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 internet is unusually sluggish today. I wrote a bit about some possible reasons why at Sinobyte.

Blogspot has re-disappeared, MSN Messenger is inaccessible from an artsy Beijing cafe, searches for Carrefour are just back from going unanswered, and the spring sky is clear. It’s the 89th anniversary of China’s May Fourth Movement.

In 1919, student activism took a powerful and still-honored turn for the patriotic in China. On May 4, thousands of students gathered at Tiananmen to protest the Treaty of Versailles and its treatment of previously German-held territory in Shandong Province, which was given to Japan rather than back to China.

Today, students have been at the forefront of recent demonstrations of national pride in the face of demonstrations against the Olympic flame as it toured the world. After a French demonstrator went after a woman carrying the torch in a wheelchair, anti-French sentiment was converted to demonstrations and boycotts directed against the French megamart Carrefour.

Go read the full post here.

After meeting with a fellow blogger in Beijing I decided it might be time to give Twitter a shot. So far, I haven’t been completely consumed and I like it. Follow me there. I’m gwbstr.

They said this day would never come.

Perhaps the biggest fight I’ve ever picked in the blogosphere was when I wrote an opinion piece while a writing intern at Editor & Publisher in 2005 arguing that newspapers should get over blogging and put more energy into innovation. It ran under the provocative headline “Forget Blogs,” and declared, “Blogs are a horrible way to deliver journalism. Forget them.” You can imagine the kind of reception this got from bloggers.

The argument was a bit more subtle, and I think it has stood the test of two and a half years. I was trying to convince editors and publishers to put more resources into non-blog online content. And many newspapers have. Many people know about innovations made by The New York Times, but fewer keep track of the minor successes of hundreds of smaller newspapers using non-blog online media to do journalism. Bravo!

I was a blogger then, and obviously am now. I just thought big media companies should be able to put together more engaging media than I can in my spare time. This doesn’t entirely eliminate the irony that now, as a freelance writer and freelance student living in Beijing, I’m launching a blog that will be my most consistent work. In a real sense, a guy who argued that blogs aren’t all that has become a professional blogger.

So here it is. As part of the CNET Blog Network, I am now the author of Sinobyte, which will follow technology in China and Asia from my perspective as a student of media, politics, and society. All I have there so far is an introductory page, but check back later this week for an account of an impending trip to a mobile phone market and several other interesting developments that have been churning in early 2008. Subscribe to Sinobyte’s RSS feed here.

What does this mean for Transpacifica? Not much. I’ll still be writing here on transpacific relations and political and social issues in Asia. But I won’t be writing so much about the Chinese internet here. That work, and much more, will from now on show up on Sinobyte. Enjoy!

That’s Beijing’s design and lifestyle companion known until now as tbjhome became urbane with the January 2008 issue. It also contains my first story for the publication: a look at French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte’s rework of a 1950s weapons factory for the new Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing’s 798 Art District. Urbane’s website does not have text online yet, but those interested can read from the photographs below.

Among the several reasons this site has been slow recently is that I’ve had a glut of work. Yesterday, I covered Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s trip to China. The story appears in Tuesday’s Boston Globe business section.

Gov. Patrick pushes state trade ties with China

By Graham Webster
Globe Correspondent
December 3, 2007

BEIJING — On his first foreign trade mission, Governor Deval L. Patrick today told a Beijing audience that Massachusetts and China have had a “special trade relationship” that spans more than two centuries. Patrick noted that the first United States merchant ship to sail for China — in 1784 — had Boston owners.

The governor and a delegation of about a dozen business executives, and academic and state government officials are meeting with their Chinese counterparts to discuss biotech and clean energy. They are not expected to strike any business deals before heading home on Friday, after traveling to Shanghai for more ceremonies and meetings.

