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September 2006 - Posts

A banana republic move

Posted Friday, September 29, 2006 12:06 AM by will
To Singapore's lasting shame: Far Eastern Economic Review banned - in Singapore Singapore (dpa) - Singapore revoked on Thursday approval for the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) to be sold or distributed in the city-state. "It is a privilege and not Read More...
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A few good reads

Posted Thursday, September 28, 2006 6:45 AM by will
Time was short today, so you've been spared the mooncake rant, the cultural relativism rant and a few other choice in-development rants. But I did notice a few articles that I though I'd pass along to readers so you can keep outta trouble. Just because Read More...
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CNET 32: China's next-generation Internet

Posted Wednesday, September 27, 2006 8:06 AM by will
China's next-generation Internet 27 September, 2006 What if you built an Internet and no-one came? This was the question that went through my mind when I saw a couple of stories this week about China's certification of a "next-generation" IPv6-based Internet. Read More...
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Defusing a verbal arms race

Posted Wednesday, September 27, 2006 5:53 AM by will
Danwei has republished an interesting article by author and businessman James McGregor. It's absolutely worth a read. McGregor is one of the most experienced and astute China analysts around. As a flack, there was one paragraph in particular that struck Read More...
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The diner syndrome

Posted Wednesday, September 27, 2006 12:49 AM by will
This month I did the back page column for That's Beijing again. Kaiser gave me a ring 24 hours before deadline and asked me to pinch hit. Fortunately for him (and for me -- That's BJ paid me today), I had a half-written blog post that lended itself to Read More...
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Irony-free Xinhua hails own success

Posted Tuesday, September 26, 2006 3:46 AM by will
Last night, at an entertaining dinner with the cream of the China tech/media blogosphere and technology press/dive instruction community , I said that China was a good place to be a foreign blogger because the country had no sense of irony. This was wickedly Read More...
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More China PR trouble in the making for Yahoo?

Posted Monday, September 25, 2006 6:01 AM by will
I have only seen this one article (and only today, though it's a few days old), and its too early to say what, if any, repercussions it might have. But it raises an interesting question. As an American Internet company, how, exactly, would you defend Read More...
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CNET 31: Google aground in China, MySpace sailing for trouble?

Posted Thursday, September 21, 2006 6:06 AM by will
Google aground in China, MySpace sailing for trouble? September 21, 2006 It's been a rough week for Google in China, news-wise, with the release of two reports showing a sharp drop in market share for globe's leading search engine. This is just the latest Read More...
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The trouble with polls...

Posted Thursday, September 21, 2006 3:29 AM by will
...is that you might discover something you don't like. Fortunately, in China, you can close the poll, sack the editors (there is no direct link to the poll, but the timing is suspicious) and make the whole thing go away. Details at Peking Duck , Danwei Read More...
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Wrap your lips around this...

Posted Thursday, September 21, 2006 1:00 AM by will
Imagethief was highly aroused interested in a purely academic way to read about the controversy surrounding a Haagen-Dazs ad in Nanjing in this morning's China Daily . The add features a trio women with various expressions of ecstasy slurping on straws Read More...
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The "A-list"

Posted Tuesday, September 19, 2006 6:28 AM by will
Imagethief would like to give a big shout to John Biesnecker , who is City Weekend's new China blogosphere columnist. In his inaugural column in the August 31 issue, he broke China blogs into three categories: China political blogs, "wide-eyed foreigners" Read More...
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Tuesday PR blog: Southern Weekend on foreign correspondents

Posted Tuesday, September 19, 2006 2:07 AM by will
ESWN has translated an interesting Southern Weekend article (Chinese) on foreign correspondents in China. The Chinese journalist, Zheng Yan, interviewed a eight foreign correspondents, including AP's Beijing bureau chief, Charles Hutzler, the New York Read More...
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Adventures in mucilage

Posted Monday, September 18, 2006 4:01 AM by will
Every now and then, just when I think I've got this living in China thing totally handled, something spins out of control in a way that reminds me to maintain a little humility. On Friday that moment came when I went to bank to change a bunch of US dollars Read More...
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Translating 信息化

Posted Sunday, September 17, 2006 11:21 PM by will
Mondays always make me crabby and prone to complaint, and today is no exception. I've just cleaned up the English in an event report that will be going out to a client later. In that report I stumbled across the word "informationalization". A half hour Read More...
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Massive blogroll refresh

Posted Saturday, September 16, 2006 4:25 AM by will
I've made a long overdue blogroll refresh. I've purged some dead or stagnant blogs and added some new categories to better sort what I kept. The blogroll now more or less mirrors my RSS reader in organization (minus the p*rn of course, and some newspaper Read More...
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Xinhua on Xinhua

Posted Friday, September 15, 2006 6:48 AM by will
I really like this because it captures with unscriptable deliciousness the irony of Xinhua's new re-emphasized regulations: Xinhua's measures won't lead to monopoly 2006-09-14 23:38:56 BEIJING, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- The government will pay attention to Read More...
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CNET 29: Could Lenovo be sexy?

