China


25
Aug 08

The Big Picture – Boston.com

The Big Picture – Boston.com.

Great photos as usual, from an outstanding blog.


22
May 08

Great Firewall Articles

Great interview today on VentureBeat, featuring Chinese blogger Isaac Mao. Definitely a must read. Isaac is a very interesting guy and good friend who’s on the forefront of lots of internet-related issues in China.

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.


12
May 08

Great Article about the Great Firewall

Must-read article on the Great Firewall of China for anyone who’s interested in the Internet in China today, by James Fallows. [He’s also got a great blog — nerd, writer, world affairs reporter focusing on China — great stuff!]

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.


25
Jan 08

great posts on china & asia & creative commons

a couple of slightly old, but great posts on china and asia:

– 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.


2
Jan 08

Foreign Babes in Beijing, by Rachel DeWoskin

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.