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| Read about it here.
I like Gore and the widespread effects of his movie/advocacy, but this might be the most unrealistic thing I've ever heard. I'm a fan of mass investments in solar, wind and clean-coal energy to fast-track our way out of dependence on carbon-fuels, but that number - 2018 - just seems so arbitrarily fabricated.
The more I read about agreements and plans, the more I get frustrated reading deadlines and guidelines that look great on paper but never are truly enacted. Why put a real figure to it in the first place, if it is going to be so loose?
"2018" is great speech material. That is, it combines the pragmatism of an actual (impending) number with the idealism of it being a lofty goal (very soon). Yet, that might be all it is: speech material.
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| Haven't posted a personal/serious entry in a while.
Context: On the way home from Birmingham, Alabama (from
Henry and Sharon Tsay’s wedding, which was fantastic, by the way), I got stuck
in Atlanta, Georgia (connecting flight) for 50 hours, 30 of
which was spent at the airport.
My connecting flight (from
B-ham to Atlanta) was originally canceled due to a big storm in Atlanta.
Delta/NW said they could bus (yes, bus) us
out there so that the people with connecting flights in Atlanta could make
them. I agreed. 3 hours later, I find myself in Atlanta Int’l Airport in the
midst of mass chaos: apparently, the 2 hours of storms caused over 126 flight
cancellations (including many which were connecting flights), meaning thousands
of people were stranded at the airport.
Babies crying, people
everywhere (including the floor), and lots of yelling. My flight’s gate got
changed twice, delayed 4 times, and then (at 11pm), it was canceled
altogether. I then found myself in a line of displaced travelers that stretched
from gate B6 to gate B22. You couldn’t see the end. There could’ve been
hundreds or thousands of people in it (and only 3 Delta operators that
individually helped each person, I found later). We took a step every 15
minutes. At 3 or 4 in the morning, I finally got my flight rebooked for Tuesday
afternoon – a two day delay. Apparently, there were so many standby passengers
that every flight to Detroit was booked for those two entire days. I slept in
the terminal that night.
Yet, there were many upsides to
this experience, I think. For one, I got to meet a lot of people. It’s
interesting that it only takes a disaster (I hesitate to use the word ‘natural
disaster,’ although it was climate-based) to humanize the cold, impersonal and
business-quick politeness of the airport. People tend to talk when they’re
frustrated, venting and worst yet, alone. A few mentionable people were: a
German engineer who was on business and going to Detroit (which he proudly
referred to as the “motor capital of the world,” only to be shot down by 3
Detroit natives telling him about the recent economic letdowns of Detroit),
many Omego Psi Phi fraternity brothers (all black frat notorious for their
branding the ‘omega’ sign on every member with a hot iron), 7 Chinese high
schoolers from Hangzhou who were doing a Summer exchange program at UT Austin
(their first US experience was being stranded at an airport), an elderly lady
who apparently was very nervous and sick who couldn’t stop throwing up, a
mother who really exemplified motherly love at the time who had 3 children with
her, and a tech-savvy weightlifter who showed me how to sync a Bluetooth headset
with an mp3 player and blackberry phone.
I learned a lot. Lessons:
1. When it comes to travelling,
I should always book flights early, so I never have to take weird 1 and 2 stop
flights again.
2. I should always pack light,
so I can take my luggage as a carry on. I met so many people who checked their
bags, only to find their flights cancelled and their bags in Jersey, Ft.
Lauderdale, etc.
3. The luxury of travelling by
plane is only afforded to a small minority of us upper-class. For some reason,
this realization only hit me when I was awakened by the 7AM bustle of the
airport the following morning and found myself lying on the ground, looking and
feeling disheveled and self-conscious. It’s interesting to see that there are
natural filters to this industry (I guess every industry has some?), but it’s
especially apparent when I remember traveling by Greyhound (comparing the type
of people who travel by plane vs. bus).
4. People are a lot more willing to tell their
respective stories than I imagine.
5. Unexpected and unavoidable
things (like bad weather) bring the best and worst things out of people: both
irritable renegadeness and mutual commiseration. Here, the economy of small
gestures of good faith (a smile, a small hint of reassurance, a nod of
sympathy, etc.) seem to go a much longer way than usual. I distinctly remember
the emotive effect of a small cup of water offered by a rather optimistic barista
upon me and the same effect of my saying “I think it’ll be alright” offhandedly
to a woman I was waiting in line with.
