Internet – Crisis in the blogosphere

 

Blogger Wang Jianshuo declared this morning the blogosphere to be in a crisis after his wife Wendy had no clue anymore what direction to take her weblog. According to Wang Jianshuo it is a feeling that is currently widespread among the almost half a million webloggers in China.

“Along the way to today, I often ask myself, am I going away from the initial motivation of blogging? Am I recording the true feeling or recording the feeling I want others to see? There are some direct and frank feelings I shy away from writing, because I know he is reading. I shied away from the private details, because I know they are reading. I don't write the deepest thought in my heart, because I know....,” he quotes one blogger.

I had expected the crisis to emerge a bit earlier, as columnist Frank Yu of China Tech News had a go at the English language teachers that dominated the English part of the blogosphere in living in China. “Lets take the typical China foreign blogger John X as a fictional example,” writes Frank Yu. “John X gets up very early each morning, before he goes out to teach his English language class, to update his blog with his latest thoughts and writings. Unless he has a burning issue on his mind that he needs to opine on, like the deplorable sound of Chinese Pop Music, he will trawl the web for China related news or simply read the links provided by other bloggers.”

Since no one of the blogging English teachers responded and I also had better things to do than get involved in this potential brawl, I decide to ignore this potentially interesting conflict. I generally tend to ignore blogs that bore the hell out of me by displaying baseless clichés and ignorance about China: there are simply too many really interesting things going on. I even do not feel inclined to write a column about such an uninteresting feature, but then, column writers also have to make a living when they are lacking real subjects.

Both articles do reflect elements of a maturing process in the Chinese blogosphere. While I agree with Jianshuo’s view on things, I disagree about his all to simple solution. It makes sense to have a look at the blogosphere in the US and see how things work out there. Most blogs, more than 95%, are not meant for a larger audience, but only friends and family. They have no ambition to reach out to a larger audience and this is fine: why should you? That will be the same for Chinese bloggers.

The internet has taken away the constraints of time and place, creating a new wave of media. But to be interesting for the outside world you might have to restrain yourself a bit, get a focus. Having a life that goes beyond teaching English might help too, it helps when you can support your opinion with those little things called facts. Like most other bloggers in China, I’m lacking that focus. Sometimes I think I should focus on economic developments, then I get taken away by a subject like this and write about the internet media. Wangjianshuo had his own development, first by dumping his potentially very interesting writing about his employer Microsoft as a possible subject, then trying to focus on services for visitors of Shanghai. Like most of us, he is still searching.

China Digital News show a similar lack of focus, sometimes focusing on human rights issues, then on politics and then on media. Maybe only Danwei is doing this well, by having a very strict focus, and to a lesser degree Isaac Mao, doing his bit about education. Muzi Mei was of course the prototype of a very focused weblog, but that caused some other problems.

Focus is going to be an issue in a maturing blogosphere, and a bit of crisis is part of that.

 

 

banking - Conflicting stories
 
The Standard in Hong Kong brings today relative cheering stories on China's state banks being able to get rid of their non-performing loans ahead of their upcoming IPO.
That is quite different from the story they published only a few days ago, and the warnings economist Wu Jinglian gave last week. The new story even does not refer to the earlier 'devastating' news the ratio of non-performing loans had not changed over the past five years.
Bringing this kind of conflicting stories used to be the patent of the South China Morning Post.

How fast is China really growing? - the WTO column
 
(Next week at Chinabiz)

This week the National Bureau of Statistics announced that China’s economy has been growing 9.7 percent in the first half of 2005, well ahead of the official target of 7 percent.
How close is this figure matching the reality? Last year we all had a good time when one of our friends discovered that all the provincial averages for their economic growth were well ahead of the national average, a feature that flabbergasted all my statistically more versed friends, but did not really amaze me. Those statistical realities are always constructed, mostly for political reasons and motives for their magnitude are different on a central level and on a provincial level, where bonuses of officials often depend on the imaginary economic growth they can fabricate.
 
How much of the economic reality is really captured by that figure? I hope some of my statistical friends can put me straight, but according to my observations on the ground much of the economic growth does escape from the attention of the official bean counters. For reasons of convenience I always say that the informal economy, next to the official one, is at least of the same size, but that is only because any other percentage would be harder to calculate and aas unreliable as my assessment.
When you sit down with people and ask how their income is structured, you see some features that are really different from developed countries. I’m now working on a new project that is going to measure wages in China and very often I have to explain to people that it will be profoundly different from measuring income.
People tend to earn more than only their official wages. Bonuses, housing allowances and cars are seen as non-wage related perks people do not see as an extension of their income. Paying tax over it would most certainly be a possibility that would not be considered. It is very different from what I remember from the tax system in the Netherlands, where a corporate lease car would be considered to be part of your income.
 
