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 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?

The United States is importing less oil from Venezuela, and China is buying more. Is Venezuela putting its resources where Hugo Chávez’s mouth is and using the country’s major export as a geopolitical lever? Or are U.S. imports just catching up with a 10-year decline in Venezuelan production?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration released April data on Monday, revealing that imports of crude and petroleum from Venezuela in the first four months of 2008 fell 10.7 percent from the same period last year—from about 1.3 million barrels/day to about 1.16 million b/d.

If we take a longer-term view of U.S. imports of Venezuelan crude and petroleum, the drop is even more significant: Venezuela sold about 1.6 million b/d to the United States in January–April of 2005, as it had since the mid-1990s (except in the oil strike years of 2000 and 2003). This means that Venezuelan sales to the United States have declined 30 percent over the past three years. Why?

AP’s Rachel Jones reports that the drop is likely due to three factors: (1) falling demand in the United States, (2) falling production in Venezuela, and (3) Venezuela’s decision to sell more oil to China. Does this make sense? Let’s take a closer look at the numbers:

1. Total U.S. oil imports in January–April 2008 dropped 2.5 percent compared with the same period last year (you can download the raw data here, or check out the Transpacifica digest below (after the jump). This, then, might explain one-fourth of the decline in imports from Venezuela.
2. There are no reliable numbers on Venezuelan oil production, but those that exist (for example, the monthly OPEC report) indicate at most a 2 percent drop in production from last year—which, like the change in U.S. demand, would explain only part of the 10.7 percent drop in sales. Over the past 10 years, however, Venezuelan production has declined about 25 percent—about the same as the change in U.S. imports over the past three years (according to EIA data here).
3. The AP report states that Venezuela now sends 250,000 b/d to China, up from next to nothing a few years ago. The story does not source this figure, and PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil company, recently stated that China buys 398,000 b/d, as a result of increased CNPC operations. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said that the country plans to sell China 1 million b/d by 2012.

Is China buying 250,000 b/d or more of Venezuelan oil? If so, does that purchase explain declining sales to the United States? Or would sales have declined anyway, as a result of falling production in Venezuela? What is the role of Chávez’s oil donations to countries throughout the region? Perhaps there are other explanations. If the United States wants control over how much oil it buys from Venezuela, the answer is critical. (more…)

The things I miss living outside the United States. New last week from ABC, I Survived a Japanese Game Show, has gone to work reinforcing the “odd Japanese” trope with laughter directed at the unsuspecting nation. David Marx writes at Néojaponisme:

ABC producers went all the way to Japan to make their own TV program, vaguely based on silly segments from Japanese variety shows. And after completely rewiring the original program formula to fit their own needs, the producers had the gall to blame the final product on the Japanese. “I survived a Japanese game show“? This is like placing the onus of Guantanamo Bay on the Cubans. American rented the space, borrowed the know-how, and made it all happen, but in the end, the Americans maintain: hey, we were just “following orders” to this crazy Japanese aesthetic.

The national propaganda effort fortunately backs up their premise. According to the New York Times, “The Japanese originals [on which the show is based] are known as batsu games, or punishment and humiliation games.” There is either fundamental confusion or willful truth-bending here: Japanese “game shows” tend to punish talento (celebrities or aspiring celebrities), and for the most part, extremely-unfunny comedians. While game shows in the past have sadistically meted out punishment to normal contestants, this has become relatively rare in recent days. Yes, even the Japanese race thinks it’s kind of sad and depressing to see everyday people humiliated on television.

I share Marxy’s distaste. He’s issued a well-argued rant. Read it.

An inexplicably terse headline has been making its rounds in my news feeds for the last couple of days. It would be big news, if only it were true.

“Malaysia Bans Foreigners,” cries the headline of an AP story published at the International Herald Tribune.

Well, no. The article outlines how non-Malaysian vehicles are being banned from gassing up within 50 km of the borders with Thailand and Singapore, since Malaysia is subsidizing fuel and they don’t want foreign freeloaders coming over just to take advantage of the subsidy.

So if you were planning to stop by Kuala Lumpur, and you’re not a Malaysian citizen, fear not. Just this: If you’re driving in from Thailand or Singapore, stop for gas before you get to the border and eat the high prices. Some desk editor needs to read the whole article (or even the lede) before writing the headline.

