economy - Europe fears possible slowdown in China

European companies might feel a strong backlash as China succesfully slows down the current growth rates, the Financial Times from London writes today. "Remy Cointreau, Lonmin and Siemens all generated 10 per cent of their revenues from China in 2002, as did Volkswagen, which saw sales of its cars in China jump 40 per cent last year," writes the paper. "China provided Nokia and Ericsson, the mobile phone giants, with about 9 per cent of their revenues, while for Alcatel, Danone, STMicroelectronics and Infineon Technologies, the figure was nearer 8 per cent."

internet - Update on European weblogs

Just one day too late for the Bloggercon in Shanghai arrives Stefan Wiskemann, founder of the weblog hosts for what he describes as a 'private' visit. They have operations in English, German, French and Dutch.
How can bloggers have private visits? A good moment to get an update on the blogging situation in Europe. My idea is that Europe, just like most of Asia, still has to catch up a lot. Monday we will know more.

bloggercon - "Blogging can be a form of journalism"

Chris Nolan takes on the notions of BloggerCon organizer Dave Winer.

media - 9 Dead, 150,000 evacuated

Media in China have been for a very long time rightfully being accused of hiding bad news. That has been changing over de past year dramatically and yesterday's disaster at the Chongqing Tianyuan Chemical Plants, here in the China Daily, show that those days are over.
That is partly due to the internet, that made it impossible for local authorities to hide problems of this size.

bloggerCon - Journalism and weblogging

Moderator Jay Rosen of the first sessions gives his thoughts on what he has learned up to now re the discussion on weblogging and journalism. Two points of his new essay:
* Blogging is not journalism, but some journalists are natural bloggers and some bloggers may be natural journalists.
* Blogging is not journalism, but bloggers now filter and edit journalists, and journalists read blogs. (Both facts are new.)

Economy - Banks can deal with NPL's - PBOC governor

The four Chinese commercial banks can deal with their non-performing loans, said governor Zhou Xiaochuan of the People's Bank of China, at the luncheon of the Instiute of International Finance today in Shanghai. Most of the NPL's developed because of policies of the central government and China's plan economy. "The banks can only be blamed for about 20 percent of the loans," a very relaxed central banker told an audience of international bankers.
Getting the banks listed was seen as an important tool to improve corporate governance at the banks, Zhou said, echoing a conclusion of the yesterday released IIF-report that urged state-owned companies to go public.
Zhou impressed his audience about the relaxed way he talked about his business, without actually saying anything new. He deplored the transparent table he stood behind did not allow him to hide a glass of whisky, he joked. "He knows the jargon, speaks excellent English, that is what we like to see," said one of the bankers.

internet - Blogging on Chinese corporate responsibilities

Andrea offers some good links to a Chinese blog on social responsibilities of corporations at Living in China. The English blog, hosted at singleplanet.blogs.com is blocked so you need a proxy to see that one in China.

media - Journalists advise on corporate governance

Should journalists advice banks and other financial institutions on corporate governance? Ethical issues emerge very frequent in the fast-changing Chinese media market and today was such a day. While browsing through the today released IIF report on corporate governance in China, I discovered the names of two colleagues who work for some of the most respected financial media: managing editor Hu Shuli of Caijing and Annie Zhang of the International Finance News. Journalists should write in their publications about corporate governance, I feel, they should not be part of the backroom deliberations themselves. Or am I too strict now?

economy - Bankers expect brakes to work against overheating

International bankers, gathering under the umbrella of the Institute of International Finance, expect that the efforts of the Chinese government to slow down its breathtaking economic growth will in the end work, although the effects were not yet visible today, leading to speculations on a further unsustainable growth rate.
Only today the official figure for China's economic growth in the first quarter was fixed on 9.7 percent.
The current turn against Chinese IPO's was qualified by Victor Chu, Chairman and CEO of the First Eastern Investment group as a "premium" on earlier euphoria. He saw that China had achieved much in improving its corporate governance, he said. "Maybe not on a day to day basis, but over 5, 7, ten years time, much has been achieved."
The IIF has 330 members in international finance, 50 of whom are based in Asia. With the important changes in China, the organization hopes more Chinese banks will also join the organization.

