Globalizing Football
Feb 6, 2010 China, NFL, globalization
Remember what I said a while back about the NFL’s (really rather clever) efforts to bring the game to China?
The National Football League has tried and failed to build international audiences, but now they’ve set their sights on China with a new strategy: a reality show starring a Chinese rock band. WaPo buried the money quote on page two:
It was obvious after watching one taping that the reality show will not have the usual sheen of an NFL Films production. But then, it doesn’t have to. The intent is to produce a campy, lighthearted program that will convince Chinese children that if they want to learn the essence of America they must come to understand American football. (Emphasis mine)
They might have a point: George Will once described football as “a combination of the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings.”
Turns out the NFL’s strategy has as much to do with Sun Tzu as rock’n'roll:
Morning Video
Feb 3, 2010 China, Morning Video
Hu Jintao reviews the troops. China has replaced Maoist ideology with nationalism…and utterly impractical whitewall track wheels on its tanks.
Google vs. China
Jan 14, 2010 China, Chinese censorship, Google, globalization
James Fallows weighs in at The Atlantic:
In a strange and striking way there is an inversion of recent Chinese and U.S. roles. In the switch from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, the U.S. went from a president much of the world saw as deliberately antagonizing them to a president whose Nobel Prize reflected (perhaps desperate) gratitude at his efforts at conciliation. China, by contrast, seems to be entering its Bush-Cheney era. For Chinese readers, let me emphasize again my argument that China is not a “threat” and that its development is good news for mankind. But its government is on a path at the moment that courts resistance around the world. To me, that is what Google’s decision signifies.
Henry Blodget at Advertising Age says “Google has played the overall China situation maturely and brilliantly:”
(B)y playing ball with China until it had some real leverage, Google has a much better chance of actually forcing the government to change.
And that’s the real goal here–change. If Google forces any change at all in China, it will have done more for China’s 1 billion-plus citizens than it would have if it had boycotted the country from the beginning.
Blodget suggests the outcome will be a new compromise of some kind. China’s ruling party should remember the way Europeans compromised themselves onshore once upon a time, and how that worked out; but they probably won’t treat Google like the evil round-eye.
After all, there are probably lots of party members using Google by now.
The Emperor’s New Map
Jan 13, 2010 China, Chinese censorship, Google, Political Geography, globalization, internet
The AP has stirred my inner map geek at exactly the right time. A million-dollar map is on rare public display:
The map created by Matteo Ricci was the first in Chinese to show the Americas. Ricci, a Jesuit missionary from Italy, was among the first Westerners to live in what is now Beijing in the early 1600s. Known for introducing Western science to China, Ricci created the map in 1602 at the request of Emperor Wanli.
Ricci’s map includes pictures and annotations describing different regions of the world. Africa was noted to have the world’s highest mountain and longest river. The brief description of North America mentions “humped oxen” or bison, wild horses and a region named “Ka-na-ta.”
Maps like this tell us a lot more about the makers than the world they mapped. This was an era when cartography was only beginning to resemble what we’d call a “science.” This is a European doing his best to describe the shape of the world to the Emperor of China; that Florida is prominently “the land of flowers” tells us the missionary understood his audience.
In order to give His Imperial Majesty the most effective view of the world, Ricci put China at the center — which makes it look smaller. To the Chinese dynasties of that time, the world outside China was unknown and therefore unmapped:
The message hiding in this map is that China was not the center of the world, or even the largest or most important state; that vast lands were still barely explored and filled with wonder. That the world surrounded Wanli. Based on the best work of Spaniards, Portuguese, and Venetians, it was a picture of expansion and limits at the same time.
China’s regime spent the next four centuries dealing with all the changes this map would see. Their faith in barriers and oceans proved misguided and shortsighted — a lesson for a more modern, American civilization that was hardly imagined yet, but still a lesson China hasn’t learned. The communist party has gone from the failed “Green Dam” censorship project, a kind of Great Wall of Technology, to a confrontation with Google in less than a year.
Google May Leave China
Jan 13, 2010 China, Chinese censorship, Google
After a spate of cyber-attacks aimed directly at Chinese human rights advocates and their foreign contacts, Google has had enough:
These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China. (Emphasis mine)
China’s police state 2.0 has a choice to make. Either allow the connectivity that brings prosperity in the age of global, technology-driven economies, or disconnect and go back to the way things were. I doubt the communist party really wants to make the latter choice.
