou Xiaoping. Zhou reportedly was invited to attend a Forum on Art and Literature on October 15 held by “Uncle” Xi Jinping, where he posted a rather blurry selfie that featured the chairman in the background. That he wasn’t wrestled to the ground indicated Zhou’s star was in the ascendancy.

The 33-year-old actually began his writing efforts with a Sina blog back in 2005, where his provocatively titled articles have the measured nuance of Rush Limbaugh on a Vicodin binge. “America-Style Democracy Can Kill You,” begins one. Another warns, “If American Soldiers Invade China, I Will Have No Choice But To Join the Taliban.” Many are plain vulgar: “Some Gossip About the Gay Affair Between Gary Locke and Brother Blind” describes an alleged relationship between the former US ambassador and blind activist Chen Guangchen.

Such sophomoric writings have made Zhou a laughingstock even within the wumao community. His nickname, “Belt Fish” Zhou, was earned for his penchant toward fabricating evidence (Zhou had claimed that social critic Charles Xue was “spreading rumors” about Zhejiang beltfish farms suffering water pollution. When people pointed out that the beltfish is not farmed, Zhou revised his article and claimed the original was by an unknown sock puppet out to discredit him).

Has Xi actually read any of Zhou’s bollocks? Hard to say, but that’s irrelevant now anyway. Following the presidential praise, Zhou is a made man, and millions of readers have to pretend to give a shit about what he says. He has interviews with People’s Daily and affiliated tabloid Global Times (neither mention the beltfish), and has published three articles (“Broken Dreams in the USA,” “Fly, Chinese Dream,” and “Their Dreams and Our Flags”) on Reference News, the best-selling newspaper in China.

Not that there aren’t knives out for Zhou. Fang Shimin, better known as Fang Zhouzi for his relentless fights against plagiarism and fraud, published his own point-by-point critique of Zhou’s “Broken Dreams” on October 21.

The pair has history. Fang himself was maligned by Zhou in a 2010 article titled “This World Will Enjoy Harmony When Fang Zhouzi Doesn’t Exist Anymore.” It took four years, but Zhou’s wish was realized merely hours after Fang’s rebuttal came out: Not only was the blog deleted, Fang’s accounts on Sina Weibo and Sina Blog were soon gone altogether. Within a day, almost all reposts of the article were also erased. It’s as if Fang didn’t exist anymore.

But with Fang, has harmony returned to the galaxy? Far from it, says, of all people, Sima Nan. “Fang held his rationality as always and corrected the untrue parts in [Zhou Xiaoping]’s article,” Sima wrote (pictured below). “I tried to repost Fang’s article but was blocked too. Firstly, I hope that was a mistake by law enforcement; second, I hope the blogger [i.e. Zhou] will stand up and speak for himself; and third, hopefully Fang Zhouzi’s account will be spared from death when the sun rises again.”

Alas, it was Sima’s post itself that was deleted. That led to a meditation on rule of law, the theme of the Communist Party’s Fourth Plenum.

“Learning from the plenum documents should combine realities. There’s one thing I just can’t get over thinking about,” admitted the leftist in an emotional plea. “A popular science writer that I know, whose name now cannot even be mentioned, is blocked all over the Internet. None of his works can be read on Weibo or WeChat. Please – exactly what law did this writer break? Stripping him of his right to speech rights, is that legal? Please help me understand!”

That post was also blocked. Unbowed, Sima made a third petition: “Could [administrators] mercifully allow [Fang’s] popular science writings to be published? Even in the days when the Qin Emperor launched his ‘Burning Books and Burying Scholars’ campaign, he didn’t burn all books… Your grace, please think carefully!”

So, why is Sima Nan doing this?

Well, he wasn’t always been known for being a blowhard. Sima was once a keen critic of pseudo-science himself in the 1990s. He met Fang in 1997 as a guest speaker at a forum led by Fang on academic corruption, according to this interview. “Fang Zhouzi is hardworking, insightful and feisty… many elites choose to protect themselves by not pointing fingers at plagiarism and lies, but some choose to stand out. Fang is a respectable, fearless warrior,” he told the journalist in 2010.

Fang returned the favor by publicly acknowledging Sima as a friend, something which won him few friends (here’s Sima having a shoe thrown at him by one of his detractors). “I don’t agree with his basic political ideas, but it doesn’t mean I can’t make friends with him,” Fang said in an interview with Tencent News. “I’m not looking for a political ally.”

But friendship may be only part of the reason. Political observer Zhang Lifang says that Xi Jinping’s Mao-style Forum is an attempt to seize the “market” of mainstream commentary and “replace it with political control.” Many, like Sima, were tempted to sign up, says Zhang: “But as it turned out to simply mean degrading themselves ahead of cheap scum like Zhou, they are reluctant.

