Several of my Atlantic colleagues have explained why they are not writing more frequently about this ongoing war.
My explanation is simpler, and is the opposite of Jeffrey Goldberg's. He says, in effect, that he knows too much about the situation. I know too little. I spent the first weeks of the Iraq war in Haifa and Tel Aviv, mainly working on this article (about the Mohammed al-Dura case, which of course took place in Gaza), and I was at Camp David with Jimmy Carter's entourage when he brokered the Sadat-Begin agreements of 1978. But I understand enough about the politics of the Middle East to recognize that I don't understand enough.
The one relevant thing I do know concerns a repeated source of tragedy in foreign-policy decision making. That is the reluctance to ask, before irrevocable decisions, "And what happens then?" For instance: so we depose Saddam Hussein. What happens then? This question is all the harder to ask when the step in question feels so good. Crushing Saddam. Or, punishing Hamas.
I can imagine the Gaza ground war "working" from Israel's perspective in the short term. The obvious question is, What happens then? I find it very difficult to imagine a sequence of events that leaves Israel -- or anyone -- better off one year from now, or ten.
If I thought the people making Israel's choices were stupid, I could tell myself that they hadn't properly weighed the consequences. But I don't think they're stupid. Instead I think that, like the people who rushed the U.S. into war in Iraq, they are reckless and unwise and will therefore hurt their country. Along with hurting a lot of others.
I had no idea how many readers know about, care about, and have forcefully-expressed opinions about Indonesia! After the jump, specimen reactions on two main points (in response to earlier posts here, here, and here).
One concerns whether Indonesians of all varieties, and not just members of the Muslim majority, are enthusiastic about the ascent to glory of former Jakarta resident Barack Obama. One reader, whom I quoted earlier, said it was a sectarian matter: Muslims loved him, Indonesian Christians and other non-Muslims didn't. Many, many readers have written in to disagree; in fact, everyone I heard from saw it differently. I quote a sample letter below.
The other has to do with the airport tax that surprised me. The theme of many correspondents was: you don't know the half of it! I include a letter concerning the "fiskal tax," a steep levy imposed not on foreign tourists, who are generally richer than Indonesian citizens, but on Indonesians thinking of going overseas.
This is a one-time only update: fight it out among yourselves from here on!
I should probably also say that, ever since my initial visit to Indonesia in 1981, while my wife's parents were working there, I have been enchanted by the place. In the current Atlantic I mention the indelible memory of my wife's and my very first moments in the country, when as soon as the airplane's doors opened on the tarmac we could smell the kretek cigarettes and hear the tones of gamelan. We've been to many parts of the country and always look forward to the next visit there. When I mentioned the incident of penny-ante bribery I encountered at the airport, it was mainly out of surprise that something taken for granted 20 years ago could still be found. Even when this was a lot more prevalent and the Suharto regime was boundlessly corrupt, it didn't make Indonesia a bad or unlovable place.
Here, a short sample of gamelan, which I never get tired of listening to. Once, in Java, we saw a gamelan gong being forged and bought one to take home. The music is this video, by a skillful but obviously non-Indonesian ensemble, starts 45 seconds into the nine-plus minute clip. (For some less traditional but very seductive gamelan, try this; for a more traditional and very energetic music-and-dance performance, here.) After the jump, some recent mail.
It is 4am in Beijing as I type. For good and sufficient reason*, I had to be at a radio studio downtown from 2:30 to 3:30am. When that session was over I went out on the street to find a cab. It is so, umm, crisp in Beijing that I went out with knit cap pulled down practically to my eyebrows, muffler wrapped from my neck up to bottom of my eyes, plus assorted huge overcoats, gloves, thermal underwear, etc. Speak to me not of the joys of winter.
Find a taxi; climb into the front seat, the comradely thing to do in Australia and China alike. Pull off my knit cap and undo the muffler. Driver turns to me, starts to chuckle, and gives a little salute.