6. Delta/NW Airlines has
horrible management (at least in Atlanta). Of course, in the bigger picture,
the incident was weather related, but then again, weather related events always
occur. You’d expect one of the largest airlines in the world to be better
prepared to mount a properly executed response – one that is quick, courteous
and most importantly, effective. Theirs was none of the above. In fact, they
were as clueless as we were to the outcome of the flights, often giving answers
that weren’t very comforting or descriptive(ie. technical difficulties, etc.),
delaying flights 5 or 6 times and then cancelling them altogether, and to top
it all off, they were downright rude. I will be taking my domestic flights to
Southwest.
7. I cannot imagine the
responsibility of having a family, particularly having kids and elderly to take
care of. I was pretty calm throughout the whole ordeal because at the worst, I
would have to sleep at the airport for two nights (plus, I had a sleeping bag).
I talked to others who had to care for their children and elderly parents and
had no idea what they were going to do. And at around 3am, we were informed
that most of all the hotels were booked around the airport. What to do then?
8. I am extraordinarily
thankful for friends in other states (eg., Alex Lin). Although I had to sleep
that first night in the airport, I was lucky enough to have a friend whose
family was hospitable enough to not only house me, but show me a great time. They
absolutely treated me like I was family. Among the highlights were good food,
great conversation (horay for practicing Chinese), a lightshow, and my first
time shooting a gun. And, I felt honored that Alex’s grandma let me walk her
down the hill in the park. Word.
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| June 28, 2008
By Ethan Zuckerman
In
putting together the Global Voices summit, the program sometimes ends
up changing to reflect recent events. We added a panel a few weeks ago
focused on the Chinese blogosphere and issues of bias, misunderstanding
and miscommunication. It’s become very clear to those of us who watch
blogopshere conversations that there’s a great deal of anger in China
about percieved media bias in the US, and deep misunderstanding between
Chinese bloggers and western human rights activists.
My co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon,
a former CNN bureau chief in China and an expert on Chinese media,
offers us a timeline on the incidents that have led to these
discussions of bias. With China hosting the 2008 Olympics, there’s been
a western expectation that China would be more open in terms of media,
and that human rights situations would improve. On March 10th - the
anniversary of the Chinese army march into Lhasa, a day that’s
remembered with protests every year that remember Tibetan people’s
resistance against the Chinese army - protests turned violent, sparking
clashes between protesters and police.
Rebecca points out that there are very different ways to understand
these protests. Western activists tend to feel, “the Chinese are
denying Tibetans basic rights and opressing them.” Han Chinese tend to
offer reflections like, “These ungrateful minorities - look what we did
for their economy! We built infrastructure and sanitation for them and
this is what we get?”
The violence in Tibet helped give support to movements to protest
the Olympic torch passing through cities around the world. Western
rights groups expected that Chinese people would be grateful for these
protests against their “government oppressors”. Instead, they were
deeply angry over percieved media bias in American mainstream media.
This anger became most visible at Anti-CNN.com,
a site designed to challenge narratives in Western media about China
and to check facts reported in those media. Text on their front page is
instructive in understanding their motives: “We are not against the
western media, but against the lies and fabricated stories in the
media. We are not against the western people, but against the prejudice
from the western society.”
Anti-cnn got its name because commenters there revealed that a photo
shown on CNN - which showed Chinese tanks in the streets of Lhasa - was
improperly cropped from the original AFP photo… which showed Tibetans
throwing rocks at those tanks. Writers on the site did excellent
fact-checking, discovering cases in which photos of Nepali soldiers
beating Tibetan protesters were mischaracterized as Chinese soldiers
abusing Tibetans.
Is it possible, Rebecca wonders, that instead of preventing cultural disconnects, the net is capable of ampifying them?
Rebecca shows us maps generated by Dave Lyons of the Mutant Palm
blog that show weblinks to the Athens Olympics site and to the Beijing
Olympics site. They point out that there’s two separate clusters of
people linking to the Beijing site - a cluster of Chinese blogs
centered on certain media outlets, and everyone else’s blogs centered
on other sites, suggesting two isolated conversations.