“Even if Zhou doesn’t have a market, he doesn’t need one. If one day all public intellectuals are diminished, [wumao] will lose their jobs too. That’s why you now see many wumaos like Sima Nan talking more and more like public intellectuals.”

That, after all, may not be a bad thing.

Follow Valentina @valentinaluo.

Because it’s politically expedient to do so — proven by Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, etc., to work — Beijing conducted a drug investigation that recently culminated in a bust of street-level slingers in Sanlitun. This news doesn’t affect the vast majority of Beijingers, foreign or local, which is to say, there’s little reason any of us should cheer. If anything, we should cringe, knowing these “crackdowns” almost always disproportionately affect those on society’s fringes who are most powerless to defend themselves. It’s not a coincidence that highly publicized drug/prostitution stings never seem to target princelings or the monied owners of hotel brothels.

That’s what makes this blog post from Michael Wester, CEO of the Beijinger’s parent company, True Run Media, so surprising. Near the bottom of what starts as a straightforward news blog post, there’s this (all emphasis his):

The bust comes as welcome news to the vast majority of foreign residents of the city who choose to live within the letter of the law. Foreign drug dealers who seem to operate with abandon in certain areas of Sanlitun have been both an embarrassment and a downright hassle to foreign residents, whom the dealers often strike up friendly conversations with as an intro to offering drugs for sale.

What happens, exactly, after dealers offer their ware? Do they — facing rejection from those poor study-abroad students who don’t have 700 RMB in their pockets, to say nothing of the desire to get high when they can obliterate their minds on 10-kuai shooters and 15-kuai street beverages laced with a poison called alcohol — snarl and physically intimidate? Do the smiles that prefaced those friendly conversations turn into glowers of fury and menace? Need I remind, this is an area that frequently reeks of piss, drunkenness, and buffoonery, an area in which foreigners (law-abiding, surely!) pass out till the next afternoon. And we think our African friends are the problem?

That excerpted paragraph comes directly after this one:

The dealers will face the same penalties as local citizens, the report notes. China’s drug laws are notoriously strict, and dealing over 50 grams of methamphetamines can earn a suspect the death penalty.

No pause via quote or ellipses, no further questions, nothing to help us process the utter insanity that dealing 50-some grams of meth can lead to execution.

The bust comes as welcome news to the vast majority of foreign residents of the city who choose to live within the letter of the law.

Look… we’re reasonably confident Wester’s an upstanding citizen, a nice enough guy, and that we’re reading too much into all this. But he’s also the head of Beijing’s largest expat media empire. Has he risen so above expattery (have you seen the Beijinger’s forum?) that he can parrot, apparently without self-awareness, an apparatchik’s cliche? Living within “the letter of the law” doesn’t make a person decent: you can still be a judgmental prick.

And since when do we celebrate China’s haphazard application of laws? How many laws do the Beijinger’s readers break, those with fake gas-scooter licenses (which you can buy on the Beijinger’s classifieds!) and visas obtained through questionable qualifications?

Do you use a VPN? Ever gotten into a black cab? Drank in an unregistered bar? We wonder, too, about the Beijinger’s ISBN — does it permit them to run advertisements alongside content?

What if Law didn’t criminalize certain service providers and institutionalize racial profiling? What if it made buyers equally responsible by tying them to the same risk of draconian penalties? What if laws weren’t made by those who insist on “social stability,” as if that weren’t another term for homogeny, conservatism, and control?

Bringing the conversation back home: who’s doing more harm in Sanlitun? The drug dealers who honestly don’t care about pushing their product on those who don’t want it? Or the army of fake-booze distributors, the pickpockets, the black-out-drunkards, the police officers in the station around the corner who will do absolutely nothing about fistfights and stolen property but who’ll strong-arm the hell out of roadside vendors to ensure they receive their cut?

It’s something for all of us to think about the next time we’re tempted to deem someone else’s choices illegitimate and say they should be punished “according to the law.”

People’s Daily deserves not our scorn but our patience and understanding. I make the comparison with autism with absolutely no intention of being insulting to autistic people or their family and friends, and please accept my apologies if this still sounds offensive. But maybe the proper response to People’s Daily — which has underdeveloped communication skills (despite being the official mouthpiece of the government), difficulty grasping abstract concepts, and fantasies that are simply untenable in the real world — should be with tolerance, composure, and encouragement?