Green Becomes Strategic
Dec 27, 2009 China, Green Revolution
China is betting long on green, but also disturbing strategic planners in the way Germans and French played brinksman with coal and iron once upon a time, and Russia does with gas and oil. The irony is that these green metals have been mined in the most polluting of ways:
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a draft plan last April to halt all exports of heavy rare earths, partly on environmental grounds and partly to force other countries to buy manufactured products from China. When the plan was reported on Sept. 1, Western governments and companies strongly objected and Ms. Wang announced on Sept. 3 that China would not halt exports and would revise its overall plan. But the ministry subsequently cut the annual export quota for all rare earths by 12 percent, the fourth steep cut in as many years.
Here’s hoping China exercises quotas wisely. It would be a terrible irony to have a war over green tech.
Your Liberal Media At Work
Nov 18, 2009 Chairman Mao, China, Obama and China
Via RawStory, a study in CNN Drudge-link trolling?A CNN correspondent said Monday she was detained by Chinese security guards in Shanghai for two hours for displaying a T-shirt on camera depicting US President Barack Obama as Mao Zedong.Emily Chang, a Beijing-based correspondent for the US television network, said in a blog post on CNN.com that she hunted down the shirt after hearing they had been banned amid fears they “may offend the American president.”
You know what? I like the shirt. It’s my American right to collect leftist kitsch; I’ll assume that was Chang’s interest as well.
The Thoughts of Chairman Miaow
One Degree of Glenn Beck
Oct 13, 2009 China, Glenn Beck, Rupert Murdoch
Glenn Beck connecting the dots, via Bob Cesca’s GDAB:
“Six Degrees of Glenn Beck” could be a fun game, too! Let me see…he works for Rupert Murdoch. You know, this guy:
“Six Degrees of Glenn Beck” could be a fun game, too! Let me see…he works for Rupert Murdoch. You know, this guy:
And Rupert, of course,
has extensive connections with communists — not just some communists, but some of the most powerful communists in the world. According to an extensive report in the New York Times, this man has “flattered Communist Party leaders and done business with their children,” met repeatedly with senior members of the communist Politburo, “cooperates closely” with communist censors and propaganda networks, and “cultivates political ties” with communists in the hope that they will “insulate his business ventures.” Not only that, but he “often supports the policies” of communist leaders and “attacks their critics.” (Emphasis mine)
Gosh, that was easy.
ADDING:
Globalizing Football
Sep 13, 2009 China, globalization
The National Football League has tried and failed to build international audiences, but now they’ve set their sights on China with a new strategy: a reality show starring a Chinese rock band. WaPo buried the money quote on page two:
It was obvious after watching one taping that the reality show will not have the usual sheen of an NFL Films production. But then, it doesn’t have to. The intent is to produce a campy, lighthearted program that will convince Chinese children that if they want to learn the essence of America they must come to understand American football. (Emphasis mine)
They might have a point: George Will once described football as “a combination of the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings.”
Adding: I’m trying to raise $500 to do some investigative journalism! Click here to help.
Is China a Potemkin Economy?
Aug 7, 2009 China, Chinese Economic Data, Transparency
Economists have long suspected China’s official economic data was worthless. Now the official numbers have gotten so out of sync that no one believes them anymore. From Reuters:The Global Times, controlled by the People’s Daily, the Communist party mouthpiece, reported that the public reacted with “banter and sarcasm” to NBS figures showing average urban wages in China rose 13 per cent in the first half to $2,142.It quoted an online poll showing 88 per cent of respondents doubted the official numbers.
An editorial on Tuesday in the China Daily, the government’s English-language mouthpiece, quoted another survey that found 91 per cent of respondents skeptical of official data, up from 79 per cent in 2007.
While China consistently reports 8% growth, at least one expert on China’s markets sets the real number closer to 2%. An asset bubble is inflating in China’s financial sector; the Communist Party has already forced banks to slow down lending. They also admit the jobs picture looks bleak, but their official figures don’t include migrant workers or college graduates:
Wang said around 147 million migrant workers had moved to cities for jobs by June but more than four million had yet to find one.Moreover, three million university graduates, including those who had left last year, were still unemployed, he said.
Will the global economic downturn force real disclosure on China? It remains to be seen. If it happens, it will be because international investors get spooked by the lack of transparency.
