Internet filtering in China

A lot's been said about Internet controls in China, but this is the first in-depth scholarly report I've seen on the subject: Internet Filtering in China: A Country Study 2004-2005 (Thanks to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School for the link).

While slightly out of date, it contains a lot of technical and bureaucratic detail that's largely missing from the blog and popular press discussions of the "Great Firewall".

Discounted computers through Harvard

One great benefit of being a student at Harvard is access to computer and software deals through the Harvard Technology Products Center. I just bought a copy of Mac OS X 4 (the Tiger operating system) for $78, including taxes and shipping. That compares with more than $130 for the official Apple price.

In the past I've bought other gear through the TPC. Discounts vary. The OS X discount is about 50% cheaper, but many other things -- such as the iMac -- are between 10% and 20% cheaper. You have to have a Harvard ID and PIN access, too.

Harvard Extension School & Distance Education

Distance Education is a big growth area for the Extension School, judging by the increase in course offerings and even a all-remote certificate program (in applied sciences, and environmental management).

While I haven't tried any distance education courses at the Extension School, I might do so in the future, as one of Harvard's foremost China scholars -- Peter Bol -- offers a course called "Traditions and Transformations in China." It's actually a Faculty of Arts and Sciences course offered to Harvard College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences students "live" during the day, while Extension School students can watch the recorded lectures at night (or whenever is convenenient). The course covers a lot of ancient history, as opposed to Professor Kuhn's classes on China, which focus on modern Chinese history -- Qing, Republican, and People's Republic.

However, the one thing that may prevent me from taking this class is one of the technical requirements. Not the connection issue (while I only have dial-up at home, it's enough to participate in this course) but the media player issue. Everyone, regardless of operating system, has to use Real media players.

You may not know Real by name, but you probably have seen it on your machine, especially if you are a Windows user. It's the software which requires irritating and often deceptive installation and registration processes, attempts to take over all music and video-playing duties on your machine, and displays advertising and promotions from the system tray even when you are not using it! It's often called "scumware" by certain segments of Internet community.

Why the Extension School settled on this technology is beyond me -- Real's corporate, advertising-centric profile is totally at odds with the purpose of Distance Education -- but I hope that the school branches into open formats that don't require Real, or at least formats that can be played on the default, pre-installed media players for Windows (Windows Media Player) and Quicktime (Apple).

Research: Americans, Chinese, see the world differently

Wow. Wired reports on University of Michigan research that found Americans and Chinese view the world in radically different ways.

The researchers ran a test that measured eye movements of Chinese and American subjects while they looked at photographs. The Americans looked more at the foreground subject, the Chinese paid attention to the background and the relationship of the background to the foreground subject. As for overseas "Asians" raised in North America:

Reinforcing the belief that the differences are cultural, he said, when Asians raised in North America were studied, they were intermediate between native Asians and European-Americans, and sometimes closer to Americans in the way they viewed scenes.

But this still doesn't explain why Chinese tend to follow the same formula for all photo compositions -- posing in front of monuments/buildings/scenic areas at the exact center of the frame. Pictures of scenery without people are rare, as are close-ups, unusual compositions, non-posed photographs of people, etc. Maybe future research can address this important question ...

Expert analysis of PRC foreign policy, and the missing ingredient: mass media

I've been reading a fascinating book on Chinese foreign policy, Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (Oxford University Press, 1994, edited by Thomas Robinson and David Shambaugh).

Steven Levine's chapter ("Perception and Ideology in Chinese Foreign Policy") notes the role of history and how it affects China's relations with other countries:

“Chinese leaders tend to internalize a sense of historical resentment at the raw deal which history has given them. This resentment often translates into a claim of entitlement upon others. When other states behave toward China in accordance with their supposed obligations, everything is fine. But when these claims are not recognized, or are recognized only partially, additional layers of Chinese resentment may build up. This hypersensitivity is manifested with respect to symbolic and status issues no less than to substantive issues of resource allocations and power.” [p. 44]

David Shambaugh, in "Patterns of Interactions in Sino-American Relations" also points to the historical dimension, and how it has contributed to a pattern of cooperation and tension that will continue into the future:

“It is a relationship fraught with high emotions, misperceptions, and considerable historical baggage.” [p. 223]

But something is missing. The writers cite geopolitical, economic, social, historical, and ideological variables to explain the development of China's foreign relations, but there is only limited mention of the role of foreign media (primarily concerning the Tiananmen coverage) and no mention of the role of the Chinese media in impacting China's foreign relations.

This is really surprising to me. How can experts on foreign policy overlook the role of mass media in influencing Chinese foreign policy? They mention "historical baggage," but Chinese people -- and policy makers -- develop their perceptions of history not just from grandpa's stories of the concessions and elementary school textbooks, but also from a relentless diet of state-sanctioned history and one-sided international worldviews disseminated by Xinhua and other state-run media outlets since 1949.

Re-evaluating the mission of Harvard Extended

I've been thinking over the last few days about why I blog. In my very first post I talked about how this blog was meant to share information about the Harvard Extension School, and keep me motivated as I started my thesis. I would say that the blog has achieved its mission in these regards.

However, I've found that Harvard Extended had a couple of unanticipated effects as well. One is that it has really made me a faster writer, and given me a lot of freedom to expand my thoughts on various subjects. I knew how to write before, but often approached it as I would a student preparing academic papers, or a journalist approaching a reporting assigment, with careful planning and concern for how my professors and editors would react. Now I just fire up blogger, and start writing. It's a free-form structure that's not constrained by rules (other than my own), and it really gives me a lot of freedom to say what I want, how I want.

Another effect: it now serves as a global platform for me to ruminate upon Chinese history, journalism, society, the Harvard Extension School, and other areas of expertise or interest. It's like having an op-ed page all to myself.

A third effect: It allows me to be part of a much wider discussion about these topics. I get questions about the Extension School, and I am sometimes featured on Asiapundit, which finds my commentary on Chinese journalism and history to be worth sharing with a wider audience.

Of course, while unanticipated, these developments are certainly welcome. I have therefore decided to formally incorporate them into the mission of Harvard Extended.

The British Empire in Colour

I saw an interesting program on WGBH (Boston's public television station) last night, The British Empire in Colour.

