From today’s Global Times.

The country’s Tibetan-populated regions are in a party mood as the Tibetan New Year, or Losar, falls today, striking a stark contrast with the call by the “Tibetan government in exile” to cancel celebrations.

Decorations decked Lhasa’s main streets, and local people were busy with last-minute preparations for their most important festival of the year.

Yonten, the head of publicity and education with Drepung Monastery on the outskirts of Lhasa, told the Global Times that families have cleaned up the buildings, prepared heaps of food and purchased new Tibetan garments as the Tibetan Year of the Water Dragon drew near.

“Markets in the city were crowded Tuesday with shoppers snapping up fruits, beverages and other goods for the holiday. We will get up before sunrise tomorrow morning in brand new clothes,” Yonten said.

Take a look at the photo, too. China’s minorities always wear such bright, colorful costumes.

This is not a post about Tibet per se but about how the Chinese media sugarcoats stories about it to the point of making these stories self-parodying and downright embarrassing. (This old post is my favorite example.)

About Tibet, let me just say I understand the Tibetan and the Chinese points of view. About who is right and wrong, we can leave that for another discussion, as it has been over-discussed already. My sole point here is how the Chinese government portrays Tibet in the media. Do they truly believe anyone fails to see it as rather desperate propaganda?

You absolutely must see the new Next Media Animation’s great video on Kim Jong Il’s passing. Go there now.

You should also see the Global Times’ special page on what China’s Foreign Minister calls “the unfortunate passing of Kim Jong Il.” They also print the reactions of Chinese netizens, my favorite of which makes a plea to Kim’s successor, “Don’t abuse the people by stripping them of democracy and imposing authoritarian rule.” Because, as we all know, the utopia of North Korea enjoyed a thriving democracy.

It’s not good to speak ill of the dead, but this is a glaring exception. Kim, I hope you enjoy the flames of hell for all eternity.

This is an open thread.

[Note: Whatever you do, don’t miss Math’s classic comment to this post.]

As you all know by now, Ai Weiwei is out on bail and has confessed to the crime of tax evasion (the usual charge against dissidents). I heard him interviewed by the BBC today, and all he could say, sheepishly, is that he’s home now and cannot comment on anything. Released, despite what my friend from the Global times told me eight weeks ago:

“Let Ai Weiwei go? But Richard, how can we do that? How can China admit to the world it is being defeated, it is bowing to international pressure and not doing what is right for China? How can we humilate ourselves like that?”

Well, apparently China has bitten the bullet and humiliated itself. Maybe global outrage really can work, at least in high-profile cases like this. To me, this biting of the bullet makes China look better, at least a little bit, than if they’d kept Ai Weiwei hidden away under lock and key. It is less humiliating for China than appearing weak and terrified by an activist artist. From today’s NY Times:

The release of Mr. Ai, 54, who is widely known and admired outside China, appeared to be a rare example in recent years of China’s bowing to international pressure on human rights. Mr. Ai was the most prominent of hundreds of people detained since China intensified a broad crackdown on critics of the government in February, when anonymous calls for mass protests modeled after the revolutions in the Middle East percolated on the Chinese Internet.

China’s move to douse any flicker of dissent was the harshest in many years outside restive ethnic regions in the far west, and the vast majority of those detained in the crackdown were, like Mr. Ai, held in secret locations for weeks with no legal justification.

Chinese officials announced in May that the authorities were investigating Mr. Ai on suspicion of tax evasion, after police officers took him from the main Beijing airport on April 3 as Mr. Ai prepared to board a flight to Hong Kong. Supporters of Mr. Ai said the tax inquiry was a pretext to silence one of the most vocal critics of the Chinese Communist Party.

Right, they arrested him and held him in a secret location for three months because he evaded taxes. The tax evasion thingy is kind of droll, considering China’s hyperbolic response 8 weeks ago to the international outrage over Ai’s disappearance. Remember the Global Times rant in response to the international outcry? [Update: Wow, it looks like this link has gone dead! Wonder why.]

It is reckless collision against China’s basic political framework and ignorance of China’s judicial sovereignty to exaggerate a specific case in China and attack China with fierce comments before finding out the truth. The West’s behavior aims at disrupting the attention of Chinese society and attempts to modify the value system of the Chinese people.

Ai Weiwei likes to do something “others dare not do.” He has been close to the red line of Chinese law. Objectively speaking, Chinese society does not have much experience in dealing with such persons. However, as long as Ai Weiwei continuously marches forward, he will inevitably touch the red line one day.

