Valerie Niquet is Senior Research Fellow at The French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), Sinologist and Japanologist, Doctor in political science and writes about the evolution of regional balances and strategic issues in Asia since the end of the Cold War. Funded in in 1979 by Thierry de Montbrial, IFRI is France’s leading independent international relations center, dedicated to policy-oriented research and analysis of global political affairs.

This is how she describes her work:

Thirty years after the start of the policy of reform and opening up launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, the political system and Chinese society are considerably more open. However, there still are many gray areas, one of which is the question of decision-making: the way the decision-making process is concretely implemented remains opaque. Between statements of principle and apparent inconsistencies, an analysis of the decision-making process helps to shed light on the conflicts within the political apparatus, the debates on the evolution of the regime, the interests at work, and the power games that take place.

This is a very interesting piece of work if you are interested in how complex and opaque the decision-making process at the top political level in the Middle Kingdom is. Above all, she deserves all the credit for bringing to the mass – me (sic)- in less than 30 pages:

- The management of the Olympic Games

- How China is handling the international financial crisis and social challenges

- Environmental issues and the promotion of the “China” brand

- Last but not least, corruption and the power of influence networks

p/s. All the credit goes to Arnaud de la Grange who first spotted this article. You can download it here (PDF-122Kb).

Subject: Soya milk as substitute for milk and yogurt

Dear Parents,

It has always been our concern to look into our students’ health. We try our best to give them healthy and nutritious food/snacks to sustain all the nutrients that their growing body needs. In this regard we have decided to provide soya milk and fruits everyday instead of milk and yogurt. The reason is because of the continuous milk scare that goes around, being on the safe side, we will serve soya milk which is equally nutritious and healthy for the children.

I am very grateful to the school team for being such cautious but I can’t prevent myself from raising a couple of questions:

1. The word melamine is carefully not mentioned
2. Either these guys don’t read the news – everything’s possible in China… – and just discovered 6 months later the Sanlu affair, then just realized that feeding kinds with melamine was far from clever
3. Or they are very well informed and there is another scandal underway we are not aware of.

But the real question is then: What do I put in my morning flakes? Beer? Anyone has ever tried?

Arnaud de La Grange from Le Figaro asks whether this is going to turn into the “New President Security Services’ Nightmare“, Aujourd’hui La Chine collects Chinese reactions in Beijing here and ChinaSmack has translated an impressive list of Chinese reactions there.

BTW, you noticed Wen is speaking in Chinese… at Cambridge !

It started all here on Dec. 26th by ChinaSmack, when Chinese Netizens noticed in pictures the Commissioner of the Nanjing Housing Administration Bureau was smoking very expensive cigarettes and wearing an expensive watch that a government official should not be able to afford [Read: on his salary]. ChinaSmack has translated in his post the numerous comments originally from Tanya. [Update: this link has been "harmonized"]

Yesterday, The Strait Times revealed this Government Official had been dismissed and that authorities in Jiangsu province where Internet users exposed an allegedly corrupt official’s taste for luxury have made posting information about private life illegal.

The ruling Communist Party’s parliament in eastern Jiangsu province approved a law making it illegal for people in the city of Xuzhou to publish ‘private information’ on the Internet, the China Daily reported.

But now, anyone in Xuzhou who posts ‘private information’ online will be fined up to 5,000 yuan and could be barred from using the Internet for six months.

Today the news has been reported by Shanghaiist and China Digital Times [Proxy required] as well.

“This is spine-tingling and hair-raising stuff” says Shanghaiist.

Global Voices Online has sum up some Chinese comments as well.

I don’t remember having sung such song at school, seems that some Chinese pupils do. Here is an excerpt of the transliteration from the China Digital Times:

Lead: Earthquakes, shifting back and forth like the positions of Sarkozy, with his dirty tricks, trying to shake the great China

Lead: Did China retreat?

All: No. The Shenzhou-7 launched. We are victorious!

Lead: Pathetic Europe will never stop the insurmountable force of our great dynasty

All: Just the aftershocks from the earthquake would destroy France!

Watch the video. I am sure Sarkozy will love it !

Among the several conclusions, this has drawn my attention:

Internet Filtering (“the great Firewall”) is only one part of Chinese Internet censorship

Domestic web censorship is not centralized at all

Domestic web censorship is outsourced by government to the private sector

Domestic web censorship is inconsistent – if you can’t post successfully in one place, it’s usually possible to post your content somewhere else, at least for at least a while

The system of “managing” user-generated web content in China appears to follow a similar logic and approach as the system for controlling professional news media

You don’t need to be an activist to be willing to freely navigate the Web… Here is a handy workaround I wrote previously to acces any website from China Mainland.

When you are in China but working for a European company, it means you don’t need to work hard, or work at all from Christmas to New Year.

… Which New Year ? The calendar one or the Chinese New Year ? I’m sure CEOs will love that one !

There is still something of the petulant 3-year-old here, brazenly pursuing something that is decidedly not in her [China] interests. It illustrates the fact that China’s foreign policy, its strategy and its world view are anything but mature.

