Yes, we all know most people in China don’t mind the censorship. It’s true. Well, some do, but they look at it more as a nuisance rather than something worth fighting for. There’s the unspoken but well-understood agreement between the people and their leaders that for the sake of harmony, political expression will be controlled (sometimes violently), balanced by a relaxation of the long-time communist control of personal freedoms. And that placates just about everybody. You can’t, after all, have everything.

One great Chinese blogger, however, has always seen CCP censorship as the noose asphyxiating China’s brain cells. And after a brief respite, the noose since 2005 has only gotten tighter. Read this wonderful post about how Michael Anti views censorship in China, and why he thinks today’s generation of young Chinese is more willing to accept it than those who grew up in the echoes of Tiananmen Square’s gunfire.

Via eswn.

China Law Blog, one of my favorites, is the only China blog in the running for the American Bar Association’s best law blog award. I just voted for them, and hope you’ll do the same.

To my readers who claim CLB is a neocon, fascist, CCP-boot-licking stooge, all I can say is 1. Not true, and 2. Lighten up.

Yes, I too was disappointed that Bill Clinton lied about a blow job. But no one can say he spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars along the way to pay for his trysts, forcing the bill on agencies set up to help the disabled, and on the public defenders’ office.

What will it take to convince the American people that Rudy Giuliani is a criminal, a cronyist, a liar, a serial adulterer (which I can live with) and, all in all, the last thing we need after eight years of Bushism?

This should drive a stake right through his vampire heart. Just imagine if this kind of story came out about Hillary or Obama. Imagine. (And for any of you who cling to the myth of a “liberal media,” check out this lovely front-page story from yesterday’s WaPo. Read the comments, and read this. Yes, the “MSM” is just a conduit for liberal propaganda. Right.)

Please, stop reading my blog and go here for one of the funniest-creepiest posts ever, a description of a blogger’s trip to the Creation Museum. And skim the 600 (!) comments for more laughs. If you are too busy to click the link, here’s a samplette:

And this is, in sum, the Creation Museum. $27 million has purchased the very best monument to an enormous load of horseshit that you could possibly ever hope to see. I enjoyed my visit, admired the craft with which the whole thing was put together, and was never once convinced that what I was seeing celebrated was anything more or less than horseshit. Popular horseshit? Undoubtedly. Horseshit hallowed by tradition and consecrated by time? Just so. Horseshit of the finest possible quality? I would not argue the point. And yet, even so: Horseshit. Complete horseshit. Utter horseshit. Total horseshit. Horseshit, horseshit, horseshit, horseshit. I pity the people who swallow it whole.

And the photos! $20 for the admission ticket! And the step-by-step description of Christianism at its looniest. Just go there. And while you’re LOLing, remember, lots and lots of Americans believe this horseshit should be taught in our public schools as an “alternative theory” to evil-ution. God save us all.

Via my favorite I-was-a-Bushie-who-saw-the-light blog.

If there are any aspiring writers out there, you will not want to miss this.

Literally unbelievable. Sounds like it could have been written by one of my commenters. And they pay that guy to write this stuff.

A grim and grimly amusing article, beautifully written, about a “vacation” spent in the utopian paradise that is North Korea’s capitol. Some samples:

If you are very lucky and honored, you may penetrate the Kumsusan Memorial Palace. This was the home of the Great Leader when he was ordinarily alive, kept going in his later years by a special diet of extra-long dog penises. Today, it is his mausoleum, where he lives forever in the extraordinary fashion devised for him by whoever actually controls this country. This is no mere Lenin’s Tomb but a temple of awe, where devotees must have the dust blasted from their clothes and shoes before approaching the sacred body and bowing deeply.

I was not considered worthy to go there, but was allowed to lay flowers at, and bow to, the bronze image of Kim that gleams on a hill above the city - and used to gleam a great deal more before the gold leaf that once adorned it was stripped off. It is widely believed that the extravagant coating was removed in one night after the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping remarked dryly that if North Korea could afford such a display, it surely did not really need the Chinese economic aid for which it was asking.