Members of the delegation will also meet with executives of China’s Hainan Airlines in hopes of establishing direct flights between Boston and Beijing, possibly to begin in 2009, according to Massachusetts Port Authority chief executive Thomas Kinton, who said talks have been underway for two years. [full story]

Today my newly-former employer publishes my interview with Fair Trade and international economics expert Jonathan Jacoby of the Center for American Progress. I always found myself wondering how exactly Fair Trade is put together, especially when confronting such things as a favorite coffee roaster Intelligentsia’s “Direct Trade” program, which claims to pay farmers even more than Fair Trade-certified sellers. About a month ago I interrogated Jonathan about how all this works, and here’s the product, after the jump.

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I have a review of Björk’s new album up on CampusProgress.org. Check it out:

Dozens of critics, from the Associated Press to Yeshiva University’s The Commentator to the New Straits Times in Malaysia, have described Björk or her music as “other-worldly.” With the opening track of Volta, she comes right out and admits it: “We are the Earth intruders; we are the sharp-shooters.” Great. Not only is she an alien, she’s a sniper. We’re all screwed.

But Volta, Björk’s seventh wide-release album and her first since 2004’s a cappella creation Medúlla, is decidedly Earth-bound. Despite the lyrical theme of “Earth Intruders,” the brutal backbeat of “Innocence,” and the Aphex Twin-style scream-fest “Declare Independence,” most of the album is intimate and cinematic in the tradition of Selmasongs, the 2000 soundtrack for “Dancer in the Dark,” which starred Björk herself.

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I and my colleague Ben Adler interviewed Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer for CampusProgress.org a few weeks ago, and it went up last night. Ben asked him about his dress code after he famously showed up in D.C. with a bolo tie. After telling us about the jeans he was wearing at the office, I told him he should bring the dress code with him if he ever moves to D.C.

I like what he had to say about the attitude toward politics in the Rockies:

There’s a lot of talk here in Washington about whether the Rocky Mountain West, a traditionally conservative region, is going to open up and turn purple or blue. Do you think it will, and if so, why?

On the East and West Coast people look at the map of the center of the country and they draw lines that are red and blue on it. But people don’t get up in the morning and go off to work thinking they’re red or blue. They don’t sit down with their family thinking they’re red or blue. They don’t go to church on Sunday thinking they’re red or blue. We just don’t think about it that way out here.

In the Rocky Mountain West, we have a tradition of libertarian populists. And out here in Montana, we didn’t like the notion of having this PATRIOT Act that allows the federal government to spy on us and collect a lot of other financial information about law abiding citizens. We didn’t have to see the report come out to see that the FBI would abuse this—every time they’ve been given this power in the past, they have, and they did again this time.

And the greatest thing about Montana and the Rocky Mountain West is that you’re never more than 30 minutes from great trout fishing. You’re never more than 30 minutes from a place where you can hike. You can raise a family, and that family not only will grow up being able to camp, hunt, and fish, but to hike in some of the most pristine places left on the planet, drink the water and eat the fish that you catch in that stream.

We want to protect that, so when Washington, D.C., has notions about coming out here and digging up all of Montana and drilling wells everyplace that we’ve got across the state, saying, “Well, we need your energy and we’re willing to sacrifice your backyard,” folks in Montana say, “No, I don’t think so.” We could produce our energy with alternative energy; We don’t want you to destroy our backyard. [more]

This piece originally appeared on CampusProgress.org. It outlines the argument set forth by Joe Cirincione, the head of national security and international policy at my day job—the Center for American Progress.

Ask the Expert: North Korea’s Nuclear Test

A progressive response to North Korea’s actions.

By Graham Webster
Thursday October 12, 2006

North Korea’s report of a nuclear test represents a failure of U.S. nonproliferation policy under President George W. Bush. Campus Progress recently interviewed Joe Cirincione, an expert in nuclear proliferation and senior vice president for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. In a separate article on the American Progress website, Cirincione outlines a progressive response to North Korea’s actions. Here, based on additional discussion with Cirincione, are a few quick points and answers to common questions.