Tax evasion indeed. I am thrilled he has been released. Let’s not forget, however, that there’s a long list of other less high-profile “tax evaders” who remain in custody.

Amnesty International is calling for the immediate release of Ai Weiwei’s four associates Wen Tao, Hu Mingfen, Liu Zhenggang and Zhang Jinsong, who all disappeared into secret detention after Ai was detained.

Ai Weiwei is one of over 130 activists, lawyers, bloggers and tweeters detained since February in a sweeping crackdown on dissent prompted by government fears of a ‘Jasmine Revolution’ inspired by the Middle East and North Africa.

Let’s hope the CCP’s sweet forbearance and beneficence continue, and that the rest of the detainees are soon freed. (And no, I’m not recommending you hold your breath.)

What could be more enjoyable than watching 28 movies promoted by SARFT to celebrate the 90th birthday of the Chinese Communist Party? The Global Times gushes:

Jian Dang Wei Ye (Beginning of the Great Revival, or The Founding of a Party), a movie chronicling the history of the Communist Party of China (CPC), premiered in Beijing on Wednesday. It is among 28 movies promoted by the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the CPC, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

….The movie is one of the films promoted by the SARFT for the Party’s anniversary.

Tong Gang, director of the SARFT, said at a promotion event on Tuesday that SARFT had selected 28 movies for recommendation and added that these movies serve as a report that the Chinese movie industry has submitted to the CPC and the Chinese people, according to Xinhua on Wednesday.

The 28 movies include a profile of Qian Xuesen, CPC member and pioneer of Chinese missile and space projects, a movie depicting the rebuilding of the quake-hit Beichuan in Sichuan Province and a movie about the development of the J-10 fighter jet.

Tong asked the distributors to “be highly aware of the films’ political and social responsibilities” when showing the movies.

Twenty-eight propaganda movies to celebrate a birthday no one gives a crap about except the birthday boy. That’s probably about 60 hours worth of propaganda. Can you imagine being forced to watch 60 hours of CCTV? Because I suspect that’s what it will feel like.

And Tong is basically admitting this is pure propaganda. Will the Chinese people really flock to see these movies?

After my last post about People’s Daily, at least one reader asked me via email why I bother posting about articles in the Chinese media that rail against the West, since they are so consistently preposterous. And the reader has a point. These columns from People’s Daily and Global Times and China Daily tend to repeat the same tiresome theme, namely that the West is determined to make China look bad, to undermine the CCP, to somehow harm China. These memes become ingrained in the Chinese psyche (not across the board, of course) and are echoed in countless blog posts and comments and message boards. I know entire blogs (or at least one) that seem to focus solely on this theme of China’s victimization.

So why bother? First of all, being a media junkie I find the explosive responses infinitely fascinating, I admit. More importantly, I believe contemporary China can’t really be understood without having insight into this phenomenon, without understanding the raw sensitivities of so many Chinese people (especially the young). I had to deal with this mentality on a daily basis when I was living in China. My young colleagues truly believed Anti-CNN was gospel, and that the US media, in partnership with the US government, actively conspired to defame China and make it look atrocious, with the ultimate goal of stymieing China’s growth and keeping it weak and under the control of its former imperialist masters. This sentiment is real.

Which is all a long way to build up to today’s atrocity from People’s Daily, highlighted in a most interesting piece in the NY Times. Looking at it today, I saw another reason why documenting these stories is important: they reflect a growing hostility and brazenness that has deep implications for China’s future relations with the West.

You all know by now about Google’s new charges against alleged Chinese hackers breaking into gmail accounts of activists, foreign officials and other high-profile users. People’s Daily, in a front-page editorial under the headline, “Google, What Do You Want?” responded with savagery:

“Many international bystanders believe that Google’s charge is thickly tainted with political colors, and one can’t dismiss the fact that Google is taking advantage and provoking new Sino-American Internet security disputes with sinister intentions. Today’s Google really makes one wring one’s hands. What was once a model of leading Internet innovation has now become a political tool for slandering other countries.”

….Once the international winds change, Google might become a political sacrifice and might be discarded by the market.”

[I’d love to ask them who those “many international bystanders” are. I can only think of only one who might step forward to hump the CCP’s leg.]

Needless to say, revenge against Google was swift.

In the days after Google’s latest accusation, Chinese users of Gmail and the popular Google Maps service have seen connections slow to a crawl, while the same services accessed over private networks have remained trouble-free.

Chinese officials have attributed Google’s service problems to technical issues that do not involve the government, and they have denied any government role in hacking Google computers or e-mail accounts.