Via SCMP:

The Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily has been waging a war on the direct use of non-Chinese words such as “iPhone” and “Wi-fi” in the Chinese language. The paper has published two editorials in the past week, claiming that “mingling foreign words in Chinese has damaged the Chinese language’s purity and undermined communication”.

Perhaps we should not, due to PD’s autism, compare it to an animal. They might attack the New York Times, the Relevant Organs, Sina, porn, The Big Bang Theory, the English language, and everything enjoyable in the world, but they’re not so different from you and I. Like us, they are trying to form patterns out of and stitch sense into this weird and wondrous thing called life. They’re trying, damn it. We should meet them halfway.

The concerns come at a time when popular English terms and expressions have become more commonly used in the daily life of the Chinese than ever, as they embrace western cultural products such as Hollywood blockbusters and British TV dramas like Downton Abbey and Sherlock.

Nod.

The articles question why the Chinese language had to include English abbreviations while similar terms borrowed from other languages, for example “kung fu”, are always translated into English letters in English-speaking nations.

I like kung fu. You like kung fu. You’re not so bad, People’s Daily. We’re going to survive.

Beijing’s call to ban foreign words in Chinese media meets with mocking satire (SCMP)

People’s Daily has had an eventful week. Last Monday it called the New York Times “circling vultures” for an article on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370; on Friday it sought “immediate rectification” from a parody Twitter account, @relevantorgans; then, somehow, it got a guest editorial out of Bill Gates. But PD truly tops itself with this next thing, because these are words that someone actually wrote. Via Reuters:

“While ordinary people and governments have enjoyed the conveniences brought by the Internet, they have also in turn experienced the Internet’s negative effects and hidden security dangers…”

Wait, okay, let me just get this in before we really hit the truly gonzo part. “Hidden security dangers,” says the paper of a government that hacks everyone, and digitally spies on governments, foreign correspondents, and its own citizens. (Does that cover “everyone,” basically?)

“If you don’t have Internet order, how can you have Internet freedom?”

If you don’t have Internet order, how can you have Internet freedom.

There are many sites that are dedicated to Internet freedom, but strangely, none within China. GreatFire.org and Free Weibo can serve as wonderful watchdogs on Chinese Internet freedom, except they face one huge obstacle: the Chinese government. Reporters Without Borders called China one of 12 “enemies of the Internet”; the report was purposefully sensationalistic, but its premise is basically correct: when it comes to Internet freedom, China gives zero shits.

There will never be freedom — nor should there be, People’s Daily is saying. It’s order that should take primacy: here’s China launching yet another anti-porn campaign, like pulling weeds out of a prairie; here they are bullying Sina into apologizing twice because it needs corporations to shoulder the dirty burden of censorship; and look, here they are pulling foreign TV shows because while they like money, they’d much rather have control.

If you think People’s Daily really cares about porn though — the lurid objectification of bodies to stimulate sexual arousal — check out what’s on its “related links”:

People’s Daily, everyone: crusader of social conservatism and lawful order.

Continuing with Reuters:

“Anyone enjoying and exercising their Internet rights and freedoms must not harm the public interest and cannot violate laws and regulations and public ethics.”

Between a) public interest, b) laws and regulations, and c) public ethics, which do you think People’s Daily considers most important? Public interest, like porn? Public ethics, like fighting for the powerless? (Hmm.) Or… that other one?

Yeah. That’s what I thought.

China party mouthpiece says no Internet freedom without order, as U.S. TV shows pulled (Reuters)

The fourth Beijing International Film Festival opened on Wednesday, and it looks like it’s already less boring than last year’s. For that we have the Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone to thank, who on Thursday in a panel discussion spoke provocatively on Mao Zedong and urged the Chinese to confront their history. As The Hollywood Reporter reports:

“Mao Zedong has been lionized in dozens and dozens of Chinese films, but never criticized. It’s about time. You got to make a movie about Mao, about the Cultural Revolution. You do that, you open up, you stir the waters and you allow true creativity to emerge in this country. That would be the basis of real co-production,” said Stone, speaking at a panel on co-production which also included Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron and Paramount Pictures COO Frederick Huntsberry, and was moderated by Zhang Xun, president of China Film Co-production Corporation.

He continued:

“You talk about co-production but you don’t want to face the history of China. You don’t want to talk about it,” said Stone.

“Three times I’ve made efforts to co-produce in this country and I’ve come up short. We’ve been honest about our own past in America, we’ve shown the flaws.”

Clearly on a roll…

“It’s all platitudes. We are not talking about making tourist pictures, photo postcards about girls in villages, this is not interesting to us. We need to see the history, to talk about great figures like Mao and the Cultural Revolution. These things happened, they affect everybody in this room. You talk about protecting the people from their history. I can understand you are a new country since 1949. You have to protect the country against the separatist movements, against the Uighurs or the Tibetans, I can understand not doing that subject. But not your history for Christ’s sake,” said Stone.

