internet – the Niu Niu incident, another case study

Corruption and misuse of power have mobilized angry Internet users, documents the website China Elections and Governance. (Thanks for the tip, CDN!)
A Shenzhen official used his power to send school kids to a 20 Rmb movie, made by his daughter Niu Niu about study abroad – something only rather few can afford. Shenzhen authorities came with a lukewarm statement, after they could not keep this ‘moviegate’ scandal under wraps.
Yet another example on how the internet can be a useful tool for people to vent their anger. When the scandal evolved, it became clear that Niu Niu’s father had also financial interests in the movie.

culture - China wins, US loses Asian hearts and minds

The New York Times documents a watershed in allegiances in Asia from the US to China.

One China, many borders – the WTO-column

(soon at Chinabiz too)

What I try to avoid to newcomers in China is explaining the ‘one China, two system’ relationship between the mainland and Hong Kong works. Only the Dutch broadcasting system might be hard to explain to the inaugurated.
But the often murky ways how decisions in China are being made, or not, is part of what makes it both fun and troublesome to get things done.

A few days ago one of my friends told me yet another reason why the internet connections in Shanghai nowadays are so troublesome. There is a war going on between the southern part of China Telecom and their brethren in Beijing, who would rather have the lacking capacity for their own region, in stead of sharing it equally with Shanghai.
I have not checked this rumor, but it is so telling it explains much about the way China is working, or often not working.
Newcomers have heard in relation to China mostly the mantra of “one China”. Most people still know that the traditional communist manuals describe a heavy-handed top-down way of government. It is very hard for them to imagine that under this thin layer of unity, a wealth of diversity, bureaucratic warfare and turf picking is dominating much of life in China, not only in the government departments, but also in companies and between regions.

Media tend to reinforce this misunderstanding by putting much ‘China’ into their headlines. That might be correct on a political or diplomatic level, but in many cases that description is not precise enough and very often not helpful in understanding China.
So, it is not ‘China’ that closed 1,600 internet cafes, but is was the ministry of culture who claimed so, and most likely they made most of the cases up to look good for a Chinese audience.
When China opens its media sector up for minority stakes by foreign investors, it is good to know that it is the State Administration of Radio, Film and TV, who still can be overruled by a higher administrative body.
Even when state-councilor Qian Qichen criticizes US president George Busch a day before his reelection, it does not mean that this is the official Chinese viewpoint.
At Chinabiz I have tried to ban ‘China’ from the headlines, since in this case it is obvious articles very seldom focus on Zimbabwe. Only in a weak moment of laziness ‘China’ slips through.

Of course it is still correct to write that ‘China’ closes down 1,600 internet cafes, opens up its media industry for foreign investments or criticizes US president Busch. But as China opens up, gets more complicated it is more helpful to identify the culprits more precise.

Fons Tuinstra

NGO's - Dam works suspended after protest

Work at the Pubugou Dam in Sichuan province has been suspended and an official has been sacked after widespread protest, the BBC reports. Ten of thousands participated in sometimes violent protests against the dam in recent weeks.The central government has intervened in the conflicts in an effort to cool down emotions.In another dam-related conflict in Yunnan province the NGO's scored only a partial success and the struggle still seems to go on.

media - Questions on journalism and women

(picture by Dan Gillmor, last monday)
Together with Dan Gillmor I wondered on Monday why the class of the journalism school at Fudan University was 100 percent female. Most journalism schools have a majority of women, but even the official Fudan-figure, ninety percent women, is way out of line with the averages elsewhere.
One theory I heard today from a quasi-insider is that already at the gate of the journalism school the men are stopped. Women mainly focus on harmless subjects like fashion and the trendy stuff, men are more ambitious and would perhaps sooner go for more political subjects. Women are easier to handle and to manipulate, my (male) source said.
That would not explain why women complain that men are preferred by media organizations when jobs are handed out. (See the comments in Dan's entry).
Any more ideas here?

law - Shanghai residents seek protection by law against project development

It came as a surprise to all parties: residents at the Qinghai street sought legal protection against a project development, and they might succeed, writes David Fullbrook in the International Herald Tribune.

