China

And it’s no contest: James Fallows dismantles David Brooks’ column on China. His advice: Take a little time and look around, David. The parts that don’t fit what you theorized before arriving are actually the most stimulating. That’s in response to Brook’s beloved pseudo-scientific hucksterism: If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim. These sorts of experiments have been done over and over again, and the results reveal

Well, the Olympics have finally arrived. James Fallows has been my go-to China blogger for some time. I heartily recommend his blog to you and suggest it will be well worth reading over the next couple of weeks. Not for its coverage of the games as such, but because he has a sympathetic humanist’s appreciation of what the games mean to China and the Chinese people. I also think he is right when he argues, as has done repeatedly, that it is in everyone’s interests that these are successful games. Of course, London is next. One of the remarkable things about modern Britain is the joyously jaundiced view many Britons

Panorama tonight: The Olympic Games are special. The biggest show on earth – with an estimated global television audience of four billion people. But hosting the Games brings extreme attention and extreme scrutiny. Chinese Premier Wen Jibao promised that foreign media would be free to report on Chinese politics, economics and society in the build-up to the Games, a pledge at odds with the Western perception of China as a restrictive and secretive state. In Panorama: China’s Olympic Promise, reporter John Sweeney sought to put this assurance to the test as he travelled across China following the path of the Olympic torch. Well, fine. But there’s something mildly grotesque about

James Fallows has a very interesting post about what it’s like to be a foreigner in China, in which he writes: I think I now can explain why, despite the pollution and congestion and overall ceaseless hassle of big-city life in China, I always tell friends or visitors that I “like” Chinese people in general. The reason is that, most of the time, people in China treat me as … a person. Not always and in every circumstance as a foreigner, though I obviously am that. I hear the Chinese words for “look, a foreigner!” and feel the general ripple of outsiderness much less often than I hear or sense

The BBC: Paris protests mar Olympic relay This, naturally, is entirely incorrect. The problem would have been if there hadn’t been any protestors. Still, the BBC, which is sending more than 400 staff to Beijing, is heavily invested in the Olympics and keeps insisting that London 2012 is something to be jolly proud of whereas much of the population wished the IOC had handed the games to Paris instead.

From James Fallows’ Tibet-blogging: CCTV coverage (that’s state-run China Central TV) Lots more interesting stuff here and here.