I HAVE exercised Chinese commenters with a few posts that were seen as either simplistic or biased. So let me offer two competing visions of Chinese that help explain what the two sides disagree on. These are archetypes which few partisans may agree with every word of. But they are the basic poles of thinking about Chinese, I think. I submit them for the good of commenters, who should debate them to shreds.

In brief, Chinese traditionalists believe

1) Chinese is one language with dialects.
2) Chinese is best written in the character-based hanzi system.
3) All Chinese read and share the same writing system, despite speaking in different ways.

Western linguists tend to respond

1) Chinese is not a language but a family; the "dialects" are not dialects but languages.
2) Hanzi-based writing is unnecessarily difficult; the characters do not represent "ideas" but "morphemes" (small and combinable units of meaning, like the morphemes of any language). Pinyin (the standard Roman system) could just as easily be used for Chinese. Puns, wordplay and etymology might be sacrificed, but ease of use would be enhanced.
3) Modern hanzi writing is basically Mandarin with the old characters in a form modified by the People's Republic. Everyone else (Cantonese speakers, say) must either write Mandarin or significantly alter the system to write their own "Chinese".

There are so many arguments packed into these two ideas that it's hard to start, much less finish, in a blog post. Since I'm (really) on holiday, I'll leave it to commenters to enlighten each other, and me on my return.

AT A ceremony on December 11th to mark the anniversary of China’s admission to the World Trade Organisation a decade ago, President Hu Jintao commemorated “a new historical stage” in the country’s opening up. The next day he and fellow leaders retreated to an army-run guesthouse for a secretive three-day meeting to decide how to run China’s economy in 2012. Their gnomic conclusion: to maintain a “prudent monetary policy” and a “proactive fiscal policy” in the face of an “extremely grim and complicated” global outlook.

The annual Central Economic Work Conference (CEWC) sets the tone for China’s economic policymaking for the next 12 months. Attended by members of the ruling Politburo, government ministers, provincial chiefs, military leaders and heads of banks and other big state-owned companies, secrecy is the watchword. No dates are officially announced in advance, nor even the location (although it is an open secret that it takes place at the heavily guarded Jingxi guesthouse in western Beijing, the Communist Party’s favourite spot for large closed-door gatherings).

This year’s conference, which ended on December 14th, seemed more worried about growth than about price pressures. Inflation is now receding (consumer prices rose by 4.2% in the year to November, after peaking at 6.5% in the summer); and dollar inflows are also slowing, removing one source of extra liquidity. That has allowed the government to cut the amount it tells banks to keep as reserves. Most economists expect it to carry on cutting in the year ahead. Nonetheless, the CEWC chose to describe its monetary policy with the same word (“prudent”) it used last year, when fighting inflation was the priority. It suggests the leaders will cut cautiously.

Freed from prison in 2010 but unable to walk, she ended up living in a Beijing park with her husband for nearly two months, until unflattering publicity led local officials to move them into a cheap hotel.

Their predicament will most likely take a turn for the worse in the coming weeks, when a court in the capital’s Xicheng district is expected to sentence the couple on charges that include “picking quarrels” and disturbing public order. “I’m afraid the sentence this time will be especially heavy,” their lawyer, Cheng Hai, said after their hearing on Thursday.

The trial of Ms. Ni and her husband, Dong Jiqin, capped a particularly grim year for Chinese dissidents and human rights advocates. In recent weeks, two veteran activists, Chen Wei and Chen Xi, have been given long sentences for essays criticizing the ruling Communist Party. Late last month, the authorities announced that Gao Zhisheng, a prominent rights lawyer, would have to spend an additional three years in prison for violating the terms of his probation.

Unaddressed in the terse official statement was how Mr. Gao, who had spent the previous 20 months in the custody of public security agents, had broken the law.

Although the government has long restricted the work and words of opponents, its tolerance has diminished further since February, when unrest in the Arab world unnerved senior leaders. Dozens of rights lawyers and intellectuals have been detained, countless others have been subjected to heightened police surveillance, and propaganda officials have sought to tighten controls on the Internet.

The artist and critic Ai Weiwei, who disappeared for more than two months, is still battling tax-evasion charges, an accusation he says is designed to silence him.

“The government seems to be going in only one direction, which is more control and harsher punishment against political dissidents,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This is a reflection of the broader atmosphere in China, which is more conservative and hard-line.”

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