The DMZ, DPRK side

There are few things terribly wrong with this article (if I should even call it that):

First, he has the worst three-picture slide show ever, which fails not only to depict the stark differences between China/the outside world and DPRK, but fails to actually show anything (photos include a train departure schedule, a foggy photo of irrelevant geography across the Yalu River, and a Chinese Tesco supermarket). And he had three days to come up with those photos?

Second, he fears oversleeping on the train and waking up in Pyongyang, the epicenter of “world’s most brutal regime—and with no former U.S. president to come rescue me.” Perhaps brutal for native citizens, but would the government even dare to pull a hair off your head without incredible international repercussions?

Third, he talks about how local Korean food isn’t as tasty as Korean food in Seoul or Los Angeles. Granted it even was an “authentic” North Korean restaurant perhaps their tastes have been altered by the inherent lack of efficient and sustainable agricultural practices over the last few decades. It could also be attributed to, like he mentions himself repeatedly in the post, Chinese people. They could have run the restaurants he dined at (hence: different tastes). Or it is also just as likely he just went to the wrong restaurant.

Fourth, he noticed a dearth of Koreans and Hangul/Chosongul being spoken around him. I don’t need to spell this one out but it’s not someone’s instinct to speak to someone in Korean when you’re white in an East Asian country.

Ultimately, I may be biased since I’ve both gone to Dandong, done the whole marvel-at-the-darkness-across-the-border-at-night thing, and gone to North Korea. While I do commend him for writing his experiences and sharing them with the wider community, he should have done a little more research if he wanted to publish on something other than his personal blog. I have learned not to extrapolate my personal experiences with the country and apply them to how North Koreans perceive themselves or perceive others. There is still much to learn.

A schoolboy at the Pyongyang Children’s Palace

A good point to remember (and to apply) to other situations is how hard it is to look from outside a bubble when you’re encapsulated within it yourself. That is, it is difficult to conceive of a tweet not having as much social worth as you think because you are invested in it as a crucial networking tool. In addition to that, we are restricted by our own limitations–language, personal biases, and limits on information dissemination topping the list. How many of us read non-English tweets that disagree with our own political and social views?

A well written argument by Gladwell, but like all his writing, imperfect. Gladwell also touched upon the inherent flaws in “networks,” in which the lack of hierarchical structure leads to messy, disorderly campaigns. While he does have a point, I do believe that networks have their advantages. In the scope of terrorism, for example, networks are more flexible and innovative than their hierarchical counterparts; they are more resilient and spread out, making it difficult for their adversaries to extinguish. John Arquilla, a scholar at the Naval Postgraduate School, emphasizes the decreasing importance of geography and advantages of small networks in counterterrorism.  The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal offers another take on the article.

While limited, networking sites can make an impact (e.g., Obama’s 2008 campaign), just don’t give them too much credit. Perhaps we just need to give us and technology a little more time to sort things out.

A simple Google Scholar search shows more results that undermine the notion that TFA brings “positive” change to underperforming schools across the country than supporting it.

One study says:

Findings for 5 school districts, roughly 300 new teachers, show that students of under-certified teachers (including teachers from the “Teach for America” program) make about 20% less academic growth than do students of regularly certified teachers.

While I believe the underlying philosophy of TFA is still honorable, the pageantry and self-righteousness involved on the applicant side has turned me off from the whole thing. Do students avoid independently searching for jobs because it lacks the prestige associated with TFA? Is there a sustainable solution to bring positive impact to low-performing schools?

Xinjiang has been under political contestation since the late eighteenth century, when the Qing reconquered the area. Political unrest became increasingly prominent since the late-1800s and sporadically manifests into violent opposition, especially during the late-1980s and early-1990s.  From the 1820s to the 1870s, the Uyghurs posed a significant challenge to Qing conquests in the area until the Qing re-conquered the majority of the land.   In 1884, the Manchu Qing empire brought Xinjiang under its control and incorporated it into the Chinese empire. The Manchus appointed hereditary princes and staffed local ethnicities, but never exercised much more than minimal authority in the area.  After the dissolution of the Qing dynasty, neither Uyghurs nor Chinese ruled Xinjiang. The Soviet Union exercised some influence in the area.  In the beginning of the twentieth century, sporadic violent uprisings occurred, but none that made a serious impact on the Chinese state.