This was a documentary, based on color film footage of Britain and India in the 1920s that was apparently shot by a documentary filmmaker (the British footage) and amateurs (the India footage). It was really quite remarkable. I had always assumed that color film wasn't available for small cameras (16mm, or whatever gauge was considered small at the time) until well after the first commercial-grade Hollywood productions in color, which were Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz in the late '30s.

Another remarkable aspect of this program is that the India footage is mostly made up of vacation shots of street scenes, parties for Indian notables, military processions, and expat lawn parties. Using skillful editing, narration, actor voiceovers, and dubbed sound effects, the modern producers have created an intriguing picture of life during the late era of the Raj.

Besides the entertainment value of this program, the process of making such a film is very interesting to me, for two reasons. First, I was a broadcasting and film major during my undergraduate years at Boston University, and at one time I hoped to become a documentary filmmaker. Although I did shoot some documentaries as a student and later on my own with a video camera and iMovie, the closest I actually came in my professional career to being a documentary filmmaker was working in broadcast news in Taiwan. TV news is kind of a documentary process -- pictures and narration are cobbled together in short chunks to tell brief stories about what's going on. The concept that 80-year-old home movies can be turned into an excellent overview of an important era of modern history is not only testament to the skill of the modern producers of this film, but also how every-day relics and records from past eras can help modern people understand history. At one time, historical documentaries tended to rely on interviews with experts and modern footage of ruins and old buildings. Fifteen years ago, Ken Burns' The Civil War really opened the door to letters, photographs, and other everyday records being turned into powerful documentary films. The British Empire in Colour continues this tradition, and I am certain 50 years from now the e-mails, websites, cameraphone images, and blogs will form the basis of a new generation of historical documentaries.


Second, as a student of history, I am interested in the potential of film to bring history to life in color. The fact that the producers of The British Empire in Colour were able to find so much footage from India in the 1920s indicates to me that similar color footage of life in China during the same era probably exists as well. The British Empire was a very large presence in China at this time, most notably in Hong Kong and "concessions" in Shanghai and other coastal cities, and I would expect amateur filmmakers there probably shot street scenes, expat parties, and other spectacles of Chinese life that are long gone. It would be wonderful if some of that footage was unearthed and made public.

The British Film Institute talked with some of the producers of The British Empire in Colour, and I found a few quotes to be very revealing of the processes and concerns that they had to deal with:

Adrian Woods:

A whole team did the work. I've been looking for film for twenty years and when I first thought about material for Empire I was astonished how much more was discovered by the team, whose work should be appreciated. It came from national and regional archives who have suddenly become to realise the value of private film as a record of social history. We go along as a team and ask them what they have in colour, which is not a way that film is usually categorised. We appeal for material on radio and in newspapers and in TV interviews. But the principal source is regional archives and collections.

Lucy Carter:

We researched all over the world. We think we saw over 1000 hours of film. In-house we ordered over 100 hours of film, of which 20-30 hours went into the edit for each one-hour programme. That's the sort of percentage we worked with. ... We never aimed to tell the whole story of the British Empire. Obviously we are limited by the footage we can find, and that gives us our starting point. From then on we look into the stories to work out which stories we can tell using those images, but also using the other elements which are the letters and diaries, which are just as important to show the emotional experience of Empire.

Your ridiculous clamour for "human rights" is nothing but a shrill cry!

This is awesome! Someone in California has taken North Korean propaganda from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) from 1996 to the present, and dumped it into a searchable database with a Web interface.

KCNA is like China's Xinhua News Agency on PCP. Xinhua has always been careful to toe the party line, but there are no such restraints on KCNA -- it is apparently always on rabid attack dog mode. It's famous for threatening war against the United States, launching personal attacks against U.S. leaders, and publishing ridiculous stories about acts of nature that apparently show support for Kim Jong-il and other North Korean "leaders."

I had always assumed that KCNA, like Xinhua and other state-run news agencies, was stored in LexisNexis and Factiva, but that is not the case. This Californian programmer decided to make the data available, by not only mirroring the KCNA website, but providing a search mechanism and RSS feeds ... and a hilarious, KCNA-based random insult generator!

Taiwan, China, and high-tech manufacturing

Just posted on my Computerworld blog about Taiwan's recent evolution into a high-tech manufacturing and engineering powerhouse. In it, I note the way Taiwan has, in the course of two decades, gone from manufacturing Christmas lights to designing CPUs. It really is a remarkable transformation, but we should remember that Japan and parts of the United States have experienced similar transformations from low-tech manufacturing centers to high-tech, service-oriented economies, albeit at a much slower rate.

One thing I didn't mention in my Computerworld post was my own extremely minor observation post overlooking the Taiwanese economic transformation. In 1993 and 1994, I worked at two small import-export companies in Taipei. One, Viking Co., was very old-school -- the owner had made a mint selling pens and cheap plastic goods to Europe, the United States, and the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s, but as of 1993 was not able to adapt to the new environment caused by the appearance of cheaper manufacturers on the mainland. Calls, orders, and requests for quotes from once-dependendable customers were drying up, and he couldn't figure out how to stem the flow.

The other company, Ben Novelty Co., did figure out how to adapt. Ben Novelty was a family-owned operation that had gone from making novelties to lamps and more expensive housewares, and had started outsourcing manufacturing to China. It realized that local manufacturing was dying, as Taiwanese wages couldn't compete with Chinese wages. Once I accompanied Ben (the owner) to a small lamp factory in Taipei's industrial suburbs, and was struck by the types of workers there -- almost all were high-school aged girls, and some older women. These were the only types of people who would work for low wages at a dreary lamp assembly line.

