Somebody should educate the Chinese about the phrase we don't comment on ongoing investigation/development/story.

Probably less funny if you're in China.

Maybe it's that the humor doesn't translate.

Kevin, I'm glad you linked to this very interesting piece, but I have a hard time understanding what's funny about it. Like it or not, we have to live with the Chinese government; but like it or not, they really are not good folks. If you don't like where the Bush Administration is taking our country, just remember they're taking it in the direction of China. With God's support, of course, but still ...

Don't worry, the Chinese are catching up. Soon they too will have celebrity pundits that are paid well to mouth official policy with silver tongues.

Can't we outsource some of our Republican K-Street lobbyists to the Chinese to help them with the lying?

It would help the balance of trade. And the lobbyists are going to need the work.

It seems to me that most outside commentary on the Chinese propaganda apparatus focuses on what it does outside China. There, combined with behind-the-scenes business/bribery, it seems to have been highly effective. That's not inconsistent with China's homeland propaganda being laughably inept -- the two are probably run by completely different organizations.

"inscrutable".. "cunning".. "sly".. "the clever Chinese".. "cunning".. "Clever! Wily"..

Lame. I've got nothing against stereotypes, per se, but using them is usually just for the lazy, and for those who don't have a more nuanced opinion.

And wasn't it the Japanese that were inscrutable?

What is Mr. Fallows saying anyway? He admits that his personal experience has been hassle-free. "I should say that I'm not speaking personally: I had initial visa problems but no run-ins with authorities since then."

And then, he says that talking with ordinary people is more fun and illuminating than listening to official government announcements. "Even in my case, the most impressive and winning aspects of China, are the non-scripted ones. The "official" reassurances about one happy Chinese people looking bravely to the future under the Party's steadfast guidance are, umm, less effective."

How is this different than any other government's press releases?

BBC News: Iraq power system 'near collapse'

Baghdad's power supply crashed completely for a day last week
Iraq's national power grid is on the brink of collapse, the country's electricity ministry has warned.
Water supplies to Baghdad have also been cut off for days at a time, with summertime pressures on key systems said to be more intense than ever.

The ministry blamed poor maintenance, fuel shortages, sabotage by insurgents and rising demand for the problems, and said some provinces hold onto supplies.

The US Army told the BBC that Iraq must now take charge of fixing the problems.

The general in charge of helping Iraq rebuild its infrastructure, Michael Walsh, said that although Iraqi authorities only have one-quarter of the money needed for reconstruction, solving the problem was now up to them.

Gen Walsh told the BBC that the US had jump-started reconstruction but that, working with donor nations, the Iraqi government needed to do the rest.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, General Walsh forgot the "Fuck you".

Kevin: "inscrutable" as a term for Asians? Better than "gooks" I suppose, but only marginally.

steven duncan;
No wonder they took August off.
Anyone got the odds on whether they're going to actually come back in September? (given the amount of them that have just plain walked out now).

kevin drum;
Q: Who can tell if this story about Chinese government propaganda isn't just made-up American government propaganda?
A: No one.

Beautiful huh? A couple of corporatist regimes in a pissing contest over the sophistication of their fascistic control of press content. Makes me proud.

James Fallows: "Two minutes of white-noise on the screen, then the signal returning when it was time for the weather report."

Well, that's really blunt and ham-handed.

The solution here is painfully obvious. The Chinese government needs to stop being so puritanical and patronizing in defining others' personal morality for them.

That way, they can begin to develop their own superstar celebrities like Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, etc. -- people who are famous for being well-known -- whose scandals, follies and antics will provide their TV audiences with hours upon hours of vicarious amusement. Then, voila, no more white screens -- just lot and lots of bimbos, male and female alike.

Joe Buck: "Kevin: 'inscrutable' as a term for Asians? Better than 'gooks' I suppose, but only marginally."

It's a term that's questionable only when used in conjunction with the noun "Oriental".