internet - Bloggers: avoid the Pudong Shangri-la

Trying to access the internet from the Pudong Shangri-la in Shanghai proves to be a real headache.
When I asked them about a wireless access, management proved to be clueless. I got three signals, but could not sign up to any of them. Now they have linked me up to a dialup connection, after I found a guest willing to pay the costs. Might not go to the conference tomorrow, really pissed off.

internet - Blogging the IIF-meeting

Today and especially tomorrow the Institute of International Finance, Inc will host a meeting for their members - most of the world's largest banks. Guests include vice-premier Huang Ju, the governor of the People's Bank of China Zhou Xiaochuan and many others.
It will be my first effort to do some real-life blogging, so stay tuned.

travel - Price hike for domestic flights

Airline companies are trying to get most out of the upcoming May holiday and announced increases of fares of around 10 percent, starting on April 20, the China Daily reports.
It is the first time airliners can change the price without interference of the official regulator, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).
In the past all travel prices would go up during Spring festival, also those of trains and busses. After the holiday they would come down again.

Missing: 20 million women - the WTO column

(Tomorrow in Chinabiz)

Shanghai – Lying with statistics is a special art and the best ones are even able to deceive the users themselves very intelligently. In China the story of the 20 million unmarried men, looking for women has been keeping both demographers and journalist very busy for the past fifteen years, blaming both the one-child policy and the traditional preference for boys as an explanation.
For the arguments’ sake I will now assume that the population statistics in China are correct. I know there can be a lot of discussion about that issue alone, but also for this kind of discussions we need a level playing ground.

China has 20 million more unmarried men than unmarried women and that shortage has been part of many doomsday scenarios for the country. While they are still missing – remember we decided to believe the statistics – I do have to kill the doomsday scenario.

Do join me to a trip I made 15 years ago to the town called Kerkrade in the southern parts of the Netherlands. The 50,000 citizens in this former mining town belong to the poorest in my country and the men were complaining, just like the men at the Chinese country side. All the women left their town to find richer men elsewhere, they told me. They took me to these special places where the lonely hearts, all beer drinking men, were waiting in vain for women to show up, while only a small group of women dealt with their needs on a more professional basis in a corner of that hall.
I checked the local statistics, and indeed, Kerkrade did have 3,000 more unmarried men than women. The official spokesman of the town almost fainted when I confronted him with the statistics. I went home as a happy journalist.
In a move I still regret I also decided back home to call the Dutch National Bureau for Statistics to recheck the figures. After having a good laugh about my story, the expert there checked his figures confirmed Kerkrade was missing 3,000 unmarried women.
I had just finished my story, when he called back. He had bad news for me, he said. The women were not only missing in Kerkrade, but they were missing everywhere in the Netherlands. The difference was caused by the fact that women marry earlier than men. So, for a country with 1.3 billion inhabitants, ‘missing’ 20 million women is not that much of a problem, although some of the men involved might not agree with me. As a percentage, it comes very close to the figures in Kerkrade.
To blame the one-child policy or the traditional preference for boys at the country-side does not help, both demographers and journalists will need to look for a better story, I fear.

I still hate this guy of the Dutch National Bureau of Statistics who called me back and killed my story. Colleagues here in China will hate me for doing the same thing, but I think it is only fair. There are so many real stories to tell, why should we make them up?

Fons Tuinstra

internet - The BloggerCon discussions

In the US the pre-discussions on the BloggerCon are already on its way. One of the sessions we are following, the first on 'What is journalism' got most comments yet. Click here for the latest on this discussion.

travel - The next US trip

Just saw that Dave Winer is aggressively plugging his trip to Holland. Well, I'm coming to California. If all goes will I will arrive April 29 in San Francisco and attend a Western Knight seminar on controlling the internet. That is for fellows only, but the conference on China's Digital Future is open for everybody.
After this I will travel to LA and return to Shanghai by May 11, so I will fortunately miss the May-holiday when 1.3 billion people are on the move.

