Curse You, Roland Soong!
Having freshly cleaned off the screen of our sexy MacBook Pro at the ChinaGeeks temporary HQ, we were all set to fire off a fascinating new post translating this. It’s got everything: sex, internet technology, government heavy-handedness and the Chinese media embarrassing themselves. Too bad, then, that ESWN has already done it, better than we would have. (In case you haven’t figured out, the title of this post is meant to be taken in jest. We love ESWN, and I suspect that being preemptively outdone by Roland is something that’s happened to almost any China blogger who has ever touched their finger to a key).
This, then, is doomed to become a rare “links” post. Lazy as it is, we — read: I, who knows where my contributors have been of late — are packing and preparing for some summer employment and haven’t time to be wandering through the Chinese internets. However, there are several things you should read, if you haven’t yet.
First is the ESWN post mentioned above, and maybe this NY Times piece for context. James Fallows’s most recent update contains an anecdote that will be funny in an “Oh, China…” sort of way for anyone who has lived there (see number 4 in the post). And finally, the China Media Project has translated summaries of the “Six Whys” idea the Chinese government has recently been stressing (the “Six Whys” are an ideological foundation for continued one-party socialist rule in China).
So check those out, and in case you want something discuss, I’ve been wondering about this ever since I translated it for our last post:
Yes, while this person’s words are the worst sort of treason, they’re also all true.
It’s certainly not the first time I’ve come across this kind of logic, but, being American, it always strikes me as interesting. What are your thoughts — can the truth ever be treason? (Yes, obviously it can if you are telling some other country the truth about your country’s nuclear program or whatever, I mean in the context of social or political criticism). ChinaSMACK’s story about Jet Li taking Singaporean citizenship also plays with ideas about what treason is, if you haven’t seen it already.
Related posts:
A few years back people might remember that the New York Times was accused of treason by right wingers when it published an article saying that the CIA was spying on Swift bank transfers.
Err, sorry, it was the treasury, not the CIA.
Literary criticism: I’m not sure I understand this blog…… I know what happened (it’s quite funny, CCAV being itself) but still the language and the wording in this blog is confusing for me. And the focus in this piece keeps making random jumps…
Wooddoo, do you mean ESWN or this post?