No, this is not the Obama-honoring salute I encountered so recently in (balmy) Indonesia. No, not at all. Zongtong Bushi! "President Bush!" Hardee har har. As mentioned previously, to most citizens of China I am apparently indistinguishable from Xiao Bushi, "Little Bush." I do not reply, "Chairman Mao!" or "President Hu!"
Instead I collect myself and make a pun: Wo bushi Bushi! I'm not Bush! It does no good. He salutes again as I get out of the cab.
Somehow I hope this is good for the soul. _____ * Taping of Fresh Air interview, presumably for broadcast on Tuesday.
The most obvious environmental problem in China is air pollution, as I have from time to time -- OK, maybe five million times -- mentioned in this space. But environmental experts consistently stress that the most consequential problems are the related issues of CO2 output, climate change, and water supply. (On Chinese environmental issues in general, here is one article by me and one very valuable blog site.)
The Asia Society's "China Green" project has just posted a riveting and sobering series of videos on how climate change is affecting the once-vast glacier fields of the Tibetan Plateau that are in turn the source of nearly all the major rivers of Asia: Yellow and Yangtze in China, Mekong and Salween in Southeast Asia, Brahmaputra and Ganges in India, Indus in Pakistan, and others. This is an introductory three-minute trailer:
There is a lot more, and a lot that's more dramatic, at the project's main site, here. I recommend spending a minute with the interactive opening-page splash shot, which allows you to run your mouse over a photo of Mt. Everest and watch how its surrounding glaciers have changed from 1921 to 2008.
This past August, during the Beijing Olympics, Michael Zhao of the Asia Society posted a wonderful series of daily shots of air-quality conditions in Beijing in the months leading up to the Games. They showed, among other things, the minimal correlation between what was officially a "blue sky day" and how the sky really looked. (The photo-chronicle is ongoing.) Zhao has also put together the Glacier project and really is demonstrating the potential of online video to dramatize public issues everyone "knows about" but has a hard time visualizing. Making these issues vivid is a necessary though not sufficient step to getting something done about them.
UPDATE: Have swapped a version with English subtitles for the previous Chinese-subtitled trailer. Ever considerate!
Two years ago, I said I was making an exception to the "no active involvement in politics" stance I had maintained through my previous decades of journalistic life. (After leaving a one-time stint in politics in the Jimmy Carter years.) That exception was to support my friend Jim Webb's then-improbable run for the U.S. Senate from Virginia.
Here is exception number two: Tom Geoghegan for Congress. He will be running in the special election for the seat Rahm Emanuel is vacating to become White House chief of staff. This seat, representing the 5th District in Illinois, has a colorful lineage, to put it mildly. Emanuel's predecessor was Gov-for-the-moment Rod Blagojevich. Earlier, for 36 years, the 5th was Dan Rostenkowski's base, before his unfortunate indictment and imprisonment on fraud charges. Tom would continue the tradition of having a difficult-to-spell last name. It's Irish and is pronounced Gay-gan.
The basic background on Tom Geoghegan is here, written by his Chicago friend Rick Perlstein. Having been a friend of Geoghegan's for most of my life, I couldn't be more enthusiastic about his deciding to run.
To the extent Tom is known publicly, it's mainly because of his books, like Which Side Are You On?, The Secret Lives of Citizens, and In America's Courts. These really are masterful and original pieces of thinking and writing, which most writers would be content with as their entire contribution to the human endeavor during the period Tom has turned them out. Which Side, which was published in 1991, begins this way:
'Organized labor.' Say those words, and your heart sinks. I am a labor lawyer, and my heart sinks. Dumb, stupid organized labor: this is my cause.
The remarkable thing is that in Geoghegan's case writing has been a sideline. Day by day for several decades he has been a lawyer in a small Chicago law firm representing steel workers, truckers, nurses, and other employees whose travails are the reality covered by abstractions like "the polarization of America" and "the disappearing middle class." Geoghegan's skills as a writer and an intellectual are assets but in themselves might not recommend him for a Congressional job. His consistent and canny record of organizing, representing, and defending people who are the natural Democratic (and American) base is the relevant point.
