Safe From Harm
Yesterday morning in Kunming, two buses exploded, killing two people and injuring fourteen. The attacks occurred on the same bus route, spaced sixty-five minutes apart, at 7:05 and 8:10 a.m. What’s...
View ArticleEasy Come, Easy Go
The day after Ai Weiwei’s Shanghai studio was demolished, my morning mobile phone newspaper opened with the following piece entitled “National Public Relations”: From 30-second “made in China”...
View ArticleThe World According to Xinhua
The world portrayed in China’s state media has a certain disconnect to reality. Hence the joke from ordinary Chinese: “When can my life resemble the one on CCTV”? Recently President Hu visited a woman...
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The Jasmine Revolution Comes to China
It seems that the seeds of the Jasmine Flower, the symbol of the Tunisian Revolution, have spread beyond the borders of the Middle East, wafting through the air and touching down in the Far East. In...
View ArticleThe Grief Gap
Back in the 1990s, China stopped publishing official annual statistics on mental illness and suicide. The escalating numbers were too disheartening. This year, the National Center for Disease Control...
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And on the Seventh Day News Rested
Yesterday was the seventh day after the Wenzhou railway crash that claimed dozens of lives and rocked the Weibo micro-blogging universe. The seventh day after a death in China is called touqi (头七) and...
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Humor Me
Brother High-speed Rail Safety Helmet Niels Bohr once said, “Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.” Certainly, humor is one way in which the Chinese public have chosen to deal...
View ArticleRepression 101
With the Libyan Revolution seemingly nearing its end, it’s worth taking a step back to look at authoritarian regimes around the world. It brings us to the unique question of why some authoritarian...
View ArticleRepression 101: Censorship
The first and most obvious feature of how Chinese government maintains order is through censorship. The Great Firewall of China, Xinhua News, and the censorship of books and publications is merely the...
View ArticleRepression 101: Deterrence
Most repressive regimes use the total authority they possess like a hammer—midnight arrests, curfews, executions, and the like. While China also utilizes these methods to a large degree, they tend to...
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