Great quotes about journalism in China

Looking through the precis I finished last week, I've noted a couple of great quotes from Robin Porter's Reporting the News from China. Even though this book is nearly 15 years old, and some of the recollections date to the late 70s, some of the authors' observations about China's English-language media and foreign media coverage of China are still valid:

From Robin Porter, talking about Xinhua's English-language wire service

“Final reinforcement of the party line occurred with the editorial checks on the work of DWB staff. As noted above, news would be normally either be taken from an existing official newspaper or be written from scratch with guidance from senior journalists within the duiwaibu ... Occasional errors of syntax in English translation would get through this process, but errors of line almost never did; the DWB carried responsibility for ensuring that China’s policies were understood overseas, and political errors were unacceptable.” [page 6]

“… fundamental shifts in policy over the years meant that what was painted white at one stage must be represented as black at another.” [page 7]

“The past could be and was frequently invoked in support of current objectives: no fewer than thirteen stories were put out to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, while two others recalled the revolutionary careers of Li Dazhao and Xu Deheng” [page 122]

Kelly Haggart, on Chinese journalists during and after Tiananmen:

"There is pride among Beijing journalists about those few days of press freedom. For one thing, it showed the potential of Chinese journalists. For the first time they were allowed to act like real reporters and they did no worse at covering the story than their more experienced foreign counterparts. ... For almost all city people, no matter what they thought of the students and their hunger strike, that week of relative press freedom brought home to them the importance of more open, more enterprising media. Freedom of the press was no longer a complete abstraction." [page 50]

Mark Brayne on China's English-language media:

"Xinhua is strictly blinkered in its handling of Chinese news. Its task … is to present a sanitized, ideologically acceptable picture of China for consumption mainly by the foreign media in BJ itself." [page 54]

Jasper Becker on foreign media in China:

“It was easy to condemn domestic reporting in China by Chinese journalists as entirely the product of the ideological imperatives of the Communist Party. It was something else to realize that Western reporters were guilty of the same sin, albeit in a more subtle way.” [page 65]

Roger Smith on foreign media in China:

“Before Tiananmen the political story was sometimes a hard one to sell. Any script containing more than a couple of Chinese names was considered too confusing for viewers. What editors preferred were pictures, which China provides in abundance. Hence the clichéd stories; stockpiles old cabbages each winter in Beijing and the new restaurant serving rats in Guangzhou, rosy-cheeked children bundled up for school and old folks doing Taiqi in the Shanghai dawn.” [page 84]

Of course, to get the full context of these quotes, you should really check out the original book, which is available in university libraries and even on Amazon for about $15 new, $10 used.

China and IT offshoring

I wrote a China-related post for my blog on Computerworld. The post responds to a Computerword article describing a PR roadshow to drum up support for international IT "offshoring" projects

I've written about this issue before, specifically about how China has a tough time competing with India in this sector.

Precis for Porter's Reporting the News from China

A few months back I wrote about the importance of writing precis, as a way of keeping track of many of the books I've read in the course of my graduate studies, and preparing for research papers and (eventually) my thesis.

Precis are invaluable. Try writing a research paper, and refering to a quote in a book you have read for an earlier class. Most likely you'll remember the subject, but do you remember the book's title or author? Or, you want to brush up on what a seminal title said. Is it a good use of your time to re-read the entire book?

It's situations like these where precis come in handy. They can eliminate hunting through old notes and old papers, or searching among multiple texts about the same topic at the library. Properly written precis can save time when you need that crucial quote, or want to evaluate the differences of opinions among different scholars who discuss the same issue.

There are two ways to prepare a precis: Reading the entire book, and then immediately writing down the answers to the main questions as described in my precis outline. Or, reading the book and preparing the precis simultaneously, taking extra care to transcribe quotes and page numbers. The former method is quicker, the latter method is better if you anticipate quoting from the book in your own work. Now, as I prepare to start my thesis proposal, I am mostly using the latter method.

I would also like to note that I don't write precis for every book I read, especially for those books assigned as class reading and textbooks which I know I will never use for papers or future research. At other times, I prepare short precis, no more than a page or two long, if only one chapter of the book is relevant to my research or areas of interest.

Below I am going to give an example of my most recent precis, for Robin Porter (ed.) Reporting the News from China. It is quite thorough, as it is one of the few sources about the inner workings of the Xinhua Englsh-langauge wire service.

A few additional things I would like to mention about precis:

1) Writing your precis on a computer, as opposed to writing it on paper, holds several advantages. First, it's easier to copy, backup, and transfer, compared to a paper precis. And secondly, writing a precis on a computer allows you to search for it months or years later, when you might not remember the title or author. Mac OSX and Windows XP allow you to search all the documents on your hard drive by content as well as title, meaning if you need to find a precis and you are sure it contains the phrase "NATO" all you need to do is open the search progam in OSX or XP, enter the term, check off that you want to search the content of files, indicate you want to search the entire hard drive, and wait a few minutes while the program brings up all the hits, including the precis containing "NATO"

2) Writing a precis usually takes several sessions, and I always make sure to save the current session under a new file name, usually by changing the date at the end of the file name. So, for instance, the Porter precis below is porterChinaReporting081005.doc, but I also have two earlier versions ending in 080205 and 080505.

3) After writing a new version, I always email a copy of the precis to myself, usually to my work email address. This is to ensure that I am not stuck if my computer dies (not likely, it's a Mac!).

4) In my precis, I always use page numbers when I quote or summarize an author. It is absolutely necessary to do this if you want to save yourself a lot of trouble when preparing footnotes or bibliographies.

5) I like to transcribe direct quotes, if the quote is particularly observant about a certain issue. It reduces the chances of misrepresenting another author later on, and also is useful for inserting quotes into research papers, proposals, and theses.

OK, without further ado, the precis for Porter's Reporting the News from China. Note I left the "Thesis" line empty, as it is a collection of other people's writings, not just Porter:

Precis: Reporting the News from China, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 1992

Read: August 2005

Author: Robin Porter, ed.

Author’s Intentions: To examine the role of foreign reporters and journalists in China, who are responsible for creating the reports which lets people all over the world understand China. The struggles they face, the prejudices they have, etc. will be examined in the reports in this book. Also examines the effect foreign journos had upon their Chinese counterparts. China’s foreign-targeted media will also be examined.

Thesis:

Type of History: Accounts of foreign reporters, editors, and advisors working in the China in the late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s

Structure of argument: The experiences and opinions of foreign journos working in China are used to give a picture of Western and Chinese newsgathering practices, issues, and problems.

Evidence used: Based on personal experiences and opinions. Very few sources cited; as one writer put it, he was writing an essay, not a scholarly work

Ideological orientation: This book is written from an Anglo-American journalism perspective, and is generally critical of Chinese journalism. Only one person (Robin Porter) attempts to defend Chinese journalism practices or put Chinese journalism in the context of political, social, and employment environments of China.

Strengths of book: Western complaints about Chinese journalism, and Western news media outlets' shallow attitudes toward reporting news about China are well known. But this collection of essays excels at detailing the inner workings of Chinese English-language news media (Xinhua, and China Daily) and also the day-by-day issues that arose reporting Tiananmen Square demonstrations in May and June of 1989

Weaknesses: 1989 was not just something that affected Tiananmen and Beijing … it had repercussions across the country, but there are no reports or observations about what happened to media or journos in other parts of the country.

