Karen Christensen 沈凯伦: Social networking and doing business in China

Rather like the special relationship the United States and United Kingdom enjoy (and that many of my British friends disparaged), there are special relationships in Asia, too. I’ve been enjoying Jonathan Fenby’s massive Modern China: The fall and rise of a great power, 1850 to the present. One thing I found enlightening is his explanation of the practical reasons for the renewal of relations between China and the United States in the 1970s. (I don’t remember anything about this, which is proof that I had absolutely no interest in politics as a kid, much as I loved global things, and read many books about and set in Asia.) Weapon sales to Taiwan, and U.S. support for Tibet, was an issue then, but as Jimmy Carter explained in 2007, “Beijing privately acknowledged that the US would continue to sell arms to Taiwan.” Fenby gives the full story.

By the way, the jacket copy of Modern China is as good a summary as I’ve seen of China’s recent history and the extraordinary disasters (some self-imposed) came before its breathtaking rise.

Seeing if TwitterFeed’s reassuring “Feed parsed okay” is true, as I want to set up feeds from this China blog to Twitter. It sounds great: I can tag or categorize in a way that sends some posts one way, other posts to other places. I have registered China_a2z as the Encyclopedia of China Twitter page, so this will really make sense - if it works!

What the heck are Uyghurs and how do you pronounce the word? I’ve been helping people with pronunciation all week and been surprised by how many people are paying attention to the new stories. This is a good chance to show some of the insightful, expert coverage in the Encyclopedia of China, and a good time to relaunch a neglected project, BAO Blogs, a group blog site designed for our authors. It alsos gives me a place to focus some of my China attention, as at our main Berkshire Blog I have plenty of other subjects that I have to make sure I mention (being a publisher is like being a mother with lots of children trying not to play favorites). Here are a couple of articles that provide context for the events of recent days:

• Ethnic Relations
• Uygurs
• Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region
• Full list of Entries

The Wall Street Journal is starting to give a lot of attention to the Olympics in its weekend edition. Here’s the latest: “Victim or Victor? China’s Olympic Odyssey.” But for something more fun, take a look at this report from the well-known blog Danwei about the newly announced official Olympic cheer. My son Tom studied it carefully, I see; the first I heard about it was when he came into my office yesterday to demonstrate.