Mutant Palm

From the Washington Post, April 3rd, after the verdict in the Chi Mak espionage trial:

“The Chinese government, in an enterprise that one senior official likened to an “intellectual vacuum cleaner,” has deployed a diverse network of professional spies, students, scientists and others to systematically collect U.S. know-how, the officials said.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, April 13th, announcing the Minerva Consortia (h/t Danger Room):

“The Chinese government publishes a tremendous amount of information about military and technological developments on an open-source basis. However, it is often inconvenient, if not impossible, for American researchers to get access to this material since it is often available only in China. A real – or virtual – archive of documents acquired by researchers and others abroad would help us track Chinese military and technological developments.”

Yes! Because U.S. academics should be thrilled to copy and export unclassified public domain data from China after the U.S. locked up someone for the rest of his natural life for doing the same thing.

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It’s 100 days to the 2008 Beijing Olympics! That can only mean one thing! No, not deteriorating reporting conditions. No, not a countdown ceremony in Nepal, though thats some serious unintentional irony right there. No, not whatever else is being reported. No, it can only mean one thing… ROCK!

The idea that the Chinese people, as a whole, are engaged in struggle, overcoming shame, or that every individual is responsible for the fate of the nation goes back before the Communist era. Since 1949, these ideas have been intensified, but it didn’t start there. And now’s a good time to remember it, because the 80th anniversary of the Jinan Incident is coming up next weekend. The Jinan Incident, on May 3rd 1928, was a brutal clash between Chinese and Japanese troops that both sides, it seems, wanted to avoid but failed. Kuomintang forces ended up retreating from the city, and the Kuomintang government declared May 3rd to be National Humiliation Day. A boycott of Japanese goods followed.

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