Monthly Archive for February, 2010

Chinese Net Memes

Published on February 22, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: .

Here are some Chinese internet memes, as presented by More Suzhou magazine (February/ March 2010 issue):

What, brother, is smoking, is not a cigarette, but loneliness!
(…) gē chōu de bú shì yān, shì jì mò

In July of 2009, someone posted a picture of a guy eating a bowl of noodles on a Baidu forum, and titled it, “What, brother, is eating, isn’t noodles, but loneliness!” After that, it ran out of control. People began to use this sentence on many other occasions, such as, “What, brother, is loving, isn’t you, but loneliness.” And “What, brother, is loving, isn’t beer, but loneliness.” This has become lots of peoples’ signature on MSN, QQ, and other social networking sites. (…)

Jia Junpeng, your mom is calling you to go home to eat!
(…) jiǎ jūn péng nǐ mā mā hǎn nǐ huí jiā chī fàn

Jia Junpeng may or not be a real person but, on July 16th, 2009, an empty post named “Jia Junpeng, your mom is calling you to go home to eat!” appeared on a World of Warcraft forum on Baidu Tieba. It was viewed by 390,617 people in the following few hours, and had over 17,000 replies. By the next day, there were 7,100,000 hits, and 300,000 replies. After that, it became the most popular network greeting online, and had permeated all sectors of society, including the media, who spent a lot of time on in-depth analysis of this quotation. (…)

Out buying soy sauce
(…) wǒ shì lái dǎ jiàng yóu de

It literally means, “I’m just out buying soy sauce.” The phrase took the Chinese Internets by storm in 2007, thanks to a Guangzhou TV news clip of a reporter asking a man on the street his opinion on the Edison Chen sex scandal. The man famously replied: “I don’t give a shit. I’m just out buying soy sauce.” Chinese Internet users have taken up the phrase as a cynical euphemism for “It’s none of my business.” or “Who gives a shit?” (…)

Distraught
(…) xīn shén bù níng

One day on CCTV’s, “Focus Interview,” there was an interview with a college student about how Google doesn’t filter out pornography. He said, “I think the harm of online pornography is particularly large. I have a classmate who used to obsess over dirty porn. He visits those website a lot a lot, he was very distraught for a long time.” So after that, whatever happens, people all say “distraught,” …

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Chinese Net Memes | Comments]

Does Internet Matter in China?

Published on February 8, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , .

http://www.bullogger.com/blogs/lihuafang/archives/345317.aspx
Does Internet Matter in China?
李华芳 @ 2009-10-16 22:00
Does Internet Matter in China?
Li Huafang

Hu Yong, 2008,?The Rising Cacophony: Personal expression and Public Discussion in the Internet Age, Guangxi Normal University Press. （胡泳，2008，《众声喧哗：网络时代的个人表达与公共讨论》，广西师范大学出版社。）
The paper,?The Internet and Civil Society in China: a preliminary assessment, is Guobin Yang’s pioneering study on the relationship between Internet and politics, which came up with a question that whether Internet has boosted the development of civil society.[1] In another word, what is the relationship between Internet and civil society? Continue reading ‘Does Internet Matter in China?’

The End of the Beijing Consensus

Published on February 4, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: .

Can China’s Model of Authoritarian Growth Survive?
Author:Yang Yao via

Since China began undertaking economic reforms in 1978, its economy has grown at a rate of nearly ten percent a year, and its per-capita GDP is now twelve times greater than it was three decades ago. Many analysts attribute the country’s economic success to its unconventional approach to economic policy — a combination of mixed ownership, basic property rights, and heavy government intervention. Time magazine’s former foreign editor, Joshua Cooper Ramo, has even given it a name: the Beijing consensus.

But, in fact, over the last 30 years, the Chinese economy has moved unmistakably toward the market doctrines of neoclassical economics, with an emphasis on prudent fiscal policy, economic openness, privatization, market liberalization, and the protection of private property. Beijing has been extremely cautious in maintaining a balanced budget and keeping inflation down. Purely redistributive programs have been kept to a minimum, and central government transfers have been primarily limited to infrastructure spending. The overall tax burden (measured by the ratio of tax revenue to GDP) is in the range of 20 to 25 percent. The country is the world’s second-largest recipient of foreign direct investment, and domestically, more than 80 percent of its state-owned enterprises have been released to private hands or transformed into publicly listed companies. Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lacks legitimacy in the classic democratic sense, it has been forced to seek performance-based legitimacy instead, by continuously improving the living standards of Chinese citizens. So far, this strategy has succeeded, but there are signs that it will not last because of the growing income inequality and the internal and external imbalances it has created.
Continue reading ‘The End of the Beijing Consensus’

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