James Fallows

One of many charming touches in Seth MacFarlane's Oscar-hosting role -- remember that? -- was the line about those wacky, funny-talking Hispanics. It was a good thing, he said, that Salma Hayek, Javier Bardem, and Penelope Cruz were all so easy on the eyes, since "we" could barely understand a word they say.

Seth got some flak for that in America, but they appreciate him here in China. According to Still and Always My Favorite Newspaper™, the China Daily, the country's foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, had this exchange with a French reporter at his news conference yesterday. Here's how the story looks, with details below:

Foreign reporters flaunt their Mandarin skills
Caroline Puel, French magazine Le Point correspondent in Beijing, was surprised twice on Saturday at the press conference with China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.

Besides getting a chance to ask a question out of the hundreds of reporters at the scene, Puel also got high marks from Yang for her Chinese.

"Your Chinese is so good I can understand your question without asking you to repeat it", Yang told her with a big smile.

Yes, I did notice the "with a big smile" touch; and this story caught my eye mainly because I find it droll. At the same time, I am trying to imagine the counterpart in America: a Secretary of State Clinton or Kerry hearing a question from a German or Japanese reporter and, before answering, noting that the questioner's English is "so good" that it can actually be understood. It's another little marker on the long road of China's developing a sense of ease as an international presence and power.

Bonus Favorite Newspaper™ Detail. Here's today's front page:

Yeah, I could go for some of those cyber rules myself. This morning all of my normal VPNs appear to be blocked, and I am filing this by working out some rococo routing to the Atlantic's corporate VPN, which is not really designed for this sort of international intrigue. The accompanying story is actually worth reading for the Chinese perspective on the ongoing cyber wars. For instance this detail, which is how the situation is often described from the Chinese point of view:

Cyber security has become an increasingly prominent issue as security threats in a peaceful era, and seems another way for Western powers to apply pressure to contain China's rise, they [various Chinese officials] say.

Wen Weiping, a professor at the School of Software and Microelectronics at Peking University, put forward his explanation on the belligerence.

The US believes it is justified to launch military attacks on any country that launches cyber attacks threatening its cyber space, he said, and it must raise a fuss against such alleged attacks to build up a case. Wen said the US also aims to strengthen its cyber security forces as a deterrent and maintain its advantage during the information war.

AFP/Getty photograph, as noted here; thanks to WY and BB.

UPDATE: In the WSJ, Minxin Pei has an excellent essay on "what have we learned about the Chinese system??" via the Bo Xilai case.

3) This story, which is played at the top of the front page of today's WSJ (and has been rumbling around for a while), has potentially large real-world and also political-world significance.

The real-world ramifications, as discussed over the years, involve the effort to "rebalance" the Chinese economy in various ways -- exports vs domestic growth, investment vs consumption, region vs region, etc. Everyone agrees that a more flexible value for the Chinese yuan RMB will make that process easier.

Political-world ramifications: the main thing I've heard Mitt Romney say about China is that on Day One he would slap on tariffs to stop their currency manipulation. I suppose now it's time to ask what he'll do on Day Two. Also: if the U.S. is finally getting what many politicians (notably Sen. Chuck Schumer among Democrats) have been asking for, we're not going to like all the results. These will inevitably include a shift of more world trade from dollar-based to RMB-based pricing and settlement. This will have both good and bad effects from the U.S. perspective. More another time.

4) A friend in China sends this screen shot of an ad at the bottom of a China Daily story.

The Chinese state media never disappoint. My friend writes:

If they only used Google [eg, to research possible brand names], they would know, but instead, they use Baidu so they end up with this.

 

Previously in the same series, here.

America's newspaper industry is in crisis. China's is booming. Hmmmm.

Web placement:



Minter puts it in perspective:

In any event, I must admit that I've been clicking over to the People's Daily site all morning, looking for what today's "beautiful [fill in the blank] at the NPC and CPCC" feature will be. Being that it's international women's day, I'm expecting something special to complete the trilogy, but so far ... nothing. The betting man in me thinks, though, that the odds are better than even we'll see something like "Beautiful Soldiers at the NPC and CPCC" before the end of the day.

And as it happens, just now I see that the most-clicked item on the People's Daily site is about the country's first female fighter pilots, alas with no extraneous comment on their looks or whether they will be making goodwill appearances, with the "beautiful service staff," at the dual meetings.

I cannot think of anything decorous to say, except: this is the kind of thing I miss. And, I foresee a promising Chinese remake of Top Gun.

PS: The Wall Street Journal follows the People's Daily lead.

The story points out that 200 flights had been cancelled in Beijing as of mid-day because of the air quality.

-  From a reader in the thick of it:

I'm one of the millions suffering through the "fog" here in Beijing. A couple of observations -
  1) Even though twitter is blocked the US Embassy's Air Quality Index can be found at http://iphone.bjair.info which is not blocked in China.
 
  2) When it comes to pollution it seems like papers like China Daily and Global Times are challenging the government more than on other topics.  For example, about a month ago when the smog was also heavy there was an article in the Global Times which basically said that the government should be more accurate:

"Since the problem cannot be solved quickly, a consensus is needed. The government should play a key role. Local governments usually leave the impression of "playing down bad news" among the public, which makes many people exaggerate the gap between their feelings with the government's figures."

  It is probably the same reason why the monitoring standard of the US Embassy is emphasized by netizens. That means local governments need to establish absolute authority over monitoring pollution without concealing information. If they are defeated by foreign embassies in this regard, they will lose more than just authority in monitoring air quality."

