Like parent said, if people are going to organize protests, things like QQ and text messaging are far more conducive, and much harder to monitor. See cell-phone text messaging in the anti-Japanese protests from a few years back; text messaging was the dominant form of organization, and while it can be censored, it is much harder to get a handle on it without disrupting services and inconveniencing millions of people.

Seriously, almost no Chinese use those sites. Twitter doesn't even have a Chinese language version, and has barely begun to grow in China (though it may, there are already several Chinese clonewares out). Nobody ANYWHERE in the world uses Bing, and the Chinese use QQ, Sohu, Xinlang, or other IM/Portal/Blogging services instead of Live/Blogspot. Flickr is the only one Chinese might even notice, and there are plenty of alternatives.

The only Chinese that use these (now blocked) services are educated, and probably have decent English, and know how to get around these blocks. The vast majority of Chinese users use other websites, or have alternatives. The contrversial stuff has always been hosted on non-Chinese websites for obvious reasons, and people who want to see it are well aware of how to get around the blocks.

Far more telling was the 7 hours of downtime Xiaonei went through yesterday for maintanence. They've already been shutting down certain Xiaonei groups and blocking users for doing political stuff, I wonder if the maintanence included any updates to help with censorship?

Then I can patent accepting money, goods or other services in payment for other goods or services. We can even patent "profit maximizing"! Truly, this will finally allow people to stop emulating and perfecting business models, allowing me to reign supreme!

Next up, patenting human bodily functions. Everytime you breathe, your heart beats, or you fart, you owe me a quarter.

Regardless of of whether or not you consider the Chinese foreign occupiers, Tibetans are Chinese citizens. They carry Chinese passports, idenfication cards, go to government schools, etc. In fact, Tibetans (and Tibet) receive large transfers from the central gov't- this is actually one of the incentives for Chinese to move to Tibet, as Tibetans receive preferential treatment for applying to college and whatnot (think of it like the SAT bonus for minorities in the US- if you're Tibetan, you don't have to do as well to get into a good school).
Whether Palestinians are more analogous to Israeli Arabs or to Native Americans is up to you; but they are full citizens, and are most likely tortured no more nor less than any other person who agitates against the government.

I should probably have qualified that statement. Based on my experiences and the Chinese people I have met, most don't care enough to do anything about it. They are interested, sure, but don't want to rock the boat. Most of the students I know (again, mostly talking about Beijing students) know where the limit is on how to talk about democracy and history. They aren't stupid, and if they really want to get around the censors, they know how. But again, they care more about getting a job, especially a stable, well-paying government job, then about discussing history or toppling dynasties.
For those worse off than students, most care more about getting the basic necessecities (clean water, food, etc) than about political change.
There are dissidents, sure, and those the party runs roughshod over. But if the government demolishes a village, and makes room for some facilities that provide jobs or will be used by thousands more, what's a few discontented farmers? For every farmer that gets stepped on, there's a hundred with new cellphones and a fridge thanks to the economic boom.
While I usually avoid politically sensitive topics when I'm in China (unless its a good friend), most of my overseas Chinese friends have a similar viewpoint. They may want to topple the "Red Dynasty" eventually, but not until China is rich enough to emerge unscathed. They don't want to destabilize the party, which would possibly derail economic growth. Since stability is a prerequisite for growth (and vise versa for China), why would they want to do anything to harm the interests of the hundreds of millions of Chinese getting lifted out of poverty? Politcal reform can wait for China to get rich.

And the vast majority of Chinese don't care.

And why should they? As long as you don't say inconvenient things, you can DO whatever you want in China. With freedom of action, and a growing economy, why would most Chinese care? If it weren't for the amazing economic growth presided over by the CCP, most Chinese wouldn't have access to computers to even make these websites.

Given the weakness and corruption of late Qing dynasty China, they were hardly expanding anywhere. In fact, China endured over a century of humiliation by foreign powers, including Russia, France, Germany, the US, and Japan, as they carved up "spheres of influence" and took Chinese land (Hong Kong by Britain, Jiaotong Peninsula by Germans, Taiwan by Japanese in the 1890s). Japan and Russia fought for control in Manchuria; the Japanese won that war, and had de-facto control of Manchuria until they allowed it to declare "independence", as a Japanese puppet state.
While claims of Chinese *Communist* expansion into Tibet and consolidation of power in Western China is another issue entirely, the idea of Chinese expansion from 1800-1949 is simply propagandist bullshit. Through the Opium Wars, Taiping Rebellion and other civil strife, to the Nationalist/Communist Civil War, China couldn't control its own territory, much less expand.
We were carving China up, hence calling it the "sick man of the East". Claiming pre-1945 China was expanding or looking for "Lebensraum" is simply rediculous.
Claiming post-Communist China has imperial ambitions is another argument entirely, and perhaps one worth discussing. But trying to use "Manchukuo" as an example, or saying the China was a dominant empire (it was an empire in decline, corrupt and feeble) discredits much of the rest of your argument. "The secret and reclusive Middle Kingdom"? It was the Republic of China at that point, and currently involved in both civil war and trying to repel invasion from the Japanese.

For the rest, Modern Chinese leaders do not view their industrial usage of the territories as expansion, but as using territories that rightfully belong to them, just like the US drilling for oil in Alaska (which we purchased from Russia in the mid 1800s).
Using adjectives like âoesinister policy" and "consolidate de facto Chinese rule for an eternity" does not help your case, either. Makes you sound paranoid at best. I am not even Chinese; but the historical inaccuracies and misrepresentations in your post would make anyone weep.

Seconded. Most newer Asian airports have great food, and also free high-speed Wifi. You start to take it for granted until you hit LAX, and then you start to think America is a third-world country.

Try the Chinese news sources, there were a few good pieces on Sohu and Xinlang when it was announced.

Though, what he should say is most of the stimulus package was already planned spending- they are simply rushing the schedule. Indeed, most of our own stimulus package (and many others) are mostly made up of already-planned packages, moving future spending to now rather than upping spending too much.
I'll dig through my history to get you citations, but much of the Chinese plan is provincial governments announcing they are breaking ground sooner rather than later, moving up a few billion in planned investments to today to absorb the newly-freed labor force from the export factories.

Xiaoneiwang is the Facebook of China. Even the interface and logos look similar.
QQ on the other hand is the Geocities/Myspace. It comes with QQ Kongjian, or QQ space, which is a user-generated MySpace or Geocities style page.

And yes, it is bloated. I've had to build so many exceptions into my AV and firewall software in order to run it that it's almost unbearable.

The Googling, it has begun!

While I agree with you completely, in general it is actually very easy to a lot of papers to be wrong, especially in the same direction.

It happens a lot when we start citing the same original paper, or other papers based off the same research/data. Very easy to build off others' mistakes. Kinda like those tests where you use your answer from part A for part B- if the original was wrong, so will everything using that answer.

You're right with regards to the LHC; but in general, the number of papers on a subject doesn't mean it can't be wrong.

Yeah, but without emoticons, how do you get subtleties like sarcasm and other emotions across?

This is a blessing! The Chinese authorities have realized that Baidu and Gougou index torrents and pirated material for more effectively than TPB & co., and seek to save Chinese users the trouble of having to use them! Why bother going to TPB when Baidu has it earlier, faster, and in Chinese? Props to the firewall for this one!