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July 2007 - Posts

There's no accounting for taste

Posted Monday, July 30, 2007 7:31 AM by will
So to speak. Especially when it comes to sperm. From the China Daily , Chinese women's top picks for sperm donation: 1. Andy Lau 2. Bill Gates 3. Takeshi Kaneshiro 4. Liu Xiang 5. David Beckham 6. Li Ka-shing 7. Tony Leung 8. Louis Koo 9. Lee-hom Wang Read More...
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China problems create rewards for PR risk takers

Posted Monday, July 30, 2007 12:41 AM by will
All PR has an element of risk to it. That's one of the things that separates it from advertising. Ultimately, much as we might like to be able to control the press, we can't. Any time we agree to an interview, or put an executive together with a journalist Read More...
8 Comments

In your face marketing

Posted Wednesday, July 25, 2007 8:30 PM by will
Imagethief would like to take a moment to acknowledge the moxie of one of the businessmen in the alleyway near my house. I walk through this alleyway twice a day, on my way to and from work. It's a fairly thriving place, with a well known Cantonese restaurant, Read More...
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Life as a Chinese news assistant for a foreign correspondent

Posted Tuesday, July 24, 2007 9:47 PM by will
Via Danwei's "from the web roundup", Fan Linjun, the news assistant for McClatchy's China correspondent, Tim Johnson, has written a guest post ( proxy link ) on Tim's blog. She writes about how the kind of coverage she has helped Tim with has been different Read More...
12 Comments

How blogging turned China into "Brazil"

Posted Tuesday, July 24, 2007 9:09 PM by will
Is it legal to host your own blog in China? Discuss. Or just read Joel Martinsen's post on Danwei , which republishes part of a post from English language Chinese blogger Yee (also worth reading in its entirety ) and provides a translation of the extensive Read More...
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AP: China watching NGOs prior to Olympics

Posted Tuesday, July 24, 2007 6:38 AM by will
An interesting article from Charles Hutzler of the Associated Press. Hutzler writes that China is stepping up monitoring of activists and NGOs that it thinks may try to disrupt the Olympics or use the games to advance their own agendas. According to the Read More...
15 Comments

Massacre of the freelancers

Posted Tuesday, July 24, 2007 6:23 AM by will
Two interesting articles have emerged in the last couple of days with regards to the great cardboard bun scandal . Both have to do with the navel gazing that the episode has prompted in China's media, as well as the relatively predictable government reaction. Read More...
2 Comments

Bullet in the head: Marquee executions and public communication

Posted Tuesday, July 24, 2007 6:02 AM by will
As has been widely reported, the Chinese government has got round to making an official example of Zheng Xiaoyu, the disgraced former head of the State Food and Drug Administration who became the poster-boy for China's rippling food and drug scandals. Read More...
3 Comments

Lao Lao, drop me a line

Posted Sunday, July 22, 2007 4:52 AM by will
If you read this. Some of your friends are looking for you and none of us have your phone number in China. You know how to reach me. Read More...
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The dark side of AmCham membership

Posted Sunday, July 22, 2007 3:15 AM by will
Imagethief has been in Shanghai about six months now. Since arriving I've received my share of Chinese SMS spam and telephone pitches. But until recently I had been blessedly free of calls from expatriate money managers. In the last two weeks that has Read More...
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Video from the Lion City

Posted Saturday, July 21, 2007 4:44 AM by will
I've uploaded to YouTube a short clip from the underwater video I shot a year ago while diving in Qiandaohu, in Zhejiang province, on the Lion City. Lion City was flooded in 1959 when the Xin'an River was dammed. Most of the shots are of carvings on an Read More...
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Media and the modern cadre

Posted Saturday, July 21, 2007 4:21 AM by will
Imagethief was gratified on behalf of spin-doctors everywhere to read a few days ago in the China Daily that the CCP is finally taking PR seriously : Party leaders of the future will be better equipped to face the media, well versed in international affairs Read More...
8 Comments

Lessons from the great carboard bun hoax of '07

Posted Thursday, July 19, 2007 1:52 AM by will
Oh, it was so delicious, so scandalous, so nasty that it just had to be true. A bun-maker in Beijing cutting corners. Literally: cutting them off of cardboard boxes, softening them up in caustic soda and using them to replace some of the pork in steamed Read More...
25 Comments

Free Oiwan Lam

Posted Sunday, July 15, 2007 6:37 AM by will
OK, technically she isn't in jail. But the Global Voices editor is at the center of a somewhat ridiculous enforcement action by Hong Kong's Obscene Articles Tribunal. Or it would be ridiculous if the consequences for Oiwan weren't so grave. Oiwan recently Read More...
12 Comments

BBQ-less 4th of July and the naughty waiter of Hongqiao

Posted Thursday, July 12, 2007 3:33 AM by will
I must preface this with two warnings. First, Imagethief is going to name names. As a PR man my instinct is often to smooth over difficulties and embarrassments, but some problems truly are best addressed in the cold and antiseptic light of public inquiry. Read More...
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Another day, another lake

Posted Thursday, July 12, 2007 1:35 AM by will
How many lake disasters does that make this summer? Taihu. Dianchi. The season is young. More here. Read More...
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Chinese business wisdom: Never take the inside seat

Posted Wednesday, July 11, 2007 7:21 AM by will
I had the pleasure of Shaun Rein's company for lunch today, at a small cafe near Xintiandi. Toward the end of our meal in the nearly empty bistro an unfortunate scene unfolded at a large table under a kind of indoor gazebo in the dining room. A single Read More...
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Are Chinese journalists too credulous at press conferences?

Posted Sunday, July 08, 2007 5:29 AM by will
Via Danwei , ESWN has translated and reposted a very interesting, short post (Chinese) by Xinhua journalist Wu Hao. Titled, "A reporter can lose independent judgment at press conferences", the article is Wu Hao's rebuke of some of his colleagues for being Read More...
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Xinhua's declining relevance as an international PR organ

Posted Thursday, July 05, 2007 11:32 PM by will
Here is an interesting post from Chris O'Brien's rock-solid Beijing Newspeak blog: One reporter from the economics desk has started to ask me on a regular basis if it is worth translating certain Chinese stories from the domestic news desk into English. Read More...
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Now that's dating moxie!

Posted Tuesday, July 03, 2007 9:44 PM by will
Stealing a girl's bank card and drawing down her own bank account so you can pretend to be rich in order to date her. From the Shanghai Daily : Zhang was reported to have embezzled at least 50,000 yuan (US$6,562) from his girlfriend and most of the money Read More...
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How not to telemarket in any language

Posted Monday, July 02, 2007 7:39 AM by will
Imagethief has been getting more telemarketing calls to his mobile phone recently, suggesting either that I should stop throwing away my old business cards (we recently changed our logo) or that China Mobile has peddled my phone number. Here, only slightly Read More...
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