eating - Vegetarian style for meat lovers

Both vegetarians and meat lovers can meet each other at Zaozishu (vegetarian life style) in Shanghai. I had there this evening a very nice dinner - and their even more affordable lunches earlier on.
The mostly packed restaurant offers a wide range of dishes, without MSG, but rather surprising. It tastes like meat, it looks like meat, but it's all veggies. Alright, the Beijing duck was a bit disappointing, but otherwise you would not see the difference.
It is part of China's hunger culture, where in the past people developed techniques to imitate meat they could not afford in a perfect way.
You find the restaurant at 77 Songshan Lu (enter the compound, its on your left), and that is a side street of Huai Hai Zhonglu, just east of Huangpi Nanlu subway station.

video blog - A beta bug...

Just had some discussions with Mike at Userplane after I told him my video blog would display on the right hand column and not in this entry. Obvious the kind of bug yuo can expect during beta-testing.
The good news is that it does display on a Mac, but not on a normal PC. They are clueless for the time being, so I'm even more clueless.

internet - Bloggers meeting in Beijing

Well, there will be a bit of a meeting of bloggers anyway tomorrow in Beijing. Jeremy of Danwei just got to me through skype and invited me for a Belgium beer.
That is hard to refuse. No time set yet, but if other bloggers are around tomorrow at the end of the afternoon: do give me a call at 1391 6349 026 and we can arrange something for tomorrow.

video blog - On sex and spies...

How I discovered the Chinese did it differently from the KGB.

A/V Blog by Userplane

(When this video does not work, please click on the one at your right hand column)

video blog - Sex and spies....

Tomorrow in my Friday morning column, my experiences with sex, spies and state security.

labor - Shortages keep on making headlines

The shortage of migrant workers, especially felt in the southern Pearl River Delta, keeps on making waves. Since the story hit the media, local governments have gone out to end the largest misuses of migrants in the economic powerhouses, and made sure that they actually got their low salaries - that was not really a solid tradation.
The Ministry of Labour and Social Security has actually sent out team to investigate the problem, writes The Standard today. The conclusions are not new: wages have not met the increasing costs.
Also The Financial Times uses the report to repeat the story.

connecting China - My online panel

My slowly expanding team of participants for Connecting China will be participating in a first experiment this weekend during the two-day meeting of the World Econonomic Forum in Beijing. We are still in an early phase, but the opportunity is too nice not to try a testrun. I have asked them to watch the news about the forum and send me their comments. Join us, and watch and see.

Sam Dai from Dongguan


Amy Gu from Hong Kong

Lan Dou from Weifang in Shandong province


Lillian Li from Shanghai


Lee Yantsai from Guangzhou


Scott Shi from Shanghai



Fred Wang from Wenzhou, Zhejiang province

Ivy Wang from Tianjin


Jiang Bo from Nantong, Jiangsu province

Amy Han from Dalian, Liaoning province



Rose Wu from Guiyang, Guizhou province

internet - Decided to give Linkedin a go

Some of my friends think that I jump on every new technology that comes into the market. In real life, I often trailing behind, for example in using the social networks on the internet. That was partly because when it became hot last year, I got invited for about five of those networks, all asking me politely to spend half an hour in filling in a profile and then spend days to find out most of my friends were linked up somewhere else.
None of the networks is a clear winner, but this week I decided to work through Linkedin. I got a few more invitations and looks around to find many more people I know on this network. So, when you think the phone, fax, email, icq, yahoo, skype, msn, sms and meetings of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club do not offer enough ways to get in touch with me, you can also link me up through this network. (Sigh).

IT - Does Microsoft need China?