North Korea is a small, isolated, stagnant pond left over from the flood of Marxism-Leninism, which long ago receded. But it has nowhere to drain away. Far too many people, not all of them in Pyongyang, have an interest in keeping it as it is. It still has the capacity to do terrible things but mainly to its own citizens. A serious policy would aim to find a way to help it escape from the political and economic trap in which it finds itself. Threats, name-calling, and the pretence that this shambles of a country is a serious world power are unlikely to achieve this. It is more to be pitied than to be feared.

Do read it all; it’s long and there’s lots of good stuff. Yes, we all know already how surreal life is over there, but this is a good reminder that it’s still just as god-awful as ever, and maybe even a bit worse than the last time we checked.

If so, you may want to read this to remember what life can be like out there in “the other China.” Devastating. And those pictures…

That said, the response of the local population and the attention this has received in the media are truly encouraging.

The great Ken (chinesepod.com) Carroll takes on the mighty Economist in an outspoken and entertaining post on his brand new blog. He actually makes the poor reporter look pretty ridiculous.

I love the Economist, but it ran an incredibly weak article today - False Eastern promise whose sub-heading tells us that the ‘craze for teaching Chinese may be a misguided fad’. The craze for teaching Chinese may just be a fad? May be a fad?

Of course it’s possible that this is a fad, but what precisely is that saying? There’s a lot of things that may or may not happen out there, that may or may not be fads, no end of things we could speculate wildly upon without providing data. Why this particular issue? The premise is so vague, speculative, unsubstantiated, and out of the blue, that you have to wonder where the author suddenly got the idea from. It’s bizarre.

That said, I think for many people caught up in the “we must learn Chinese” mass movement it really is a time-wasting fad, because there is no love for the language and no deep-hearted commitment to it: Based on wildly exaggerated articles they’ve read about China being on the verge of becoming the next superpower, they think it’s a necessary business decision, that by the time their kids grow up all business will be conducted in Mandarin and those who can’t read a Chinese newspaper with perfect tones will be left in the cold. Which is a complete snow job.

Learning Chinese is great. It is hard for most people, but not at all impossible. Everyone who is interested in China and who wants to live here or who loves languages and wants to expand their horizons should give it a try. But if you’re jumping onto the bandwagon because you think Chinese is the way of the future, you’re in for a double surprise. 1. Chinese is not going to become the international business language anytime while we’re still alive (if ever); 2. If your heart isn’t really in it, little of the language will stick and you will give up frustrated and annoyed at yourself for wasting so much time you could have spent learning macrame or other more practical things.

I only have time nowadays for about two hours of Chinese lessons a week. At this rate, I’ll probably never be above an elementary level. But every day I spend at least an hour studying, and I have Chinese Pod and other lessons playing in my apartment rather constantly. Over the past year I learned a few hundred characters and doubled my vocabulary on my own. Because I love the language and feel that with each phrase I learn the more rich my experience here can be. I have no illusions that I will ever conduct business in Chinese or write proposals in hanzi. But I am still completely committed to it, and I spend the majority of my time when I’m not working studying Chinese.

So yes, there is a fad element to the learn-Chinese stampede. But it’s also a great undertaking and everyone who really wants to learn it should go for it. If, however, you think it’s going to make you rich, or if you think it’s a magic bullet for survival in the age of “China rising,” you’re going at it for the wrong reason and will most likely give it up and feeling kind of bitter about it.

The Taipei Times has reported today that the mayor of Taipei, Hau Lung-bin (KMT), has threatened to refuse ballots to anyone who does not follow a “two-stage” voting process, where individuals take a ballot for the legislative election, casts it and then must return for ballot papers concerning two referenda.

Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) reiterated his government’s determination to follow the two-step voting procedure for the Jan. 12 poll yesterday and warned that voters who refused to follow the procedure would not be given ballots. The Central Election Commission (CEC) decided last Friday to use a one-step voting process, in which voters would receive the ballots for the legislative elections and two referendums together at the entrance to polling stations.

The 18 pan-blue-governed cities and counties, however, have said they will employ a two-step voting process. “Anyone who fails to follow the two-step voting procedure, including the president and all other politicians, will not be given ballots. They will give up their right to vote,” Hau said.

One referendum was proposed by the KMT, giving voters the opportunity to express their opinions about fighting corruption. The one more likely to pass, sponsored by the DPP, is intended to force the KMT to return its illegally obtained assets to the State, which it amassed whilst in government.

Early on all the main parties had lobbied the CEC to organise the election in terms they saw more favourable. The KMT and PFP wanted the referenda ballots to be handed out later so that turnout on the proposals would be lower, hopefully meaning the DPP one would not pass (their’s was generally a ploy to counter-act the support for the other). The DPP and TSU wanted all the ballots to be handed out at the same time to increase turnout so that hopefully their’s would pass. In the end the CEC found in favour of the DPP and TSU, stating all ballots would be handed out at the same time in order to protect voter privacy (if people returned for a referendum ballot it was argued party officials would know how they voted, as opponents are encouraged to boycott the referenda so that the turnout doesn’t exceed the minimum level).

The Pan-Blue cities and counties reacted that actually they could hold the elections as they pleased anyway and would use the two-stage format. This was a rather empty argument, as if that were the case there would have been no point in petitioning the CEC in the first place - unless they had wanted to force the Pan-Green areas to accept a two-stage format as well. By trying to turn the CEC to their position the Pan-Blue camp acknowledged its authority in the matter.

However, the mayor of Taipei has shot the Pan-Blues in the foot. Previously, they may have got away with the disagreement over voting format. With no way to actively force local election officials to use the one-stage format, the CEC could only warn them that they may face prosecution or have their funds cut - the KMT promised to make up the shortfall themselves (doubtlessly out of their own ill-gotten funds). But by now refusing to let people vote if they won’t follow the two-stage format, Hau (and anyone else who followed him) would be causing a serious electoral crime in denying people their right to vote. Not only could he face criminal prosecution if he made good on his threat, but I think the CEC would refuse to verify the results from the areas where voters were not given their ballot papers. There was always the possibility of this if people were simply not given their referenda ballots and they asked for them, but if they can’t vote in the main election there’s no way the CEC would let that stand.

As a result, at the very least the results for the affected constituencies would not be allowed to stand and the CEC would probably insist on another round of elections for those locations. At worst, the whole election would have to be held again and the Pan-Blues would be held responsible. Not giving out referenda ballots is one thing, but depriving people of their right to vote would not go down well with most Taiwanese.

And for what? Even if the DPP referendum passes it won’t necessarily result in a new law - the legislative would still need to agree on something. If the Pan Blues controlled it they could block it - if the Pan Greens won the election they’d bring the law in even if the referendum failed. Also, I don’t believe that receiving referenda ballots at the same time as the legislative ballots will change the vote - most people know how they will vote before they arrive at the ballot station, as otherwise they’d stay at home. The only way the referenda can affect the election is by influencing people before they go to the polling station. So in many ways the Pan Blues’ refusal to comply with the CEC can only hurt them. They won’t benefit in any real way even if the referenda fail, and they can only hurt their image by so brazenly trying to push their own agenda.

Sometimes you don’t get your way - the KMT and PFP need to learn that they can’t win every time. They didn’t accept that in 2004 when they lost the Presidential election, and they don’t appear to have learnt that now. Hopefully, if they lose the Presidential vote next year, they’ll do some soul-searching and learn how to trust the people to make the right choice - implying voters are too stupid to know what to do with a handful of ballot papers (when in the past they managed with five different votes in one go) won’t win them support. Otherwise they’ll stay in Opposition for the foreseeable future.