At China Digital News, a summary of how AnnaLee Saxenian of the Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems, and Orville Schell of the School of Journalism, talk and muse, respectively, on the influence of the internet on China. [Update: and many more talk summaries, make sure to read the succeeding entries as well. I particularly enjoyed the more technical talk by Tom Vest on "Internet Development in China", where he talks about the structure of the internet in China and argues that a monopoly on the national Autonomous Routing Demand (ARD), ie the number of ways China is connected to the international internet, will ultimately be harmful to the Chinese use of the internet. I agree, but I see this more as a warning of a potential outcome and think that Tom would agree that the network will evolve as political and economic circumstances change.] --Sinofiles confirmed my suspicion: the reason that the Ma Jiajue case is getting so much coverage is that people sympathize with him. Ma Jiajue was a university student in Yunnan who hammered four of his roommates to death, ran away, and was caught and sentenced to death. He came from a poor family, was very smart, but prone was to episodes of depression and isolation. I think the combination of being discriminated against for his family background, and the grueling academic life that so many Chinese are familiar with combine to make him a pitiable figure in the eyes of many Chinese. --7-11 has arrived in Beijing.