Absurdity, Allegory and China

The Kingdom from another angle.

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Entries Tagged as 'propaganda'

And Those Sami Have Such Cute Little Shoes

August 4th, 2010 · 6 Comments

If you don’t know the Global Times you should. Here’s a brief sample from their About Us page: Global Times particularly focuses on expressing Chinese people’s real feelings, sharing their opinions and standpoints on significant international issues and promoting their understanding of the global views on China. When I see “Chinese people” and “real feelings” [...]

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Tags: Tibet · propaganda · reporting

Civilized Chaoyang: What Was It Before?

April 25th, 2010 · 3 Comments

I am trying to imagine how I would feel if I went to New York and was confronted with billboards that said, “Civilized Brooklyn.” Or if I were walking through Paris and ran into large public displays that said “Civilized Belleville.” Of course I would wonder, “Why is this being addressed at all?” A weekend [...]

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Tags: CCTV · CCTV fire · Koolhaas · TVCC · architecture · language · propaganda

The Empire from the Official Tour Bus

January 10th, 2010 · 2 Comments

“This is not a book that should be set aside lightly. It should be hurled with great force.” – Dorothy Parker (What follows is not a book review, but rather a response to a promotional book tour interview by the co-authors of China’s Megatrends: The 8 Pillars of a New Society (Harper Collins), John and [...]

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Tags: Naisbitt · propaganda · review

Showtime!

October 1st, 2009 · No Comments

I have been quiet in here of late for a few reasons (excuses?), but my focus has temporarily shifted to creating more of a web presence beyond the blog by building a website to display photos and other content that is not necessarily blog-able. Doing this with a web connection that has done nothing but [...]

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Tags: Beijing · nivison · propaganda · shang

Where’s Wen?

April 20th, 2009 · 1 Comment

There are moments in our lives that peg us to a position when an event of great weight unfolds. The afternoon of May 12, 2008 is one I will not soon forget. I felt ‘something’ that did not feel right, a noise of some sort as I lay in the bed reading. (I keep odd [...]

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Tags: Sichuan · corruption · countryside · earthquake · propaganda

Brothers in Propaganda: CCTV and Fox News

March 16th, 2009 · 1 Comment

CCTV’s Rui Chenggang, the host of a popular nightly financial news program hates the word “propaganda,” and accurately compares CCTV to Fox News when the GOP held all the cards. According to a feature in the NYT, Capitalism Finds Voice in China, Because his positions often parrot Beijing’s critiques of foreign journalists, Mr. Rui is [...]

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Tags: CCTV · propaganda · reporting

Out of Nowhere

January 14th, 2009 · No Comments

“A fishing pole is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool on the other.” –Samuel Johnson There’s an old joke I heard nearly three decades ago concerning a Fish and Game warden named Joe, whose jurisdiction included a large, well-stocked lake. (I was living  in Wyoming at the time, and the [...]

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Tags: CCTV · propaganda

Nude Women in Cage

January 5th, 2009 · 1 Comment

This from Reuters, via Yahoo: China targets big websites in Internet crackdown. China has launched a crackdown against major websites that officials accused of threatening morals by spreading pornography and vulgarity, including the dominant search engines Google and Baidu. China’s Ministry of Public Security and six other government agencies announced the campaign at a meeting [...]

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Tags: propaganda · protests · reporting

Good Dog, Karl*

January 3rd, 2009 · 2 Comments

In a recent article in the WSJ, the Bush administration’s chief muffin man and ‘architect’ of the bloody madness, Karl Rove, pitched a possible explanation as to why the Bush White House has been so terribly ineffective. In what can only be described as an act of political taxidermy and stick-in-your-eye propaganda that we’ve come [...]

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Tags: Bush · propaganda

Tidings

December 25th, 2008 · No Comments

I know that picking on party rags is fish-in-a-barrel sport, but it’s Christmas and I’m full of good cheer. A wander over to the (English) People’s Daily Online today found this one floating on the surface: A new year approaching amid intense turmoil,  which outlines the world financial crisis in terms that are pretty odd. [...]

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Tags: Beijing · Bush · Qinghai · Tianjin · propaganda · reporting