After many months of having to endure journalism that all follows the same emerging-superpower-showcases-development-with-Olympic-games-but- still-must-struggle-with-human-rights-and-environmental-issues line, the Olympics finally launched last night. It seems that, except for thousands of Western journalists who were defining their careers around the reporting line given above (what an angle!), just about everybody can finally let out a sigh of [...]
Bush, trying to appease stateside critics of his decision to attend the 2008 Olympics despite China’s still-poor human rights record, gave a speech in Bangkok today criticizing China:
Change in China will arrive on its own terms and in keeping with its own history and its own traditions. Yet change will arrive. And it will be [...]
The big pre-Olympics news today is a last-minute visa cancellation for 2006 Olympic gold-medalist Joey Cheek. Cheek is the co-founder of Team Darfur, which is self-described on it’s website as a “campaign leading up to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing… to put international pressure not only on Sudan, but also on those countries [...]
ExpressIndia reports that table tennis is losing its appeal for China’s younger generation, which is increasing becoming interested in basketball.
The reasons for the shift are the usual culprits. Ping pong is an individualized, stand-in-place sport, while basketball is played with a team on a court, providing opportunities for strategy, sweaty bodies, showmanship and other things [...]
China’s vast Western province of Xinjiang is in the news today:
Two men armed with knives and explosives ambushed a military police unit in China’s majority Muslim northwest Monday morning, killing 16 officers and wounding 16 others before being arrested, according to the state media.
Besides finally giving Beijing some solid evidence to back claims that the [...]
The Washington Post:
Instead of writing about pandas or Olympic food, Western journalists are mostly covering stories that the Chinese government would rather they not — the city’s chronic pollution, for instance — and complaining about a lack of access to Internet sites and the famed Tiananmen Square.
Their determination to cover stories critical of China [...]
The following article was brought up in a forum:
As they eagerly await the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese people express extraordinary levels of satisfaction with the way things are going in their country and with their nation’s economy. With more than eight-in-ten having a positive view of both, China ranks number one among 24 countries on [...]
Big news on the internet wires is about the failure of Beijing’s much-touted pollution controls and the more extreme measures government is planning on introducing, if the pollution does not dissipate in the coming days. These measures include further vehicular restrictions in Beijing itself, and expanding the current restrictions to the entire province of Hebei [...]
Says Canada’s CTV:
A deal between the International Olympic Committee and China will allow the communist country to block journalists from sensitive websites during the Beijing Games in August.
IOC press chief Kevan Gosper said Wednesday that the Beijing Organizing Committee of the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG) will impose “limitations on website access.”
Neither this article, nor any [...]
News reports have surfaced that Tian Liang 田亮, a diver who won gold and bronze medals at the Athen’s 2004 Olympics, will not be included on China’s 2008 team. According to China Daily, the government’s English-language mouthpiece, Tian was removed from the national diving team in 2005 “for violating state sport regulations and taking [...]