The answer given by CFO.com is negative, although that will not stop Microsoft from spending billions into this less than attractive market. And most likely China does not need Microsoft, nor does the rest of Asia. (Thanks, Andrew)

Connecting China - Chinese should smile more - Lillian Li



Lillian Li just returned to Shanghai from a business trip in Dalian, and enjoyed the change very much. “Dalian is very clean and beautiful,” she says. “Life over there is so different. The sea around the city is really a wonderful thing.”
Although it was a business trip, Lillian used it also to look around. “It is not so crowded as in Shanghai, especially during my daily trip to work by subway. It will drive me mad, someday, why are there so many people in Shanghai?” That is one of the reasons why Shanghainese like to travel so much, to avoid the crowds.
Just like Bonbon, Lillian does not want to travel during the upcoming holidays, because so many other people will be on the road. “Last year after SARS I went on a holiday in Sichuan; that was beautiful, because nobody else dared to travel then.”
Chinese do not have a good name as tourists, she knows. Lillian Li: “Many foreigners dislike Chinese tourists. We do not have the same smile like the English have. I felt very comfortable when I was on my holiday in the UK, everybody smiles at your, although it might not have a real meaning. Chinese people are very friendly, but they keep it inside. We are not so outward-going and try to hide ourselves. I think we should be more open and smile more."

WEF - Though agenda choices

Just got the most updated agenda of the World Economic Forum Business Summit in the Hyatt in Beijing on Sunday and Monday: it will be hard to choose between all the parallel session that are going on. The first session has a panel on 'China in the Global Supply Chain'; one on the shortage of resources to fuel economic growth and an update on the reform of state-owned companies, moderated by Hu Shuli of the Caijing magazine. And that is only the first session.
The conventional hall is equipped with wireless access, to prepare for some intensive blogging on Sunday and Monday.

WEF - A short visit to Beijing


Things getting in place for a short visit at the end of this week to Beijing for the World Economic Forum. A courier tries already for days to deliver a parcel here, but up to now that has been rather unsuccesful. More problematic is that the WEF-weblog is hosted on a typepad domain and is therefore blocked in China. That might be problematic, when Rebecca MacKinnon and others (including me) are trying to set up a conversation with your (yes you:-)).
When the Hyatt is able to provide with with internet access (you never know in five-star hotels), you can read here more on Sunday and Monday, and sessions take place. I will arrive on Saturday afternoon, have some meetings on Tuesday in Beijing and possibly Tianjin, but will be back in action on Wednesday again.

Is a civil society possible? – the WTO-column

(Later in Chinabiz)

In one of the online discussions I’m having in an internet project called Connecting China I had a revealing discussion about China’s developing civil society. “What are you talking about?” asked one of the participants, Amy Gu who recently moved from Shenzhen to study journalism at the Hong Kong University. She has no clue what I was talking about.
It was a fair question. When you have grown up in a society where there is a clear distinction between government and civil society, there is a lot to be seen here in China. But when you have always been in a society where the government has been dominant, from defense to telling the media what citizens should read, it might be hard to imagine what a civil society actually is, and certainly you would have your doubt whether it would work.

At a central level we see a rather strong commitment of the government to change China into a civil society. The government is trying to withdraw from actually running companies and businesses. The planned economy is making way for a market economy. The economy lobby groups are running into the thousands and for the first time in China post-1949 history NGO’s are sometimes really what their name says. Media control has been reduced to some key subjects and the culture of needing permission for any stone that should be moved, is on its return. At least: when we can believe what the central authorities are telling us through their former propaganda tools.
I do believe that the government is – at least verbally – committed in getting this civil society in place. But when you ask it citizens, they tend to be rather doubtful whether it is actually going to work. The culture, the traditions, the resistance of government officials on a lower level that might see their reason to exist and their livelihood under siege. There are very legitimate reasons to believe it might almost be impossible to get a civil society in place very fast.

Even on a central level, the temptations to fall back into the old habits are huge, for example when we recently saw that the banking authorities ordered their banks to issue loans to students. It might be for all the right reasons, but it smelled certainly like the old policies that have cause so many bad loans in the first place. Giving up power does not go easy.
Although I see all those problems, I’m still optimistic about the emergence of a real civil society in the long run. Why? Because there is no alternative. China has been working very hard to abolish remains of the planned economy, but has been less than active in encouraging alternatives to come up. In the past government departments would decide on wages, now it is left to the discretion of the employer, the market conditions or a combination of both. In the end also China needs a system of collective bargaining that represents also the interest of the employees in a fair way.
Lobby groups representing different economic interests are the first very real signs of a civil society emerging, although some still function under the umbrella of some kind of government departments. The situation is not unlike the existence of the so-called ‘collective’ enterprises in the 1990s. While the ownerships structures were often unclear, many of those enterprises smelled and acted like private companies. At the end of the 1990s they were ordered to re-register and suddenly the collective enterprises were gone, while the private enterprises emerged in the statistics as a new economic force.
Behind the scenes a similar change is being prepared, waiting for the official announcement that civil society – with some limitations – will be in place: then only labels have to be changed.