“We’re talking about the essential essence of this nation of how it was built, this whole century, you’ve not dealt with it.”

The audience, “mostly film and media professionals, many Chinese,” Sinosphere notes, “clapped loudly” at his comments.

Perhaps we could pause here to point out that Hollywood is mostly platitudes these days, too: “tourist pictures” — i.e. summer blockbusters — that are heavy on entertainment but superficial in almost every other way. But American cinema is self-regulating, so for all those movies that appeal to mass audiences, seeking to please the common denominator, there are plenty that dare to be artistic and brutally honest. One of those films won an Oscar for Best Picture very recently, I believe. Twelve Years a Slave is the sort of film that will never be made in China, because those in charge of the film industry here must answer to people higher up, people who are much too immature to handle ponderous, critical, far-reaching subject matters that dare reflect any semblance of truth. In China, there are simply too many intellectual cowards. If Stone was too polite to say that out loud, we’ll do it for him: censors are destroying this country’s culture because they take orders from milksops and dummies.

We all know it, including the Chinese, if the audience response is any indication: censorship deadens art, waters it down. The only people who remain clueless — willfully, I think — are conservative hardliners within the Party who would rather wait out the world’s changes and die in their leathery skin rather than consider the possibility that censorship is unnecessary and oh yeah the earth is round. They maintain that cultural emasculation is a necessary price to pay for stability, purely unable to question whether the price we’re paying is too steep.

Guess who has the power to make things change? It’s not Stone, and it’s really not the people clapping at his comments. If Farewell My Concubine, possibly the most critically acclaimed mainland Chinese film of all time, can remain blocked in this country, then nothing else really has a chance. Quality is a secondary consideration when examining art in this country; adherence to CCP dogma is first.

It was good on Stone for making those comments, but really, he wasted his breath. There is no art without politics in China. There is no art.

POSTSCRIPT: I wrote about the closing ceremony of last year’s Beijing International Film Festival, which I attended. An excerpt:

The extravagance, unfortunately, served to prove yet again that glitz is often merely farce dressed up. What we witnessed was the red-carpet-film-awards equivalent of a Chinese factory owner hiring a white face to accompany him on an inspection tour. We were treated to a comedy of miscommunication that would have made residents of Babel grimace. Less a showcase of the cinema than a self-congratulatory trade show, the audience reacted accordingly, supplying often mistimed applause more tepid than you’d find from an American crowd at a cricket match.

Forget human rights, which will not, I promise you, get the man on the 5F dancefloor to lose his groove. Forget censorship, because who cares about cultural emasculation? Forget Zhou Yongkang, school stabbings, Diaoyu Islands, corruption, Sichuan earthquakes, shoddy construction. Take a lesson from the New York Times when it wants to link-bait: head over to the US embassy’s Beijing air Twitter account and report the latest AQI, because nothing — absolutely nothing — unites the English-reading populace of China quite like bad air.

Knowing this, maybe the US embassy has done all of us a favor by posting Beijing air quality data dating back to 2008. Quartz has helpfully put it in an eye-catching chart, above. “Scary” chart, reads the headline. Feel scared, Beijingers? If only there were a way to leave.

Listen: all sympathy for you if your children live here and you’re legitimately concerned about their health. And if you’re making money off others’ fears, whether selling filters or jars of French air, more power to you. I’m not saying bad air is good. But what is it we hope to accomplish by complaining on our Facebook feeds? To make friends and family back home rubberneck at all our woe? Or to feel special? Do we think our voices will compel officials to do “something,” or “more,” as if their children live under a different sky and they remain blissfully ignorant of or unaffected by PM2.5? (Okay, actually — sometimes the children of rich people do have other options.) AQI obsession has gotten a bit cliched, no?

I think the answer is we — you, me, guvs, squids, the rest — have nothing else in common. We’re from too many different countries, to say nothing of cultures, and we need this to feel connected to, I don’t know, each other? We need something to agree upon and nod our heads to, because Xi Jinping falls short of the Great Uniter standard. I’m not going to take pollution away from you.

I just want to say I’m tired of seeing your AQI retweets.

If you think I’m being harsh, consider: traditional media routinely, flippantly compares living in Beijing to a nuclear winter. Seriously: a barren, gray hellscape caused by a force rivaling the explosion of stars resulting in death, destruction, and decay. That’s where we’re living. Tell that to the young lady sipping her Cosmopolitan in the hutong bar.

