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November 2007 - Posts

Vote for China Law Blog and earn some lawyer karma

Posted Thursday, November 29, 2007 1:37 AM by will
I don't carry advertising on Imagethief as a matter of principle. And, of course, because no one will pay me any serious money to reach the small band of eccentrics and malcontents (although apparently very intelligent ones ) that constitute my readership. Read More...
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Shock findings: Chinese media not trusted by, er, Chinese media

Posted Monday, November 26, 2007 6:15 AM by will
I hate to give props to a competitor but I'll make an exception in this case because I know a few Imagethief readers work at our crosstown rivals, Edelman. I've been having a read of Edelman's China Stakeholder Survey (pdf). which I stumbled upon via Read More...
7 Comments

Listen up! Good podcasts on the digital environment and new employment law

Posted Sunday, November 25, 2007 11:08 PM by will
Catching up with my China Business Network listening this morning, I find that host Christine Lu has been talking to a few of my friends recently, including Kaiser Kuo, of Ogilvy China , and Steve Dickinson of Harris & Moure (whom you may know from Read More...
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Notorious MDA: The Singapore government raps

Posted Sunday, November 25, 2007 3:35 AM by will
From time to time someone will ask me why I left Singapore for China. This is a fair question. I lived there for nearly a decade, Mrs. Imagethief is Singaporean, and I have great affection for the place. Usually I give some longish explanation about various Read More...
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A western journalist reflects on his complicity in Chinese propaganda

Posted Saturday, November 24, 2007 10:50 PM by will
If you have access to the Financial Times , take a few minutes and read Mure Dickie's thoughtful and slightly confessional column on China's censorship regime . Mure reflects on his heavily edited appearance on a television panel discussion on Shenzhen Read More...
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Hairy crabs, the hill of pain and the boulevard of a thousand massage touts

Posted Wednesday, November 21, 2007 6:14 AM by will
Imagethief went for a hike with some good friends on Sunday. Hiking is one of the things that I was sorry to give up when I moved to Shanghai, and that I've been most eager to rediscover upon my return. In Shanghai you can drive for days through the industrial Read More...
23 Comments

The day YouTube went dark

Posted Sunday, November 18, 2007 11:14 PM by will
A few weeks ago, when Tim Burroughs of China Economic Review sent me his quarterly reminder that I had a column to write, YouTube was still being blocked. It seemed like a shoo-in topic. By the time I started writing the column, however, YouTube was (thankfully) Read More...
6 Comments

Olympic PR by fiat? Good luck with that...

Posted Tuesday, November 13, 2007 10:16 AM by will
Tim Johnson of McClatchy blogs on an interesting SCMP story (subscription) on efforts by the Central Publicity Department (nee Propaganda Mininistry) to improve the tone of reporting on the Olympics. The theory seems to be that by ordering the local press Read More...
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China's new labor law won't just make work for lawyers

Posted Monday, November 12, 2007 10:29 PM by will
Imagethief spent a fine evening over tall beers with China Law Blog's Steve Dickinson in Shanghai last Friday. One thing we didn't talk about was China's new labor law. That's a shame, because he's clearly been paying attention to it, as is clear from Read More...
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Q: Why haven't I written about the latest Yahoo hearings?

Posted Monday, November 12, 2007 9:41 PM by will
Longtime readers will know that I have commented on Yahoo and other foreign Internet firms in China at length, and may be wondering why I've not written about the latest hearings (in which Rep. Tom Lantos calls our heroes "moral pygmies"). The reason Read More...
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Further adventures in glamorous international travel

Posted Monday, November 12, 2007 10:17 AM by will
Having arrived in Macau, the romance continues. First was immigration, where the lines crawled as officers stamped arriving passengers in with the indifferent sloth that seemed circa Vietnam, 1996. My immigration officer painstakingly inspected every Read More...
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Reconsidering a glamorous life of international travel

Posted Monday, November 12, 2007 8:25 AM by will
In the cold and revealing light of hindsight it seems that aspiring to a life of international travel and adventure was, perhaps, not the wisest possible choice. This revelation dawned upon Imagethief this afternoon as he patrolled Beijing’s Capital International Read More...
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He's guilty of premeditated press releases!

Posted Friday, November 09, 2007 8:22 PM by will
In an auto-congratulatory Xinhua piece on media freedom this morning, Imagethief was pleased to see the following among the proof points offered: Starting this month, the southwestern municipality of Chongqing, which straddles the Yangtze River, instituted Read More...
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Another site for Chinese propaganda poster fans

Posted Wednesday, November 07, 2007 8:44 PM by will
Imagethief is a big fan of Stefan Landsberger's propaganda poster website , and has often raided it for images. He has also, from time to time, used Maopost , which also has some good material. Now there is a third site available. On his Docs Populi website, Read More...
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Just what Beijing needs: A giant Ferris wheel

Posted Tuesday, November 06, 2007 6:46 AM by will
Proving that there is no idea so unoriginal that it can't be rejuvenated by making it bigger, Beijing has announced plans for a colossal Ferris wheel . This, it is claimed, will be larger than both the famous London Eye (destroyed by the Fantastic Four Read More...
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Top of the list of names that will date quickly...

Posted Tuesday, November 06, 2007 4:47 AM by will
As the expectant father of a baby boy (first week of March if all goes well), Imagethief was interested to see the following brief AP article : BEIJING -- The upcoming Beijing Olympics is more than just a point of pride for China - it's such an important Read More...
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Is that a flood of evildoers sneaking across America's borders?

Posted Tuesday, November 06, 2007 3:12 AM by will
Imagethief enjoys "consuming" media, even though that phrase is obnoxious and makes me think of eating a newspaper. However, I note that the media's understandable search for newsworthy angles often leads to reinforcement of the climate of anxiety that Read More...
1 Comments

BOCOG buries the lede, we dig it up

Posted Thursday, November 01, 2007 10:59 AM by will
We PR people have a natural tendency to try to put the best possible face on things. While this is a good skill for any PR pro to master, it can be carried too far. Ultimately, as one of my colleagues likes to say, you can't polish a turd. But that doesn't Read More...
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