Truly, my new favorite Chinese holiday. The traditional way of celebrating offline involves umbrellas. It’s as if they’ve been watching Simpsons reruns in ZNH. And they’ve probably seen it in the dorms of Beida, or the equivalent, but it just doesn’t pack that same wallop it does for the overseas chattering dissident class, it seems.

Still, taking away Twitter?Curtailing my ability, as one friend described, to find out instantaneously how many loads of laundry a former high school classmate just successfully washed? Fuck. That. Shit.

It’ll be interesting to see panels that sit Peking University researchers alongside Freedom House, and Human Rights in China with Google Director of Corporate and Policy Communication Bob Boorstin. And that’s just Wednesday morning. Ethan Zuckerman, Isaac Mao, Rebecca MacKinnon, Yang Guobin, Jack Qiu, Jiang Min, Michael Anti and more will be there too.

First, there’s the endless drumbeat of the official line in Chinese media Bandurski illustrates thusly:

In People’s Daily: “Treasuring the fruits of democratic reform: celebrating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of millions of Tibetan serfs”
In Guangming Daily: “Treasuring the fruits of democratic reform: celebrating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of millions of Tibetan serfs”
In Economic Daily: “Treasuring the fruits of democratic reform: celebrating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of millions of Tibetan serfs”
At Xinhua, etc. etc. etc.

And so on. Which, of course, is echoed repeatedly in English as Tibet to set “Serf Liberation Day”, or minor variations thereof. You can even read about it in Esperanto, along with full coverage of the two conferences last month. Which reminds me of my all time favorite bit of heavy handedness from Chinese English media, the special report page Xinhua produced titled “Condemn Falun Gong”, in which the headlines report all sorts of groups doing just that: a forum, overseas Chinese, the students of Chongqing, “people of all circles”, and then, so as not to leave out people without circles, simply “people” condemn it, in case you weren’t sure if you were invited to join in the festivities.

Bandurski then reminded me of the news that China is investing 45 billion RMB in CCTV, Xinhua and People’s Daily to “accelerate “going out”" and go global with its news operations to set media agendas. The maximum any one of them can get is 15 billion, which is alot more than CCTV-9 has ever seen, but wait a minute. I’ve heard most of this before. Li Changchun has been saying more or less the same things about “going out” since 2003, albeit I’m guessing he’s not referring to the Three Represents as often. The same goes for soft power - just because America finally has a president who likes Joseph Nye doesn’t mean the Chinese just discovered him too. It’s been a perennial favorite for years, and been applied to everything from CNN to Korean soap operas, and always boils down to “China doesn’t have enough”.

First of all, one bit going around is that China is inspired to start its own Al Jazeera. That was something heard in 2004 and repeatedly thereafter from Li Xiguang, Tsinghua professor and at that time newly appointed director of CCTV International. Li was behind the relatively tame revamp of CCTV-9 at the time, when they hired Edwin Maher, and launched Spanish and French language channels (and five years later, how many people watch those?).* Now, CCTV is on the verge of launching Russian and Arabic channels, and plans to have seven different languages on 11 channels by 2012. I count six including Mandarin. Is there a Cantonese CCTV, or are they going to launch the world’s first global 24 hour esperanto network? Point being, that 15 billion RMB gets sliced 11 ways. Most importantly, what kind of strategy is this? Al Jazeera made its mark primarily through exclusive journalism in one language - it’s own - and then expanded into English. At this rate, the Big Underpants building in Beijing is going to be the Tower of Babel, or worse resemble the EU’s translation center.

Besides this lack of focus, there are other reasons China can’t have an Al Jazeera:

1. Size matters: Al Jazeera is based in Qatar, which is about 11,000 square kilometers (4,400 square miles). To put this in perspective, all of Beijing is 16,807 kilometers. But their primary Arabic business covers the entire Arab world. Al Jazeera offices have been closed or raided because of negative reporting in the Palestinian territories, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain. It’s not beholden to the governments of 99% of its regional viewers. That’s one of the reasons Al Jazeera was so successful.
2. Nobody wants to hear about Qatar: Qatar has about 350,000 citizens according to Wikipedia, and around another 700,000+ expats. There is news to be reported, and Al Jazeera has been criticized for not looking in its own backyard too closely, but the country is just too small to be a generator of globally significant events (except about Al Jazeera itself). By contrast, China sneezes about the dollar and markets turn.
3. Al Jazeera’s main mission is not boosterism: China is flatly stating they want a Chinese network to boost their reputation. The Emir of Qatar, by contrast, has allowed editorial independence and Qatar doesn’t really need it anyway thanks to size and oil. Not to mention perhaps the Emir understands that it doesn’t work. Soft power does not seem the Emir’s main interest, at least not in the way Chinese officials and scholars tend to think of it.
4. They made their bones with regional Johnny-on-the-spots and call-in shows: Al Jazeera’s primary success was in Arabic, not English, with bureaus reporting live on the scene, even if it is only horrifying images of bodies (not typical fare for Chinese media). How often has Chinese language television been breaking news for their domestic audience with investigative interviews or live reports? Not so much. Al Jazeera’s popular live call-in shows, meanwhile, have often involved shouting matchs and free debate.

