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 ›

Photos via news.163.com more ›

In our past life as a media whore public relations executive, we learnt that one of the defining elements of PR with Chinese characteristics is that cash is not only frequently extended in return for positive coverage, it is actually industry standard that you hand out the cash to journalists in nice little envelopes discreetly tucked into the media kit as "travel expenses" (车马费). That this is standard practice is hardly news, but tough luck anyways for the Gehua New Century Hotel which hosts the official non-accredited media center for the Beijing Olympics because it's just been busted by Nick Mulvenney of Reuters for offering journalists "500 yuan for a 'positive' article on the hotel of 100 to 500 words in length and 1,000 yuan for an article of between 500 and 1,000 words". PR manager of the hotel Zhao Xiaoda explained it away in a phone interview with Reuters by saying, "We want to extend our reputation through the opportunity of the Olympics, it is necessary to promote our brand. I understand it is different from international practice. It was a decision of the PR department not the hotel." Let's see how BOCOG deals with this one. more ›

In our past life as a public relations executive, we were always surprised at how China's media world appears to be in sort of a pre-Cambrian age with as many publications going out of business as there are coming in. Call up all the journalists you've invited after a press conference and there always be bound to be one or two publications that have folded up. Well it appears we haven't quite come out of those pre-Cambrian times yet, and at least the expat magazine circle is beginning to feel the heat. Hot on the heels of the closure of News Views Reviews comes the demise of Hint Magazine. We just received this in our mail from the editors of the publication:

Dear Friends of Hint Magazine, more ›

The last time an anchor from our favourite TV channel made it to the news, he created such a brouhaha that culminated in the eviction of one coffee company from the Forbidden City. In the news this time is New Zealand-born anchor Edwin Maher who for many years before arriving in China was a weatherman with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Los Angeles Times published a profile of Maher that started it all off. It... more ›

Chinese search engine Baidu just can't seem to stay out of the news. Pacific Epoch thinks that Baidu is finally living up to the formerly tongue-in-cheek moniker of "Google of China," while fool.com likens the growth of the company to a "runaway freight train." Certainly, there are plenty of reasons behind its phenomenal growth: for one, it copies most of the neat functions and applications that Google has—including a rumored instant messaging application. Called "Baidu Xiaosheng (百度小声)", no one actually knows if this thing exists or is just another fake cardboard steamed bun. The picture that you see came from a website where you could supposedly download the beta version, but the install file link no longer works. The Baidu public relations say that this so-called "leak" is a hoax, though there are those that believe that Baidu will eventually want to take on Tencent and other internet giants, meaning that an IM client and an email service are just a matter of time. What does seem to be closer to an undisputed fact is that Baidu is the fastest search engine in China according to a report from webpronews.com that measured and compared response times of various search engine websites. more ›

So about a week ago, the news surfaced that German-born Swiss-based couturier Phillipp Plein released a limited edition T-shirt that screamed "F-U-C-K YOU CHINA". OK, it was more like a whisper - the words were only readable up close and as we all know, couturiers are all about subtle elegance. more ›

The last time we heard from Air China, it was hit by an embarrassing spate of accidents. Not so long afterwards, it announced an order for 15 units of the new Boeing 767 Dreamliner. This time, Air China has proclaimed its ambitions to grow its market share in Beijing from the existing 44% up to 50%. more ›

Harshing the mellows of college kids all over China, the Ministry of Education has announced a ban on off-campus student housing:

In a notice issued on Friday, the ministry instructed all universities to make the dormitories "another front for political and ideological education" to create "a good climate for the students' growth." more ›

Watch this video clip of the poor receptionist girl working at Google China getting harrassed by a guy, Zola Zhou, (once) billed as "China's first citizen reporter". Zola first gained widespread attention for his blog reports on the Chongqing nailhouse. Hungry for more success, he also went to Xiamen to report on demonstrations against Haicang PX. Hell, he even got interviewed by NBC. more ›

Even though we've long put our public relations days behind us, we can't help but think what a day in the life of a PR executive at Starbucks must be like. They must all have been working overtime lately with the Seattle-based coffee company hitting the headlines like crazy lately. First it was the landmark victory against Shanghai Xingbake, then there was the trans fat issue. more ›

Ours is. And so is the internet for many other friends in offices and apartments across Shanghai. more ›

Many of you might have read our post regarding the horrible mass-slaughter of dogs in August. Sadly, it seems we could be experiencing the third wave of the canine cull, based on this Economic Daily report (in Chinese) that says five major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Wuhan are going to address "dog problems". more ›

OK, so it's a bit difficult to type like Elmer Fudd, but you can always find inspiration by trying Google in Elmer Fudd language. more ›

Via the ever-informative (and concise) Pacific Epoch: more ›