hate to bother you Goobi but can you translation for the United States of America, and also what is the Gobi desert like? Does it have anything special about it or is it just very hot?

Thank you Space Poney I should have probally look back on MightyGoobies past replys to this post before asking

Interesting article:

The Cleveland of Asia: A Journey Through China's Rust Belt

From talking to some of my friends from Guangzhou, it feels like the the Indonesian "democracy" has the same level of freedom as the Chinese neo communism (dunno what to call it sorry :socialist?. I think a lot of things have just lost its meaning.

You got that right!

The result of increased communication methods over the last 50 years has been a greater awareness of whats happening in the big wide world, and also whats happening to other people in a personal sense. That all gives rise to comparisons and the inevitable argument along the lines of "whoa, I'll have some of that", or call into question existing labels that were originally based on past values. The latter is always fatal and illogical.

In both cases the pandora's box has been opened, and away we go! Likely it will not settle for another generation or two until accepted practices have accepted labels according to the values that evolve from our current enhanced awareness.

Until then, we are all vulnerable to "challenges" from those who disagree on labels - or many cases those who are deliberately abusing the current enhanced freedoms in communication by deliberate mischief making. The latter is easy to do when there is no-one looking over your shoulder and able to give you a right-cross on the jaw for deliberate smoke and mirrors

The latter is one of the challenges of the Internet and modern communications. The enhanced reach of ideas and opinions in the current environment of "well I read it at ...... so must be true" encourages such mischief making from the more Intellectually Challenged of this world.

All good grist to the mill though - much rather individuals yell at each other in print than get out your friendly neighborhood ICBM

Regards
Zy

@Mighty Goobi:

I'm curious about how you're even able to have this discussion in the first place. I've been under the impression that words like 法輪 and 洪志 (Referring to Falun Gong and its founder), 美國之音 (Voice of America), 民主 (democracy) 六四 (6-4, June 4th, the day of the Tiananmen Square massacre, with connotations similar to 9-11 in America), and 達賴 (Dalai, as in Dalai Lama), all tend to get blocked within China by the Golden Shield project.

I just went to Baidu.com myself and tried it, and it looks as if outside of China none of those terms are blocked, though http://www.voanews.com/ is conspicuously absent from the first several pages of results. Sitting in a hotel room or an apartment in mainland China I'd be a little less eager to test that theory.

There's a book written by an Englishman right after World War II called "1984". It describes a society that, in order to prevent the possibility of rebellion or bad thoughts, decides to remove certain words from the language. It's hard to discuss a concept the government doesn't like if there are no words available to describe it.

It was supposed to be a chilling "what if?" novel. As long as you cheered at the right times, as long as you said the right things, as long as you believed what the government told you, no matter how extreme it became, you could lead a peaceful, happy life. When you angered the government, your life could become very unhappy and very short. China today very much resembles that book from 60 years ago.

Or maybe I'm completely mistaken? After all, I've never actually been to China and found out about the situation firsthand. Then again, I've never measured the radioactivity of the Chernobyl reactor firsthand either.

Wow if this was true, the government would've killed my friends long ago since we've been saying things like "screw commieland" or "china sux" on msn (all this was a joke btw no offense to anyone, i have a lot of respect for china). My friend can go search foreign news online about china not a lot of sites are blocked, and from the disses that we tested above, it doesn't seem like the government is monitoring the population's online habits.

The only thing my friend told me to never do is say those things on the city streets. The most freakiest part is when he said that you would probably get shot on sight. don't know if this is true. Maybe i should tell my friends to hide. lol

I'm going to Hong Kong and Guangzhou sometime in the coming months thats why I've been asking a lot of things to my friends there.

Things are never as good as people claim they are.

Things are never as bad as people claim they are.

Its human nature to exagerate, we've all done it from time to time I guess.

Old English saying: "There's nowt so strange as folk" - and thats oh so true

Regards
Zy

Carbon016 said:



Thank you for posting this link Carbon016. Some things I thought were interesting:

The author had dinner with some Party officials:

"And after six or eight rounds of ganbei (“bottoms up”), language barriers disappear. Mr. Feng, sitting next to me, spoke better English than I do anyway. He went to the London School of Economics. He was full of jokes about the government in Beijing, its muddles and its meddling. These sent the local Party functionaries into helpless laughter. Mr. Feng proposed ganbei after ganbei, pouring and emptying glasses of scotch. He had the kind of personality—both engaging and disarming—that could get you talking to him about anything, if you could get a word in edgewise.

