Evolution of a Large Online Social Network focuses on Weaklink, one of the largest online social networks in China, to illuminate its exposition of social networking’s evolution. The author created his own profile while adding anonymous friends.  To monitor the evolution of the social network, the user logged in for a specific amount of time in order to evaluate when (and how) the networking developed.  The article catalogues the initial peak interest, garnered among a few hardcore aficionados who transmitted their enthusiasm to their joining friends.  Later, users habituated towards social networking’s novelty; the euphoria since declined.  Interestingly, the article notes that most relationships were created between two old users or one old user and one new user.  Ultimately, the virtual world encourages engagement by shattering invisible boundaries between social groups.

This piece provides a general overview of how social networks develop.  The discussion regarding the rise, fall, and plateau of interest in social networking provides valuable insight to how social networks are formed and – more importantly – who forms them and for what purpose(s).

Barboza, David. "Google and Music Labels bet on Downloads in China." The New York Times. 5 April 2009.

This article addresses one of the most recent experiments in new profit models based on digital music: Google's free music search engine in China. Very recently, several of the biggest international record labels partnered with Google and a Chinese company (top100.com) to offer a free music-download service. Because online piracy of music is particularly rampant in China, the success of this model could have lasting implications on policies in the US. The New York Times article offers both critical and supportive opinions on the initiative. Notably, Google will have to struggle to contain the music-downloading to China, employing "legal and technical hurdles."

The partnership of Google with major international music labels represents a new way for record companies to remain profitable without trying to stop free music downloads. This unlimited-download service is supported not through subscription, but by advertisements. Although it is difficult to anticipate the success of such a model, the adoption of this idea certainly reflects a major change in the way that the entertainment industry is approaching its consumers. The willingness of labels (even on this controlled scale) to abandon control over music distribution to this degree is a symptom of their desperation, certainly. However, it is likely also a necessary move towards a new kind of support for music development.

Benshoff, Harry M and Griffin, Sean. America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

      In chapter six of America on Film, Benshoff and Griffin provide commentary on the representation of Asians in Hollywood films during the silent film era and the “classical” 1930s Hollywood films. The chapter suggests that immigration legislation, like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1924, were indicative of pervasive Western prejudices and fears that were then perpetuated in popular film. Asians in movies were almost never represented as Asian-Americans but rather, as exoticized “orientals” living in exaggeratedly aestheticized foreign landscapes. Also, the roles of Asians in most films were filled by Western actors in “yellowface,” as was the case with General Yen’s character in Bitter Tea. The chapter also discusses at length two well-known Asian characters of early film history –  Charlie Chan and Fu Man Chu. Both are characters of detective-genre film played by white actors, and both embody what is known as the “inscrutable Oriental” stereotype. Charlie Chan is akin to the classical Holmesian detective, but is more comical and often spews “old Chinese wisdom.” Fu Man Chu, similar to Chan in many regards, is an evil genius who exacts obscure and ghastly forms of “Chinese” torture on his unfortunate victims.

      This chapter provided contextual information that is important to understanding the kinds of preconceptions viewers of the 1930s might have had about Chinese, or more generally Asian, culture. Was General Yen a character unique to film at the time of Bitter Tea’s release? He’s seems not to have been. In fact, his character fairly well suits the “inscrutable Oriental” stereotype discussed by Benshoff and Griffin, in that he is both shrewdly perceptive and intelligent, and at the same time, subtly menacing (as demonstrated by his brutally pragmatic indifference about executing his prisoners during times of economic crisis and famine). Yen, like Chan, says several cryptic “fortune-cookie” type maxims throughout the film. Even Mah-Li’s character, the wily concubine, seems to fit the description of another stereotyped character mentioned in the chapter called the Dragon Lady, a seductive and treacherous female spy who fools men with her sexual wiles.

Frank Capra's 1933 film "The Biter Tea of General Yen" was given the honor of premiering at the grand opening of New York City's Radio City Music Hall. With a budget of around $1 million dollars, it was one of Columbia Studio's most ambitious high-profile projects to date. Despite this, the movie immediately revealed itself to be a box-office flop, one of only two of Capra's moves to prove financially unsuccessful. This annotated bibliography will explore the reasons for the film's unexpectedly poor reception. Was the film doomed to failure because audiences were not yet ready for portrayals of inter-racial romance? Was the film's success crippled by censorship from various foreign markets? Was the serious subject-matter simply ill-suited for the Depression-era climate? Most broadly, this bibliography will attempt to understand the historical context out of which Bitter Tea arose.