The people of Chicago would have to look elsewhere for Blago-style ethics entertainment. Tom Geoghegan is honest and almost ascetic. Because it's an important part of his makeup, I mention too that he is a serious, Jesuit-trained Catholic.
Not living in the 5th district, I can't vote for Tom Geoghegan. But I can give him money, and just did, via his online donation site here. The campaign's mail address is Geoghegan for Congress; PO Box 1145 Chicago IL 60690. Email is GeogheganForCongress @ gmail.com
The race will be wide open, and I have no idea now what Tom's chances might be. It's a winner-take-all, no-runoff contest. I do know that the Congress would be better if Tom Geoghegan were part of it. Check out his record and see what you think.
NOTE: Several typos now cleaned up in what was originally a very late-night post -- including, unfortunately, a mistyped email address for writing to the Geoghegan campaign. The name is hard to spell, but not THAT hard.
On New Year's Day I mentioned an Indonesian military policeman's heartening response when he heard that my wife and I were Americans -- not Australians, as he had assumed. I also mentioned the traces of the top-to-bottom corruption of Indonesia in the old Suharto era that can be seen even in its spiffy new airports these days.
From reader Aaron Connelly, of Georgetown U., this amplification and reality check.
It seems the government must have upped the departure tax since I left in late November,
when it was a mere 5,000 rupiah. [For me, it was 150,000.] I suspect this is related to the 20% decline in the value of rupiah vis-a-vis the dollar since October. If it is, this might
be a land speed record for an Indonesian government policy change.
I also wanted to spoil your excitement, just slightly, with regard to the
Indonesian airport official's enthusiasm for the President-elect. It is likely
that this gentleman was either "orang sekular," ["secular person'] or a Muslim. While I
was in Jakarta and Yogyakarta for the three months leading up to our elections,
opinions on Barack Obama were very neatly divided along sectarian lines:
Muslims and secular Indonesians [the great majority] were generally enthusiastic; Christians were
uniformly pessimistic or wary of Obama.
When asked why, Christian Indonesians would tell me that they believed Obama
was a Muslim, or that they were suspicious because their Muslim friends or
coworkers were "too excited" about Obama. I was always surprised to
turn on TVRI [the national network] week to week and hear another "investigative report" on
Obama's Muslim school days. Unlike in the American press, in the Indonesian
newsmedia the "Obama was a secret Muslim" accusations were never
off-limits, though there they were treated as a much more cheerful sort of
intrigue than they were by the Jerome Corsis back in the States. Muslim
Indonesians were fascinated by the possibility, even if they ultimately doubted
the substance of the argument.
The effect of this sort of coverage, however, in the context of Indonesia's
sometimes tense sectarian politics, was to turn off Indonesian Christians to
the President-elect. Asking natives of North Sulawesi and Flores about American
politics in Jakarta, I learned to settle in for a long diatribe against Obama,
our "Muslim Senator," and for a very strangely impassioned, wholly
superficial defense of the virtues of John McCain. It was amusing at first,
frustrating and tiresome by the end of my time there-- because it says nothing
positive about the direction of sectarian politics in Indonesia.
In a followup note, Connelly said he wanted to make clear that when referring to Indonesian Christians he was talking about that country's counterpart to America's "low information voters" -- people who followed US politics hazily if at all. He did not mean the very sophisticated cadre of Christians in think tanks, academia, etc.
In any case it makes you wonder whether the anti-Obama Indonesians found this information on their own, or whether instead Roger Ailes has quietly reached a new target audience.
