SOME JOURNALISTS SIT in bay windows their whole careers, writing precious words about the precious world they see. Their fancy work is best suited for parlor talk, not the ugly and brutal world that ruins our morning tea and wine tastings. Other journalists actually hit the streets, getting dirty and filthy and bloody, at times risking their safety to write about the human condition. Ted Conover is a reporter's reporter, exploring illegal farmworkers (Coyotes), hobos riding the railroads (Rolling Nowhere), and prison guards at Sing Sing (NewJack, a National Book Critics Circle award winner). Not easy work.
CONOVER'S NEW BOOK,The Routes of Man: How Roads are Changing the World and the Way We Live, is a fascinating look at how roads reflect our global culture, from Peru, to Nigeria, to the West Bank. If you liked William Least Heat Moon'sBlue Highways, this goes a bit further. In a Salon.com interview, Conover says: "Roads are a yardstick of the growing complexity of the world. They are one of the essential connections between people, and through them you can look at both the ways connection propels us forward and the ways it sets us back." Conover is on a book tour now, and Routes of Man is enjoying high praise from some of our finest essayists of the modern American West. William Kittredge writes in a publicity blurb: “Humans evolved on the road and we go on seeking territory, survival, wealth, and even knowledge. The Odyssey, Don Quixote, On the Road, The Road, Arabian Sands, Marco Polo on the Silk Road, wagon trains heading for California, and Latinos at the fence between Mexico and the U.S.A.—so many of us streaming toward vivid dreams." Conover follows that vein. Rick Bass, in a book review for the Philadelphia Inquirer, writes: "The Routes of Man is the kind of book that sadly doesn't get written much anymore," given budget cutbacks in publishing and the changing global economy. That makes books such as Conover's even more valuable.
YEARS AGO, I took a writing class from Conover at the old Aspen Writers Conference in Colorado. Conover was a very good teacher, an antithesis of the posers, brown-nosers, and self-promoters who rule much of the media today. Real and authentic -- those are the words. For some reason, I failed to mention Conover in a freelance story back then for the Los Angeles Times on modern Western authors (see below), so this blog post is good karma. It's good to see a journalist of his caliber exploring the globe, doing important work. There's so much crap out there, let's at least read the real stuff, written by authentic reporters.
WHEN BRITISH COLONIAL rule of Hong Kong ceased in 1997, Western corporations faced a critical question: Stay or leave Hong Kong, a free-trading citadel of commerce for much of the century? Soldiers and tanks of the People's Liberation Army loomed over Hong Kong's borders, and many of Hong Kong's politicians and populace feared the worst. Western companies weighed all potential scenarios, from a disastrous civil war, to a global stock market crash, to international business as usual. Luckily, no mass violence broke out, Hong Kong's economy didn't die, and nearly all of the Western companies stayed.
LEAP TO TODAY, and Google's stand on Internet censorship. The Silicon Valley giant surely agonized over the business and political risks of possibly leaving the fast-growing China market. One potential scenario: Google's move could open a wedge to barter with Chinese authorities, who are proud of their home-grown companies but know they still trail the best of the Western multinationals. Google's action might even create leverage for other Western companies to chisel away at economic barriers. And if Google teams with U.S. negotiators, the private talks might elevate to trade and policy issues, including China's role in the World Trade Organization.
THIS SCENARIO LOOKS even likelier today, with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telling censorship-minded countries that more U.S. companies are making Internet freedom a factor in their business decisions: "Countries that censor news and information must recognize that, from an economic standpoint, there is no distinction between censoring political speech and commercial speech. If businesses in your nations are denied access to either type of information, it will inevitably have an impact on growth." (See Associated Press video clip on YouTube.com, and my CoolGlobalBiz.com post on corporate social responsibility in China.)
MEANWHILE, CHINA WATCHERS continue to weigh in with a range of views -- ideally the way that Internet info should flow openly, with readers sorting out fact, opinion and political spin. Rebecca MacKinnon, a University of Hong Kong professor and a former CNN bureau chief in Asia, wonders in the Guardian if Google will stand up to European nations and others that censor the Internet . . . Shaun Rein (photo, left),founder of China Market Research Group in Shanghai, writes in Forbes.com that "Google's actions in China not only imperil its own bottom line; they also threaten to start a slowing of Internet and media reform." . . . Zachary Karabell, president of River Twice Research and author of Superfusion: How China and America Became One Economy and Why the World's Prosperity Depends On It, opines in Time magazine that China's Web censorship challenges the dominance of Western business: "That story — of China's emergence and a burgeoning world of hungry entrepreneurs not willing to play second fiddle to America — is the backstory for the Google imbroglio and one that is about to assume center stage."
NEW YORK TIMES columnist Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat and a master of the metaphor, believes that "Command China" (the Communist Party and state-run companies) clearly is at odds with "Network China" (the more global and entrepreneurial culture of Shanghai and Beijing). In "Is China an Enron? Part 2," he writes: "That is what the war over Google is really all about: It is a proxy and a symbol for whether the Chinese will be able to freely search and connect wherever their imaginations and creative impulses take them, which is critical for the future of Network China."
LASTLY, REBECCA FANNIN, author of Silicon Dragon: How China is Winning the Tech Race and a longtime observer of the China tech scene, anticipated a month ago that Google might leave China when Google's China head, Kai-Fu Lee, resigned in September. In Forbes.com ( "Google's China Blues" and "Why Google is Quitting China"), she writes: "My venture investing sources in Beijing and Shanghai suspected then that there was more to Lee's departure than was being told. Maybe Larry Page and Sergey Brin want to exit China and Lee knew this, my sources speculated. Certainly, the rush to the exit door by Google staff in Beijing since September suggests that."
New York Times, "China Paints Google Issue as Not Political" by Edward Wong, Jonathan Ansfield and Sharon LaFraniere.
Rebecca MacKinnon in the Wall Street Journal,"Google Gets on the Right Side of History."
GlobalVoices.org, "China: More on Google cn" (translations of China blogs).
Newsweek,"Clash of the Titans: How the Democratic Republic of Google is Testing China's Appetite for Democracy Itself" by Fareed Zakaria.
Council on Foreign Relations, "Google, China and Dueling Internets?" podcast with Adam Segal.
Ted Fishman in USA Today,"How Google Mirrors China"
