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As a PR person you're always alert to formulaic messaging, where talking points or messages are repeated by various spokespeople in various forums. Skillfully executed, this kind of approach can saturate media channels with a message. The Bush administration are past masters of carpet-bombing Iraq Sunday news shows and conservative blogs with ...

Bad PR:Villagers in southwestern China are puzzled by a county government's decision to paint an entire barren mountainside green.Workers who began spraying Laoshou mountain in August told villagers that they were doing so on orders of the county government but were not told why, media reports said Wednesday.Some villagers guessed that officials ...

Imagethief was morbidly fascinated to find a Reuters article over the weekend that explains how the Chinese Propaganda Ministry has launched a point-based ''demerit'' system to try to encourage proper behavior from the print media:CHINA'S Communist Party propaganda department has launched a points-based penalty system to try to rein in the ...

Colleagues from American and European offices often ask Imagethief how PR in China is different from PR in the west. Usually I give a two-part answer. First I tell them that were they to step into our offices in China they would see many things that they would instantly recognize as garden variety PR. We write press releases, organize events, ...

It can happen to foreign retailers as well.

How did I miss this?The Washington Post's Ed Cody has written a fascinating story (via David Wolf's Silicon Hutong) about a syndrome we in the PR business in China run into regularly: the practice of media extortion in China. I can't comment extensively right now, but this is a very real issue. Cody gets into the  history and consequences of ...

Imagethief likes Chinese propaganda posters. People who have seen me republish images from Stefan Landsberger's great Chinese propaganda poster website will be familiar with this inclination. I like to think that my appreciation of these posters extends beyond the usual foreigner fascination with revolutionary kitsch (although I have that too). As ...

Longtime readers of this blog will recall I have devoted extensive time to the various woes of foreign (read: American) Internet companies in China, covering both their business and political woes. (Recap of previous posts here.) Now we've reached the next stage in this story. Rebecca MacKinnon has written about the recent announcement that ...

Periodically journalist friends ask me who can comment on China Internet issues. The list of people I send them to is pretty short. Someone who's always near the top is Sam Flemming of CIC, a company in Shanghai that specializes in watching what is unfolding in the China blogosphere and forums and analyzing it for corporate clients.CIC has ...

As the epitome of the considerate foreign resident, Imagethief is sensitive to the need to preserve China's cultural heritage. That's why I do not deface monuments or ridicule the metropolitan statuary (excessively) and why I did not fart loudly when visiting Mao's mausoleum. It's also why I can understand why a celebrity CCTV compere such as Rui ...