I’ve never met Edwin Maher. From all I’ve heard, he is a very nice man, a New Zealander by birth. I used to see him regularly on CCTV 9, the English language channel of China’s state broadcaster, where he was a principal anchor and newsreader for several years.

I wouldn’t normally think about Maher. Except that his name popped up over the weekend in a Xinhua story about the 15 most influential foreigners on China’s development over the past three decades.

The list includes many notables, like I.M. Pei, the architect famous for his buildings both in China and the United States. Also on there are Chinese-American Nobel physics laureates Yang Chen-ning and Lee Tsung-dao, and Hein Verbruggen, the Dutch IOC commissioner who helped Beijing win the 2008 Summer Games. I was a little surprised to see the name of Henk Bekedam, a former WHO representative in China who was a great source to journalists on health issues. His key role in the 2003 SARS crisis must have earned him a spot.

But Edwin Maher? Read more about Maher here and here to see a storm that was kicked up about him late last year with a Los Angeles Times article by my friend John Glionna. The article gave what I considered a balanced appraisal of Maher, quoting people who see him as a shill for an authoritarian government and others who see him as simply doing a job well in an environment in which everyone helps prop up the state to one degree or another. Fellow blogger and friend Imagethief did a particularly nice post on this a year ago.

I watch that CCTV 9 newscast quite often. It’s my job, after all, to stay abreast of the news. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems to me that most of the foreign newscasters are too earnest, taking up the banner of glorifying China. A precious few, however, do the job with a wink and a nod, letting the viewer know subtly, ‘Hey, this is what they told me to read. Believe it or don’t.’

Maher, though, represents the tip of the spear of the broader issue of complicity among foreigners involved in China. It’s an issue that goes far beyond newscasters. A Hong Kong-based academic, Carsten Holz, ruffled feathers last year with an article in the Far Eastern Economic Review -- "Have China Scholars All Been Bought?" -- suggesting that many Western academics pull their punches on China because they need to stay in the government’s good graces to have access and do research. After all, many have spent much of their adult lives honing Chinese skills and can’t easily transfer those skills to other regions.

Chinese government officials are very quick to try to take one’s measure: Are you a Friend of China? Among China veterans, most know what an FOC is. Being an FOC can earn one special access. For journalists, it means getting spots on special trips, or invited to special interviews. For business people, I’m sure it has other connotations.

Personally I find it a bit tiresome. There are times when I find China profoundly interesting, even mesmerizing. Other times, I see things that are truly and deeply disturbing, even inhumane. Some things are great. Some things aren’t. So what? It seems that true friends call it like they see it, pleasant or not.

So as ImageThief said last year, it’s really not about Edwin Maher. It’s about a system that takes any criticism as an unfriendly or even hostile gesture when that is not the case.

This is an interesting 24-minute video about China’s huge impact on Angola. The report is from Current TV, the internet network founded by former Vice President Al Gore.

The reporter interviews a number of Chinese and Angolan workers. At one point, looking for Chinese work crews, she says that the Chinese work so fast that it is hard to track them down. “They are here one week, then gone the next,” she says.

The Chinese say they earn three times the wages in Africa that they would get back in China. So the allure of migrating there is huge.

The Angolan tourism minister touts the benefits of the Chinese work crews, who he says build roads in places where others refuse to go. Even Angolan workers acknowledge that Chinese investment is changing the face of their country, while some complain that the Chinese are taking away jobs.

Take a look.

A foreign reader who lives in China sent in an interesting email about marijuana, responding to the item yesterday about the tomb that contained the world’s oldest stash.

He’ll remain anonymous because of the nature. He said he traveled down to Dali and Shangri-la in Yunnan Province last summer, and this is what he found:

“To my great surprise, marijuana was EVERYWHERE down there.  I was told by the folks in the Tibetan medicine shops that pot has been used as medicine in Tibet, Yunnan and the whole region for thousands of years. The medicine shops had it under the counter for special customers. They said it was widespread and accepted until Mao. Even today, you see folks on the streets smoking their bongs and you see pot sold in the countryside markets. They smoke it, eat it and brew a tea. It's growing everywhere in the foothills and mountains.”

The reader sent along a couple of photos, which you see above and below.

In a follow-up email, the reader said: “I was told they smoke a blend of what they call angel hair tobacco from the region and marijuana. Many just smoke all pot. They also make a black paste from the pot (we'd call it hashish) and mix it with the tobacco. Those folks were the Bai minority from Dali I understand.  The pot pic is from Tiger Leaping Gorge...another reason the area is so popular with Western backpackers. A friend told me Dali is known as the Amsterdam of China. I totally understand why.”

As most readers should know, penalties are harsh in China for marijuana usage, so don't take this as an endorsement to stray from the straight and narrow...

For anyone who doubts the rivalry that exists between Beijing and Shanghai, it’s illustrative to look at the case of the Shanghai Center, the immense tower project that just broke ground.

The high-rise will be enormous, dwarfing the landmark 1,380-foot tall Jinmao Tower completed in 1999, and even the Shanghai World Financial Center that was inaugurated in August. It is 1,615 feet high.

At a whopping 2,074 feet, the 121-story Shanghai Center will be the tallest building in China, and one of the tallest in the world. Construction should be complete by 2014. An artist's prototype is seen in the drawing. Some wags say the building will look like a bottle opener.

The ground breaking was barely over Saturday when Beijing started to gripe.

Even the China Daily, the English-language mouthpiece of the national government, railed this morning against the $2.2-billion project in an editorial, calling it a waste of money, an eyesore, a cause of urban subsidence, a source of “urban heat island effect,” and even potentially dangerous.

“It will be a milestone in turning Shanghai into a less pleasant concrete jungle, considering the 4,000 high-rise buildings built in Shanghai in the last three decades, more than any other city in the world,” the editorial said.

And in case any Chinese office workers have jitters about being more than 100 floors above ground, the editorial added this: “Of course, there is always the safety issue regarding skyscrapers. They are much more vulnerable to various attacks, disasters, and evacuation would usually take too much time.”

Geez, it kind of gives you the feeling they may not even bother to try to save anyone. So what if there are tens of thousands of people inside?

In case anyone didn’t get the point, China Daily slammed the project as symbolizing that “blind worship and race for skyscrapers has reached a new high.”

And did we mention that Beijing is lagging behind in skyscrapers? Tallest building here is still under construction. It’s the China World Trade Center Tower 3, which stands at 1,083 feet (74 stories).

Looks like very early residents of China had a penchant for smoking what we used to vernacularly call wacky tabackey. Yup, marijuana.

Archaeologists who dug up a 2,700-year-old tomb of a shaman near Turpan out in far west Xinjiang province found a curious pouch. Inside was the wacky weed. News reports call it the oldest stash of marijuana on Earth.

The cannabis was “superbly preserved by climatic and burial conditions,” according to this article in the scientific Journal of Experimental Botany.

“The cannabis was presumably employed by this culture as a medicinal or psychoactive agent, or an aid to divination. To our knowledge, these investigations provide the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent, and contribute to the medical and archaeological record of this pre-Silk Road culture,” the abstract says.

No pipes, bongs or rolling papers were uncovered in the tomb of this wild and crazy guy.

The dope apparently had a very high content of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, but the leaf was too old to measure precisely.

So the question is whether the stash was just for the shaman’s personal consumption. According to the journal, the shaman had 789 grams of the stuff, which by my calculation is almost two pounds. That would put him in the slammer for a long time in a lot of places these days. Then again, he might argue that it was for medicinal purposes.

According to this news article, the Xinjiang region of China may be an original source of cannabis strains worldwide.