public relations and media

Imagethief was interested to see a self-congratulatory story in the China Daily reviewing the things China has done to make work easier for foreign hacks:
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From the work of two other bloggers Danwei consolidates a wonderful dig at one of the most tiresome rhetorical devices of the Chinese government, "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people".

Genius.
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A couple of days ago a journalist acquaintance called and asked me what I thought about the anti-trust and fraud lawsuit that may be filed against Baidu. Her timing was good because I'd spent a large chunk of last Sunday writing a long post about Baidu. If you're wondering why you didn't read it, it's because in moment of dumb tab management I accidentally deleted it rather than post it. It still hurts. It took me a few days to get over my sorrow and take another crack.
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If you follow China business news then you've probably heard or read about the arrest of Huang Guangyu, chairman of the huge Gome home appliance store chain and China's richest man. As Time's Austin Ramzy points out, being named on China's rich list is a widely known as an indicator of future misfortune.
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Imagethief was interested to see that the ARJ-21, the Chinese regional commercial jet that is currently in development, had its maiden flight on Friday. China has big ambitions to grow its capabilities in commercial aviation, and there is much riding on the ARJ program. So I was not surprised at all to see that the pilots were complementary after the flight:

"The plane flew normally and it handled well," the report quoted pilot Zhao Peng as saying.
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Let's all take a moment to appreciate the Global Times, the nationalist tabloid cousin to the staid People's Daily, which has decided to get indignant about the new Guns'n'Roses album, "Chinese Democracy". It's not that the Chinese people don't have some cause to be angry. After all, the title is somewhat provocative, and the title track itself makes mention of the dreaded FLG.
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This is one of those unusual occasions on which I feel genuine sympathy for Microsoft, which has a hard time catching a break in China. It's true there was, during the Tim Chen era, a brief flowering during which Microsoft's government relations improved and the company appeared to make real progress licensing Windows to Chinese OEMs. Remember when Hu Jintao visited Bill Gates?
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Singapore's PAP has discovered its value as a political marketing tool:

Said PM Lee [Hsien Loong]: “(This) is how this generation communicates —
through YouTube, through images, through sounds — and we have to get
our message across in a serious way, but in a way which people can
accept, and we’ll resonate with them on our website and on many other
places in cyberspace.” 


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