“Who is Mr. Feng?” I asked Tom. I examined the business card Mr. Feng had given me, printed with his vague title at a vaguely named trading firm.

“I don’t know,” Tom said. “But when there’s trouble with the government, with regulation, bureaucracy, or courts, you go to him. The problem disappears. I think he’s secret police.”

The author interviewed Mr. Wu who was forced to the fields during the Cultural Revolution:

“You have a responsibility,” Mr. Wu said to me. “Not all of Americans can come to China to find out what China is all about. Edgar Snow was the first guy to tell the world about the Communist military and the U.S. help in the war against Japan. Maybe you can be the twenty-first century Edgar Snow and change the opinion of the American people about the Chinese.”

Mr. Wu had been to America some years before. “I had a very good impression,” he said, “especially the Twin Towers. When bin Laden hit the towers, I said, ‘He’s a bad guy.’”

“We are going for democracy,” Mr. Wu said. “Please send the message. Russia had to go through a revolution. We are moving gradually. The American people should take time to understand. On surface we are socialist. Underneath we are capitalist. During the Cold War there were lots of struggles, lots of revolutions. China’s was the only successful one. We accept America as a great country. President Washington was a great president and led the country to where it is today. The policy of America is correct. But every country has its own situation. You can’t use your country as a standard for other people. You love the people and peace. This is the right policy.” Mr. Wu summed up: “You have the patience. We have the confidence.”

The author had dinner with some local Chinese friends:

We went to dinner at a pavilion on West Lake and talked about what Katie Holmes could possibly see in Tom Cruise. Katie is from my hometown, Toledo, Ohio. Linda and Mike were suitably impressed by the fact. “I don’t understand this Scientology,” Mike said.

I floundered around for an explanation. “It’s American Falun Gong,” said Mai.

The author writes on Tian An Men:

I mentioned to Tom that the whole time we’d been on the mainland I’d hardly heard the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 mentioned.

“That’s no surprise,” Tom said. “Tiananmen Square is where the abdication of the last emperor was proclaimed in 1912. It’s where the student demonstrations, which led to the formation of the Chinese Communist Party, were held in 1919. It’s where the Japanese occupation government announced its East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, where Mao declared victory over the Kuomintang in 1949, and where a million Red Guards swore loyalty to Mao during the Cultural Revolution. When the Chinese see a bunch of people gathering in Tiananmen Square, they don’t go all warm and fuzzy the way we do. The Chinese think, ‘Here we go again.’”

The author writes on 'the old China':

“Some older people,” David said, “are nostalgic for the Mao era. They have the grudge in their hearts about the big differences of income. And about the insecurity. Old people say, ‘You cannot use the money of tomorrow.’”

HunterADA said:



Your Chinese is good Hunter and welcome to the thread.

A couple of thoughts about "Project Golden Shield".

1. I understand the portrayal of Project Golden Shield as this massive internet censorship net - which blocks outside world information from insular China. My mental image is of a giant room with white tile walls, a thousand secret agents, beady eyes glued to screens, faces lit only by the neon glow of the monitor, pouring over internet emails, searching for IP addresses and then hounding down violating internet users who dare speak a free word - all under a giant poster of Chairman Mao.

I have no idea if such a room actually exists. If it were really as amazingly powerful as it's made out to be, I also presume I'd be in jail now. And if I went to jail, presumably Ethan Hawke, Jack Bauer and James Bond might be able to bust me out.

I'm sorry - I don't mean to be aggressive towards you, it's just that I think the image of the Golden Shield is somewhat less than what it's made out to be.

2. Firstly, from a techonology perspective, I don't believe China really has the resources to do what Project Golden Shield is made out to do. In the States, you are debating net neutrality. In China, we have some places without telephone lines (and after the earthquake, it's a LOT of places). Yes, we have more and more internet users. But our bandwidth speed, our programming ability etc. is not so good - at least not to the standard of the US. I don't think our skills are that great - after all, all of top guys are being trained at MIT and other top American institutions. There's no particularly famous China Technology training school.

I suppose it could be argued that the government has secret 'super bandwith offices' and special training camps for secret agents. It might be good for some parties to portray China with a sophisticated internet ability, wide net scanning system with millions of highly trained technicians and hackers who make regular attacks on the Pentagon database. Given the technological sophistication of our leaders, to be frankly, I'm not sure we have that capability. We can hardly speak English... I'm not sure if we can really code as well as we are said to.

Open disclosure - I am totally useless when it comes to computers. So I suppose it's possible that China actually is very very good with computers and I personally just suck.

