Stories about Ideas from April, 2006
China: America's real threat
Intelligent Being blogger Chen Xuyu says that China, not the Muslim world, is what Bush should most be worried about right now: “Yes, China is the real threat to America, because the two countries’ approaches to handling affairs are too different; The Bush administration is bent on pushing democracy around...
China: Blogger suggests agenda
The Sun Bin blogger raises two issues he expects to see addressed during Chinese president Hu Jintao's visit to the United States this week: plans for Iran and Tibetan independence: “Dalai [Lama] is showing to Hu that he can command all the Tibetan separatists (I guess I can use this...
China: Beijing's USA strategy
China Confidential‘s Confidential Reporter starts off a series of posts this week looking at the Chinese government's presence abroad with ‘China Spins a Tale of Two Washingtons‘. “In preparation for Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the United States, his propaganda meisters have been playing up Beijing's notion of dramatic...
China: Microsoft in collusion
When Chinese president Hu Jintao stops over for dinner at Bill Gates’ house and Microsoft centers research in Beijing, bloggers start to wonder: “Bill Gates, Jerry Yang, Eric Schmidt and the other executives should be challenging repressive regimes,” says Jeff Chester from Digital Destiny, “by refusing to operate in countries...
China: Blogger still imprisoned
Beijing or Bust blogger Wu Hao has been imprisoned without charge for close to two months. With various efforts aiming to secure Wu's release already underway, Migratory Fool blogger suggests how to kick it up a notch in a comment on the latest post of Wu's sister Nina's blog: “I...
China: Presidential responsibility
Lisa at The Paper Tiger posts on the lack of progress in imprisoned blogger Hao Wu's case and shifts her gaze towards Chinese president Hu Jintao: “President Hu will be visiting the United States from April 18th through the 21st. Originally the hope was that he would consider releasing Wu...
Argentina: Ernesto Sábato
Cartoonist Bob Row uses his artistic pen to honor the Argentine humanist, Ernesto Sábato. You can learn more about Sábato on Wikipedia.
Taiwan: Blog conference
The Taiwan Blogger BoF conference opens this Friday in Taipei. Here's their blog [zh].
China: Taoist scripture
The Useless Tree blogger posts a pacifist poem from the ancient Taoist scripture Tao Te Ching and dedicates it to Iranian and American presidents Ahmadinejad and Bush.
China: Generation gap
The Bingfeng Teahouse blogger uses subway passengers in Shanghai as a case study on the difference between generations in China: “As you might find when you live here, the younger generations of china is quite different from the older ones and sometimes regarded as a new ‘race.’ Generally speaking, they...
Japan: Yasukuni shrine visits
The Japundit links to a story in which recently-elected leader of Japan's Democratic Party Ichiro Ozawa suggests “that visits to Yasukuni shrine are the main cause of problems with Japan's neighbors,” a view which Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi rejected. Next up is a review of writer Hillary Raphael's first...
Hong Kong: Same sex discourse
Has Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain given homophobia a foothold within the Cantonese language? The flagrant harbour blogger gives us the both the short and long answer in ‘Brokeback Mounting.’
China: Qing Ming festival
An astute observation in a post at The Useless Tree regarding China's Qing Ming festival—which took place last week—in which people go and sweep the graves of their relatives: “If you go to a graveyard to sweep the tomb of your parents, and if you speak out about how they...
Ukraine: Promoting Books in Ukrainian
A group of Ukrainian LJ users concerned about the sorry state of Ukrainian-language book publishing had a lively discussion on how the situation could be improved. One blogger even drew a parallel with the Aymara language of faraway Bolivia. Below are just a few snippets of this conversation (UKR): swalllage-kits:...
Taiwan: Cross-straits relations
Rank Beginner of the Taiwan-based blog Rank pre-empts Kuomintang Chairman Lien Chan's visit to China scheduled for Thursday with a look at recent China-Taiwan diplomatic talks and the prediction of a subtle yet important declaration.
China: Communist bureaucracy
What did you do this weekend? Roland at EastSouthWestNorth spent his translating The True Life of a Political Worm, a Tianya Club forum post which gives an insider's perspective on Communist Party culture in China.
Hong Kong: Future of China
SimonWorld links to an article from mainland China-born but American-based political science professor Pei Minxin which, Simon says, contains “brave observations about why we should be pessimistic about political liberalization following on from economic liberalization.”
China: Great firewall undermined
The end to China's Cultural Revolution thirty years ago took with it the need to censor one's self in order to survive. While people in China can now speak freely—a right protected in the Chinese constitution—there still exists an unwritten set of rules and standards for when and if an...
Iran: Iran & American People
View from Iran, an American blogger living in Iran, talks about her conversation with American friends about Iran. She writes “this is what I tell Americans: there is no other country in the world with a more pro-American population and that people in Iran are kind and generous to me....
China: Legal reform
Chen Yongmiao posts on his Constitution Blog a letter he sent recently to lawyer John Wei Chien-feng, former president of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, on behalf of some of China's leading democracy activists and legal experts in which he states the need for democratic reforms, suggests some practical...
China: Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai's death thirty years ago this year gave rise to the April 5th movement. Or was it May 4th? The Useless Tree gives us a refresher, and more. “There are no official commemorations of the 1976 demonstrations in the PRC today. The official party line is that the April...
