• [078]  Taiwan Public Opinion Polls (2/28/2006)  The National Unification Council "ceases to function" and the guidelines for national unification "cease to apply."  Earlier, the rumor mill has a lot of unverified (and unverifiable) information about the choice of language: "abolish," "terminate," "eliminate," "scrap," "freeze," "suspend", but the final choice is "cease to function/apply."  However, for the western media, it proved difficult to write the headlines because the construction "Taiwan declares that NUC has ceased to function" is awkward.  So here are some of the actual headlines:
   
  -AP: Taiwan Leader Halts China Unifying Panel
  -AFX: Taiwan formally scraps reunification body
  -Bloomberg: Chen Says Unification Panel Will 'Cease to Operate'
  -Christian Science Monitor: Taiwan's president abolishes China reunification committee
  -Financial Times: Taiwan ends push to unify with China
  -Guardian: Chen enrages Beijing by axing unification council 
  -Telegraph: Taiwan defies China by axing unity body
  -Reuters: China condemns scrapping of Taiwan unification body
  -San Jose Mercury: Taiwan's leader kills council on reunification with China
  -Washington Post: Taiwan Scraps Council on Unity With China
   
  The following are some Taiwan public opinion polls.
   
  (Apple Daily) [Sample size=250; automated telephone survey; WARNING: small sample size and bad methodology]
   
  Q: Will changing "abolish" to "cease to function" ameliorate the tensions in the China-Taiwan-US relationships?
  -30%: Yes, it may 
  -56%: No, it won't
  -  8%: It won't make a difference
  -  6%: Don't know/no opinion
   
  Q: What do you think the most important thing in Taiwan is right now?
  -57%: The economy
  -10%: Determine the direction of unification/independence
  -27%: Both of the above are important
  - 4%: Don't know/no opinion
  - 2%: Other 
   
  (China Times) [Sample size=703; telephone survey based drawing random numbers from the telephone directories and then randomly changing the last two digits.  The 95% confidence interval is plus/minus 3.7%]
   
  -22%: Support decision on National Unification Council
  -51%: Oppose decision on National Unification Council
   
  -  9%: Taiwan-US relationship is better as a result
  -46%: Taiwan-US relationship is worse as a result
  -12%: Taiwan-US relationship is the same as a result
   
  -10%: Positive impact on economic development in Taiwan
  -53%: Negative impact on economic development in Taiwan
  -12%: No impact on economic development in Taiwan
   
  -  8%: President Chen Shui-bian will have positive influence on China-Taiwan relationship
  -47%: President Chen Shui-bian will have negative influence on China-Taiwan relationship
  -  8%: President Chen Shui-bian will have no influence on China-Taiwan relationship
   
  -24%: Approve overall job performance of President Chen Shui-bian
  -53%: Disapprove overall job performance of President Chen Shui-bian
  -23%: No opinion
  [Note: The 24% approval rate is a historical low for Chen Shui-bian]
   
  -22%: Lean towards independence
  -15%: Lean towards unification
  -46%: Maintain current status
   
  (United Daily News) [Sample size = 923 (at 67% response rate);  telephone survey based drawing random numbers from the telephone directories and then randomly changing the last two digits.  The 95% confidence interval is plus/minus 3.2%]
   
  Q1. President Chen Shui-bian's performance
  -25%: Satisfied
  -62%: Dissatisfied
   
  Q2. Recent cross-strait relationship
  -39%: More tense
  -36%: No change
  -  5%: More relaxed
   
  Q3. President Chen's position on Taiwan's future
  -43%: Independent as quickly as possible
  -10%: Maintain status quo and then become independent
  -17%: Maintain status quo permanently
  -  2%: Maintain status quo and then unify
  -  3%: Unify as quickly as possible
   
  Q4. You personal position on Taiwan's future
  -13%: Independent as quickly as possible
  -  9%: Maintain status quo and then become independent
  -47%: Maintain status quo permanently
  -13%: Maintain status quo and then unify
  -  7%: Unify as quickly as possible
   
  Q5. Do you support President Chen terminating the National Unification Council and the guidelines for national  unification?
  -22%: Support
  -46%: Not support
   
  Q6. President Chen terminated the National Unification Council due to
  -21%: National interest
  -20%: Political party interest
  -37%: Personal interest
   
  Q7. Does President Chen terminating the National Unification Council help the progress of Taiwan independence?
  -51%: Yes
  -25%: No
   
  Q8. Does President Chen terminating the National Unification Council help maintain the status quo?
  -20%: Yes
  -52%: No
   
  Q9. Do you believe that President Chen has no intention to change the status quo in Taiwan?
  -21%: Yes
  -63%: No
   
  Q10. Does President Chen termination the National Unification Council have negative impact on Taiwan-US relationships?
  -53%: Yes
  -29%: No
   
  Q11.  Will you support the recall of President Chen for terminating the National Unification Council?
  -36%: Yes
  -47%: No

• [077]  The Ponemon Survey of Americans About Chinese Internet Censorship (2/28/2006)  The source here is the San Jose Mercury article by Therese Poletti titled "Censorship in China divides Americans."
   
  The key information came from a survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute (Elk Rapids, Michigan).  1,056 respondents were surveyed conducted after the US Congressional hearings on Chinese Internet censorship in which four US companies (Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo) were present.
   
  Here are the survey results:
  - 47% believed content companies should not allow their content to be censored; 40% believed the companies should comply with restrictions.
  - 54% agreed that it is better for the Chinese people to have access to information from Google and others, even if it is subject to government censorship.
  - 77% agreed that companies should not identify individuals who read banned content.
  - 76% do not think the US Congress should create new regulations that prevent US companies from cooperating with China or other countries on the censorship of Internet content.
   
  What does this mean?
   
  Nothing.
   
  I praise the SJM reporter Therese Poletti for including the technical details of this survey, because very few reporters bother with these important details: "The institute conducted its survey over the Internet. It received 1,056 responses deemed usable out of 1,234 total responses from 13,000 adults contacted. Respondents were paid $5 for answering the questionnaire. The margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 1.5 percent."
   
  You can go and read my previous article Survey Biases Due To Sampling Frame Coverage Problems to see why an online survey (on any topic whatsoever) with an 8% response rate is just garbage.  In this case, you can see the Level Seven factor in operation: How many Americans have heard of the US Congressional hearings about Chinese Internet censorship?  I would guess that this is a very low number.  Do you believe that those who have and those who have not heard about the hearings share the same opinions on the survey questions?  You tell me.

• [076]  Hong Kong Sex Cultural Festival 2006 (2/28/2006)  (The Standard, Apple Daily, Sing Pao)  The opening day festival at Chater Road drew about 50,000 people, who did not have much to look at.  There were 34 stalls, but only two exhibited sex toys (one was a clothed inflatable doll and the other was a made-in-China 'sex chair').  The best fun was probably at the ring tossing contest (see photo).
  
  The festival organizers admitted that they were deliberately conservative in their approach for this inaugural event in a sexually reserved city.  That was why the inflatable doll had to be clothed.
  

• [075]  The Channel Asia News Interview (2/27/2006)  I was interviewed by Stephen Jiang of Channel News Asia a while ago, but it was only today that I mustered up the courage to look at the VCD of the January 5, 2006 broadcast that was sent to me.  Basically, I don't like to look or listen to myself.  Period.  Still, this was satisfactory because my on-air appearance was very brief relative to the actual length of the interview (around 10-15 minutes).  All I said was something like: "The mainstream media attempt to cover everything as they see fit.  This is much better than a bunch of random bloggers talking about whatever they see fit."  Oh yes, at the New Media and Social Transformation Conference at City University of Hong Kong in December 2005, Chinese blogger Michael Anti openly identified me as a "rightist" for holding such ideas (along with himself).  So I shall wear this badge with honor.
   
  More interesting in this Channel News Asia segment was the opening piece about Curbside @ WTO journalist Sam Graham (at MayBe HK) and the statement by Mark Clifford (then editor-in-chief at The Standard and now at the South China Morning Post) about the impact of the Internet.  The Channel Asia News reporter Stephen Jiang said that website traffic to The Standard has grown by over eight times in the last two years.  Nice, but did this change their coverage?  That is the real question.

• [074]  My Nike Team (2/27/2006)  On this particular Sunday, I am thinking of my orange running team again (see CentralParktc.org).  This is the day of the New York Road Runners' Snowflake Run, which is the traditional high-point of the year for my team.  Everybody on the team was supposed to turn out, regardless of their physical condition (unless they live on the other side of the world like me).  I went and checked the team results.  I looked for the team beginning with "Central ..." and I see only the "Central Jersey RR."  There were 41 men's teams and 34 women's teams, but there was no "Central Park Track Club."  I cried my eyes out over the demise of my team, which apparently could not even field five runners at any pace in this race.  Then I checked out the winners: The Open Men division was won by the Nike Central Park Track Club and the Open Women division was won by the Nike Central Park Track Club, both by comfortable margins.  And this was not even a full-strength team as our top middle-distance track runners were running in the distance medley relays in the USATF National Championships in Boston this weekend.
   
  Oh, silly me!  I had totally forgotten that the team now has a corporate sponsor (Just Do It, Swoosh!) in addition to being granted the status of Elite Development Club by the USATF!!  Here, the EastSouthWestNorth blogger puts in a full claim for being responsible for these fantastic developments.  Once upon a time, when the blogger was the webmaster of the Central Park Track Club, the team had the reputation of having a far-too-interesting website and people spending far-too-much-time on mouse-clicking than working their legs and lungs.  The departure of the aforementioned person to the other side of the world to start the EastSouthWestNorth blog has resulted in the glorious renaissance of the team with respect to its core values and purposes.
   
