AsiaPundit thanks Michael for alerting us to the documentary on Betelnut Beauties, and is happy to present the first clip mentioned. For the second one, follow the links.

The Real Taiwan sent me a link to his blog, so I went and looked and saw an interesting pair of betel nut girl videos. The first is a few BNGs discussing their lives, the second, well, don’t show your kids….

Technorati Tags: asia, betelnut, east asia, taiwan

At the Registran, Nathan provides news that beer consumption is rising in Central Asia.:

RFE/RL reports that beer consumption is skyrocketing in Central Asia.

“Clearly, market research in countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, is at a lower level of sophistication than it is in, say, Russia or China,” he says. “But I’ve seen massive volume growth in both Russia and China in terms of the beer market, and all the indications are that in Kazakhstan, in Turkmenistan, in Uzbekistan, beer is on a steady upward growth curve.”

Silvester cites a recent market-research report in Central Asia and the Caucasus carried out by the beer-market consultancy Plato Logic. The report found that, from 2002 to 2005, beer consumption in Turkmenistan grew by a staggering 177 percent. Other Central Asian countries are not far behind. Kyrgyzstan has shown a 112 percent increase, Kazakhstan a 75 percent increase, and Tajikistan a 71 percent rise.

And he adds the even better news that beer quality is increasing.:

I think that the issue of quality is very important, and I am surprised it was not mentioned especially because a Baltika employee is quoted in the story. I picked up some Baltikas at the supermarket the other day for nostalgia’s sake and to see if they were better than last time I’d had them. They were better. In fact, since I first tried Baltika seven years ago in Russia, I have noticed constant improvements in quality, and I know that they are not the only brand to have improved over the years.

Technorati Tags: asia, central asia, beer

Via Singabloodypore, the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) have been ordered to remove podcasts from the party website.:

SINGAPORE : The Returning Officer for the General Election has ordered the Singapore Democratic Party to take down audio files and podcasts from its website.

The Elections Department says the podcast contravenes the Parliamentary Elections (Election Advertising) Regulations.

It says those found guilty are liable for a fine of up to S$1,000 or imprisonment of up to 12 months, or both.

Dr Chee, the SDP’s Secretary-General, had recorded a podcast message and posted it on the party’s website two days ago.

The SDP’s website cannot be considered a blog, and the audio files on its site are not really podcasts. Nevertheless the PAP is making good on its threat to squash political speech in Singapore. The SDP is also making good on its attempt to be the most prosecuted political party is Southeast Asia.

In a related matter, the PBS MediaShift site takes a decent look at political speech in Singapore, including this money quote from Yawning Bread (yawningbread.org).:

“The freedom available to Singaporeans is quite wide,” Au told me via email. “However, there is a climate of fear that the government can clamp down anytime. There have actually been very few instances of arbitrary clamping down, but the fear persists, and thus a lot of people in Singapore, including bloggers, self-censor to some extent. With the passage of time, there is increasing confidence that freedom of speech on the Internet is pretty wide. The more years that pass without incident, the more confidence people gain.”

The article also cites AsiaPundit, somewhat unexpectedly but without causing any offense.

AP would like to clarify that his mention of the word ‘nepotism’ was done to illustrate an example of one of Singapore’s ‘out-of-bounds’ markers and that he was in no way implying that such a thing exists in the Lion City.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, east asia, singapore, southeast asia

While AsiaPundit admits to schadenfreude over the ‘censoring’ of Mahathir Mohamad, AP generally doesn’t relish in the misfortunes of others. Still, AP’s first reaction when hearing of Dan Harris’s recent plight was to chuckle:

Is Beijing Law Firm Violating Copyright Laws?
My blog assistant (everyone should have one) just e-mailed me to ask if I had seen the relatively new Blawg of China. I had not, so I followed the link he gave me and was instantly shocked; This blog’s design appears to be a direct rip-off of my law firm’s website, which our Russian design team Fokadan/3dots.ru had copyrighted.

Compare my firm’s website, here with the Blawg of China, here. What do you think? Seems awfully close to me. Is this a counterfeit? A fake? Why would one law firm do this to another?

Looks to me like there is a big problem here and I am going to be contacting our friends at Fokadan to advise them of this situation.

Copyright violation or not, I would have expected better.

AsiaPundit and Dan have corresponded - through comments and through e-mail - about the ability and willingness of Chinese authorities to enforce intellectual property laws. AP has always been far more skeptical than Dan. For example, see our recent posts on Xiangyang Market (here and here). With that, the irony of this was amusing.

That said, Dan does have AP’s sympathies. And AP hopes that Lehman Law conceeds the contested design to Harris & Moure. A dispute over web design copyright - even if infractions were likely done without knowledge - surely would deter clients from the firm’s Intellectual Property Practice.

Internet Censorship Explorer, a blog associated with the Citizen Lab initiative, discovers that while Google is censoring its search results for Google.cn, it is not censoring the keyword-based advertising that is displayed on the site .

After buying an advertisement for the banned website for the Human Rights Watch lobby group, ICE discovers that the ad is displayed on Google.cn.

I created my ad (which does not appear to fall under these categories) for hrw.org, which is censored by google.cn, and it was held in a queue waiting to be viewed and labeled “Family Safe”. Only “Family Safe” ads are allowed to be shown by Google in China. Eventually my ad was approved as “Family Safe” and was labeled as currently being shown…

My ad was being shown on the uncensored Chinese language Google, but not the censored Google.cn. Google checks what ads to deliver by location (determined by IP address) and the language setting of your browser. Despite both of these showing that my language was Chinese and my location was in China the ad did not properly appear.

Eventually, my ad began to be shown on Google.cn. While my ad does not appear every time the keywords are searched, it does periodically appear.

Although there are no search results available for hrw.org, my ad for a censored website did appear on some occasions.

While it is news that the AdWords service does display uncensored advertising on Google.cn, AsiaPundit has been aware of the lack of censorship in AdSense for some time. The right-hand corner of the below screencap, taken in Shanghai minutes ago, clearly indicates that advertisers bidding on China-related terms are not necessarily pro-CCP.

While some groups have boycotted Google over its China censorship, in light of this evidence, AsiaPundit suggests a new tactic of buying Chinese AdWords terms.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, east asia, google, northeast asia

More than one year.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association and Reporters Without Borders have campaigns to save Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong journalist charged by China with spying. RSF says he faces a possible death sentence although the Chinese authorities have produced no evidence against him.

Over two months.:

Reporters Without Borders today said it considered Chinese blogger Hao Wu to be the victim of state abduction as more than two months have gone by since his arrest by the National Security Bureau in Beijing without his family getting any news about him. His lawyer has not been allowed to see him, but has been told his client is under house arrest.

“This case shows the Chinese security services operate without any control by the courts,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Hao is the victim of an arbitrary system that interprets the law as it sees fit. We call on European and American diplomadts to raise his case at their meetings with the Chinese authorities. We are curious know how they will justify the National Security Bureau’s procedures.”

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, corruption, east asia, freehaowu, genocide

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, corruption, east asia, freehaowu, genocide