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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 10:04 pm Post subject: Maine town has more soft power than Chinese media |
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Millinocket, Maine v. China�s Global Times
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On Monday, the English language edition of China�s state-owned Global Times newspaper, daily circulation of 1.5 million, had this to say about Millinocket, Maine, population 5000, and its high school (Stearns), enrollment 200:
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Stearns is a run-of-the-mill high school and doesn�t appear on any �best high school lists.�
The school building is over 40 years old. The school has only one Advanced Placement class and the school maps date from the Cold War era.
Millinocket is isolated. The closest mall and movie theater is one hour away. The town gets 93 inches of snow per year. Millinocket has about 5,000 residents but has experienced increasingly hard times since its paper mill filed for bankruptcy eight years ago. There were about 700 students at the high school in the 1970s. Today there are about 200?and the biggest kick for kids is hanging out in a supermarket parking lot. |
Context: Millinocket, Maine has an active international students program in its public schools and, over the last year, it�s been covered by several media outlets, including the AP and the New York Times (indeed, the Global Times story lifts language, unattributed, from the Times� story). The Global Times editorial argues that Chinese parents are better off sending their children to elite Chinese schools, rather them to international programs like the one in Millinocket, Maine � especially if they want their children to attend elite American colleges. It�s the kind of thing that the Global Times, once described by James Fallows as �the pro-Communist Fox News of China�, likes to run, especially when � as in the case of this editorial � it�s written by an American.
In any case, it struck me as patently unfair that a subsidized newspaper, circulation 1.5 million, would pick on a small town in Maine, population 5000, without giving that small town the opportunity to respond. |
Read the whole post. This is priceless. |
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rollo
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: China
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| Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:59 am Post subject: |
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| Kind of sad/disgusting that the citizen of the U.S sells himself to the Chinese to write tripe about a place he knows nothing about. There are a few of these guys in china. They all seem to have sketchy credentials. Most I think are unemployed or unemployable English teachers. |
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The Great Wall of Whiner
Joined: 24 Jan 2003
Location: Middle Land
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| Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:43 pm Post subject: |
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| rollo wrote: |
| Kind of sad/disgusting that the citizen of the U.S sells himself to the Chinese to write tripe about a place he knows nothing about. There are a few of these guys in china. They all seem to have sketchy credentials. Most I think are unemployed or unemployable English teachers. |
Exactly. The vast majority of 'English teachers' here in China are here for a reason. I have only met a few who have proper credentials, making a decent wage, or are not running from something. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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This is a little bit related:
The sounds of Chinese boilerplate
Based on what I heard and the consensus reaction of the old China hands around the table, Le's talk was pretty much boilerplate. That's a term of art for policy mandarins -- it translates into "nothing new was said, it was just a recycling of old talking points and approved language." However, for those of us who are not old China hands, even boilerplate can be somewhat revealing.
http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/06/13/the_sounds_of_chinese_boilerplate |
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