Tuesday, January 13, 2015

the last book I ever read (Age of Ambition by Evan Osnos, excerpt six)

from 2014 National Book Award Winner for Nonfiction Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos:

For all the energy that the Web gave to intellectuals such as Liu Xiaobo, and the nationalist fever it stirred among Tang Jie and his friends, most of China’s online life, as in any country, concerned matters less grave. When researchers noticed a spike, in April 2010, in the number of Chinese users taking steps to get around censors, the cause might have been a surge in political awareness; actually it was a Japanese porn star, Sola Aoi, who had opened a Twitter account, and young Chinese men were sparing no effort to reach it. But there were many ways to get attention on the Chinese Web. Bloggers started identifying photos that had been doctored by Party propagandists to make the crowds look larger or the officials more important. Techniques that had served the Department well for decades were now open to ridicule: a blogger noticed that a state news report on China’s newest fighter jet included footage from Top Gun. Look closely, and there was Tom Cruise destroying a Soviet MiG.



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