Contributions to the Field: Books written by Western journalists who were in Beijing in 1989 are common (Jan Wong’s Red China Blues, etc.) This is the only book I am aware of that really gives a behind-the-scenes look of the affect on China’s English-language media at that time.

Outline:

Robin Porter: “Shaping China’s News: Xinhua’s Duiwaibu on the threshold of change”

My summary: Porter has a generally negative appraisal of XNA DWB, for many reasons. It would have been good to get some figures on output.

DWB – “External Department”

Page 1 “XNA remains something of an enigma to Western students of Chinese affairs.”

1 – “The conflict between the reporting of news and the more manipulative function of propaganda, apparent in the reports of the Yanan era, has persisted ever since in the work of Xinhua, not least in its external news service, the Duiwaibu.”

1 – essential to understanding duiwaibu is understanding the role of party and politics upon editorial content. However, other factors include skills and attitude of journos, various structural factors, which affect what the journo may write

1 – she seems to be writing about 1979 in particular – China Daily not yet on the scene; therefore XNA had a monopoly of distribution of official news abroad

2 DWB is under the National Division of XNA (as opposed to International Division) and is responsible for disseminating news abroad about developments in China

3 – DWB divided into sections: political, economic, cultural, and work on two teams – morning and evening. “Each section puts out stories about events in China within its sphere that are considered likely to be of interest to outsiders, or that are of political significance in the view of the party.”

3 – most work done in Chinese and then translated into English. French, Spanish, Arabic stories translated from English. Russian and Japanese, directly from Chinese.

3 where stories come from:

- XNA branches in local cities and towns
- Reports from national or local papers (not XNA)
- Special journals or handouts from government organs
- Memos from ministries, especially Defense and FM
- Investigations by DWB staff (mostly around BJ)
- Investigations by domestic XNA staff (mostly around BJ)

4 DWB workflow
- DWB section journo will write up story in English, using his own research or other sources
- Section head may (or may not) review
- Foreign proofer reviews, corrects, comments
- Goes to daily editor, who will give it careful scrutiny – may approve, send back for revision, or withdraw it (rare)
- Quick inspection by head of DWB or other senior editor
- Immediate transmission on wire, and publication in Xinhua Bulletin

4 – Porter doesn’t believe all XNA output is propaganda – doesn’t take into account tensions between news and propaganda functions of XNA

5 “… the journalist is faces with the dilemma that he must both report accurately on all aspects of life and single-mindedly propagate the policies and perceptions of the party.”

5 – XNA director reports to Prop Department of the party. Prop Department responsible to the party Central Committee and has to make sure its policies are reported and widely understood

5 – “The senior staff of Xinhua and of the DWB would therefore meet regularly to discuss the work of the CC, and in particular lay down guidelines for more junior staff as to what should be covered in news reporting and how in general terms it should be presented.”

6 – all staff have to attend regular meetings of political study

6 – “Final reinforcement of the party line occurred with the editorial checks on the work of DWB staff. As noted above, news would be normally either be taken from an existing official newspaper or be written from scratch with guidance from senior journalists within the DWB … Occasional errors of syntax in English translation would get through this process, but errors of line almost never did; the DWB carried responsibility for ensuring that China’s policies were understood overseas, and political errors were unacceptable.”

6 – in 1979 DWB reported almost exclusively good news; most westerners wouldn’t even consider many stories to be news. Domestic (Chinese) writing style carried over to overseas stories. Conflicting views of different officials were presented side by side without any interpretation. Members of the public, when quoted, were always saying something good about the party

7 – “… fundamental shifts in policy over the years meant that what was painted white at one stage must be represented as black at another.”

7 – “Theoretical articles based on contributions by senior party officials to PD or Red Flag were reproduced verbatim and usually without comment …”

7 – large groups of people (i.e. delegates to the NPC) described as speaking with one voice

7 – tendency to drop items for political reasons when they were clearly still news

7 – omit mention of developments of which the world was already aware because they were considered to be damaging to China

8 – some staff skilled at recognizing news, others had no idea or training about what should be stressed or reported. Vagueness was common. Depending on PD for reporting of news and facts of an event was common, rather than doing original reporting.

8 – obsolete terms, vague terms, cliché common

9 – in 1979, new emphasis on economics, even though few reporters had any economic expertise. Problem with numbers (translating from Chinese) that end in 000.

9 – staff were hired for English ability, few had journo training or expertise in an area of coverage. Many had no interest in journo work, but were assigned there

10 – in 1979, foreign news outlets did use XNA copy (as determined by XNA Research Section, which monitored this). FEER, SCMP, AFP, Reuters, AP, Time and Newsweek. But no direct contact between news org and its consumers – hard for them to conceptualize how foreigners lived or viewed China

11 – some journos didn’t care whether foreigners understood …. Porter says this is result of centuries old ethnocentric attitudes of Chinese

11 – management ignored genuine talent among younger staff. Also, lack of clear career path within XNA

12 – DWB did not get adequate cooperation from XNA bureaus in SH, GZ, NJ.

13 – editors not used to fast-paced newsgathering … would sometimes mull over stories for days. Deadlines not important

13 – equipment primitive. Only one Xerox for entire DWB. A few word processors started appearing in 1979, though

14 – staff didn’t have access to training, or even books about how to write news stories



John David: “Pioneering Xinhua’s International Journalism Training Center

16 – Success of China Daily in usurping XNA as the main source for news about China probably led XNA to hire Thomson Foundation to set up journo training center in 1984

17 – XNA payroll: 6500 and 100 external bureaus, compared to 1200 for Reuter and 35 foreign bureaus

17 – XNA “titular head” Director General Mu Qing, but effective controller, Guo Chaoren, 45ish ex reporter who spoke Russian but no English

- Guo had liberal attitude, “ridding agency from shackles of Communist ideology”

19-20 – problem with gullibility, unlike young western journos, who are cynical. Author cites fake training presser, featuring Canadian dressed up as US Naval Attaché announcing a nuclear incident near SH. Students believed it, two even went back to the office to report it but were stopped before it could be released and cause an international incident

21 – Training didn’t make a difference for some trainees. Example of XNA reporter sent to Zimbabwe, if he witnessed a tribal killing, would he report it? No, because of friendship between PRC and Zimbabwe and he wouldn’t want to upset that

* 22 – XNA is actually an important source of news in some foreign countries … in Tanzania, Reuter refused to supply news until bill was paid, so local Tanzanian journos depended on XNA briefs for foreign news coverage

23 – Every Saturday was a political meeting which all staff had to attend – relaying the party line on various topics. Three hours long in 1985, but dwindled to 30 minutes or were cancelled by 88

24 – Journos never ask probing questions … they are “receivers of alleged facts, never hunters.”

