Absurdity, Allegory and China

There is a good piece by John Leicester in the Seattle Times concerning the former Chinese gymnast, Dong Fangxiao, who won a bronze medal at the Sydney 2000 Olympics: China leaves underage gymnast in the cold. Ms Dong is now at the center of a records falsification storm, abandoned by the officials who most likely [...]

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If you follow this blog you know I am not a fan of Jacques Rogge, the current president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). He is seen by many – this blogger included – as a CCP lapdog and a free agent who, under the charade of officialdom, always goes to the highest bidder. In [...]

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It’s difficult to get through an entire spring and summer without writing something about baseball, even if it won’t ever get much of a grip here in China. Despite the MLB’s recent series of promo events in Shanghai, Wuxi, Guangdong, Chengdu, and now, as I write, in Beijing. I think baseball has about as much [...]

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Access to the NYT started to waver last night here in Tianjin. On, off, on again. This morning on, but for at least the last several hours off again. So do we blame it on Jim Yardley’s After 30 Years, Economic Perils on China’s Path, and his coverage of the 30 year “reform and opening” [...]

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In the latest dance of finger-pointing into empty space, the IOC has unveiled their newest strategy, which is actually an ESL Revisionist View of Recent History. As the flap continues over what the IOC was promised by BOCOG and China and what the IOC head, Jacques Rogge, actually meant to say about the censorship issue [...]

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The big news of the day is that China has broken the promise it made to hook the IOC and land the Olympics seven years ago. This is only news to those who believed that this could possibly have happened, though seven years out there was at least a modicum of hope that things might [...]

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The persistent pollution problem that has received so much press in the long run-up to the Olympics is claiming more and more press space as more and more press arrive in Beijing: “Where’s the sun? Where’re the mountains? Where’s the next building?” Don’t look for the assault to let up. It is after all, Huabei [...]

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One of the fallouts from the new visa restrictions is that foreign tourism has dramatically fallen off just at the time when it should be on the rise. No surprise, really. The official fear of protests and social unrest, as well as the equally official and severe reaction to that fear, may end up causing [...]

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“We had a hard time explaining to them that we couldn’t just ban all protesters from the street.” – Marie Lajus, spokeswoman for the Paris police, commenting on a meeting between the Paris police and Chinese embassy officials weeks before the torch relay fiasco. (fm the WSJ) ________ Two days ago I referred to the [...]

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The IOC has raised the question of possibly cancelling the remainder of the international portion of the Olympic torch relay. In Beijing, the IOC president, Jacques Rogge, said his executive committee would discuss the matter on Friday, when the flame will still have a dozen cities on its route, starting with Buenos Aires and arriving [...]

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