Actually, I agree with you, wholeheartedly. Hopefully, such race- and ethnic-referenced terminology will eventually become archaic. I live in a city with a majority Asian-American population, so I'm sensitive to it.

I, for one, have always bristled at the use of the term "mongoloid" when describing infants and young children afflicted with Down's Syndrome.

Amusing story: Once, about 15 years ago, while I was tending bar in Waikiki, a white man from the Midwest told us that he was uncomfortable being in "an American city and surrounded by Japs". One of our cocktail servers, a native Hawaiian girl, told him sarcastically that she understood perfectly, because she felt the same way whenever she was in Chicago and found herself in the midst of "all those dumb Polacks."

Aloha.

And wasn't it the Japanese that were inscrutable?

No, I'm pretty sure that slur was for the Chinese. Think Ming the Merciless and his 'Fu Manchu' moustache.

This is no excuse, of course, but the Chinese have got plenty of slurs and prejudices of their own.

Far more effective would be the American model whereby CNN has 48 hours of non-stop, repetitive and mostly jejune coverage of a collapsed bridge while Congress spends more on the War Department than ever before in human history (not counting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) and signs away Fourth Amendment rights (but only for a 6-month trial period!).

If it weren't for BBC (half an hour) and PBS (one hour) and CNN's Your World Today (one hour, if there isn't some inane presser or a cat up a tree with live footage)—forget local broadcasts—there would oftentimes be literally zero real news on any given night. It's the equivalent of being distracted by someone saying 'look over there!' and pointing. Little wonder that blogs are popular and that the people who read them are scared spitless that newspapers might all go NewCorp on us.

Donald from Hawaii,

Actually for someone living outside the US it is pretty astute to know about the immigrant Polish population in Chicago. Did you find out how she knew of it?

Donald;

Did the guy say "dumb japs" or "japs"? you see, because there's a big difference between what he said, and her response about Chicago. Anyway, "dumb polacks" is redundant. (ba-dump-cha! just kidding folks - grew up in Chicago, grew up with polack jokes, never really "got" them, cause, anyway, everyone knows they're way smarter than the wops - damn, my point is, you've got a lot of ethnic groups in Chicago, and they use the derogatory slang (or they did in the 1970's), but, frankly, there never seemed to be much of a problem with these groups "getting along" - including african americans. At least from my point of view; a dumb scandahoovian.)

Rupert Murdoch's gone to China?

OT

Kevin! I'm listening to you now on Warren Olney's To the Point.

Very good.

Alert your readers!

lord_mike >"Rupert Murdoch's gone to China?"

My boy, you ARE out of touch. Mr. Murdoch is a front man for certain Chinese interests (note I didn`t say "the Chinese government").

"For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill" - Sun Tzu

OT: More Thomas Beauchamp news from TNR:

A STATEMENT ON SCOTT THOMAS BEAUCHAMP:

We've talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account as detailed in our statement. When we called Army spokesman Major Steven F. Lamb and asked about an anonymously sourced allegation that Beauchamp had recanted his articles in a sworn statement, he told us, "I have no knowledge of that." He added, "If someone is speaking anonymously [to The Weekly Standard], they are on their own." When we pressed Lamb for details on the Army investigation, he told us, "We don't go into the details of how we conduct our investigations."

Funny, I suppose -- but the fact that a tyranny is this clumsy does NOT mean that it's not dangerous. Indeed, one can make an excellent case that the clumsier a nuclear-armed tyranny is, the more dangerous it is.

I'm not normally one to defend the use of racial stereotypes and slurs, but perhaps Kevin's use of "inscrutable" and Fallows' use of "wily" are just a wee bit facetious, especially given the context of a heavy-handed act of censorship?

BTW last time I checked, all east Asians have been "inscrutable" at one time or another.

I hope you guys never have to go through what my team felt when Scott McClellan was "our" spokesman... every day I saw him up there mud wrestling with David Gregory I could only think of Flounder from Animal House, trying to fend off Ted Baxter from The MTM Show...

I had an Asian friend in college who said all the American girls he went out with were inscrutible...

