kaiser, how about getting 方舟子 on the show? he's a well known provocative character in Chinese society，he speak pretty good English and lives in Beijing. I'm sure there's a lot you guys can talk about.

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I'm halfway through the show. I thought I could contribute a little tie-in to both the question on high-school gangs and the question on minority regions.

The only area in China where I've heard of stories of high-school violence is in towns and cities in Xinjiang, where gangs of Han, min-kao-han Uyghur (Uyghur with Chinese-language education) and min-kao-min Uyghur (Uyghur with Uyghur-language education) are pitted against each other.

Several acquaintances have been involved in incidents; terrible beatings, perhaps sometimes to the point of death. I've never heard stories that are quite as gruesome as the person that called in to the show (cut-off hands...)

On another note, I think that aspects of the minority 'question' can constructively be discussed on the show. But perhaps one other reason why minority issues have not yet been discussed on Sinica is that you often focus on the PR and media aspect of issues in China, no doubt because that's your area of expertise. Am I wrong in thinking that?

方舟子... Oh my God....

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

I strongly support the idea of getting Fang Zhouzi on the show. His English will most certainly be better than that of Michael Anti -- seriously, if you consider Anti's English comprehensible, then basically everybody goes.

The problem is not that Sinica hasn't had Chinese guests -- it has; the problem is that all those guests are famous (or infamous) "Chinese liberals" from the "Universal Values" crowd, representing views that (a) are very uniform and repetitive among themselves, compared to the wide spectrum of political opinions out there, and (b) despite being doubtlessly significant, don't reflect the mindset of the "common people" in China -- let along the (official) "mainstream voices" (there are people who can talk articulately about the government's positions, but you won't find them within the government, I guess).

Of course, Fang Zhousi is even less of a "typical Chinese". The outstanding quality that makes him a great guest is that even those he is also a "liberal", he is not an ideologue -- an extremely rare quality among politically minded Chinese (no matter their alignment). He is a hyperrational character who has no problem tearing apart the illogical group-think of "common Chinese liberal thinking" the same way he blows away the absurdity of fenqings.

By the way, while Fang is most famous for his anti-fakery work, his main dedication is something more fundamental: the anti-scientific nature of the traditional Chinese culture and its disastrous consequence in modern Chinese society. That's a topic you can talk about anytime, without relying on the breakout of a scandal.

@wgj

In respect to the traditional lack of skepticism within the traditional (redundant) portions of Chinese society, it would be awesome to hear from current Chinese skeptics and their hardships in promoting critical thinking. In the U.S. anti-scientism is fueld by religious precepts where as in China it appears to be imbeded in tradtion. Of course this may be a distinction without a difference.