As the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Department of Commerce, Henry Levine's statement to the "Congressional -Executive Commission on China sheds light on the efforts and intentions of the U.S. government on helping the Chinese attack on IPR infringement. As bilateral merchandise trade reached nearly $150 billion by 2002, U.S. commerce has started to feel the effect of large scale Chinese piracy of its goods. Indeed, American manufacturers complain about rampant piracy of intellectual piracy and trade barriers. Despite China's commitments to cracking down, rampant piracy, fake CDs, DVDs, and pharmaceuticals cost the U.S. an estimated $20-$25 billion annually. In fact, the Business Software Alliance estimates that software piracy rates in China exceed 90%. In response, the U.S. continues to evaluate and monitor China's IPR apparatus through the annual Special 301 process, and has begun certain proactive measures to stem the piracy. The Department of Commerce has organized a series of seminars with Chinese officials conveying US views on how best to increase criminal enforcement of IPR violators.

Mr. Levine's statements illustrate the influence U.S. corporations have over foreign trade policy and the ways in which they seek to protect their goods in foreign markets. This approach differs greatly from the view and approach of the Chinese culture towards copyright infringement and the spirit behind ownership and may explain some of the chasm between U.S. and Chinese policy and enforcement. Mr. Levine's statements will help illustrate not only the scale of the Chinese piracy but also other means by which the U.S. government seeks to proactively aid the Chinese government besides trade sanction threats and lobbying for further WTO compliance.

Excerpts from this book address intellectual property rights and their protection, compliance, and enforcement in China. After China's entry into the World Trade Organization, which subsequently extended the TRIPs agreement to its borders, China has seen mixed results on its attempts to enforce the standards and statutes outlined in the TRIPs agreement. According to the authors, China's IP law currently offers protection consistent with the minimum requirement of TRIPs. However, the authors suggest that in order to elimanate some of the shortcomings of the TRIPs framework, Article 7 of TRIPS and its role must be enhanced in order to restore balance: "the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights should contribute to the promotion of technological innovation and to the transfer and dissemination of technology, to the mutual advantage of producers and users of technological knowledge and in a manner conducive to social and economic welfare, and to a balance of rights and obligations. However, the landscape of international intellectual property is changing, and the authors point out the diverging trend of multilateral institutions leaning towards securing the access of developing countries to protected content and material on reasonable terms while bilateral trade agreements continue to enforce strict copyright rules in favor of the developed nation. However, we must take TRIPs on facevalue and should be viewed as part of the broader strategy of priority setting, education, and institutional capacity building, regulaory adaptation, FDI marketing, and patent mining. Nevertheless, piracy and counterfeiting are still significant threats to right holders. The Chinese policy of administrative enforcement of copyright law often impedes its very goal due to longstanding local protectionism and cronyism as well as the internal bureaucratic rivalries that prevent the creation of a comprehesive IP strategy.  However, the Chinese have instituted judicial review of these administrative decisions, increases in the maximum fines available for IP infringements, and lower thresholds for criminal liability. Although change has come at a sluggish pace and Chinese IP enforcement will never rival that of many Western nations, China has made considerable steps in order to comply with TRIPs legislation.

 

The general opinion seems to agree that China has come a long way in IPR enforcement, but it still has a long way to go. As the broader themes of this paper come together, this article will serve to point on many of the drawbacks of the Chinese system and what can  be done to change this as well as the steps taken by China to meet the minimum requirements of the TRIPs agreement. While enforcement is still an issue, this authors make clear that we must be patient due to the extenuating circumstances of China's robust economy coupled with a lagging administrative stucture and status as a developig nation.

This article documents China's promise to step up its efforts to punish violators of intellectual property rights outline in the agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Proprety Rights (TRIPs). China unveiled an outline of a new enforcement policy of IPR's, eaded by the deputy director of its National Copyright Administration's copyright management bureau, Xu Chao. Their response comes after multiple please by the U.S. for the Chinese to further crackdown on IPR infringement, despite Chinese claims of significant progress. China's law stipulates a maximum of seven years i prison for copyrigh violators. However, the Chinese still do not meet international IPR protection standards. The aforementioned outline promulgated the Chinese goal to increase its self directed IPR levels within 5 years. Furthermore, the Chinese plan to fully ramp up their efforts, similar to international levels, by 2020.

