A mere two days after 21 were killed in violent attacks in Bachu county, Kashgar, including six police and six ethnic Uighurs, Beijing has politicized the incident, using it to call out the United States for failing to condemn the attacks as "terrorism." Reuters:
But the U.S. State Department on Wednesday merely expressed regret at the loss of life and urged China to "provide all Chinese citizens, including Uighurs, the due process protections to which they're entitled."
Just about anyone not holding a select diplomatic or South Korean passport can travel to North Korea. All it takes is money, which you give to a tour agency. They’ll even take you to the countryside if that’s what you’re after. It’s only the hucksters who try to dress up their North Korean trip as... Read more »
Anne Ishii, writer/translator in New York, writing in Slate: Martin Luther King Jr. said… Please stop. …we should be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin, but no one said anything about what’s in our pants. Oh fuck. There is an unspeakable fallacy that all Asian-American men must decide... Read more »
The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television is a yawning cunt of beigest ninnies and bacillus. It’s written right there in its mission statement: Our function is to research and promote the insipid, hackneyed humdrum of popular media while bowdlerizing, inside the deep recess of our cave of assery, all that is good, interesting, real, or... Read more »
In a December interview on a Phoenix TV talk show, Jackie Chan made comments that Western media have recently described as "anti-American" -- ...really? I think his comments regarding America are immature, but they're not without reason. What a lot of reporting has ignored is that Chan was speaking in Chinese on a Chinese television channel, and the message he was delivering to a Chinese audience was this: “Yes, China has flaws, but if you talk about our country's shortcomings with foreigners, they'll misinterpret the message.”
More than a few journalists and observers have averred the significance of the Southern Weekly "incident," but the actual story has appeared to fall short of their expectations. As I wrote two days ago, "But is this really a watershed moment for media rights in China, as some hope... or will we return to our jobs soon and let the more vested parties enter negotiations on the future of both Tuo Zhen and Southern Weekly?" There's nothing wrong with hoping, but as Zhongnanhai points out, sometimes we would do well to step back to view the story in its proper context.
Bad articles deserve to die a silent, lonely death. Really bad articles, however, deserve to be thrown into the public stocks and ridiculed. This one from Daily Mail belongs with the latter. It begins: Ravaged by hunger and desperate for food, these are the sad pictures which show just how needy families in China are. Oh... Read more »
Chen Kegui, nephew of blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng, was sentenced to 39 months in jail for his role in fighting back hired thugs and local officials who had broken into his home on April 27. The man slashed three officials — out of a group of about 20 of the most spineless, chicken-livered, piss-poor excuses... Read more »
The flagship CPC newspaper People’s Daily is, well, it’s a bit, you know. It’s rubbish. The design is terrible, the editorials are as pleasant as a shirt of broken glass and Captain Crunch, they have military equipment on their flash home page every day and their non-CPC related stories have the detached insouciance of a disabled child petting a kitten too hard.
The Party Congress is, mercifully, over. For those of us here in Beijing, it feels good, like a massive cold-water colon cleanse. Now with the brown-nosers out of the city, we can reflect.
Now that it’s over, I mourn the loss of the banners.
The propaganda rags had a few different roles to play during the Congress. 1) Don’t report bad news. 2) Make sure everyone loves the Congress. 3) Love our dear leaders. 4) Publish editorial rimjobs about the Party Congress. 5) Convince people that change will happen gradually, after they die. 6) Hate the US and their pussy-ass elections. 7) Bang on about the Party Congress, no matter how boring and un-news-like, until you kill yourself, go on, do it, just kill yourself. Do it. You pansy. Go on. You don’t have the balls, do you? Do it. DO IT!