The article may not be as vocal as some of the classics such as

But for the government newspapers it's definitely more than expected criticism. Ironically, in the case of the Beijing pollution people may actually drop dead due to respiratory ailments.

- Indeed, China Daily took in today's edition an astonishingly bold stand about what is going on. It simply ran comparative shots of the same view of Beijing on each of the past four mornings. The first and last shots aren't camera failures. They show the air:



This is the paper that until very recently had insisted that any such conditions were either being invented by the foreign media or arose from "fog." And although "fog" finds its way into even this story, good for them.

Next installment will be from some climate scientists explaining why the U.S. ability to monitor such problems, and to work with the Chinese and others to do so, is now being hacked away in budget cuts. Plus some larger and even less cheering climate news. For now good wishes to all coping with this disaster.

China Daily, People's Daily, and Wall Street Journal laid out on one table: what else could any HBS student want to read? The editorial-page writers for all three publications share a temperamental similarity in their preference for seamless world-views, despite some differences in policy outlook.

Also, there is this account from Japan of China Daily's extension of its footprint there and elsewhere in Asia too.

A nice touch in this report is its reproduction of one of China Daily's classic headlines: the news that 'Most Nations' joined the PRC government in outrage over the selection of Liu Xiaobo as recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. You can read the original story here. Highlights from its lead:

Award 'cannot change fact he is a criminal'

BEIJING - Most nations support China's stance on the Nobel Peace Prize, and China will not yield to outside pressure on this issue, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said on Thursday in response to a question concerning the prize being awarded to convicted criminal Liu Xiaobo.

"Any attempt to deter China from development will be futile," she said....

Jiang denounced what she said were "double standards" applied to China's legal system, and criticized the US House of Representatives for calling on the Chinese government to release Liu.

She said most nations do not support the Nobel Committee's "wrong decision". Any move by the committee will not change the fact that "Liu committed crimes", she said.

More to read, more to enjoy.
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UPDATE A reader in Philly writes:

China Daily is everywhere now--not only Harvard Business School and DC. It's one of three free papers always available in the mailroom of my Philadelphia high-rise--alongside Philadelphia Weekly and Metro, the free paper they give away at the subways. If you think CD is just targeting the elites, you're wrong. They're after the mix of arts students and ancient pensioners who live in my building too.

This is such a relief to hear!

And I will let you fill in your own jokes about the various detainees who will feel better too, if they're able to read this while in prison, under house arrest, and so on.

Also, in the words-of-wisdom category, my favorite news outlet, the China Daily, offers this suggestion:

As it turns out, this sage advice via China Daily is a reference to a very interesting article by a serving US Navy officer, Lieutenant Commander Matthew Harper, which you can read at the USNI site and about which I plan to say more later. For now, I hope these views from China have boosted your spirits as much as they did mine.

Various tainted-food scandals are causing concern all over China. Happily, Global Times, a state-controlled publication that is more and more a competitor to China Daily as the world's finest newspaper, has reassuring news about the latest threat. This threat comes from imported eels that are carriers of brain-destroying parasitic worms. (Domestic Chinese-raised eels have their own problems, because of an ongoing scare about overuse of growth hormones. I'm not even getting into the reports about adulterated Peking Duck.) The headline in Global Times's print edition, tragically not available on line, puts things in perspective:

'Brain-eating Parasitic Worms No Cause for Alarm'

Online we make do with this headline, beneath which the story is the same:

I showed this to a seasoned world traveler a few minutes ago and asked what he thought it was. "'China Watch' ? -- The Post's blog about China?" Reasonable guess. In fact if you click on the image above to see an enlarged version, you'll make out the tiny words "A Paid Supplement to the Washington Post" in the upper right hand corner. To the wary reader, the content itself offers further clues. For instance, the item above: "Stop Telling Us What We Should Do," with "we" being China and the object of the imperative sentence being the nagging United States. Or this one and this, clarifying how unfair it was for foreigners to criticize China's "rare earths" exports policy. As a matter of fact, China's "actions taken in the past few months, and those to be taken in the months to come, are totally legitimate." OK! I've long been skeptical of the Chinese government's ability to exert "soft power" influence over outside opinion, precisely because of the tin-eared super-earnest "Resist Hegemony!" / "totally legitimate" approach. Getting the Post to present Chinese government material this way is a step I hadn't foreseen.

(I have spent the last 45 minutes on the phone trying to get a comment out of someone from the Post. I was eventually routed to a very helpful young woman on the foreign desk, who said, "It's just a paid supplement." OK again. Also, to be precise, if you start at the Post's world-news home page, you'll see China Watch set off in a box, as ads usually are. But if you got a direct link to any of the component stories, the URL makes them look like part of the "real" Post -- for instance, http://chinawatch.washingtonpost.com/2011/02/stop-telling-us-what-we-should-do.php -- and you have only the tiny-type indication that it's not "normal" news. Thanks to my friend Michele T for this tip.)

To end on a brighter note, and to explain why I'm popping up in the midst of a guest week: I wanted to thank and congratulate this week's crew of guests for entries that deserve careful reading. Xujun Eberlein has done an extraordinary series of recollections on a part of US-Chinese history virtually unknown in America (latest here, with links to preceding items); Bruce Holmes has given a systematic examination of what "Sputnik moments" and general national renewal might mean for the United States (here and here) and a wonderful bit of techno-porn here; Andrew Sprung has done a close, serial analysis of one of the major works in American rhetoric and its modern implications (here and here) plus this about America's current predicament; and Chuck Spinney has shown why he has been so influential as a budget and strategic analyst. My thanks for the ongoing quality of their work.