This article will help illustrate some of the causes of the rampant Chinese piracy of U.S. IPR. There exists both a punitive and a cultural defecit between the two countries. The lack of genuine enforcement of IPR domestically has enfuriated U.S. copyright officials and trade czars for decades. There seems to exist a chasm between the two countries as to the moral reprehensibility of copyright ifringement, illustrated by the Chinese complancency with their progress, that may help contextualize much of the discrepancy in policy goals between the two countries. This article will serve as background support and evidence to my larger goal of first proving the enforcement of international copyright law and then documenting the trade agreements put in place to accomplish this very task.

This article draws on theories of globalization, technology, and the struggles between trade agreements and copyright objectives to place international piracy into a global context. The author, Shujen Wang, examines the the role of Hollywood in shaping trade agreements and piracy policy as well as the interconnectedness of unilateral and multilateral solutions. Specifically, Wang documents the General Agreement on Tarrifs and Trade (GATT) which led to the creation of the WTO, the growth of U.S. trade policy from the WTO's agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). While analyzing the importance and role international piracy and copyright law play within the framework of these multinational trade agreements, Wang illustrates the necessity for copyright protection via the importance of the copyright industry in the U.S. economy. Moreover, Wang tracks the way techological developments like VCR's and DVD's have changed the moral landscape of the pirating industry and Hollywood's lobbying efforts to push for protect copyrights internationally.

This article incorporates many of the essential themes of my topic, including techology's ability to alter and push the boundaries of domestic and international copyright statutes, international piracy's role in shaping trade agreements, and the U.S.' ability to use these trade agreements to open up markets and ensure strict copyright protection for its goods. Furthermore, the article cites the specific legislation, trade organizations, and trade agreements that have been instrumental in shaping the two-pronged U.S. approach to copyright protection. Specifically with the passage of the Permanent Normal Trade Relations act with China in 1999. Overall, this article provides valuable insight into constrcting a fraework that encapsulates the complexity of Chinese piracy and how it has affected our bargaining and trade agreements and policies.

 

China's All-Seeing Eye China's All-Seeing Eye

With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.

NAOMI KLEIN

Posted May 29, 2008 3:24 PM

60 minute interview with China's SWF manager.

China is building megacities like this at a pace and scale the
world has never seen before. Chongqing has 12 million people and counting.
It's part of the central government's plan to bring some of China's economic
boom to its impoverished interior province where three out of four Chinese
live. Vanguard takes you on a whirlwind tour of the city---from inside a
cramped boarding house where migrant workers to inside a starter apartment
of China's new class of yuppies; from inside ancient, crumbling teahouses to
gleaming new car factories.

Woodrow Wilson Center (Princeton). China Environment Series, Issue 5.

Project of the Council on Foundations and the International Center for Non-profit Law.

China Policy Institute. University of Nottingham. Discussion paper 15, February 2007.

The Kowloon Walled City (traditional Chinese: d9i> ee/(; simplified Chinese: d9i>ee/(; originally known as d9i> e/(e) was an anomaly in Hong Kong's colonial history. China's tiny exclave in the middle of British Hong Kong for decades, it had a colorful existence until it was torn down in 1993.

As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes
By JOSEPH KAHN and JIM YARDLEY

BEIJING, Aug. 25 - No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.

But just as the speed and scale of China's rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China's leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country's 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.

Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.

China is choking on its own success. The economy is on a historic run, posting a succession of double-digit growth rates. But the growth derives, now more than at any time in the recent past, from a staggering expansion of heavy industry and urbanization that requires colossal inputs of energy, almost all from coal, the most readily available, and dirtiest, source.

Choking on Growth

A series of articles and multimedia examining the human toll, global impact and political challenge of China’s epic pollution crisis.

