internet - Is Skype becoming a hype?

Last night I switched on Skype for the first time after months to add some friends when suddenly the virtual phone started to ring. First a group of six art students from Guangzhou called up and then an anonymous lady from a place in China she did not want to disclose. The number of users in China is really amazing, I found out. Am I sitting here on the beginning of a new hype. What do you use?

blogging - Conferences and visitors lining up


Up to the summer there will be very little time to get bored here in Shanghai as a growing number of conferences and private visitors line up in my agenda. Take for example the Asian Technology Roundtable Exhibition.
When I think a meeting is bloggable, I will announce it and when you have questions you cannot ask - because you are too shy or not present, please let me know, I might get the chance you might not get.

What is on the China agenda? - the WTO column

(tomorrow at Chinabiz)

Shanghai – A few days ago I sat down with a colleague from Hong Kong at a meeting of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club who became rather emotional about the latest developments in his city. I had been following that news from Hong Kong, just like I would follow the news about Taiwan, the US presidential elections and the Beijing ban on dyed hair for Chinese TV-anchors. Good to notice, but it did not really seem to touch me.

Unlike many of my non-journalistic friends here in Shanghai I’m following those far away events because one of these days they might become part of a larger agenda, like the war in Iraq became. I’m part of some informal discussion groups with colleagues on how the future of foreign correspondence will look like, so I have to know what is going on in other parts of the world.
So I see their comments on the elections in India, the relieve operations in North Korea but feel not really involved and see that my interests are changing. That is partly because our job has changed. In the past, we journalists, did set the agenda. I still remember a joyful meeting with colleagues in the Jinjiang Hotel after a press conference and with a good glass of wine. We actually discussed whether we would take another glass, let the deadline be the deadline and file the story a day later. We did not, but we could have.
In those days the South China Morning Post would set the China agenda for the foreign media. At the editorial desks in Hong Kong they made a selection of the news – also from the newswires – that would be followed worldwide.
Those days are over, fortunately, because of the internet. Now you, our readers, can go online and check whether we do a good job and whether we do it fast enough. I’m still experimenting with new ways of reporting but thanks to the internet I can file reports before a meeting has actually finished to my weblog. The colleagues of the traditional newswires look rather worried when I unpack my laptop onsite and check whether a location has a wireless connection or not. I cannot be a thorough as they can be, when they go back to the office, check their background material, drink a cup of coffee and send their article to their editors, but for sure I’m much faster.

What our audiences have discovered is that the traditional media they used to rely on made more mistakes in their coverage then they expected. The recent scandals about reporters making up their stories or bending story lines for political reasons, has seriously undermined the credibility of the traditional media.
I feel it is good that thanks to the internet we can have a more complete story, but what I’m increasingly missing is the selection, the agenda-setting mechanisms that have also eroded. Of course it is better that Chinese media now report on all the mining accidents in their country instead of covering them up like they used to, but two, three major accidents per week is killing for the subject itself.
Setting the agenda might be in China tougher than in most other place, since all politics – and thus the news – is local politics. You tend to focus more on what is happening around you, while developments in other big cities, even Beijing, seem far away.

The discussing is and will be - an ongoing one: please feel free to react.

Fons Tuinstra

law - Hello police man Wu

This morning I bumped into my friend the local police man Wu. Last year when I moved into my temporary lodgings in Pudong he called me, visited me and we would have become good friends if I would not have been traveling most of the time.
Today he asked again for my phone number and I'm almost 100 percent sure he did not recognize me from our earlier encounters, when I actually promised him to teach him some English.
Foreign with no or little exposure to Chinese say they all look the same, but the same happens to Chinese who seldom meet with foreigners: they complain we all look the same. Very hard to change that.

economy - Blackouts hit Shanghai

Shortage of electricity is also hitting Shanghai, even worse: it is hitting my neighborhood in Pudong. During the day suddenly the electricity is gone and I'm forced to seek refuse downtown. My laptop can stand half a day without electricity, but my broadband connection does not. Very few stories yet about blackouts in Shanghai, unlike other places.

media - Should I come to Shanghai and work as a journalist?