Finally, Bandurski also points out that China shipped a happy Tibetan monk all the way to Canada to say how not mad he is about anything. Well, three years ago China was building the largest embassy in the U.S., designed by I.M. Pei, and their ambassador had started gladhanding people in diners in Iowa. That didn’t pay off huge either.

China may have a respectable global news franchise yet, but throwing money around and talking about copying models that don’t fit isn’t going to make one.

*Li Xiguang’s speech on World Press Freedom Day in 2004 about coverage of the Iraq War by Chinese jounalists is fascinating. He basically savages CNN and Fox for spewing U.S. propaganda, but also savages the Chinese government for essentially “turning over” state TV to Rupert Murdoch.

UPDATE: SARFT said today that CCTV International’s four existing stations now reach 100 million households. I’ll just point out two things: first, reach is not the same as viewers or trust, and second, if that’s the case it wouldn’t make much sense to spend the 45 billion on a new network, but rather in integrating Xinhua’s overseas bureaus with CCTV International. Will turf wars and red tape make this difficult? Who knows.

by otisarchives3

World War I era photo of Chinese woman’s feet from the Otis Historical Archives at the National Museum of Health & Medicine in Washington, D.C.

MAPS OF CHINA

Populations of China Compared to Countries

China as an Island (from “The Geopolitics of China” at Investors Insight)

CHINA IN THE WORLD

The Cannibal Map of the World (Tibetan literature apparently does talk about eating human body parts)

The World as Seen From Paris (for all the Chinese netizens who get mad at Sarkozy. Look, the French have always been like this with everybody)

Cathay, Here I Come (the map Columbus thought would get him to Asia)

The New World Order (as imagined in 1942)

Patients per Doctor of the World (950:1 in China, 390:1 in U.S., 230:1 in Russia)

The World According to Country Code Top Level Domains (China & India actually not to scale, reduced 30% so as not to ruin the layout)

The Lost Continent of Mu (the Atlantis of the Pacific, the missing link between Chinese, Turkish - hence the appearance of the word Uighur, Ataturk actually researched this - and Mayan cultures)

With conflicting reports about YouTube access in China tonight, here’s the breakdown from reports to the unfortunately named Herdict (Herd + Verdict, get it? neither did I…) censorship reporting tool:

156 reports from China in the past 26 1/2 hours (March 5 11:30 PM Beijing Time)

125 report YouTube inaccessible

31 report YouTube accessible

Herdict doesn’t yet generate country maps, but the ISP providers usually name the province, and so its not hard to color in a map like the one above. Green means all reports (in every case, only one) said YouTube was accessible, Red means all reports were for inaccessible, and Orange means there are reports of both.

From ComicStripLibrary.org, two Little Nemo strips from consecutive Sundays in December 1912, in which regular characters Flip, Dr. Pill, and The Imp visit China, and Flip attempts to kidnap Emperor Puyi.

Special bonus: Krazy Kat draws a Kue.

Language Log has created a map of what languages are considered by other languages to represent “incomprehensibility”, as in “it’s Greek to me.” Predominantly referring to European languages, Chinese is hands down the big winner. I’d point out, though, that Chinese not only refers to it as “Heavenly Script” for the written word, but as “bird speak” for the spoken word.

The Dalai Lama (or his office, at any rate) has opened a Twitter account @OHHDL. Last March, I argued that according to his own stated beliefs the Dalai Lama and his supporters ought to be using technology like Twitter and Fanfou to engage Chinese Internet users. Now three more steps:

1) Follow some Chinese people

2) Tweet in Chinese

3) Get a funkier Twitter avatar. Baby pictures can be good:

Photo of the Dalai Lama when he was 3, courtesy of The Tibet Album: British Photography in Central Tibet 1920-1950

From the New York Times, February 8, 1912:

CHINAMAN A JOURNALIST NOW: Anyway, He Has a Degree from the University of Missouri That Says So.