Urbanisation in China
China's Chicago

Jul 26th 2007 | CHONGQING
From The Economist print edition
A giant city in the south-west is a microcosm of China's struggle to move millions from rural to urban areas

 

 

No enough parking space in Beijing
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-02-07 16:31

Beijing lacks 400,000 parking spaces, Zhao Fengtong, vice mayor of the Beijing Municipal government, said on Thursday.
With car ownership rocketing to the current figure of more than two million cars, not to mention more than 300,000 more cars annually, Beijing is struggling to keep up.
Besides building more underground parking lots and parking buildings, Beijing should create an internet parking information system showing all the available public parking spaces, suggested Li Xun, deputy director of China Academy of Urban Planning and Design.
Beijing announced earlier last year that 26 free or low-cost large-scale parking lots will be built near subway and bus stops to encourage drivers to use public transport in downtown Beijing.
Traffic problems topped this year's list of suggestions from representatives of the municipal people's congress. Traffic has been the number one issue for the last five years, said officials of the municipal people's congress.

something about us
Expatriate Shanghai Food & Beverage media focus on fashionable restaurants, design, and location.

 

npr weeklong series 

Shanghai Builds for the Future 

China is now undergoing one of the most massive urbanization in human history, and nowhere is that more evident than in cosmopolitan Shanghai. The city's population is now almost 18 million, and is forecast to rise to 25 million by 2020. This series looks at how the city is preparing for its future

December 10, 2006
World View Podcast
Summary: A transcript of Calvin Sims interviewing Times Hong Kong bureau chief Keith Bradsher about China's new love affair with cars.

Sims: Gives us some background, if you will, Keith. China is typically known as a country where you had just millions and millions of bicycle people. Probably that's the image they have when they see photos of Chinese, especially in big cities. What has been fueling this growth in car usage in the last couple of years?

Danwei TV is an Internet TV station that shows short programs about China

Thesis: The Chinese economy is best served by a gradual increase in intellectual property right (IPR) protection that corresponds to the growth of its economy. This gradual increase will allow China to become technologically and culturally self-sufficient because contrary to what large American corporations would argue, foreign investment and involvement in the Chinese intellectual property (IP) economy would still be sufficient and China's domestic development would not be unduly restricted.

   This book, a collection of essays by the scholar, Kong Qingjiang, is among the most comprehensive and up-to-date sources available on IPR in China. In this book, Qingjiang takes his work over past years and compiles it into an organized fashion. Because of the nature of this compilation, there is some overlap among the essays in concepts, facts, and ideas. Nevertheless, the book provides more information about IPRs in China than most other books written to this date.
   Because this book is a collection of essays written over a period of time, there is no single unifying thesis to the work. However, it can be said that Qingjiang is very optimistic about China’s IPR future in regards to meeting international standards. On a very basic level, all of the essays suggest that China is making a great deal of progress and that strengthening its IPR regime is a good thing, although it should be undertaken in a gradual manner.
   Specific topics that Qingjiang’s essays focus on are a brief history of recent developments in Chinese IPR regime; an overview of China’s current stance on IPRs, domestically and foreign; judicial enforcement of IPRs; problems in China’s IPR regime posed by the digital era; a discussion of how China is handling the balancing of competition policies and IPRs; China’s strategy for the future of its IPRs; China’s place in the WTO; China’s role in TRIPS and the Doha Agenda; whether China is or can enforce international standards of intellectual property protection; how China’s IPR regime effects Sino-US relations; and lastly, how China’s IPR regime effect Sino-Japanese relations.
    The bulk of these essays use case studies to exemplify their individual assertions although some essays use more statistics than case-studies. As a result of the numerous essays, this book provides more information specific to China than any other book. The book is important for any assessment of IPRs in China and helps to accentuate the argument that China is best suited by a gradual change toward meeting international standards of IPR. This thesis is supported by Qingjiang in different essays throughout, and so is a useful tool in providing a scholarly grounding to the thesis of this project.