24 – CD is an exception, founding editor Feng Xiliang realized that foreign audience not so likely to swallow propaganda, and altered coverage accordingly. Lots of low level corruption stories, and in the early 80s he was called to be questioned by the Minister of Information four times per week on imagined transgressions.

________________

Jean Conley and Stephen Tripoli (former copy editors at CD in 86 and 87)

“Changes of line at China Daily: Fluctuating party policy or fluctuating control.”

Analysis of coverage of demonstrations in 1987 and 1989.

35 - Notes “propaganda typhoon” after June 4, 1989 …. CD coverage immediately changed to “victory” of crushing anti-government protests; also CD dropped to four pages for a short time

35 – Change in coverage the result of change in policy, or change in coverage?

36 – 1989 crisis – Propaganda Department in such disarray that no meetings (formerly once every two weeks) were held with CD editors from late April until after June 4

36 – Top Editor Chen Li’s policy during this time: Do less and do it later, in the absence of official guidance

37 Starting in late April, Zhao Ziyang ally Hu Qili told press that they could report on the demonstrations

PD controlled by conservative forces, printed editorials that inflamed the students

38 – Chen Li still cautious in May. Heard from contacts in Prop Department that Zhao Ziyang was losing struggle. Chen Li tended to follow XNA’s lead, which would shelter them later on. Also, as CD aimed at foreigners, not as regarded as severely as domestic press. Most 2nd tier editors below Chen were sympathizers with students, but only one staff was arrested, and for something not related to CD coverage






Kelly Haggart: “Chinese newsrooms in the aftermath of Tiananmen”

40 – Junior XNA staffers stopped work after editors suppressed a report, based on hospital accounts, that soldiers had been given amphetamines prior to clearing out Tiananmen and protesters had been shot with dum dm bullets forbidden by the Geneva convention. Journos demonstrated in the XNA compound, and some even demonstrated outside of senior editors’ apartments

41 – PD protested by highlighting stories from abroad that talked about students being killed by the government (i.e., Korea)

41 – China Daily editor didn’t come to work, and journos on duty, playing it safe, waited to see what XNA English wire would send over. Nothing came over that night or for several days

41-42 – PD journos put under house arrest and forced to write self criticisms. Others were fired or suspended. Editors from the army newspaper replaced the PD editorial board, and editors from provincial papers which had not seen massacres were brought in as well

44 – In the 1980s, it wasn’t old line communists who served as senior editors. The reason: the relatively liberal Hu Yaobang had been head of the CP Organization Department, which is charged with choosing senior editors of the newspapers. He had chosen people of a like mind for the newsrooms. PD changed a lot as a result in the 1980s, more human interest stories and stories about social problems, including investigative reporting.

Also, university requirement changed makeup of newsrooms. Journalism was relatively interesting work for a university grad in the arts, and they did not want to simply parrot the party line

The middle editors supported reformists like Zhao Ziyang and Hu Qili

45 – But Senior editors report directly to the propaganda department … their lives, homes, positions in society dependent upon toeing the party line .

46 – interesting trend: In the 1980s magazines weren’t under as tight a control regimen as the newspapers, and could publish investigative or critical stories. Many did, and these reports were written by moonlighting newspaper journos who wanted to speak their mind or report on things they liked (and earn some extra coin). The Propaganda Department realized that some of these magazines were getting out of control, and started cracking down before 1989. After the massacre, the trend was accelerated – hundreds were shut down.

46 – After massacre, party circulated doc to media orgs, stating that one percent of journos should be punished as an example (not including those directly involved in the demonstrations, these were to be treated as criminals)

46 – “During the crackdown, every journo in BJ had to confess the extend of their involvement in the protests.” Self-examination, criticism, articles and petitions were produced

49 – The party suspected senior XNA leaders of protecting younger journalists, and sent an investigation team several months after the massacre – why had no XNA journo been arrested, despite 6000 journos, half of whom are in BJ?

- Propaganda Dept kept a close eye on XNA, looking for evidence of sabotage – stories with double meanings, etc.

50 – “There is pride among BJ journalists about those few days of press freedom. For one thing, it showed the potential of Chinese journalists. For the first time they were allowed to act like real reporters and they did no worse at covering the story than their more experienced foreign counterparts. …. For almost all city people, no matter what they thought of the students and their hunger strike, that week of relative press freedom brought home to them the importance of more open, more enterprising media. Freedom of the press was no longer a complete abstraction.”



Mark Brayne: “Reporting the news from China: the problem of distance”

54 – Author’s assessment of XNA English wire: “Xinhua is strictly blinkered in its handling of Chinese news. Its task … is to present a sanitized, ideologically acceptable picture of China for consumption mainly by the foreign media in BJ itself.”

54 – “In the years between 1984 and 1987, I found Xinhua’s reporting on domestic affairs inadequate, often inaccurate, and always idiosyncratic. It could in no way be relied on to give a comprehensive or accurate picture of what was happening within China.”

** “In contrast, its foreign coverage, where this did no impinge on direct Chinese interests, was at that time refreshingly unbiased, and was incomparably more readable, informative and comprehensive, than for example, the Soviet news agency TASS at that stage. This was, needless to say, less to do with high editorial investigative standards at Xinhua than a reflection of how the foreign news was put together – generally in the form of a straight lift from Reuters.”



55 – Author doubts that Xinhua was opening up in the 1980s. Notes example of Heilongjiang forest fire coverage in 1987, it wasn’t clear, contained lots of drivel about soldiers going off to battle but no reliable facts. “This, it might be noted, was at a time at which the media were meant to be at their most open and honest. It was never really plain whether Xinhua was guilty of dishonesty or of plain journalistic incompetence.”

- Author also doubts China Daily, even though it was an importance source for foreign correspondents in BJ. “It was superficial and unreliable as the rest.”

