Americans Voting Overseas

April 20, 2008 at 12:22 am · Filed under Uncategorized

My fellow American expats,

As I’m sure you are all aware, we have a very important presidential election coming up this November; one that, among other things, will influence how Americans are received abroad. Therefore, I want you to have your say. I don’t care which way you vote, I just want you to vote!

Please take 10-15 minutes, go to this website, and fill in the necessary info to ensure you will vote in November 2008. Don’t wait until October to do it either! because you need to mail the form back to the US. You will also need:
- your social security number
- the address of the place you lived when last voting in the US,
- your current overseas address, and
- possibly your US driver’s license number.

Here is the website: https://www.overseasvotefoundation.org/overseas/home.htm Please sign up to vote!

Undoubtedly there are many more Americans out there who could benefit from this info, so please pass it along.

P.S. if you know an easier way (not that this isn’t easy enough), let me know because anything that helps people vote is great!

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T_bet - This is ridiculous

April 17, 2008 at 6:18 am · Filed under Uncategorized, Knowledge and Experiences, Learning through Foreign Cultures

The whole situation with T_bet has gotten out of hand.  From the blocking of Google News and Youtube to the San Francisco torch protests, and the closing of the Nepal-T_bit border, including stationing Chinese security forces in Kathmandu (talk about national sovereignty & autonomy that China values so highly), to Chinese attacking Chinese who support T_bet independence, this has really gotten out of control.

As if this could get any more absurd, today I was I was verbally attacked (albeit on the internet) by a Chinese person who was upset that I wasn’t equally outraged at CNN’s coverage of the T_bet situation.  He claimed CNN’s coverage was damaging to China’s reputation and full of complete lies.
My response:
1) I haven’t seen any of CNN’s coverage therefore I can’t agree or disagree;
2) I’m not in T_bet, nor have I been following the historical-political situation; therefore, I am in no position to say what is truly happening or who is in the right;
3) I am not the outlet to which you should be expressing your grievances because
a) I already live in China, not in the US,
b) I do not control CNN, and
c) I don’t even own stock in CNN.
4) Perhaps you should be a little more open-minded about the whole situation and try to see both perspectives.
5) Did you ever consider maybe it’s the Chinese media that is telling the lies?
6) Since when did China have a good reputation to begin with in the English-language press?

Perhaps what’s more embarrassing and damaging to China’s reputation is that Chinese people are searching for fellow countrymen’s pictures and information on the internet to hunt them down and throw rocks at their house all in the name of nationalism.  (I sure the West can still remember what happened last time a population had feelings of such extreme nationalism (think WWII).)

Maybe the reason the Chinese government maintains the Great Firewall of China and heavily censors the media is not for self-preservation, but to protect foreigners (expats) from the violence and anger that ensues when Chinese citizens don’t like what foreign governments or news media say and do. (That was a joke, by the way.)
P.S. If this doesn’t get my blog blocked in China, I don’t know what will.

Comments (1)

Facebook and Internet Companies in China

April 13, 2008 at 6:35 am · Filed under Uncategorized, Entrepreneurship & Business, Business Climate

As Facebook looks to its Chinese users to translate the site into Chinese, the expectation is that Facebook will soon enter the Chinese market. Facebook tried to enter China previously through acquisition of an existing Chinese social network but nothing came of the negotiations. Will Facebook have more luck this time? Or better yet, will Facebook be more successful than other overseas internet companies have had trying to enter China? (See below slide show) I think Facebook may have somewhat of an inside track with current overseas Chinese studying in universities who’ve already gotten onto Facebook. Maybe those users can help it ‘go viral’ in China. Facebook already seems to have developed a small user base among outward-looking, international business-oriented young people. I know many have sought to be my friend on Facebook, regardless of whether we’d met or not.

Perhaps the better question than whether Facebook can scale in China, is whether it can successfully monetize in China the way China’s own social networks have done. Facebook does not make much money on advertising currently. Chinese social networks, on the other hand, have different revenue models making them more profitable than any advertising-based model developed by Western-based social networks.

Another concern I have about Facebook offering a Chinese-language version is whether that will make it yet another target on the government’s internet block list. The Chinese government already blocks more Chinese-language sites that are sensitive than English-language sites, for example wikipedia.en is sometimes available but wikipedia.cn is never available within Mainland. Therefore, if Facebook is offered in Chinese, that makes it even easier and more accessible to Chinese users, including groups for or against T_bet independence, F_lun G_ng supporters, etc, as well as other sensitive information contained in pictures and videos on Facebook. My Facebook profile is already frustratingly blocked in China (for some unknown reason), I don’t know what all of us expat Facebook addicts would do with so much spare time we’d have if Facebook was totally blocked.

Slide show about the difficulties foreign internet companies have had in China by Jonathan Haagen (Economist Intelligence Unit)

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