how thoughtful.

• China’s normally secretive Ministry of Defense launched its first Web site for trial operation on Thursday, in Chinese and English versions, as part of an effort to promote the transparency and improve perceptions of the world’s largest military force.
• In an introductory announcement, the site says it aims to provide “authoritative information of China’s national defense and army building” and “display before the world the fine image of the PLA as a mighty, civilized and peaceful force.”

Chinese military weirdness - Google Sightseeing

There aren’t many sights that puzzle us here at Google Sightseeing, but this one has us stumped. In a remote desert area of Gansu province in northern China is this mysterious maze-like pattern. The “streets” are about 20 metres wide, and the pattern occupies a rectangle measuring about 1km x 1.8km, aligned north to south and so sharply defined that it almost appears superimposed on the image. If you zoom in, though, you can see that the lines really are there on the ground. Exploring the surrounding area, things get weirder….

• Pictographic and logographic signs at airports and beside highways are a limited language of universal communication, which belongs to proto-writing, not full writing. Mathematics, too, is a universal language, but it is no use for most purposes of written communication. Painting and music communicate powerfully across cultures, but their meaning is diffuse and ambiguous. To communicate any and all thought always requires phonetic symbols. Wikipedia may have started in English, but it subsequently evolved versions written in over two dozen languages, including Esperanto. Full writing and reading depend on knowing a spoken language. This fact has not been altered by the internet—however many computer icons (and emoticons) we may encounter online.
• Until the last few decades, it was generally agreed that over the centuries western civilisation had tried to make writing a closer and closer representation of speech. The alphabet was naturally regarded as the pinnacle of this conscious search; the Chinese script, conversely, was widely thought of as hopelessly defective. The corollary was the belief that as the alphabet spread through the world, so eventually would mass literacy and democracy. Surely, one might think, if a script is easy to learn, then more people will grasp it; and if they come to understand public affairs better, they will be more likely to take part in them and indeed demand a part in them. Scholars thus had a clear conception of writing progressing from cumbersome ancient scripts with multiple signs to simple and superior modern alphabets.
• Few are now quite as confident. The superiority of alphabets is no longer taken for granted. The ancient Egyptians, for example, had an ‘alphabet’ of 24 signs nearly 5000 years ago, but apparently chose not to use it alone, and instead developed a logo-consonantal system with over 700 signs in regular use. The Japanese, rather than using their simple syllabic kana more and more frequently, chose to import more and more kanji from the Chinese script, creating a writing system of unrivalled complexity. Mayan glyphs show that the Maya could have used far more purely syllabic spellings, if they had wished, instead of their elaborate logographic and logo-syllabic equivalents.
• The reason why scripts flourish or vanish has more to do with political and cultural considerations than purely linguistic ones. Literacy concerns far more than merely learning how to read and write. A Japanese physics student once outlined for me the genuine linguistic disadvantages of writing only in kana, without kanji, and then added: ‘After all, a long tradition cannot change like that. It will NEVER happen!!’ In other words, writing Japanese in kanji is a key part of Japanese identity.
• Many scholars of writing today have an increasing respect for the intelligence behind ancient scripts. Down with the monolithic ‘triumph of the alphabet’, they say, and up with Chinese characters, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Mayan glyphs, with their hybrid mixtures of pictographic, logographic and phonetic signs. Their conviction has in turn nurtured a new awareness of writing systems as being enmeshed within societies, rather than viewing them somewhat aridly as different kinds of technical solution to the problem of efficient visual representation of a particular language.
• While I personally remain sceptical about the expressive virtues of pictograms and logograms, this growing holistic view of writing systems strikes me as a healthy development that reflects the real relationship between writing and society in all its subtlety and complexity. The transmission of my intimate thoughts to the minds of others in many cultures via intricate marks on a piece of paper or a computer screen, continues to amaze me as a kind of barely explicable magic.

• WASHINGTON — Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were military retirees and psychologists, on the lookout for business opportunities. They found an excellent customer in the Central Intelligence Agency, where in 2002 they became the architects of the most important interrogation program in the history of American counterterrorism.
• They had never carried out a real interrogation, only mock sessions in the military training they had overseen. They had no relevant scholarship; their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure and family therapy. They had no language skills and no expertise on Al Qaeda.
• But they had psychology credentials and an intimate knowledge of a brutal treatment regimen used decades ago by Chinese Communists. For an administration eager to get tough on those who had killed 3,000 Americans, that was enough.
• So “Doc Mitchell” and “Doc Jessen,” as they had been known in the Air Force, helped lead the United States into a wrenching conflict over torture, terror and values that seven years later has not run its course.

