One of my favorite & most thoughtful writers on China writes a great framing piece for the new administration. Great suggestions. One of a few areas that have made me uneasy in the new administration’s work the last couple of weeks. (Although as James Fallows points out, Secretary Clinton already has adjusted and made great strides.)

Winchester has written a number of masterful books — most notably (the oustanding) The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa, as well as the more recent A Crack in the Edge of the World. Anything he writes, I’ll pick up — he’s just a very careful and thoughtful historian who’s able to contextualize a great number of contemporary world events and help you make sense of the real history.

Anyway, this is a bit of an unusual book — it chronicles the life of Joseph Needham, a Cambridge scientist who became enamored with China and it’s amazing history of scientific innovation (especially from antiquity to the 1500s or so). He was right to be fascinated, of course — the Chinese invented printing, gunpowder, chain link, the segmented arch bridge, and on and on. He learned about all this as a British diplomat during and after WWII. Then later in life, back at Cambridge, put together a colossus of a history called Science and Civilization in China. Weighing in at 7 gigantic volumes, it’s never been out of print since its introduction (of volume 1) in 1956.

The book also details a bunch of Needham’s adventurous (escaping parts of China just before the Japanese occupation forces closed the roads, for example), peculiar (a confirmed nudist, clearly polyamorous, etc), and and controversial (blacklisted as a communist by McCarthy, duped by Mao’s government into condemning the US for alleged (and apparently false) claims of using biological weapons during the Korean war) paths through life.

I didn’t love this book — it was a little too long for so narrow a look — but am glad that I read it. Would recommend his other books first. But I’ll pick up his next book, for sure, no matter what the topic is.

An amazing meeting in Beijing — Jimmy Wales seeing Chinese officials at the State Council Information Office. I met Jimmy in Dalian at the WEF event a year ago — he mentioned then that people in the Chinese government were interested in talking with him about Wikipedia. Rebecca’s got a great writeup on it, as she apparently saw Jimmy at this year’s WEF event there (The event last year is when I met Rebecca, too.) We live in interesting times.

Great photos as usual, from an outstanding blog.

And some interesting stuff over on Rebecca MacKinnon’s blog (and Wired) about Cisco and their involvement in the GFW dating back to at least 2002.

First half of the article focuses on the what & how, which is interesting enough, but the second half is more important as it talks about the whys, and the effects that the techniques are having even though they’re quite easy to circumvent. Huge implications for everyone around the world, not just in China.

Article also features Rebecca MacKinnon, a very very smart observer/participant/writer in the middle of things now.

- a post on techblog86 (a great new blog on tech and startups in china) about the extremely fast rise of the chinese internet population and some details about it — 210 million people and growing quickly

- a fantastic recap by rebecca mackinnon (her blog is also highly recommended — she’s a wonderful voice about the internet reporting from hong kong) about the recent Workshop on Asia and Commons — and the myth that “Asia” means anything, not to mention the idea of “freedom” or “commons”

both are great writeups that are well worth a few minutes.

I’ve got a bunch of reviews backed up, so am going to do a few brief ones before writing about a couple of fantastically amazing books I ended 2007 with. I got this memoir from Gen after our first trip to China last year — it’s an accounting of DeWoskin’s time in Beijing several years back — maybe 1999 or so — when she became a little famous in a Chinese soap opera about foreign attitudes called “Foreign Babes in Beijing.” Very readable account, but probably mostly/only because I spent a bit of time in China this year and am still in the phase of initial reactions — and I’ve heard so much about how Beijing is completely transforming itself every day that it’s neat to read an eyewitness account of a few years before I got to be there. Worth reading if you’re interested in Chinese contemporary culture.

So it really cheered me up today to see Li’s post about the Mozilla Manifesto translated into Chinese.

Our work in China is something that’s gone incredibly well this year — at the start of this year we had a very small market share there (something like 0.5%), and no team really focusing on it (but a community that was ready to be energized). But Li is doing great — we’ve got an office and a small full-time team working hard now, we’re working hard to engage the community, and our market share has at least tripled, to something between 1.5% and 2%. This is really good news, because getting to 5 or 6% market share will mean that a whole lot more sites in China will start testing against and working with Firefox.

