This year's Golden Globe winner, Avatar, is stirring up some surprising debate and discussion among China watchers who are wondering why Beijing has pulled the 2D version from 1600 theaters around the country—swapping it out (to the delight, no doubt, of Chinese filmgoers) for a thrilling state-sanctioned biography of Confucius.

New York magazine quotes the Hong Kong newspaper Apply Daily, which alleges that propaganda officials were worried that 1) Avatar was stealing too many viewers from Chinese films and 2) the film, which describes the plight of the Na'avi, an intelligent people threatened with eviction by an evil military-industrial machine, was drawing too much attention to the sensitive issues of forced evictions in China.

Meanwhile, the China watching community has been abuzz about the subject in private emails, discussing the film's Chinese ramifications.  Several scholars suggest that Beijing might actually see the film as a Chinese parable, about the Confucian-era struggle between the Legalists (read: the government), who believed in strengthening the power of the ruler, and Taoists (read: the innocent Chinese citizenry) who were more in tune with nature and less obsessed with calculations of profit and loss and big plans.

The Chinese leaders, Legalist by bent as they steamroll ahead with development at any cost, might not be so happy that the Taoists (read: the Na'avi) come off triumphant. Maybe. But it still seems more likely that the Chinese government just doesn't like the idea of an innocent people rising up against evil, rapacious government. There are many thousands of protests every year by Chinese property owners and residents who have been evicted by evil, greedy companies and corrupt local officials.  At least China's film audiences now get to see the hunky Chow Yun Fat as Confucius.

Kaiser Kuo:  As cool as he looks

The discussions of Google's decision to stop kowtowing to Beijing after its gmail accounts were hacked from accounts based in China continue. In a fascinating Lowy Institute interview with Kaiser Kuo, Beijing-based American Ogilvy executive who has years of experience working in China’s online world, Kuo points out that Chinese censorship has evolved into a 2.0 version.

Five years ago, Kuo points out, China's censors blocked foreign sites like Time magazine or the New York Times to keep foreign news and analysis of Chinese affairs out. Instead, censors now focus on internal social media websites because of their potential to spread rumors and help people organize. These days, the government is much more concerned about Chinese bloggers and chatter.

What does it mean? Yes, Chinese citizens are becoming more nationalistic and proud, but economic and social freedoms have also made them much harder to control. The Internet—with or without Google—may actually outrun even the best of China's censors.

Outside Google’s Beijing headquarters
Photo: René Vandergoten, China Digital Times

One of the scariest things about China’s censorship of the Internet and other media is that the government has effectively erased whole chapters of Chinese history.  Many—and I dare say, most—20-somethings in China, for example, know little about the turmoil and violence of the Cultural Revolution, and virtually nothing about the bloody massacre of democracy protesters near Tiananmen Square in 1989.

But no amount of censorship can totally wipe away a nation’s conscience. The announcement that Google gmail accounts were attacked by Chinese hackers, leading Google to reconsider its presence in China, has led to an outpouring of Twitter commentary by Chinese praising the internet company for doing the right thing—finally. @xuxiaoxuxiao pretty much sums up the Chinese Twitter response so far: “Respect Google for: 1 Doing what you should, even if it’s not easy 2. Protecting your heart and your clients
.”

A group of daring Chinese netizens even laid flowers at the Google office in Beijing, and Chinese bloggers also praised Google for finally ending its cooperation with Chinese government censors. (Google's history in China is shameful: To get into the country, Google agreed in 2006 to delete banned topics—Tiananmen, Tibet, etc—from search results.) See this video of Chinese bloggers, taken by Guardian correspondent.

So why does any of this matter? As Rebecca McKinnon, a Chinese internet expert, writes, "This censored environment makes it easier for the Chinese government to lie to its people, steal from them, turn a blind eye when they are poisoned with tainted foodstuffs and cover up their children's deaths due to substandard building codes." It also allows people to forget history. And if we don't learn from the mistakes of our past, what's to prevent them from happening again?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the 11-year sentence the Chinese authorities gave to Liu Xiaobo, China’s only true public intellectual, wondering why it is that Beijing should be so frightened of one man who dares to speak truth to power. For more than 20 years, Liu, a bookish literary critic, has spoken out for democratic reforms and rule of law in China, writing essays and scripting petitions to the authorities demanding an end to one-party rule and the release of political prisoners. China’s consumption-obsessed citizens pay little notice. So why does Beijing care?

