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- Despite Banning Twitter, 92% of China Netizens Use Social Media [Read Write Web] "According to a recent report, Chinese netizens are twice as likely to use chat and three times more likely to micro-blog, blog and use video conference than American users. The Netpop Research study shows that mainland Chinese citizens are "more likely to share information broadly and openly." This comes as a surprise as the country's censorship has been such a topic of contention. Nevertheless, the study estimates that up to 92% of Chinese netizens use social media, meanwhile, only 76% of US netizens do the same."
- Xinjiang Crackdown and Changing Perceptions of China in the Islamic World? [The Jamestown Foundation] "While it is clearly in China’s interest to resolve the crisis in Xinjiang on terms that promote long-term reconciliation and stability and address the legitimate grievances of the Uighur community, the recent violence will have little impact on Beijing’s relations with the Middle East and wider Islamic world. Turkish and Iranian criticism of China, which at this point has amounted to little more than rhetoric in the first place, will likely prove to be an exception rather than a precursor of future trends. In the long run, China’s diplomatic and economic clout is too important to ignore."
- Beijing Softens Stand on Emissions Cap [Wall Street Journal] "China and the U.S. are still miles apart. China, driven by a historically unprecedented wave of urbanization and industrialization, has recently surpassed the U.S. as the top emitter of greenhouse gasses. But Beijing insists that rich industrialized countries have a responsibility to clean up first. On the other side, countries like the U.S. say big countries like China and India are growing so fast that, unless they accept absolute limits on their greenhouse gasses, the extra pollution from all of their new factories obliterate gains made elsewhere, gutting the value of any deal."
- Uighur Leader Says Children's Letters Were Coerced [Reuters] "Exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer said on Wednesday she believed two of her children had been coerced by Chinese authorities into writing letters accusing her of orchestrating unrest last month in Xinjiang region. 'I believe it is against their conscience, against their will, to force them to say things against me. I believe that it is a form of dictatorship imposed upon them by the government,' Kadeer told journalists."
- Trial of Chinese dissident ends without ruling [Newsday] "Huang, 45, long one of China's most outspoken activists, ran a human rights Web site and wrote about parents who had lost their children when badly built schools collapsed in the May 2008 quake in Sichuan that left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing. The activist is charged with illegally possessing state secrets, an ill-defined charge often used by Communist leaders to clamp down on dissent and imprison activists."
- Filthy Fiction: The Writings of Zhu Wen [The China Beat] "For Zhu Wen, no subject is sacred: neither the establishment fantasy of a wholesome socialist civilisation, nor defiant student idealism. There are plenty of works of Chinese fiction written in the 1980s that seem rooted in the feverish cultural atmosphere of that decade; there are plenty of works written in the post-1989 period that are steeped in the crass materialism of the 1990s. There aren’t many that look back at the late 1980s from the subdued perspective of the 1990s, trying to make sense - within the censorial limits imposed by the Chinese government - of a period that the authorities would prefer to pretend never happened."
- Analysis: Bill Clinton as a diplomatic fix-it man [CNN] "But with the success of his North Korean mission so quick and easy, it's conceivable that Bill Clinton could add the role of "diplomatic cleaner" to his resume -- a version of Harvey Keitel's role as Winston Wolfe in the movie "Pulp Fiction" -- a fixer of messy problems, which he solves with a combination of stylish charisma and lucid thinking under pressure. The Obama administration has no shortage of messy foreign policy problems that Hillary Clinton knows could use a Winston Wolfe."
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