Tripp: Actually for someone living outside the US it is pretty astute to know about the immigrant Polish population in Chicago.

When did Hawaii leave the Union?

osama_been_forgotten: "japs" ... "dumb polacks" ... wops ... scandahoovian

None of those terms is terribly offensive. What's really offensive is belonging to an ethnic group that nobody's even bothered to create an epithet for - talk about being ignored! My own wife confuses it with Slovaks and Slavs. Anybody know an epithet for Slovenes?

but perhaps Kevin's use of "inscrutable" and Fallows' use of "wily" are just a wee bit facetious, especially given the context of a heavy-handed act of censorship?

What do you mean facetious? This is an internet. Where's the emoticon?

No wink, no excuse.

every day I saw him up there mud wrestling with David Gregory I could only think of Flounder from Animal House, trying to fend off Ted Baxter from The MTM Show...

Okay - that one is funny enough that it gets you out of the box. Good one, minion.

Having lived in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan for over twenty years, I would say that for the vast majority of Chinese, being called "wily" and inscrutable" by a foreigner would not only be seen as a compliment but also as a simple statement of fact.

Take my wife...{No, I'm not going to say it.)

I can see how for ABCs, BBCs, CBCs as well as immigrants, it must get annoying and contribute to racial stereotyping.

"Inscrutable"? What next, Kevin -- a still photograph of Myrna Loy from those pre-Nora Charles days where she portrayed Asians?

Tripp: "Think Ming the Merciless ..."

And I think of Michael Chertoff, Director of Homeland Security.

alex: "Anybody know an epithet for Slovenes?"

No epithet is really necessary, because it's the root word for "slovenly".

minion: "I had an Asian friend in college who said all the American girls he went out with were inscrutible ..."

I think he probably meant "insatiable" ...

Donald from Hawaii: No epithet is really necessary, because it's the root word for "slovenly".

On the bright side, you being incinerated by a lava flow will spare your family the expense of cremation.

alex: "On the bright side, you being incinerated by a lava flow will spare your family the expense of cremation."

"Touché!" for that, and also for reminding Tripp that Hawaii is part of the United States.

Kevin! Stop giving the bushies ideas!

On second thought, if Smirky blocked all the news he doesn't like, at least then we would know everything we see on teevee is Official Propaganda.

Just believe the oppposite of the "news," and you'll always know the truth.

Hah! The American Armed Forces Radio Network in Japan and Korea used to do that. They probably still do. AFRN ran several syndicated news & talk shows - Paul Harvey, Rush Limbaugh, etc. Whenever anything "host-sensitive" came up (Paul Harvey talking about how Korean immigrant convenience store owners in the States discriminated against blacks, for example), white noise would replace that segment of the show. Very subtle!

I currently live in southern China. The Chinese government monitors and blocks out portions of all broadcasts originating from outside China. Generally, it's anything speicifically criticizing the Chinese government, particularly regarding Tibet, Taiwan, Falon Gong (sp?), the Catholic church's problems in China, etc. In Guangdong it cuts from English-language Hong Kong TV (which is uncensored in Hong Kong, but censored on the mainland) to Cantonese public service announcements for the duration of the offending segment. The cutting is amaturish, but that's probably because it's a person monitoring a live feed.

That said, Hong Kong TV did a segment on this subject, including criticism by the international committee to protect journalists, and it wasn't blocked out. And the monitors weren't taking a day off (which happens) because at the end of the broadcast they censored out the Hong Kong lottery numbers (which they do every night, because it's illegal to play it or even have a ticket if you're physically on the mainland).

Don't worry, the Chinese are catching up. Soon they too will have celebrity pundits that are paid well to mouth official policy with silver tongues.
Posted by: F. Frederson on August 7, 2007 at 1:39 PM
------------------

Yep.

"China Threatens to Trigger Dollar Crash":
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml;jsessionid=G21MW4NLYI2OLQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/money/2007/08/08/cnchina108.xml

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