Three, four times per month I get this question. I try not to encourage people too much. This is part of my answer today: "Since the end of the Cold War the news industry has increasingly changed into an extension of the entertainment industry with less and less room for serious reporting from places where war is not imminent. Numbers are not yet going down in China (unlike the rest of Asia and Africa), but having a booming economy does not automatically translate into jobs for journalists. Most reporters end up working for local papers and just met somebody who earner .7 Rmb per word: really rock bottom prices. Chinese media have not yet opened up - despite all rhetoric - and do not offer decent jobs for non-Chinese journalists... Initially we thought here in Shanghai that the combination of an economic crisis, 911 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq made thing tight for a limited time, but after roaming the world for a year looking for answers, I'm not that optimistic. But you can always sell cars here."

blogger - A fast expanding network

Today I linked up with Amy Gu, my first blogging friend from Shenzen. She was referred to mine by our common friend Andrew Lih, who is teaching at the Hong Kong University, but is still not blogging.
Amy reacted on my entry regarding China Mobile, her current employer. But she is also thinking of maybe becoming a journalist. A blog would at least be a good start.

conference - World Bank meeting on poverty reduction


Next week I will try to attend a 3-day World Bank conference on reducing poverty in Shanghai, although I was rather late in applying for access. Just keep my fingers crossed.
Their website is a great source for case studies that also focus on China and I will give some links to the most interesting once (pdf-files if available):
* Supply chains in the dairy industry: the New Hope Group
* Improvement of investment environment; poverty reduction in Sunan and Wenzhou
* Universalizing compulsory nine-year education; proverty reduction in rural areas;
* the loess plateau watershed rehabilitation project;
* Reform of the rural finance sector;
* China's rural water and sanitation program:
* Infrastructure, growth and poverty reduction;
* Southwest proverty reduction program;
* the east helping the west to reduce poverty - Shanghai and Yunnan

health - Shanghai warns against eating seafood

Shanghai fishery officials have been issuing warning against eating seafood, writes the Shanghai Daily, as the so-called red ride of plankton expands in the seas bordering neighboring Zhejiang Province.
Especially shellfish and crabs might cause danger in case of human consumption. The rid tide, with the size of 1.3 million soccer fields, is killing life in that area and has stalled fishery. But since the origin of most seafood in Shanghai is unclear, health officials are taking precautionary measures.

economy - Cooling down hits commodity market


The meeting of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club last night in Zapata's was good for new stories about China's economy. For the first time the commodity trade said it was feeling the effects of the cooling down of the economy. Up to now it had been very hard to see any clear effects.
The for commodity traders regrettable downturn has three reasons, the power cuts, the logistical problems and the problems in getting L/C's (letters of credit) over de past two weeks.
The power cuts because of an ongoing shortage because of the rising temperature has the largest effect, but not getting an L/C is of course also a nuisance.

blogger - Fudan talk blogged!

That is the way it should go. Bob blogged my talk yesterday at Fudan: the echo chamber starts working.

Economy - Shanghai is a tenants' market

I'm currently looking for a new place to rent, maybe for three months, possibly for three years and I'm pleasantly surprised by the market. Real estate prices might have gone up in the past few years, but rents are going down while quality of the apartments seems to go up - still have to check it for myself.
Both That's Shanghai and Chinabiz give a bit of an indication. As you might guess, I looking for something large, cheap, downtown and near a subway station. An installed broadband connection is a plus, since Shanghai Telecom seems to have a hard time to meet demand. A relocated colleague in Nanjing Road was told yesterday she has to wait another month for her ASDL!

Fudan - All politics is local

Handan street, splitting Fudan University in Shanghai in two, is a mess as construction of a new subway station is taking place. That will not only connect one of Shanghai's prestigious universities with the rest of the city, it will also prove for the generations to come that all politics in China is local politics.
The outside would too often looks at Beijing to get a clue about what is going on in this immense country, but real power is local power. Shanghai wanted to connect this part of its city with an elevated light rail, but Fudan university refused: they forced the track to go underground as it passed the university. No way Fudan's decision could be reversed, so the light rail goes underground and emerges again after it has passed Fudan. Many passengers in the future will wonder why that is.
The elevated light rail seems to have severe problems anyway: of the only track in operation three stations are sinking, because of the swampy nature of Shanghai's soil. That is the advantage of a real subway: it cannot sink.

internet - 10 years online: China is only starting

(tomorrow at Tidbits)