  The above was said in jest, of course.  For an organization with such a long history, there will be bountiful years as well as lean years.  In the bountiful years, we enjoyed ourselves; in the lean years, we kept stiff upper lips, persevered and never gave up.  I am a relative newbie, as I only joined the team in 1989 and so my ups and downs were fewer than those of the founding parents of the teams.  But I am looking towards a very bountiful year in 2006.  Just Do It!!!

• [073]  Logging Off On China (2/26/2006)  This is from Robert Reich's TAP article (via CBS News):

If the U.S. government wants to make Chinese human rights a priority, it could pass a law tomorrow prohibiting American companies from helping the Chinese government trample on the free speech of its citizens. Such a law wouldn’t hurt the competitiveness of these companies because they’re preeminent in the world. If China wants to be part of the Internet age it has no choice but to allow in Cisco, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and other American firms – who could then tell the Chinese government they’re required by American law to respect the free speech of Chinese citizens. Otherwise, no deal.

Besides, given the pressures on these companies to maximize profits, this sort of law is the only way to stop Cisco, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo from being enablers. And it’s the only way to get the attention of the Chinese authorities. 

This is one of those things that is said to "hurt the feelings of the Chinese nation and its people."  The assumption is that the Chinese would not have a clue what to do without Cisco, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo and the Chinese Internet age will come to an immediate end without these great American companies.  Therefore, the Chinese government will get down on their knees to beg the companies and accept the terms that these companies will dictate to them in accordance with the new American law.  
 
This is SO WRONG, because there are indigenous Chinese market leaders such as Huawei, Bokee, Netease, Sina.com, Sohu.com, Baidu, Sogou, etc.  China can choose to say no to this American law (and it will win the hearts of minds of the "angry young people" wing of the Chinese Internet while even the "rational reformist" wing will have to shut up), while those indigenous Chinese companies will be delighted not to have foreign competition.
 
Cisco, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have little or no leverage because they are inessential and/or inconsequential in their respective markets.  The leverage will come only after they grab a significant market share and/or become indispensable.  For example, if MSN Spaces registers 20 million Chinese blogs, then it can dare the Chinese government to shut down the whole service and face the wrath of the Chinese bloggers.  But if they are just blog-city.com and they only have several thousand users, then who gives a damn if they are shut down.

• [072]  Globalization At Work (2/26/2006)  (New York Times)  Two weeks ago, a dead wild duck was found to have been infected with the H5N1 avian flu virus in the Ain region of France.  More recently, the turkeys at a French farm have been decimated by the virus.  On Friday, France's president Jacques Chirac served Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski, suprême de volaille, a creamed chicken dish, at Élysée Palace.  Still Japan and other countries have banned the import of poultry and poultry products from France.
   
  In Hong Kong, the front page news in Apple Daily was: "Hong Kong bans the import of French goose liver."
  
  What will we do?  According to the PR person for the Hong Kong Intercontinental Hotel, its restaurants (including the French restaurant Spoon) use top-grade French goose and duck liver, and they have about one week's stock left.  After the stock is exhausted, the restaurants will have to suspend the offering.  According to the Fu Lam Chinese restaurant famous for the Number 1 Abalone, they will resort to using canned goose liver after the inventory of fresh goose liver runs out.  They claim that the canned version is every bit is as good.

• [071]  How Did I End Up In A Movie? (2/26/2006)  See Adamu at Mutant Frog Travelogue for the plot summary: "I have lunch with Roland Soong and his Chinese girlfriend (petite, bubbly voice, intelligent) at a Chinese restaurant in a Japanese city (Osaka?). We discuss poverty in Japan and China and I mention something about a black underclass in Japan. We discuss other really intelligent things and then go and take some kind of weird water ride that’s kind of like underwater paddleboats. The end of the ride deposits us in a huge pond where this funny white guy is splashing everyone ... "  
   
  Shall I raise the capital for this proposed movie, as suggested in the comments over there?  I can't -- as a result of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  I once was a movie buff until I encountered Barry Levinson's Toys in 1992.  For more than ten years afterwards, I was unable to walk into a movie house to watch a movie.  What caused the trauma?  Here was a bad movie and an exercise in self-indulgence for which Barry Levinson was able to raise and piss away US$40 million.  I can list any number of good things that can be done with US$40 million.  Forget it, Jake, this is Chinatown Hollywood and nobody cares ...

• [070]  My Google PageRank (2/25/2006)  An Internet friend (note: the kind that I have never personally met) informed me that the Google toolbar PageRank for EastSouthWestNorth is 7.  What does that mean?  That is far too abstract.  The explanation was that this would put me in the same grade as Sina.com.  What does that mean?  This is just too abstract.  The only concrete thing that I can understand is that when I punched "Apple Daily" into Google today, my post of February 19, 2006 (Stories About Apple Daily) was ranked number 5, just behind three authentic Apple Daily sites (Hong Kong, Taiwan and Apple/Next corporation) and Wikipedia (see screen capture below).  
  
   
  Among other things, the rank of a page with the keywords relevant to a search depends on the average PageRank of the site on which the page is deposited.  The high ranking of this particular page is likely to be due to the overall popularity of the site.
   
  From Google-Watch, here is a critique of PageRank:

In the first place, Google's claim that "PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web" must be seen for what it is, which is pure hype. In a democracy, every person has one vote. In PageRank, rich people get more votes than poor people, or, in web terms, pages with higher PageRank have their votes weighted more than the votes from lower pages. As Google explains, "Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important.'" In other words, the rich get richer, and the poor hardly count at all. This is not "uniquely democratic," but rather it's uniquely tyrannical. It's corporate America's dream machine, a search engine where big business can crush the little guy. ...

Secondly, only big guys can have big databases. If your site has an average PageRank, don't even bother making your database available to Google's crawlers, because they most likely won't crawl all of it. This is important for any site that has more than a few thousand pages, and a home page of about five or less on the toolbar's crude scale.

Thirdly, in order for Google to access the links to crawl a deep site of thousands of pages, a hierarchical system of doorway pages is needed so that crawler can start at the top and work its way down. A single site with thousands of pages typically has all external links coming into the home page, and few or none coming into deep pages. The home page PageRank therefore gets distributed to the deep pages by virtue of the hierarchical internal linking structure. But by the time the crawler gets to the real "meat" at the bottom of the tree, these pages frequently end up with a PageRank of zero. This zero is devastating for the ranking of that page, even assuming that Google's crawler gets to it, and it ends up in the index, and it has excellent on-page characteristics. The bottom line is that only big, popular sites can put their databases on the web and expect Google to cover their data adequately. And that's true even for websites that had their data on the web long before Google started up in 1999.

Is this another reason to hate Google?  The alternative may be to retrieve every page that contains the keywords and present them randomly.  That would be 'democratically' fair to the pages (as in equal opportunity), but will the users be satisfied?  I think that one can fairly assume that such a 'democratic' search engine would be rejected by the users after a short trial period.

And then there is the question about the class struggle.  Could it be that the rich got rich by doing the right things all along?  Or because they were big, fat capitalist pigs who managed to buy Google's help?
 
P.S.  The recent EastSouthWestNorth post titled There Was A Man Named Liu Binyan is also Number 5 for the person of that name, after TIME magazine, Human Rights Watch, New York Review of Books and Radio Free Asia.    If you are looking for a "steamed bun," the EastSouthWestNorth post titled The Steamed Bun Lawsuit is number 2; the post The Case of Zhang Dejiang is number 2 for Zhang Dejiang; the post The Wangfu Ping Essay in Caijing is number 1 for the Wangfu Ping; etc.  Those were the prominent posts in the month of February.

• [069]  Chinese Student Faints At Sight Of Internet Police (2/24/2006)  (Chongqing Daily News via Wenxue City)  In Chongqing, China, the police inspection team entered an Internet bar in the morning.  About seven or eight students were present.  One student was concentrating hard on pornographic websites and was totally unaware of the police officers behind him.  The officers stood there for a minute and then they asked him to cooperate.  The student stood up, his body wavered and he passed out.  The police gave him some water and he came to a few minutes later.  He said, "I was scared."  The student was brought back to the station where he apologized and was soon released after a lecture and a warning.
  

• [068]  Two Photographs of Wen Jiabao (2/24/2006)  (Northeast News)   The following two photographs was first posted on January 30, 2006 at a BBS forum under the title: "When Premier returned to the Shandong rural village 10 years later, he is still wearing the same winter jacket!"  
  
  The photograph on the left was taken in the winter of 1995 when Wen Jiabao was still a reserve member of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo.  The photograph on the right was taken this January when Wen is the Premier.  It looks like as if Wen is still wearing the same green jacket.  This post then spread like wildfire through the Chinese forums and blogs (the reporter found 232,000 links on the Internet).  Sample comment: "I pay my respects to Premier Wen, because he is just like the neighbor who lives next to an ordinary citizen.  He is a good neighbor and a frugal good neighbor."
   
  Is this a piece of engineered public relations?  I don't know and neither do you.  It suffices to say that this was not accomplished through a traditional top-down campaign, such as the Xinhua story of a certain national leader swimming across a river.  Instead, this one propagated horizontally across the Internet by many people.  This would not have been possible in 1995 when the Chinese Internet was still in its infancy.

Addendum:  It would be remiss for me not to give you some flavor of the several tens of thousands of BBS comments on these photos.  The following is translated from some Tianya Club comments selected by the KonG 空 blog.

