Shameless, Priceless

That China Central Television would apparently use footage from the movie Top Gun to prop up a puff piece on China's air force hardly surprises me. It reminds me of the indoctrination disguised as a welcome party that I had to sit through when I first taught English at Liaoning University in Shenyang. A panel of city and provincial officials, plus an officer from the Public Security Bureau, spoke at length about the importance of "teaching from facts" and shunning "pseudo-science". The highlight, however, was the promotional video (set to the music of one of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns) intended to trumpet the glorious past, present, and future of Liaoning Province but which, for reasons not explained, included footage of a Space Shuttle launch.

I do not imagine that the CCTV producers, or whoever else was involved, thought they were truly getting away with anything, nor do I imagine it was an inside potshot or clever attempt at subversion (the penalties are too great), but I do think the incident reflects China's general disregard for intellectual property rights, to say nothing of a lack of creativity or even awareness of how ridiculous China looks on the world stage in the wake of such events. The chicken-or-egg question is whether China's lack of IP protections has such a chilling effect on homegrown talent, or whether there are deeper cultural and educational issues to be explored if the country is to become an "innovation" economy.

At least the Taiwanese media has shown there is a better way to produce compelling television news.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (But Will Be Tweeted)

I will admit to not following the recent events in Tunisia all that closely.  Frankly, I could not understand what was going on, who the principal actors were, or their motivations. Perhaps that is because the country's revolutionary spirit was so decentralized before being channeled suddenly through online social media in response to a single, and possibly apocryphal, catalyst. 

The Tunisian Revolution will no doubt be scrutinized by the Chinese Communist Party, and is likely all the assurance the Party needs to believe the continued blocking of Facebook, Twitter, and other high-profile and user-friendly social networking websites is a sound course of action. China is certainly not without its share of potential rallying cries, which have found currency despite all official attempts to squelch them.

I have just arrived in Beijing, so this is a fitting post given that Blogger.com is also blocked here. The only way I can update this blog is by email.

Third Time is the Charm

I am off for my third stint in China---in just a matter of hours from now. My first was as an English teacher at a university in Shenyang; the second was with the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, and the third is with a corporate advisory services firm specializing in investor relations communications (and also in Beijing). I will try to keep this blog going but expect future posts to be fewer and farther between.

Trash Talking

Doom-and-gloom predictions concerning the U.S. economy and the uncertain future of the United States as a hegemonic power abound--and the Chinese media are always quick to spotlight them.

In the wake of the Tucson shooting, however, I have not yet come across any Chinese editorials taking the sort of propagandistic cheap-shots that marked coverage of, for example, the Columbine tragedy (the U.S. equivalent is noisome enough). So far, coverage seems limited to basic reportage culled from wire services. If there has been a change in the party line regarding issues of gun violence, it may be because such events are no longer unheard of in China.

Netizens of the World, Unite!

China's online population might now top 450 million. That figure includes an estimated 277 million who rely on smartphones to access the Internet.

Fighting the Good Fight

The Information Office of China's State Council has released its first-ever white paper regarding the country's anti-corruption efforts. Government corruption is a highly sensitive subject in China and sparks public furor across the PRC blogosphere, despite the government's best efforts to squelch them.

White papers are nice, but I do not expect any fundamental changes to the CPC's approach to date, which has been to scapegoat mid-level officials whenever public opinion appears ready to spark action.

Go West

The old punishments are still the best. Beijing's Vice Mayor has been "reassigned" somewhere in China's remote western region. Politically speaking, that is the equivalent of being transferred to the dark side of the moon. His sin was in bungling the rollout of the city's new traffic-improvement plan. Beijing's subway system has roughly tripled in size since I moved away in 2004, yet street and highway traffic continues its stranglehold, so the city is considering a wide range of aggressive measures to combat the problem. Word that new-car registrations would be severely limited in 2011 led to a rash of panic buying in December and sealed the vice mayor's fate.

Anecdotally, I can attest to the seductive power automobiles have on the "average" Chinese consumer. While visiting Beijing earlier this month, I had dinner with two of the city's newest and proudest car owners. They are friends I have known since 2002, when both worked at my gym. They have since married, bought a dog, and live in a modest apartment block not far from the intersection of the South Third Ring Road and Line 5 of the subway system. They drive a new Chinese model that looks like a 1999 Nissan Sentra and cost roughly US$12,000. While it might be a "status" symbol, the car does not exactly reflect their professional achievement: he has a low-level sales position while she is between jobs as they consider starting a family. Both acknowledged that their parents often help them make ends meet.

Their neighborhood is what I like to call the "real" Beijing: densely settled and thoroughly urban but seemingly cut off from the political, international, historical, academic, diplomatic, economic, post-Olympic, and/or touristic dazzle of much of the city. Bus service is excellent (so long as you don't mind crowds), and taxis are everywhere; even before the subway stretched this far, I could not imagine why anyone would want to own a car here. I tiptoed around the issue and carefully asked when they drove. He shrugged in response as if the answer were obvious: "to work, to the store..." but later conceded his commute can take nearly two hours, roughly twice as long as by public transportation.

Whatever the motivations, they seem to be shared by many of my friends' neighbors. The small square wedged between their apartment block and its twin was never designed to accommodate anything more than foot traffic but is regularly jammed with more than a dozen parked cars.

Automakers are not as alarmed by the prospect of new restrictions as one might imagine, apparently because they cannot satisfy current demand.