Christmas Presents from the Chinese Government

December 24, 2009
By C. Custer
Christmas Presents from the Chinese Government

It’s the time of year for lights, trees, bells, and creepy columns about how Christmas presents excellent opportunities for proselytizing. Even in China they’re celebrating, and the while the Chinese government may have been a bit busy fending off American ‘conspiracies’ sabotaging global efforts to combat climate change and dooming small island nations in...
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Ai Weiwei, Lu Xun, and the Hope of Hopelessness

December 23, 2009
By C. Custer

This China Digital Times post has been sitting open in my browser for several days now. If you’re stuck behind the GFW, it’s a question and answer Chinese artist and social commentator Ai Weiwei did with a private Chinese BBS forum, full of social questions and snappy answers. It’s worth a read, but one...
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Favoring Foreigners

December 21, 2009
By C. Custer

There is a reason that when the topic of racism in China comes up, many Chinese think of the preferential treatment foreigners sometimes receive, rather than anything else. (including famous lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan, who told us “Chinese law gives foreigners all sorts of special privileges” when we contacted him for this post). In reading...
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Subtlety in The Times

December 21, 2009
By C. Custer

Who are the titans of Chinese industry? The Times thinks we should know — what with the Chinese economy growing by the minute — and they’ve does us the favor of writing up a list. But how to convey that information to the illiterate and the lazy, who aren’t going to read about powerful...
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Ai Weiwei: The Need for Change

December 17, 2009
By C. Custer

After some time in Europe, which he spent doing art stuff and recuperating from what Professor Farnsworth would call his stylish head wound, Ai Weiwei is back in Beijing. And thanks to Tiger Temple (Ai’s own blog seems to be gone, we can’t access it even here in the States), we’ve got some pretty...
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Yan Xiaoling, Legal Questions, and Reporting Injustice

December 16, 2009
By C. Custer

For some time now, lawyer and blogger Liu Xiaoyuan has been following the case of three netizens (You Jingyou, Fan Yanqiong, and Wu Huaying) accused of framing/falsifying information because they published an article on the internet about the lethal gang rape of Yan Xiaoling. The post attracted widespread interest online and was posted on...
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