Want the news in China? Speak English

According to Ad Age Magazine in the US:

"Sometime during the week of Oct. 11, the Chinese-language websites of the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal disappeared."



But the English language versions remained, as did the Chinese versions outside the country - so the message to students and digerati in censored countries the world over remains clear: If you want the whole story, read it in English.

"It's not clear exactly why the sites went dark, but the suspected reason is because the WSJ and FT covered in depth an open letter written by a group of retired Communist Party members that called for greater openness in media and less censorship. The letter was published briefly on various Chinese sites before being censored."

But the thing about the Internet is this: Once it's out there, it can still be found - maybe not on the front page of your local daily but it has already entered the mindset of the populace and there the discussion begins - although a discussion is exactly what the authorities were hoping to avoid.

"As the economy has gotten stronger, you might think China's media censorship would relax more, but it hasn't. The timing of the letter is likely tied to a meeting held this week in Beijing to discuss the party's next five-year plan."

As the economies in Asia move more towards trying to build a sustainable middle-class that supports their countries internally, as opposed to being primarily export driven, governments may look more towards joining the conversation as opposed to trying to squelch it - after all, isn't it a lot easier to just pick ones battles and fight the ones that matter, rather than trying to stop a billion farmers from going to a billion fences and having a billion conversations they're going to have anyway? Seems to be. But nobody has ever accused any government of being logical, or sensible.

"China hasn't blocked the English-language sites and it's highly unlikely it will.

'They're not going to go and piss off all of the expat business community, that would be going too far,' Peter Herford, a former CBS news producer who's now a journalism professor at Shantou University, told me by phone. 'But their own citizens, hell yes.'"

As Thailand endures its travails with Democracy and French 20 year-olds overturn and burn cars in protest of a retirement law that won't affect them for 40 years, it's hard to say that Democracy works better than other more authoritarian forms of government. "It's a perfectly lousy form of government" - but, as I have been able to see over the course of my overseas work, I still come up on Churchill's side when he said, "But it's the best we've got".

Last week we were fortunate to have a WWED story linked in the WSJ. I guess they just won't be getting it in Chinese :)

"The most trusted man in America" dies: RIP Walter Cronkite

CNN) -- "Walter Cronkite, the CBS anchorman known as "Uncle Walter" for his easygoing, measured delivery and "the most trusted man in America" for his rectitude and gravitas, died Friday night in his New York home, CBS reported. Cronkite was 92. Cronkite covered World War II's Battle of the Bulge, the Nuremberg trials, several presidential elections, moon landings, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Watergate scandal of President Richard M. Nixon's administration. At his height of influence as CBS anchorman, Cronkite's judgment was believed so important it could affect even presidents. In early 1968, after the Tet Offensive, Cronkite traveled to Vietnam and gave a critical editorial calling the Vietnam War "mired in stalemate."

Noting Cronkite's commentary, President Lyndon Johnson reportedly said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." Johnson announced he would not seek re-election less than two months later."

At the time Cronkite entered the medium of television, TV was to the world, what the Internet is today. An infant, a newcomer. He was and always will live as a pioneer and sadly, throngs will not gather at the Staples Center for an all-star memorial service. Let's just bid him farewell quietly. He would have liked that. He will be missed.