What have the Olympic Games done to affect the world’s discussions about China? Perhaps, very little. Instead of delving into the diversity and complexity of “China,” journalists focused on sports, especially the journalists’ home team. Cultural reporting, too, reflected the journalists’ national identities.

John Burns, a veteran foreign correspondent for The New York Times remembers today his experience running a route similar to Beijing’s Olympic marathon as the only foreign runner in 1973. He left China for the last time in 1986, as he notes, “when my second posting there for The New York Times ended with imprisonment and deportation on charges of using a motorcycle trip across the Chinese heartland as a cover for spying on the country’s missile program.”

Burns had expected to see more coverage of the type of things we saw covered during the Olympic Torch Relay. Dissidents, unrest in Tibet, the situation in Xinjiang, and the challenge of clearing the Olympic air. But he notes that the coverage he’s seen has been quite different.

In condemning the West, [Mao] said, the Chinese should be careful to distinguish between the “handful of capitalists and imperialists” who made it what it was, and the ordinary people, who were China’s friends.

It’s a dictum that can serve us, too. Whatever propaganda gains the current Chinese leadership may have sought from their multibillion-dollar Olympic extravaganza, one thing that has been beyond stage-management has been the joy and pride of ordinary Chinese that have permeated the images from Beijing, speaking more powerfully than any propaganda could of the happiness that three decades of growing prosperity have brought to a people repressed by Mao.

The key to this passage is his qualification that this joy and pride has “permeated the images from Beijing.” This implies something he doesn’t discuss: whatever exists that isn’t shown on camera, or quoted by foreign journalists.

Those journalists are unlikely to elicit completely honest opinions from the Chinese people they interview. It’s difficult to get honest comments from anyone anywhere as a journalist. People may offer opinions they haven’t thought through in an effort to appear more confident and knowledgeable than they actually are. And in China, people who have negative or unenthusiastic thoughts about the government are naturally cautious when speaking to journalists, foreign or domestic. (Nevermind the challenge of speaking frankly with someone through a translator neither of you knows well.)

I share Burns’ impression of the most-watched media during the Olympics—and I had the opportunity to watch coverage in Italy, England, and the United States. TV reports have focused on athletics and visits in Beijing ranging from slightly scripted to completely staged.

One morning, I watched with a sustained cringe as NBC’s Today Show cast interacted with “China.” Al Roker’s less than stellar performance in a segment where he began to learn Mandarin was produced with goofy music and colored by a sentiment of, “Boy, these Chinese are tough to understand!” But their bungling through Chinese culture also kept the positive, wholesome American tone of the Today Show’s normal broadcasts.

Similarly, one evening surrounding the opening ceremonies I watched on Italian TV as a singer from southern Italy who had apparently toured extensively in China interacted with shopkeepers. My initial thought was that this particular fellow was a bit brash, but in the opinion of the friend sitting next to me, his behavior was typical of Italians traveling abroad. The commentary, which I caught through some translations by my friend and some Spanish-based comprehension, was centered on the experience of being a disoriented Italian. Like the Today Show, this segment came off as warm toward China, but taught us little about Chinese people—except that one interviewee was visibly uncomfortable when the singer joked that corruption in China’s government and that under Italian President Silvio Berlusconi might have something in common.

Rather than take the opportunity to attack the difficult task of learning about China and hearing the way Chinese people view a great many things, television gave us good-hearted bumbling travel journalism. Anchors were gleefully confused, ignorantly polite (bowing is habitual in Japan, but can look out of place in China), and faux-adventurous (eating “exotic” snacks I’ve never seen outside tourist enclaves).

There remain a multitude of unheard opinions. The admiration of China’s history sought after by the opening ceremony and reinforced by neophyte reporters serves only to reinforce a narrative that had taken hold even before China was selected for the Olympics: China continues to rise as a world power in the post-Cold War era. In the political and social minds of North American and European TV viewers, for better or for worse, very little is likely to have changed.

China is working on the world’s first anti-ship ballistic missile, according to some defense analysts. Tobias Harris writes that the ASBM may be based on an existing missile that has a range of 1,800 km, and he notes that such a missile would threaten U.S. ships based in Japan.

While it may be hard to target a ship at sea, he writes, minimal effort would be needed to learn of a ship’s landing at U.S. bases in Japan. Tobias writes:

The question I have is whether the Chinese ASBM will render US naval forward deployments in Japan obsolete, in that homeporting an aircraft carrier in Yokosuka may leave it vulnerable to a crippling first strike before even leaving port. Are anti-ballistic missile deployments in Japan — both by the US military and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces — reliable enough to protect US forces while in Japanese ports?