A vibrant system is more important!
The previous attempts to inflate the quality of the leaders reeked of feudalism and were quite useless.  
There are all sorts of officials out there, some are good in some ways and others are of terrible quality.  
The most reliable thing is an effective system.

I believe that this was stage clothing.
I think so.
Someone also said that this was a "bullet-proof vest."  That is possible too!

Just because the clothes were worn for several years does not solve any problems.
It is the payment of the back wages of the migrant workers, elimination of the agricultural taxes, the gradually elimination of the miscellaneous fees for elementary school (already in place in the western regions) and so on that made me respect the current generation of leaders.  At least, they paid attention to those socially vulnerable groups and thought about doing some concrete things for them.
We should not ignore these leaders' efforts due to some other unresolved problems.  At least, they are doing something for the people.  
 don't know what the "angry" people have in mind.  Are you perfect?  Can you be a perfect person overnight?

Certain people say that the country is corrupt and the government is corrupt.  Were they never corrupt in their entire lives?  If they should ever ascend to Premier Wen's position some day, would they dare to take out their ten-year-old jacket to wear?  Should they go and check how important Premier Wen has valued the common people since assuming the post?
I don't understand these people.  We the Chinese people finally got such a good Premier, but they won't support and they don't care about him.  Are we supposed to attack him instead?  Are we tell him that you are the Premier and you represent China, and so you must not wear old, beaten-up clothes because it damages the reputation of China?  It is really difficult to be China's Premier."

If you step back for a moment, you will realize that something is missing in these voices.  It is possible at this point to get on a BBS forum and accuse Premier Wen of cynically putting on a stage show.  Enough people are doing that and none of them is likely to be arrested in the middle of the night.  This is just standard BBS behavior now.  It may be that the Central Publicity Department will eventually ban the topic, but the commentators will simply move on to the next topic.  

The counter-arguments in the debate are not given in officialese.  Nobody ever talks about how the brilliant and courageous Premier Wen is the representative of the glorious Party and therefore must never ever be impugned or insulted.  Today, that kind of talk is no longer acceptable, because it is unpersuasive in a discursive environment.  If there are undercover Chinese police commentators at these BBS forums, their messages would have to be more subtle and nuanced.  In fact, they probably don't have to do anything  because the two largest camps are the "angry young people" and the "rational reformists," and the latter is an effective check-and-balance entity right now.

• [067]  Previewing Guangdong Province (2/24/2006)  This is what is coming up for this year, according to the Guangdong province police.  From Ming Pao:

The Guangdong police indicated that they will concentrate this year on the problem of internal and external hostile forces interfering with "defending rights."  According to the report from the Guangdong province public security bureau, hostile forces have politicized the issues of economic rights of urban consumers and rural farmers in recent years, and used individual incidents to stir up opinions and incited people who didn't understand the truth to cause trouble.  There had been multiple serious mass incidents which posed a serious threat to the construction of a harmonious and stable society in Guangdong.  The report indicated that the many serious mass disturbances last year in Guangdong were related with disputes over rights.

According to the report from the Guangdong police, there were 498,000 criminal cases last year, which was 3.3% fewer than the year before.  The police solved 186,000 cases.  But the number of mass incidents increased largely.  The provincial public security bureau used firm measures under these special circumstances to defeat the infiltration of overseas hostile forces including Falun Gong, terrorist activities, Internet criminals and others in many cases.  This year, apart from concentrating fighting the internal and external hostile forces interfering in defending rights, the Guangdong police will increase their fight against terrorism, to develop anti-terrorist response, system and professional forces.

• [066]  Tammy NYP Tops Chinese Competition (2/24/2006)  First, the top of the hit parade was held by university student Wang Tingting whose photos and videos of her trysts were apparently posted by the ex-boyfriend (see Comment 200602#050).  Next, it was Xie Lijun posting videos of her trysts with a Chinese police officer (see Comment 200602#056).  Now both have been toppled by student Tammy at Nanyang Poly in Singapore (see AsiaPundit for links from Singapore).  Once the news got around, the Chinese forums are getting hot on those videos (see, for example, Wenxue City and 6Park), with people "getting down on their knees" for those videos and/or instructions on how to view a .3GP file (use QuickTime!).  For convenience, Tammy NYP is even bundled with Wang Tingting in the same download.
  
  Is there anything better the Internet can be used for?

• [065]  Free Market in Operation (2/23/2006)  The previous comment Free Market Economics in the Blogosphere drew a bunch of sympathetic emails.  Since they seem to share a common theme, I will try to collectively address the issues here.
   
  The common question is: Who is writing these hate emails?
  Answer: The usual suspects are present.  Here are some specific examples from the past few months: 
   
  - Why do you keep insisting that you don't understand the meaning of the 87,000 mass incidents in China during 2005?  Maybe you just can't deal with the fact that China is falling apart?
  - Why did you translate the slanderous Freezing Point article by Yuan Weishi about the Boxer rebellion?  Do you hate China so much?  Do you want the foreigners to occupy China again?
  - You use the word cult to characterize the Falun Gong.  We all know that there are serious consequences as to whether you use the word cult, sect or religion.  You should not be using the word cult lightly.  (Note: I usually use 'cult' inside apostrophes).
  - When you posted the Abu Ghraib pictures, you must still want Saddam Hussein to be in charge in Iraq?  Don't you understand that we have brought freedom and democracy to the people of Iraq!?  Does it mean anything to you at all!?
  - As we all know, Taiwan is a sovereign nation and you should take care not to suggest that it is a part of China.
  - You should not be criticizing Reporters Without Borders because they are the good guys in this.  By criticizing them, you are aiding and abetting the totalitarian forces in China.
  - For you to say that fewer than 250,000 people marched in Hong Kong on December 4 means that you hate democracy and freedom.
  - Why are you so interested in criticizing the arrests of those South Korean farmers during the anti-WTO demonstrations?  Everybody knows that they are professional rioters!
   
  The problem is obviously this: Who am I supposed to please?  There is a Chinese saying: 順得哥情失嫂意. (translation: If you please your brother, you displease your sister-in-law).  For example, if I start calling Taiwan a sovereign nation, the other kinds of email will start appearing in my inbox.  I am not in the business of pleasing my email writers.  I am here to please myself.  A personal blog is not a democracy.  It is an autocracy of size one.  So there you have it.
   
  The other problem is this:  Do you believe that dealing with the listed questions is the major issue of our times?  I voted NO.  That was my personal decision.  You can decide whether you want to spend X hours a day dealing with them but you can do it on your own time.
   
  The second point to note is that many of these complaining emails begin with an opening statement such as "Since you have an influential blog, you should not ... (blah blah blah) ..."  That is the good news.  It means that they wouldn't have given a rat's ass if this were just an ordinary blog.  The EastSouthWestNorth blog is more than an ordinary blog in their view and that is why they wrote in.  I must admit that I enjoy being important.  Still, a blog is a personal project that reflects the personality, values, attitudes and opinions of an individual blogger and not subject to the calculations of the mainstream media to offend the least number of people.  I am not going to change myself.  If you believe that you own or represent the majority view that is not reflected here, you should write your own blog and you will win in the free market of public opinions.  You have my best wishes.
   
  P.S. I was just told that someone thought that the original comment was about him.  I had no idea who that was.  Here, I am reminded of Carly Simon's song:

You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you
You’re so vain, I’ll bet you think this song is about you
Don’t you? don’t you? 

• [064]  The Greatest Court Trial Photo Ever (2/23/2006)  (My China via Wenxue City)  In Fuxin city, eight individuals were on trial for forcing three females into prostitutes.  When the females refused, they were raped and beaten.  At the trial, the eight individuals all claimed that they were used by the others or that they had not realized that they were involved in any crime.
  
  But the case is not what made this a remarkable photo.  It is what the court clerk was caught doing on camera.  [Sorry for all you Apple Macintosh people: the court clerk was playing the Microsoft game solitaire!]
   
  Reader's comment: "Just wondering what you think the likelihood is of the trial photo with the solitaire-playing woman actually being a Photoshop job.  Seems to me that the MS solitaire game has seven piles of cards in the lower section, where in the photo, there are four filled and two empty slots, making a total of six. I don't think the monitor is large enough to obscure the right section of the screen from the angle the photographer is using, and the left hand side doesn't look like it holds another pile of cards. I'm inclined to think it's a fake, or at the very least, some sort of court software that resembles Solitaire..."

• [063]  What Is Up With Huang Ju? (2/23/2006)  Executive Vice-Premier Huang Ju is ranked number six on the nine-member Politburo in China.  Under the prevailing media protocol, all news about the Politburo members is released only by the Central Publicity Department.
   
  -(SCMP via UPI, 2/22/2006): Huang had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and remained in hospital.  He is expected to quit the Politburo.
   
  -(Beijing News via Boxun, 2/21/2006): At a meeting to study rural village problems, eight members of the Politburo were present with the exception of Huang Ju who was "visiting outside" (外访)
   
  -(Asia Times via Boxun, 2/20/2006): Huang Ju has not been seen since January 16.  In his last appearances, he looked healthy and did not look ill.  If he is ill, then he may be trying to avoid certain political storms.  For example, in April 1993, Li Peng pleaded a "heart disease" and spent half a year in a hospital; but the speculation was that Li was unhappy with the wave of reform after Deng Xiaoping's southern tour and he was under a lot of pressure.  So ducking in the hospital was a way of evading responsibility for an economic collapse.
   
  -(Ming Pao via Boxun; 2/17/2006)  At yesterday's Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conference, spokesperson Qin Kong replied: "I thank you for your concern about Vice-premier Huang Ju.  I don't know where you are coming from.  He is working normally and nothing has changed."
   
