Fool’s Mountain: Blogging for China

As Beijing Olympics closed, the Internet censorship in China further tightened. Undeniably, this deterioration has affected and frustrated an increasing number of netizens in China. Continue reading »

This post was submitted by BI Yantao.

McCain seems to be getting a little desperate.  He seems to be pulling all stops (including going negative and aggressive against Obama) and most recently also trying to inject some foreign politiking into his campaign. Continue reading »

Daizong Meditation Room, established by Professor BI Yantao, is designed to promote the political communication studies in China and advance the democratization of the Chinese mainland. Situated at the foot of the world-famous Mount Taishan, Daizong Meditation Room is the first non-profit research center of its kind in China. It is open to all interested researchers over the world, free of charge. To push our career forward, donations of books, essays, diaries, etc. on political communication studies are welcome. For more information, please contact BI Yantao via bytaishan@sina.com. Thank you.

This post was submitted by Billy.

Prologue: On my last trip back to China I brought back some reprints of Republican-era books. The following musings are based on my hasty reading notes.

Abstract: The Chinese society functions well when the stuff of its elite works. The American society functions well when the stuff of its elite works and is embraced by its masses (which is far from automatic). The challenge for the Chinese society is that historically the stuff of its elite (e.g., Confucianism, Legalism and revolutionary socialism) has often failed to work. The challenge for the American society is that the stuff of its elite (e.g., science, education and secular humanism) is often rejected by its masses. Continue reading »

A Mainlander uses the Made in China dairy scandal to spoof arguments commonly made by the Chinese government, fenqing, and other blindingly patriotic Mainlanders. Continue reading »

This post was submitted by Joel.

The problem of Chinese powdered and liquid milk producers lacing their products with industrial chemicals has left the Chinese public (especially the parents) in panic. The facts of this crisis have been well-documented. I have a few thoughts about its implications. Continue reading »

I’ve been reading a lot of bloggs on this topic. It seems a lot are written by patients and asked for by the clinics (or by the clinics). I do not how many are true or just for propaganda. If you have a real case success or failure, please let us know.

This post was submitted by TonyP4.

I have been following this year’s US election. As an onlooker, there is some kind of entertaining element in my interest. But, at the same time, I am asking myself how it would be like if this election process was run in China, a country of 1.3 billion population. Since i don’t know the US election process very well, I am asking simple questions here: how feasible is democracy or how to put it in practice in a large country without it being downgraded to image competition? Continue reading »

This post was submitted by sophie.

Here’s a bit from a famous poem by a famous colonial-era British author. I’ll put the original and then an updated version, since his English is old and a little hard to understand. It’s from “The Ballad of East and West,” by Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Continue reading »

This post was submitted by Joel.

Two of the most commented threads over the last week relate to Tibet.  Even a neutral posting on the administration of the website has also somehow “devolved” into a debate over Tibet.

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For all the talk about democracy leading up to the Olympics, perhaps it is time - in the wake of the Olympics - to take a step back and ponder about what democracy really is.

An interesting article appeared in the New Yorker earlier this month about the process of politics. Digging under the hood of democratic politics, it tries to explore two strains of forces that in real life can be di-opposed: rough and tumble democracy v. good governance and social policy.

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I thought I’d bring to people’s attention to a recent Op Ed from Tony Blair in the Wall Street Journal on the Rise of China and the Olympics. I think the piece is interesting as a genuine attempt by a Western Leader (or at least a former Western leader) to understand - in good faith - the Rise of China and the Olympics. Continue reading »

Overshadowed by the Olympics, the news of the passing away of a former supreme leader of China, Hua Guofeng 华国锋, on August 20, 2008 wasn’t particularly noticed by many. I would like to use this post to pay respect to Chairman Hua, as he was once called when I was in my childhood, and offer condolences to his family and friends.
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H/T to David Peng for pointing out this article written by Assaf Lichtash and published in the Jerusalem Post. David also pointed out an interesting discussion thread on this article in Chination Report. Continue reading »

For a change of topic from the Olympics, please check out two recent discussion threads at Talking Point Memo: “Out of Mao’s Shadow” and its followup “Do not underestimate the CCP”. Continue reading »

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On Wednesday, Mr. Gorbachev wrote an opinion piece in New York Times commenting on the South Ossetia crises. The following passage sounded eerily familiar: Continue reading »

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I have followed the responses to David Brooks’ essay “Harmony and the Dream” published in the New York Times with interest ever since first reading James Fallows mercilessly picking Brooks’ theme apart. There have been others joining the “onslaught” as well since then. Elliott Ng has now compiled a nice summary of Brooks’ thesis and various responses online. It is well worth a read.

Note: The following is a translation of a post by “zl19860707″ in 铁血论坛 Tiexue Forum, one of the popular online bulletin boards in China. This post was responding to the words spoken by the Chinese shooting athlete 谭宗亮 Tan Zongliang after he won the bronze in the men’s 50m pistol event on August 12. Beijing 2008 is the fourth Olympics Tan has competed in, and this bronze is the first of any kind he has received. (Tan, by the way, now officially owns a silver medal because the North Korean shooter ahead of him failed subsequent doping tests.)

Do not pressure athletes into saying sorry

Tan Zongliang said: “I feel that I have let the country down by winning only a single bronze through four Olympics.”
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