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November 2007 - Posts

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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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...
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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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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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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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...
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...