The first documented incidents of violent separatist activity on behalf of the Uyghurs occurred between 1932–33, when ethnically Chinese Muslims and Uyghurs attempted to separate from the Chinese state and temporarily established an East Turkistan Republic. However, this resistance was crushed by February 1934, when the Chinese Nationalists (Guomingdang, or GMD) reestablished control over in the area.  In 1944, Uyghurs attempted once again  to rebel against the Chinese state.  Uyghurs established an “East Turkistan Republic,” which lasted until the Chinese Communist Party re-conquered the area in 1949. These sporadic violent outbursts that were aimed at establishing Turkish republics, James Millward argues, reflected “more the general anarchy of the warlord period  (1916–1928) and the weight of Soviet influence than any…Islamic or even ethnonationalist motivation.”

By 1949, the GMD were ousted from control and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) tried to quell and control Uyghur uprisings, and were largely successful. The PRC did not actively promote ethnically oriented policies towards the Uyghurs early on, but by the Great Leap Forward (1958–61) policies called for rapid cultural homogenization, and as many as 60,000 Uyghurs had been displaced. PRC policies began to have an assimilationist undertone, ethnicity was deemed an obstacle to progress, and Han in-migration increased.   Assimilationist and intolerant attitudes towards non-Hans increased throughout the 1960s and became the most extreme during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76).

After Mao Zedong’s reign over China ended in 1976, Deng Xiaoping relaxed the assimilationist aspects of cultural policy and brought more non-Hans back into government positions. This relaxation spurred demonstrations from the Uyghurs against the PRC. Tensions escalated and climaxed with several riots and protests in the 1990s. For example, a major Islamic-inspired insurrection in Baren county that was originally against family planning, weapons testing, and oil exploitation morphed into a violent uprising “with calls for ‘jihad’ and the overthrow of communism.”  Shortly after, China reacted with a crackdown on political activity with “Strike Hard” campaigns aimed at sweeping up political infidels.

Uyghur unrest resurfaced in the form of violent outbreaks in the 1990s, and prompted China to initiate its “Strike Hard” campaign in April 1996.   Their Islamic faith has put Uyghurs at odds with the Chinese government. Their religion has also made them susceptible to being labeled as religious terrorists who want to secede from China and establish an independent Islamic state called East Turkistan.

Strangely, prior to 2001, the Chinese state gave little lip service to anything related to East Turkistan. Anyone who even used the term could be subject to arrest.  The September 11, 2001 (9/11) terrorist attacks on several United States targets altered Chinese domestic and foreign policy, and reinvigorated China’s drive to counter terrorist, separatist, and splittist movements within and around its borders. In 2002, both the United States and the United Nations placed an organization known as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a radical militant organization that uses violence to try to establish a separate Turkic republic, on the international terrorist watch list.  Post-9/11 policies and strategies are more widely publicized in both national and international media than those of the 1990s.

Sources:
Graham E. Fuller and S. Frederick Starr, The Xinjiang Problem (Baltimore, Maryland: Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at John Hopkins University, 2004)
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Bureau of Statistics, Xinjiang Tongji Nianjian, 2001 (Xinjiang statistical yearbook, 2001) (Beijing: China Statistics Press, 2001)
Information Office of the State Council Of the People’s Republic of China, White Paper: History and Development of Xinjiang, May 2003, Beijing, http://www.china.org.cn/e-white/20030526/
Yongjiu Gao and Shangzhe Liu, “Lun ‘dongtu’ kongbu nuli dui guojia liyi de weixie yu pohuai” [On the "East Turkistan" terrorist forces in the national interests and the threat of destruction], Xinjiang shehui kexue [Social Sciences in Xinjiang] (May 2005)
Christian Tyler, China’s Wild West: The Taming of Xinjiang (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2004)
James Millward, “Violent Separatism in Xinjiang: A Critical Assessment,” Policy Paper 6 (Washington, D.C.: East West Center Washington, 2004)
David Wang, The East Turkistan Movement in Xinjiang: A Chinese Potential Source of Instability? EAI Background Brief No.7, East Asian Institute, (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 1998)
Gardner Bovingdon, “Autonomy in Xinjiang: Han Nationalist Imperatives and Uyghur Discontent,” Policy Paper 11
(Washington, D.C.: East West Center Washington, 2005)
Dewardric L. McNeal, China’s relations with Central Asian states and problems with terrorism CRS report for Congress, RL31213. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 2002)

