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Recommended Readings

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There was more “strolling” in China this week (see #4), and these are the pieces we enjoyed in our own strolls around the internet this week…

1) Head over to Beijing Sounds for a thoroughly enlightening and entertaining piece by Randy Alexander on spoken Chinglish–and particularly the sort that results from transcribing English using Chinese characters (yep, you read correctly–follow the link for images of the texts that teach using this method and even the amazing audio clips of what English spoken this way sounds like).

2) Victor Cha wonders if the Olympic Games were “too perfect”?

3) China Beat‘s …

Faking Heaven: The Utopian Will To Order In China, Timothy S. Oakes

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Now that the 2008 Olympics have come and gone, Beijing can perhaps breathe a sigh of relief that after two weeks of intensive scrutiny, the most embarrassing thing the foreign media could come up with during the Games was that some of the events in the spectacular opening ceremony were faked. First, we learned that 9-year old Lin Miaoke was not in fact singing a revised “Song of the Motherland” at all, but was lip-synching the voice of the less photogenic Yang Peiyi (see Geremie Barmé’s “Painting Over Mao”). Then, we learned that at least some of thefirework footprints leading …

Olympic Echoes In Denver And St. Paul

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

When the media spotlight shifted instantaneously from Beijing to Denver last week, it was easy to focus on things that the Olympics and the Democratic Convention had in common as spectacles, especially since each ended with a big party in a stadium where rock music played and fireworks exploded. But if there’s a real American sequel to the Beijing Games, it’s the Republican Convention underway in St. Paul.

It’s true that in Denver one big story involved long-term rivals working together to achieve a new goal. This is definitely an Olympian theme in the era of “Dream Teams” made up …

The Human Face Of Economic Globalization: Mexican Migrants And Their Support For Free Trade, John Aldrich, Victoria Defrencesco Soto, Gregory A. Petrow

Political Science Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results from a focus group and an experiment conducted with Mexican immigrant farm workers as participants. The idea is to investigate free trade attitudes among a group little studied in the debate over immigration and its role in globalization. We can readily illustrate, as we do via our focus group participants, that many of these migrants understand their political situation. Our focus then turns to the political psychology of these workers: how does this understanding manifest itself in their political attitudes? The experiment exposes them to a standard set of arguments for and against economic globalization …

Beijing À La Jasper Becker, Pierre Fuller

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A Financial Times news brief lay buried in an inside page: At the very moment a few weeks ago when Olympic medals were awarded in front of adoring crowds, “two elderly women” were jailed for seeking permission to demonstrate against “being forcibly evicted from their Beijing homes” back in 2001. And who knows what now stands in the place of these pensioners’ loss – faux Italianate villas? an IKEA? pavement?

Stories like this make a timely book of journalist Jasper Becker’s history of the Chinese capital, City of Heavenly Tranquility: Beijing in the History of China from Oxford University Press …

Advocate, September 2008, Vol. [20], No. [1], Gc Advocate

The Advocate

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

From the Editor’s Desk: I Want to Believe (p. 2)

Guest Editorial: Class Struggle and the PSC. Tom Smith (p. 3)

Opinion: Tech Fee: Let Students Decide. Gregory Donovan and Rob Faunce (p. 4)

Adjuncting: Grad Students, Job Security, and Health Care. Jessie Goldstein and Renée McGarry (p. 4)

Dispatches from the Front: Of Earth Monsters and Adjunct Lecturers. Renée McGarry (p. 5)

Grad Life: The Summer Fling. Erin Lee Mock (p. 6)

Political Analysis: China, New York, and the American Way. Justin Rogers-Cooper (p. 7)

The PSC’s “Adjunct Problem”: The Proposed Contract and the Future of …

The Political Personality Of 2008 Republican Presidential Nominee John Mccain, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of Arizona senator John McCain, Republican nominee in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, from the conceptual perspective of personologist Theodore Millon.

Psychodiagnostically relevant data regarding Sen. McCain was extracted from biographical sources and published reports and synthesized into a personality profile using the second edition of the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with Axis II of DSM–IV.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed in accordance with interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC manual. McCain’s …

Interest Groups And Morality In The Public Square, Jack Van Der Slik

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

A Little Post-Games Analysis

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last week, we handed out five medals for media handling of the Games, and now we’re following with a different sort of list, which flags both shortcomings as well as accomplishments.