When traveling in Indonesia in the early 1980s, I used to
marvel at the way the high-level mega- corruption of the Suharto family had
filtered down to every level of life. The airports were somehow the most
impressive example, since you assume them to be connected to international
standards. In those days, the Garuda Airlines agent at the Jakarta airport might
sorrowfully announce that your reservation had been canceled - until a bunch
of Rupiah notes, passed discreetly across the counter, made the bookings re-appear. Bags suddenly
became "overweight" and impossible to fit onto the airplane, only to slim back down to an acceptable poundage through the same
person-to-person magic.
On this promising first day of 2009, my wife
and I walk into a vast modern-looking Indonesian airport. After we've
been
through all the check-in rigmarole, we are directed upstairs to the
departure gates. At the top of the stairs we find - surprise! - a
departure-tax toll booth, where each departee must pay 150,000
Indonesian
Rupiahs (about $13.75) in cash.
Old-fashioned element #1 in this set up: forking over cash,
rather than building it into the ticket price as in most of the world. In the old days, this was prevalent everywhere. Now it's rare. #2: no
noticeable previous mention of this fee within the airport or from the airlines, so that unless you happen to have
kept 300,000Rp on you for sentimental reasons, you're stuck, as every other foreign traveler we observed was.#3: other currencies accepted, but at
punitive rates (eg,$17 US dollars -
or 170 Chinese RMB, the only cash we had on us, which is equivalent to $25).#4: no ATMs in this part of the airport, but
plenty of little money changing booths offering similar punitive rates. The tax collectors helpfully steer each flummoxed foreigner toward these booths.
Oh well.
But the real continuity with days of yore was #5, the
solution to the problem. I had seen an ATM outside the airport. I asked a
uniformed security guard if I could go out to withdraw Rupiahs there, at a more reasonable rate than from the money changers. He
pointed to the big sign that said, "No one may leave the airport after check
in." Tidak boleh. No can do.
Then he leaned closer and said, "Boss, I help you, you help me!"I said Boleh!
- "can do!" - and slipped out the door he opened for me. I walked the few feet to the ATM, got my 300,000
Rupiahs for departure tax -- and a little more for whatever you would call lagniappe in Indonesian. Back in the
door, a Happy New Year greeting to the guard with a discreet money-passing
handshake, and on to the plane. It was as if we'd never been away.
11 am Indonesia time, January 1, 2009. Present our boarding passes to uniformed military
police supervising the entrance to an international airport in Indonesia, for first
of several connecting flights back to Beijing. For reasons that will be evident after the next posting, I'm not naming
the airport.
"Where you from? Australians?" one of the policemen asks.
It is the most likely guess for people who look like us in this part of the
world. Amerika Syarikat, I reply -
"the United States." We used to live in Malaysia, and after our struggles with Mandarin the Malaysian/Indonesian language feels practically like our native tongue.
The officer pulls himself up to attention and with a huge smile gives
us a snappy military salute. "America - very good!" he said. He lowers the salute and says "Barack Obama!!"
with a big thumbs up.
It's been a while...
(Yes, yes, Obama is a particular favorite in Indonesia because his childhood years in Jakarta make him seem a local boy made good. Still, this is not the spontaneous reaction to the name "America" that traveling Yanks have gotten used to in recent years.)
Like many other people who pay taxes in the US, I am using some of the waning hours of the year to think what worthwhile causes I should be sure to remember (ie, give money to) during the 2008 Tax Year.
There are more candidates than anyone could cover, but here is a note about one that has been important to my wife and me. Several months ago I wrote an article about the Yellow Sheep River/"West China Story" project, which is designed to help poor rural children in China's arid, remote western regions, especially the girls, earn the money they need to stay in school and have a chance to escape the impoverishment to which they would otherwise be fated. For $130 a year, donors can cover one student's expenses for the year -- and in return the students must write regular accounts of the lives, their families, their studies, and their dreams on web sites their schools create.
My wife and I have met students like those our donations have supported, and everything about the project makes us respectful of what it is trying to do. (The kids below are ethnic Tibetans, at a school in Gansu province.)