Colombia, Mo., Feb. 7, - Hin Wong, who is said to be the first Chinese to receive a degree in journalism, finished his work at the University of Missouri this week and left for New York, where he will remain with his father, a tea merchant, for a short time before going to China. Wong says he will do his part in the formation of a new republic, although he will not accept a government position, which has already been offered to him. He expects to help the unfortunate classes among his people by giving publicity to their condition.

Wong has been engaged as correspondent by a New York newspaper, and will write articles for Chinese papers. He will devote all of his time to acquainting his own people with the actual conditions among the poor of China and their reasons for discontent.

“It is a field of work that has never been attempted in China,” said Wong. “It was my main reason for coming to America to study journalism.”

Less than three months later:

GOES TO AID OF SUN YAT-SEN.; Hin Wang, Columbia Student, Has Received a Call to China

Hin Wong, a Chinese student of Columbia and a trained journalist, left for China yesterday after receiving a call from Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, former Provisional President of China, to join him in achieving the social regeneration of South China. Wong is a graduate of the School of Journalism of the University of Missouri, and has been studying at Columbia for the Consular Service. Wong will be one of several young Chinese educated abroad to assist Dr. Sun in the industrial development of South China.

On April 4 Dr. Sun in a interview at Shanghai said that he had finished the political revolution and was to “commence the greatest social revolution in the world’s history,”adding that in his work he will rely mainly, as in the political revolution, “on our trained young blood.” Then he sent messages to Europe and America for his assistants to return and meet him in Canton as soon as possible.

Mr. Wong was educated in Hawaii, where his father was a Presbyterian minister and a publisher. It was in his fathers printing office that he grew to love newspaper work. In 1907 at his fathers behest he went to the St. Louis Bible College to study for the ministry. There he supported himself by reporting for the newspapers, which rekindled his longing to be a newspaper man. The next year he gave up the ministry and matriculated in the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri.

In 1910 Mr. Wong came to Columbia and took courses in diplomacy and consular service. While here he helped organize the Chinese Presbyterian Church, and although 25 years of age, became its elder. Then he formed the squad of Chinese Boy Scouts, founded a school to teach the coolies of Chinatown, became news editor of the Chinese Monthly, and President of the Chinese Students Club.

One of the tasks Mr. Wong carried out was in bringing about peace between the fighting tongs in 1911, and a no less conspicuous success was the management of a fair for famine relief, when thousands upon thousands of tourists visited Chinatown and poured money into the Chinese Red Cross fund. Mr. Wong’s last interest in New York was the agitation among the Chinese merchants to have the old Joss House torn down and replaced with a fully-equipped YMCA Building. His sudden departure for China necessarily leaves this work in other hands.

In Canton, his native home, Mr. Wong expects to relieve the poor by the most scientific means known. After a thorough investigation of the social conditions in a tour which he will make with Dr. Sun and his colleagues, a socialistic scheme is to be tried. Several factories are planned in which capitalists and laborers will share equally in the profit. Then large public works are to be undertaken to give the unemployed work for several years unti they have learned different trades.

Before Mr. Wong left for the West, he said: “We have our political freedom; it remains now to secure our economic independence. It was the realization of the utter impossibility of alleviating the awful conditions of the poor that drove Dr. Sun, twenty-five years ago, to strike at the sole obstacle - Manchu corruption and incompetency.

Hin Wong would go on to help famed China Hand Carl Crow, as well as John B. Powell, whose son John W. Powell would continue to publish the China Weekly Review (and was even tried for sedition by the U.S. for printing Chinese allegations of germ warfare in 1952), which employed Edgar Snow and Arthur Ransome among others.

Hin Wong would later appear at the Press Congress of the World in 1921, according to Timothy Weston’s paper “Newspapers, Journalism and China’s Entry Into the World in the Era of the First World War”:

As Hin Wong, editor of the Star of Canton, stated: “Much injustice has been done to China because of ignorance of Chinese conditions on the part of foreigners… Much misconception regarding things Chinese exists, and it is high time that definite steps should be taken by Chinese and others interested to bring to the attention of the world the existence of a great people with incalculable natural resources capable of bringing peace, prosperity, and happiness to mankind if properly developed and appreciated or curse and war to the world if misunderstood and mistreated.” Hin Wong and his colleagues desperately wanted China to take, and to be permitted to take, its rightful place among the world’s leading nations.    They understood that they had a sympathetic audience at the Press Congress and hoped the journalists assembled there would convey what they had to say to their home countries.

By speaking out in this way the Chinese participants were both appealing to the publics in the world’s leading nations and warning them that Chinese public opinion was growing more nationalistic in a way that portended future conflict if foreigners could not learn to treat China more fairly.

Wow. That sounds familiar.

(H/t to Granite Studio for reminding me I used to do this)

Photo from the Sidney Gamble Collection at Duke.