3. Secondly, from a policy perspective, Golden Shield is supposed to put thousands of China's youngest, best and brightest in one room, all together, who's primary purpose is to read the most inflammatory, controversial informations. Every day to read nothing but Dalai Lama, Free Tibet, Taiwan Independence etc. I am thinking - wouldn't that be almost guaranteed to FOSTER the so called dissent that we are so desperately (apparently) trying to eliminate. I mean, imagine what coffee break would be like? "So John, I read that Chinese eats Tibetan monk intestines and here's the link" "Really? Here's the url for how our government is planning a crackdown on human rights" "Oh cool. And here's the flikr album for Falun Gong torture". "Erm... aren't we supposed to be the good guys?"

Imagine if these best and brights are reading this every single day. Somehow, I think it just would be a strange policy to have. I suppose it could be argued that these secret agents are super loyal to the Dark Side of the Force. Maybe I'm overly cynical, but it all sounds a bit TOO La Femme Nikita for me.

4. It IS true that our internet gets frustratingly censored at times. And there appears to be little reason for it. Today Youtube is inaccessible. Tomorrow, Gmail is done. Next week, access to Amnesty International Website or Human Rights Watch or Dalai Lama dot com or whatever is slow.

It's probably censorship. Fully agree.

It's also not particularly logical or difficult to get around. Sometimes, simply hitting refresh enough times gets 'through' the censorship. Or using proximates.
Which makes me sometimes think that sometimes, it might not be censorship at all, but rather poor connections or bad technology.

And I fully recognise that there are ABSOULTELY some times where the censorship is very blatant. It is annoying because I'd like the ability to work out for myself what is right or wrong rather than have information restricted on the basis of what someone else tells me is right or wrong. I just don't think the censorship is as bad as it's made out to be.

5. Finally, all those 'special words' that you listed can be found on a 'baidu' search here in Mainland China (as you know, Baidu is our version of Google... it's much better at finding Chinese sites). It would be a little strange to completely block the use of the word Tibet or Falun Gong or whatever - after all, local newspapers, websites and even government press releases will use all those words. Voice of America is syndicated I believe to China Radio International which broadcasts some VoA programs (is VoA the station that has 'NPR'? - I listen to that sometimes and it's quite good).



If I'm not mistaken, you are refering to the book written by George Orwell - and the idea that the government may one day control all life and language so much that 'bad' words disappear and we instead talk about double plus good events. I think this is the book that made the phrase "elder brother". Furthermore, there is the idea that 'our' country is always at war against an evil foe and the people are so brainwashed they just simply accept everything on the grounds that it "helps the war". Your final line is that "China today very much resembles that book".

Respectfully, I disagree. Emphatically. I am worried to sound like a broken record because I have said this before in this forum. Life here is not as 'Orwellian' as sometimes it's made out to be. Right now, there is massive blogging and forum posting about corrupt government officials being the reason for poor construction of schools resulting in many students dying in the earthquake. There are posts about lack of trust that the gazillion of yuan will be properly spent by authorities in charge. There is doubt that the Red Cross is truly sending all the money it is collecting to the victims and calls for transparency and accounting of the NGOs and government bodies involved. My post now is too long and I will list just this example as how China today does not resemble the Orwell world - and if requested I'd happily post more.

I'd love to meet this Mr Wu some day, he's absolutely right. People need to get into their heads that they cant "preach & teach" its highhanded and will inevitably result in a major push-back irrespective of whats going on. As soon as you call into question someone or a Countries motives, the original discussion or topic for debate goes flying out the window as a virtual steel shutter descends almost taking off your toes


A lot of this comes from the Media. The latter are there to boost circulation or viewing figures, its what they are employed to do by their Investors. Nearly all newsworthy events are therefore treated in such a way as to whip up popularist emotion - emotion sells... Thats fine, its life, as long as individuals do not fall into the trap of believing everything they read in "the paper" or see on "the news" is a true reflection of the surrounding circumstances, motivations and drivers for events. Very often its not, and very often a wider perspective changes the the whole reporting scenario.

EG: (and it happened - at a time when it was topical due to attacks by Rotviellers on children)) Dog is destroyed for serious injury to a neighbor. Logical one would think, and on the surface yup, no problem, solid story logical outcome. What wasnt reported what the fact that the man concerned had just beaten the bejesus out of the dog with a baseball bat because it was "too noisy". The dog needless to say wasnt impressed with the guy's logic and went for him. The story was true, no lies, they just had not told the whole story which changed totally the perspective of the story.

