The workers of Danwei were overpowered by Communist sloth during the October National Day holiday. But we're back and regular posting will resume today.
Thank you to all readers emailing about free wireless hotspots all over China. We will be compiling all the listings over the next week and publishing them.
In the meantime, some links:
- The China Heritage Newsletter is an online quarterly edited by Bruce Gordon Doar and Geremie R. Barmé. From their blurb:
It is an up-to-date digest of recent developments in all major areas related to Chinese heritage, and is based on a continuous assessment and collation of the latest archaeological finds, conferences, exhibitions, publications and media debates, both in Chinese and other relevant languages.
The current issue focuses on Xinjiang.
- If you are looking for free wireless Internet in Xiamen, visit What's On Xiamen.
- The new Insider's Guide to Beijing is out: go to their Insider's Guide web site for information about ordering the book or see their list of other recommended books about China (disclosure: your correspondent is a contributing writer to the guidebook).
- Finally, during the October holiday, U.S. megablogger Instapundit linked, without comment, to Danwei's defence of Yahoo's activities in China, resulting in many critical emails and a slew of hate mail. The funniest response is reproduced below:
MEME ALERT! “EVIL BABY BATH” VIRUS DETECTED IN YOUR POST
by Hu Yue
Dear Danwei,
While to most readers, it might appear that your argument against boycotting Yahoo! was simply specious, the Norton Team has some great news for you:
It’s not your fault.
Symantec’s Norton Anti-Meme 2005 Software has detected the presence of the virus/meme ”EVIL BABY BATH” in your post “Boycotting Yahoo! Will Not Help Freedom Of Expression In China.”
MEME/VIRUS DEFINITION:
“EVIL BABY BATH,”aka "Don't Throw the Good Bath Water of Media Growth Out With the Babies of Evil Corporate Complicity," aka “The Growth of Media Will Solve Everything,” aka “Information – Even Without Wisdom, Fairness or Justice – Will Set Us All Free.”
DESCRIPTION OF VIRUS:
If your writing gets infected with this meme, the following symptoms usual present themselves.
Symptom 1. ASSUMING ALL BATHWATER IS GOOD BATHWATER. AND THAT BATHWATER IS FINITE AND UNREPLACEABLE
You tend to equate the universal imperative of free-thinking human beings to be critical of and take action against specific instances of evil (i.e., throwing out evil babies) with the media’s unprovable belief that more access to media (i.e., media growth bathwater) is always a greater good, no matter what conditions in which that growth occurs. This is a purported but critically ambiguous greater good, for instance, which should justify forgiving the actions of Jerry Yang’s IP-Address Collection and Storage Agency.
Therefore, you would criticize the efforts of those who call for a boycott, and mistakenly equate such a specific action with a negation of the hallowed bathwater of unqualified media growth.
The reality, however, is this: no matter how many evil babies you toss out of the bathtub, there’s always going to be more bathwater left over, not to mention the faucet across the room.
So, chill out. Let the boycotters do humanity a great service by expressing their right to boycott corporations.
And as for the media growth bathwater: Here’s what we can predict about the Holy Grail of unhindered growth of media: Nothing.
The nature of media – who owns it, what it is, etc, -- and the nature of our access to it changes so quickly, it’s really kind of hard to say what it actually is, from day to day.
In Thomas Paine’s day, for instance, a printed pamphlet was a really cool medium. Back then, you read a pamphlet. These days, the pamphlet reads you. So, the idea that “However it Grows, Any Growth is Good,” is so unspecific as to be unmeaningful anymore. Especially if you live in an environment where Big Brother frequently employs seriously long jail terms to clamp down on innocuous emails.
The growth of free anonymous ad-based email services would be really good if, for instance, such services were actually anonymous. Yahoo! and probably all other “free” web-based tools (gmail, hotmail, etc.) are apparently only anonymous to people who don’t have Yahoo!’s Hong Kong office telephone number and a court order from, er, um, anyone.
[Note to legal department: Check and see if Yahoo! actually got compensated for providing such information. If they got paid in anyway for providing confidential information, that would be REALLY interesting.]
Is the Internet in China an unqualified good thing for millions and millions? I don’t know. I can imagine a different universe where it’s equally big, but not as nasty.
Is profit-driven, highly censored-monitored-and-recorded media expansion, much of which is owned by the state, a good thing in all cases? I’m not so sure.
Maybe Yahoo! shutting its doors in China over a single instance of principle-over-profit would be a really good thing for 1/4th of humanity. It’s possible.