While Twitter has provided breaking, up-to-the-minute news about what’s going on in Iran, is the source to be trusted? You have to wonder who on the “other side” is reporting. There have been many false reports of protest traps, Mousavi under house arrest, and election results . Additionally, there has also been speculation that Iranian hardliner elites are manipulating the protests to “hoist themselves back into power.” Just like any other news source, you cannot take what you read at face value.

What Twitter, YouTube, and 24-hour news syndicates have proven, though, is that media is very saturated in the average computer-user’s life. Thus, the repeated news stories from citizen journalists, bloggers, and reporters lead us to believe that much more is happening in Tehran than what may actually be transpiring. Additionally, there has been an uneven focus on the students and protestors, who by no means represent the majority political sentiment in Iran, yet many outside the country believe that sweeping political change (probably via Mousavi) is on the verge of dawning. That is not to say that there isn’t balanced news. For example, George Friedman at STRATFOR has released “The Iranian Election and the Revolution Test,” and provides solid analysis of the realities in Iran.

Second, I appeal to anyone with a green icon on their Twitter account to explain to me a) why they did that, b) who they support, c) why they support him, and most importantly, d) to name one policy issue of the candidate in question. Why? Because I believe that people are conflating election freedom with who we feel we (as the West) want as President of Iran. It’s turned into an anyone-but-Ahmedinejad mindset. We in the West hopelessly believe that radical changes will occur once Mousavi is given the seat as President.

Third, while there are some parallels between the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident in China and what’s currently unfolding in Tehran, it is not the 2009 [Twitter] Tiananmen. Yes, both states have cracked down on foreign and domestic media, both states have turned against their own citizens, both states have citizens that were frustrated and muffled by the current regime. Fundamental differences also exist between the two acts of mass citizen action, and although I don’t agree completely with this post, it does provide some sound reasons on why Tehran 2009 cannot be equated with Tiananmen.

Don’t get me wrong–from what I know, the election results do seem fraudulent. What the Iranian government is doing to its people is despicable, and a desperate attempt to protect the status quo. I do sympathize with the protesters–I fear for their safety and for their political freedom. But I also fear that those of us outside of Iran are looking at the situation with colored glasses, as well.

UPDATE (26 June 2009)
I happened upon this Slate article by Daniel Byman, “Is Iran ripe for revolution?” which provides excellent analysis on the political situation in Iran.

Guard standing at one of the entrances to the Square

Sea of umbrellas

Just standing around with umbrellas, very inconspicuous

Tons of ?? (wujing, special police forces)

56minus1 speculates this may have to do with Ai Weiwei joining Twitter. Lostlaowai says it has to do with that special 20th anniversary on Thursday.

Whatever the reason, this isn’t making my “I hate China” week any better.

Edit: an exhaustive list of all the websites “down for maintenance” has been compiled. Check it out here.

The name “duck” complements their female counterparts, who are called chickens, (妓女). According to The Observer, more and more Chinese women “buy a duck for a few hours of chatting, drinking and flirting.” While ordering a duck used to only be prevalent among middle-aged women, increasingly more younger women are also finding ducks to accompany them through a night of drinking, karaoke, or more.

I became curious as to the life of a duck in China and searched some blogs and forums.

One 19-year-old said on a forum:

I am a 19-year-old duck. My family is poor. I am a high school graduate, and it is imperative for me to find a woman to take care of me, I can do whatever she wants me to do!…I can visit your home every day to serve you. My information is as follows…

I want to find a woman to accompany me for life, doesn’t matter if you’re older or younger, just love me! I will be with her forever.