1) Yellow Card for over-generalization and reinforcing stereotypes: to Thomas Friedman for “Melting Pot Meets Great Wall.” Though the Olympics could be seen as a “teachable moment,” with both the U.S. and China having things to learn from the other, Friedman essentializes both countries here, arguing that the US is diverse while China is focused and goal-driven. Moreover, the jumping off point for Friedman’s piece is his observation that …

“同一个世界，同一个梦想”还是 “同会异梦”?, James Farrer

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Mo Bangfu, a Chinese columnist writing for the liberal Asahi Shimbun, used his weekly column the day before the closing ceremonies to award the Beijing Olympics a symbolic “silver medal” for its overall organization (Aug. 23, 2008, p. B3). Despite accusations of fakery, the opening ceremonies and the Olympic volunteers both deserve “gold medals,” as do the ordinary Beijing residents and migrant workers who had to put up with massive everyday inconveniences.

The government, however, deserves a “disqualification” for not allowing any demonstrations in the designated demonstration areas, for restricting the access of normal citizens to the Olympic venues, and …

Olympic Echoes

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The echoes of the Beijing Olympics have been soundly drowned out, at least in US medialand, by the Democratic Convention. Even so, there’s still a lot of good and interesting coverage and reflections on the Beijing spectacle. Here are a few of our favorites.

1. For a variety of takes on the closing ceremony, see Danwei’s wrap-up.

2. In case you missed them, here are Xinhua’s pictures of a sweaty President Bushchatting with the eventual gold medalists in women’s beach volleyball.

3. Mary Beard at TLS wrote two recent pieces on the Olympics that may be of interest–both written from …

Where Have You Gone, Hua Guofeng?

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Let’s face it: Hua Guofeng just never could get any respect. He’s the former leader of China, but was sidelined by Deng Xiaoping and relegated to the ashbin of history: the triumph of mediocrity…the Gerry Ford of Chinese politics. His death last week was greeted with a chorus of “Who? He was still alive? No kidding. How’s Liu Xiang’s ankle?”

The great Han historian Sima Qian once wrote that a man’s death could be as weighty as Mt. Tai or as light as a feather. Hua’s death was eclipsed by the achilles tendon of a 20-something hurdler/professional product endorser.

Anyway, …

Olympic Hurdles, Trials, Losses And Wins

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As we go into the final laps of the long race to the Closing Ceremonies, here are five things worth reading (actually, four to read and one to watch) to put issues related to the Olympics (albeit sometimes vaguely) into novel perspectives.

1) Warren Cohen, a leading scholar of U.S.-China relations has a smart essay on the truthdig site that compares and contrasts the frameworks and details of books on the PRC by journalists, Philip Pan’s Out of Mao’s Shadow and Joshua Kurlantzick’s China’s Charm Offensive.

2) Speaking of Kurlantzick, whose book came out some time ago, he’s got an …

Beyond Backlash: Assessing The Impact Of Judicial Decisions On Lgbt Rights, Thomas Keck

Political Science - All Scholarship

This article evaluates the widespread scholarly claim that the courtroom victories of the LGBT rights movement have invariably provoked a counterproductive political backlash. Those victories have indeed provoked conservative counter-mobilization, but that has not been their only or even their most prominent effect. Assessing the political reaction to the movement’s judicial victories, the policy impact of those victories, and the alternative strategic paths that were available to the movement at the outset, I argue that here, as elsewhere, legal mobilization has sometimes been a promising avenue for pursuing policy changes whose prospects were otherwise quite limited.