* 55 – Xinhua and CD “excelled in endless soft stories about Wild Men or archaeological finds pushing further and further back the beginnings of Chinese civilization. They made cheerful reading … Yet all too often these were the items that were dictating what the outside world read about ‘cuddly, appealing, but odd’ China.”

57 – translators for foreign press who couldn’t speak Chinese were provided by the Diplomatic Service Bureau. Author suspects their “news judgment”


Jasper Becker: “Ideological bias in reporting China”

65 – “It was easy to condemn domestic reporting in China by Chinese journalists as entirely the product of the ideological imperatives of the Communist Party. It was something else to realize that Western reporters were guilty of the same sin, albeit in a more subtle way.”

71 – Independent journo who documented Tibetan environmental holocaust was told by major news agencies that this story couldn’t run because it would jeopardize their Beijing bureau.

72 – “ingrained prejudice of editors at home”. Editors regard China as a quaint, ancient oriental society. Stories that have some funny or touching angle are more appealing.


Roger Smith “Television and Tiananmen”

84 – “Before Tiananmen the political story was sometimes a hard one to sell. Any script containing more than a couple of Chinese names was considered too confusing for viewers. What editors preferred were pictures, which China provides in abundance. Hence the clichéd stories; stockpiles old cabbages each winter in Beijing and the new restaurant serving rats in Guangzhou, rosy-cheeked children bundled up for school and old folks doing Taiqi in the Shanghai dawn.”

84 – Mandarin speaking journos more common in print, owing to TV journos being moved from post to post more frequently. Language barrier means journos can’t get as close to the story, have to depend on translators.


Simon Long “The winds that keep blowing: China and its foreign press corps since June 1989”

94 – author notes that Chinese newsrooms are still populated by the people who were around in the early 1960s

97 – Apparent popularity of BBC and VOA Chinese broadcasts, viewed as more reliable than official Chinese media (from the BBC, 24.5 hours in Mandarin and 5.25 in Cantonese per week, p. 108)

* 99 – “It is my contention that the impression a general reader would take away from following China in the newspapers since 1989 matches in many respects one that the CCP would want to convey, and is false. I would summarize this into five central myths about China promulgated by the BJ authorities: (a) that China is a socialist country, (b) that the CCP is a strong central government, (c) that ‘the third generation of leaders with Jiang Zemin at its core is stable and united; (d) that economic growth is conductive to political stability, and (e) that China never compromises on issues affecting its internal affairs.”

107 – “In every decade since the communist victory in 1949, China has been shaken by an unforeseen political upheaval.”

*** this jives what I have observed for years … that major crises rear their heads every decade or two .... Boxer Rebellion, 1911 revolution, movements and upheavals in the late teens and 20s, 1930s Japanese invasion and Civil War ....



Robin Porter: Appendix one: A day in the life of the Duiwaibu

115 Describes how stories are chosen: at the previous evenings meeting of the senior cadres, XNA decided that coverage should be on explaining the policy of economic readjustment, following the concerns of the party and the lead of the domestic press.

Also, DXP was expected to give important speech that evening, which morning crew at DWB should cover

PD carries text of the speech, which XN English begins translating, other staff work on a related story: Deng meeting with American trade delegation.

Another works on digest of readers letters printed in the PD criticizing privilege among party cadres, which is the subject of a current party campaign

115-116 – work interrupted by call from PRC Foreign Ministry, which says a prominent American leader has died, and Deng XP offers his condolences. XNA English staff drop work to make a write up

116 – “Editor of the Day” is a senior editor from one of the topic sections, on this day, from the Econ beat

116 – principle news check: “The editor is concerned that the story should be accurate and complete in journalistic terms, that any translation from domestic news sources should be correctly done, and that the political line of the story should reflect the party’s will on the matter being reported”

116 – Two stories from Sichuan, one relayed by post, the other gathered over the phone with a talk with local correspondent

117 – morning stories on their way. Editors decide that a Workers Daily editorial explaining economic readjustment will be translated, identified as from that paper, and not elaborated with any comment.

117 – domestic newspaper have picked up story about a trial, and as that provides a lead, XNA decides to carry it on the English wire

117 – From the Political Section, a story about remarks from vice premier suggesting China is claiming extraterritoriality is kept on the back burner. Normally this would play, as the remarks are from a senior leader, but one of the foreign copy editors says that this could cause a stir, and editors decide to play it cautiously.

118-119 – discussion of other stories chosen, and the sources: provincial papers, XNA bureau reports translated into English, XNA DWB reporters going out and reporting on their own cultural stories, something about a solar panel factory, the performance and reception by a visiting Shakespeare troupe (which has an angle, reinforcing the Sino British friendship). Quality varies, some are great, others are rejected as poor quality or not news

119 – story about African military delegation observing Chinese naval exercises.

* 119 – XNA has two journos covering the banquets given for visiting delegations, this group returns in the evening to write up their formulaic “protocol” stories.

1190120 – “In another office, a journalist has been in private conversation with the Minnistry of Defense about an armed clash that occurred some two hours earlier on the border with Vietnam. He sits down to write an urgent piece about the incident, which, after approval by the night editor, he takes immediately up to the office where finished stories are sent out on the wire.”

120 – list of the days stories – note there are 20 in Porter’s list, all domestic, but Lexis Nexis has 63, including many foreign stories about China and not about China. See note from Appendix 2, below



Robin Porter: Appendix two: The pattern of China’s external news

121 – repetition in output of DWB: possible to classify stories according to various sub-types according to the subject matter, and to “determine over time the relative importance attached by the party to the release of different types of “news.”

Porter chooses May 1979 to analyze, a “typical month” which would not be distorted by the intrusion of the NPC or other party conference, and before intrusion of training in western journalistic techniques

XNA Bulletin that month contained 1848 news items **I measured 1856 using Lexis Nexis, but porter says her stories for May 2 were incomplete. 1200 items came from Guojibu, originating overseas, and concerning international events. Remaining 648 items by DWB in BJ, about developments in China.