At Foreign Policy, former Amnesty International Executive Director William F. Schultz considers how to “pressure Beijing.” Aside from taking a little too literally Chinese government statements about “the Chinese” and their supposed hurt feelings, Schultz, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (disclosure: my former employer), makes an interesting suggestion:

What is the appropriate tack to take? The most successful human rights engagement with China—such as that of John Kamm, a former head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong who has intervened on behalf of hundreds of political prisoners—is characterized by what one might call respectful tenaciousness. Trying to crack Chinese Internet censorship or highlighting the cases of those mistreated for seeking to advance the rule of law or exercise free speech, for instance, is always appropriate. But so is applauding China’s attempts to control corruption or experiment with local elections.

Effective human rights work requires two things. First, it requires a tragic sense of history—a recognition that, no matter what we do, we will never be able to save everyone from misery or suffering. Sometimes, for example, despite its immense power and resources, the U. S. government’s own ability to influence human rights is limited, and its willingness to do so in a bold way is compromised by competing interests. We who care about human rights would do well to recognize that and shape our recommendations to the U.S. government accordingly. Otherwise, we risk even greater marginalization than we already experience.

But secondly, good human rights work requires persistence and a long view, the recognition that human rights have become the lingua franca for much of the world and a ticket of admission to widely honored membership in the international community. The United States with its plummeting approval ratings around the globe has learned that the hard way. China too will learn eventually that the best way to avert hurt feelings is to avoid prompting criticism in the first place.

The whole construct of “pressure” feels problematic, but I think what Schultz proposes is a significantly more sensitive tack for advocacy and diplomacy. It’s an open question, though, whether a government that stakes much of its domestic persona on a national sense of pride will really change behaviour for the sake of avoiding criticism.

James Fallows notes, but does not really respond to, a criticism of his persistent posts on bad air quality days in China. A reader recounts the thoughts of a Chinese friend, who “pointed out that the focus on pollution before the Olympics is a phenomenon of the typical inability of the Western press to focus on more than one idea at a time, when they’re thinking of China (if at all).” Where are the stories about Beijing’s efforts to replace coal heat with electric installations?

Let me start by pointing out what Fallows didn’t bring up: It’s simply not an accurate representation of “Western” news coverage to say they only focus on the environment. Thousands of stories come up in Google News searches on China and human rights, or China and Darfur. The U.S. press is preoccupied much of the time with a possible economic and military threat from China. The way I see it, at least the English-language news world focuses on several major story-lines with China, and the environment is one. It may be more prominent because the environment (thankfully) is a major story overall, and China plays an important role in the global environment.

That said, it is not unreasonable to criticize a large number of North American and European press reports for a failure to put China’s present environmental problems in perspective, especially when it comes to air quality in the cities. I happened to have a brief conversation yesterday with a man who was at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in the late ’60s. He remembered burning coal for heat—the stoves glowing red in some cases because of the high burning temperature of coal. And he remembered façades blackened from centuries of coal smoke.

In Beijing, I told him, some neighborhoods have seen their streets dug up repeatedly over the last weeks in preparation for heating season as the city installed brand new electric heating systems to replace coal-powered radiators. This year, the hutong apartment I live in is heated by electricity for the first time (aside from space-heaters), and coal is no longer the primary source of heat here. Before the systems turned on this week, some neighbors were burning coal to keep warm on cold nights. No more.

The new heaters have timers. Mine is programmed to come on at 10 p.m. and stay on until 6 a.m. My landlord tells me we’re doing this because electricity is cheaper at night. But the key here is that I can turn mine off when I leave town. I can also turn it off if I’m warm enough under a good blanket and don’t need the leftover heat in the morning. (Now to better seal my windows before the deep freeze…)

The English-language press is not devoid of stories recognizing the efforts by Chinese authorities to improve the environment. It’s also not terribly rare to read an article that notes London’s blackened history. People in the United States need only to visit steel country and take a good look at the University of Pittsburgh’s iconic tower to see some old U.S. industrial gunk. (They might have cleaned it up, but you could see it when I was there for a wedding a few years ago.)

When Chinese state media stories argue that developed countries who have already gotten rich at a cost to the environment should be responsible for tightening their belts more than those still developing, it’s hard to argue. But just try to get that sort of thinking through the U.S. Congress, and notice how far the Kyoto Protocol got with that ethic partially enshrined.

A sense of responsibility for past emissions needs to accompany pressures on emerging emitters. Richer countries with cleaner environments should work with poorer countries in the process of development to slow environmental degradation. The air in Beijing is indeed quite striking when you come from the United States—especially for me, from a background in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. But as the same Rhodes Scholar told me when I mentioned that I balked at jogging in Beijing air, “get over it.” Whether or not it’s the only focus of the “Western” press, and even though I don’t believe Fallows intends to be demeaning or contribute to a paternalistic narrative, putting across the message that “holy moly these people have dirty cities” does not create the understanding we’ll need to put together real solutions in the future. And dirty or not, we all keep going through life here.

