· October, 2005

Stories about China from October, 2005

China: Am I A Journalist

EastSouthWestNorth asks: “Am I a journalist?” His answer: “If I wanted to become a traditional journalist, I would have become one. Instead, I became an independent blogger by my own...

31 October 2005

China, Taiwan: Map Mess

When Google Maps labeled Taiwan a province of China, the company received protests from Taiwanese — and anger from China at its efforts to change the label. Then Google removed...

26 October 2005

Effect Measure on Facing the Global Bird Flu Threat

Masked Mao With recent reports of avian flu in Western Europe, the disease is clearly no longer East Asia's problem. It's a dilemma for the world. Last week I emailed Revere, the pseudonymous leader of Effect Measure, a public health group blog. Since its inception in late 2004, Effect Measure has been covering the global response to avian flu. My goal was to discuss the pandemic fears and what the world -- and ordinary people -- can do to prepare for it. Revere, an environmental epidemiologist in a senior faculty position at a major research university, has 40 years of experience in medicine and public health. He is also one of the individuals behind the Flu Wiki, an Internet-based experiment in community mobilization and knowledge-pooling to face the feared epidemic. He paints an alarming picture. "If a pandemic is going to happen (and we don't know how to predict if it will or not with certainty), it will happen whatever we do," he writes. "There will be no "outside" for help to come from, so each community needs to prepare to cope on its own." In previous flu pandemics, hundreds of thousands of people went sick or died, leading to massive disruptions as workers failed to show up to work and instead surged into ill-equipped and ill-prepared hospitals ill-prepared. Revere sees two big tasks ahead: managing the consequences of a potential pandemic, and building (or rebuilding) the world's rotting public health infrastructure.

25 October 2005

China: Power Player

Musing Under the Tenement Palm reads the tea leaves in the probable absence of traditional prisoner releases before George Bush's state visit to China in November.

21 October 2005

China: Too Much IP Law

Mutant Frog Travelogue has a paradigm shift: It's not that there's no intellectual property law in China; the problem is that there's too much of it.

20 October 2005

Wikipedia Blocked in China

Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia based on collaboration and participation is now blocked in many areas in China. On the main page on Wikipedia in Chinese, a sentence appeared:”Some users...

20 October 2005

China: Guardian Explains, Others Respond

asiapundit rounds up the skeptical reactions to the Guardian‘s explanation that reporter Benjamin Joffe-Walt's exaggerated description of Lu Banglie's injuries at Taishi was caused by temporary insanity. Bingfeng Teahouse helpfully...

19 October 2005

Japan: Yasukuni Visit

Yaw and Mog passed by the Yasukuni Shrine during PM Junichiro Koizumi's visit on the anniversary of the interment of fourteen war criminals there and asks what Japan gains by...

19 October 2005

China: A Prostitute's Life

Over at WoW, the blog of journalism students at Beijing Foreign Studies University, a fascinating, tragic account of the dashed dreams of a murdered prostitute.

18 October 2005

China: Fons on Guardian Beating

On his blog China Herald, Fons Tuinstra explains his fence-sitting position in the increasingly acrimonious debate over the beating of Lu Banglie for bringing Guardian correspondent Benjamin Joffe-Walt to Taishi.

17 October 2005

China: Trust no-one

ESWN shares his philosophy of blogging, China reporting and critical thinking, saying that no-one gets a monopoly on the ‘truth’, whatever their credentials, especially where this ‘thing’ called China is...

14 October 2005

China: Taishi update

ESWN once more rounds up commentary in the China-related blogosphere to recent events in Taishi village, Guangdong province, especially the Guardian‘s report on the beating of Lu Banglie. And Sun...

13 October 2005

China: Blogspot unblocked

Danwei reports that Chinese Web users now have access to Blogspot blogs and the Google cache, but suspects the move is a result of more efficient blocking using “forbidden” keywords.

12 October 2005

About our China coverage

Oiwan Lam
Oi wan Lam is the North East Asia editor. Email her story ideas or volunteer to write.