I mention this now in part to remind people of one more deserving cause (and of the fact that, even during the hard times now besetting the US and the world, there are people for whom $130 will make a bigger difference than it does to most Americans). But also I wanted to mention one quirk of the online contribution process for this fund.
If you log onto the English language donation site for West China Story, you'll see a notice that contributions from US taxpayers will be tax-deductible only if handled by Give2Asia.org, which in return takes a 9.85% cut. That seemed punitive enough to stop me for a minute, and make me consider just continuing contributions in non-tax-deductible Chinese RMB cash when I'm back in Beijing. But on examination. Give2Asia appears not to be some usurious counterpart to payday check-cashing leeches but instead an operation run by the Asia Foundation to manage contributions to small organizations in Asia. Its existence is one of many illustrations of how complicated it can be to manage efforts, including charitable ones, across national borders.
In the long run, I hope this middleman cut can be avoided. But as 2008 draws to an end, I willingly used the service to support another cohort of students. This cause may not mean as much to your family as it does to mine, but perhaps it will make you think of similar efforts closer to your own heart.
Or Happy New Year, as they put it in the Indonesian language I have been hearing around me for the past week. That week has coincided with enforced separation from the mighty Internet -- not a bad way to spend time with one's family! -- which in turn leaves me behind on various year-end updates still to come.
But I can't let this day pass, nor this moment of online connection, without mentioning that my new book Postcards from Tomorrow Square goes on sale today, with official pub date early next month. Random House's catalog listings here. Random House's e-book format is here, and Amazon's Kindle format is here. A very nice set of quotes, for which I'm grateful, here.
I won't make a habit of book promo, but I include this link to an email Q-and-A that Kate Merkel-Hess, of the influential blog The China Beat, conducted with me about the book and the general process of writing about China. She evoked from me an admission I'd long managed to avoid:
Ahah! You have cruelly revealed the trademarked secret of everything I've ever written for the magazine!
Further details and secrets at the China Beat site. Further promised year-end updates on software, hardware, the press, and China in this space very soon. New Year's greetings for now.
Or Merry Christmas, in the Indonesian language I hear around me at the moment.
In two or three days, the much-anticipated Year End Pensee series resumes, with wrap-ups on software, hardware, publishing (including the virtues of the print version of the Atlantic), politics, and a replacement for the hoary boiled frog analogy. Until then, peace on Earth, goodwill to all. Thank you for reading our magazine and its writers -- on line and in print.
Despite the best efforts of Jeffrey Goldberg in his Atlantic article last month, despite my varied efforts in articles like this and this and this, despite the books by John Mueller and others, despite the precocious academic papers of Benjamin H. Friedman -- formerly of MIT, now of Cato, not the economist Benjamin Friedman of Harvard -- we end 2008 with the rituals of "security theater" still enshrined in American life.
As Jeff Goldberg is the latest (and most amusing) to demonstrate, security routines like those of the TSA gum up travel and cost countless billions in salary, wasted time, and general hassle (not to mention the thrown-away bottled water and cigarette lighters!) without adding much that would thwart a serious terrorist.
My heart sank when I read recently about a truly idiotic last-minute Bush Administration step to lock in security theater. This is converting the "Air Defense Identification Zone," which had been "temporarily" in effect in the skies of the Mid-Atlantic since soon after 9/11, to a permanent federal regulation. (Splenetic background from me, here and here. News of the conversion to permanent status here.) Sigh. And commercial airports in the U.S. still ring with the ignored-by-all announcements warning that the "threat level" is "elevated."
If you haven't spent much time out of the country recently, it may be hard to convey how fraidy-cat all this ritual makes the US seem. Yes, the 9/11 attacks were a disaster of historic proportions. Yes, some group, somewhere, will probably manage to attack the United States again. But many, many societies around the world face an ongoing risk of attack. Life is dangerous. Over the long run, we judge societies by how they bear up under such threats (and, of course, what they do to contain them.) Compared with the Brits, the Indians, not to mention the Israelis and I bet also the Iraqis, our security theater makes us look like chickens. Reclaiming Gary Cooper, not Chicken Little, as our national icon is part of what I argued here.