Symptom 2. FALLACIOUS LOGIC UNDERLYING SPECIOUS ARGUMENTS
But let’s come back to Earth for a moment: Boycotting Yahoo! or any American company operating in China doesn’t even come close to suggesting they pack up and leave. A boycott is designed to send a message, because the organizers of the boycott see value in the receiver receiving the message. Chinese who boycott Japanese products are clearly not saying, “I want the company that makes my hard-earned Sony Lifestyle destroyed forever.” What they are saying is, “Please rewrite your f---ing textbooks.”
Boycotting Yahoo! would have almost no effect on its viability in China – it would however send a much-needed, timely and appropriate message. Even if every single American IT company packed up its bags and left forever, this country would not and could not return to a pre-Internet condition.
Your comparing a specific thing – a legimate tool of expression known as a boycott – to a hyperbolic impossibility (shutting down the Chinese Internet, a community that is unlikely to be shut down by anyone).
Symptom 3. INABILITY TO SEE THAT BOYCOTTS ARE A CRITICALLY IMPORTANT KIND OF MEDIUM -- AND MAY BE OUR LAST
You lose sight of the fact that in a world increasingly managed by private corporations – operating in conjunction with hundreds of different governments by rules that are only transparent to highly-paid international law firms and supercomputers – a boycott is one of the most interesting forms of free speech available to humanity.
Indeed, just a few seconds before artificially-intelligent life takes over the planet or we blow ourselves up, the freedom NOT to purchase something will probably be the very LAST form of free speech we ever have.
NORTON ANTI-MEME SIDEBAR: BOYCOTTS FOR DUMMIES
A human being can go to jail for lying, stealing or murdering.
A corporation, on the other hand, cannot. No jail big enough, even if it were possible. And it’s not possible.
A human being is tied down by all kinds of moral, social and even philosophical considerations.
A corporation is not. It has one Prime Imperative: increase profits to shareholders. In the cases of big corporations, it usually has millions of shareholders – all of whom simply want to recoup profits from the corporation.
Which is to say, most public companies are like big Ouija boards being operated by millions of blind, cheese-seeking rats.
Predictably, this weird and unfair situation leads to some pretty f----ed-up situations.
Therefore, truly idealistic people (whom we should revere more than do these days) occasionally come up with mechanisms like boycotts. Boycotts almost never result in the destruction of a company, by the way, (as your infected article suggests). The goal of a boycott is almost always to change a specific behavior of the unjailable corporation, and to cease the boycott once t
Boycotts are a form of communication. In fact, it they are the perfect and perhaps only form of communication that is actually intelligible to a multinational, unjailable monster who thinks like a Ouija board operated by millions of cheese-seeking rats.
Because boycotts threaten the only consequence an almost perfectly amoral monster will listen to: The diminishment of its profits, which would go directly against its Prime Directive.
Corporations, by the way, don’t care HOW they make money. Which is useful if you’re interested in influencing their behavior. Corporations also know no shame. (Imagine a million cheese-seeking rats looking shameful. Can’t do it, can you?)
Which is why boycotts are a legitimate tool of expression, and why they sometimes work. Because once the corporation becomes convinced that a particular action – if continued – will result in diminished profits, it will do something else.
Wby, because every one of those millions of cheese-seeking rats dutifully read Who Ate My Cheese?
This brings us back to Jerry Yang:
Theoretically, yes, a big fat well-organized boycott of Yahoo! could very result in greater freedom of expression in China.
Indeed, it would lead to – and probably already has – resulted – in ONE SPECIFIC INSTANCE of greater freedom of expression in China: The boycott itself – even if only mounted by foreign users of Yahoo! – would add to the tally ONE MORE FREELY-EXPRESSED MESSAGE, a big message read and discussed by many.
The messsage is this: Dare to speak.
Symptom4: INTERPRETING CHINA’S NETIZENS’ LACK OF EXPRESSED ANNOYANCE AS HAVING ANY STATISTICAL RELEVANCE
Random Quote: “Never have so many done so little with so much.”
Random Horror Movie Quote: “Why is it so quiet in here?”
Symptom 5: INFECTIOUS WEBSITE COLOR ISSUES
Finally, if you indeed have contracted virus/meme ”EVIL BABY BATH,”your website might turn a really hip shade of grey and maroon. Disturbingly, this symptom itself can become contagious and start infecting other websites, such as, The Shanghai Daily. (Which means, of course, that the folks at Shanghai Daily aren’t really a bunch of unoriginal plagiaristic copycats. They’re just diseased.)
REMOVAL INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Download the Following Virus Definitions and Their Associated Subtext Codes:
- knee-jerk cynicism
- apathy with a slight hue of entitlement and well-educated defeatism
- corporate stockholm syndrome
2. Search for Associate Subtext Codes in Your Post.
3. Replace with Following:
- idealism
- courage
- social justice
Prophylactically Yours,
The Symantec Anti-Virus Team