  -(Oriental Daily via Boxun; 2/14/2006)  At the evening meeting in the People's Great Hall, eight members of the Politburo (minus Huang Ju) ate the traditional sweet soup balls.  The absence of Huang Ju led to speculation that he may have lost power.
   
  -(United Daily via Boxun; 2/14/2006)  The last written appearance of Huang Ju was a national resources supervision meeting on January 23; the last photo was on January 5 at a national transportation meeting and he looked tired in the Xinhua photo.
   
  What is up with Huang Ju?
   
  Additonal link: Washington Post (3/3/2006)

• [062]  Negative Reporting and Public Safety (2/22/2006)  (Jinan Times via MediaChina.net) (in translation)  According to the most recent research by Zero Point, the sense of public safety among Chinese urban dwellers has been falling down since 2003.  In China Youth Daily (2/20), Professor Wang Taiyuan said that there are more negative reports in the media nowadays, and it subjectively affected the knowledge and psychology of the people.  Logically, then, the easiest way to increase people's sense of public safety is to decrease the amount of negative reporting in the media!!!
   
  The commentator then wrote: As an editor, I probably come into contact with a lot more negative news than ordinary citizens, but I don't feel less safe.  But when a thief broke into my home one night and stole stuff while I was sleeping, I truly felt threatened and unsafe.
   
  The commentator continued: There is no denying that people feel less safe when they read the negative reports, but that influence is tiny relative to their personal experiences.  But if some local governments believed Professor Wang, they may blame the media and neglect to look for the real reasons.  This will not increase people's sense of safety.  It will only restore the policy of keeping people uninformed or misinformed.

• [061]  Free Market Economics in the Blogosphere (2/22/2006)  With respect to the pile of email in my inbox as to why I refuse to address certain criticisms, I will try to answer them with this sweeping statement.  Life is too short, and I don't have the time to deal with these issues one at a time.  In a nutshell, this is about "free market economics."
   
  Axiom #1: If you don't like the EastSouthWestNorth blog, you don't have to read it.
  This axiom is the core concept of free market economics.  If someone does not like this blog, he/she doesn't have to read it.  How simple can this get!  Nobody is pointing a gun at them.  As for me, I did not do this blog to please the market to maximize any objective function (such as money, fame, etc).  I do this to please me and only me (and The Most Popular Chinese Blogger does not feel any differently about herself even if she is totally apolitical).  In the end, I have to be me and it does not matter to me whether I get zero traffic or a ton of traffic.  I have to be me because this is my essence.  It is you who have to decide for yourself whether you want to come here or not.  This is not my problem and I don't answer to you.  You vote with your feet (or mouse click, as is the case).  This is the essence of blogging.
   
  Axiom #2: If you keep coming back to the EastSouthWestNorth blog even though you keep stating that you hate it, then you are a masochist.
  Again, this is your problem and I don't care.  It was your choice to be 賤 (trash, despicable).  As for me, I am not going to let you change me in any way or fashion.  If you have any appreciation about the import of blogging, you will agree with me on this principle regardless of your political predilections.  I will always be me.  If you don't like me, you don't have to come here.  This is the true beauty of the market economy of the Internet blogosphere.
   
  Axiom #3: If the rest of the world continues to traffic the EastSouthWestNorth blog while you despise it, then (1) you are the only smart one around and (2) the rest of the world is stupid.
  In the previous post Stories About Apple Daily, the point was that 'lying rag' known as Apple Daily happens to be among the market leaders in both Hong Kong and Taiwan.  Either Apple Daily is doing something right, or else its readers are doing something wrong.  With respect to the EastSouthWestNorth blog, are you the lone voice in the wilderness  of stupid people, or are you the only person who is out of your mind?  You can go and figure it out for yourself.  Again, this is your problem and I don't care.  I am not going to let you change me.
   
  Axiom #4: The unique service offered by the EastSouthWestNorth blog is the near-real-time translation service for suddenly breaking incidents.  If you think that you can provide the same service, please do it.  I would be very delighted to relinquish my 'stranglehold' in this area and let someone else fulfill this important function.  I would rather devote my finite time each day to 'commentary' instead of straight 'translation.'  For my travails, all I get are complaints about translation nuances, biases and partiality in selection.  If you don't like what I do, please step up and provide a better service.  The free market will reward you with huge traffic.
  I am here because there is a market vacuum.  I don't want to fill it, but it needs to be filled and nobody else is doing it.  As an example, the Washington Post is providing an extensive accounting of Chinese blogger Michael Anti with the State Council Internet Monitoring Bureau and Microsoft (via RConversation) on this date (February 20, 2006) together with translation of the last blog posts by Michael Anti at MSN Spaces.  Those blog posts were translated in near-real-time in late December and early January right here at the EastSouthWestNorth blog (in passable and possibly imperfect translation).  That would be about six or seven weeks before the Washington Post can do the perfect job.  That is how this blog is different from mainstream media and this is why people come to this blog.  As I said, if you don't like what I am doing, you don't have to come here and/or you can do it yourself better.  This is about the free market.  You can either step up, put up or shut up.
   
  Now that you have heard the free market principles enunciated, go for it!
   
• [059]  Super Girl's Press Conference in Taiwan (2/22/2006)  Eastday's summary (via 6Park) was 滴水不漏 (translation: "not a single drop of water seeped through").
  Q: Now that you are finally allowed to speak, how do you feel?
  A: I don't have much to say, and I don't have any special feelings.
  Q: What about the photograph on the Internet of you in an intimate embrace with a member of the same sex?
  A: I am not the person in the photograph.  There is nothing to clarify.
  Q: Do you like boys or girls?
  A: [No response from Li Yuchun who just stared the questioner icily in the eye.  At that moment, the workers entered and escorted her out.]
  
  The above were not real questions; they were provocations.  The real substantive statement from Super Girl Li Yuchun was this: "Taiwan fans are very warm-hearted.  The local snacks are good."

• [058]  The Case of Annie Pang (2/21/2006)  On the day when the mother of the 'Goddess of Democracy' Anson Chan passed away in Hong Kong, the headlines were shared by the inquest into the death of Annie Pang, alleged mistress of Anson Chan's brother John Fang.  
   
  The inquest is being heard by Coroner Colin Mackintosh and five jurors.  According to The Standard, statements from as many as 49 witnesses, including three described as "casual friends/drug addicts" may be heard in the investigation which is expected to last 15 days.
   
  This is a tremendous waste of public resources.  Everybody agrees that there is a mystery, as noted in The Standard:

There are many unanswered questions, beginning with why Pang's body remained undiscovered for so long - the last time she was seen was July 1995.  In about August 1995 neighbors complained of a smell they described as "dead rats," [coroner's officer Dee] Crebbin said.

Also, why, in October 1999 when Fang and a locksmith entered the Waterloo Road apartment to close bathroom and bedroom windows that had caused water leakage into the flat below both said they never saw Pang's uncovered skeleton nor her skull in a waste basket on the floor beside the bed in the 300-square-foot flat.  "Mr Fang said he had to step over some things to reach the [bedroom] window and did not look at what they were," Crebbin said.

The next day he sent a man named Yeung Kwai-choi, who also knew Pang, to clean up the flat which was "in a terrible mess. Extremely untidy, dirty full of dust and cobwebs," Crebbin said.  It was Yeung who saw the skeleton and called police after he notified Fang.

(Apple Daily illustration)

The 'mystery' is this: When a person dies, she does not pick up her own head and put it in a waste basket.  That was why it defied commonsense for the police to have closed the case previously because there was nothing "suspicious."  Of course, the trail is cold by now and nothing can be done barring some new breakthrough evidence.  
 
So what is the purpose of this inquest?  The court probably has the best of intentions in trying to satisfy the Pang family's desire for an explanation, but the press is going for sensationalism and scoring political points.  The headline in the South China Morning Post was: "I was told Anson Chan's family linked to underworld, court hears."   There you have the money quote: "Anson Chan's family involves both the authorities and the underworld."  It sounded better in Chinese (via Ming Pao): 「你知不知道陳方安生家族一邊黑一邊白﹖」   The Sun even put the "Half Black/Half White" quote onto the front page, while Oriental Daily, Sing Pao and Sing Tao went with the three abortions that John Fang allegedly forced Annie Pang to have.  Please be mindful that this is all hearsay testimony and the inquest is not about probing the black/white connections of Anson Chan.  Here is an eyewitness account of the court proceedings: "The coroner told the jury to ignore that testimony as it was clearly hearsay, involved anonymous/unknown 'sources' and ridiculously vague. It was also quite brief; more so as he cut it off."  But it made the front page in The Sun.

Apple Daily preferred to have the story about the death of Anson Chan's mother.

• [057]  The Pushback Against Gao Zhisheng (2/21/2006)  The pushback by the Chinese government against the account by lawyer Gao Zhisheng of being followed by the secret police everywhere (see My Life With The Plainclothesmen) took place in a pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper.  This is at least an acknowledgement that the Gao has assumed some international importance.  But Gao Zhisheng cannot be discussed on the mainland, and the pushback had to come from friendly sources outside of China.
   
  According to Wen Wei Po, its Beijing-based reporter went to an informed source to ask about the "surveillance" and "near assassination" of Gao Zhisheng.  According to the source which checked with the Beijing police, there was no "deliberate collision" at the time and place on January 17 and the police did not receive any complaints from Gao.  As for the Beijing EB8233 license plate number, there is no such number.  Therefore, these were all manufactured rumors without any factual basis.  The Gao Zhisheng case has been hyped up by foreign media and Taiwan and overseas organizations are supporting it.  The Hong Kong Alliance In Support Of Patriotic Democratic Movements organized marches, signed petitions and engaged in hunger strike support.
   
