Month: March 2012

  • A great paragraph: Wen Jiabao as prodding CCP rule

    At China Elections and Governance, Yawei Liu, head of the China program at the Carter Center, has an interesting read on CCP legitimacy and Wen Jiabao’s (self-serving) suggestion that even top leaders are helpless in the face of increasingly entrenched interests. The mere fact that the Wen argument is self-serving, however, doesn’t invalidate the point:…

  • Some notes on This American Life's retraction episode #Apple #China

    The U.S. public radio show This American Life yesterday announced it would retract its adaption of Mike Daisey’s storytelling show about Apple’s manufacturing operations in China. I’m taking notes while listening on WNYC to a broadcast of the show Retraction. The podcast is available Sunday now (yesterday it said it would be held; now the link is…

  • The rise and fall of a migrant food cart in China, from Tricia Wang

    A few weeks ago, my friend Tricia Wang published an account of her fieldwork, which for about a week included living in an “inner-city” migrant enclave and working as a family (one member of which she’s known for three years) tries to open a small business: a dumpling cart at a construction site. This entrepreneurship…