This month China celebrates the tenth anniversary of being online and the verdicts about what is has achieved differ very much. Yesterday I taught a class of 60 students of the prestigious Fudan university and most of them spend one or two hours per day online, while only a couple maintained a weblog and an online presence. Quite limited compared to their US counterparts. For Chinese companies the internet is hardly existing and most even do not bother to register a domain name.
Yet, with 80 million internet users, a quarter using a broadband connection, China has the largest presence online, second only after the US. Telecom providers expand the internet in high speed, looking at it rather as a utility than as a way to maximize profit.
While volunteers still keep an eye on discussion in chat rooms, and occasionally interfere, the internet has also become a tool for the government to listen to its citizens. Chinese are learning how to talk online and also the rest of the world will hear from them. The message might be that of an 80 million selected few netizens, but they are talking – and we might not always like what they are saying, there is no way to stop them.

censorship - Fudan played Vagina Monologues

A Chinese edition of the Vagina Monologues played twice for a packed hall this week at Fudan University in Shanghai. Earlier this week the play had been banned in both Beijing and Shanghai.
The organizers avoided problems by not announcing the play publicly.

internet - Freedom of speech - Yu Jie

David Cowhig kindly provided this summary (and the kind permission to pass it on) of a speech essayist Yu Jie gave at the University of Chicago.

Yu pointed out that while there are 80 million chinese online, the proportion in smaller cities and in the countryside is still very low; the great majority of users are still very young (16 - 25 age group), and most users use fake names to protect themselves. The space given to nationalistic/chauvinistic expression on the web continues to grow, while people expressing more rational calmer views are on the defensive. The communication channel that the web opens does allow people to meet many people they wouldn't have ordinarily met, gradually replacing the work unit and traditional organizations as social nexus. Web discussions do facilitate social protests -- Yu Jie gives the example of how people in his district in July 2003 mobilized to protest against some real estate deals that threatened their quality of life.

The website "Frontiers of Thought" gave a fine forum for academic and intellectual discussion until the government closed it in 1990. This website was recently reborn outside China at http://www.open-society.com/sixiang/
Despite the closure of "Frontiers" other similar websites such as Issues and Ideology appeared. The quality of articles and discussion on these website is at a considerably higher level than within the publications of official universities.

Political criticism on the web and the pressure of public opinion on the web have become significant forces. Chinese leaders rely on the web for much important information. This was particularly evident during the SARS epidemic when central government officials visiting Beijing and Tsinghua Universities made it clear to the students that they themselves were relying heavily on the web to stay informed about the epidemic.

The recent Sun Dawu web dissident case gives an example of the power of web opinion. Traditional conservative media such as Central Television were forbidden to report on this case. Most likely if it were not for pressure from web opinion, Sun would have been dealt with much more severely. In March, pressure from the web played a big part in the freeing of the three Tiananmen mothers -- other media were strictly forbidden to report on this case. The Sun Zhigang case was discussed on the web and then Nanfang Shangbao picked up the story. The paper was severely criticized by officials for reporting on the story.

The government puts great effort into suppressing speech on the internet using firewalls and other methods. Web users have responded with petitions protesting arrests that contravene Chinese law.

The best method for people facing a irrational, dictatorial government is for more and more people to tell the truth.

Yu also spoke May 12 at Harvard University.

marketing - China Mobile goes professional


China's largest mobile telecommunication company China Mobile is really becoming more professional. Earlier today I got a call it recognized right away as a sales call: those I always answer in Dutch, that saves everybody a lot of time. But half an hour later they called back in English and I was taken by surprise.
They announced a new 'plan', a word I have discovered in the US as an intelligent way to confuse customers about how much they are really paying for their mobile phone. China Mobile offered me a rather good deal, with only one problem: I had to stick to it for one year. Because of my traveling plans that did not seem a good idea. Striking is the new way for this state-owned enterprise to approach their customers. They already had different other plans, but would never bother their customers directly with it.

education - Teaching at Fudan

Tomorrow I will be teaching 60 students at Fudan University about what it is to be a foreign correspondent. It is part of the curriculum taught by Amy Goldman on American and British journalism. I have become a journalist, because I wanted to avoid becoming a teacher, but every now and then going to a class or teaching people in different settings do is enjoyable.
I will start with a part of the lecture I gave also for my colleagues here about the (lack of) future of foreign correspondence and then see if these future journalists also develop the art of asking questions.

blogger - Feedback sought on comments

I activated yesterday the new comment section of blogger on my weblog after Haloscan, who mostly takes care of that service, disappeared, yet again. They are back now, and there are now two ways to comment on my blog.
I have some problems with the blogger-comments, since they seem to push registration for people who comment. When you comment anonymously - that is possible - I do get an email with that comment (a large improvement), but it does not show up on the weblog.
Not sure which of the two I like most. Any comments?
Ellen Sander is not happy, I noted.