Tag: politics

Chinese Comics Review

Evading Hong Kong’s self-censors: Ah To’s absurd yet poignant comics about life and politics

Posted on by Jason Li

Fuck It Suck It Up book release gif

It was nearing the end of May. With less than two months to go before the Hong Kong Book Fair 2016, Ah To’s book still hadn’t yet hit the presses. In fact, it was looking like the book might not be published at all. Talks had broken down between the author-illustrator and his unnamed, major Hong Kong publisher. Despite a promising start,…

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Occupy Hong Kong one year later: the coming colonization of cyberspace

Posted on by Jason Li

Governments are increasingly playing catch-up and sometimes even leapfrogging ahead of social movements in the use of digital tactics.

A recent paper by Lokman Tsui, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and longtime member of Global Voices, offers a chilling look at how authorities in Hong Kong outdid…

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Ai Weiwei: lessons on dealing with Chinese officials

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

There is something weirdly compelling about reading the transcripts of calls made to dozens of offices in search of specific numbers and names, part of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s attempts to force public clarity on data from the May 12, 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan.  You can read pieces of the list he and his friends have collected on his blog. …

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Virtual China

understanding Chinese nationalism online: the telegraph and the internet

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

If you read one book about the Chinese Internet this year (and, yes, there aren’t very many are there?), let it be Historicizing Online Politics: Telegraphy, the Internet, and Political Participation in China, by U. Wisconsin Madison’s anthropology professor Zhou Yongming (Stanford Press, 2006). The book is actually a good read–not always the case for an academic monograph–and juxtaposes the…

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Virtual China

online memorial for slain Chinese UN peacekeeper

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

duzhaoyu_1

Peoples_heroes

“The people’s heroes will never fade”

Chinese UN peacekeeper Lieutenant Colonel Du Zhaoyu was killed in Lebanon by an Israeli rocket on July 25, along with three other UN peacekeepers. China was already not supportive (to say the least) of Israel’s bombing of Lebanon and Lebanese civilians, and this death only adds fire to an…

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Virtual China

Bilis on the BBS

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

Tropical Storm Bilis hit southern China over the weekend, killing over 200 people, flooding major
cities, sweeping away houses and cutting railways, power and water supplies. The BBS forums are full of first person reports and comments on the effects of the storm, as well as evaluations of offical responses.  You can clearly see how the BBS is acting as a space…

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Virtual China

Baidu bias: nationalism and CCP hatred

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

A Web 2.0 blog, TechCrunch, posted about a week ago on the upcoming launch of Baidu Space.  The post spurred a series of comments that reveal the craziness of commitments both for and against China’s leading search engine, Baidu. There are those who hate Baidu because it’s a mainland company and is seen as participating in government oppression of certain kinds of speech; there are…

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Virtual China

Henan student riots

Posted on by Lyn Jeffery

ESWN has translations and photos from BBS posts about student riots (and yes, they really were riots) at Shengda Economics, Trade and Management College of Zhengzhou University in Henan last week. As ESWN notes, this is another clear case of mainstream media getting their reports directly from BBS posts. It also highlights the anger that many college and university students are feeling today…

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