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china/divide And China Tracker And The Just Too Damn Good Exception.

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

A few years ago, I went all gaga over a new blog that had produced all of two posts. The two posts were incredibly well written, incredibly insightful, and incredibly original. I immediately determined that this great light (discovered by me, of course) should be introduced to the world so I did a post on his blog and put it on our blog-roll. I cannot even remember that blog any longer, but what I do remember is that it never came out with another post. Apparently my kudos either convinced him he had achieve the pinnacle and there was nothing left for which to strive. in any event, after that I instituted my own "sand-box" rule, which held that blogs must have been in existence for at least a reasonable time before I put them on the blogroll. For years I stuck by the rule, but today, I'm gonna throw caution to the wind and put china/divide and The China Tracker blogs on to the blogroll before their time. I hereby create the just too damn good exception. Other than its failure to capitalize its name (which drives me crazy and has caused me to violate another of my longstanding rules to capitalize every single word in every single blog post title), china/divide is perfect. Back in my more conservative days, in a post, entitled, "China/Divide. I Will Keep My Wits About Me" (I capitalized all words back then to), I wrote the following about this blog:

The blog that nearly caused me to lose my head is China/Divide and though it is brand spanking new, what got me all aflutter are the people behind it and its stated mission. The people behind it are Stan Abrams, whose China Hearsay blog has always been one of my favorites. Charles Custer, who has been banging out great stuff for quite some time over at the China Geeks blog he founded. And Kai Pan, the lead writer over at CnReviews, yet another truly top-flight China blog. I have to believe that any blog combining these three really thoughtful people will be superb. It would not be an exaggeration to say that these three people have produced some of the deepest, most thought-provoking blog posts out there on China.

I was right to have gotten so all aflutter as it has consistently turned out great stuff, controversial stuff (that's a good thing), thoughtful stuff, and, on top of all that, generated a ton of good comments. It has also had some interesting pictures as well. It is a terrific blog and I have concluded I am doing our readers a disservice by leaving it off the roll. China Tracker is even newer, but after reading a trio of excellent posts all put up today, I realized I could no longer justify leaving that blog off the roll either. China Tracker has been put together by Forbes and it consists of an all star cast of China bloggers. Paul Denglinger posted today on "Why Hong Kong is China's New Tech Hub," Ray Kwong posted on "How Multinationals Can Compete In China," and Bill Bishop posted on Facebook's China plans in "Has Facebook Hired Several Google China Engineers?" All good stuff. Am I forgiven?

Full post as published by China Law Blog on May 12, 2010 (boomark / email).