Why China's Youth Find Western Culture Attractive. JEFFREY BROWN: Next tonight, the debate in China over the growing influence of Western culture.
It comes as China’s vice president kicks off a trip to the United States this week, one designed in part to head off mounting tensions between the two countries. Kathleen McLaughlin is a Beijing correspondent for our partner GlobalPost. She has this report. KATHLEEN MCLAUGHLIN, GlobalPost: From clothes to coffee, to food and movies, Western culture is big and getting bigger in China. KFC is the country’s most popular restaurant chain. At a public square in Beijing, 35-year-old Hou Xiazhou and friends show off moves they learned from watching their American idols on the Internet. HOU XIAZHOU, skateboarder (through translator): The West influences us a great deal. KATHLEEN MCLAUGHLIN: Western culture swept into China when the country opened to foreign trade 30 years ago. Now the government is pushing back.
Second are dramas with contents of immortality, moral and ethical betrayals. Cuba Creates Its Own Facebook-Like Social Network. New China blow for Google as Android Marketplace is blocked. Google’s rocky relationship with the Chinese government is under further strain after it emerged that the Android’s app store, Market, is unavailable for many users in China, with others reporting lag and time-out issues accessing the site.
Update below. Blocked In China, a site which tests whether URLs are accessible across five major provinces in the country, confirms a blockage of market.android.com. This isn’t the first time that Android Market has been inaccessible in China, mumours of discontent from disgruntled phone owners unable to access the store can be tracked as far back as 2009. As ever in China, despite the issues there are plenty of alternative options as TechRice outlines. NATO Commander Announces End to Libyan War on Facebook. Chinese prudence vs US recklessness. Chinese prudence vs US recklessness By David Gosset When American publishing magnate Henry R Luce (1898-1967) announced exactly 70 years ago the beginning of the "American Century", he correctly anticipated the United States pre-eminence following World War II, but overestimated the duration of the Pax Americana.
Ironically, Luce who spent 15 years of his early life in China, would have been very much at home in the 21st-century, where globalization is increasingly more about Sinicization than Americanization. The Internet in Africa - still an alien concept. I remember visiting a school in Accra, Ghana earlier this year.
Though many of its students could recite the lyrics of popular musicians in Ghana, none of them had heard of YouTube or even of the Internet. Such experiences bring one face to face with certain realities; first is that Africa remains the world’s least connected continent and second is that it will take tremendous effort by the continent’s private and public sector to reverse this reality. Iceland's On-going Revolution. An Italian radio program's story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world.
Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion. As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here's why: Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. Contrary to what could be expected, the crisis resulted in Icelanders recovering their sovereign rights, through a process of direct participatory democracy that eventually led to a new Constitution. What happened next was extraordinary. 90 Years of Chinese Communism: A Multimedia Celebration: Design Observer.
Posted 08.23.11 An Xiao Mina Anniversary street art features a blackboard with lyrics from a popular song, “Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China.
" Image courtesy Roman Sharf On July 21, 1921, some 50 men, including an obscure educator named Mao Zedong, gathered illegally in Shanghai to form a party devoted to radical populist ideas. In 30 years, they wrested power from the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party of China, and established the People's Republic of China. Topiary design outside Beijing’s Wangfujing subway station. Recent coverage in The New York Times and Washington Post has focused on large-scale commemorative events.
China Stifles Coverage of U.S.-China 'Basketbrawl' - Global. Footage of the bench-clearing brawl between the Georgetown Hoyas and the Chinese Basketball Association's Bayi Rockets in Beijing on Thursday has captured the attention of the U.S. media, with reports parsing the ugly incident in the context of Vice President Joe Biden's visit to China this week.
But the reaction in the Chinese press has been far more muted. The Communist Party's Global Times and People's Daily mention soccer and speed skating "brawls" but don't mention the basketball game. Chinese prudence vs US recklessness.