Only four-in-ten Venezuelans, who will go to the polls in a key election this Sunday, told the most recent Global Attitudes Survey that they “like American ideas about democracy,” a sharp decline from the 67% who said so in 2002.
The publics of the world broadly embrace key tenets of economic globalization but fear the disruptions and downsides of participating in the global economy. In rich countries as well as poor ones, most people endorse free trade, multinational corporations and free markets. However, the latest Pew Global Attitudes survey of more than 45,000 people finds they are concerned about inequality, threats to their culture, threats to the environment and the threats posed by immigration. And there are signs that enthusiasm for economic globalization is waning in the West.
In my ongoing quest to visit as many internet cafes in China as possible, I was on the lookout last week during our visit to Urumqi (aka: Wulumuqi), a city of about 3 million along the Silk Road in the northwest corner of China.
In China, the internet cafe has overtaken the workplace as the second most popular place after their own homes for internet users to go online. Most of the increase in internet café use is in rural areas.
Reports on monitoring and censorship of Chinese internet content, particularly news and blogs, are familiar to westerners. We are less familiar with editorials praising a Party official’s meeting with a “netizen,” wishing for a day when it was les…