Comments on: Can Blogging Help Foster International Understanding?

By: Anonymous

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By: sondaj

sondaj — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:03:42 +0000

I always read your blog in high spirits. Thanks :)

By: ChinaVet

ChinaVet — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:55:15 +0000

@Slayer,

I completely agree with you. It would be a complete joke to send someone like Ellis out as an emmissary to Chinese bloggers. We need to take this thing very seriously and Ellis is not the guy and it surprises me that anyone is putting him up for that task. His site does not even work on my RSS reader, so it is hardly fair to him to consider him a blogger.

By: CommunicateAsia » Blog Archive » 168. This Week on the FIR Asia Report (with a surprise at the bottom)

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:59:57 +0000

[...] you would like to read about a thread which has gathered a bit of attention in China. Titled Can Blogging Help Foster International Understanding?, China Vortex argues that blogs are popular because the MSM has done such a poor job of addressing [...]

By: Richard Slayer

Richard Slayer — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:24:26 +0000

@Max Vittachi,

Sites like China Briefing are actually a large part of the problem. The person behind that blog, Chris Devonshire-Ellis, speaks little to no Mandarin and is often harshly critical of Beijing politics. You say “they now run their blog as a daily news service” but all they are really doing is rehashing the Western press’s China slams for their own pecuniary benefit. No, if we are to have an online detente here, we need the real bright lights of the blogosphere to get involved, not the wannabes.

By: Max Vittachi

Max Vittachi — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:16:05 +0000

You may recall that China Briefing (www.china-briefing.com/news)
‘de-blogged’ themselves after having problems with the medium, and disassociated themselves from the blog community as they thought it diminished (I think I recall this correctly) the total package that they additionally provide – magazines and books. They now run their blog as a daily news service instead. So it didn’t work for them. They might be interesting people to have along to talk about the down side if you can get them to discuss it. I think Dezan Shira have an office in Guangzhou too.

By: a Duoist

a Duoist — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:19:36 +0000

The first reason Western media is so ‘confrontational’ is that the media reflects the deeply embedded cultural norms. In Europeans (including all of the Anglosphere and the Western Hemisphere), the ancient Greek concept of the ‘agon’ is paramount. The ‘agon’ is the clash between equal opposites (duality). Note that in the East, the opposites (duality) are complementary (the Yin and Yang), not necessarily dueling to the death. In Eastern culture, the two opposites cannot exist without the other; in Western culture, the two opposites are in a battle to the death, until only one is victorious. The Anglo/American legal system is entirely based upon this adversarial (antagonist) concept between two opposing ‘truths,’ which is a way of thinking now over three thousand years old among Europeans.

Secondly, for the past five hundred years of ‘modernity,’ a cultural norm has developed from the spread of science which insists that criticism is a vital necessary requirement in order to practice good science. This norm, or ethic, is known as “open inquiry,” and is the most telling feature between modern societies and those that continue to languish in poverty, tribalism, and xenophobia. All of the most prosperous nations on the planet have ‘open inquiry’ as a mainstay of their governance, economics, and technological innovation.

And on ‘open inquiry,’ China is where? Wherever China is on ‘open inquiry,’ that is where she will eventually settle, both economically and politically, regardless of whether the culture values the complementarianism of the Oriental Yin and Yang, or the competitiveness of the Greek agon.

‘Be free,’ China.

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:11:46 +0000

You definitely raise a good point that blogging fills a hole left by the mainstream media. A lot of the criticism of China and the anti-western sentiment within China has come as a result of the bias of the respective ‘main stream media’. The blogosphere is far more democratic; although you will get extreme opinions, you will also get a lot of practical and realist views that the main stream media don’t offer.

This is a good example of how technology can bring people closer together, and by-pass controlling powers, whether those of Rupert Murdoch or the CCP.

Bobs last blog post..New 100m World Record By Usain Bolt

By: beijinger

beijinger — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:14:20 +0000

I agree there’s a fair bit of sanctimonious claptrap on blogs, but isn’t that part of a wider issue you skirt a bit – blogging is writing, sure, but it’s also very instantaneous. In the same way that many people write in emails things they would tear up rather than post when they wrote letters, with internet writing it’s very easy to dash off thoughts which are then “published” with no editors to argue with the ideas contained, fact-checking, etc.
I wonder also what you mean by the US mainstream media? Do you really think that what you say describes how the NYT, WSJ, LA Times cover China? It seems to me their coverage is far less knee-jerk than a lot of the chinese blogosphere… I know it’s a shocking thing to say, because there is so much that is good there, but it’s a bit of a myth to think that the blogosphere is an informed, egalitarian, democratic place. Apart from anything else, bloggers in China, and elsewhere of course, are by their nature – their education, their access to laptops and internet – a social elite. They speak for quite a narrow tranche of society, particularly in such a diverse one as China, and it is undoubtedly true also that young Chinese are not particularly well-travelled in their own country. They obviously understand a lot of things about China better than a foreign journalist, but there are also areas where I’d back the foreign corr (I am one – declaration of interest).

By: Xi

Xi — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:55:41 +0000

It is a good point you have made. I am a Chinese living in Canada. I am keep blogging in English, making my tiny voice.

I think, if some of you could write in Chinese, that would help Chinese understanding the West too. After all, most Chinese do not read English. There is a New Yorker blogs in Chinese: http://blog.sina.com.cn/honglaowai2008

Well, maybe this is not a good example. This blog is more hilarious than serious. But it is pupular because using Chinese.