what's news

i have now devoted one semester at GW and two semesters in shanghai and beijing toward understanding china and its relationship with the united states. one of the coolest things about being IN china is that it is ten times easier to keep up on china news, and to see the rest of the world through china's eyes. information is always flooding in, but here are some quick examples from this week and their sources:

facebook (via my private VPN), wall street journal.com, sociology class discussion - chinese dissident liu xiaobo winning the nobel peace prize, the chinese government refusing meetings with the norwegian government, the placement of liu's wife under house arrest. none of this has been publicized in the chinese media. professor ferchen told us that when he asked his chinese students at tsinghau university about it, they chuckled and said they were aware of it (through less official internet sources). however, when i asked my language partner what she thought about it, she (a graduate student at a prestigious chinese university) didn't know what the nobel prize was, so i didn't get very far.

CNN international - just a day after the miners were rescued in chile, 20 miners were killed and another 17 are trapped in a henan province mine. in china, about 2000 miners die in accidents every year, but that's down from the 7000/yr of a decade ago. this is interesting because, in response to the chile media coverage, chinese people expressed skepticism in online message boards that miners in china would ever receive such attention or assistance. they guessed that those miners would have been dead men if they were in china. we'll find out.

CCTV english channel - protests in three major cities against japanese claims to the dioyu islands and the recent fishing boat controversy in sino japanese relations. also covered responding protests in tokyo, noting that they were led by a japanese military official who was sacked for publishing an essay denying japan as an aggressor in WWII. at least he was sacked... also, coverage of the shanghai world expo on the palestine pavilion's special exhibition day. the pavilion emphasized palestine's commitment to harmony, peace, and environmental protection, as well as it's "two major cities," bethlehem and jerusalem. not exactly how that information would be presented in the US but an interesting perspective. also note that my chinese teacher over the summer had never heard of "israel" as a country, only a terrorist group that had attacked palestine.

CCTV chinese channel - excitement over the announcement of kim jong-il's successor (his son) as the "dear leader" of north korea, coverage of the festivities in pyongyang. china is perhaps north korea's only friend. intriguingly, didn't make it into the news on CCTV english channel.

sociology class discussion - china cutting off sale of "rare earths" (periodic table elements that are difficult to find but key for high technology like hybrid vehicles) to japan, japan looking into filing a WTO suit. china is the only major source of these elements, but their indignation over the recent fishing boat controversy motivated this move. the rest of the world sees this is china throwing its weight around in asia and bullying its neighbors. my prof called it an awful foreign policy move. not in the chinese news.

anyways, trying to soak it all up! in the process, confirming (and disproving) some of the things i have learned about chinese censorship in the past. the most interesting thing to note is that if you have a computer, can read english semi-fluently, and can find some way around the great fire wall (there are proxies and other options) you can find out just about anything here. then again, those are all significant barriers. i also try to keep in mind that the world press freedom index rates USA as 20th and PRC as 168th out of 175 countries. so even though the distance is mind-boggling, we aren't perfect either!