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Don't miss James Fallows' superb story in Atlantic Monthly on China's national communication woes. Fallows gets into all the things that China does to undermine its own attempts to improve its international image. It's a fascinating read for anyone interested China and communication:Such self-inflicted damage occurs routinely, without the pressure ...

I don't normally go for the straight Chinglish stuff, but this one is worth sharing. Via Language Log:   Full explanation at Language Log. A better translation of this might be, ''The world's biggest sporting celebration is about to burst forth!'' But even so, the copy writing is, shall we say, unfortunate. Hat tip: Bishop Joey

Tim Johnson, Beijing bureau chief for the McLatchy newspaper group (and a standout among the local blogging journalists), has posted about the imminent expiration of the relaxed rules for foreign correspondents that were implemented for the Olympic period. This has been a matter of concern for the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC), which ...

Imagethief, being an arrogant son of a bitch and a bona-fide member of the Ivory Tower Elite, is seldom interested in what the common man has to say. Nothing gets me to change the channel faster than an ''iReport'' segment on CNN, or the BBC equivalent. Of course, most professional pundits are equally useless, so in a sense, my contempt is ...

Like a giant kid who's been holding a fart in during a three week elevator ride, Beijing has apparently relaxed its many industrial sphincters and let a big one rip. That's the only way I can explain the lighting-fast deterioration in air quality. In the space of about 36 hours the skies have transformed from the Olympic blue we all got perhaps ...

Black and White Cat compares an August 10th New York Times article on Beijing's preparation for the Olympics with a heavily ''improved'' version run in translation in the Beijing Evening News (with attribution). The Cat creatively shows the omissions and additions together: Visitors to the Olympics, however, can be forgiven for thinking are ...

Xinhua headlines from the last 36 hours, almost all of which came to me in one Google news alert:Swiss media praise Beijing Olympic Games World leaders, media praise Beijing OlympicsU.S. media praises ''truly exceptional'' Beijing Olympics  Iranian media hails Beijing Olympics as great success Foreign leaders hail successful Beijing ...

Those who live in Beijing and commute on the subway will know that bags are now X-rayed on the way into the station. The security is already fairly porous in several ways. For instance, they only seem to cover one of three entrances at the station by my office. However, as I was heading home last night, I spotted a particularly Olympic-themed ...

Via the China Digital Times, this outstanding excerpt from the transcript of Wednesday's IOC/BOCOG press conference (the ninth in a wretched series, we are informed). I've excised some back and forth between the question and response: South China Morning Post: Mr. Wang and Giselle, we did get to know there were 77 applicants to the protest. ...

The latest incident report from the Foreign Correspondents Club of China is out. It doesn't make for pretty reading:BEIJING: OFFICERS ROUGH UP AP PHOTOGRAPHERS, SEIZE MEMORY CARDS August 20, 2008: Two Associated Press photographers attempting to cover an Olympics-timed protest were ...