Update: Lois Le Meur will be in London in May, keep your agenda's free!-)

visas - New times, new problems

In the past people would call me regularly to ask how to deal with visas when they had to visit China. Now, I get more questions about visas to Europe. For the Netherlands the application takes now up to eight weeks, in case of problems even twelve weeks, so better apply on time.
Happy I do not have to answer questions on US visas.

economy - Struggling with the heat

China is fighting the overheating of its economy, writes the Financial Times, while the New York Times gives an overview of the worrying signs.
This all happens while Shanghai posted in the first quarter a growth of 13.5 percent, the higest in six years time, writes the Business Times. China as a whole grew between 9 and 10 percent in the first quarter.

media - Between fact and fiction

Telling fiction is a long standing tradition among foreign journalists in China, as Sterling Seagrave illustrates in his bestseller The Dragon Lady. I thought that because of the internet telling nonsense about China would be much harder to get away with. But telling fiction has now become the new standard in the media, I believe.
Perhaps I'm just an old conservative journalist who still enjoys an occasional fact, but that is over. A Dutch TV station wants to do a story on the shortage of women, and bring a Dutch woman over to look for a man. The problem is already a fiction (see my previous entry) and might only occur at some places in the country-side. They want to shoot in a large city, even though they know it is no problem here.
Why do they need a journalists for, to organize a fictional documentary? They might as well go to a Chinese restaurant in Amsterdam. What a nonsense.

media - China's 20 million missing women

One of the most fascinating stories from China is that of the supposedly 20 million men that cannot find a wife to marry. I hate to kill a good story, but that happened to me about 15 years ago when I did a similar story about 3,000 missing women in the little city of Kerkrade, in the south of the Netherlands.
Men in this tiny former mining place complained they could not get a decent wife, and statistics supported their claims. Women went to more prosperous places, to find richer men. The Netherlands did not have a one-child policy or a strong preference for boys or girls, but the women were missing anyway.
After having a good laugh, an expert at the National Bureau for Statistics checked the figures and had to admit I was right. Three thousand unmarried women were missing and we did not noticed that because women were living longer, so the total number of men en women was about equal.
An hour later - I had almost finished my story - he called back with a rather disappointing discovery. He had done some more research and discovered the women were missing everywhere, not only in this poor city of Kerkrade. Because women tend to marry earlier, there were more unmarried men than women. The facts were correct, the explanation was gone, and gone was my story too.
That is why I'm not too sure about the 20 million missing women in China. A large part might be due to a similar difference in marriage age in China. But that is a story journalists rather not write down.

miracles - Making money at the stock exchange

Something very unlikely is happening at the Shanghai stock exchange: some people are making money, perhaps for the first time in about three years time.
The mutual funds have doubled in one year time, reports also the Financial Times today, a combination of more regulatory freedom and a relative amazing success. Stocks in Chinese companies are still highly overrated and only bound to drop, but some mutual funds do very well. Up to a year ago all mutual funds (with one exception) followed the same direction, and all went south. Now, some of the better ones went north, some up to 20 percent since the beginning of this year.
While mutual funds might be a new thing for many Chinese, they for sure know how to appreciate the rising value of funds.

internet - Latest on BloggerCon Shanghai

Find here the latest changes in the program, an RSVP-form and the current list of attendees. Please RSVP before Thursday 15 April noon and check back at our bloggercon Shanghai page for possible updates.

Iraq - Chinese hostages free, Russians apprehended

The seven Chinese hostages in Iraq are free again, write domestic and international media. They have been slightly hurt in a traffic accident. Three Japanese are still held and also eleven Russians are said to be among new hostages.

media - It is true: Maglev track sinks

This weekend I brought it as a sensationalist rumor, today the Shanghai Daily confirms it: the track of the transrapid is sinking.
"We have been aware of the sinking of our maglev track, though very slightly," Xia Guozhong, an official in charge of the s media section of the Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development Company.
He declined to comment on what had caused the sinking or whether it would affect the operation of the city's maglev line - the world's first maglev in commercial use, says the Shanghai Daily.

media - Strike at 21th Century Business Herald

Deteriorating working conditions caused a strike at one of China's leading business papers, writes blogger Shanghai-eye, who also links to an anonymous blog by one of the employees.

internet - Alltheweb.com blocked?

