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In a “mini-debate” posted at Dissent Magazine, Daniel A. Bell and Michael Walzer contend the question: Should the international community do more to support democracy in China? Bell establishes the parameters for the discussion by defining ‘democracy’ as ”free and fair competitive elections at the national level” and ‘promotion’ to mean “moral criticism of a non-democratic status quo.” Unsurprisingly, given [...] From yesterday’s [...] YJ and I went to the US-China baseball match last night at Wukesong Stadium. I was at Wukesong this past spring for the LA Dodgers-San Diego Padre AAAA international tour, and the experience last night was more or less the same…with the addition of a few thousand rowdy China supporters making up in exuberance what they might have lacked [...] I took advantage of the sunny skies to do some urban hiking through the legation quarter, up through Tiananmen Square and back over to Wangfujing. Some random TGIF thoughts: Today was a BLUE SKY day. We’re talking 蓝 freaking 天. First one of the Games and well timed too as track and field preliminaries kicked of today. The [...] There has been a bit of bally-hoo in the press about China putting an end to US Olympic dominance, a dominance which doesn’t seem to jibe with history. I took a look at the medal counts for the Summer Olympics, and since 1956 (not counting the boycott years of 1980 and 1984, a total of 11 Olympics) the [...] We seem to be stuck in the muck, metaphorically speaking. Western critics of the CCP argue, correctly, that the government needs to do more to end media censorship, enable citizens to pursue legal remedies in court without fear of political reprisal, and to allow true freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion. Chinese defenders counter, with equal [...] Just got back from Tianjin where we we watched the women’s football preliminaries between Argentina/Sweden and China/Canada. The crowd–to put it mildly–was supportive of their countrywomen. I’ve been in Fenway during playoff games with the Yankees and that’s a boisterous crowd on its worst day, but the partisan boosters of the Chinese women’s soccer players were [...] YJ is out running around the city as Tianjin’s answer to Brenda Starr, I’m here in The Studio with CCTV on the television, NBC on the Sling Box, and a fridge full of diet coke. I was thinking of wandering out of the hutong to join the madness, but I decided to bunker down and [...] Beijing-based artist, Granite Studio friend, and occasional anonymous commentator Helen Couchman has been winging around the world this past month promoting her new book Workers. Last December, Helen snuck onto the construction site for the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube and offered to take the portraits of any worker who wished to have his or [...] There’s a scene in the movie Animal House, where Dean Wormer informs the Delta Chis that the fraternity has been placed on “double secret probation.” I now know how that feels. There’s been a lot of talk in the pubs and online about what some have dubbed the “No Fun” Olympics. Restaurants and bars are closed, new [...] “100 Years of Humiliation.“ It’s a phrase so common I think most people have unfortunately stopped listening. An essay by author Lijia Zhang in The Guardian quotes 67-year old Beijing resident Xie Fengzhi: “I want foreigners to see what China has achieved. We were called the ‘sick man of Asia’. Now we are strong and rich enough [...] I haven’t read the book in years, so memory might fail, but I seem to recall a line (perhaps the opening line) from William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer: “The sky was the color of a tv set turned to a dead station.” Such is Beijing. Beijing has announced ‘special environmental measures’ that can be implemented on an ad hoc [...] Well after one week of odd/even traffic restrictions, I stood on the pedestrian overpass on Chao Nei Dajie and looked west. On a good day, you can see Xiang Shan and the Western Hills. Today you could see about 200 meters and then the street dissolved into a smog bank so thick it was positively science [...] Author Kerry Brown has an essay up at OpenDemocracy looking at China’s tumultuous 2008 and the cycles and contingencies of history. Brown reminds us that despite China’s rise, the unity of the modern PRC nation-state is something which can’t be taken for granted, as China’s leaders are all too well aware: the PRC, as heir to [...] Many, if not both, of my regular readers know that I am both a history geek AND a bit of a sports nerd, and one of the biggest events of the year for sports nerds was last night…the NBA draft. As part of the tradition, ESPN columnist Bill Simmons does an annual ‘running diary‘ which–if you [...] |
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