Google had little to gain by making these accusations. It has already seen its market share trounced by Baidu, especially since its accusations against Chinese hackers last year, and I think they’ve been resigned for a long time to being number two (or lower) when it comes to Chinese search. As the NYT article says, however, they’re making their profits in China from advertising, with revenues growing year over year and a staff of 500. I see no reason why Google would make these accusations if they weren’t fairly certain they were true. At this point, what’s in it for them? Was the Chinese government behind the attacks? I don’t think anyone can say for sure, but there is certainly plenty of circumstantial evidence (just look at the list of those who’ve had their gmail accounts hacked).

As one Washington Post commentator maintained today, this is actually a non-story. Everyone knows what Chinese hackers are up to:

The big surprise: This story made front-page news.

Hackers in China, who most security experts believe work for the Chinese government, have been whacking away at Gmail accounts of Chinese citizens for years and have previously hacked into accounts of prominent U.S. journalists and businesspeople working in the Middle Kingdom

It’s pretty much an open secret. Every correspondent in China knows it. And yet whenever it’s brought to light the Chinese media goes into paroxysms of rage and finger-pointing, to the extent of accusing Google of trying to sabotage US-Chinese relations. This is what amazes me and is why I bother to write this sort of thing up: it’s the sheer vitriol of China’s reaction, dripping with veiled threats, and their need to put this on the front page of their newspapers. The lady doth protest far too much, methinks.

This post is a bit all over the place, but I think you get my point.

We all know the line abut Tiananmen Square, that we can only thank God the CCP saved China from chaos by cracking down on the protesters by whatever means necessary. This argument was carried to another extreme in the case of Russia, where the rapid switch to democracy plunged the nation into chaos. Every schoolchild in China knows about that. And now Egypt. Seems like whenever a dictatorship is threatened, the CCP feels the need to desperately convince its citizens that change equals chaos.

Egypt may well be facing chaos. Russia indeed went through a long period of chaos. The protests in Tiananmen Square were nothing if not chaotic. But sometimes chaos is part of a phase toward stability. Often the relatively brief period of chaos ultimately leads to something better than the decades of oppression that preceded it. But that’s not how the CCP sees it, and they were lightening-swift in branding the Egyptian protests as an invitation to chaos.

Censoring the Internet is not the only approach. The Chinese government has also tried to get out ahead of the discussion, framing the Egyptian protests in a few editorials and articles in state-controlled news publications as a chaotic affair that embodies the pitfalls of trying to plant democracy in countries that are not quite ready for it — a line China’s leaders have long held.

The English-language edition of Global Times, a populist newspaper, ran an editorial on Sunday about the Tunisian and Egyptian protests with the headline “Color revolutions will not bring about real democracy.” Though Global Times is not the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, the message of the editorial was consistent with official thinking, saying bluntly that whether democracy “is applicable in other countries is in question, as more and more unsuccessful examples arise.”

….Some of the news coverage of Egypt that has appeared in People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s main newspaper, and Xinhua, the official news agency, has focused on attempts by China to evacuate its citizens, simply leaving out the political discontent at the root of the unrest.

Of course, if I didn’t know better, I might think the party was nervous about its own people seeing what’s going on in Egypt as a good thing, and getting their own ideas about how it might be time to try the same approach in China. Now, as I said in my last post, this is a pretty groundless fear. There is no reason to believe the Chinese will take to the streets and risk life and limb to tear down a regime that most of them see as a vast improvement over what they had before, or that they at worst see as a necessary evil. But the CCP always gets the jitters when it sees people anywhere rising up to demand democratic reforms.

The “C word” is a very powerful tool for convincing people to shut their pie holes and get back to work and be happy for what they’ve got. For a society taught at birth to prize harmony over nearly everything else, nothing can be more terrifying than the threat of chaos. So it’s hardly a surprise to see the propgandists spinning their wheels to get the chaos meme out there, while censoring like mad to keep awareness of the Egyptian protests at a minimum. They have to worry that a lot of Chinese people are watching Egypt closely, despite the censorship and propaganda:

….Zhao Jing, a liberal Chinese blogger who goes by the name of Michael Anti, said that “it was amazing netizens on Twitter cared about Egypt so much” that they had begun drawing parallels between China and Egypt. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was being called Mu Xiaoping, a reference to Deng Xiaoping, who quashed the 1989 popular protests in Beijing, while Tahrir Square in Cairo was being compared to Tiananmen Square.