Where do you go talking sensibly about a subject after you’ve burned your last hyperbole?

Lily Kuo, author of the Quartz article, gives us this little sane tidbit to think about:

At the same time, the embassy’s motivations for publicizing the data in Beijing have been questioned. China’s bad air quality has been a source of international criticism, derision, and discontent at home. In contrast, the US embassy in New Delhi does not widely publish its air quality measures, despite air pollution that has hit levels twice as high as Beijing’s for several winters running and much lower public awareness of the problem.

Air quality is a problem in both capital cities, but perhaps the difference is their relationship with the US: India has long been a diplomatic ally, but China is increasingly seen as something of an economic rival.

Whether you believe it or not, it’s sure more interesting to ponder than “air is bad.”

An episode of The Colbert Report last Wednesday used the words “ching-chong ding-dong” in an attempt to satirize / skewer Washington dunderhead Dan Synder. When the show’s Twitter account tweeted the joke the next day without context — “I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever” — a bit of hell broke loose on social media, resulting in Korean-American Twitter activist Suey Park starting the hashtag #CancelColbert. It reeked of so much faux outrage and willful ignorance that I did all I could to ignore it.

Something strange happened though: the story became about more than Colbert, Synder, Park, or hashtag activism. How do Asians fit within the scheme of liberal / white privilege? Are Asians and white Americans so intricately linked, socially and economically, that one could adopt the joke of the other without crossing the red line of race? Having lived abroad as long as I have, I don’t have a good answer anymore; in so many ways, this is purely an American question, reserved for those living in America. (Can you imagine what a good liberal in America would say if they found out that Chinese people in China call themselves “yellow-skinned”? Or this.) If I had ventured a comment over the weekend though, I suspect I would have sounded like I did last October when Asian Americans feigned anger at Jimmy Kimmel over a joke about “killing Chinese people.”

I’ll point out here that the two stories you should read, if you’re interested in this #CancelColbert story and haven’t already read, is “Gooks Don’t Get Redskins Joke,” written by Deadspin’s Tommy Craggs and Kyle Wagner, and “The Campaign to ‘Cancel’ Colbert,” written by Jay Caspian Kang for The New Yorker. Craggs and Wagner, who are both Korean-Americans like Park, assert that Park’s reading of Colbert’s joke is “problematic; it flattens out all meaning and pretends, in effect, that there is no ironic distance between Jonathan Swift’s satire and actual cannibalism, not to mention that it’s tighter-assed than life itself, as a funny white man once said.” Kang, generous nearly to the point of his own argument’s destitution, writes sympathetically of Park’s hashtag campaign:

#CancelColbert may have been silly and dumb and wrong in spirit, but it’s worth asking if those of us who find it distasteful know as much about the intentions of the hashtag activists as we think we do. If we take #CancelColbert at face value, we can easily dismiss it as shrill, misguided, and frivolous. But after speaking to Park about what she hoped to accomplish with all this (a paternalistic question if there ever was one), I wonder if we might be witnessing the development of a more compelling—and sometimes annoying and infuriating—form of protest, by a new group of Merry Pranksters, who are once again freaking out the squares in our always over reacting, always polarized online public sphere.

And all this is a longwinded way of introducing the below, which is Colbert breaking kayfabe on Tuesday’s The Colbert Report to tell his audience that he is, in fact, a satirist. Hopefully this is the last time we write about this story. It won’t be, I suspect, the last time we talk about racism, specifically what constitutes it.

Via Gawker:

“That ends that controversy,” Colbert concluded. “I just pray that no one tweets about the time I said that Rosa Parks was overrated, Hitler had some good ideas, or ran a cartoon during Black History Month showing President Obama teaming up with the Ku Klux Klan because, man, that sounds pretty bad out of context.”

When it comes to toadying up to authority, you can’t beat foreign business. While smog comes and goes like a dissident in the night, its legacy lives on — for example, in the missive below from Savills, the London-based real estate agency, which wins our coveted Beijing Cream Corporate Whore of the Month Award with “Twelve tricks to protect you from haze.”

Click to enlarge

What exactly is “haze”? A nightclub — or do they mean the noxious pall of manmade fumes that hangs over the city like a perpetual funeral veil?

It’s smog, Savills. Smog. Which kills. You don’t have to play silly buggers with the word. Even the English-language dailies have given up fanciful uses of “fog” to describe the shit they’re breathing. Look, here’s a critical Global Times article that uses “smog” in the headline.