Some activists made efforts at trying to break down this echo
chamber - she points us to an instructional video on YouTube designed
to help Westerners talk to Chinese users on Fanfou,
a twitter-like site, and engge in conversations via Google Translate.
It’s not wise to come in with the perspective, “If only we could break
down their wall and give them the information, they would be free.”
(This statement gets a lot of laughs from the audience.)
There’s a systemic problem with getting alternative voices about
subjects like Tibet from China. It’s difficult to post about the Dalai
Lama without being effectively filtered on the Chinese-hosted internet…
which means it’s hard to see these perspectives online.
John Kennedy,
GV’s China editor, argues that anti-CNN was amazingly effective in
critiquing western media coverage, and that there aren’t very good
responses to their critiques - CNN didn’t offer an apology for their
photo-cropping decisions, which made bloggers even more angry.
“How different are the Chinese views on Tibet? I don’t know, and we
don’t know,” Kennedy offers. “If you’re not in a dialog with Chinese
bloggers, does your opinion matter? Some people in China are really
pissed off - how do you talk with them?”
Kennedy points out that he’s sometimes accused of picking the most
extreme voices in the Chinese blogosphere and amplifying them. He
offers a counterexample - a surprising post about Chinese bloggers
finding common cause with Burmese monks, a subject that challenges
perceptions about Chinese bloggers as supporting authoritarianism.
Isaac Mao points out that biases come from the absence of
information. We need to understand that there are interlocking layers
of media. There’s official media - words directly from the government.
There’s professional media - which often critiques official media and
helps interpret it. Now, we’re seeing the rise of grassroots media,
which has emerged very quickly in China and now challenges these other
narratives.
I offered an observation and question from the crowd: There are a
lot of situations where we end up with cultural misunderstanding and
failure to communicate due to a failure to consider the audience of
remarks. Sermons Reverend Wright offered to his congregation were
understood very differently by the reporters at ABC news than they were
by his congregants… and this almost cost Obama the democratic
nomination. Comments made by Jack Cafferty on CNN led to a law suit from Chinese citizens…
it’s unlikely that Cafferty thought of himself speaking to a Chinese
audience while speaking to his viewers. How often do we misunderstand
because we’re not part of the intended audience for something?
Xiao Qiang offers the
example of Chinese party secretaries writing about the Dalai Lama as “a
wolf in lambskin”. This was pretty routine when talking to other party
members - once translated into English and promoted worldwide, it led
to outrage and a PR disaster.
Xiao offers the hope that projects like Global Voices can help build bridges of cultural understanding. He offers a story about Tang Danhong,
a Han woman who’s lived in Tibet for ten years and has been writing
epic poetry to try to encourage understanding and build bridges between
groups:
Yes, I love Tibet. I am a Han Chinese who loves Tibet, regardless of
whether she is a nation or a province, as long as she is so
voluntarily. Personally, I would like to have them (Tibetans) belong to
the same big family with me. I embrace relationships which come
self-selected and on equal footing, not controlled or forced, both
between peoples and nations.
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What I’m Reading
As my departure to China quickly nears, I find that in my
preparatory attempt to get myself well versed
with China’s current and pressing topics revolve around blogs and feeds,
rather than books. Ostensibly, the primary reason is speed; publication takes a
while and (especially at the rate China’s politics, economy and policies are
changing) a book can be old hat by the time it’s published. A blog on the other
hand (which is becoming standard amongst almost all journalists and current
event writers) is quick, informative and most importantly, varied. You know
that someone out there is talking
about almost any topic.
A few of the blogs that I daily read:
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/
http://consciousearth.blogspot.com
http://www.responsiblechina.com/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/
And these are just a few of the blogs I read up on in
regards to general Chinese issues. My Google Reader account (which acts as an
RSS feed for the entire internet) is divided into the following:
1. General China Blogs
2. Friends blogs
3. Photography blogs
4. Food blogs
5. Public Health blogs
6. Economics/Business blogs 7. Environmental/ "Green" blogs
So, even with
Google Reader (which I believe was a response to the idea that there’s already so much crap on the internet and
the question isn’t how much
information is on the web, but how to sort it all in a user-friendly,
informative manner), I find myself a bit overwhelmed. My mornings are spent
sifting through the very application (Google Reader) that is supposed to help
me sift through the online craziness we call the Internet. Quite simply, there’s
just too much stuff to look at/read (a chapter in Thomas Friedman’s “The World
is Flat” says it better than I do).
