Silencing Independent Voices

China cracks down on Web and expats, by Robert Marquand:

I host with Yahoo! in CA, but I'm sure the good folks at the Propaganda Ministry can find me if they want to.

Reflecting on China World Tower 2

Our building's reflection.

Quick and Dirty Survey of Chinese Newspaper Vendors

We've returned from Shanghai where I learned one interesting thing: it's darn hard to buy a Chinese newspaper whose primary focus is the stock market. The street vendors I talked with grudgingly carry only one paper (Gu Shi Xian Feng) on a daily basis. They are willing to get a second paper (Shang Hai Gu Shi something or other), but only if you book it in advance. There's just no public interest in the stock market here as the Shanghai Composite hits eight-year lows. By comparison, when I lived in Nanjing in the summer of '97 (pre-Asian currency crisis), there were at least a half-dozen very thick stock market papers for sale on the street outside the hotel.

I did notice that there were two thick papers available on a weekly basis that the vendors were enthusiastic about, both of them focused on, you guessed it, real estate. I never tire of spreading the gospel: you gotta buy 'em when they ain't. The Chinese should now be focusing on the equity markets and eschewing real estate investment.