Consider Yourself Warned

The point of the GFW (Great Firewall of China) isn’t to block all access to content Beijing opposes. So much useful information would be caught up that the Internet would be useless. Rather, the point is to remind people that the system is being monitored.

Silencing Lu Xun

So why cut back on the reading of Lu Xun? One clue is the fact that present-day China resembles more and more the denouement of the Republican Period in the 1930s.

Minxin Pei gives a pessimist’s view of the Chinese economy

So Long, Lu Xun

From China comes news, reported in the Chinese-language newspaper World Journal, that the works of Lu Xun—the country’s greatest modern author, a founder of the Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers, and a longtime favorite of the Communists—are being removed from high school curricula. These classics will be replaced by contemporary fantasies about ancient knights and swordplay by the popular Hong Kong author Jin Yong. The reason for this censorship? The Tiananmen Massacre, of which Lu Xun’s works uncomfortably remind the Chinese government.

Beijing police launch Web patrols

Police in China’s capital said Tuesday they will start patrolling the Web using animated beat officers that pop up on a user’s browser and walk, bike or drive across the screen warning them to stay away from illegal Internet content.

Can Hong Kong help `green’ China?

Increasingly loud complaints about deteriorating air quality have goaded Hong Kong and Guangdong into embarking on a joint program in which a series of monitoring stations now provides emissions data. Hong Kong’s data has been released regularly, and last year, Guangdong’s data was made public for the first time. There is now talk about monitoring water quality. These are laudable steps for China, given its poor record on transparency.

China’s own Frankenstein

“A limited amount of assets is being pursued by a lot of liquid money and speculation, and this cannot be sustained in the long run. So the government has to do something to tackle the excess liquidity problem.”

Jared Diamond – how to get rich

So, the lesson I draw is that competition between entities that have free communication between them spurred on Europe. In China one despot could and did halt innovation in China. Instead, China’s experience of technological innovation came during the times when China’s unity fell apart, or when China was taken over temporarily by an outside invader.

Mental health in China

AT HOME and abroad, China’s mental-health establishment suffers image problems. Overseas, China has drawn thoroughly deserved criticism for the way it has used police-run psychiatric hospitals as political prisons. At home, the system has long been seen chiefly as a sad but necessary place to cast the severely disturbed or profoundly abnormal.

Reebok’s Chinese Trade Union: five years on

In November 2002, Reebok instigated democratic elections for a trade union in one of its shoe suppliers ….. The results of the investigation were extremely disappointing. Working conditions have deteriorated noticeably, and the trade union is doing more or less nothing to further workers’ interests. Interviews with workers uncovered widespread dissatisfaction and distrust towards the current union.