Adding to the Noise
So, how do I respond? I start to blog, myself. 4 blogs to
be exact: I have my xanga one, my rachaelraydeng.blogspot.com food blog, the
writing one that I’m somewhat a part of, and I’m thinking about starting one
dedicated to my China Fulbright adventures. So, my readers, I hope you don’t mind me
talking about China so much in this very blog.
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| June 17, 2008
Booming, China Faults U.S. Policy on the Economy
By EDWARD WONG
BEIJING - Not long ago, Chinese officials sat across conference tables
from American officials and got an earful.
The Americans scolded the Chinese on mismanaging their economy, from
state subsidies to foreign investment regulations to the valuation of
their currency. Your economic system, the Americans strongly implied,
should look a lot more like ours.
But in recent weeks, the fingers have been wagging in the other
direction. Senior Chinese officials are publicly and loudly rebuking the
Americans on their handling of the economy and defending their own more
assertive style of regulation.
Chinese officials seem to be galled by the apparent hypocrisy of
Americans telling them what to do while the American economy is at best
stagnant. China, on the other hand, has maintained its feverish growth.
Some officials are promoting a Chinese style of economic management that
they suggest serves developing countries better than the American model,
in much the same way they argue that they are in no hurry to copy
American-style multiparty democracy.
In the last six weeks alone, a senior banking regulator blamed
Washington's "warped conception" of market regulation for the subprime
mortgage crisis that is rattling the world economy; the Chinese envoy to
the World Trade Organization called on the United States to halt the
dollar's unchecked depreciation before the slide further worsens soaring
oil and food prices; and Chinese agencies denounced a federal committee
charged with vetting foreign investments in the United States, saying
the Americans were showing "hostility" and a "discriminatory attitude,"
not least toward the Chinese.
All this reflects a brash new sense of self-confidence on the part of
the Chinese. China seems to feel unusually bold before the Summer
Olympics, seen here as a curtain raiser for the nation's ascent to
pre-eminence in the world. The devastating earthquake last month helped
by turning world sympathy toward China and dampening criticism of its
handling of Tibet.
The Chinese attitude is no doubt bolstered by the lame-duck status of
the Bush administration and by the fact that the United States is widely
seen as having squandered its political and military leadership during
the war in Iraq, which China opposed. Likewise, Chinese officials and
state news media have suggested that the relatively quick mobilization
of the Chinese Army during the recent earthquake in Sichuan Province
contrasts favorably with the Bush administration's reaction to Hurricane
Katrina.
The aggressive stand comes at an inopportune moment for the White House.
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and other cabinet members are to
meet with Chinese officials in Annapolis, Md., on Tuesday in the latest
round of semiannual economic talks. The Americans have a laundry list of
complaints, among them that the Chinese use regulations to favor
domestic companies over foreign rivals and that Beijing does too little
to police the theft of copyrights and patents held by Western companies.
The United States is also pressing China to address concerns about the
safety of food and drugs it exports.
But China has its own list of grievances, topped by management of the
dollar and restrictions on foreign investment in the United States. And
the Americans could find themselves with little negotiating leverage.
"U.S. credibility and the credibility of U.S. financial markets is zero
everywhere in the world," said Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor of
economics at Columbia University who has sharply criticized the Bush
administration and praised China's economic management in the past.
"Anybody looking at this from the outside says, 'There's been a lot of
hot air coming out of the U.S., so why should we listen to these guys
when they didn't know how to manage risk?' "
Here in China, economic observers are noting that the Chinese posture
toward the Americans has decidedly shifted.
"This time, the Chinese side is trying to change its attitude to be more
active, to be more aggressive, to balance the two sides," said Song
Hongbing, author of "The Currency War," a best-selling if conspiratorial
book on the American economy. "They just started to change their
attitude for the future."
Chinese officials are expressing their disdain in forums around the
world. Last month, Liu Mingkang, the chairman of the China Banking
Regulatory Commission, delivered a lecture at the British Museum in
London in which he blamed the American government for the subprime
mortgage crisis that came close to freezing Western debt markets and
required extensive intervention by the Federal Reserve. The turmoil, he
said, was "counteracting the course of global civilization."