Regulations – The Shenzhen visa (update)

My request for information on the current status of the Shenzhen visa has proven to be rather useful, thanks to input from Gemme. The problem is confined to US citizens, as a retaliation for the current US restrictions on visa for Chinese citizens (and many others). “The best Americans can get in HK is a 6 month Multiple Entry Visa with the restriction that they have to leave the country every 30 days, writes Emme. “Once they have that Visa they can get the restrictions removed through Visa Agencies. I heard from American Friends they used the services of visainchina.com Maybe your friend can be helped there. I just checked , it's http://www.visainchina.com/visa3.htm ”under S1.

civil society – Small step, big change

At least that is how I perceive it. You might notice that I have added a few words in the description of this weblog: “of the emerging civil society”. After my rant against the way how media traditional frame the China story, I felt it was time to acknowledge a direction that this weblog has taken already for some time. Just see if it works, but at this moment, I think this is the right way to focus my daily entries.

labor – Factory owners held hostage over unpaid wages

Hong Kong newspapers reported that two Hong Kong owners are held hostage by workers of their factory in Shenzhen because 200,000 renminbi worth of wages have not been paid since September, Asian Labour News writes.
The couple was seized on Friday and the workers refuse to let them go, despite promises to pay within a few days. The police took no action, the papers said, only warned the workers not to hurt the couple.

media - Notes on the SFCC-meeting

Andres attended our meeting or the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club with Dan Gillmor and made some rather comprehensive notes.

media - China Wall Street Journal no. 4



Danwei noted the launch of the China Business News, a daily with the ambition to become the Wall Street Journal of China. I had to laugh. When Dan Gillmor was interviewed during his visit to Shanghai by the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post, this was also introduced as a potential Wall Street Journal in China. Andrew Lih, my other visitor, was sure there were at least two others also around. So this would be number four.
It is getting pretty competitive at the top, almost a standard procedure in China for attractive markets.

internet - Auction war hits Eachnet

The successful auction site Eachnet has lost customers massively after it has been purchased by Ebay.com in the summer of last year, local media report.
Especially the younger student users are shifting to the free services of Chinese competitors like Taobao.com and others. Eachnet has started to charge for its services and because Ebay moved its servers to the US, students have also to pay an extra fee that is charges for surfing outside China.
Taobao has been spending a fortune on TV-adds to attract the attention of new users for its free auction service, but has not developed any revenue model for itself yet.
Eachnet is also suffering from fraud as any many users tend to each others. The company has introduced a credit rating system to establish the credibility of users, but now the latest trend is to cheat the system in trying to get high ratings.

regulations - Has the Shenzhen visa ended?

Early reports suggest that the must-used six-month business visa that could be obtained in Hong Kong is no longer issued. The visa was part of an overall relaxation of the visa restrictions in China and allowed the users to extend it twice with three months.My information is only based on one case, where the user suddenly was only allowed a 30 day stay in China. Has anybody additional information of experiences?

blogger - Blogger.com goes Chinese

The world's largest hosting services for weblog blogger.com - or shoud we call it already Google-blog? will have its interfaces in Chinese and many other languagues. Only nuisance is that its blogspot-domain names are still blocked, so you need a proxy to see them.

blogging - Meals, talks and a poor internet connection

This is our bloggers-dinner on Sunday with journalist and blogger Dan Gillmor and Andrew Lih from Hong Kong University in Shanghai, at Vale, Yananxilu 1088, a recommendable place. Sorry, I had not time to blog much about it yet, since apart from a busy schedule, poor connectivity has hit all of us during the past week. A whole group of people organized parts of the visit for me a co-organizer Isaac Mao. While we had a fast tour through the city, visited the journalism school at Fudan and joined a meeting of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club, the internet seemed to fail at most places.

Unconfirmed rumors (thank you, Duncan) suggest that nortern divisions of China Telecom block partly access from the south, including Shanghai to have more capacity for themselves. Now, what would be very nast, if true.

The visit when excellent, as some of the reports show. Dan Gillmor could post a few entries, as could Isaac Mao. I will keep you updated as more might come.