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Grace Wang and Chinese “Nationalism” April 19, 2008, 9:16 am By Nicholas D. Kristof Shaila Dewan of The Times had a fascinating article about Grace Wang, a Chinese student at Duke University who tried to encourage dialogue between pro-Tibet protesters and pro-China protesters. Grace is from China, and bloggers there perceived her as betraying her country and siding with Tibetan independence. The result was a nationalist explosion on the Chinese web, with people posting her parents’ home address and comments that came across as threatening. Her parents abandoned their home for reasons of safety. This is exactly the kind of story that makes those of us who like and admire China so uneasy about rising Chinese nationalism. It’s the same feeling I had after 9/11 when I saw all the posts on Sina and Sohu BBS sites, expressing the feeling that it was so “cool” that Americans were dying in the twin towers. That broke my heart. Granted, I’m sure many of those Internet users didn’t mean what they wrote about 9/11, any more than they mean the threats against Grace Wang. People let off steam on the Internet. But this kind of Internet bullying seems more common in China — there have been many such cases — than in most other countries, and it has shades of the Cultural Revolution in it: The mob of crazed students clinging blindly to an ideology, denouncing a cosmopolitan intellectual as a “stinking No. 9? and demanding that he or she repent to the crowd. This kind of nationalism is …
STORY: It’s time to ditch the famous names and wear fake, say some Chinese. A new trend in fake fashion is taking the world’s most populous nation by storm. GiPhone, HiPhone and Anycoll handsets sell for far less than their genuine counterparts. Sportswear is also a victim and bargain hunters think the altered logos validate the copycat brands. [Cui Lai, Student]: “It’s an imitation, so it’s not a fake and it’s not infringing copyright. Maybe it lacks innovation, but it’s not really bad.” Although many regard it as piracy, fake fans find the brazen imitations part of the attraction. [Jin Hui, Student]: “I think that Shanzhai is an example of China’s skillfulness. I mean think about it, if you can take good products and produce the same thing, that’s a sign of progress.” But their growing popularity could prove a headache for genuine brands, says Baker and McKenzie lawyer Scott Palmer. [Scott Palmer, Lawyer]: “It is possible that these lookalike, these sort of upstarts, can actually become quite famous locally and then, you know, the case would be considerably more difficult.” Palmer receives a daily stream of foreign client enquiries over Chinese imitations, and foreign governments frequently take China to task over copyright infringement. But China responds that as a developing country it may take years to root out the problem.
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