   This book is essential for any study of intellectual property rights or copyright in modern China. Because it is one of few books devoted entirely to this subject, The Politics of Piracy provides the reader with an indispensable source of information and a unique thesis on the problem of piracy in the People’s Republic of China. The book’s thesis is as follows: “The direction of external pressure and the characteristics of the institutions it is designed to change are crucial to understanding the effects of foreign pressure on policy enforcement outcomes.”
   As can be seen by this sentence, which merely states Mertha’s hypothesis, the book can, at times, be difficult to read. The writing does not flow as smoothly as it could but this reflects some of the harder concepts that Mertha tries to tackle. To defend his thesis, Mertha mainly uses empirical case studies as opposed to broad statistical evidence, presumably because statistical evidence on piracy in China is fraught with a great deal of unreliability.
   One of the best aspects of this book is that it devotes an entire chapter to each type of intellectual property: patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Because most books on IPRs deal with multiple developing economies, they tend to lump all IPRs together. This book treats each IPR as its own entity and explores their problems and possible solutions with the attention they require.
    It must be stated that this book treats IPRs in China from an obvious etic perspective and argues that most reform in China’s IPR protection comes from foreign, usually United States, pressure. Mertha believes that this is a good and effective method for bringing China’s IPR standards into compliance with Western standards. However, one of the strengths of Mertha’s book, the penultimate chapter, discusses problems with his thesis and his approach to the subject. As a consequence, this book is very valuable to the topic of intellectual property rights in China despite its sometimes difficult prose.
   The value of this book in relation to my thesis is that the book illustrates one aspect of the relationship between China and the US. This book shows that by pressuring China, the United States has achieved higher standards of IPR protection. To my thesis, this suggests that as China has become more important economically, it has also become more important regarding IPR. This importance proves a correlation between the strength of the economy and the strength of IPRs that goes well toward advancing the argument for China's gradual improvement of IPRs.

This book is a collection of essays.  It is very interesting and important for my topic of strengthening IPRs in China because it presents a point of view that is contrary to many of the other books written on IPRs for developing economies.  This book contests that developing economies should not adopt IPR regulations similar to well-developed countries.  More succinctly, “the chapters in Part II suggest that global intellectual property rules may well be an obstacle to development.”
    The essays are generally written in an easy style and all present compelling arguments.  Most essays are written by scholars although some are written by administrators and businessmen with experience in international intellectual property.  The book is broken down into four segments with each segment representing a different aspect of the overall argument.
    The first segment, entitled, “Innovation and Diffusion of Technology” suggests that international IPRs make it difficult for poor countries to receive advanced technology and education, which is in a contradiction to many economists view of IPRs.  The next section, “Development and Access to Technology: Genetics, Health, Agriculture, Education and Information Technology” discusses the current situation in many developing nations and how they use the economic principle of free-riding to their advantage.  It also discusses the fact that developing nations have the capacity to understand and enact versions of IPR laws that are beneficial to them and don’t need assistance in determining their own laws.  The third segment, entitled, “Knowledge and Access: Who Makes the Rules?” argues that international IPR agreements are really just bully tactics enacted by developed nations to coerce weaker countries into adopting the formers’ standards of IPR.  The final part, “Ownership of Knowledge: Changing the Rules” discusses how developing countries have effected TRIPs, the WTO, international IPRs, and their relation to larger countries.
    This book is very valuable for filling out a complete view of IPRs in developing economies.  It presents an alternative view to most economic arguments and, therefore, shows how my thesis would be beneficial at the initial stages of Chinese economic development.  Because the book only discusses developing nations, its thesis falls apart when expanded to nations that have outgrown the “developing nation” status.  This lack of discussion implies that a country that is neither developing nor developed needs an intermediate level of IPR protection, and therefore a gradual increase of IPR protection is necessary.

UK House of Commons Library Report.

July 5, 2006
Guangzhou Journal
First Comes the Car, Then the $10,000 License Plate
By JIM YARDLEY

... 

But, as we all know, these numbers regarding China are completely bogus anyways. Because most MPAA member movies can't be sold in China so they have no loss. China only allows 20 foreign films to be imported each year, and usually 14 - 16 of these are from MPAA members. So what the MPA is talking about in this report isn't "profits lost to pirates in China" but "profits lost to closed markets in China".

A VERY detailed guide to business in China by the Department of State (227 pages!).

China Rights Forum
2006
China's Environmental Challenge    

CDT is run
by the Berkeley China Internet Project out of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

article to be published in this weekend's nytimes magazine

article to be published in this weekend's nytimes magazine

China's accession to the WTO changed the face of world economics, but in order to be successful, markets needed to open up. This paper argues that China should eliminate tariff's on IT quickly in order to help open markets and pave the way to success.

Chinese women, living and working / edited by Anne E. McLaren. [0415312175 (alk. paper) ] London ; New York : RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.
Call#: Van Pelt Library HQ1767 .C45253 2004