Global Voices Online

Chong translates a cultural critics Zhu Dake's comments on Zhang Yimou's film (director of the Curse of the Golden Flower) and the aesthetics of power that colours Chinese modernity:

It is a problem of Chinese culture. We have a passion for sickness and aesthetics of power rather than ordinary people's aesthetics. In Sichuan province, a small township government even built a Tiananmen Square. People there are poor and starving but the local government spent so much money in it. Some local governments even built squares bigger than Tiananmen Square. They only want to show off their power to occupy space or to build a high building…

Recent Links also in East Asia

Lawyer and blogger raymiyatake expresses his doubts [ja] over the election of Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano as director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). First, he says, Amano was supported by only 23 nations out of 35. Second, he points out the difficult situation that the Agency is dealing with, at present, and the “unfairness” of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which should be applied also to the five members already recognized as possessing nuclear power. Lastly, he suggests that instead of promoting a “pacific use” of nuclear energy, this should be replaced with clean energy sources (such as the geothermal or the aeolian ones).

This year is Mobile Suit Gundam's 30th birthday.
While a giant statue of the robot stands in Odaiba's park (in the Tokyo bay area), in a theatre of northern Tokyo, blogger/actress Rie Takahashi [ja] and her crew pay tribute to the animated television series in stage play Robot.

Bernard Leong observes that Facebook is almost the dominant social networking platform in Southeast Asia. It has overtaken Friendster in Malaysia and is getting more members in other countries in the region.