Most blogs are just a random collection of unorganized information about someone's mundane life, which you never wanted to know about. To my knowledge, everyday they tell you more tedious details until you just become detached from the entire subject matter. As a result, you end up with a lot of floating blogs without much purpose or direction. My blog will attempt to be the exact opposite. I am challenging myself to write about Chinese international affairs in the most fascinating approach I can think of, which is a chronological reflection of how I understand Chinese international affairs in an anonymous blog
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By no means am I an expert on Chinese international affairs, but my credentials are sufficient enough to analyze the rapid rise of China. Considering I have studied the language, traveled to China, and enrolled in international relations courses during my tenure at my respected institution. This blog is intended to explore and familiarize people who have a limited knowledge on a country that is becoming a global leader (think of it like the rise of sleeping dragon). Furthermore, this blog will utilize a lot of imagery and analogies to make the subject of international relations more relatable to people’s daily lives. Therefore, I plan to personify countries like if they are somehow a reflection of people we may have encountered. Although this blog will inevitably reference academic journals, Chinese and American media sources, and other outlets it will be explained for a general audience to understand how China perceive itself in a globalized world. The understanding and prediction of China’s current and future general behavior in international affairs as stated before will chronicle my own comprehension throughout this semester (wish me luck).
Under this blog experiment, I hope to gain insight on how Chinese see their foreign policy and their place in the world different from non-Chinese (and also see what you guys think, do you agree with my interpretation or not?). The variables that will be conducted (because … you know I have to reinforce what I say) are looking at Chinese policies, principles, party congress, worldview and national identity. By understanding these variables, the potential of understanding the values China incorporated into their policies that allowed them to develop into influential juggernaut will help outsiders discover key elements necessary to understand China. This will guarantee a minimal bias perspective on Chinese international affairs. In addition, I will draw upon my own travels to China to contextualize how Chinese citizens see their place in the world and the domestic affairs.
My main goal for this blog is to create an opportunity for those who are interested in Chinese international affairs to learn about it more informally. To accomplish this, a lot of unnecessary jargon will be omitted to make it more accessible to people. In both the United States and China, the media explores the role of the Chinese government in succeeding or lacking in shaping international affairs (I may refer to them as ‘the haters’). In the United States I will explore that further by looking at U.S. propaganda of China and vice-versa. I will be referencing both American and Chinese news articles that seem to explore the Chinese phenomena in recent years. Finally, I will get a chance to interact and ask questions of Chinese and American students and faculty, where I hope I can find out more about their perspective and their relationship China (validating that I am not crazy when I say the things I say). The principal goal of this blog as commented earlier, is to sharpen the readers’ understanding of China’s present and future view on their leading role in international affairs. So laugh, cry and learn with me as I tackle this from the horns like a Spanish bull-fighter (China is the bull by the way).
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Profile
Ever found yourself surfing the web for no perfectly good reason? And then … trying to justify yourself the countless hours you have spent. Later, you come to the realization that your justification can only truly be reasoned by procrastination. Or better yet, my favorite reasoning, which is stalking people via the net. I think it is safe to assume many of us practice this type of behavior on a daily basis and it is, sadly one of my guilty pleasures.
As a result, I often put my talents of stalking people to good use. I will admit I have gotten better at it (or it really has just gotten easier) with the evolution from MySpace to Facebook. By the virtue of being born into a millennium generation I think many of us have perfected this skill differently. Some of us have mastered it in “Facebook stalking” people we are interested in. Others stalk famous people. One form or the other it is inherently a human characteristic of us to be curious of other people.
My curiosity of others often manifests from my aspiration to emulate them (either looks, speech, or other random quality I like about them). As a result, via my curiosity I further my own personal development. Thus, I am pleased to present I found someone who shares my interest (its almost like unrequited love). Although, he (I am assuming it is a he) and I are interested in the same discipline and is a PhD student in Political Science, which means he is more qualified to talk about Chinese foreign affairs. Yet even in the face of adversity (or in this case my own stupidity) I will persevere (partially because I am stubborn).
From the little I know of my anonymous PhD blogger friend I think I like him. I may not know him (and keep in mind know very little about him). I think I like how he is so personable in his blog and his ideas about what a blog is. The way he sees his role in the blog is somewhat inspirational when he says:
“I understand this blog as an instrument to ‘archive’ my ideas, both to get my head free and to lay the foundation for the development of more complex thoughts.”