I personally have learned a ton about China through this work — have gotten to go meet some interesting and amazing folks (including our own team there) 3 times, and am looking forward to more visits. Notwithstanding ongoing weirdness with redirects there, the Chinese consumer Internet is being shaped right now, and I’m excited we have an opportunity to make a difference.

I’m going to be incredibly interested to watch reaction to the Mozilla Manifesto there.

- China’s Censorship 2.0

- Eating River Crab at the Harmonious Forum (this is an absolutely delightful must-read piece)

she also wrote something about one of the most interesting sessions in Dalian with Tom Friedman and some leaders of Chinese government and industry.

Great, great book. Everyone interested in China should read it. Written by an NPR correspondent who’s reported from Beijing for 6 years, it’s a really good bit of insight into what’s happening in China now and why. The book jacket reads a bit like a travel book: the frame of the story is 2 trips that Rob took on China’s Route 312, and East-West highway that stretches from Shanghai on the East all the way through Urumqi and into Kazakhstan in the West.

But it’s a lot more than that; it’s a look into the mass migration that’s happening in China from rural areas into cities, and from the relatively underdeveloped West to the coastal East of Beijing, Shanghai & Shenzen. He likens it to the travels of the Okies written about by Steinbeck.

He also gives quite a lot of historical context as he travels through places like Xian (the original capital, I think?), and visits Tibet. There are bits about what the government is doing to bring the West into the rest of China (culturally), and why that’s happening. And it’s a fun book to read, too.

Anyway, great book, highly recommended. I recognized a bunch of the places and the phenomena that he talks about from my recent trips, and from my point of view, he does a really admirable job of making some very complicated things accessible to everyone.

Today was an extraordinary day for me here at the WEF meeting in Dalian. I had a 1-1 half hour conversation with Tom Friedman (we talked about a bunch of stuff, including the fact that we’re all transparent humans now in the public eye, and that we need to learn again how to read — incidentally, watch for his next column, as it will be a bit about Dalian), spent an hour talking with Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia), talked with my friends Isaac Mao and Kaiser Kuo, preeminent bloggers in China, kidded around with the founders of probably a dozen incredibly awesome startups, met Rebecca McKinnon (formerly CNN Correspondent for northeast Asia including North Korea), and spent time with my new friend Chris, whose design firm is involved in this and this and especially this, not to mention probably two dozen other extraordinary people I met for the first time. Oh, right, and I had drinks at the reception with a friggin astronaut who’s now trying to save the earth’s water.

So all in, a good day. An amazing range of experiences and an amazing range of people to spend time with. As I mentioned, I feel very lucky.

But here’s the really amazing thing: as blown away as I am by all these folks, every single one of them knows Mozilla and Firefox and is rooting for us. Not everyone uses Firefox, although most do (1 Maxthon user, 1 Safari user, the rest use Firefox). But every single person I talked with thinks that what the Mozilla community has accomplished is incredible, and wants to see us do better and better.

So the funny bit for me is that sometimes you have to go 5,000 miles (literally & figuratively) to really be reminded how amazing the people around you are, and how lucky you are to get to work with them every single day. [This also applies to my family, of course -- I can't wait to get home to see Kathy & Sam.]

Everyone involved in any way with Mozilla should be proud of the impact we’re having on the world — an awful lot of awfully amazing people are noticing & cheering & helping.

The first said it in the context of global climate change: “Democracy is going to have a hard time surviving climate change [in 10 years or so].”

The second was Tom Friedman, in response to Martin Wolf, a Financial Times writer — Martin said this: “News is expensive; information wants to be free.” And he’s concerned that to have a functioning, healthy democracy, you need legitimate news (construe that how you will, but he and Tom mean that it has reasonable editorial standards and process).”

But it’s the climate change one that knocked my hat into the creek, as Diego says from time to time. The implication is that effects from climate change have the potential to put tremendous stress on our political systems; market dynamics may not be able to address the problems, and direct democracy may actually make the problem worse, not better. (If you have any doubt, think about Prop 13 in California, (relatively) cheap gasoline in the States, even now, or the person who cut down the last tree on Easter Island.)
Sobering & brain-breaking. Lots to think about.

