China Readings for January 2nd

"Sinocism is the Presidential Daily Brief for China hands"- Evan Osnos, New Yorker Correspondent and National Book Award Winner

  • Shady Investments, Cloudy Official Response – Caixin Online – The only thing more opaque than the futures exchanges that have sprung up around China is how the government will rein them in
  • new tiger in town: happy new years i’m not dead!– Well, it turns out this is twenty-first century America, where achievement precludes happiness and psychologists hold panels called “Tiger Moms and Childhood Trauma.” Have they even read my mom’s book? Of course not, they read the Wall Street Journal excerpt and are boycotting the book on principle. Every troll has a constitutional right to trash that Asian witch and her brainwashed daughters in every far-flung corner of the internet. But they would never buy her book, hell no, it’s all a moneymaking scheme and if you think you can trick them into funding Chinese supremacy, guess again. (How do I feel about that? Well, I support your lawful right to say whatever you want. I also support my playground right to break your nose if you call my mother names.) At least judge the book by its cover, people! The cover says it’s a story of being “humbled by a thirteen year old!”Ever since I was little, my parents have told me not to care what other people say about you. My dad is especially good at that, which is why he has been kicked out of various establishments for insubordination and chased out of restaurants by angry French chefs. When the book came out and the commentary came in, I wanted so badly to be that type of person. I succeeded halfway: I was able to shake off strangers’ opinions of me, but their words started to change my opinion of myself.  I started to question Carnegie Hall, my schoolwork, and everything else I was proud of. Was I the one who had achieved my goals and dreams, or had it just been my mom standing over my shoulder the whole time?
  • China Herald: 53 reasons I cannot believe in the upcoming collapse of China – Now, we wake up in 2012, and Gordon Chang announced in Foreign Policy he second edition of the Upcoming Collapse of China. The comments under the article predict that he new prediction might not be taken for granted by many, like it was a decade ago.
    Telling fairy tells is a useful skill, and actually, one of these days, when doomsday scenario #83 turns out to be true, I’m on the wrong side of history as a reversed skeptic. China has collapsed a few times dramatically in its rich history, so it is a chance that might still become true.
    But not now, and not very soon. And it is about time, Gordon Chang finds a new fairy tale to tell.
  • Amazon.com: No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems (9780674061477): Xiaobo Liu, Perry Link, Tienchi Martin-Liao, Xia Liu, Vaclav Havel: Books
  • Liu Xiaobo’s Plea for the Human Spirit – NYTimes.com– By JONATHAN MIRSKY“I have no enemies, and no hatred.” Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, spoke those words on Dec. 23, 2009, just before he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for “incitement of subversion of state power.” It was his fourth jail term since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. Liu is the only Chinese citizen to win any Nobel while living in China and, as Perry Link notes in introducing a new collection of Liu’s writings, one of only five Nobel Peace Prize winners unable to appear in Oslo to receive the gold medal: “In 1935, Carl von Ossietzky was held in a Nazi prison; in 1975, Andrei Sakharov was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union; in 1983, Lech Walesa feared he would be barred from re-entering Poland if he went to Oslo; and in 1991, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest in Burma.”
  • 凡客的抉择:低价上市还是继续等待? – 家电·电商 – 21世纪网 – Vancl in trouble?
  • Censors Pull Reins as China TV, Chasing Profit, Gets Racy – NYTimes.com– Then regulators formulated a sweeping policy that takes effect on Sunday and effectively wipes out scores of entertainment shows on prime-time television. The authorities evidently determined that trends inspired by “If You Are the One” and a popular talent show, “Super Girl,” had gone too far, and they responded with a policy to curb what they call “excessive entertainment.”That a dating show could help set off the toughest crackdown on television in years exposes the growing tension at the heart of the Communist Party’s control of the entertainment industry. For decades, the party has pushed television networks here to embrace the market, but conservative cadres have grown increasingly fearful of the kinds of programs that court audiences, draw advertising and project a global image not shaped by the state. Television, after all, occupies a singular position in the state’s media arsenal: with its 1.2 billion viewers and more than 3,000 channels, it is the party’s greatest vehicle for transmitting propaganda, whether through the evening news or staid historical dramas.
  • William Farris – Google+ – China’s Internet Censorship Year-In-Review 2011: Part I …
  • William Farris – Google+ – China’s Internet Censorship Year-In-Review 2011: Part I -…
  • 沦陷的互联网:安全投入不足1% – 产经 – 21世纪网 – IT支出薄如蝉翼,使得网站的安全性大打折扣,这才让用户信息的大规模泄漏成为可能。