Culture and Society Guangdong Guerilla Marketing – The Weather Girls Win! June 12, 2012 3 By Mike Bastin. Guangzhou-based network Guangdong TV has succeeded with an incredibly audacious guerilla marketing ploy after using models in bikinis as weather reporters for…
Education Chinese language teaching in U.K schools – a yawning gap between rhetoric and reality June 7, 2012 14 By Mike Bastin. Currently, there are only one-hundred Chinese language teachers across the whole of the United Kingdom (U.K), a pitifully low figure. Yet, it…
Culture and Society Have Confucius Institutes become the battlefield of US-China public diplomacy? May 31, 2012 6 By Annie Y. Liu . The headline “Confucius Institute teachers required to leave the US before deadline” appeared as a top Chinese news item last week…
Culture and Society China Vice: Is China Now The Sex Capital of Asia? May 16, 2012 0 By Sam Beatson. According to the statistics from one sex industry/vice forum online, China could be emerging the new sex tourism destination for the whole…
Culture and Society Discordant Notes in Spite of Efforts to Play a Harmonious Tune May 8, 2012 3 By Xiaoling Zhang. A state-backed newspaper posted an online statement in the early morning of May 5 on its Sina Weibo account: “In the still…
Culture and Society Devil’s advocates and people’s advocates: stability, the law, and Chen Guangcheng May 2, 2012 2 By Jackie Sheehan. I appreciate the spirit in which Sam Beatson’s piece on the Chen Guangcheng case was offered. It nicely modelled the leaps in…
Business May Day or Mayday? China’s Golden Holidays Signal Development or Distress? May 1, 2012 0 By Mike Bastin. Once again China is witnessing another ‘Golden’ holiday or half-week with the annual May 1st Labour Day holiday upon us. But is…
Culture and Society Some Devil’s Advocacy – Chen Guangcheng’s Escape May 1, 2012 4 By Sam Beatson. News abounds that blind dissident activist, Chen Guangcheng, made an escape to the US embassy in Beijing this week. Democratic media has…
Culture and Society Can Mandarin become mainstream in UK schools? April 24, 2012 4 By Sam Beatson. This week, I interviewed the deputy head academic of one of Britain’s leading independent co-educational schools, historian Jo-anne Riley, of Brighton College,…
Culture and Society Chinese National Holidays – Should Jia(1) Ban(1) Be Banned!? April 5, 2012 1 By Mike Bastin. So, it is now Qingming Festival time, Monday 2nd – Wednesday 4th to be precise, in China or Tomb Sweeping Festival as…