"Does moneymaking or doing business justify the regulators in ignoring
their duty for prudential supervision and their job of preventing
misbehavior?" he said.
One of Mr. Liu's colleagues, Liao Min, told the newspaper The Financial
Times in late May that the "Western consensus on the relation between
the market and the government should be reviewed."
"In practice, they tend to overestimate the power of the market and
overlook the regulatory role of the government, and this warped
conception is at the root of the subprime crisis," said Mr. Liao,
director general of the commission.
China is grappling with its share of economic problems, including high
inflation. But it has reasons to feel optimistic.
Some economists say it has improved its state-owned banking system by
writing off bad debt and overhauling management even as it rejected
American pressure to privatize banks and allow unfettered competition in
the financial sector. Its financial system is more tightly regulated and
less dynamic than the American one, but also more stable, Chinese
economists argue.
On currency management, China has been under heavy pressure to raise the
value of the renminbi, which foreign critics say is maintained at an
artificially low level to make Chinese exports less expensive. So far,
China has managed to walk a tightrope. It has allowed the renminbi to
increase in value against the dollar in tiny increments, for a total of
20 percent since 2005, a less dramatic change than the Bush
administration and Congress demanded.
The gradual approach has allowed the export sector to adjust while
preventing a currency shock that might derail growth.
Meanwhile, the Americans allowed the dollar to plunge in value. That
angered the Chinese, which keeps most of its $1.76 trillion in foreign
reserves in dollars. Chinese officials have accused the Americans of
mismanaging the dollar at a time when Washington is still pressing China
to appreciate the renminbi to narrow the trade deficit.
This month, the Chinese envoy to the World Trade Organization said in
Geneva that the United States had failed to safeguard the value of its
currency, worsening the pain for people around the world who pay high
oil and food prices in dollars.
The envoy, Sun Zhenyu, also said the United States was engaging in
protectionism by imposing unfair duties on Chinese goods and subsidizing
American products.
Also this month, several Chinese institutions submitted sharp critiques
to the Treasury Department of proposed new regulations relating to
foreign investment in the United States. Some of the remarks were
scathing.
"The regulations still include some sections and procedures which
reflect the enshrouded protectionism, an obvious contradiction to the
spirit of free competition the U.S. has championed since long time ago,"
wrote the China Securities Regulatory Commission.
The commission said the proposed regulations reflected a "self-evident
hostility" and "discriminatory attitude" to certain types of foreign
investments and "will ultimately hurt enthusiasm of foreign investment
in the U.S."
China was particularly stung in 2005 by opposition in Congress to a bid
by its third largest national oil company to buy the Unocal Corporation,
an American oil company, for $18.5 billion.
Mr. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, said Monday that he agreed that
there had been a "general trend" of China's becoming increasingly vocal
in its criticism of American policies, but that this was not a cause for
concern.
"We've had a relationship where both sides have been pretty frank
privately and pretty frank publicly," Mr. Paulson said in a telephone
interview in Washington. He said China's criticism of American policies
grew out of its rise as an economic power, with greater voice in global
discussions on trade, currency and the flow of capital.
Nicholas R. Lardy, a China expert at the Peterson Institute for
International Economics in Washington, said in an interview that "the
Chinese are reacting adversely, and I think with some justification."
He added, though, that he interpreted China's recent aggression more as
a reaction to specific events or policies involving the American economy
than as a result of a new surge in national confidence.
If that is the case, China might be able to avoid the pitfall of hubris.
Japan attacked the American government's economic management in the
1980s, only to find itself tumbling into recession and stagnation ever
since. Some economic experts here warn that China's economy could soon
feel the full brunt of the downturn in the world economy, and that the
American economy, in the long run, could stay on top.
"The U.S. has always considered its economy powerful and is reluctant to
listen to other countries," said Lin Jiang, the head of the economics
department at the China Youth College for Political Sciences in Beijing.
"Of course China now is more confident than before and Chinese people
are more proud of China's economy, but we can't be blind. It's still
hard to challenge the U.S."
Huang Yuanxi contributed research from Beijing. Keith Bradsher
contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Steven R. Weisman from
Washington. | | |
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