How to Blog Asia for the MSM

If you're a close reader of IHT Rendezvous, you're jonesing for a fix of Mark McDonald right about now. Our peripatetic Asia blogger's last day writing was Wednesday. He's moving on to other assignments. We'll miss him.

Since Rendezvous launched in January, Asia has been one of the two main focuses of our coverage and our audience. Indeed, before the Great Firewall began the shutout of nearly all content from The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and Rendezvous, China was Rendezvous' third country by audience - we had more readers only in the United States and Canada.

Moreover, China posts dominate our Top 20 most read and most commented on posts.

The driving force behind that coverage has been Mark McDonald. From Hong Kong, he produced some of our most commented on and most read posts of 2012. Here are our Asia Top 10 of 2012.

When Rendezvous launched, our goal was to connect and engage with intelligent readers with a passionate interest in global affairs. We aimed to host the International Herald Tribune's corner of the global conversation taking place on the Web, reporting on things that mattered to those readers - and pointing to the best of others' reporting on them: from politics and economics to sports and the arts.

Basically, what the IHT has been doing for 125 years.

Mark has been a crucial part of our success in curating our piece of the global conversation. His news acumen, developed over nearly half a century of reporting, editing and teaching, coupled with his take-no-prisoners analysis, have made the Web pages of Rendezvous both wondrously broad and deeply provoking.

He has authored many of our most trenchant posts and, without a doubt, sparked our mo st intense discussions. Whether writing about Jeremy Lin, the Chinese-American N.B.A. wonder, Chinese Web censorship, the true cost of U.S. military drone strikes, China's high-pressure annual college entrance exam or natural disasters in the Philippines, Mark has engaged and enlightened readers.

Didi Kirsten Tatlow, an insightful and well-connected journalist based in Beijing will pick up where Mark left off. In her weekly contributions to Rendezvous, Didi has already demonstrated what she can do: from telling the harrowing story of how a reporter interviews a dissident to how mainland Chinese saw - literally - November's historic Party Congress, from the stakes in the confrontation over the East China Sea islands to the personal side of raising children or buying a puppy in Beijing.

We can't wait to see how she will deepen our understanding of China on a daily basis.

< p>Mark will remain in the pages and Web pages of the IHT. And occasionally visiting us here on RDV. We'll be following him. And I suspect many of you will be too.

Trending in Asia in 2012: Our Top 10

Our most popular Asia posts of 2012, by the number of readers and/or the number of comments:

China Calls for ‘No Delay' on Gun Controls in U.S. This recent post on China's reaction to the Newtown shooting tragedy brought nearly 200 comments, some enraged at China's hypocrisy, some enraged at the American gun lobby and a few saying that China, despite any hypocrisy, wasn't wrong.

China Demands Apology From U.S. This post, about Chen Guangcheng, the 40-year-old human rights lawyer held up in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing before leaving for New York, also generated nearly 200 comments.

The Best Countries to Be a Woman - and the Worst. After the recent events in India around the murder and rape of a woman the debate that ensued in the discussion of this post - whether India really was as bad for women as the poll respondents (experts in gender relations) said; worst than Saudi Arabia and China - takes on a new light.

From Milk to Peas, a Chinese Food-Safety Mess. Many of the 125 comments on this post came from outraged readers in China complaining about their government's failure to safeguard their lives and their children's.

Watch Your Language! (In China, They Really Do). Before China shut out most content from The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and Rendezvous , China was the third country that Rendezvous' readers came from, outranked only by the United States and Canada. Ironic.

East Asia's Sea Disputes: Scar Tissue from War Wounds. This analysis, way back in August, about Chinese activists being arrested by the Japanese coast guard for planting flags on one of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, was just one of many seeking to explain a host of Asian territorial disputes, and the rising stakes.

A Telling Language Lesson in Hong Kong. When Leung Chun-ying, the new chief executive of Hong Kong, made his ina ugural speech in Mandarin rather than Cantonese, it generated nearly 100 comments that showed the depth of the divide that still separates Hong Kong and the mainland. (As did this post, one of Rendezvous' first, way back in January.)

It was not all geopolitics. This post on basketball phenom Jeremy Lin, Did ESPN Cross the Line Into Racism? received more than 100 comments, many touching on the role and view of Asian-Americans in the U.S. and globally. But our first post on Mr. Lin was back on February 5: Asian-American Christian Basketball Star.

And this story generated nearly 100,000 pageviews. Finally, Outrage in China Against Bear Farming. Similarly, this story received more than 100 comments. The Slaughter of Elephants in Vietnam Is Nearly Complete.

‘Gangnam Style' Becomes Most-Watched Video Ever on YouTube - 805 Million Views. Of course, K-Pop star Psy's video has since surpassed the billion-view mark. But the comments and the ones on an earlier post, showed the ambivalence many Asians felt toward the image of Asian men they said Psy was portraying.

European Union to Accentuate the Positive in 2013

LONDON - With the prospect of more troubles ahead for the European Union in 2013, officials have launched a campaign to remind its 500 million citizens of the benefits of belonging to the 27-nation alliance.

Next year has been designated the European Year of Citizens by the decision-makers in Brussels, who have highlighted a range of advantages, from freer cross-border travel to cheaper cross-border phone calls, to convince a sometimes skeptical public that membership has been worthwhile.

It might seem like a hard sell after a year in which the Union limped from crisis to crisis over a debt mountain that threatened the survival of the euro, the currency shared by 17 E.U. states.

Action by European leaders eventually succeeded in keeping Greece within the eurozone amid fears that a Greek exit - a “Grex it” - could spark the collapse of the single currency.