I’m here at the World Economic Forum meeting in Dalian — the first of these annual meetings of 2,000 or so global leaders in China. Dalian is a very very nice city — the nicest Chinese city that I’ve been to (I’ve only been to three — Dalian, Beijing & Shanghai). I’ll post more about it, and some of the activities here, soon.

But this morning has been amazing — the queen of Jordan spoke, then there was a smaller session on China’s use of soft power (referring to a brilliant concept by a Harvard professor named Joseph Nye) — Tom Friedman of the New York Times was on the panel, along with the CEO of China’s largest bank (maybe the world’s largest by market cap — I’m not sure), and a pretty high ranking Communist Party official. It was a candid, sometimes aggressive panel, and was terrific. Then I sat in a very small session with the guy who coined the term “nanotechnology” and a couple of other guys who are succeeding with it today. And I just had lunch with some Chinese friends who are working very hard to develop an open culture here. I’m blown away by their mission, their dedication, and what they do every day.

As for Mozilla, about half the people here who I talk with know about Mozilla and/or Firefox — and the people that recognize us absolutely love us. It’s great. I do feel like a tech nerd, though, next to all these economists, politicians, and world leaders. It’s cool, actually.

More later — at the moment I’m about to go into a session where all of us on the panel will be nerds. Tariq Krim of Netvibes, Dave Sifry, formerly of Technorati, John Gage of Sun, and some others — it’ll be like being at home…

Lots to think about — makes me both realize that the contribution of Mozilla in the world is large (and growing) and can be larger — and that the way we’re doing it — in a broad, people-focused, open, non-organizational way — is what many many leaders around the world aspire to.

And as usual, I feel very lucky to be here on behalf of Mozilla. More soon.

anyway, i’ve just put up some pictures of my first day in Beijing on .mac (easier to get to than flickr from here). hopefully i’ll get to take more in Dalian, where i’m headed this evening. [warning: the .mac gallery isn't working for me with firefox 3 trunk builds, but it's hard to tell whether that's because of a browser problem or our slightly wacky network situation here in BJ.]

The hotel I’m in is brand new — it’s the Wenjin Hotel right near Tshinghua Science Park — the Mozilla office is about 2 blocks away, so it’s super-convenient. The hotel is great — super-shiny, super-stylish, and the staff is very friendly and ready to help. It’s sort of like my whole China experience so far — ultra-modern, brand new stuff, stylish, tons of people around to help — but also a little empty — sort of like people are waiting for everyone to move in. It’s a strange dichotomy — it’s not like there’s a shortage of people — there are folks everywhere — but the ubiquity of new construction just seems empty sometimes.

Having said all that, I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Europe, Japan and China over the past couple of years, and nowhere feels the same entrepreneurial intensity as Beijing. I’ve not been to India yet, but for me, at the moment, Beijing feels more like Silicon Valley than any other place I’ve been.

More later — I’ll post some pictures to Flickr in a bit, once I get into the office — I got glimpses of the amazing new buildings going up for the Olympics — the National Stadium and the National Aquatics Center — amazing, amazing buildings.

Fighting with ecto3′s notion of time zones — things aren’t quite showing up correctly on my blog right now, but working through it on a somewhat sketchy internet line.

Hoping to blog a bunch during my week in China — have a couple of things to write about books I’ve read lately, of course, but also planing to post some pictures & thoughts on my 3rd trip to Beijing. FWIW, it’s getting harder & harder to travel away from Kathy & Sam. But back in a week.

Li’s been fantastic so far, and I’m really excited to work with him on improving the Internet experience in China, and helping the rest of the world understand some of the innovation that’s happening.

Li’s been with us about a month so far (in addition to helping us form the Mozilla China Foundation a couple of years back) and has been doing great. He’ll be in Mountain View next week to work on things together, and I’m hopeful he’ll start blogging soon about his experiences in China so far, setting up Mozilla there, and some of the opportunities he sees going forward.

[photo swiped from news.com]