Amy K. Bell

Governance and Authority in China:

All in the Family

I recently attended a Visiting Scholar Lunchtime Talk held by the Center for China Studies at Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies. (Go here for a listing of events; I really recommend them and what’s more, they’re free!)

The lecture was titled “Corporate Governance in China: An Investigation of the Interdependent Model” and was delivered by Prof. Liu Pingqing of the Department of Business Administration at the Beijing Institute of Technology. Professor Liu had taken case studies of over one hundred State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and over one thousand Private Enterprises (PEs) whose owners are from Mainland China.
Continue reading…

Vaccine wars

Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine specialist and a colleague of my father’s at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has this feature article written about him in the latest issue of Philadelphia magazine.

I’m sorry but not entirely surprised to hear that he’s received death threats and hate mail for his status as a major influencer of our nation’s child vaccine program at the CDC, and for inventing a rotavirus vaccine which he developed at Merck and for which he received a substantial sum as its sole inventor. Citing a study done by a British gastroenterologist that claims a connection between autism and the MMR vaccine, certain members of the autism community remain very outspoken about their beliefs against vaccines.

And that’s just what this is about – belief, held so tightly as to wrench and twist scientific debate into a storm of emotions. Just read the comments after the article. Things get personal; the passionate language of Heroism and Villainy is tossed around. I disagree with author Jason Fagone’s highly personal portrayal of Dr. Offit as a piece of rather yellow journalism. But for some perspective, this article comes after waves of slanderous attempts from the other side to dehumanize him and blame him as a person. That Dr. Offit’s intentions as a doctor and scientist are being libeled as evil, elitist, and deliberately harmful by frustrated parents is repulsive and sad. He is not the enemy; he is an expert. The absolute worst he could be is wrong.

***

Amazon – Vaccines: What Every Parent Should Know, by Paul Offit and Louis M. Bell

War of the Loaded Word: ‘propaganda’

Today Shanghaiist linked to a mini-war going on between Peter Foster of the Telegraph and Australian reporter Patrick Whiteley of China Daily over the Telegraph’s use/overuse of the term ‘propaganda’. The Telegraph referred to a government campaign on education as propaganda. Whiteley returned with a critical piece, arguing that through its consistent use of the term ‘propaganda’ to describe Communist party publicity, western media outlets like the Telegraph proclaim their immovable bias against China’s socialist system. He says that the Party won the war of favor and has a mandate to govern. I couldn’t access China Daily online for some reason, but here’s a BBS posting of Whiteley’s article

In his reply, Peter Foster of the Telegraph accuses Mr. Whiteley of spinning propaganda for the Chinese government’s ‘mouthpiece’, China Daily. He contends that the White House opening a Facebook page to promote the Obama administration to young people is not propaganda, because “in America the young people are free to throw as many rotten tomatoes at Mr. Obama as they like”. For Foster, the freedom to reply makes what Obama’s party does on Facebook different from Communist party publicity campaigns.

I’m not trying to debate that here. The Chinese would name their government’s efforts and the Obama administration’s efforts with the same word — xuanchuan, 宣传. It’s a neutral word closer to ‘publicity’ or ‘dissemination’ and doesn’t carry the negative connotations that it does in English.

Mao Zedong found you through Friendfinder!

I’ll just say this. News outlets are organizations run by people, and it is in our nature to create spin. We’re not Vulcans; it requires immense effort for humans to actually remain neutral in their communications.

Now for my blanket-statement interpretations of what are perhaps truths, sometimes (don’t worry, I’ve seen the bumper stickers…don’t believe everything you think):

Westerners are amazed by the straightforward, blatant mandates the CP uses to promote itself: “Love China, Love Socialism”, etc. We marvel at those translations, thinking, ‘does the general population really think in those terms?’ The Chinese struggle to see their nation jabbed at under the spotlight of western media attention. ‘Do the westerners really think stripping something naked for all to see is the proper way to deal with its problems?’ Both wonder, ‘how can they be so hypocritical?’

As someone who once worked in the Publicity/Propaganda department (officially the 宣传与公共关系办公室) at a Chinese public university, and who has both Communist and WWII-era U.S. Navy and Marines propaganda hanging on the walls of her home…I have no real authoritative answers. In wars of loaded words, I can’t think of anyone who would. Maybe Spock.

____________________________________________

*Update: How about ‘torture’ and ‘harsh techniques’ for loaded words? Heretical Ideas Blog

Language learning : politics :: flower : pollen

On a lark, I Googled “people learning Chinese in the U.S.” and found several articles mentioning the Confucius Institutes — Chinese government-sponsored centers found all over the world that are working for the promotion of Chinese language and culture education. I found their website, CI Online, and had a look around. Introduction, promo news, some fun interactive language tools and my favorite, “The Moonlight Girl’s Songs“, a series of children’s music videos featuring a young woman I can only guess to be the Moonlight Girl.

Continue reading…