- 90 principally political in content
- 120 dealt with econ developments
- 67 cultural affairs (according to XNA’s definition)
- 17 – health and medicine
- 16 – sports
- 338 – “protocol” stories, recording comings and goings of delegations

122 – Most significant political stories concerned “current campaigns” – seeking truth from facts, party privilege, discipline among cadres and society, democracy, the effects of the Gang of Four

122 “The past could be and was frequently invoked in support of current objectives: no fewer than thirteen stories were put out to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, while two others recalled the revolutionary careers of Li Dazhao and Xu Deheng”

122 – “Some stories intended to appeal to specific segments of the Chinese population, even though they formed part of the news for external consumption.” Ex: stories directed at PLA, and a speech aimed at young women

others directed at audiences outside of China: three Taiwan stories, inc. news of a Taiwanese defection to China, and 15 stories of progress involving national minorities

123 – economic stories

124 – Cultural section – apparently the sick puppy of the divisions. Included reports on archaeological finds and historical relics

125 – Protocol stories briefly mentioned, then footnotes, then the end of the book.

... And that is what I will use later on, when I begin to write my proposal and eventually my thesis. It takes a little more time than simply reading a book and scribbling a few notes in a notebook, but the long-term value of a precis stored on my computer is significant.

Patterns of upheaval in modern Chinese history

I'm in the process of writing a precis for Robin Porter's (Ed.) Reporting the News from China (London: RIIA, 1992). One of the essays is by Simon Long, entitled “The winds that keep blowing: China and its foreign press corps since June 1989.” On page 107 he observes,

“In every decade since the communist victory in 1949, China has been shaken by an unforeseen political upheaval.”

As a student of modern Chinese history, I have long believed that a similar pattern has existed, but for far longer: Since the late Qing, China has experienced local or widespread upheavals caused by a variety of domestic and external factors. Starting in 1900, and up until 1989, China has experienced a major upheaval affecting multiple urban areas and/or provinces about every 10 to 25 years. In 1900 it was the Boxer Rebellion. In 1911, the Republican revolution. In 1930s, civil war and the Japanese invasion. In the late 1940s, the Communists coming to power. In 1958, the Great Leap Forward and its aftermath. In the mid-1960s, the Cultural Revolution. In 1989, student protests in Tiananmen and other major cities.

One could argue that this pattern of major upheavals stretches back even further: Taiping Rebellion, the Opium Wars and other major foreign incursions, etc.

Additionally, besides the major upheavals, more localized or limited upheavals have occurred across the country on a more frequent basis. Yuan Shikai's revolt in the teens, warlordism and associated battles in the teens and 20s, student movements in the late teens, massacres in southern cities in the 20s, student movements in the mid to late 1970s, 1986, and 1987, and now these rural revolts and riots we see mentioned in the New York Times and other press outlets every few months.

If this pattern holds, are we in store for another major upheaval? I sure hope not, but I fear that a convergence of social and political factors may contribute to just such a scenario. I think technology may play a role, as I outlined in an earlier post .

Fleshing out a content analysis involving China and Vietnam

I used the morning commute to flesh out my idea for an expanded study of China's official attitudes and policies toward Vietnam, based on a content analysis of Xinhua stories from the late 70s through the late 90s.

This could be a two-stage content analysis. The first stage: a "dumb" computer-assisted counts of lead paragraph refs to Vietnam, China, the USSR, Kampuchea, the United States, territory, trade, and maybe overseas Chinese, and combinations of these terms, to measure their relative rankings amongst all Xinhua stories, and their correlation to each other. I would tentatively hypothesize that spikes would correlate to bilateral crises or changes in the geopolitical landscape, developments in Vietnam's relations with the Chinese-supported Khmer Rouge government and later rebels, as well as changes in China's leadership and Vietnam's leadership.

While the first stage computer-assited content analysis is good for comparison and correlation between variables, it is not good for extracting meaning from the stories -- criticism, support, indifference, etc. Therefore, the second stage would involve a human-coded content analysis of Xinhua news items that mention Vietnam in the lead paragraph. The coding would attempt to measure if these items are directly supportive of Vietnam or its leaders, indirectly supportive, directly critical, indirectly critical, or neutral. As I learned in my earlier study of Xinhua references to Vietnam and overseas Chinese in the late 1970s, there was a period in which almost all criticism of Vietnam was indirect, i.e., Xinhua would cite third party criticism of Vietnam -- a Parisian newspaper slamming Vietnam for the refugee crisis, or Fidel Castro denouncing Hanoi over the invasion of Kampuchea. I believe this indirect criticism is an indication that China sees, or wants to see, certain issues as being of international concern as opposed to a bilateral dispute, or segments of the international community back China over Vietnam. Measuring direct and indirect support or criticism of Vietnam would be useful in determining how Chinese policy is tied into larger international issues.

New Harvard Extension School website!

The Harvard Extension School just updated its website, and I gotta say, it looks pretty slick at first glance. They cut out about half of the links that used to run down the left side of the page, gave it a modern look, and feature prominently a teaser about an Extension School student, someone who is taking classes part time while she works during the day. And the tagline: "What are you doing tonight?"

The school is obviously trying to appeal to local folks who are working full time, who might be interested in the Extension School offerings.

I haven't explored the site itself, but will give it a spin later this week.

One small design issue: The description of the profiled student, Jaya Kumar, is on the right side of the page, but her photo is on the left side of the page, separated by other text and photos. There's no caption or image text either, to let people know that Jaya is that person.

A rock and roll past in Taiwan

Tomorrow I'm going to a wedding. Normally, in my Harvard blog I don't write about what I do in my spare time, except to say how it impacts my studies, but in this case I will, because attending this wedding keeps me in touch with my life in Taiwan, where I lived from 1993 to 1999.

The people who are getting married are Bob Hsiung, and his bride-to-be, Jaq Chai. Like me, Bob is from the Boston area, but in the mid-1990s, we happened to meet in Taiwan and started a band and a friendship that has lasted 'til this day. I remember when we met -- 1995, a going away party for a mutual friend named Vince Morkri.

I had been in some Taipei cover bands (The Librarianz, the Freds, and Swampus) but was angling to do some original music. Bob was a bassist, and he was game. We talked about music, and playing music, and, as I recall, he knew a drummer from California named Pauline Mu, and the M-9s (named after a Chinese missle) was born. We wrote a bunch of original songs, played around some Taipei clubs (and even Taipei City Hall!) and released a tape, "Love Songs." All of the songs were in English, except a cover of an old Shanghai big band tune, "Wo yao ni de ai" ("I want your love") which was in turn a cover of an old American big band tune. We didn't make much of an impression on the local scene except at one sparsely-attended show in a basement dive called "Scum". A Taiwanese drummer named Steve Tsai came up to us afterward and said he liked the band and wanted to jam with us. This was early 1996, I was about to go off on a six-month backpacking trip thorugh China and SE Asia, so nothing came of it ....