• BEIJING — Shanghai and Beijing are becoming new lands of opportunity for recent American college graduates who face unemployment nearing double digits at home.
• Even those with limited or no knowledge of Chinese are heeding the call. They are lured by China’s surging economy, the lower cost of living and a chance to bypass some of the dues-paying that is common to first jobs in the United States.

buffleheadcabin:

tsparks:

The Nation
by ROBERT SCHEER
July 29, 2009

What a hoot. The Chinese Communists invaded Washington on Monday demanding not that we sacrifice our freedoms but rather that we balance our budget. Creditors get to make that kind of call. And the Marxists of Beijing, who have turned out to be the world’s most prudent bankers, are worried about their assets invested in our banana republic.

“China has a huge amount of investment in the United States, mainly in the form of Treasury bonds. We are concerned about the security of our financial assets” was the way China’s assistant finance minister put it. Briefing reporters at the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, he added, “We sincerely hope the US fiscal deficit will be reduced, year after year.” Quite sincerely, one suspects, given a US budget shortfall this year that is slated to reach $1.85 trillion.

Suddenly, it was US officials who were promising deep reform to their disgraced economic system rather than demanding it from incompetent foreigners. President Barack Obama’s economic team of Clinton-era holdovers, who a decade ago had hectored China on the virtues of fiscal responsibility, now were falling over themselves to reassure the Chinese that their $1.5 trillion stake in US government-issued securities is safe, and that they should buy more at this week’s $200 billion Treasury auction. If they don’t, we’re in big trouble.

….read entire article

• Chinese hackers have attacked the Melbourne International Film Festival website in an intensifying campaign against the screening of a documentary about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.
• The hackers replaced festival information with the Chinese flag and anti-Kadeer slogans and were last night continuing to disrupt the site by spamming.
• He said the festival had reported the attacks, which appear to be coming from a Chinese IP address, and was discussing security concerns with Victoria Police. He said private security guards would be hired to protect Ms Kadeer and patrons at the film’s screening on August 8.

• Three Chinese films have been withdrawn from Australia’s biggest film festival in an apparent boycott after China’s government protested over the inclusion of a documentary about restive ethnic Uighurs.
• Chinese consular staff last week contacted organisers of the Melbourne International Film Festival to demand they dump a film about exiled Uighur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer, blamed by Beijing for instigating this month’s ethnic riots in Xinjiang.
• Now three Chinese films, “Perfect Life,” “Petition” and “Cry Me a River”, have been withdrawn in protest at Kadeer’s planned attendance at the festival next month.

• Sustained, rapid economic growth since World War ii has undeniably boosted the region’s economic output and military capabilities. But it’s a gross exaggeration to say that Asia will emerge as the world’s predominant power player. At most, Asia’s rise will lead to the arrival of a multi-polar world, not another unipolar one.
• Asia is nowhere near closing its economic and military gap with the West. The region produces roughly 30 percent of global economic output, but because of its huge population, its per capita gdp is only $5,800, compared with $48,000 in the United States. Asian countries are furiously upgrading their militaries, but their combined military spending in 2008 was still only a third that of the United States. Even at current torrid rates of growth, it will take the average Asian 77 years to reach the income of the average American. The Chinese need 47 years. For Indians, the figure is 123 years. And Asia’s combined military budget won’t equal that of the United States for 72 years.
• Those who think Asia’s gains in hard power will inevitably lead to its geopolitical dominance might also want to look at another crucial ingredient of clout: ideas. Pax Americana was made possible not only by the overwhelming economic and military might of the United States but also by a set of visionary ideas: free trade, Wilsonian liberalism, and multilateral institutions. Although Asia today may have the world’s most dynamic economies, it does not seem to play an equally inspiring role as a thought leader. The big idea animating Asians now is empowerment; Asians rightly feel proud that they are making a new industrial revolution. But self-confidence is not an ideology, and the much-touted Asian model of development does not seem to be an exportable product.

• According to a report from the Ministry of National Planning and Development, released on Thursday, investment jumped from $172.7m in the 2007- 2008 fiscal year to $984.9m.

• The ministry said 87 per cent of the total invested in Myanmar came from China.

• The surge in investment comes despite wide-ranging sanctions imposed on military-ruled Myanmar - formerly known as Burma - that have virtually cut off any investment from the US and European Union.

• The country has large and underdeveloped reserves of oil, gas and timber as well as minerals and precious stones.

• China’s investment in Myanmar is focused mainly on energy and natural resources, which its needs to fuel its rapidly expanding industrialisation and urbanisation.

• According to reports Chinese corporations are involved in at least 90 hydropower, mining and oil and gas projects across the country.

• The projects include construction of hydropower dams as well as a large pipeline project across the length of Myanmar aimed at transporting gas and oil to China’s landlocked southern Yunnan province.

• The Ministry of Health has ordered a halt to a controversial electroshock treatment intended to help treat Internet addiction in teenagers, the Beijing News reported on Tuesday.
• The Ministry said the therapy, which was administered by a clinic in Linyi, Shandong province, has not been proven to be safe.