If not, hadn’t the US and Japan be having a serious discussion about the impact of China’s ASBMs on the future of US forward deployments in Japan, and with them, the future of the US-Japan alliance? Should the US consider relocating more assets from Japan to Guam to put them out of the range of ASBMs?

Of course, many in Japan are not enthusiastic about the U.S. military’s continued presence. Both advocates of Japanese military independence (not likely any time soon) and those opposed to U.S. military actions have spoken up. If this strategic environment were realigned by a new type of missile, perhaps they would be happier.

My question, however, is What are the implications for the U.S. if basing in Japan were reduced and ships in the western Pacific had to launch from bases like Guam and Hawaii? Would this strain the situation with Taiwan? Would it make it more difficult for U.S. ships to be in the neighborhood for humanitarian aid during catastrophes like the 2004 Tsunami?

As Tobias notes, U.S. ships can increase their readiness for this type of attack, but resources would be diverted from other functions.

This picture is stolen from photographer Michael Wolf’s website, where he as lots of great work, including this series on Hong Kong architecture called “Architecture of Density.” The work has been shown at Beijing’s 798 Photo Gallery among many other places. Check out much more of his work at his website.
[via Coudal]

Many people from outside China marvel at what Chinese eat—or, more accurately, what you can order at tourist locations. At Wangfujing’s Snack Street in Beijing, you can order a scorpion skewer. Jim Boyce, Beijing’s leading nightlife blogger, has been tracking media mentions in horror. The truth, of course, is that virtually no one eats scorpion regularly, despite a McClatchy report claiming that Beijing is a place “where donkey and fried scorpions are considered lunch.” That’s from Jim’s latest post on the subject.

The best quote of all is from Dave Barry, who’s been writing from Beijing. (An earlier column I saw was a satirical train of clichés that made me uncomfortable despite the fact that I know he’s a satirical columnist.) Here’s Dave’s take:

The market was bustling with people. But here’s the thing. The Chinese people I saw all seemed to be buying things like lamb kebabs and fruit. On the other hand, the people gathered around the centipedes and scorpions on a stick were, in almost every case, tourists or American TV reporters doing fun features on weird Chinese food. These people were basically lining up to eat scorpions. A reporter would hold up a skewer of scorpions, and the camera person would get a close-up shot. Then the reporter would scrunch up his or her face, take a bite of a scorpion, chew, swallow, and declare that it really wasn’t that bad. Then, depending on how in-depth the feature was, the reporter might take a bite of seahorse.

I watched as this procedure was repeated with several different TV crews. Then the truth hit me: The Chinese don’t eat scorpions. They feed their scorpions to TV reporters. I would not be surprised to learn that the Chinese word for scorpion is “TV reporter food.”

Much more at Boyce.

James Fallows got worked up over David Brooks’ ignorant musing about Chinese and Asian collectivity. The product was this excellent paragraph, which follows part of Brooks’ words.

If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim.

These sorts of experiments have been done over and over again, and the results reveal the same underlying pattern. Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts.

This is the kind of thing you can say only if you have not the slightest inkling of how completely different a billion-plus people can be from one another. Beijingers from Shanghainese,  Guangdong entrepreneurs from farmers in Sichuan, Tibetans from Taiwanese, people who remember the Cultural Revolution from those who don’t, people who remember the famines of the Great Leap Forward from people who’ve always had enough. The guy across the street from his brother. His daughter from his wife. People hanging on in big state enterprises from those starting small firms. People who stayed in the villages from those who came to the city for jobs. Christians from Buddhists. Hu Jintao from Jiang Zemin,  Olympic weightlifters from Olympic tennis players, Yao Ming from Liu Xiang, Wen Jiabao from Edison Chen  — and while we’re at it, Filipinos from Koreans,  Japanese from Chinese, Malaysian Chinese from Malaysian Malays. Lee Kuan Yew from Kim Jong Il. People from Jakarta from people in Seoul. Hey, they’re all “Asians”.

In the months leading up to the Beijing Olympics, which began Friday, English language media have published countless stories on China and its capital. But many of these stories echo each other and few break new ground in the world’s understanding of China. Many emphasize a consistent set of outside concerns and, in portraying conflict, oversimplify the wide variety of viewpoints to be found even without leaving Beijing.

Reporting in China is not easy, and difficult conditions while pounding pavement encourage an over-reliance on the easily accessible but skewed commentary online. After the unrest in Tibet this year and demonstrations on the Olympic Torch Relay route, especially in France, a torrent of nationalist commentary and push-back emerged from people who thought China was being portrayed unfairly, and there were dozens of stories on “angry Chinese youth.”

Writers (including this one) have also written frequently about internet censorship and efforts to circumvent restrictions. In the last year, LexisNexis finds more than 350 mentions of “great firewall,” one of several ways reporters refer to China’s online controls.