Handing Out Five Media Medals

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Here is an admittedly quirky list of some pieces I’ve come across recently that seem medal-worthy. Not all deal with “big” topics. Isn’t that fitting where the Games are concerned, though, since Olympic athletes don’t just compete in globally popular sports (like soccer) but also in ones that have few practitioners and, shall we say, niche followings (like synchronized diving)?* This list focuses almost exclusively on Western and English language publications, so I hope readers will bring Chinese and other publications into the mix via their comments. And while I’d like to award medals to some China Beat pieces (they …

Hand Grenades And Olympics, Lijia Zhang

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

At my school, sports lessons included an exercise where we threw hand grenades (made from wood topped with metal to resemble the real thing) against a wall that stretched a red slogan with the reason for our militaristic “sport” – “exercise our bodies and protect our motherland.” We feared that China might be invaded one day by the American imperialists or Soviet revisionists. Indeed, the whole West seemed holding evil intent towards us. Living in a closed country, we had little idea about the outside world.

I went to school in Nanjing in the early 70s, when the revolutionary fever …

China: The Pessoptimist Nation, William A. Callahan

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China is the most optimistic nation in the world. 86 percent think that their country is headed in the right direction, up from 48 percent in 2002 according to the latest Pew Global Attitudes survey.

There are good reasons to be hopeful. 2008 is important not only because Beijing is hosting the Olympics. This year Chinese people are also celebrating thirty years of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform policy, whose double digit economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, and created a new middle class that is larger than most European countries.

But China’s nationalistic pride takes pessimistic …

Rob Riggle Goes To China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

All week, Rob Riggle of The Daily Show has been acting out his exuberant American routine in China. Last night’s interview with BizChina’s anchor Rui Chenggang was a particular gem for China media watchers. Rui, who has interviewed a whole host of prominent American business leaders (not to mention Chinese ones), gives no ground to Riggle, parrying all Riggle’s Daily-Show style ambushes. Unfortunately, the only available online clip is the entire episode of last night’s show at Comedy Central (head here–the clip starts at 6:42, and you’ll have to watch a short ad).

The Right To Party, En Masse, Haiyan Lee

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The most clichéd way of referring to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games in English-language media has been “China’s coming-out party.” The slightly condescending undertone is nonetheless mingled with well-wishing that the debutante will give the world a heck of a party, the glitches and disappointments in the run-up notwithstanding. For this precious moment, China chose Zhang Yimou, arguably its most talented film director, to chaperone itself onto the world stage.

By all indications, it was a good choice. The 50-minute multi-million-dollar extravaganza was so spectacular that the only appropriate response, it would seem, was a WOW! Or to wonder, like …

Painting Over Mao: Notes On The Inauguration Of The Beijing Olympic Games, Geremie R. Barme

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The ancient city of Beijing was literally turned on its head to help achieve the effects of the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday August 8, 2008. Six hundred years ago the city was designed around a north-south axis that runs from the south of the old city through the Forbidden City and on north. Along this axis the spectacles of imperial times would unfold (including the imperial “Tours of the South” or nanxun that were a major feature of the reigns of the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors in the Qing dynasty). Since the 1910s, however, Chang’an Avenue, now a multi-laned …

From The Us To China, By Way Of Israel, Shakhar Rahav

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I have recently returned to my native Israel after a long sojourn in the USA. One of the things I have been looking for here is the way in which China is covered and portrayed in the Israeli media, and what images of China arise in local discourse.

As elsewhere, there is much media coverage of China these days–most of it fed by economic and commercial interests on the one hand, and by interest in the Olympics and the Olympic-hype on the other.

Indeed, most interest in China is generated by commercial interests and as such reflects our globalizing world, …

Big And Small Nation(Alisms): A View From Aotearoa-New Zealand, Paola Voci

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

And so it was. All as expected; all that is indeed the stereotypical China: the long civilization, the characters, the Confucian traditions, the big inventions, the huge number of people, and of course the fireworks. Zhang Yimou copied and pasted it all together so that the audience—both “them” and “us”—could safely enjoy familiar images, saturated with spectacular effects.

And there I was watching it all on TV like billions of others, an Italian “sinologist” turned into a Chinese film and media researcher in the USA, who ultimately landed in New Zealand five years ago to teach about China in Dunedin, …

Questioning The Olympic Project: Lessons From Seoul, Sam Goffman

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“You Americans look down on us—you think of us as low-educated and savage. I hope the Olympics can change all that.”