Then I read the recent Wall Street Journal report of a nationwide crackdown on organized crime, and it dawned on me that from the leadership’s perspective, China is just this side of “luan,” or chaos. Indeed, with no rule of law—after all, how can you have rule of law if there is no independent judiciary and the Communist Party is unassailable?—corruption is out of control. So much so that criminal networks of Party bosses, gangsters, murderers and sheisters have organized to run prostitution, loan-sharking, bribery, and tax evasion conspiracies. Protests are on the rise. The leaders may feel they are an inch away from losing control of the country.

But what the leaders don’t seem to understand is that crackdowns and slogans won’t ever solve their problems. The Chinese middle class are increasingly educated; they will start wanting more than just money. Beijing Film Academy professor Cui Weiping has been collecting commentary on the Liu case from intellectuals in China, and the consensus is resounding: the sentence defies the Chinese constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech. Without political reform, China is doomed to growing corruption, which has already eroded social morality, and ultimately will destabilize the country. I understand China’s focus on economic development and the “greater good.” But at the dawn of a new decade, the question is, without the other part—individual rights and rule of law—the country may get rich, but at what cost?

Congratulations to Lindsay, who guessed correctly that the gorgeous waterfall in China, edited by Guang Guo, published by Abbeville Press, is called the Nuorilang Waterfall in China's Jiuzhaigou Valley. A perfect gift for Chinese New Year's!

OK, China people, here's the question you need to answer to win the world's most gorgeous China photography book: WHERE ARE YOU? 

Imagine you are a 22-year old Chinese girl, working in an electronics factory in the Shenzhen industrial zone. This is your big chance: you have made it out of your impoverished village, and maybe, just maybe, if you keep working your shifts for long enough, you will earn enough money to send your child to college. Your only hope in achieving that dream is that China’s economy keeps growing rapidly.

What does this have to do with the climate change negotiations underway in Copenhagen? A lot. Because when it comes down to it, this is a fight about the right to a better life. While there is no question China and the U.S. both need to reduce carbon emissions dramatically if we want to avoid planetary catastrophe, I have a lot of sympathy for China’s position. The US says it won’t subsidize China’s efforts to curb greenhouse emissions. In response, according to an article in today’s South China Morning Post, Chinese negotiators—in high posturing mode— accused developed nations of making "empty promises" and putting impossible demands on their developing counterparts.

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A New York City Chinatown Diary

I follow Dr. Zhang down an outdoor, steep staircase to the basement, where I find two more massage chairs and two cots. I’m feeling quite alone at this point—the woman at the desk has disappeared—not sure that I am liking this experience so far. But it seems too late to bail. “The opera singer, the opera singer…” I keep repeating in my mind. The doctor tells me to lie down and take off my shoes. That sounds innocent enough, so I do as he says as he washes his hands.

I nervously ask him if this will hurt. Not much, he says, which doesn’t help much. He chatters away in Chinese, telling me about his technique, about how he studied with his father as a young boy in Wuhan, how his father told him to follow the Communist Party but never to join. As he distracts me, he inserts eight needles, forcefully but with absolute precision.

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A New York City Chinatown Diary

I feel like I’m in a James Bond movie: any moment, black-suited Chinese gangsters are going to pop out from behind the curtain. In my mind I keep repeating my new mantra, “the opera singer trusts him, the opera singer trusts him.” There seems to be no sign of medical degree or history on any certificate on the wall. But that’s the way it is with Chinese medicine: you go to Chinese doctors through word of mouth. And so here I am.

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Photo: moriza/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

A New York City Chinatown Diary

The East Broadway stop on the F train is deep in the heart of New York’s Chinatown. This is a different world from touristy Chinatown, along Canal Street half a mile away, where Nigerian and Chinese hawkers tout knockoff handbags and sunglasses to ogling visitors from Wichita. Here, stepping out of the subway station, I am the only non-Chinese person in sight. The tenement streets are ramshackle, dark, and greasy, a result of too many bags of leaking garbage. I pass a group of Chinese high school kids and several harried women laden with groceries. In one smoky hallway, I spot tough-looking Chinese guys sitting at a card table playing mahjong.

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