  What can we say here?
  (1) Just because the police did not have a police report on file does not mean that the event did not happen.  How about checking the closed circuit television tapes?
  (2) Just because there is no Beijing EB8233 license place number does not mean that there was not a car going around with that plate.
  (3) Why doesn't the Wen Wei Po reporter run a surveillance on Gao Zhisheng to see if anyone is really following him?  Gao claims that when he goes to the park for his morning exercise, he is surrounded by a whole crew.  The Wen Wei Po reporter can just take some photographs from afar, one way or the other.  Is that an invasion of privacy?  Well, how do paparazzi reporters treat celebrities such as Jay Chou and Cecilia Cheung?  What can't they treat Gao Zihisheng the same way?

• [056]  Reporting A Crime On The Internet (2/21/2006)  Earlier this year, there was a widely distributed post titled "A Letter Pleading For Help From A Weak Woman (一个弱女子的求助信 )" (see example).  The complainant is a divorced woman who claimed that she was coerced into a relationship by a police officer in Cixi city (Zhejiang province).  She operates an unlicensed taxi cab, and the police officer held power over her livelihood.
   
  The police officer is already married, so she was in fact made into a long-term mistress.  She sent the evidence of the relationship to the police department, which should take disciplinary action against the police officer.  When that failed to happen, the woman went public on the Internet.  When that letter failed to generate enough support, the woman began posting video clips of love-making (see JiaoDong.net).  An informal tally is that this post now has more several hundred thousands viewings and more than 30,000 comments across many websites.
  
  According to the police, the police officer has been "severely reprimanded by the party for improper personal relationships."  But at QQ.net, a lawyer wondered if the woman has legal liabilities for posting the video clips, including invasion of the privacy of the police officer as well as disseminating pornography.
   
• [055]  This Blog Is Not Being Filtered (2/21/2006)  In Keywords Used to Filter Web Content  (Washington Post), there is a list of filtered media titles.  Included are two entries: EastSouthWestNorth Forum and EastSouthWestNorth Forum.  Not to fear, because the reference is to a much bigger forum 东西南北 论坛 (Omnitalk.com).

• [054]  The First Li Datong Letter (2/20/2006)  Philip P. Pan at the Washington Post recreates the history of the first Li Datong internal letter of August 2005 at The Click That Broke a Government's Grip.  This is an astonishing and emotionally rousing story, and it is infinitely more significant in Chinese history than the US Congressional hearings on Cisco, Google, MSN and Yahoo!.  I read this article and I applauded.
   
  At the time, I recognized the significance of this astonishing event and I immediately translated The Letter of Li Datong in near-real-time.  It took Pan to tell us today the timeline and processes by which that letter got propagated in a moment when the Central Propaganda Department could not cope with the huge popular response.  This was a case in which numerous strangers unconnected to each other did what they saw as the right thing without any instructions from anyone.  There have been more such moments since, and there will continue to be many more courtesy of the Internet.  The process is irreversible unless the Internet is shut down altogether in China (together with all business activities that are based upon Internet services such as email, IM, websites, etc), and that would be a Great Leap Backward.
   
  The next scheduled event on the calendar is the re-launching of Freezing Point minus the services of Li Datong and Lu Yuegang.  The announced program promises a critique of Yuan Weishi's article (see History Textbooks in China) which was the alleged reason for the banishment of Freezing Point and its editors.  I look for the entire Chinese Internet community to go ballistic against this critique, and the Central Propaganda Department will not know how to stop them because the attacks will come from everywhere.  I predict that they will endure a couple of days of blistering attacks before declaring the subject to be out of bounds altogether.  I promise you that I will be out there giving you all the information.  The Central Propaganda Department has the upper hand most of the time, so why not kick them when they don't have full control?

• [053]  Morph: We Media Global Forum (2/20/2006)  For the month of February, I am collaborating and interacting with people around the world on this group blog.  See, for example, The Shot That Won't Get Heard In China about how people from different areas and fields think about the Dick Cheney hunting 'accident.'

• [052]  Yet Another Real Baidu-Google Project (2/19/2006)  Pursuant to The Li-Lu Statement On Freezing Point, the subject of interest was obviously going to be the man Li Datong (李大同) himself.  Here are the results:
  - Google.com: 60,300 results (led off with a copy of his own open protest letter against the shutdown of Freezing Point)
  - Google.cn: 15,100 results (the open protest letter can be found on forums and blogs; obviously missing were Epoch Times articles, etc)
  - Baidu: 194 results (nothing about the shutdown of Freezing Point)
   
  Li Datong's deputy Lu Urging was also ousted, but for having published this essay There Was A Man Named Liu Binyan.  Another subject of interest was obviously going to be Liu Binyan (刘宾雁).  After all, Lu Yuegang wrote the essay precisely because the name of the reportage pioneer had been erased.
  - Google.com: 10,800
  - Google.cn: 8,740
  - Baidu: 10,700 (and you can even find copies of Lu Yuegang's essay through Baidu)
   
  These are two different scenarios.  In the case of Li Datong, there was a concerted effort at Baidu to block out any mention of the recent happenings at Freezing Point.  Google.cn is blocking out links to the 'hostile overseas forces' (Epoch Times, RFA, VOA, AsiaDemo, 64memo, etc), which would be inaccessible from inside China without some special tools.  In the case of Liu Binyan, both Google.cn and Baidu are blocking out the 'hostile overseas forces.'

• [051]  The Steamed Bun and Freezing Point (2/19/2006) From Southern Metropolis Daily, this is a short opinion piece about The Steamed Bun Lawsuit.  Here is the loose translation, with the most interesting bit being that last sentence.

The dissemination of The Steamed Bun was made possible by the Internet.  It was a no-brainer for forum masters, who didn't need more than a second to approve the post.  Soon, the hits were occurring faster than a chicken pecking at food on the ground.  The traditional media did even better, and soon opinion pieces such as: "Brother, you hold on in there.  If you go bankrupt, we will raise money for you" are everywhere across the country.  On Phoenix TV, the beautiful program hostess raved about the video, as if telling the audience: "Look!  I can talk about this freely, like a little bird flying in the air."  Then there are the dozens of lawyers who fight to become Hu Ge's defense lawyer.  Thus, a huge entertainment show is about to begin, in which both sides seemed righteous.  At this moment, in the eyes of the numerous participants, other more urgent things that require attention have all turned into freezing points (emphasis added). (此时此刻，在成千上万的参演者眼中，再现实再紧迫再需要关注的事，都凝固成了冰点。)

Yes, we all know.  There are restrictions on what you can talk about in China, but you do everything to act innocent and slip in whatever you can ... like Freezing Point ... did you think that it came out of nowhere?

• [050]  The Most Famous Face In China Now (2/19/2006)  According to 6Park, the name Wang Tingting (王婷婷) is hot on Baidu as netizens have received word-of-mouth recommendations to look for her photo/video collection that ranges from the mundane tourist pics to a hardcore session video taped at a hotel.
  
  What is so interesting about Wang Tingting above all other porno actresses/amateurs?  Because she is described as a third-year student at Northeastern Finance University, having served as class leader, excellent student league member, excellent military cadet, etc.  Furthermore, these photographs were allegedly posted on the Internet by her ex-boyfriend after breaking up.  In other words, this is a real person.  There are now netizens who "get on down their knees" to "beg" for the photos/videos as well as her telephone number, home address and anything person item that she might have used.
   
  When the reporter went to the university and looked up Wang Tingting, there was indeed a real Wang Tingting except she looks nothing like the one in the photos/videos.
  
   
  The real Wang Tingting said: "Several days ago, a friend called to tell me that there are photos plus a biography of Wang Tingting. I was walking down the street, and I rushed into an Internet bar to check.  That person isn't me, but the background in one photograph was our university campus.  Perhaps some busy body thought that it was me and made up the story.  I can't imagine who would do that.  I am surprised and I am angry!  My future and reputation may be ruined.  I am 'famous' without trying.  School is going to re-open in a few days.  Someone is going to start calling me at the dormitory based upon the information on the Internet.  What will I do?"

• [049]  ETTV-S Returns (2/18/2006)  Back in July/August 2005 (see post and comment), the Taiwan cable/satellite news channel ETTV-S was denied a license renewal. 
   
  According to eTaiwanNews today:

A news channel owned by the Eastern Multimedia Group won its war with the Government Information Office after the Cabinet's Commission of Administrative Appeals ruled in favor of an appeal filed by the channel to reinstate its license, which was revoked by the GIO last year.  ... The commission said it had failed to find evidence that the group was running in the red or failed to meet other requirements set by the government.

... Chang Shu-sen, an ETTV-S executive said his company will consult with its lawyers before deciding whether to seek national compensation for the GIO's decision, a move which has incurred heavy losses for the channel.

Long Shong Group, whose cable movie outlet was also shut down last August, has decided to seek NT$1.8 billion in compensation from the government. The group has been showing its movies on a different channel under different licenses since the Long Shong channel was closed.

National compensation can be asked when a public servant violated citizen rights either deliberately or mistakenly during the discharge of his/her public duties.  The public servant may also have personal liability if his actions were not permitted under the law and administrative regulations.  
 
In the case of ETTV-S, the most readily identifiable public servant is the former GIO Minister Pasuya Yao.  Here is the instant Apple Daily poll:  When the reinstated television channels ask for national compensation, should the government ask Pasuya Yao for compensation money?  Yes: 63.8%; No: 20.6%; Don't now/no opinion: 15.7%.  In practice, showing personal liability would be impossible since this was not a personal decision by Pasuya Yao alone, as any number of government bureaucrats and commissions were involved in the process too.  The poll reflects public perception, though.

