This blog is meant to be an open site for discussion about China and the World. You are welcome to participate, comment,  send me fan mail, press all the buttons and otherwise interact freely with this website without reading the instructions. Don’t worry, it will not break.

But if you are wondering how all this works, or where I’m coming from, you might want to read below:

Political position

I already gave a bit of my background in the Introduction page, but I want to clarify this point so that everyone knows what to expect. I am not an activist, I am not an ideologue and I am not here to tell the Chinese how to rule their country. Most people agree that Western democracies are better systems  for their citizens, and I think so as well. But this does not give us the right to force China to follow our model, nor does it give us any moral standing to judge the Chinese.  In the international scene, Western countries have committed immensely more crimes than China, so whatever ideas you want to express, drop that moralizing tone now. Or else you risk being sent to my Gitmo page for suspects of bigotry.

Freedom of Speech

Any French reader can tell you that I’ve copied my motto from a famous newspaper, but I just couldn’t find a better way to say it than this line by Beaumarchais. This is my a statement of principles:

Sans la liberté de blâmer, il n’y a point d’éloge flatteur

Without the freedom to criticize, any other opinion becomes meaningless. Censoring is a form of lying, because it gives the false impression that what information is available represents the only truth. No matter its achievements, any government that forbids its citizens to speak the truth is a weak government. I am convinced that censorship is bad for China and bad for the World. That is why Freedom of Speech is the only exception to my non-activist rule.  I do what I can from my little corner on the internet to support it, by writing about subjects that have been censored, or by helping other people to unblock their websites in China. If this makes you very angry, I suggest you visit our 劳改 page for Reform through Labour.

The comments policy

Don’t hesitate anymore, stop thinking, press that button. Comments make me happy. Just try to keep it reasonably polite and on topic–if you want to write about something else send me an email to see where we fit it. There is only one kind of comment that I really dislike, and that is ad hominem attacks. Don’t bother with those, they will be erased without notice. You are welcome to disagree, but you have to address directly the points in discussion, not the qualifications of the writer. Your diplomas and medals will not impress me: on the internet you might as well be a dog.  But if you really know what you are talking about and you make the effort to explain it, then I will be convinced.

The new Mini-me

Otherwise called the MiniYouren. This is the absurdly named mini-blogging service that I set up on the top sidebar of my blog. It is connected with GBuzz and GReader, so if you follow me on those sites you can see the same stream. Otherwise, use the Reply and Stream buttons, or Subscribe to the feed. The posts I do here are not included in the main Chinayouren feed. They are often latest news translations or comments, they are short and sloppy but they can be more interesting than the main blog content.

The Content

While this might not be immediately obvious to everyone, content has real value and it is not alright to steal it or copy it elsewhere on the internet without my permission. The CC license of this blog lets you use my content as long as you put a link to me, but you should not copy whole posts to your site, or else Google will penalize both of us. The right way to do it is to quote a few key sections, or even better write your own comment/excerpt with a link to me.

The Mysterious Row of Colourful Indicators

I write this blog completely free of charge and I have never posted adverts nor I intend to do it in the future. Writing a blog  is hard work, and all I ask in exchange is that you come to my site with some sense of humour and an open mind. You will notice that there is a row of colourful buttons below each of the posts: those are sharing services. There is Facebook, Twitter, Google and many other sites that you can use to support my work and spread the word. If you are not a user of any of those services, then you can click on the icon with the shape of a little envelope and send an email to your grandma with my latest post. She will enjoy it, guaranteed!

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