First, it’s not like China doesn’t need friends right now. It’s economy is in crisis. Over the weekend President Hu Jintao told a gathering of Communist Party members that the global crisis could undermine the country’s economy and threaten the party’s capacity to rule China. Europe is China’s largest market. But the Europeans are restless. European businesses want to know why they sell more stuff to Switzerland than to China. Cancel a summit and these questions will only grow louder.

So why did Hu really blow off Sarko, Pomfret asks?

The stated Chinese reason in this case bears scrutiny because of its brazen honesty. According to wire service reports, Qin Gang, a spokesman at the China’s foreign ministry, acknowledged to reporters that France was being held to a higher standard than, say, the United States, whose leaders routinely huddle with the Dalai Lama and barely suffer a slap on the wrist.

Chinese tea-leaf readers have focused on another reason: They’ve wheeled out the old bogeyman of Chinese political calculus, claiming that unidentified “hard-liners” were behind the cancellation. That’s rich.

The reality is that China just screwed this one up.

I am sure Sarkozy will feel less lonely after this…

Le Monde: Do you think the China-EU summit has been canceled because of the Tibetan question only ?

Jean-Vincent Brisset: The Dali Lama is just a pretext. China is focusing on France but the real target of all this is the unity of the Europeans countries. Chinese politicians think they can manage bilateral relations – except with the United States – but they know how much harder it is to manager multilateral relations. Since the French obtained an embargo on weapon trade in 1989, China tries to hamper the EU, because of its capacity to impose economic quotas, currency reevaluation, etc. They identified Nicolas Sarkozy as the weak point. Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel both received the Dalai Lama or did not assist the Olympics opening ceremonial.

Le Monde: France is the weak point then…

Jean-Vincent Brisset: It is, historically. When I was doing my time in the military, there was a saying, “Keep harassing one guy only, you will have one guy only yelling”. This is exactly what China is doing, as France is currently leading the UE Presidency.

But this attitude dates back to long ago, since French diplomats always had a deep admiration for China and and a total outdated understanding of this country. French believe that by being kind to people you can be paid the same in return. Amongst the countries which played a preeminent role in history, France has always been the weakest. France is considered as a female country and as the same time, China does respect powerful nations only.

Le Monde:The Olympic torch incident in Paris doesn’t help as well…

Jean-Vincent Brisset: France has been apologizing only since the beginning of this affair, following the chinese diplomatic tradition. Historically, a vassal State was submitting to China by offering presents. This is exactly what we did by sending Raffarin offering a present to Beijing.

Le Monde: How this was interpreted by Chinese ?

Jean-Vincent Brisset: To them, it is very clear ! France is a vassal State. This will be very difficult to catch up.

Le Monde: How to regain confidence and trust between the two countries ?

Jean-Vincent Brisset: Fortunately, a lot of European people begin to understand China is not such a friendly country. It’s a selfish country maintaining rough relationships with the rest of the world, and we should keep our distance with it. China is testing the power of the EU, not France. Should China gain to imposing economical retorsion measures toward France without any EU reactions, it would be a victory. On the contrary, if France puts the EU in front of the battle, this affair can find a smooth settlement. But if the EU shows some weakness, China could step then towards each of the European counties, except the UK which will always resist.

Ouch ! I told you this guy was rough… Interesting times indeed, let’s see what’s next for French.

Log on www.skype.com and you will be redirected automatically to http://skype.tom.com – no choice, this is the Chinese version of Skype. Then look at the color of the Siteadvisor icon on your web browser, it turns from green to full red which is a strong invite to leave the page. Asking more details at SiteAdvisor, you will then discover that the Skype Tom page in China is hosting Adware-BDsearch, a generic trojan considered as harmful to your computer.

I discovered this long ago adn advised friends to download Skype from the US site instead.

Yesterday, the New York Times revealed that surveillance of Skype messages was found in China. At last…

A group of Canadian human-rights activists and computer security researchers has discovered a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives certain Internet text conversations that include politically charged words.

The system tracks text messages sent by customers of Tom-Skype, a joint venture between a Chinese wireless operator and eBay, the Web auctioneer that owns Skype, an online phone and text messaging service.

The list also serves as a filter to restrict text conversations. The encrypted list of words inside the Tom-Skype software blocks the transmission of those words and a copy of the message is sent to a server. The Chinese servers retained personal information about the customers who sent the messages. They also recorded chat conversations between Tom-Skype users and Skype users outside China. The system recorded text messages and Skype caller identification, but did not record the content of Skype voice calls.

The researchers said their discovery contradicted a public statement made by Skype executives in 2006 after the content filtering of the Skype conversations was reported. At the time the company said that the conversations were protected and private.

So if you don’t want your private conversations log to be stored on a Chinese computer somewhere you don’t want it to be, make sure you use a US version of Skype and make sure you correspondent is doing the same as well.

Read the full article here.

Also in French from Reuters here. [Update] The previous link has been removed from Yahoo archives.