But given the way politics works, security theater is a ratchet. If a public figure dares suggest reducing some for-show "protective" measure, then when an attack occurs -- as it will, someday, in a country this large and open -- the politician will be in trouble. So it's easy to add extra "safeguards"; almost impossible to remove them.
Except, perhaps, with the general housecleaning that is possible when Administrations change. Here is one very modest place to start. Please, Gov. Janet Napolitano -- please, please, please, for the love of God -- change the name of the department you have been nominated to head. "Department of Homeland Security" is not a term a real American would use. "Homeland" is something that Germans of the 1930s would say. Or Soviet Russians of the 1950s. Not Yanks. "Domestic Security" is dull but not Orwellian. Try that, or something similar.
For more ideas, I hope that everyone who can possibly be in Washington on Jan 12-13, including Napolitano, will attend this conference, at Cato, about rational and non-hysteric ways to keep America secure. (Extra background here.) A new Administration has a chance for a new start.
NYTimes.com is working fine for me once more, and I hear from friends in varied corners of China that it's up and running across the country, after three or four days of (apparent) nationwide blackout. Background here and here, with links to other stories. Who can explain. As I mentioned earlier, it's the miracle and mystery of Christmas.
Yesterday I mentioned a summary of the latest John Boyd conference, which included the argument that today's lean, hyper-efficient, "just in time" economy was magnifying the effects of today's economic collapse. Problems in one sector instantly become problems in another, since so many businesses were fine-tuned to await the next order, the next payment, the next shipment from someone else.
Via reader Evan Oxhorn, I learn that the novelist David Brin has recently expanded on just this theme. Anyone interested in the first dispatch will find it worth reading Brin's thoughts, here. As a preview:
I refer to a brittle weakness in our economy, courtesy of the same
smartaleck caste of MBAs who brought us derivatives and hyper-leveraged
finance. A frailty that could, potentially, turn some short-term
crisis into full-scale disaster -- and all because of a good theory
that's been taken way too far.
For
decades, we've been told -- by the same fellows who brought us
"efficient finance" -- that manufacturing and commerce should be
fine-tuned to squeeze every penny of profit, by trimming away all
"fat." ... Under this
principle, any reserves that are kept on-premises will only encourage
sloppy management and incur unnecessary storage costs -- a calculation
that has long been exacerbated by shortsighted tax policies that punish
warehousing and inventory-keeping.
This approach, called "Just-In-Time,"
is based upon ... a wholly unjustified wager
that the economy and its supporting systems will always remain stable
and never experience disruption.
The whole question of what today's economic seize-up does to comfortable, accepted economic creeds -- from management theory, as above; to the pluses and minuses of full globalization; to the role of regulators; to theories of trade -- will be with us for many years. I do not remember a time when so many ideas seemed to be pressed so hard by fast-breaking events. Probably the last time it happened quite this way was in the 1930s.
I am enough of an optimist to think that the process of working out new ideas won't be as protracted as that last time, and that it need not end in world war. My cheering thought for the day.
Thomas Friedman tells us in his column today about the art village of Dafen, and how it has been affected by the housing collapse in the US:
I had no idea that many of those oil paintings
that hang in hotel rooms and starter homes across America are actually produced
by just one Chinese village, Dafen, north of Hong Kong. And I had no idea that
Dafen's artist colony -- the world's leading center for mass-produced artwork
and knockoffs of masterpieces -- had been devastated by the bursting of the U.S.
housing bubble. I should have, though.
