China Law Blog

Okay, so that's a bit of an exaggeration. Just a bit though.

Must read post over at Cup of Cha regarding how the Chinese people view various Chinese bloggers. Post is entitled "What Chinese People are Saying About our Blogs" and it is based on Josh's (Cup of Cha's) reviews of China internet forums. The results are fascinating.

We (CLB) are described as "Dan's blog" -- which is unfair as at least half of our deeply substantive posts are written by co-blogger Steve Dickinson and Steve also has input into most of my posts as well. The view on us is as follows:

Dan sees China as having the same kinds of problems as other societies. ZXiang argues that Dan understands China better than other foreigners because CLB makes the case that the West needs to give China more time to do things their own way (presumably reform).

I do see much criticism of China as more out of context than anything else; or at least the context by which I view China. My perspective of China is heavily imbued by my having been intensely involved (including living in) with emerging market countries for the last 25 years. My life experiences with Turkey, Korea, Russia tell me China is both unique and not unique (how's that for a lawyer sentence?), with its non-uniqueness carrying the trump. China is not unique in that so much of what it is criticized for is a natural offshoot of its developmental stage and not much different from the way other countries developed. China is uniquely subject to scrutiny though in that its development is happening in the internet age, at what seems to be an an accelerated pace, and in such a large and important country.

Cup of Cha concludes his post by urging people vote for us in the pending ABA Journal best blog competition. Now if I could just capture 1% of that 1.3 billion....