Anyway, here’s some of that time-proven Savills advice:

1. Wear a hat.
2. Wear a coat
3.Wash your hands
4. Drink more water

It’s like listening to a lecture from your Chinese grandmother. Yes, we should be encouraging people to wash their hands more — bathroom hygiene is very much in its infancy here, especially among chefs, I’ve noticed — but some of Savills’s advice (“wear a hat”) is barmy.

Don’t pick your nose? “Nose breathing helps stop PM10 and larger items like pollen and sand, but it’s totally useless against PM2.5,” explains Dr. Richard Saint Cyr, local medic and oft-quoted Beijing Family United expert on the topic of inhaling treacle.

The only really helpful “trick” — “wear a respirator” (an unfortunate mistranslation for “wear a face mask”) — is known to mostly everybody, but, crucially, doesn’t specify an N95 mask. (Every time someone’s out in the smog wearing a simple cotton mask, isn’t there an instinctive urge to grab them and shout, “It’s useless, you poor damn fool! Useless!”?)

Most foreigners are wise to this, because the overseas and expat media ram advice about wearing the right kind of protection practically down our throats. Sadly, there’s still plenty of naïveté among others about the risks and preventative measures. And bad advice, however well meaning, is still bad advice.

Like this: “Open your window wisely” makes sense, but (Dr. St Cyr again) “Opening at noontime makes no sense.” Why noon, exactly? Does the AQI have a schedule? Does the smog take lunch? Dr. St Cyr: “Their advice for a high-fiber diet is generally good because it implies a healthy anti-oxidant boost — but certainly not because of any ‘expelling gut toxin’ benefit.”

The doc also reiterated his point that, as far as smoking is concerned, an average day in Beijing is equivalent to less than one sixth of one cigarette. (What about an average day in Yinchuan?) So that guy standing with his mouth open in the middle of a 500+ AQI day, just sucking the stuff in? He’s healthier than your average bar or nightclub.

Still, if you’re getting your medical advice off Savills, why not fashion tips from the gurus at Knight Frank? Maybe Century 21 can help with your marriage.

China is officially (politically, that is) an enthusiastic supporter of the Sochi Games, which is why Chinese athletes walked out at the opening ceremony waving both Chinese and Russian flags. To no one’s surprise, then, the pro-government media here is peeved by all the negative coverage in “Western media.” Speaking for them all, Global Times has just published an editorial headlined, “Booing Sochi only shows West’s bigotry.”

Sure, one tires, especially if one has lived abroad, of first-world complaints — particularly from media types who are prone to narrative-following and will invariably proclaim the Games a “surprising” success in about two weeks — but Global Times, per usual, takes it a bit too far, into sourceless sensationalism, confused truthiness, and outright lies:

Some say it is the journalistic nature of the Western media to be critical and ready to challenge authorities. But the excuse sounds so hypocritical when you look at the Western coverage of the 2012 London Summer Games, which was much more friendly and festive.

Critics called various aspects of the London Olympics a “waste of money,” “humiliating shambles,” and “disconcerting.” (That last one was from Mitt Romney.) Then they slammed the logo and mascots. The organizers were called a “closed oligarchy” — by the London Assembly! BBC published “10 reasons some people will dread the Olympics.” Ten days before the opening ceremony, the Guardian published this so-very-British headline (because it’s sarcastic) above a picture of a torchbearer grimacing in a downpour. During the Games, there was a protest featuring topless women. A year after the Olympics, Oliver Wainwright of the Guardian wrote, “At every junction of this roaring A-road sprouts a steroidal tower, each clad in ever more lurid colours, transforming the street into a gauntlet of competing ambitions. Looming over adjacent council estates, these brash totems are a monument to Olympian greed.” You know who cheered the London Olympics though? “The London Olympic Games were hailed a success by visiting journalists,” wrote Xinhua.

Excerpting a bit more from Global Times:

Since the ending of the Cold War, only the 2008 Beijing Games and the ongoing Sochi Games have experienced such criticism. It is surprising how much the Western media stick to their bigotry.

The “Western media,” if I may say, have gone easy on Russia. Most of the negative stories I’ve seen are about toilets, infrastructure, stray dogs, and un-homely hotel rooms. Very few articles have mentioned the Russian government’s targeting, sometimes murder, of journalists, or their systemic, massive corruption that is objectively much worse than China’s, or their lack of social cohesion, or the environment, or NSA-level surveillance… About as negative as the media has agreed to go is a snarky remark here and there about Vladimir Putin’s homophobia.

Russia is much smaller and weaker than the Soviet Union. No matter how “tough” Putin is, today’s Russia will no longer fall back to the Stalin or Brezhnev times. But the West’s endless criticism of Russia under Putin’s rule appears no different from the elder generations’ stances against the Kremlin decades ago.

