While (and I use this term quite loosely) researching my previous post on Obama, China, and the vast media conspiracy against media’s poor coverage of his recent trip, I ran across the U.S. Embassy/Beijing’s website.  Take a look at this screenshot of the English-language version of the home page:

This is sad — I know grade school kids who could produce better code than this (full disclosure:  I sure as hell couldn’t).  More importantly, reading this is likely to convince Chinese that the United States is hopelessly boring and backwards.

To be fair, I’m not sure if this is true of the Mandarin version of this site, given that I don’t read Mandarin. But given the fact that its looks to be different, I’m guessing — given the Great Firewall — it’s even more anodyne. And as far as I can tell, there’s no Cantonese version.  I guess the assumption is that everyone reads Mandarin.

Let me offer one example.  There was a lot of snarky commentary in the U.S. media about the Shanghai town hall and the fact that it wasn’t shown throughout China.  Well guess where else Chinese can’t see it?  Yep.  The Embassy Beijing site has no video.  No link to video.  Not even a photo.  Only the text.

Sometime the page is so bad that it borders on the comical (and potentially, at least to the prickly Chinese, offensive).  Here’s a shot of one small part of the English-language version of the home page — it’s part of a list of “warden messages,” which basically are travel warnings for U.S. citizens:

Whoops.

There are supposed to be two separate travel warnings — one on security measures in the lead-up to the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC and one on concerns about reports of pneumonic plague.  But somehow somebody conflated them.  So now October 1 is the National Day Holiday Plague.

Please explain this to me.  Shouldn’t we want to make the United States look interesting and exciting?  And make the presentation of that information eye-catching?  It’s great that the State Department website is all glam and web 2.0 and everything, but if this is what our embassy in Beijing is doing, then the main targets of our public diplomacy  — the Chinese people  — aren’t really getting the message.

For what it’s worth, Embassy Beijing site appears to be the exception, not the rule.  Home pages for the U.S. embassies in Italy, India, and even Papua New Guinea have better content, are better designed, and incorporate social media. In fact, even the Shanghai consulate has a better site (including photos and links to the video of the Shanghai town hall meeting).

The new U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman seems to understand the importance of the intertubes — it was he, after all, who posed the Great Firewall question to Obama during the Shanghai town hall.  here’s hoping that he takes a minute to tell his staff to fix this mess.

(By the way, I also checked out the English-language home page for the Chinese Embassy in D.C., and it’s just as bad.  But that’s certainly no excuse for the USG’s terrible presentation and content.)

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