For those of you looking to get yourself (or your boss) splashed across Chinese media, look no further than this article by David Barboza of the New York Times whose already done the legwork for you and found out all the rates: more ›

"The Chinese government has never really learnt how to 'speak.' You see a lot of politically correct language, and too little self-criticism. Subjects like Wang Lijun are deemed too sensitive to even be touched upon. China is generally a country that does not too bad on the whole, and the hard results are out there. If something has happened, we should talk about. The more you refuse to talk about it, the more you shroud the matter in mystery. But when you choose to talk about it, people think, oh, it's just that. Society needs criticism all the time. The more the government criticizes itself, the less the public will criticize it. The more good news there is on official media, the more bad news and rumors there will be on Weibo. That's just how things balance up." more ›

It would have been so much easier if China had put a full stop to the sordid affair of the Confucius Peace Prize, but nope, authorities have decided to charge ahead with their public relations trainwreck. Apparently, a rival group calling themselves the "Confucius Prize for World Peace" quietly emerged on September 21, the International Day of Peace -- that's one whole week before we found out the original organisers had been disbanded. more ›

Public relations impresario Richard Burger, better known as the Peking Duck, comments on the PR disaster otherwise known as the Confucius Peace Prize:

This is what we call a train wreck. Everything the CCP has done to suppress the Liu Xiaobo story has only succeeded in keeping it front and center. The Confucius prize only exists, of course, because of Liu, and any coverage it gets dredges up the embarrassment China suffered with the empty seat in Oslo. Now once again China faces smirks as the world witnesses the internal disarray that seems to spell the end of the Confucius Peace Prize. And once again, the story of Liu’s imprisonment and his wining the Nobel prize gets churned up all over again. more ›

Via Shanghai Daily: "The China Railway Ministry's chief spokesman has been fired, the ministry announced yesterday. Wang Yongping, the spokesman for the ministry since 2003, gained wide media exposure after the recent bullet-train crash that killed 40 people and injured hundreds late in July in Wenzhou, one of the deadliest rail accidents in Chinese history. Wang will be transferred to a Warsaw-based international railway cooperative, the Xinhua news agency reported. The ministry did not disclose the reason for Wang's dismissal, so it remains unclear whether it was related to his comments at a press conference after the Wenzhou accident." Well, we'd be surprised if it really had nothing to do with the train crash. But then again, sacked officials are sometimes rotated to other similar positions of equal or higher stature when they think no one's watching, so this may be little more than a cosmetic move designed to appease the people for now. more ›

Looks like China's on a new PR push in America, and this time they hired some decent producers! Far and away better than their "China Friendship" ad that aired in New York's Time Square back during Hu Jintao's State Visit to the US (which seemed to think Americans would relate strongly with random photos of Chinese celebrities they've never heard of) this new video takes a far more aesthetically pleasing approach. Shot in and around Shanghai and edited to within an inch of its life, this 7-min clip shows some very beautiful scenes from Shanghai, both past and present. more ›

A massive ceremony was conducted at Fudan University this morning to mourn the loss of Anhui policeman Zhang Ninghai, who died while rescuing a team of 18 mountain climbers, mostly from the university's mountain climbing association, who had earlier wandered into a restricted zone at the Yellow Mountain. more ›

Those watching the 2010 Rose Parade in Pasadena, California may have noticed a fun little shout out. Our city (and its upcoming Expo) somehow made their way into the hours long spectacle, sandwiched between a Barnum & Bailey's themed marching of Scripps Miramar Saddlebred horses and the Pickerington Central Marching Tigers marching band (who was in the Macy's Day Parade as well). more ›

Congratulations to Matt Mayer who yesterday became (we believe) the first person to visit every station on the Shanghai Metro system in one day. more ›

That's what Matt Mayer, the guy behind the ExploreShanghai metro map is trying to do right now. He laid out his plan, and the rules, here, a blog post that finished with: "147 stations, eight lines, one manic Monday. Wish me luck!" You can follow Matt's progress live on Twitter. His last message: "50 shanghai metro stations completed in 3h 7m 33s. Station 50 is west nanjing road. Shame i dont have time to visit marks and spencers :)" You can get in touch with Matt throughout the day. We're sure he'd love to here from you — it's going to be a long, boring Monday. more ›

So apparently the controversies in international media this summer over China and the Olympics came as a bit of a shock to the Chinese people. While the government's retained tight control over its own media, it's been less able to harmonize those pesky news outlets abroad. Not one to take perceived insults to its national image lying down, Beijing is now throwing RMB 45 billion into targeting global audiences. more ›

The Chinese media is rife with reports of a 25 year old Shanghai woman, Chan Juan (pseudonym), who supposedly gave up her RMB10,000 job, spent RMB100,000 in search of the ideal husband and cycled over 2,000 kilometres from Guangzhou to Shanghai to attend a matchmaking party that was organised just for her. She was promised by the organiser that 1,000 young men would be waiting for her but eventually only two men showed up, one from Shandong and the other from Zhejiang. More than 30 candidates from Shanghai were said to have indicated interest but all chickened out at the last minute.
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