Okay Global Times, if you’re such a tough guy, you tell Putin that he’s not so tough.

The aggressive political strategy of the Soviet Union used to make the West restless. But today, strategically the West has nothing to worry about besides fighting terrorism. The ruthless pressuring of Russia and the alert against China are pushing the West to the verge of another round of confrontation. Enthusiasts for a “New Cold War” could jeopardize a historic chance for a better world.

And so on.

But this post isn’t about yet another crazy Global Times editorial, because that’s low-hanging fruit. This post is about a comment by topolcats.

Before you read it, please understand how comment sections on pro-government editorials work: they often are frequented by harems of fifty-centers — people who get paid to post pro-China comments on stories — presumably because these people know their employers will come across them. Usually, one commenter will post something, and then someone else will try to one-up, and then someone else. But our man (or woman), topolcats, decided to do the work of four people by writing a four-paragraph paean to… the Russian resolve? It’s anti-West, so it has to be pro-China. It’s also batshit crazy.

The West since the time of the Czars have been trying to rape,control and plunder Russia, USSR, Russia from Napoleon to Clinton & beyond!!
These fascists will never stop but will never win either if history is an indication.

Someone should tap Bill Clinton on the shoulder and tell him he was just compared to Napoleon.

After 1917 Europe and the united states attacked the USSR. But only after 3 years,Trotsky defeated the combined forces of western Europe & America and then came the Nazis. The dream of Hitler and crew was to conquer western Europe, destroy Russia and hook up with the Japanese in Asia and jointly control the world. Yet again Russia/USSR destroyed the german Anti Christ.

Russians suffered greatly during World War II, and they should be rightfully proud of their victory over Nazi Germany. But only someone willfully ideological — i.e. the worst type of person — would confuse the people’s victory with the government’s, since Stalin’s five-year purge of everybody was interrupted only by the war effort. Stalin then rewarded his countrymen’s bravery and sacrifice with further purges until his death, leaving behind a brutal police state whose legacy survives today.

In Archangel lies the graves of the first Americans ever killed in the western invasion of 1917…standing as a monument to anyone (America), who dares try to invade again will be destroyed not to mention the million of graves of Italians and Germans fascist soldiers killed in the great patriotic war.

Don’t invade Russia. Especially during winter.

Today Russia still stands as a country without debt and armed to the teeth ready to do battle with the forces of evil to protect mankind whenever called for!…America,Europe cannot stand that two primary countries, China and Russia stands in the way of world domination…if we are lucky the spiritual guardians of mankind will always allow Russia & China to defeat American imperialism!

I like this, actually. Spiritual guardians of mankind. I mean, slightly theosophical, but poetic. To think of it, a little too poetic for the comment section of a Global Times article. So now we know: fifty-centers are actually unemployed Chinese writers. All of a sudden, I have a newfound respect for the work they do.

Louis CK was in Beijing in June 2012 to film the (wonderful) finale of (the wonderful) third season of his show Louie, and apparently he got enough material to tell stories for years. He was recently on David Letterman, where — for whatever reason — he was prompted to relive his experience. 

Old man Letterman begins by asking if Louis went to Shanghai, and immediately you know this interview will go horribly.

“Beijing,” Louis corrects him. (“It’s more like a giant Dayton, Ohio,” he later says of the city.)

“It’s hard to go to China. It’s really far away,” Louis deadpans.

“They probably hacked your computers and stuff,” Letterman suggests.

“Sure, sure,” Louis agrees, in the way someone might brush off a grandfather who uses the phrase “back in my day.”

Actual reaction

“The United States is comfortable with you doing a show in China?” Letterman asks, as if China were fucking North Korea.

“A lot of movies are produced there and stuff,” Louis says.

“I understand,” Letterman replies, though he clearly does not.

Louis then talks about the stand-up show he did in a “very ancient theater.” “I was, like, Do I have to worry about what I say? And they’re like, Dah, have fun!”

“They’re just such fun-loving folks,” Letterman butts in with a sarcastic wave of a hand. “All they want is fun over there.”

Yeah, I don’t know, why would commies have fun? And what could they do, drive tanks around their farms, amirite?

After confirming that Louis doesn’t speak Chinese, Letterman asks with an old-man smirk, “What about the people in the theater?” How is he not getting that English-speaking people live in Beijing? Or that there are expats here? I will never understand how old white people think.

“The sense I get is that the government doesn’t really do anything anymore, but everybody is really scared, so if you do anything weird everybody’s like Stop it,” Louis says. ” So you know, we were told somebody might disappear if you use that joke on the show.”

