This is Part 2 of my pre-visit thoughts on President Obama’s visit to China next week. In Part 1 I focused on issues, but here I want to talk about why I think that Obama will get a very warm welcome in China next week (despite some Chinese English publications such as this one trying to tone down his overwhelming worldwide popularity).
First of all, lets face it, Obama is cool. Most likely the coolest president ever. He’s a rock-star, etc., etc. China’s citizenry is just as susceptible to coolness as every other citizenry in the world, and if for no other reason than his coolness and his personality, Obama will be very well received. Ok, enough scientific analysis. Continue reading “Expect China’s Citizenry to Embrace Obama”
President Barack Obama will make his first trip to China as president on November 16-18, first in Shanghai and then in Beijing. He is the first president to make the trip in his first year in office, and follows on the heels of earlier meetings this year with Hu Jintao in Italy and at the United Nations. Beyond the standard US-China relations issues – human rights, Tibet, Taiwan, currency valuation (which is becoming more internationalized, see below) – Obama will also need to discuss a number of worldwide issues with his Chinese counterpart, and probably to an extent that no other US President has before. Beyond that – and although the Chinese press is trying to downplay it – the reaction that Obama will receive in China is going to be very interesting. Part 1 here will focus on the issues and in Part 2 I’ll talk about how I think Obama will be received in China and how he’ll approach Chinese domestic affairs. Continue reading “Obama in China, What to Expect – Part 1″
Just finished watching CCTV.com’s coverage of China’s 60th Anniversary Parade in Beijing on Chang’An Jie in Beijing. I was tweeting along with a number of other people in China (including @imagethief @granitestudio @davesgonechina @goldkorn @beijingboyce @kaiserkuo @christinelu @chjis and a certain Eric A.) – let’s say in not the most sombre of ways (i.e. lots of it was hilarious). Everything from the pink skirt wearing “fembot” female soldiers to the prepensity for rainbows to how much hairspray must have been used, to yes, tanks and such was…discussed. Continue reading “China’s 60th Anniversary Parade Twitter Coverage Goes Ballistic”
CCTV just announced that it will live broadcast Thursday’s parade in Beijing in six languages, as well as live stream all of the pop and circumstance starting at 8am Beijing time on CCTV.com. My experience with CCTV.com has generally been a good one, with often high quality streams (I’ve listed the HD stream below as well – so stand by your monitor, wave a little red flag and you’ll feel like you’re right there!), so if you’re not planning on catching the parade on TV, the stream should be reliable enough. Although the English streams/URLs are listed on the CCTV site I’ve linked to above, I’ve added them below just in case that page disappears before Thursday.
Live Coverage of the PRC’s 60th Anniversary Parade
Live HD Coverage of the PRC’s 60th Anniversary Parade
This is somewhat in response to Ben Parr’s Mashable article and the subsequent comment stream, and following up on a thought I had last night after hearing about Twitpic being GFW’ed. In case you haven’t heard, after yesterday’s explosion, Maggie Rauch posted a few images of the rubble and the police response to Twitpic. The images quickly made the rounds on Twitter and soon thereafter Twitpic itself was blocked in China. Continue reading “Is Twitpic the first Twitter app to be GFW’ed? And should anyone care?”