One could be forgiven for thinking the above statement is from contemporary China. In fact, the statement is from a South Korean travel agent, who said it on September 16, 1988, one day before the opening ceremonies of the 1988 Summer Olympics, held in Seoul.[1]

It is striking how many of the expectations regarding what the Olympics will do for China’s status in the world reflect earlier expectations in other East Asian countries that have hosted the Games—Japan in …

Contemporary Chinese Journalism: An Interview With Judy Polumbaum, Timothy Weston

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I’ve just finished reading China Ink: The Changing Face of Chinese Journalism by Judy Polumbaum with Xiong Lei. Given the plentiful recent discussion of the Chinese media and censorship during the lead up to the 2008 Olympic games, this book makes for fascinating and very timely reading. It consists of a short introduction by Judy Polumbaum, Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Iowa, and the transcripts of interviews that she and Xiong Lei, who has worked as a reporter in Beijing for twenty-five years, conducted from late 2005 until late 2006 with journalists currently working in …

Confronting Fiscal Stress In Municipal Governments: Support By Michigan Residents For Eight Common Strategies, Jered Carr

Working Group on Interlocal Services Cooperation

This report discusses findings from a survey of 660 randomly selected Michigan residents in winter 2007. The survey examined attitudes of Michigan residents toward eight strategies to resolving situations where current revenues are inadequate to support local services at past levels. The strategies examined fall into two broad categories. The first set (tax increases, state and federal aid) seeks to increase local revenues available to support services at previously existing levels and quality. The second set of strategies focus on reducing the costs of providing services with the objective of maintaining previous levels at a lower cost. This set includes …

Beijing’S Olympic Pollution Forecast: "Haze" And Hot Air, Alex Pasternack

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For an idea of what kind of air athletes and spectators can expect during the Olympics–and what Beijingers can expect for some time to come–the past week has offered telling indications.

Or it hasn’t.

At the start of last week, for the fourth day in a row, emissions made it hard to see down the street, despite the fact the government ordered half the city’s cars off the road and closed factories. Officials said they would implement an emergency contingency plan on top of the existing anti-smog measures if pollution lingers closer to the Games.

Twenty-four hours later, the difference …

Wishful Reporting, Pierre Fuller

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

My tea nearly dropped to the table here in Leicester, England, when I saw The Independent headline. “Beijing 2008 Olympics: Tiananmen orchestra fails to drown out clamour of protests,” it read, conjuring up images of Richard Gere and a chorus of Tibetan monks chanting a hundred violinists off a Tiananmen stage. So, it’d finally come, the wellspring of protest of the regime had burst, I thought. I started to read. An orchestra of 2,008 musicians was flown in from all over the world, I learned, while “foreign and local groups… have been told to give plenty of notice” for permission …

The Olympics Around The World: Japan, James Farrer

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

While the English language press has been reporting that over 100,000 police and 30,000 soldiers have been readied to protect China’s Olympic city, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun has come up with figures a full order of magnitude higher. The August 4, 2008, morning Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo edition) ran a front page feature article reporting that despite claims by the Chinese government that no one has been made to leave the city, nearly 1.4 million migrant workers have been moved out of the city for the Olympics. In turn, the report says, nearly 1.2 million police and 200,000 army personnel have moved …

Terracotta Ambassadors, The First Emperor, And The “Cursed” Farmers, Xia Shi

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

About twenty terracotta figures are currently on display at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, California in an exhibit scheduled from May 18 through October 12. Later, the exhibit, including statues of ten warriors, court officials, an acrobat, a bare-chested strongman, musicians, a stable boy, chariot horses and bronze water birds, will make stops in Atlanta, Houston, and Washington, D.C. It is said that this exhibit not only includes pieces of the highest quality, but is also the largest collection of the figures ever to leave China.

“As China gears up for the 2008 Olympics, it’s a …

Nobody (?) Likes A Spoiler, Miri Kim

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On July 31st, SBS, a major South Korean broadcast network, aired a short clipshowing details of the carefully guarded rehearsals for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics (the video clip has now been removed from all major news and video sites). As the news (and the clip) spread on the web, Chinese and Korean news, portal sites, and users on blogs and message boards expressed, to put it mildly, consternation. On popular Chinese portals like sina.com and 163.com, polls show that a large percentage of the respondents support revoking the offending station’s broadcasting privileges, or investigating who bore …