And some responses are as follows:

218.28.106.*:

I despise you

6202687:

Fuck!!! There’s no other way! I only have this skill! It’s so sad, it’s not easy being a duck! And I have to take medicine every day, and now I have to change my kidney. I have been a duck for 3 years already. It’s okay when I meet a beautiful girl, but an ugly one…#$@#%!! let’s not talk about it. I once met a 40-year-old woman, looks not too bad, but she wanted too much. One night I didn’t rest, did it 12 times, each time was 1 hour long. The second day I bent my waist, held the wall, and had to go two hours before being able to leave. You think this is easy?

磨力游:

Males and females are the same!

横扫の千菌:

I’m speechless, you cheap embryo, you make men lose face. Don’t think that because of your innocent little face you’re great. So you’re attractive, but can you spend money and use credit cards? Fuck, even selling yourself online now. Shameless!

218.28.78:

I support you!

Other websites have blog-like entries detailing their first experience or their experiences being a duck. Some are drawn in by the prospects of making a year’s worth of earnings in mere months, others feel like they want more freedom in their life. Though it sounds fun to hang out with women and drink and play all night, like any other profession in this field, there are drawbacks as well: sexually transmitted diseases, depression, being tricked/kept from leaving, being stigmatized in society, among many other concerns.

There’s also a video made about [gay] male prostitutes in China:

I texted my duck friend–who hasn’t told me his new direction in life yet–though I haven’t heard back from him. I hope to get some inside knowledge, but I’m not sure whether he’d consider it losing face to speak to me about it. In the meantime, his ?? (literally uncle, but also means older friend, does anyone know if this also means “pimp” in duck vernacular?) called me the morning after I sent the text, and said that he went home for the night, saying “这里没活干了,” “There’s nothing left to do here tonight.”

There are two old women, one is Chinese and the other is American. The American put out a mortgage for her home, lived in it, and right before she passed away, she finished paying her mortgage. The Chinese woman saved until she was about to pass away, and finally saved enough money to buy a house.

China Journal reports that China’s economy is a rare case in the world right now, in that it has a “relatively robust banking system and sound government finances.” However,

The problem is too little private consumption, despite encouraging signs from shoes to appliances that retail sales are holding up well. Instead of unlocking the buying power of its 1.3 billion people, for instance by deregulating services like health care or media, the government takes the lead with often billion-dollar bets. It was a good strategy to get infrastructure built, but it is an expensive one to sustain.

At around 35% of GDP, China’s private consumption in 2007 was less than those of other major countries: 71% of GDP in the U.S., 64% in the U.K. and around 56-57% in Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Japan, according to JP Morgan .

Despite a stable domestic banking system and government finances, the global recession has undoubtedly affected Chinese people. For example, users on a BBS-oriented networking site called douban.com “have formed a number of groups devoted to sharing ways of saving money.” 56minus1 highlights some user groups, ranging from hundreds of members to over 12,000 members; these groups all share strategies and know-how on saving money in day-to-day life.

On the other hand, despite the recession inciting more Chinese people to save, it is true that China has a culture of saving that outlasts the global recession. Despite many efforts to encourage spending (e.g., tons of sales and endless specials), Chinese people still, relatively speaking, spend much less than residents of other countries. Part of it is a generational issue; the ageing population may not spend much (nor may they have much to spend), but younger generations, and perhaps those set out to bribe government officials, seem to have no problem spending. I suggest analysts break down spending in China by age groups and see if there are different results. Of course, there are many other reasons why Chinese people have been saving more recently. This WSJ article highlights a few issues: oversupply, government policies, and the global recession.

It is also clear that as some Chinese people get richer, many more are left behind; the wealth inequality in China is a huge issue (searching “wealth inequality in China” will give you over 80,000 articles in Google Scholar). While statistics may show that private consumption is relatively low, it may be because that many of the 1.3+ billion people in China just do not have the means for spending. And with the strained welfare system (too many people, too little money), many Chinese are also saving up what little money they do have to pay for their child(ren)’s education, medical bills, housing, and food.

In related news, Chinese women are supposedly finding their foreign sugar daddies less attractive, with the proportion of women willing to marry a foreign man dropping from 42.5 percent (before the financial crisis) to 16.8 percent (after). In the face of a global financial crisis, Chinese women are being more conscious about the accumulation of wealth/saving, and since “most foreigners did not care that much about saving,” women have been turning to Chinese males.