• [048]  Papa's Got A Brand New Bag (2/18/2006)  This Shanghaiist post brought back a surge of memories.  And I mean a tsunami of memories.  My current readers will find it very, very difficult to believe that I once was the webmaster of an authorized blog for the personality and music of James Brown.  Yes, I was even an official photographer for him.
   
  What was going on?  Well, I never asked for such an assignment.  But I happened to be the webmaster of a highly popular running club in New York City and one club member asked me to help out with his corporate website.  So there I was for the official signing of the big James Brown bond deal.  What was the commercial concept?  James Brown may be the hardest working musician in the United States, but he had no idea how to manage his money or pay his taxes.  Consequently, the Internal Revenue Service was hounding him to the tune of millions of dollars in owed taxes.  Therefore, he sold the future revenue stream from his musical works for an immediate payout to satisfy his debtors.  This was a multi-million-dollar deal and I was called on to be the official photographer.  Here was one of my masterpieces of James Brown putting his signature onto the contract (plenty more at Pullmanco.com):
  
  Of course, this is just useless information.  I will tell you an interesting detail. The entourage had to go to the lawyer's office.  As soon as James Brown walked out onto Sixth Avenue (New York City), people in the street recognized him and asked for autographs.  James Brown obliged everybody with one exception.  Someone did not have any paper and gave him a dollar bill to sign; he said "I do not sign my name on American currency bills!"  Indeed, only authorized signatures appear on American currency bills.  I would have liked to scan an American bill to illustrate, but the Secret Service will be after me ...

• [047]  The Kindergarten School Teacher (2/18/2006)  There is an interesting article by Woo Yanwai in Yazhou Zhoukan (Asia Week) which I will have to translate.  The intriguing idea is just why freedom of press and expression in Hong Kong and Taiwan actually left these places dominated by tabloid sensationalism while humanistic journalism is no longer even conceivable (to wit, the investigative reportage in Freezing Point (China Youth Daily) is simply inconceivable in Hong Kong).  Meanwhile, in unfree China, they seemed to have no problems at quickly adapting to tabloid sensationalism.
   
  This story is just a street story in the city of Lanzhou (Kansu province).  It was immediately picked up by People's Daily, Sohu.com, Netease, Yahoo, Tom.com, Shenzhen Hotline and hundreds of other news outlets.  What is the deal here?  At 3pm, a female kindergarten teacher in her 20's walked down the street, pulled up the sleeve on her left arm and cut herself with a razor.  Blood spewed into the air.  She continued to walk quickly for almost 600 meters before she collapsed.  Pedestrians called the emergency medical service, and an ambulance came to take her to the hospital.  The reason why she wanted to commit suicide is unknown (possibly related to emotional issues).
  
  In essence, this is a story without real substance but it is sensationalistic and it tollgates without much after-effect.  This is the kind of story that the government allows in China to the exclusion of more important social and political issues.  Meanwhile, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the same kind of story dominates in most newspapers to the exclusion of more important social and political issues.  What does this say?  We are screwed no matter what ...

• [046]  Another Hong Kong Man Gets Arrested And Sentenced For Internet Speech (2/17/2006)  (Ming Pao)  In Hong Kong, a man named Chen was sentenced to probation.  However, the judge was unhappy and referred the case to the Secretary of Justice to see if a more severe charge/sentence is possible.
   
  What did the man do?  On August 13, Chen read a news item in Apple Daily about an English "Jack Rolling" gang used cars to intercept solo females for gang rapes.  The practice began in South Africa and spread to England.  On the same day, Chen posted at a Hong Kong forum seeking other men to form a "flash rape gang" in Hong Kong.  He wrote that the gang needs five or six people; while one man is raping the female, the other men will keep watch.  A netizen was alarmed by the message and informed the police.  Chen was arrested the next day (note: no technical details about the arrest process were provided, so it is not known whether the BBS forum, the Internet Service Provider and/or telephone company cooperated with the police but it was at lightning speed).
   
  The prosecutor agreed that most comments on the BBS forums are exaggerations of lies; although two or three men replied, Chen never contacted them.  There were no actual victims in the case.  Therefore, the prosecutor only requested probation.  After reading the case details, the judge told Chen: "Why are you so stupid? Is this a lot of fun? (為何這麼無聊，很好玩嗎﹖)."  Then the judge pointed out that this was a serious case involving social instability and luring others to commit crime.  The case has been referred for further consideration.
   
  Curiously, there is no explanation from Chen himself (e.g. it was only a joke, which is protected under freedom of speech).

Under the proposed US legislation (via InMediaHK):

Any United States business that maintains an Internet content hosting service may not provide to any foreign official of an Internet-restricting country information that personally identifies a particular user of such content hosting service, except for legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes as determined by the Department of Justice.

So let say Mr. Chen leaves a Yahoo.com email address for contact.  When the Hong Kong police gets the tip, they go to Yahoo.  Yahoo says that they will have to go to the US Department of Justice for approval.  How long will the delay be?  How many Chinese-language/Chinese law experts does the US Department of Justice intend to hire to process the requests that will come from a country with 110 million Internet users?  Just remember that all it takes is one single case in which the decision was delayed or the wrong decision was made (i.e. the "flash rape gang" had the time to form and go into operation) before this whole extra-territorial policing system collapses in ignominy.  Can the victims sue the US government (and Yahoo)?

• [045]  Freezing Point Returns Without Teeth (2/17/2006)  From Benjamin Kang Lim and Chris Buckley of Reuters: 

The official China Youth Daily decided on Thursday to revive a provocative weekly section closed by censors last month, but shunted aside the two editors who made it a standard-bearer for combative journalism.  Communist Party officials in charge of the newspaper, the mouthpiece of the party's youth wing, bowed to an outcry and decided to resume publishing the weekly Freezing Point section from March 1, the weekly's editor Li Datong said by telephone. 

But Li and Lu Yuegang, a famed investigative reporter, will be removed as editor and deputy editor respectively of the weekly and shunted to the newspaper's news research office, Li said.  'This exterminates the soul of Freezing Point, leaving an empty shell,' Li told Reuters. Lu also said he was 'extremely disappointed' before his telephone was abruptly cut off. 

The first edition of the new Freezing Point will publish an essay attacking Yuan, Li said.  'The editors and journalists aren't happy about it, and if they don't agree to it, the Freezing Points may not be resumed,' he said. 

... Li, the editor, said he believed propaganda officials chose the historian Yuan's essay as an excuse to act, because its criticism of nationalism jarred with many ardently patriotic young Chinese and provoked condemnation on the internet.  'They waited for the right excuse at the right moment, but they've wanted to close us for a long time', he said 

I was perhaps ambiguous in Comment 200602#039 about what the 'old comrades' were thinking.  Based upon that anecdotal story, I believe it has little or nothing to do with the pretext over the Yuan Weishi story.  Rather, for more than a decade, Freezing Point had been a source of information for directing their attention to where the government/party might have failed in spite of their best intentions.  If Chairman Mao was assessed with a grade of 60%/40%, Freezing Point probably rated as 95%/5% and a single essay did not merit the total banishment of an important pipeline to the people.  I believe that this was the reason why the elders took the astonishing step of publishing an open letter to express their outrage.

Anyway, I will make this prediction here.  May God help the person who gets the assignment to pen the article attacking Yuan!!!  He (or she) and his (or her) essay will be ripped to shreds on the Internet (unless the Central Publicity Department intervenes by banning all discussion of said essay)!!!

As for Li Datong and Lu Yuegang being assigned to the news research office, they have done that before (see Li Datong In 1989).  The only question is how quickly they will return for their next assignment.

P.S. (Ming Pao) Li Datong: "It does not matter what they say or how they arrange things.  My view is that Freezing Point is fact dead (不管他們作什麼姿態、怎麼安排，我的看法是，冰點事實上已經死亡了。)."

• [044]  American Mainstream Media and Abu Ghraib (2/17/2006)  After the first Abu Ghraib photos appeared, it had always been known that there were much worse photographs on that infamous CD.  When the US elected representatives were invited for a private screening, it was said that they had to find barf bags.  Many members of the American mainstream media have seen those photos and videos (including Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker), but they have restrained themselves from showing those additional photos.  Whatever their motives were, disclosure of truth was not at the top of the list. 
   
  Now that the Australian television channel SBS has broken through, the American mainstream media have suddenly found the courage as well (see Salon exclusive: The Abu Ghraib files).  I am going to place a link on the most comprehensive collection of those photos here -- it is hosted here at ESWN and I will kill the page if and when bandwidth usage gets out of hand.
   
  For now, let me tell you how disappointed I am with American mainstream media.  The Man Of The Year in 2004 was the person in this photo:
  
   
  Well, guess what?  That famous photograph had been sanitized!!!  Salon.com shows us the original photograph before cropping, with the following annotation: "Staff Sgt. Ivan 'Chip' Frederick clips his fingernails as a detainee nicknamed 'Gilligan' stands hooded on a box."  Just which media outlets had been complicit with the 'clean-up'?  Every one of them!!!  The excuse as stated by the Washington Post which has had these photos since 2004: ""We are going to publish only those images that give readers essential information. Many of the images are so shocking and in such bad taste, especially the extensive nudity, that they are not publishable in our newspaper or on our Web site."
  