True to the Atlantic's motto -- "this year's news, last year!" -- our own readers knew all about Dafen exactly 12 months ago, for example here, here, and here, plus a very good Feb, 2007 Chicago Tribune story by Evan Osnos here. The "village," by the way, would be considered a real city any place but China. Here is one of my favorite artists there, responsible for much of the varied work around him (many more pics at the links above):
No larger point here, just glad to see Dafen make the big time. It's also an interesting counterpoint to Adam Minter's recent observations about the changing ecology of the news.
With apologies in advance for the self-referential quality* of what I'm about to say, I recommend this recent entry by fellow Atlantic Monthly contributor Adam Minter on his ShanghaiScrap blog. He makes a point that is obvious once you think about it, but which I hadn't seen laid out quite this clearly anywhere else:
The point is that a nationwide firewall-block on the NYTimes.com site, if that is indeed what's happening, is not simply questionable as a PR strategy for the Chinese government. It also emphasizes how much the information ecology has changed.
The NYT is, in my view, indispensable as a source of reported news around the world. One of the big and really alarming trends of 2008 is the hugely-accelerating economic pressure on organizations like the NYT that support reporting rather than pure opinionizing. But as Minter details, blocking this flagship site means a lot less than it used to -- and a lot less than the censoring authorities may assume -- no matter how good a job the NYT's team is doing, because of the rise of reported blogs:
What's curious to me - in fact, what's astounding to me - is that the
Chinese authorities either haven't picked up on this phenomenon, or
they don't care. Instead, they are doing what Chinese officials always
do: focusing their attention on the entity with the most prestige.
Quite honestly, I think most Chinese officials would have a hard time
believing that the rather rag-tag unwashed mass of (for the most part)
young, male, poorly compensated bloggers could actually drive news
coverage.
* The self-referential part is that Adam Minter originally sent this as an email to me, which I encouraged him to spread more generally. I hope you agree that it's worth reading.
1) For me, back in Beijing, the main NYT site is fully blocked, if I'm using the plain Chinese internet without a VPN or other burnishment.
2) Anyone who really wants to can find what's on that site -- with a VPN, by going through the International Herald Tribune site, by trying mobile.nytimes.com from a hand-held device, or with one of the tech workarounds mentioned here yesterday.
3) Without the relatively fast, informal-but-informative polling made possible by the internet, it would have been harder to establish that this was happening all over the vast country all at once. So thanks for writing in.
INTELLECTUAL RIGOR BONUS POINT 3A) As a matter of logic, one cannot be absolutely certain that this is a purposeful, country-wide blackout. Conceivably there is some other technological or accidental explanation. I consider this extremely unlikely, given: that the same computer that won't load the pages while using a normal connection loads them instantly when a VPN is turned on; that the pattern is reported in every corner of the country, from Urumqi to Dalian to Zhuhai and points in between; and that it involves a site about which the government has complained before and that has recently carried some sensitive items. But logically, we cannot exclude the possibility that it's all an accident.
4) While the porous nature of the current NYT block is consistent with past Great Firewall practice, the motivation for this episode remains unclear at the tactical level and puzzling at the strategic. I won't review the tactical possibilities, some of which were mentioned earlier. The real question concerns the strategy.
As i argued last month in the Atlantic, China's official PR machinery often succeeds mainly in making the country seem far more closed-off, impenetrable, defensive, and difficult to deal with than it actually is most places most of the time. By that logic, what exactly will China gain through this episode? The vast majority of Chinese net users would never look at NYTimes.com anyway -- it's in the wrong language. Those who really want to see what's on there can find a way to do so, despite the block. And how confident, open-minded, rules-abiding, modern and so on will the episode make the Chinese government look in other countries' eyes? Governments everywhere are annoyed by the press, but a mark of being in the big leagues is viewing press criticism as a necessary annoyance. This just is strange.
Could end up being a very brief series, but here is one to start:
As my wife and I near our third consecutive Christmas/New Year stretch outside the United States, mainly we feel lucky for all that we've been able to see and do and experience in China and its environs.