Too many times people take on board what they are looking for or wanting to see - a fact newspapers and media know full well. Give a readship/viewers what they want or expect to see, and circulation goes up - the latter drives Editorial conferences deciding on lead stories each day.


It is, an English guy, whose book has made quite an impact over the years. He postulated a time when there would be three "Great Powers" dominating the Planet, and they would be continously at war with each other. The description he uses makes it clear he referred to the three big power blocks (US, Russia & China). It was meant to be an allegory showing the dangers of the "Big Brother" State if allowed to get out of hand.

Unfortunately its cited by many people on many inappropriate occasions as a sweeping generalisation of a prediction for the future and somehow an authoritative reference. Its only an allegory, no more no less. It made that impact because it says many things many believe will happen (or could easily believe would happen), and is almost quoted as self justification for personal views, sometimes in very inappropriate ways.


I've said it before - and will say it again, dont stop. There is the real danger (not just in the case of this discussion about China), that we get into a Rut in terms of views and perspectives, and end up like the dog story above, with a wrong conclusion. Sometimes its hard as long held perceptions get challenged, but thats what sensible discussion is about - not who is right or who is wrong.


Regards
Zy

To balance some of the positive things I write about China, I thought to comment on what things upset me as a Chinese living in Beijing.

1. Corruption. Hands down one of my top complaints. I think we have a long history of both corruption and fighting against it. Our children stories and legends are filled with corrupt emperor's advisors and government officials - and the heroic champion or pure hearted judge that resists bribes and brings justice to the land. Most recently, the earthquake has highlighted that schools and kindgardens are destroyed but government buildings are untouched. It seems we have the technology to build earthquake resistant buildings but the money to do so seems to be mysteriously used.

It's also not just government that should be criticised on this. NGOs and charities have a poor standing in recent times. Most recently, there's new about the Red Cross spending 6000 RMB on a dinner with Earthquake money (to put context, 1 USD = 7 RMB; a University cafe will sell a bowl of noodles of 8 RMB; McDonalds sells a meal or about 22 RMB; a 5-star hotel buffet dinner is 250 RMB a head... so to spend 6000 RMB, they would have had to be swimming in a bathtub of Dom Perignon). I don't know the details - I hope it's not true - and we've had too many stories of charities going bad and it's very distressing.

2. bureaucracy In the past, everything was deeply controlled by the central government and few people. The danger with having e.g. One person in charge of everything, was it's easy to bribe (as well as too much workload). So there's been increasing decentralisation. Today, there are a million bureaus, departments, offices. The theory is that each bureau can specialise in a certain thing e.g. environment control, tax, labour law and that it would be impossible to bribe everyone.

The downside is that there are now so many bureaus, I feel I sometimes need to travel all over Beijing to get 20 different forms, stamps, approvals just to park my car. Added to that most government departments are empty during lunch time.

3. inter-province rivalry. We often joke that the best way for a foreigner to make good friends in Beijing is to loudly shout how bad Shanghai is. We have a phrase, Shanghai girls are born to marry rich foreigners - the idea being that they are too arrogant to look at local people (we also have much more colourful words that we use instead of 'marry' - but I think your imagination is good enough). Whilst a little bit of competition is a good thing. But I think it might be getting a bit too unfriendly. Competition is fine, but aggression I think is unncessary. And if there is one light from the darkness of the earthquake, it's that provincial borders seem to be downed.

4. Anti-Japanese TV. China and Japan political problems are no secret. China has deep problems with no Japan apology and the war shrine. Japan says it has already done everything is should and Chinese products are low quality. It is true there are many problems and we should never forget the past wrongs. And eventually, I hope we can move forward. The Japanese for example were the first people to arrive after the earthquake to give money and help.

But pretty much 24 hours a day on one of our TV stations, there will be a war-drama television soap opera. the plot is always the same. Evil Japanese war general invades small little Chinese village. Women are kidnapped and violated. Men are killed and tortured. One cowardly Chinese guy becomes a traitor and helps the Japanese. Then one hero Chinese guy rescues all the women, kills all the Japanese and bombs the Japanese HQ. In the end he dies, with heroic music playing, and saying I did it to save my country.

There is a difficult balance between remember past wrongs and moving forward to build bridges. And of course we should properly honour our fallen war heroes. I also don't think daily reminders of how Japanese soliders invaded is helpful for international relations. I'm not clear where the balance should be - remembering vs. bridge building.