Fons Tuinstra

Connecting China - Is a civil society possible? - Amy Gu

The Western concept of a civil society popped up this weekend in a discussion with Amy Gu, participant of Connecting China, who has moved from the mainland to Hong Kong, and although it is less than an hour travel, both societies differ greatly.
“What is that,” Amy Gu wonders. “A civil society? That is different from a government society, like in China, where the government is in charge of everything?” The idea that there is a distinction between parts of the society that is being done by a government, like foreign relations, defense and policing, and a part that is organized by civilians themselves does not exist among China’s citizens as a feasible option
It does exist in Beijing, at the central government, who tries to withdraw from doing business and wants to stop regulation every square millimeter of society. But since most of the local government officials and China’s citizens cannot image a society can run without profound government involvement, discussions on whether such a society is possible are tough.
“The culture will not change that fast,” argues Amy. “Just look at China’s history. This is all a very interesting theory you are telling me about how the central government wants to change China, but I have not heard that before. I know the government is trying to develop business, not that they want to change the whole society.”
I explain how in the Netherlands wages and labor conditions are set in negotiations between employers’ organizations and trade unions. Amy: “So, they do not need the government anymore? Trade unions are not very important in China. This is not a basic concept in China, and I do not believe it will ever happen.”

culture - The pain of brotherhood

Another beautiful story at PostCampus.com about the struggle between honesty and brotherhood in the clash between the Chinese culture and the outside world, at least, that is how I see the story. It explains why some bonds and feelings in China are so much stronger than the rule of law, or even plain logic. Go on, girls and guys: I want more of those stories.

blogging - The gab between east and west...

"Most foreigners have no idea about China," complaints one of the students at a journalism department at a Shanghai university in an entry at PostCampus.com. Their teacher, "an English gentlemen', thinks that the Quotations of Mao Zedong are the most famous book in China and he likes to use many quotations himself during class.
"I don't think so. It might have been true 20 or 30 years ago, but not today," writes the student. This is going to be fun: the students are talking back to their teachers on their weblog.
The teacher, Philip Sen of also Living in China, has a weak defence in a comment and disqualifies himself wrongly as an outsider.

Connecting China – Bonbon’s blueberry cheese cake


Ask the people at Connecting China what keeps them going, and you are sure to get different answers. Eating and food, is on top for Bonbon, especially dessert and in particular the latest blueberry cheese cake she had.
For many Chinese women that an unlikely combination, eating and sporting, she agrees, eating a lot and sporting. “It stops me from getting fat, so I can keep on eating,” she says. “For most gals the best sport is shopping.” Shopping is actually the last thing Bonbon wants to think about, the favorite sport of window shopping sound like torture. Bonbon: “When I need something, I rush in, pay and rush out again. And I’m always wearing the latest fashion: jeans and t-shirts. I’m never out of touch with the fashion.”
After finishing her study, she will become a travel guide, but although she is a frequent traveler, she will stay at home during the upcoming national holiday in October. Also, she needs to earn money in a café or a bread store, to pay for her next planned trip to Europe. She has never though of going to a factory to earn money. “In a factory you need at least some skills, and I do not have any,” she thinks. Since tipping is mostly not done in China, does she think the can get enough together for such an expensive trip? Bonbon: “Maybe my dad will then pay for it, I also have the job to get more experience, not really for the money.”
Bonbon is now preparing to go back to university in Guangzhou and resume her study. That will not keep her from going online: "I can take my laptop wherever I go," she says.