But of course there are costs. And while I wouldn't exactly put this at the top of the list of things we regret missing out on (compared, say, with seeing our families and friends etc), I am in fact sorry not to have been around for the last few installments of the John Boyd Conferences, where people interested in Boyd's theories of competition gather to apply them to topics ranging from financial meltdowns to handling Iraq. Much more about Boyd via links you can find here, here (second item), here, here, and here, for starters.
(Left: the classic photo of Boyd in his days as a Korean War fighter pilot.)
So I wasn't at the University of Prince Edward Island early this month for the Boyd 2008 session. But I am struck by this summary of the session from its organizer, Robert Paterson, and how many sobering truths about the years just past and just ahead it presents. Here is one sample from a long list of bullet points:
The search for efficiency and the urge to consume has set us all up
like a row of dominoes - there is no buffer, no resiliency. As one
problem rises it causes another. As one solution is tried it drives
another problem. We all pull back and the consumer economy stalls. The
auto industry and credit firms feeds the media (40% of conventional
advertising). Papers and TV and Radio networks, many subject to LBO's
will have to fail as per the Tribune. Every sector will be laying
people off. Sales of all things fall off a cliff - driving more
business failures and layoffs. Cities and states that depend on sales
tax and property tax and the credit markets can rely on none of these.
So they too will have to lay off millions - thus making all the
problems worse. National governments will be asked to save us all and
of course cannot. As States and Cities get squeezed and cannot borrow,
they will too lay off millions - teachers, firemen police. No one will
be safe.
This is very close to what I was trying to explain three and a half years ago in my "Countdown to a Meltdown" imagined-history article in the Atlantic. The way that everything really is connected -- I recently saw a school in southern China that will be in trouble because its donors are losing money through the Madoff fraud in New York -- and that no one has "any buffer, any resiliency" is something we've known in theory but are only now comprehending in its daily, cascading reality. It's worth looking at the summary for similarly uplifting thoughts.
On December 19, the NYTimes.com site was apparently blocked all across China. For the sake of completeness, these followups.
1) Could the problem be related to a recent physical break in three of the four main internet cables connecting Asia to North America? (As reported here and elsewhere.) Maybe -- but at face value that wouldn't seem to explain why the NYTimes.com site loads at normal speeds when you're using a VPN but times-out when you try it through the plain, old, Great Firewall-screened Chinese internet. It also wouldn't explain why most other international sites seem to behave normally.
When the main undersea cable off Taiwan was cut in an earthquake nearly two years ago, you knew it immediately. Internet traffic in most parts of Asia was either interrupted altogether or brought to 300-baud dialup modem speeds. But maybe this recent break somehow contributes to the NYT problem?
2) After the jump, tech details on an important point I didn't mention: Consistent with hit-or-miss, far-from-airtight nature of Great Firewall censorship, even when the site www.nytimes.com is blocked, http://nytimes.com is not. Go figure. Also, various mobile web devices seem to be able to reach any site they want.
3) I mentioned yesterday that exactly one person, from Guangdong province, had written to say that he could reach the NYT site with no problem. I heard from him again just now. Today his connection is blocked. The change in my situation is the reverse. I started having NYT problems last night -- but at the moment, it's working fine, even with the VPN turned off. It's the mystery and miracle of Christmas. Tech details below.
UPDATE: From a friend who knows the nuances of high-level Communist Party maneuvering far better than I do, this hypothesis about what's going on:
I suspect that while the reason behind this blocking is not yet clear, the process--and thereby the motivation--might be a bit less obscure. That is, given that consensus drives policy decisions here, it is very likely that different parts of the bureaucracy weighed in and officials each had a gripe with the NYT coverage of some or another issue. Collectively, they were able to push through a directive to block it.
The people here overseeing foreign journalists also know that there will soon be a new contingent manning the desks of the NYT bureau here. Those officials want to send a clear signal that they expect more positive ("objective") coverage of China.
I suppose all will be revealed in due time. Or maybe never. _______
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