“Oh. My. God,” Letterman interjects, because he actually believes this. Louis CK, comedian, relays a joke that one of his China friends told him (“somebody might disappear”), and Letterman believes it. Go to the 1:50 mark to hear him believing it.

“Wow!” Letterman breathes.

Toward the end, Louis describes how he and his team went into a mountain seeking a Chinese family to take him in so they can film a scene. They stumble upon an old lady who invites him in and starts feeding him (that’s the final scene of the season, by the way).

Apparently unable to mine this delightful anecdote for anything, Letterman suggests:

“Government agent, probably. She’s probably a government agent.”

Sigh.

Look, comedy is hard, I get it. China is hard (not as hard if you actually tried, but whatever). But you can combine the two without being a hoary halfwit who reinforces every narrative cliche. You can be better than David Letterman.

(H/T Alicia)

“The smog has become so thick in Beijing that the city’s natural light-starved masses have begun flocking to huge digital commercial television screens across the city to observe virtual sunrises.”

Lied The Daily Mail in an article last week. Although they gave no proof for this assertion besides a photo, their horrible reporting inexplicably caught on at Time, Huffington Post, and CBS News.

There’s so many things I want to say here.

• First, this isn’t the first China lie that gets picked up and broadcast by Western news media. Mike Daisey’s fabricated NPR story on this American life comes prominently to mind. This is what happens when you cut foreign bureaus and let playwrights and people who know nothing about the country #Chinasplain on reputable platform.
• Second, it took the blog Tech In Asia to take down this story. It’s not even their beat. Hell yeah blogs. Even though we don’t have the kind of staff that these news organizations (don’t worry, I don’t count HuffPo or The Daily Mail) a good blog can sometimes get it really right.
• Third, we derive a good deal of satisfaction laughing at Global Times headlines, but when US news outlets get it wrong we don’t call them on it with enough force. At least Global Times is reasonably straightforward about being a state-run propaganda rag (with some nice people at it).
• Fourth, everything Quartz said in “Westerners are so convinced China is a dystopian hellscape they’ll share anything that confirms it.”

So start making a hit list of news sites not to read on China. You might have a place to start.

Jimmy Kimmel held a “kid’s table” a couple of weeks ago and asked blah blah blah, and it was all pretty boring until some young’un said we should “kill everyone in China.” If you’re interested in the context, read up on it here. “Kill everyone in China” isn’t the best joke, even out of the mouth of a young child — it’s certainly not the best thing* Kimmel’s done with kids — but whatever, it’s Jimmy Kimmel, it’s late-night comedy, who really cares?

Turns out, a lot of people. As of late Monday, a White House petition demanding an apology had garnered 55,000 signatures. And guess what? Congrats, people, you win. Now watch as ABC performs corporate ablution in the form of an apology so that we can all get on with our lives. SCMP with this:

“We’re writing to offer our sincere apology,” read a copy of a letter obtained by the South China Morning Post sent from ABC on Saturday to 80-20 Initiative, a cyberspace-based organisation in US promoting equal opportunities for Asian Americans.

“We would never purposefully broadcast anything to upset the Chinese community, Asian community, anyone of Chinese descent or any community at large…our objective is to entertain,” read the letter signed by Lisa Berger, ABC Entertainment’s executive vice president who oversees the Jimmy Kimmel Live show, and Tim McNeal, vice president of ABC’s talent development and diversity branch.

A serious question, fellow Chinese community members: what kind of joke — something actually funny — with the word “China” or “Chinese” in it would you consider acceptable? Where’s the line that, if not crossed, won’t make you go signing an online petition as if anyone** thinks killing all Chinese people is actually a good idea?

S.B. Woo, the chairman of the 80-20 Initiative with Hong Kong roots, said he was not satisifed with the apology.

Woo added that the incident only reflected that Asian-American communities were not doing enough to have their voices heard in American society and he urged them to unite in the face of similar situations in the future. If they had done so in this case, “the outcome of this incident would have been even more satisfactory,” he said.

The outcome of this incident would have been even more satisfactory. S.B. Woo is one serious motherfucker who is NOT to be trifled with. The head of Jimmy Kimmel on a pike OR ELSE WAR.

*The actual best thing was when he brought a kid onstage to take a basketball shot to win something or other, and with all the pressure on, Kimmel jumped out of nowhere and redirected the shot into the front row. I can’t seem to find video of that.

**I know out of millions of people, at least five or six or seven might seriously get behind killing all Chinese people. But don’t be a pedant. That’s the lesson of this post. Don’t be a dirty, dirty pedant.

UPDATE, 10/31: This is bad:

UPDATE, 11/4, 3:30 pm: Here’s Kimmel apologizing on air: