"Apple may have blinked first in the ongoing battle with the Chinese government to allow the company to sell a Wi-Fi-enabled iPhone in that country.

The back-and-forth battle between Apple and China's Ministry of Industry and Information may be coming to a close. According to a BusinessWeek report, Apple has applied for a Network Access License that would allow the company to begin selling the iPhone without Wi-Fi."

Danwei interview posted by Alice with Jiamin, one of three founders of the Yeeyan translation community.

Assistant Professor of Organizational Studies and Political Science, University of Michigan
–via orgtheory. networks and political science. new blog.

Dru Gladney writes of the "viral" transmission of news and expansion of the recent events in Xinjiang.

"All pandemics have three aspects: the initial virus, the vector transmission and an available host. The viral pre-conditions for this epidemic include severe unemployment, unequal opportunities, uneven distribution of wealth and ethnic discrimination. The new media that allow for rapid global dissemination provide many different vectors for transmission of information as well as dis-information. The available hosts are now dispersed worldwide through an active and increasingly connected Uighur diaspora, who are concerned for their people and seek to effect change in their homeland."

In an effort to reduce “white pollution”, the country restricted the sale, distribution and manufacture of flimsy plastic sacks. Is the effort working? chinadialogue joined the discussion in Beijing.

China’s restrictions on the plastic bags came into effect on June 1, 2008. How well have the rules been implemented? What problems have arisen? What changes are still needed? chinadialogue, the internet portal Sohu’s environmental channel and the Global Village Environmental Culture Institute of Beijing (GVB) recently held a forum to mark the anniversary and to explore these questions.

The East-West Center has just published a policy study with an interesting, big-power-rivalry take on the Uighur unrest in China: Ethno-Diplomacy: The Uyghur Hitch in Sino-Turkish Relations, by Yitzhak Shichor. Policy Studies 53. Honolulu: East-West Center, 2009. xii, 72 pp. (Available free online.) Here's the abstract:

The total eclipse begins at local dawn, 00:51:17 UT on July 22 in the Arabian Sea, just off the coast of India. The path is already over 200km wide here, and the eclipse will last 3 minutes 30 seconds. It crosses over central India, and passes between Nepal and Bangladesh, clips Bhutan and Myanmar, and then enters China. It crosses right over China to the coast around Hangzhou, at around 01:40 UT. By this time the path width is up to 249km, and the total eclipse lasts 5 minutes 56 seconds on the centreline.

All but invisible in Latin America a decade ago, China now is building cars in Uruguay, donating a soccer stadium to Costa Rica and lending $10 billion to Brazil's biggest oil company.

It's supplanted the United States to become the biggest trading partner with Brazil, South America's biggest economy.

Director of Princeton U Press makes the case that books are the best medium to deliver "hard ideas." Perhaps some good strategies here for uni presses, but not a word in the way of justifying the central assertion.

Filed under Ways of Knowing Network Space

Firefox 3.5 is out. And the more users download it, the more designers will be able to take advantage of the @font-face CSS rule. How can @font-face be used with currently implemented CSS selectors to create engaging, nuanced and more mature typography? Let's find out.

I didn't make it to Philly, but caught some of the panels on webcast. Now video is up!

relaunched website for ARTiT magazine

"Asia Matters for America (AMA) provides a hub for American and Asian audiences to explore the importance and impact of Asia in the United States by State and Congressional District. AMA provides government, academia, civil society, media and business with an interactive website that graphically displays useful trends and accurate data on how Asia matters at the U.S. state and local level." Via H-ASIA

BEIJING (AP) — Beijing's notoriously dirty air got cleaner during last summer's Olympic Games, but the weather played a larger role than the government's massive pollution control measures, a new report says.
The first major study on air pollution during the Olympics found that conditions in Beijing were far worse than at other recent Olympics, even with the government's cleanup campaign. Particulate levels often exceeded what the World Health Organization considers safe.

The report was published Friday in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, and funded by the National Science Foundation in the U.S. and the National Science Foundation in China.

Via Language Hat. Includes many links on Asian and American languages.

Conference Saturday and Sunday at Qinghua.