Is the search engine alltheweb.com blocked or not? Isaac Mao reported it first and since I never used this website, I checked it and got right away access.
This evening I saw his entry again, checked it from Shanghai and I was really a classical block: I could not get to it without a proxy. Very strange. I'm not familiar with the service, but they seem to use the google-technology when I look at the result of searches. Why would somebody block them and not Google? Censorship and logic do not go together.

Iraq - On Chinese farmers in Iraq

First I was a bit amazed, when I read in the China Daily that Chinese farmers had been taken hostage in Iraq. You do not expect farmer from Fujian province to look in Iraq for places to grow rice.
Most likely explanation is a translation problem. Those hostages come from a village in Pingtan county and are technically no urbanites, so they are 'farmers'. That makes it more than likely they were engaged in commercial activities other than farming.

Iraq - More info on hostages coming up

First media reports on the kidnap of seven Chinese visitors of Iraq are coming up. like here from AFP.

conference - Walking a Tightrope - China Harvard Review

Very happy that information is not yet crossing the oceans seamlesly. I just discovered yet another major China conference at Harvard University, organized by the China Harvard Review. a meeting that coincides with the BloggerCon II
I will have assistance in Harvard that weekend and possibly repost information from some bloggers attenting that meeting. Beaming this kind of conferences directly to China would indeed be a useful business.

internet - Latest on BloggerCon Shanghai

Find here the latest changes in the program, an RSVP-form and the current list of attendees. Please RSVP before Thursday 15 April noon and check back at our bloggercon Shanghai page for possible updates.

jobs - Are women getting a fair deal?

Type in the key words 'China' and 'woman' and this is the first picture you get on the internet. On April 4 I wrote a little piece, based on this article in the China Daily, I found not surprising (since I hang around in Shanghai for some time) but nevertheless shocking.
The discussions is now continuing after I mentioned it issue in another context at Chinabiz and a first reader started to comment. Chinabiz also added a poll to see how the situation is among its readers and more articles will be coming.
Please join in the discussion here or at Chinabiz if you have an opinion about this.

Iraq - Seven Chinese kidnapped

Iraqi kidnappers seem to follow the itenary of US vice-president Dick Cheney very closely, as they now kidnapped seven Chinese from Fujian Province, according to domestic and international media. Three Japanese are still held hostage, although the kidnappers had promised to release them earlier.

internet - Chinese bloggers do it very young

Isaac Mao has a nice posting about very young Chinese bloggers. They start already at eight years old! It makes me a bit suspicious: I guess they have some rather eager parents.

party rumor - Track Transrapid is sinking

Easter is party time here in Shanghai and an excellent time to exchange the latest gossip and rumors. Winner this year is the - most likely true - story from German engineers that the track of the Maglev or Transrapid in Shanghai is sinking.
During the construction by a local company German engineers already complained about the sloppy building procedure and now they claim they can see from arriving airplanes the track has started to sink. According to the engineers involved it would take about two to three years time before the Transrapid would have to halt operations.
The project is heavily subsidized by the German government and would have been a pilot project for the Shanghai-Beijing track and the Shanghai-Hangzhou track. The Shanghai-Beijing track is already written off and a problem on the pilot project might also kill other proposed projects in the world.

party time - At Boulevard St.Michel

Dashing party yesterday at the Fumin Road in Shanghai, loads of nice people and perhaps too much wine. That might be the reason we are still waiting for the pictures.

jobs - Headhunters: incompetent and unprofessional

The China Human Resources Associations qualifies the majority of the domestic headhunters in China as incompetent and unprofessional, the China Daily writes.
The 4,000 mostly government-backed agencies only entered the playing field in 2001. Up to then mainly foreign companies dominated the field, but they were forced into joint ventures with domestic organizations as China started to legislate this industry.
The lack of training makes them unable to communicate with both clients and candidates.