But internet phenomena can only be so big in China. If the government’s July numbers are correct, the country now has 253 million internet users, more than any other country in the world. But with a population of 1.33 billion, that’s still only 19 percent of the population. That’s compared to more than 70 percent in the United States, the second largest national internet population, and a global average of 21 percent, according to Kaiser Kuo at Ogilvy.

What happens online in China, therefore, doesn’t involve most of the laobaixing, a term used widely in China to refer to “regular people.” Further, in a poll conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more than 80 percent said they thought the internet should be controlled, and just as many said the government should be in charge of those controls.

Even if reporters do get off the internet and mingle with the 80 percent of Chinese who don’t log on, it’s impossible to tell the full story of how the laobaixing see the Olympics. But I’ll relate one story that unfolded over several weeks in my former neighborhood in central Beijing.

Across from the entrance to my alley, the flags of the Communist Party, China, and the Olympic rings flew above a small home that had until recently also been a dried fruit and beverage store. The residents had erected the flags and plastered much of the exterior with pictures of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping (whose son still lives in a large complex nearby, according to neighbors), and the current Chinese president and premier, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao.

Their home had been marked for demolition in a pre-Olympic beautification effort. In a pattern that played out dozens or hundreds of times during Olympic preparations, the residents were concerned that they might not get sufficient compensation and resisted leaving as long as possible.

On several evenings when the demolition was thought to be imminent, hundreds of neighbors and passers-by gathered on the street waiting and talking. A police van and some plain clothes officers kept an eye on the crowd most of the time, but people were outspoken and opinions divergent.

Some echoed the residents’ slogan posted atop the small home, “Premier Wen Jiabao should look out for the livelihood of the laobaixing.” Some said they thought the family should just move out, or were sympathetic but thought the Olympic flag shouldn’t be involved. Some spoke of frustration with the Olympics for making life so complicated this year in Beijing, and some said they were proud to welcome the world to their city, despite recent inconveniences. Some neighbors didn’t care one way or another about the Games but were strained by higher food prices, which they attributed to a ban on outside trucks entering Beijing. Others mused that it’s been an unusually hot summer and wondered why I kept wearing long pants.

The home was torn down in late July. The internet is still censored. Some people are enflamed about perceived anti-China statements. But if a news story makes any of this sound simple or un-nuanced, remember the multitude of opinions on one street corner.

Note: This column was prepared for a different publication that elected not to publish it. (Please forgive the lack of hyperlinks.) It was written about a week ago in Berlin, and I’m posting now from Bologna, Italy. This site will remain mellow in the coming days as I make my way to the United States, where I begin graduate school studying East Asia next month.

The Mexican export sector can’t compete with China’s.  Why?

In yet another reminder of the uneven evolution of the Sino-Mexican bilateral relationship, Mexican President Felipe Calderón visited China last week with the goal of encouraging investment in Mexico. The press took the opportunity to rehash the striking change in trade between the two countries since the turn of the century: Chinese exports to Mexico have grown from $569 million in 2000 to $28 billion last year; in contrast, Mexican exports to China have barely tripled, from $310 million in 2000 to $895 million last year. China replaced Mexico as the United States’ second-largest trading partner.

In other words, China’s export sector has thrived, while Mexico’s has stagnated. Why? Is it that Chinese goods have reduced global demand for Mexican manufactures? Is it simply that China has lower labor costs? In a recent paper, Gordon Hansen of the University of California at San Diego attempted to pinpoint the causes of growth (or lack thereof) in the Mexican export sector. His conclusion: Competition from China and economic slowdown in the United States bear significant responsibility for slow growth in Mexican exports since 2000.

Still, some of the problems are internal to Mexico, and some of the potential remedies—expanding the supply of skilled labor, reducing transportation costs, improving logistics capabilities, improving communications infrastructure, and strengthening property rights and protections for investors—are readily available to Mexican policy makers. Last week’s Agreement for the Reciprocal Promotion and Protection of Investment, which clarifies protections for capital flows between the two countries, was a step in the right direction in that it will encourage bilateral direct investment (which may provide needed capital and expertise for Mexican industry, as well as expand the Chinese market for Mexican products). By itself, though, it won’t be enough to reverse the erosion of Mexico’s share of the global market for manufactures.

Beijing University (aka Peking University) and Qinghua University (Tsinghua) top Science magazine’s list of top undergraduate schools for students obtaining U.S. Ph.D.s.