... Until I came back to Taipei in early 1997, and decided to get back into the music scene. Bob was into it, he was, at that point, in a loud band called Smut, but this band had a guitarist named Andrew Watson, fast and heavy as hell (and can speak Mandarin unbelievably well), who was also coincidentally from the Boston area. Somehow we heard about Steve Tsai, or he heard about us, and we got together to jam, and it worked out, and Feiwu (廢物樂隊, Good for nothing, wastrel, waste material) was born.

Unlike the M-9s, Feiwu was able to plug into the Taipei original rock scene much more readily. It was a small community then, but was just reaching a critical mass in terms of bands forming, people coming to see shows on the weekends, and everyone going down to Kenting in April to attend the Spring Scream festival. Bands like LTK (Luo Tsui Kee - or something like that, I can't speak Taiwanese!), Clippers (jiazi), 1976, Backquarter (si fen zhi yi), Medicine Jar (yao guan), Ladybug (piao chong) and May Day (wu yue tian) were starting to draw fans to Vibe and a few other clubs.

The fact that we wrote songs in Mandarin, had a Taiwanese drummer, and a beer-friendly attitude helped us get our own little place in the underground scene. We recorded and released two CDs on our own (Wu Yi Lei Ju [物以類聚, "Birds of a Feather Stick Together"] and 跳火圈 ("Ring of Fire"]), were at one point signed to Crystal Records (but never saw a dime!), were included in a bunch of underground compilations, and played all over the island. You can see some photos and sample some of our tunes at the official Feiwu website, which was created in 1998 and is still online.

And we were close friends. It's kind of a cliche that you see in movies ("Georgia" springs to mind) but in our spare time, even when we weren't rehearsing, recording, or performing, we were hanging out, at clubs, concerts, Bob's apartment, cheap restaurants, etc. It was a blast.

And of course, it came to an end. I left Taiwan in mid 1999; the other guys continued on for a year or so, but then Bob and Andrew came back to the Boston area, too, to work and be with family. We could have gotten together to play, but never did, because Steve wasn't there, and it just wouldn't be the same.

Except once .... Steve came out to Boston in the depth of winter in 2003; he was here for a month studying English and all of us got together for a series of practice sessions in Allston. We didn't do any new stuff, but it was a hell of a lot of fun playing the old stuff, and hanging out at "Sully's" afterwards for pool and beer. We made a DVD out of video footage shot from the practice sessions; contact me if you are interested in getting a copy ... it's probably the only visual record of Feiwu playing together.

And getting back to the original point of this post: Congratulations, Bob. You've been a good friend for ten years, through some fun times, some weird times, and now, some stable times, and I wish you the best wih Jaq. It's kind of late, but if you need a wedding band, all the other guys will be in town for the event, and can play " 我愛台灣啤酒" if the gear is available ...

New Computerworld post about cracking the Chinese market

I just wrote a new post on my Computerworld blog about difficulties American companies experience in the Chinese market, related to restrictions on their activities or competition from government-sponsored initiatives. You can read the post here.

It kind of ties in with something I was reading in a book last night, Chinese foreign policy: Theory and practice (edited by Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh, 1995.) One of the contributing writers, Bill Kirby (now Dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences) touched upon the "myth" of the great Chinese market. I think a lot of American companies are discovering that profits are very elusive in China, but they are afraid to pull out, fearing that they will be left in the dust.

ALM thesis writers' meeting/Revisiting Vietnam?

I went to my first ALM thesis writers meeting last night. These are sessions organized by Professor Ostrowski to let graduate students hash out some of their ideas for theses, as well as discuss issues related to research, resources, dealing with thesis advisors. etc. Professor Ostrowski, who moderates the discussion, lets students talk about their individual projects or areas of interest, which is helpful and very interesting.

Some of the more intriguing theses involve deciphering "Ghost Scrolls" by the Chinese Qing dynasty painter Luo Pen (not sure of the spelling); archaeological research on a circa 1607 British fort in Maine; a comparison of anti-Communist policies in the U.S. and Malaysia in the 1950s; and a study of Jordanian attitudes regarding American policies. One or two of the ideas discussed at the meeting were in advanced stages of research; but others were still in the proposal revision stage, and a few (including mine) were not even proposals -- we were looking for feedback from others about research, or advice on how to narrow down potential thesis topics.

I related to everyone the trouble I've had selecting a potential thesis topic. I outlined my general research question -- what China's English-language media can tell us about China, Chinese policies, and China's views of the outside world -- and discussed my proposed methodology. I then talked about three potential topics which I have discarded, or am unable to finesse:

- A computer-assisted content analysis of China's territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Problem: Xinhua has very few hits for the 1980s -- it would be hard for me to draw conclusions based on a handful of stories

- Chinese Nationalism, as expressed in the Xinhua News Agency

Problem: identifying indicators [keywords] for nationalism; and parsing whether such references are simply a repetition of stories that appear in the Xinhua domestic service or an attempt to shape foreign readers' understanding of China.

- An increase in references to Chinese history in Xinhua -- a reflection of nationalism, or something else?

Problem: Which historical references to study, and how can I determine that they are evidence of nationalism, vs. simply Chinese people/journalists wanting to look at their roots/promote tourism/commemorate an important anniversary/etc.?

I also brought up my fallback topic ... expanding the Vietnam study I completed for Professor Kuhn's Chinese Emigration in Modern Times class in the Spring. I know how I would need to proceed with this, in terms of expanding the methodology and developing a more specific topic, but one thing that has held me back is my poor international relations background. Even though I have read a lot about Chinese foreign policy, and the Chinese government, and the disputes between China and Vietnam, I haven't taken any classes on international relations or foreign policy. Until the ALM thesis writers' meeting, I assumed this would be a handicap -- I would be missing the theoretical background and expertise from people who have really studied the relations between states.

But Professor Ostrowski said I shouldn't necessarily view this as a handicap. He said a survey course on international relations might be counterproductive (too broad) and I can get a lot of the "small strokes" of history through selective readings. He and one other graduate student also recommended I get back in touch with Professor Kuhn.

All of this is good advice. One thing I will also do in the next few weeks is tackle some more readings I picked up from Widener while I was on campus for the meeting. Some are on foreign policy, and one is on China's foreign language media (the Porter book, which I mentioned in my last post.)