It’s a bad time for media. Advertising revenue is weak, circulations are falling and nobody wants to pay for news online. But there is a glimmer of hope in China. Or at least in China’s state-run media. As the South China Morning Post reports today, the government is considering a proposal to invest $6.5 billion in expanding the global …

Hong Kong’s environment will never be saved so long as there are groups like the curiously named Greeners Action. This wretched organization probably thinks it is helping with its latest campaign when all it has done is redefine uselessness. It has launched an initiative that will see diners rebated an enticing 12 cents (12 cents!) if …

Recently we reported on the arrest of dissident intellectual Liu Xiaobo and police interviews with dozens of other signatories of Charter 08, the pro-democracy manifesto released during a period of sensitive anniversaries last month. The number of mainland scholars, artists and writers who have been questioned by authorities about the …

Gu Gu, of course. As AFP phrases it, “A Beijing Zoo panda known for his bad temper has tasted human blood for the third time.”

From Lin Yang, who spent New Year’s on the road:

Not everyone is having a hard time during the financial crisis. Over the New Year’s holiday, I took my dad on a road trip to visit our old hometown in Ningxia, where the temperature was 5°F. Having spent twenty years in the bleak mountains of that region in northwest China, my dad was

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I have written in the past (and, it now seems, over optimistically) about how China’s economy is different and why that might help it weather the current crisis better than some other countries. One reason is its unique hybrid economy that mixes rigid state control with wild west free market capitalism. The central government control in …

My neighbor Jeremiah Jenne has a post on his Jottings from the Granite Studio blog today about the death of China scholar and linguist John DeFrancis. DeFrancis is well known for the popular Chinese language textbooks and dictionaries he compiled. When I hear his name I go back to Chinese 101, as in “Please turn to page 70 of your …

Way back in the mists of time when this blog was launched one of our first posts was a picture of actress Zhang Ziyi canoodling with her obviously western boyfriend at an L.A. Lakers games. There was a good deal of silly stuff on the internet accusing her of being a traitor to China etc etc. There was an similar outbreak when news broke …

From Reuters: “China faces wave of unrest in 2009.” Last month Simon wrote about whether Beijing could maintain social order as the economic crisis unfolds. A prominent mainland publication says the answer is most likely “no.” The Reuters report states:

China faces surging protests and riots in 2009 as rising unemployment stokes

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Over the past year China arrested nearly 1,300 people for endangering state security in the restive western region of Xinjiang, according to a story in the state press. The story (here in Chinese, and cited here in this AFP piece) says 1,154 of the suspects were formally charged. Those numbers are nearly double what was reported for the …