These days, Soviet-style samizdat is doing the rounds at the Prague headquarters of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty. It is a press release on the letter to Croatian government by Snjezana Pelivan, a Croatian journalist living in Prague.

APDS Blogger: Jerry Edling

The rule is part of a broad government effort to take firmer control of China's media landscape. While targeting low-brow trends, China shows its rising interest in developing its own soft power—in the arts, media and culture—to compete with the likes of Hollywood as the nation looks to take on a broader global role.

Culture is critical to the future of the Party because it goes to the heart of the Party's hold on power. Economic growth has contributed to its legitimacy, but the public's belief that only the Party can make China a strong country is its real trump card. To maintain this illusion, the usual way is fulminating against the foreign forces that are trying to hold back China's rise with "Cold War thinking."

Hostile international powers are strengthening their efforts to Westernise and divide us," Hu wrote in an article, noting "ideological and cultural fields" are the main targets. "We must be aware of the seriousness and complexity of the struggles and take powerful measures to prevent and deal with them.

We Americans tend to take our presidential campaigns lightly. We see them as fodder for Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show, and we become so enamored with the incessant polling that we watch the candidates as if they were race horses approaching the finish line.

Indeed, the elections that took place in Egypt and Tunisia have demonstrated that the young, multilingual and Internet-savvy spokesmen for the revolution who had become prominent on Al Jazeera and CNN television coverage from Tahrir Square lack any strong base of electoral support.