Via Alicia via Facebook This is photoshopped, in case you're the type to need that kind of information explicated. Previously: Xi Jinping bobblehead does Gangnam Style. UPDATE, 11/20, 2:30 am: Someone tried putting this picture on Sina Weibo, and it was almost immediately deleted. ...

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 fo ...

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: Every time there's a leadership change in China, people start forecasting what's going to happen. Tha ...

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 earnest on November 8 when a widely-followed wit with a handle meaning “Pret ...

Whatever your feelings about American politics, it's hard to argue that Barack Obama doesn't shine on the big stage with the lone spotlight. The man knows how to deliver a message, and it's liable to be heard as clearly halfway around the world as by those closest to him. According to Tea Leaf Nation: In his acceptance speech in the early morning of November 7, re-elected U.S. President Barack Obama seemed ...

Picture via Tom Lasseter China's war of attrition with journalists continues. Hu Jintao is determined to filibuster life itself. If you're seeing the light, stop walking toward it. Get on Twitter, hashtag #18PC. https://twitter.com/chinadailyshow/status/266318867171799040 We'll update periodically here as well. ...

https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/266100652269248512 Consider this your early projection in the race for China's presidency, except there are no projections, just cold hard facts, delivered by Xinhua. Xi Jinping will be the next leader of China, as announced at this evening's preparatory meeting and press conference. On behalf of Beijing Cream, we'd like to congratulate Mr. Xi on his promotion. We're going ...

[caption id="attachment_6435" align="alignnone" width="486" caption=""Please make sure Madam Whiplash gets these pronto.""][/caption] Here's Xinhua's special slideshow of delegates of the 18th CPC National Congress arriving in Beijing. These are the good folks for whom cops shut multiple lanes of traffic from the airport to Tiananmen. Captioned with RFH. ...

By TAR Nation and RFH Ed's note: TAR and RFH have diametrically opposed opinions about Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom, starring Jeff Daniels as a news anchor who, in one lapse of honesty, sees his world turned upside-down. Characters sing "arias of facts," as the New Yorker's review put it, which sounds a lot like what news organizations closer to home -- in China -- do. So, TAR and RFH set aside their disagre ...

Two huge announcements from Xinhua this evening -- concerning two men who are more or less intricately tied -- impeccably timed for just the moment when everyone's preparing to start their holiday and stop caring about news. First: Bo Xilai has been expelled from the Communist Party of China (CPC) and his public office, according to a decision made at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Com ...

Presumptive Chinese president Xi Jinping has gone missing. He cancelled high-level meetings with Hillary Clinton and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last week, and HOLY CRAP FREAK OFF PANTS OFF. Normally rational media organizations such as the Associated bleepin' Press have published sentences such as, "More dramatically, the U.S.-based website Boxun.com cited an unidentified source inside Zhong ...

Last month we brought you a draft version of a rather incredible survey called the "Questionaire on the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC)" [sic]. We were told that "exquisite prizes will be presented to 3000 winners selected out of the overseas participants," which seemed absurd. Were they expecting 10,000 respondents? Even so, that would mean 30 percent of entrants would get an " ...

In the predawn hours of March 18, a black Ferrari 458 Spider carrying three passengers crashed into a metal guardrail under Baofusi Bridge on Fourth Ring Road. The driver, a male in his 20s, died at the scene. Two other passengers somehow survived. The driver was identified only by his surname -- Jia. It's a homonym for fake, and sure enough, as South China Morning Post now reports from behind a paywall, it ...

The political orgy known as the National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is forthcoming, and while we have no idea when it'll actually arrive on its great white horse, the relevant organs have begun taking steps to ensure that the resulting lather is a nice white sheen that masks all the ticks and warts. As but a small part of the plan, apparently they're interested in soliciting opinions fro ...

Our favorite government mouthpiece has flubbed again with the headline on its latest story (four-plus hours after its posting, it has yet to be changed). Ostensibly about a new round of rainstorms scheduled to hit this afternoon, Xinhua inadvertently draws our attention to the waves of negative reaction to the municipal government's disaster response, a sampling of which can be found on China Digital Times  ...

[caption id="attachment_3798" align="alignnone" width="490" caption="Drawing by Timothy Lyster, 5th grader, Sam Houston Elementary"][/caption] This lead by Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin is pretty much the perfect example of an online magazine lead: Echoing the laments of pundits like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood argued Saturday that China outpaces the United ...

I imagine a Chinese cadre seeing this is having heart palpitations at the moment. The picture comes from the site Hong Wrong, which is where you should be paying attention if you're interested in developments in Hong Kong's handover protests. ...

Chinese president Hu Jintao was in Hong Kong over the weekend as part of the 15th-year anniversary celebration of Hong Kong's handover from the UK. Yesterday, he dropped by the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center to swear in the somewhat unpopular Leung Chun-ying as new chief executive, but before he could, a demonstrator tried to interrupt his speech with pro-democracy slogans such as, "Vindicate Ju ...

Here is the perfect example of a Chinese state mouthpiece spinning cock out of bull. Attention: this piece, "President Hu picks up China's dignity," published on People's Daily at 1:05 pm today. Scene: G20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico; as leaders walk off after their photo op, Chinese president Hu Jintao bends over to pick up something... After posing for the family photo, all the leaders walked off the stag ...

UPDATE, 6/17, 1:19 am: Tom Grundy got in touch with us and recommended a recently posted video where you can actually clearly hear what he says. I've swapped the embed. This update continues after the jump. (1:24 am: here's a video taken from Grundy's cell phone; for more, check out his YouTube page.) Video of that citizen's arrest attempt on Tony Blair, which we alluded to yesterday in our links post (via ...