After I read this I felt like it really resonated with what I want to accomplish with my own blog. I am happy to know that I am not crazy. There is someone else out there on the net that is doing something similar to me. We both have interest in international relations in East Asia. However, the only drawback about this anonymous person I am admiring from afar is that he was once active for a long time and now is just sorta just left his blog end on May 2011. I really find it a shame to let his insights go to waste, especially when a resource of his caliber is rare to find. I enjoyed to read his archive but mainly these two blogs entries (1, 2). They are probably the most relevant to China’s international affairs because recently China is building up their army.
Although, I think his entries are insightful it is probably still too academic for the general audience. So I am trying to find a balance between being informal about the content of international relations but not over simplify it either. Despite, this PhD blogger is not as active as before I am pretty sure I can find him again or someone similar to him.
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Voice Critique
Dear fellow blog readers,
I am sorry to inform you guys that I had to leave my admirations for my PhD student in political science for a more radical group of bandits. Won’t you agree that this is a bit more romantic? I mean seriously, this makes a more epic story of an undergraduate student (that’s me) jumping on the bandwagon of ‘China lovers.’ Even more surprising is that my group of bandits really do go out of their way to not only add their own commentaries about Chinese affairs; but also introduce two perspectives from different articles. Dare I say it, it is faith!
From the many editors and authors this group of bandits has the one I am going to stalk more frequently is going to be DeWang (Why you may ask? … “The world may never know”). Even I must admit to psychoanalyze his writing habits are a bit creepy, but because that is what psychotic people do it just feels like one of those things you don’t question and just do I suppose.
I feel like generally speaking his writing style uses to some extent side comments, metaphor, imagery, rhetorical questions, and witty comments. Furthermore, he makes a good usage of hyperlinks, quotations and parenthesis to emphasize what he’s attempting to convey.
Like many of us DeWang utilizes hyperlinks (for example: “The Economist recently announced a dedicated weekly section on China”) as a dynamic tool to make what he’s talking about relevant and accessible to his readers (which is much appreciated). It’s interesting that DeWang hyperlinks the word “announced” rather than “The Economist,” but his decision is justifiable because the word “announced” is the relevant topic about that sentence. Moreover, he neglects to italicize The Economist even though it is a newspaper (was he just lazy to italicize, you be the judge).
He also incorporates in this post direct quotation from a speaker and isolates it from his own paragraph to feature it. This visual representation helps to identify a break in the narration from DeWang to someone else.
This sentence within this post also caught my attention:
“In my view, the extra attention they give to ‘China’ as a topic is hardly going to help Westerners’ understanding of China.”
How he singles out the word “China” to my understanding is more like looking for the meaning what “China” is. Rather than the obvious answer: A country. Even in the context of this sentence his voice emerges pretty noticeable in his discontent of how The Economist perpetuates Westerners’ misunderstanding of China.
Lastly, another section within his blog post where he shows side remarks is in:
“The Economist’s coverage of China is bigoted, as exemplified by their debut article – which I am rebutting in this post (my rebuttal on the right).”
I like how he reinforces his discontent in the parenthesis and in the en dash his transition from semi-academic language to a more disagreeing language reinforced by his own personal authority figure.
In this post you see his cynical and witty voice come through:
“Geopolitics is a funny game, and us mere mortals simply have no idea what the true reality is.”
I like the humor in the fact that he mentions “geopolitics” can be seen as a game for amusement and that ordinary people have no idea what it is. He further adds his distinct humorous voice in the imagery (“...two giants tugging…”).
Lastly in his metaphor in the following sentences:
“Imagine two elephants in a room with a little mouse. Sadly, the reality is it’s much more likely that the little mouse gets stepped on. (Wait, are elephants really afraid of mouse?)”
He defines it in an amusing manner that in the end he jokes and questions the validity of elephants being afraid to mice.
Overall, DeWang is an amusing character and likes to play with the diction of his posts from being academic to uh … less academic to say the least. He’s transformed a generally boring topic to something that may enrage the reader of how nonchalantly he drops his strong opinions. And oddly you want to read more.
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