But that is only partial consolation for a European population facing another year of the kind of tough austerity programs that sparked strikes and protests in the most indebted states in 2012.

The Brussels bureaucrats offer a longer-term view, pointing out that tangible progress has been made in the 20 years since the creation of European Union citizenship that has improved the lives of millions.

“Nowadays traveling abroad entails cheaper travel costs, hassle-free border crossings, package holiday guarantees, access to healthcare systems and cheaper calls when you phone home,” according to the European Commission. “These are just some of the benefits derived from E.U. citizenship.”

Large numbers of Europeans have certainly taken advantage of free movement between member states to improve their job prospects outside thei r home nations. More than 12 million Europeans lived in a member state other than their own, according to data from 2010, before austerity began to bite.

Anecdotal evidence is that growing numbers of Europeans are now on the move, including French millionaires escaping tax hikes at home and young jobless Spaniards heading to find work in Germany.

Europe may have escaped a “Grexit” in 2012 but a new crisis is looming with the prospect of a “Brexit”, as Britain's Conservative-led government prepares to spell out its position on its future relations with its European partners.

Prime Minister David Cameron, under pressure from the Euroskeptic wing of his party, is expected next month to reaffirm that he will seek to claw back powers that have been passed to Europe and that he is prepared to hold a national referendum on continued E.U. membership after the next British elec tion.

Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, which brings together the alliance's political leaders, has warned that the British move threatens the future of the Union.

“If every member state were able to cherry-pick those parts of existing policies that they most like, and opt out of those that they least like, the union in general, and the single market in particular, would soon unravel,” he told The Guardian.

Is Europe over the worst? Or will continuing economic weakness and a potential “Brexit” threaten its prospects in 2013? Tell us what you think. And, if you're a European, let us know if E.U. membership has proved to be a benefit or a hindrance.

France\'s 75 Percent Tax Rate Struck Down on Constitutional Grounds

France's Constitutional Council overturned a 75 percent tax rate on incomes above "1 million euros, or $1.3 million on Saturday.

“The decision, in response to a motion by opposition conservatives, is a huge blow to Socialist President Francois Hollande who had made the 75 percent rate his flagship tax measure as he sought to make the rich be seen to contribute more towards reducing the budget deficit,” Reuters reported.

The government had estimated the 75 percent tax rate could raise around 300 million euros a year as it battles to bring down the public deficit to below a European Union ceiling of 3 percent next year in the face of stalled growth.

The Constitutional Council, which rules on whether laws are constitutional, said in a statement that the way the upper rate was set to be imposed was unfair in the way it would affect different households< /p>

“The Constitutional Council announced it was overturning the 75 percent bracket on income over 1 million euros ($1.32million) because it represented a ‘breech of equality of taxes.' ” France24, the television broadcaster, reported.

Mr. Hollande said the rate would only be temporary, to help reduce France's deficit. Most surprising to many was that French incomes are so relatively low that the rate would have to be paid by an estimated 1,500 people. (THe government estimated it would have provided an additional "210 million euros per year in revenue.

Rendezvous reported on actor Gerard Depardieu's run-in with France's prime minister and translated his cri de coeur into English as he declared his intention to renounce his French citizenship.

We've also followed closely other European countries' efforts to get more revenue from the rich, whether individuals or corporations.

Are you cheering the French Constituional Court's decision? Or do you think this is one more instance of the rich getting off scot-free?

The One-Two Punch of Chinese Web Censorship

After months of tightening restrictions on private and commercial Internet users, Beijing issues new rules for users and companies.

IHT Quick Read: Dec. 29

NEWS Officials appealed for calm as protesters gathered after the death of the student who was attacked by a group of men in New Delhi. Heather Timmons and Sruthi Gottipati report from New Delhi.

The Chinese government issued new rules on Friday requiring Internet users to provide their real names to service providers, while assigning Internet companies greater responsibility for deleting forbidden postings and reporting them to the authorities. Keith Bradsher reports from Hong Kong.

Almost 40 years after Britain joined the forerunner of today's European Union, the debate over the country's future in the Union has quickened with a warning from a top E.U. official that any moves to renegotiate the terms of British membership could wreck the bloc. Stephen Castle reports from London.

Maria Bashir, the only woman serving as chief prosecutor in any of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, does more than just walk the line between the progressive and the conservative - she has, uncomfortably, come to personify it. Graham Bowley reports from Herat, Afghanistan.

A former Greek finance minister appeared to be implicated Friday in the tampering of the so-called Lagarde list of Greeks with Swiss bank accounts after prosecutors revealed that three of his relatives had been removed from the list. Niki Kits antonis reports from Athens.

Ireland has embraced a novel strategy to help reduce its staggering deficit: charging households and businesses for the environmental damage they cause. Elisabeth Rosenthal reports from Dublin.

ARTS A program this month at the Paris Opera Ballet brings to mind how William Forsythe's “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated” began a new era for ballet 25 years ago. Roslyn Sulcas writes from Paris.

Michael Haneke's “Amour” and David O. Russell's “Silver Linings Playbook” differ in many ways, but in each movie, a home plays a critical role. Manohla Dargis on film.

SPORTS Havard Rugland knows next to nothing about American football, but his video of kicking tricks impressed a former N.F.L. player and attracted the Jets' interest. David Picker reports.

Rafael Nadal's comeback has been postponed again after six months away from competitive tennis, and this time he said the crux of the matter was not his troublesome left knee. Nadal announced Friday that he had withdrawn from the Australian Open, which begins Jan. 14, because of a stomach virus. Chris Clarey reports.