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China Blogs: That's The way, Uh-Huh Uh-Huh, We Like It, Uh-Huh, Uh-Huh. Part IV

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

About three months ago, in Part I of this series, I promised we would go through our blogroll and justify and expound upon each blog, five by five. About a month ago, I did part III of this series. This is the fourth of this slowly running series where I explain, in alphabetical order, why it is that each blog managed to qualify for our blogroll under our admittedly "slippery, vague, and subjective criteria:" Our blogroll basically consists of those blogs we like and which we think our readers will like or should be reading. We tend to like blogs that are unique in their content, well written, or consistently helpful. If we really like a blog, it makes it on no matter what. The less we like the blog, the more we have to believe it can be helpful to our readers. If a blog has not posted for a couple of months, we start seriously consider removing it from the rolls. Three months and it is usually removed. We obviously focus on China related blogs and, within that, we generally focus on those blogs related to law or business. So without further ado, the fourth five in our alphabetical list: China Challenges. Written by veteran Shanghai hand, Brian Schwarz, this blog excels in its simplicity. When at its nadir, it consists of little more than Schwarz pulling the best/most interesting/most informative China post/article off the net and nicely summarizing it. I know that does not sound like much, but I analogize it to the wide receiver in football who, game in and game out, catches a few passes for a ten to fifteen yard gain. Many a time I have gotten post ideas from China Challenges. China Comment. In some ways, China Comment is the opposite of China Challenges. China Comment is written by a US law student who wishes to remain anonymous. The blog posts only every few weeks or so, but each post is typically a doozy. The posts are long, well thought out, and full of great and oftentimes difficult to find sources. They usually relate to energy and environmental issues in China. China Confidential. Many years ago, the force behind China Confidential and I were on a BBC radio program together on China and I have been impressed by his China knowledge and, particularly, his contacts ever since. The blogger behind CC chooses to remain confidential to protect his many China sources, some of whom are quite high up in the government and the military there. This blog definitely does not have a strictly China focus, as it writes on world politics unrelated to China at least as often as it writes on China. This blog is not to be confused with the FT.com pay per view site, China Confidential, which apparently had no qualms about usurping that name from this blog. China Dialogue. China Dialogue's about page does such a good job describing it, I will just go with that: "Founded by international journalist Isabel Hilton in 2006, chinadialogue is the bilingual [English and Chinese] source of high-quality news, analysis and discussion on all environmental issues, with a special focus on China." It is a great source of high end environmental news on China. China Digital Times. If someone told me they could read only one blog/site to keep up on China, I would probably suggest they make China Digital Times their one site. I am again going to let the site itself do the describing:

CDT is a bilingual news website covering China?s social and political transition and its emerging role in the world. We aggregate the most up-to-the-minute news and analysis about China from around the Web, while providing independent reporting, translations from Chinese cyberspace, perspectives from across the geographical, political and social spectrum, and daily recommendations of readings from the Chinese blogosphere.

CDT does a consistently amazing job of pulling the best/most important China news and analysis from the top newspapers, magazines and blogs. More to come.... What do you think? Oh, and please be sure to vote for China Law Blog in this year's best law blog competition at the ABA Journal. Go here to register, and then vote for us in the "Geo" category. UPDATE: As you can see from the below, some of you have complained about China Confidential's politics on matters not involving China. This blog does not base its blogroll on politics and it is proud of the fact that the politics of the bloggers on the blogroll span the political spectrum. The complaint that China Confidential does not write much on China is a legitimate one and is something I have been monitoring for quite some time. When I put it on the blogroll years ago, it dealt only with China and it has certainly moved away from that as of late and it is not nearly as China-centric as I would like and there have been times I have seriously considered dropping it from the blogroll for this reason. Yet, just about every time I have been close to doing so, it comes up with an original China post based on what I believe to be inside knowledge. That keeps it on here a while longer. China Confidential was the blog that broke the HUGE story about how the Shanghai bar association was angered by how foreign lawyers were handling their China law practices, which story was subsequently picked up by the mainstream media. This is just one example. I also have another beef with China Confidential, which is that it does not allow comments, which makes me wonder whether it is truly a blog at all. So keep up the comments as they are appreciated.

Full post as published by China Law Blog on December 12, 2009 (boomark / email).