5. Unrealistic portrayal of 'normal' American life. The top shows amongst our youth are Friends, 24, Sex and the City, Prison Break and Desperate Housewives. An often cited favourite movie is Love Story in Harvard. In America therefore , all young people own big apartments and live next to their friends, then spend the whole day drinking coffee on sofas. Everyone has sex with the gardner four times a day. All American universities have ivy on the walls. There are daily plots to kill the president, but all you need is one secret agent and all the terrorists will die. And if you ever go to jail, Michael Scofield will get you out (our blogs and forums were so filled with Scofield is so handsome posts - I'm sure our local actors were getting jealous).

Just as I don't think a lot of overseas people know 'true' China, I think we need to be very wary about the cultural bombardment that we get about America life - and remember it might not be true. Maybe I am too cynical?

Heres my 2 cents on what we are talking about right now.

Computer censorship:

Even if these project goldent sheild was used to block some information from getting in to Chins it would probally fail. For one thing people will just get angry at what they were doing. People dont like to be forced not to do something they want to do. Another reason on this is that there is no such thing as a perfic system. It would just be a mattear of time before some chineas hackers find a way out of the blocking syetem and then tell their friends. Sooner or later the wall will go down. NOTHING lasts forever so I would not be to worried.

Relations with other countrys:

Even though many people would find many places across the world great places to be and see the culutre. Many people are afraid to leave their country becuase of what they hear about what happens across the world on the news (Iraq would be a example). Anoher problem is history and politics. How many Americans do you think go to Iran with this fuead that is going on between them? Polotics can spoil just as well as foster realtions with another counttrys people. History between countrys can lead to hatreade to one another. As you said Goobi, one channel has anti-japanses tv shows on it. This is probally because of what happend during of world war 2 (rape of naking, use of chemical of weapons on chinease civialians). What happend in the past can leave a very strong mark on people.

Frankly, not cynical enough.

One of the byproducts of a democratic institution, is a Free Press. In fact many will argue - me included - that a free press is an essential pre-requisite for fully fledged Democracy, and arguably is the basic vehicle from which Democracy develops. However, the flip side to that is the main issue of Press Integrity in the Modern Age.

Too many people automatically believe what they read in the paper or what they see on The News, particularly in the CDE groupings (which are 70% of most Democratic Countries - arguably higher proportion in Autocratic Countries). Whilst downright lies are rare in a Democratic Media, failing to tell the whole story thus giving a wrong perspective is relatively common place. In an autocratic State, control of the Press due its "believability" factor, is almost essential for propaganda purposes.

Therefore wherever you are in the world, in whatever political system, its always very healthy to have a wary look at sensationalist or "popularist" stories. They are often there to increase circulation therefore advertising revenue(Democracies), or there as a vehicle to manipulate opinions (Autocracies).

My parents cant get past this one - they are from the pre-WW2 generation that had an almost insane belief in the Press due to the crusading days in the 20's 30's and 40's of the emotional "hack" reporter battling corruption yaddie yadda. Now, I keep saying to them "will you please stop automatically believing what you see in 'The "News" '.

They still believe a newspaper or "The News" on TV is there to tell you whats going on. They have a hard time wrapping their head around today's reality. The Media exist (in a Democracy) to satisfy their shareholders and Investors, that means increasing circulation by whatever method. All evidenced by the ever increasing regulation and regulatory bodies that evolve in "The West" to curb the worst excesses.

Those who have never experienced or do not know the realities of the Modern Democratic Media Editorial Conference where decisions are made as to what are the lead stories etc for the following day, get a rude shock when they discover the motivations for the selection and presentation of stories. It many times has squat to do with "reporting the news", more usually which story has the greatest potential impact on their readers, ands therefore best chance of impacting circulation or viewing figures (which in turn drives up advertising revenue).

Therefore with The Media, China will never be as bad as they portray in Western Media, and America is never as good (or decadent) as they portray in the Chinese Media. The Media will always tend towards what people want to read or believe (Democracies), or print what the Government wants people to believe (Autocracies). As always there is no black and white on this, there are always exceptions at either end of extremes and a multitude of flavors in between. As a general proposition however, it does hold true.



Exactly that.

A good chunky dose of scepticism when reading or listening to the Media wherever you are in the World, is I regret to say utterly essential in "The Modern Age", else you will end up having a manipulated and unbalanced view of life. In the same way that I automatically treat Politicians motivations and principles with great suspicion unless I get third party corroboration; so I view popularist or sensational Media Stories as suspect until I get third party corroboration.

Regards
Zy