But that interest isn’t translating into rebellion. The government should be a little more secure. They’ve made it nearly impossible for a challenger to arise and take their place, and despite the buzz on China’s social networks, the Chinese are in no mood for another Tiananmen Square. Conditions would have to be a lot worse, with more people convinced they had nothing to lose. Maybe someday not too far off, but not today.

My former employer The Global Times wants to know.

Is there a “plot” among the Western countries against China? In answer to this, few Chinese people would give a definitive answer. However, actions taken by the West have forced Chinese citizens to speculate about this matter.

Tomorrow will see the ceremony for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, which has been awarded to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who has devoted himself to subverting the government. Furthermore, at the invitation of the Nobel committee, several dissidents who are hostile toward the Chinese government, will converge in Oslo from around the world.

The modern world is much like a sports arena, in which China has passed the first round and qualified for the final. As a newcomer, China may not be well prepared, with sloppy technique, lacking audience support and seeming like a stranger to the surroundings. China has no other choice but to fight on in the competition, strictly following the rules set by others.

Suddenly, boos and catcalls resound from the stands, from the Westerners in the pricey seats. Worse than this, the referee blows the whistle against China, amid jeers from cheerleaders and media, relishing exposing China’s “scandals.” What can the Chinese team do?

…The West has shown great creativity in conspiring against China. With its ideology remaining dominant at present, the West has not ceased harassing China with all kinds of tricks like the Nobel Peace Prize.

It might be advisable for China not to buy the conspiracy theory, for communication would be much smoother if given the benefit of the doubt. However, China has to maintain its independence in thinking and ensure its discerning ability is not swayed by outside powers. As long as China can keep its independent judgment, its security will be ensured even when faced with a conspiracy.

Love the sports metaphor.

This is one kooky editorial. It’s loaded with gems that are typical of the angrier commenters here: the West is intentionally and strategically seeking to hobble China; the West is self-righteous and hypocritical and sanctimonious, going after a benevolent, peace-loving China while engulfing the world in chaos; China must gird its loins and fight against those powers that seek to harm it. These powers wish only bad for China. These powers hate China.

Despite a series of spats and misunderstandings between China and the West, globalization is forcing the country to adapt to co-existing with the “noble countries” in the West. China has to act discreetly, obeying rules set by the West and trying not to disturb their interests when seeking to safeguard its own welfare. Meanwhile, these “noble countries” launch broadsides at China’s actions, even where no wrongdoing exists.

Do they really not get that in the eyes of civilized nations the idea of jailing a dissident for 11 years for seeking democratic reforms is unpleasant? That the civilized nations react the same way to political repression in Myanmar and Zimbabwe and other nations?

One thing I liked about Global Times was their tendency to balance the more hysterical editorials and columns with more sensible voices. I remember editing a particularly vitriolic column by a former general that all but advocated war over the South China Sea. This was tempered by a far less psychotic response that noted the weakness of China’s navy and its utter unpreparedness for war. It urged a more moderate approach, like negotiating. I mention this because I’m hoping they’ll follow this pattern now. Editorials like this, with no balancing voice, will make China appear kukoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Via Shanghaiist, which has its own excellent response to the insanity.

First let me say this post is a rip-off from a new blog that came to my attention that you should go take a look at. It just started, but the posts that are there are all high-quality.

The post in question relates to a recent Global Times article about one of our favorite topics, namely the imbalance of Chinese men dating Western women compared to Chinese women dating Western men. (We all know which way the scale tips.)

We’ve talked about this anomaly several times before. Here’s what the experts say in the GT piece:

[F]or one of China’s most famous scholars of sex, Li Yinhe, the answer has much more to do with Chinese culture than with foreign attitudes. Asked why Chinese men rarely date foreign women, she said, “I’ve asked that question many times myself. One possibility is, men just don’t have the confidence.”

Casual dating is certainly a lessestablished part of Chinese culture. Twenty years ago, only 15 percent of people in China had sex before marriage, Li said. Today, half of women have already had sex when they are married, Li said, compared with 85 percent of Americans, according the American government’s National Survey of Family Growth.

Yan agrees that Chinese men have trouble approaching foreign women. “I know some Russian girls, and some of my guy friends say, oh, let’s have a party full of blonde girls. So maybe four or five girls and four or five guys go out. And then, the girls are there, and the guys are all together across the room,” Yan said. “They are afraid to be very aggressive, because, traditionally, those kind of men are bad men, playboys.”

Of course, many men in every country don’t really know how to approach women at all. Ashley Li, a 27-year-old Chinese teacher in Wangjing, said that she was looking for a serious relationship with a Chinese man, but had wound up dating foreign men at times because it was very difficult to find a boyfriend. She’s been single for a year, despite regularly going on blind dates.