Posted Thursday, September 14, 2006 11:21 PM by will
Could Lenovo be sexy? September 15, 2006 I have to confess that my respect for Lenovo is growing. When they first purchased the personal computer division of IBM (announced in December 2004 and completed in May 2005), I didn't give Lenovo much of a chance Read More...
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Thursday PR Blog: Why China's leaders should talk to the press

Posted Thursday, September 14, 2006 6:12 AM by will
I sometimes think that Telegraph readers who aren't checking Beijing correspondent Richard Spencer's blog from time to time are missing the best of his work. Well, that's probably unfair. Newspaper reportage has to follow certain rules or, as we know, Read More...
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Because you haven't nursed that anger long enough...

Posted Wednesday, September 13, 2006 6:25 AM by will
Imagethief was at once amused and depressed to read in Xinhua this morning that the Guangzhou city government will be conducting a emergency drill on September 18th. He was amused because the city fathers will use using model aircraft to simulate bombing Read More...
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Experts agree: Xinhua wants the cashola

Posted Wednesday, September 13, 2006 12:19 AM by will
The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have both run interesting follow-up articles analyzing Xinhua's new regulations on foreign media content. The consensus is that, really, it's all about the money, and the political justifications are a fig Read More...
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Mascot for the Beijing Psychedelic Games

Posted Tuesday, September 12, 2006 2:06 AM by will
The mascot for the Beijing 2008 Psychedelic Paralympic Games has been announced. Meet Fu Niu Le Le (or, roughly, lucky cow Happy Happy): This illustration is topped by the one that now blankets the walls of my local subway station, in which the multi-hued Read More...
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CNET 28: Lessons from the Chinabounder case

Posted Monday, September 11, 2006 9:32 PM by will
Lessons from the Chinabounder case September 12, 2006 A month ago, in a post I wrote on my Imagethief blog about the pecking order of foreigners in China, an anonymous commenter asked me what I thought of a blog at chinabounder.blogspot.com (currently Read More...
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Sound advice for Foxconn from Bruce Einhorn

Posted Monday, September 11, 2006 12:19 AM by will
Also via the suddently prolific David Wolf , BusinessWeek's Einhorn tells Foxconn's Terry Gou to suck it up and hire a good flack : [The crisis has left] some people wondering who's giving you advice. I spoke to one exec from a big multinational that Read More...
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New media controls: Follow the money

Posted Sunday, September 10, 2006 11:53 PM by will
David Wolf at Silicon Hutong had a busy weekend and has spared me having to write anything about the recently announced tightening of controls on foreign news providers in China. This will no doubt provoke the usual tsk-ing about the government's desire Read More...
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Scarce

Posted Thursday, September 07, 2006 7:11 AM by will
Apologies to readers for post-lite (easy to read, less filling!) this week. It has been a bit mad and my usual posting times --early morning, lunches, evenings-- have been completely jammed by work and other obligations. For instance, this evening I am Read More...
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Spooky reminders

Posted Tuesday, September 05, 2006 8:25 PM by will
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is calling for students to rise up and purge academics and professors who don't follow fundamendalist orthodoxy. Even the language is similar (at least, in translation), with Ahmadinejad serving as head of something Read More...
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Dear lord, why not Paul Hogan?

Posted Tuesday, September 05, 2006 2:58 AM by will
Or Yahoo Serious, for that matter? I was raised never to speak ill of the dead. Unfortunately that lesson, like so many others, didn't really stick. So I thought I'd take a moment to reflect upon the early passing of Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin. Read More...
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A movie in itself

Posted Monday, September 04, 2006 5:17 AM by will
The 21st century equivalent of Terry Gilliam's great dystopian fantasy, Brazil has yet to be made. However, when they do get around to making it, I suggest they set it in China. Better yet, in a delicious bit of self-referential irony, it could be about Read More...
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CNET 27: Games people don't play

Posted Saturday, September 02, 2006 3:00 AM by will
Computer games people don't play 2 September, 2006 Last week one of my clients had an event in one of Beijing's largest and slickest Internet cafes. China has something over 120 million Internet users, and the visit to the Internet Cafe was a good reminder Read More...
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Public nuisance 2: Street market fire drill

Posted Friday, September 01, 2006 9:46 PM by will
The cops are cracking down on unlicensed street vendors all over the city these days. Presumably, a bunch of raggedy looking people hawking fruit, magazines and trinkets isn't in keeping the glorious, Olympic spirit. Or maybe it's a pre-National Day thing. Read More...
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