   
  Here is the even more odious part: (The Australian)  At a press conference in Washington for foreign media yesterday, [John] Bellinger [ a legal adviser at the US State Department] said the Bush administration's position was that it was better that the Abu Ghraib photos not be released.  "We felt that it was an invasion of the privacy of the detainees themselves to have these photographs come out and in addition, that it would ... cause, potentially, further violence." 
   
  You will have to go through those photographs to decide if respect for privacy had been on anyone's mind when all of that was happening ...

• [043]  The Most Despised Man In China (2/16/2006) (6Park)  Hundreds of thousands of people come to Nanjing's Yuhuatai to pay tribute to the revolutionary martyrs.  On this day, a Chinese man climbed onto the statues, sat himself down on the head of a revolutionary martyr and got his photograph taken.  For his troubles, this photograph would make the rounds on the BBS forums.
  

• [042]  Contrarian Advertising (2/16/2006)  When you have a unique service that nobody else offers, you must advertise it.  When you do not have a service that everybody else offers, must you advertise it?  Indeed, you must!!!  (Wenxue City)  At this hostel in Shenyang, there is a sign: "This is a proper hostel which operates according to the law.  [no Misses].  Please do not interrupt our rest)."  Obviously, every other hostel, motel or hotel in the same neighborhood has many Misses.
  

• [041]  Commentary on Rebecca MacKinnon's Blogging on US Congressional Hearing on Chinese Internet Censorship (2/16/2006)

"These companies tell us they will change China. But China has already changed them."  This is not a good day to listen to the high-and-mighty speeches from Representatives Chris Smith and Tom Lantos.  The much bigger story on this day is how the Australian television channel SBS has broken through more than 20 months of collective silence by the US government and its media to present more photographs and videos from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (see this updated post (WARNING: EXTREMELY DISTURBING).  Everything said on this day at the Congressional hearings on Chinese Internet censorship can be turned around against the US government in the case of the Abu Ghraib photos/videos -- the US government (and the subservient media) thought that certain information needed to be suppressed for the greater good, based upon their own judgment.  Now isn't that sad?  I promise that I won't drone on this point again in the rest of this comment, because it has nothing to do with it.

China censorship: Google's defense  Statement #1 from Google: "We have recently launched Google.cn, a version of Google’s search engine that we will filter in response to Chinese laws and regulations on illegal content. This website will supplement, and not replace, the existing, unfiltered Chinese-language interface Google.com. That website will remain open and unfiltered for Chinese-speaking users worldwide."  If they really have a deal or unwritten understanding with the Chinese government, then who cares?

China censorship: Yahoo! defends itself  Here are some excerpts from written testimony by Michael Callahan, Senior VP and General Counsel:  

Regarding the Shi Tao case, he repeated a lot of Yahoo!’s recent statements about the need to follow local laws. Then:

“Let me take this opportunity to correct inaccurate reports that Yahoo! Hong Kong gave information to the Chinese government. This is absolutely untrue. Yahoo! Hong Kong was not involved in any disclosure of information about Mr. Shi to the Chinese government. In this case, the Chinese government ordered Yahoo! China to provide user information, and Yahoo! China complied with Chinese law. To be clear — Yahoo! China and Yahoo! Hong Kong have always operated independently of one another. There was not then, nor is there today, any exchange of user information between Yahoo! Hong Kong and Yahoo! China.”

That is something that I have learned from multiple sources, none of which are publishable by me because they were hearsay.  Upon information and belief, Yahoo! Hong Kong does not have the technical capability of retrieving any user information even if they wanted to.  That information had to have come from Yahoo! China.  It is a mystery as to why the legal documents in the cases of Shi Tao and Li Zhi would refer to Yahoo! Hong Kong Holding Company.

There is still something that I truly don't get -- people believed that if a US law were enacted to required Yahoo! to store its emails outside of China, then there would be no need to comply with any warrants.  I can understand this if the company is the U.S. company Yahoo.com.  But if the company is Yahoo.com.cn and it is registered at a Beijing address with a named responsible person, how can they turn away a legal warrant from the Chinese government?  Who cares where your server is located?  If you are a New York City bank, can you turn away a New York City police warrant for information on a customer because your servers are located in New Jersey (or Jamaica)?

As for the rest of the Yahoo! PR statement, I have no idea what they are talking about.  It is content-free, as far as I am concerned.

China censorship: Microsoft's defense  First of all, Michael Anti has been read into the US Congressional records.  Hurray!  Skipping over the mea culpa statement in the Anti case and the revised company policies and procedures, here is the most important portion:

When pressed on this point, most observers would no doubt concede that there are circumstances—such as instances of kidnapping, child abuse, or cyber-attack—when the apprehension of serious criminals justifies cooperation with law enforcement authorities even in authoritarian societies—so long as law enforcement is not used as a pretext for political repression. Yet in practice, when companies face law enforcement requests of this kind, there is little room to question the motivations and/or second-guess the judgments made by officials in these cases.

In the end, the issue comes back to a difficult judgment of the risks and benefits of these powerful technologies, not just in China, but in a wide range of societies where cultural and political values may clash with standards of openness and free expression.

Microsoft cannot substitute itself for national authorities in making the ultimate decisions on such issues. 

This is exactly my position all along.  You can condemn these companies for all you want, but in the end there has to be a practical and workable solution for them.  Rejecting every single Chinese government warrant is NOT the answer, because you are in fact aiding and abetting real criminals most of the time.  I personally do not see how this can be done.  The change will eventually have to come from inside China about the law.

Chinese censorship: Cisco responds  From Mark Chandler: "Cisco does not customize, or develop specialized or unique filtering capabilities, in order to enable different regimes to block access to information; Cisco sells the same equipment in China as it sells worldwide; Cisco is not a service or content provider, or network manager; Cisco has no access to information about individual users of the Internet."

Do you believe that Cisco ought to start investigating each of its hundreds of thousands of customers just exactly how they are using the Cisco routers?  Maybe they can start with my New York City office: Boxun, ObserveChina and New Century Net are blocked because they are "hate" sites?  Should Cisco butt in and object, as if they have any idea what Boxun, ObserveChina or New Century Net are?

• [040]  The Elementary School F1 Drivers (2/16/2006)  6Park has several photographs of Chinese elementary school students in their official school uniforms.  Given all the Marlboro, Shell and other logos, one has to wonder if these are school kids or Formula 1 racecar drivers!
  

• [039]  Freezing Point Updates (2/15/2006)  In BBC, The Guardian and New York Times, it is noted that a group of former senior Communist party officials have issued an open letter to denounce the shutdown of the Freezing Point weekly magazine in China Youth Daily.  I can say that I saw it coming when I translated Fifth Uncle and Fifth Aunt, which was the most popular essay in the history of Freezing Point, because there was this paragraph about a reader response:

One day, I received a telephone call.  The voice seemed steady and it was a middle-aged man.  "I am the secretary of an old comrade.  This old comrade read the report on Fifth Uncle and Fifth Aunt.  He felt badly and said that we have not done our work.  I have sent 2,000 yuan over.  Please make sure that you forward it to them."  I asked him if he could tell me the name of the old comrade.  He said, "I cannot say."  I understood.  According to custom, this is a "revolutionary"-class leader in the central government.

The old comrades are naming themselves now.

In another development, Li Datong had previously filed a complaint against the Central Publicity Department in the matter of the shutdown of Freezing Point (see Comment #200602019).  Procedurally, in accordance with the party regulations, this is a three-step process.  Li Datong hands his complaint to the party organization in China Youth Daily, which hands the document to the China Youth League central party organization, which hands the document to the Communist Party Central Disciplinary Committee.  Ming Pao is reporting that the China Youth League central party organization has declined to forward the complaint to the next level, and Li Datong has confirmed this to be the case.  The word is that the China Youth League central party organization has instructed China Youth Daily to re-launch Freezing Point, but will Li Datong be around for the new and 'rectified' version?

• [038]  AOL.com in Chinese (2/15/2006)  The subject is brought up at RConversation and Peking Duck.  AOL.com in Chinese is supposedly a totally uncensored service.  Will this succeed in China for that reason?  Well, who am I to tell you, one way or the other?  I do know that AOL.com was a company that totally did not get it in Latin America, notwithstanding the combined financial muscle of Time Warner and the Cisneros Group.  From Washington Post, this is what happened after almost one decade of work in Latin America:

America Online Latin America Inc., an Internet service provider partly owned by Time Warner Inc., said it may file for bankruptcy protection because it doesn't have enough cash to pay its debt and fund its business beyond September.  AOL Latin America is not looking more money "because we believe that any efforts to obtain financing would be futile based on past experience," the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

The company also said it won't be able to obtain additional financing from New York-based Time Warner Inc., Venezuela's Cisneros Group of Cos., Brazil's Banco Itau SA "or any other source."  AOL Latin America also said Tuesday that its stock has no value. Even if the company manages to sell part of its businesses, none of the proceeds will be available to shareholders, it said in the filing.

How did they end up that way?  Because they were outsiders who totally did not understand local consumer needs.  The American model, which was failing even in the USA, meant nothing to the locals.  They never got any traction and they just burned through US$900 million (or some other absurd amount) in the process without a clue.
 
With that in mind, let us look at the AOL.com in Chinese.  The key content area appears to be the online videos.  On this day, the featured videos were the CCTV Spring Festival show and a television drama series (蝶舞天涯).  With due respect, this stuff is DOA (Dead On Arrival) inside China.  This is old stuff and nobody wants to see it on the Internet.  The AOL.com in Chinese service is not going to be commercially viable in China with just an 'uncensored' search engine which can be blocked by the Great China Firewall anytime that the government wants.
 
