China

People say the Chinese internet is mostly an entertainment network. But looking at what happened online during the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake reveals a Chinese internet with a depth and soul and much, much more.

The latest Pew Global Attitudes survey finds some encouraging signs for America’s global image for the first time this decade. Although views of the United States remain negative in much of the world, favorable ratings have increased modestly since 2007 in 10 of 21 countries where comparative data are available. Many people around the world are paying close attention to the U.S. presidential election.

Senior Research Fellow Deborah Fallows has been living in China for the past two years, sending us whimsical dispatches as well as in-depth reports about the impact of the internet on social life.

Senior Research Fellow Deborah Fallows reports from China on how the earthquake recovery is portrayed on TV and on the internet.

While the internet proved to be a faster and more varied source of news about the disaster, Chinese television reports have shown an unprecedented absence of censorship: "The faces in these productions tell everything. The soldiers are young; the grief is raw; the eyes are desperate."

(Read on for an account of how blogs, Twitter, and Google provided news coverage in China this week.)

Another example of how Chinese newspapers, websites, and internet users react in harmony and rally on many issues: "People 'sign up' to slam media bias."

Negative Views of the US More Common Than Negative Views of China

In my ongoing quest to visit as many internet cafes in China as possible, I was on the lookout last week during our visit to Urumqi (aka: Wulumuqi), a city of about 3 million along the Silk Road in the northwest corner of China.