If you read Xinhua’s English story on the removal of Beijing University message boards, you may have noticed a few instances of nonsense. The headline contains a non-word, “trimcampus,” and the lead unnecessarily pluralizes “informations.” As Chris O’Brien reports, this is not because Xinhua’s English language polishers are incompetent. Or maybe it is.

O’Brien is a polisher and was tasked with cleaning up this article about the demolition of message boards on the Beijing University campus. (I linked to AFP’s take here.) The forum in question was used by students to post political materials in 1989. That’s the only reason the story is worth reporting in the first place, really, but evidently writing anything about 1989, whether explicit or implicit, leads to recasting by censors or editors with a minimal grasp of English.

We came up with this lead paragraph:

Peking University officials have sparked controversy by removing public notice boards from the center of the university campus that were formerly used by students to express their political, cultural and academic opinions.

Personally, I thought this was fair enough. Clearly, after nearly two years at Xinhua, I am still drowning in naiviety. The published version:

Peking University officials have sparked controversy by removing public notice boards from the center of the university campus that were formerly used by students to get various informations and express opinions.

And that’s the risk you take. Push the political limits and the lead paragraph ends up being clumsy and grammatically incorrect.

Check out O’Brien’s full recounting of his handling of this sensitive story here.

Viewing U.S. presidential politics from thousands of miles away is a bit of a relief for someone like me. But I still enjoy watching the debates in webcast form to keep an eye on the tone of competition. I should say, I enjoyed it. Heading over to MSNBC.com to catch up on the recent Democratic debate, I was stopped at the door for holding the wrong internet passport:

MSNBC is not the only site to block visitors from some countries. The music site Rhapsody refuses me service while in China. Google Video also refuses my requests, though it at least apologizes:

Thanks for your interest in Google Video.

Currently, the playback feature of Google Video isn’t available in your country.

We hope to make this feature available more widely in the future, and we really appreciate your patience.

These are just the few cases I can remember off the top of my head. Many other sites have refused service since I moved to China. As of now, I don’t know how far-reaching these restrictions are, but I don’t have any reason to believe it’s just China. I have some memory of reading about sites that only work in the United States or their home country.

There are several possibilities as to why this happens. Here are a few:

• Copyright concerns. Rhapsody, for instance, may not be ready to defend its delivery of copyrighted music to some countries. Though there are no such issues with a U.S. presidential debate, MSNBC may simply have disabled video delivery abroad because of other copyright concerns, thereby unnecessarily narrowing the reach of its non-copyright-sensitive material.
• Money. Streaming video is an expensive service. It involves either a large cost in development and maintenance or large fees to an established streaming service such as Akamai to run the show. If streaming is ad-supported and advertisers aren’t interested in an audience outside of the United States, then there is a financial incentive not to serve foreign visitors. (When I listen to podcasts from U.S. National Public Radio programs, they often ask me to support my local station so that the podcast can be paid for. The smarter pitches, which acknowledge that I may not have a local station, ask me to support the program’s home station.)
• Self-censorship. Perhaps the most insidious reason would come into play if it turns out that these blocks were specifically directed toward China. It might represent a decision by U.S. content providers to censor what they provide to Chinese visitors in hopes of preventing a move by the Chinese government to block their sites overall. This is not an unreasonable fear, as we have seen with Google’s Blogger and YouTube services, among others. These sites may not always be blocked, but uncertainty about their accessibility makes it unlikely that advertisers would choose these sites to reach a Chinese audience.

Amidst recent rumors about Facebook’s possible entry into the Chinese market with a facebook.cn service, some very smart people have been remarking on a “silo” effect when national networks are created for otherwise transnational services, making cross-border communication more difficult. As Rebecca MacKinnon writes:

If they do end up having to create different Facebook “silos” in order to be compliant with Chinese government censorship requirements (and maybe other governments with other language services too), it isn’t just a missed opportunity to provide a great global, multilingual service that many people would find incredibly exciting.

The silo-ing of social networking sites like Facebook (and MySpace China already) is a sadly missed opportunity to build bridges of communication and understanding between the Chinese-speaking world and the English-speaking world.

The same applies when information is limited to borders. The key here of course is that these decisions are business decisions. MySpace, Facebook, and MSNBC are designed to make money from their audience, not foster international connections. I just hope they find ways to do both.