In days of yore when it was believed the Earth was the center of the Universe, it was a harsh reality when we learned we were only one of many planets that circled the sun. Today, the same could be said for the U.S. and Americans’ belief that we generate more interaction on social media channels than the rest of the world.
Fact is, while the U.S. is one of the world’s top Twitter nations garnering 25 percent of the world’s tweets, it falls significantly below Asia as a region. According to a recent Semiocast study, users in Asia, mainly located in Japan, Indonesia and South Korea account for 37 percent of all tweets out of 2.9 million messages tracked. And while Asia is showing growth from March to June in 2010, North America as an aggregate is declining.
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尖閣諸島の事件をめぐる議論はすごい盛り上がりを見せ、「日比谷焼き討ち事件」のころもかくやと思わせる。私も今回の政府の対応はまずかったと思うが、中国の強硬姿勢がかつてなく激越で、しかも矢継ぎ早だったのは政府も予想外だったのではないか。これは国内問題の「ガス抜き」という面もあろうが、世界に対して「アジアのルールはわれわれが作る」ということを示す意味もあったと思う。本書はイギリスのジャーナリストが書いたもので、タイトルはいささかセンセーショナルだが、内容はまじめなものだ。今回の事件との関連でおもしろいのは、中国が西洋世界の「法の支配」に挑戦しているという話だ。通説では、西洋が近代化によって中国を追い抜いたのは、財産権や契約などのガバナンスがしっかりしていいて市場や株式会社などの人的関係に依存しない組織ができたからで、中国も成熟すれば西洋化すると西洋人は考えているが、著者はこれに異を唱える。
IRVINE, CALIFORNIA – China’s government has been using unusually strong language of late to assert its sovereignty over disputed stretches of international waters near to its shores. This has led to a ratcheting up of tensions, in particular between China and the United States, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressing that the Obama administration is now ready to step in and help ensure the fair adjudication of disputes relating to the South China Sea. Chinese spokesmen denounced this as a throwback to the days when America thought it could, and should, try to “contain” the People’s Republic.
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A new dictionary, out from Oxford University Press, incorporates some very earthy Chinese slang expressions and new words, including some that you can’t invoke without having to rinse your mouth out with soap
(Now, you’re dying to know what they are, aren’t you?)
Although these street-talk words (among other more socially acceptable words) only made it to the parallel universe of the Oxford English-Chinese, Chinese-English dictionary — not the more definitive Oxford English Dictionary — it has set off a frisson of etymological excitement among folks in China. Some see it as the beginning of a lexicographic lead-in to a world that will, progressively, speak Chinese — and in countless other ways be ‘Sinified’ by Chinese soft-power influences.
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There is no knowing whether an editorial in the People’s Daily on Friday that for all intents and purposes removed the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) as the principal defender of China against Japanese invasion during World War II was simply out-of-control Chinese nationalism, or a more sinister attempt to blur the lines in the Taiwan Strait
For years now, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda has played down the KMT’s role in the war of resistance and elevated that of the communists to one that defies the historical record, a form of revisionism that, sadly, continues to be swallowed and reproduced by a number of Western academics, one of the latest being Martin Jacques in his influential book When China Rules the World.
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As according to the Burmese astrological date after Nov. 17th the Junta’s faux pas will become a fait accompli while the civilized international community looked on with folded arms.
The crux of the Burmese struggle is the inconceivable difference between Burma’s diverse ethnic nationalities, label as separatist and that of the pro-democracy forces that are unable to accept the ethnic nationalities as equals, in their obsession to overthrow the illegitimate regime. Their respective local leaders, by their actions, have chosen to live under the tyrannical regime rather than compromise their belief with their brethren. If they have been united the Junta would have been overthrown long ago, now the Jean is out of the bottle and is threatening everybody within its reach.
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Sino-Indian relations are back in public debate
Sino-Indian relations are back in public debate after the New York Times report on Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers in Gilgit-Baltistan, visa denial to Lt. Gen. B.S. Jaswal, General Officer Commanding in Chief (GOC-in-C), Northern Command, and on top of earlier Chinese transgressions like separate paper visas for Jammu and Kashmir residents. Were not the bilateral relations on the upswing since the handshake between Rajiv Gandhi and Deng Xiaoping in 1988?
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Once in a while it is worth pondering whether the conventional wisdom about China’s meteoric rise is right. Is China destined to move beyond its newly won position as the world’s number two economy to become number one? Will the United States be displaced from its primacy in global security? Is the rising power destined to clash with the current leading power? These are the themes of much recent commentary, including journalist Martin Jacques’ new book, When China Rules the World.
Thinking unconventionally necessarily involves speculating about things that are unknowable today. But doing so might prove a useful exercise before we reach conventional conclusions that are expensive, defeatist, or just plain wrong.
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No one wishes for a total Chinese collapse, but certain setbacks should be welcomed
Seven decades ago President Chiang Kai-Shek wrote in a preface to his wife’s book China Shall Rise Again, “For the rebirth of a people certain factors are necessary. Of these one is that the people should go through a period of trials and tribulations.” China had already endured a century of turmoil when Chiang wrote those words in 1941, but more was to come. In contemplating China’s future, we should remember that its modern past includes numerous failures. The Chinese themselves certainly don’t forget. For decades before the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, China was beset by foreign encroachment and farmers’ uprisings, and, after the establishment of the Chinese republic, it experienced the depredations of regional warlords, an invasion by Japan, civil war, the collapse of Chiang’s regime in the late 1940s, and Mao Zedong’s quarter-century of uneven rule (1949 -76).
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It is foolish to make concrete predictions about China, due to how often – and how quickly – the country has been proving people wrong
Very occasionally, though, I feel something is such a sure bet that I’m ready to go out on a limb and describe something I’m sure will occur. Here’s my latest example: in the upcoming year or two, we’ll see a lot of new general interest books on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) show up at online sites like Amazon.com and in brick and mortar bookstores. I’ll go further than this and predict that the books will be by varied kinds of authors, from freelance writers to pundits, daily journalists to scholars, like me, who often write for specialized audiences but have decided to try to reach that elusive general educated reader. And one further point, of particular relevance to readers of this site: these books, while focusing on the present, will often make at least some nods to the past, in order to place recent events into historical perspective.
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