A new study has found that the most likely undergraduate alma mater for those who earned a Ph.D. in 2006 from a U.S. university was … Tsinghua University. Peking University, its neighbor in the Chinese capital, ranks second. Between 2004 and 2006, those two schools overtook the University of California, Berkeley, as the most fertile training ground for U.S. Ph.D.s (see graph). South Korea’s Seoul National University occupies fourth place behind Berkeley, followed by Cornell University and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Via China’s Scientific & Academic Integrity Watch. The text of the article, without a pay wall, is at MITBBS.

Without saying definitively he would not attend the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing one month from today, U.S. Senator Barack Obama said as president he would skip the ceremony without hearing from the Dalai Lama that there had been progress on the Tibet issue.

“In the absence of some sense of progress, in the absence of some sense from the Dalai Lama that there was progress, I would not have gone,” Obama said at a news conference, according to the Associated Press.

From a Chinese perspective, the statement that Obama would take cues from the Dalai Lama is quite bold and constitutes a public articulation of which side the candidate has chosen in the Dalai Lama–P.R.C. disputes. While few would be surprised to hear a Democratic candidate support human rights in Tibet, it’s diplomatically significant if enunciated.

The AP article notes that Obama had encouraged President George W. Bush to skip the ceremony, as had Senator John McCain in April.

McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent, also issued a hypothetical ultimatum, similarly saying that he would only attend the ceremony if he saw improvements on human rights issues. McCain’s April statement was in some ways stronger than Obama’s most recent one, though he did not allude to taking cues from the exiled Tibetan leader.

“If Chinese policies and practices do not change, I would not attend the opening ceremonies,” said the Arizona senator, who has clinched the GOP nomination for president. “It does no service to the Chinese government, and certainly no service to the people of China, for the United States and other democracies to pretend that the suppression of rights in China does not concern us. It does, will and must concern us.”

These statements, which apparently promise to show symbolic support in exchange for concessions on human rights issues, recall the early Bill Clinton administration principle of conditional engagement: The United States would work with China on trade in exchange for rights improvements. What the candidates haven’t mentioned is that when Clinton tried this tactic, it either failed or was abandoned in favor of, say, less-conditional engagement.

Could the candidates be reacting to George W. Bush’s friendly behavior toward China in the way that Clinton reacted to George H. W. Bush’s? The current president, for one, comes near toeing the Chinese line in his most recent statement, promising to attend the ceremony. Skipping the event would be “an affront to the Chinese people,” he said.

In The New Republic, Jed Perl exercises no economy of words in lambasting art from China and its growing global following. Based on a reading of “Chinese art” that does not apparently leave the island of Manhattan, Perl makes several questionable statements, often abetted by lack of knowledge, and Alan Baumler at Frog in a Well has already taken some of them to task.

I find some solace in Perl’s admission that: “This is not to say that there is nothing of value going on in China today: I do not know all there is to know about art in China. What I do know is that the work that is being promoted around the world as the cutting edge of new Chinese art is overblown and meretricious.” Fine, but this comes only after hundreds of words of under-informed negativity and no apparent experience with Chinese art that hasn’t arrived in New York or Venice.

Missing from Perl’s account is the pervasive sense of unease among many in Beijing’s art scene, both Chinese and foreign, as they have watched the transformation of spaces such as the 798 Art District into pedestrian mall commercial centers, and as they have watched some of the artists Perl criticizes grow their bank accounts with manufactured art.

That’s one of the things Angie Baecker and I tried to capture with our article in the current issue (No. 59) of Art Asia Pacific. We examined the plans and sentiments of some major art spaces and figures in Beijing leading up to the Olympics. And we found a mixture of excitement and trepidation, sometimes with both sentiments coming from the same person.

Totally unexamined by Perl, for instance, are the artists whose work rarely if ever engages political and nationalist issues. And others who openly criticize the government and the country’s history, even if with a certain care to avoid publicity that could threaten their livelihood. Then there’s Ai Weiwei, both involved with and vocally opposed to the Olympics. In the classic media formulation, his contributions to the design of the Olympic stadium are tempered by his criticism of the government. (”The Olympics are an opportunity to redefine the country, but the message is always wrong,” Ai says in our article.)

I would not discount the possibility that some of Ai’s repeated statements have been motivated by a desire for publicity. But for those who make their commentaries in private and whose art-with-message works face government scrutiny, the spotlight is neither welcomed nor sought.

Criticizing a country’s art without engaging even well-reported examples that don’t support one’s criticism is an art world example of the basic structure of [insert country]-bashing: Find some well-accepted tropes about the target country that are well-reported but unconfirmed by the critic, and then use them as the basis of an argument that makes no effort to engage the actual thoughts or facts of life of those involved.

Could it be that a critic writing in a derivative way in the milieu of China-bashing is just as guilty as artists who profit from market-friendly, easily digestible political messages?