How big of a threat is North Korea?

North Korea’s missiles may possibly have the capacity to reach Alaska; they definitely can reach South Korea, China, and Japan, among other countries in the region. But the test of a nuclear explosive device, while a dangerous escalation of North Korea’s nuclear confrontation with the United States and other nations, isn’t a major escalation of the threat to the United States in military terms.

The device that exploded underground had a relatively small yield for a nuclear explosive, and it is likely too large to fit on a missile. North Korea could potentially offer a nuclear bomb to a terrorist group, but the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il knows that any attack—whether direct or through a terrorist supplied by his regime—would, in Cirincione’s words, produce a “swift, certain, and devastating” response by the United States.

How did it come to this?

A few days before North Korea’s claim of a test, Cirincione explained to Campus Progress how the world confronted nuclear proliferation since World War II, and how the Bush administration’s policy undid years of U.S. and international efforts:

“You know, for 50 years Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives have worked together to build this interlocking system of treaties and export control regimes and bilateral agreements that have slowed, if not altogether stopped the spread of these weapons. In 1960 President Kennedy was worried that if we didn’t do something, there would be 15, 20, or 25 countries. But we did something. We designed and implemented the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We put all these other arrangements in place. As result, there are only eight nuclear weapons states today, with possibly North Korea being the ninth. That’s nine too many, but it’s a lot better than 20 or 25.

“When the Bush administration came in, they rejected this whole approach. They wanted to replace negotiations with forced regime change. They said the problem isn’t the weapons, it’s bad guys with the weapons. So they were going to go off and knock-off the bad guys. Iraq was the first implementation of that strategy. It was supposed to be the beginning of a process of serial regime change. First Iraq, then Iran, and then we get to North Korea. That’s the way we settle the problem. It was okay for our friends to have nuclear weapons, like Israel, India, or Pakistan, but it’s not okay for our foes. Who was going to decide? We were. We would pick the good guys and let them have the weapons; we would punish the bad guys.

“The problem with that is obviously this is a very expensive and failed strategy. The mess we made in Iraq is just part of the problem. In the last five years Iran and North Korea have made more progress in their programs than they made in the last 10. This policy has actually accelerated proliferation. It’s convinced other countries that they better get nuclear weapons faster.”

OK, so the administration’s policy failed. We’re getting pretty used to that these days. What can the United States do from its weakened position to contain and roll back North Korea’s potential threat?

According to Cirincione, the United States should start at the U.N. Security Council with a strong condemnation and follow up with multilateral sanctions that hurt North Korea’s leadership and the country’s trade. Then U.S. diplomats should let newly-selected U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who is himself from South Korea, mediate in the international response, as he has already offered to do.

If multilateral pressure doesn’t work, what can the United States do directly?

The United States can strike a deal with North Korea just like the one it made with Libya, which means dealing directly with the Kim regime. If you don’t remember the deal with Libya, the United States gave the country diplomatic recognition, security assurances, and economic incentives in exchange for the total elimination of Libya’s nuclear program. The policy was inexpensive, no one was killed, and it worked—more than we can say for the process of “disarming” Iraq.

What about North Korea’s neighbors? Is this going to create an arms race in the region?

The new Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who before taking office had been somewhat more hawkish than his predecessor, has already said that Japan will not develop nuclear weapons in response to North Korea’s actions. But in a different situation, Japan certainly has the capacity to arm itself.

Indeed, Cirincione told Campus Progress that Japan already has the fuel: ” Japan’s nuclear facilities are under close international inspection. But the problem is that they separated out from their spent fuel, coming out of their reactors, about 10,000 kilograms of plutonium. It takes about five kilograms of plutonium for one nuclear weapon. That’s 2,000 weapons.” Given a more robust threat, Abe could potentially change his mind, and South Korea and Taiwan could decide to seek nuclear capacity as well. It is this very compulsion to keep up with one’s nuclear neighbors that makes an international nonproliferation regime so important.