Specific to general

It’s been a relatively quiet week in the torch relay, Carrefour boycotting, blogosphere and general media attention of both the Free Tibet groups and Pro China/Anti Western Media masses (real and netizens). Perhaps it has a little to do with two political movements this week that made headline. First being Poncelet (French Senate President Christian) greeting torch bearer Jin Jing in Shanghai delivering a letter of invitation from Sarkozy, and now China’s government is meeting with a representative of the Dalai Lama. Sarkozy having insulted the Chinese government and people earlier in the month now is congratulating China in it’s efforts for dialogue. I find the Chinese government is trying to diffuse situations to the upcoming Oylmpics, even calling for restraint of it’s own citizen’s national fury over Carrefour (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/20/china.chinathemedia?gusrc=rss
&feed=networkfront). I suspect the leaders are proud and chuckling behind curtains over the overwhelming nationalism of the young people fighting the BBC, CNN, Carrefour and western commentators over the net. But seriously, many are disgusted by the slander and malicious content and actions of those individuals who, full of scorn condemn whose who are seeking a more balanced perspective. Now we have Chinese fighting other Chinese. One infamous case concerns a Duke University student, Grace Wang (http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20080423_1.htm) who saw a photo online of her parents house in Qing Dao where someone had left excrement on the doorstep after she had intervened in a argument between pro Tibetan and Pro China individuals. What began as a backlash and defense by Chinese netizens began to get nasty. Over the past month, even death threats have also been sent to western reporters (http://www.danwei.org/foreign_media_on_china/scapegoating_cnn.php). It’s easy to get caught in the daily happenings of events and no doubt they affect many people in a serious way. Searching through the layers of stories and commentary, one finds larger pieces of this jigsaw to help in seeing the bigger picture. I’m not sure what I see at the moment but I feel there are larger forces at work. A blogger here writes about writing about RFA (Radio Free Asia):

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/15/224155/744/780/492483

Radio Free Asia was originally a radio station broadcasting propaganda for the US-American government in local languages to mostly communist countries in Asia. It was originally founded and funded in 1950 by the CIA (Wiki). It is apparently the leading source of information to and from Tibet.

Here is a good and long article about the past and future relationship between the US and Tibet and the US and China by Hilary Keenan.

http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/the_unusual_suspect_01635.html

A meeting i missed at Frontlines (16th April) is worth watching/listening to:

http://www.frontlineclub.com/club_videoevents.php?event=2039�

If all that’s a big heavy, the National Geographic just published it’s May edition which has good articles and great photography all about China. I advise, just even for the photography.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/05/table-of-contents

I am just about the begin searching for new subjects for interviews. But besides that, I will go back and continue my search for another piece of the puzzle.

- J