Satirical online newspaper The Onion just rolled out this morning with an elaborate “Chinese edition.” They were apparently bought out by the Chinese Yu Wan Mei company, which before entering the newspaper business was a salvage fishery, whatever that means. (The title literally translates to “Fish are perfect.”)
and my favorite: “China Strong,” complete with big picture of the People’s Liberation Army marching in formation.
Not everyone finds this so hilarious. The bloggers over at the Shanghaiist, jaded by years of laughing (and/or crying) at China’s state-run-media gaffs, have already “found enough unintentional black comedy to render this attempt perhaps unintentionally depressing.”
For example? They might be referring to the Homer Simpson X-ray incident at Xinhuanet two years ago. Funny, and yes, a little depressing. But this is why the satire on The Onion is so timely and appropriate.
China’s idea of what makes for a better Olympics for foreign consumption—tightened security and cleaning up marginal elements—is exactly what makes Western reporters crazy…you want to clean things up, but the West wants to see the dirt, not the rug it was swept under. It’s the dishonesty, as much as the substance of what’s wrong in China, that seems to get under the skin of Western reporters.
Beijing itself is an expression of the problem…It suffers from the current obsession with fazhan (“development”), which in urban-planning terms replicates the “giant soulless block” development style of Robert Moses and the American 1950s. Authenticity, which Western culture valorizes, isn’t something that Chinese people or planners go for right now. There’s a tendency to either modernize or tear down old structures, instead of trying to preserve their decay in the way Westerners like. It’s all just a little too nouveau riche to get much respect.
As the author of the article later puts it, there’s “a sense that no matter what China does, it won’t really be accepted as an equal on the world stage, that it will always be left cleaning the toilet at the OECD country club.” Maybe that’s why there is such a wide audience for the sentiments expressed in this video:
Clay Shirky at the O’reilly 2008 Web2.0 Conference [via Peter Roome]
I saw this speech on kleinschmidt’s blog and boingboing pretty much the day it came out, but somehow I didn’t have the “Whoa this is cool” moment today, when I saw it again during a particularly long Google-Reader-facilitated click-orgy. As far as discussion goes, the blogosphere has pretty much beat this speech to death. Best thing to do is watch it now (if you haven’t already) and think for yourself. After the jump: my two questions for Clay Shirky