P.S. AOL.com in Chinese has the better social and entertainment coverage than mainland Chinese portals because they have Hong Kong and Taiwan news feeds.  For example, this is an Apple Daily (Taiwan) story of a 64-year-old mother-in-law in Taichung county catching her 64-year-old husband making love with her daughter-in-law who happened to moaning too loud (很好、很好、很爽、很爽！).  With due respect, this is not enough to make this a must-read and best-overall portal for the mainland Chinese.

• [037]  US Congressional Hearing On Chinese Internet Censorship (2/15/2006)  According to the schedule (see Angry Chinese Blogger), there will be three panels.  The first comes from the US State Department and the second panel consists of the 'evil empires' of Cisco, Google, MSN and Yahoo!.  The third panel is:

* Reporters Without Borders - Lucie Morillon, Head, Internet Freedom Desk
* China Information Center - Harry Wu
* Radio Free Asia - Libby Liu, President
* University of California (Berkeley) - Xiao Qiang, Director, China Internet Project

When I saw this list, I thought: "Holy crap!"  This is not going to be your fair and balanced points of views (note: I trust Xiao Qiang).  But the long and short of it is this: "Please explain how the Chinese Internet users will be substantively better off as a result of your recommendations."  This is how I will be reading the transcripts.
 
I do dread the aftermath.  I am sure my telephone will be ringing with requests for interviews because I am someone who does not hold the identical views as the panelists.  And the request will begin as follows: "I know that you must be sick of this subject.  Just about every Chinese blogger that I have spoken to refuses to deal with what they consider to be a non-existent issue.  I have a deadline to meet and I would really appreciate if you can help me out here ..."

• [036]  The Vanishing WTO Riot Trial (2/15/2006)  InMediaHK has news from the lawyers of the three remaining Koreans who are to stand trial in March.  And now there are only two.  Previously, Yang Kyung-kyu had offered to plead guilty on the charge of unauthorized assembly to accept political responsibility as a leader.  However, he objected to descriptions of specific acts in the charges because he knew that they were false.  But the police refused to withdraw those descriptions.  Therefore, he pleaded not guilty instead.  Now, his defense lawyer has procured video tapes to prove that Yang was elsewhere when he was allegedly in the unauthorized assembly on Lockhart Road.  The prosecutor has therefore withdrawn the charge against Yang altogether.
   
  This leaves two remaining defendants, Park In-hwan and Yun Il-kwon, on charges of illegal assembly.  At a minimum, Park In-hwan would be a tough case to prosecute because he was the video-camera person.  Park had previously stated that he would need a third hand to hit the police because he was holding the camera with his two regular hands.  So the entire honor of the Hong Kong police may rest on the case of Yun Il-kwon.

[Alternate version]  (SCMP, 2/18/2006)  

Prosecutor Charlotte Draycott told Fanling Court the prosecution of Mr Yang had been based primarily on his identification by a senior police officer. But when the officer was approached for further investigation, the quality of his evidence was found to be wanting.  Police re-examined video footage from the riots and interviewed other witnesses in an attempt to identify Mr Yang, but in vain, said Ms Draycott.

"In consequence, the DPP has concluded that doubts exist in this prosecution case. In particular, it cannot be shown with certainty that Mr Yang did in fact play any particular role in the alleged offence," it said.  "Nor can any role he may have played be sufficiently distinguished from that of others arrested at the same time but not, in the event, prosecuted."

Principal Magistrate Andrew Ma Hon-cheung ordered that the charge be dismissed and acquitted Mr Yang.

• [035]  Chained Melody (2/15/2006)  The Macromedia Flash file Chained Melody by Hu Laiping (via Massage Milk) is incredibly funny, and yet there is a poignant social message about how the grassroots people endure.  If you don't understand Chinese, here is the script.  The music is sung to the tune Unchained Melody (made famous by the Righteous Brothers) to Chinese lyrics (some of them sung in Changde (Hunan) dialect).  In the first act, the street vendor explains what he plans to sell (e.g. potatoes at one RMB per jin).  In the second act, a woman asks for the price of potato.  He gets greedy and says, "Five RMB per jin."  She says, "Wow!  This is robbery!"  He pulls out a knife and says, "Yes, this is robbery.  Now hand me your money."  Whereupon she beats the crap out of him because she is a Taekwondo expert.  In the third act, a tough guy asks for the price of potato.  The street vendor gets scared and says, "Half an RMB per jin."  Whereupon the tough guy beats the crap out of the street vendor for daring to ask for any money from the top thug in the street market.  In the fourth act, the street vendor is hauled away for 24-hour-detention by the police for creating incidents.  The street vendor is first read his rights: "You have the right not to defecate.  But if you do, each piece of turd can be and will be used as evidence against you!"  You can enjoy it even if you don't understand any Chinese.

• [034]  The Xuecun Condoms (2/15/2006) (Netease)  Xuecun is the name of a brand of condoms in China.  According the records, the trademark rights were registered by a Hebei province enterprise, registration number 3495517 valid between September 7, 2004 through September 6, 2004.  Only the Chinese letters 雪村 and the phonetic spelling "Xuecun" were registered, without any associated images.  Below is a photo of an early edition of the Xuecue condoms.
  
   
  Alas, when the name Xuecun is mentioned, the general public will tend to immediately think of the singer Xuecun, famous for the song "All northeasterners are living Lei Feng's" (东北人都是活雷锋).
   
  (East Asian Economic News via Yahoo!)  Acting on a tip, a reporter went into a pharmacy and saw the Xuecun condoms displayed with other brands.  A female salesperson recommended to the reporter: "You buy the Xuecun brand.  Xuecun is the image spokesperson for the company.  He did commercials for them.  Many people buy this brand."  The reporter deliberately asked, "Who is Xuecun?"  The female salesperson laughed and said, "This one who sang 'All northeasterners are living Lei Feng's'.  Everybody on this planet knows!"  
   
  The reporter saw that the Xuecun condoms were manufactured by a Heibei company and sold at 25 yuan per packet.  The box is green in color.  On the top right corner is a cartoon drawing of Xuecun, with his tongue sticking out in the shape of a condom and holding a condom packet in his hand.  The words 雪村 appear in the middle with "Xuecun."  The product description is: Preventing sexual diseases begins with Xuecun.
  
  When the reporter contacted Xuecun himself later, he was shocked: "I have never authorized this factory.  I have never heard about this.  They used my name and image for condoms and this is an insult to my character."  Xuecun has referred the matter to his lawyer.
   
  It is one thing to have an identical name (Xuecun means "Snowy village" literally), but it is something else to use an image.  Does the real Xuecun bear a likeness to the cartoon figure on the condom package?

• [033]  Public Entertainment in China (2/14/2006)  This China Daily article on the regulation on the administration of entertainment places is factually correct ("no pirated products") but Nanfang Daily and Xinhua have much more extensive and fascinating accounts of the other regulations.  Here are some highlights:
   
  - No business to be conducted between 2am and 8am.
   
  - Apart from national holidays, electronic game machines must not be open to non-adults.
   
  - Entertainment places must not be located in: private residences, museums, libraries or buildings listed as protected cultural sites; residential areas, schools, hospitals and government offices; train stations, airports and other places of dense public gathering; basements or lower levels inside buildings; adjacent to warehouses that store dangerous chemicals.
   
  - Employees must not have criminal records in organizing, coercing, seducing, permitting and presenting prostitution; manufacturing, selling or disseminating pornographic material; smuggling, selling, transporting and manufacturing narcotics; rape; forcibly abusing and insulting females; gambling; money laundering; organizing, directing and participating in triad-like criminal organizations.
   
  - Owners of entertainment places must not be related to employees of the Public Security Bureau or Cultural Administrative Bureau through spousal relationship; direct blood relationship; indirect blood relationship through three generations; and close familial relationship (e.g. in-laws) to spouse.
   
  - The following activities are banned in entertainment places:
      - (1) Contrary to the basic principles of the Constitution
      - (2) Endangering national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity
      - (3) Endangering national security, or damaging national reputation and interests
      - (4) Inflaming ethnic hatred and prejudices, hurting ethnic feelings, intruding on ethnic customs and habits and damaging ethnic unity;
      - (5) Violating national religious policies and promoting evil religions and superstitution
      - (6) Promoting pornography, gambling, violence and drug-related criminal acts, or persuading others to commit crimes;
      - (7) Contrary to social morals or national cultural traditions;
      - (8) Insulting and defaming others and violating the legal rights of others;
      - (9) Other contents banned by laws and administrative regulations.
   
  - All box rooms in entertainment places must not have locks from the inside; the lighting must not be lower than the national standard during business hours; there must be a transparent window through which the whole room can be observed.
   
  - No one must bring guns; ammunition; restricted equipment; exploding, flammable, poisonous, radioactive, corrosive or other dangerous materials; communicable disease virus specimens into entertainment places.

• [032]  On The Epistemology of Chinese Photojournalism (2/14/2006)  With respect to yesterday's comment about Chinese blogger 天方乱谭 on photojournalism, the following remarks are made:
   
  - I take it that 天方乱谭 is a reporter with Southern Metropolis Daily and therefore may have come across instances where he may have seen certain top-quality photographs which could not be published.  That may be the reason for his comments, and we can all appreciate that.  But I am trying to be a mind reader here.
   
  - It is not the case that all negative photographs of disasters in China are banned in the media.  A reader sent in the following link at the China Daily BBS for a China Picture of the Year Poll.  Five of the ten are disasters (#1 Jilin explosion; #2 Loudi mining accident; #5: Newborn after earthquake; #9 Escaping a typhoon; #10 Harbin water crisis).  As 天方乱谭 pointed out, the most dramatic photographs come from suddenly breaking events.