Chinese media, advertising, and urban life.

Michael Anti (Zhao Jing)

Michael Anti, or Zhao Jing (赵静), is a well-known Chinese blogger who used to work for the New York Times as a researcher and made headlines when his Windows Live blog was deleted by Microsoft for its content.

Anti has been awarded fellowships at Harvard and Cambridge, and as the Niemen Fellow at Harvard 07－08, he quite notedly said that it was not difficult for information to be stopped in China, because once a service like Twitter is stopped, then the most popular ways for information dissemination will end for a while.

On the topic of the Twitter service in China, Anti has a good deal to say. Anti also answered some questions about the online journal that he started, and based on his experience in American media (as a researcher and as visiting fellow to universities), his experience with western media.

Danwei: What are you doing now?
Anti: I'm freelancing now, trying to figure our what I should do next. Doing media jobs for both the Chinese and American, studying at Cambridge and Harvard, and teaching at Shantou University has given me a lot. However, I need to have a rest to digest it all.

Danwei: What are you hoping to achieve with the Far and Wide Journal？
Anti: I started the Far & Wide Journal with my friends more than 3 years ago, right after my blog was removed by Microsoft. Before I worked for Beijing bureau of New York Times, I had been a journalist who often reported International news for Chinese newspapers, one of which even sent me to the Iraqi as a war correspondent. Compared to American media, Chinese ones are far from professional on international reporting. Most Chinese international reports or analyses are just edited translations from major English media. Agendas are set by Americans.

Chinese readers know everything that happens in the Middle East, where China has fewer interests, but they seldom read stories that have happened in China's neighboring countries, like Russia and the ASEAN.

When Chinese investors have already had great influence in Africa, this continent only occasionally appears in the crisis reports which themselves are lazily translated from English coverage. Worst of all, when liberal media give up defining China's national interest in the new globalized world, Global Times is selling cheap nationalism to millions of young readers, making them more hostile to the rest of the world.