There’s also an interview with an expat who is totally delighted with her Chinese boyfriend, so we know it’s not totally impossible. But as the cartoon above indicates, its the expat male who has the advantages, fair or not. All he has to do is show up, loser though he may be.

Check out the GT piece, as well as the new blog.

They’re saying this contraption can ease Beijing’s infamous traffic by up to 30 percent, though special track will need to be laid everywhere. Where was it when I was living there?

From another source:

A prototype of the super bus is expected to roll out onto the road by December, three months after the 40-day-long design phase is completed, the official Global Times newspaper reported today.

It is expected to commence trials on a six-km stretch of road along the West Sixth Ring Road in Mentougou district.

The concept of the ‘straddle’ bus is unique as cars could drive under its huge uplifted passenger compartment between its 2.2-meter-long legs. The two bus legs leave a ‘tunnel’ wide enough for two lanes of small or medium-sized vehicles — 1.55 to 1.6 meters high, in general — to drive right through under the moving bus.

This is definitely an “only-in-China” type of innovation, where size truly matters. More power to them if the eco-friendly super-bus actually works.

Update: Speaking of traffic in and around Beijing, it’s interesting to see that this story of China’s 60-mile traffic jam has gone mainstream.

The day we all knew would arrive is here, and according to Evan Osnos of the New Yorker, China doesn’t know quite how to respond.

How did China respond to the exhilarating news that it has sprinted past Japan to become the world’s second largest economy? Here’s what the Global Times newspaper says today, “The world ranking has brought China jealousy and vigilance…. Despite growth in G.D.P, which is only a number, natural disasters will continue to hit China, and American warships and Congress will continue to be aggressive towards China.”

Um—so you’re saying there won’t be cake? While the story has rated front-page treatment in the U.S., it has sent China into a frenzy of self-flagellation, in the hope of reminding people that it is still home to a lot of very poor people.

Obviously China’s new No. 2 status puts the country in a bind and reinforces the conundrum that China is an unbelievably rich and a desperately poor country. It’s awkward for the propagandists who on the one hand want to gloat about China’s ascending status, but who must also make sure the people understand that China doesn’t have the resources to end poverty.

Of course, real poverty (the kind that leaves people morbidly malnourished or even starving) has been all but eradicated in China, but, to put it in the words of a former Washington Post bureau chief, much of China remains “a third-, fourth- and fifth-world country” with a majority of its population living below the poverty line. On the other side of the spectrum we have examples everywhere of those with money to burn. China is so rich, and so poor.

Of course, this is in some ways the oldest story on earth, and we have an increasing and inexcusable divide between the haves and the have-nots here in America, an open wound that’s only going to deepen and fester as unemployment continues to rise in what seems to be direct correlation with the salaries and bonuses dished out on Wall Street. The contrast in China, however, is a bit more dramatic, and the middle class a far smaller segment of China’s demographic. Osnos illustrates this point:

[E]very full-time China observer has had the experience of greeting a giddy visitor for dinner, after he or she has done the Shanghai-Beijing loop or visited a top university. You inevitably end up playing the role of the local grump, trying to talk your glassy-eyed guest down from the chandelier. Standing outside the bus station in Xining earlier this month, watching the migrants stream in and out, I made a note to bring guests who want a fuller picture of China. It’s only a couple of hours by plane from Beijing, and it’s not a red herring. To reverse the roles for a moment, a visit to the Port Authority bus terminal might not showcase America’s best angle, but if I were a Chinese investor trying to understand how America lives beneath the top-line measures of its strength, I would probably want to make the visit.

China’s spin doctors are going to face an even tougher balancing act now as they send out the message that the country has reached a new economic milestone, yet remains in many ways poor and helpless. I like the way James Kynge expressed this contradiction in China Shakes the World back in 2006,

Although China is poised to overtake the UK to become the world’s fourth largest economy, on a per capita basis it ranks just above the world’s poorest nations, with an average income of just over $1,000 a year. Even if the country’s gross domestic product one day becomes as large as that of the US, simple mathematics ordains that its people at that time will on average be only one-sixth as wealthy as Americans.

Look at how far China has come even since then. And none of this is to take away from China’s huge successes and unparalleled growth trajectory. It’s just an important reminder that there’s more than one China, and that as China’s GDP grows, the higher the tightrope will be strung for China’s propagandists who need to convey two distinctly discordant messages. I don’t envy them their jobs.