Some of my friends who work in less organized part of China, outside Shanghai, laugh when I give visiting delegations of business people my assessment of the income in China. They work in other industries and regions where they think 90 percent of China’s economy is not accounted for and that China is actually doing much better than even the official figures suggest. Look at places like Wenzhou that are economies by themselves, without much relation to the official economy.
 
As long as people buy a Buick so their trunk is large enough to transport there cash for their new villa to their real estate agent, it is very hard to come up with solid prediction on how the market is going to work. Looking at general figures that try to paint a general picture of a non-existing general situation is not very helpful. The size of the trunk explains probably better why GM has for the first time sold more sedans than Volkswagen.
 
Fons Tuinstra 
 

landing - Economy grew 9.7 percent
 
China's economy grew 9.7 percent in the first half of 2004, the National Bureau of Statistics reported on Friday. Economic output grew to US$ 711.5 billion.
"Consumer prices rose 3.6 percent in the first half of the year, the bureau said. That was below the 5 percent level that officials have said might prompt the central bank to consider raising interest rates for the first time in nine years," according to AP.
The open question is whether this is the beginning of a soft landing or that of a mor rough one.

economy - Shanghai loses high-end projects

A whole set of prestigious projects in Shanghai has been cancelled or delayed in an effort of the central government to cool down the overheated economy. According to The Standard in Hong Kong the most-often postponed building in the world, the Shanghai World Finance Center is among the victims. It would have been the largest building in, well, at least in Shanghai, if it ever would have been finished.
The Standardard based is report on an article in the leading 21th Century Business Herald.
Other victims are the Lunar park under construction by Universal Studios, that has been waiting in vain for its permission from Beijing. A horse-track was also put on hold.

economy - Banking reforms fail - report

State banks have created about 1.5 trillion Renminbi (US$ 180 billion) in bad debts over de past five years, about the same amount that has been disposed of in that half decade, research of the China Association of the State Economy has disclosed, according to The Standard from Hong Kong.
The report blames bad management as the main reason for the new non-performing loans.
The report also confirms worries economist Wu Jinglian expressed last week during his key note speech at a conference in Shanghai.

landing - FDI up 12 percent

Not only export keeps on going up, also foreign direct investment have gone up 12 percent in the first six months of this year to USD 34 billion, Bloomberg reports.
"China doesn't want to slow down foreign investment because it's valuable to the economy and brings in foreign expertise," said Joseph Lau, an economist at Credit Suisse First Boston in Hong Kong to Bloomberg.

landing - Not for the export

Export broke new records in June, as it surged 47 percent compared to one year earlier, and 33 percent in May, Bloomberg reports.
Efforts of the government to slowdown the redhot economy does have some effect in other areas, to the degree that even signals of a hard landing can be seen.
China occuppies now 7 percent of the total world trade, three times more compared to ten years ago.

wages - ILO endorses wage indicator project


The International Labour Organization (ILO) has endorsed the wage indicator project, the project-managers told at an international conference this weekend in the Netherlands. This weekend saw the launch of the project in eight new European countries.
"The wage-indicator contributes to labour market transparency," Friedrich Buttler, Regional director of the ILO for Europe and Central Asia, writes in a letter. "In particular in countries with weak collective bargaining structures and a relatively large shadow economy, your approach can help to generate more realistic information about wage levels, wage structure and wage discrimination and provide useful information for social partners and individuals for wage negotiations."
The China Wage Indicator is expected to go online early 2005.

rumor - PwC employees consider strike


Unconfirmed rumors in Chinese media suggest that employees of PriceWaterhouseCoopers in China, one of the larger international auditing firm, are organizing a strike against unpaid overtime.
While payment for overtime is mostly covered in labor contracts, I have never heard of a single case where that would be paid.
The international auditing firms are having much extra work now a larger number of Chinese companies is preparing a listing abroad. A few years ago the central government has ordered that companies preparing for a listing should all hire one of the larger international auditing firm.
Such an action could have a major effect on the wages of these top-end services providers in China.
More as more stories come in...

Update
The original source of the information is the 21th Century Economic Report, a rather trustworthy paper. The unrest started among some of the lower level staff in Beijing, who want their salaries on the industry level, and has now expanded to Shanghai and Shenzhen too. Additional problems with the management style in the company and the lack of a trade union - that is officially compulsory.