media - About corrections

Only by accident I saw this correction of AP on their earlier dispatches on Zhao Yan, the NYT assistent who has been arrested. Making a mistake, that is fine. Correcting your mistakes, even though only a small part of your subcribers will publish it, is even better. But why publishing the wrong edition from September 23 till December 20? Now people thing this is a professional dissident, used to spending years in jail. This is again about framing a China story, isn't it?

internet - Crazy wishes from Hong Kong

Of all the e-cards I got today, this one was certainly the most crazy one.

internet - How to discuss with 100 million online Chinese?

ESWN sounds close to desperate when he quotes Rebecca MacKinnon who calls for "human efforts" of "ordinary Chinese and ordinary Americans" to bridge their differences. Rebecca: "An online translated forum through which ordinary Chinese and ordinary Americans can talk to one another - or read and respond to each others' blogs and chatroom posts. Most Americans have no idea what ordinary Chinese people think of them and why."
ESWN has done a great job in making many documents and also pictures from China available for an English-speaking audience. But how to translate what a nation of 1.3 billion vastly different people, 100 million online and reading over 2,000 newspapers for an English-speaking audience.
His thoughts after visiting a bookstore in Hong Kong: "I am therefore facing a tidal wave: there is a vast amount of information and exchange being produced in the Chinese-language press, all within a compressed time-frame. Given these conditions, I will have to say that the English-language world is largely irrelevant to this particular debate: if you can't read Chinese, you know too little and too late. And I don't know how it can be changed. In this light, you can re-read Rebecca MacKinnon's proposal about an online translated forum. I don't see it as being either feasible or meaningful, in this particular case."
My thoughts from an European perspective: do not even try it. Just as most of the Americans, most of the 100 million Chinese will even not be interested. It is tough but you will always deal with an elite. And even that elite has to decide what is important and what is not. In de past we, journalists, decided for people what was important. Now, that might be changing, it does not make the shifting process easier.
But shifting is necessary, and so I propose we discuss just that here: what are we interested in? By now we can see on a webcam butterflies taking off in Tibet, but doe we want to see that? I decided to focus on the emerging civil society in China, and scratch the surface for an English-speaking audience. That is quite enough, I think. We can only survive when we know our limitations.

2004 Small steps, but very fast - the WTO-column

What has changed with president Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao a full calendar year in charge? The question came up more than once in the past week now 2004 is nearing its end. Unlike the dramatic events in 2003, including SARS, 2004 has been a less eventful year. Fortunately, I should add, but change can be seen enough.

Aids is no longer covered up, like under the previous regime, but firmly addressed. There were days in Shanghai, you could not come home without a handful of free condoms. The death penalty, one of the few remaining really hot issues in China’s international relations, came on the agenda, and the convicted can now appeal at the People’s Supreme Court. Religious freedom will be guaranteed, and jury’s in the court system will be reformed.
People were very fast to point out that these and other legal reforms did not mean that much, since most of the time they were already part of the legal system and sometimes even part of the constitution. The point is of course that those legal guarantees did not mean that much in the past. It is a common practice in China to start a discussion about an issue by rephrasing legal provisions. That in itself is a chance for change, since in the past all these issues were almost considered to be taboos. That is certainly over.
Next question is of course, is it really going to make a difference? In the case of the implementation of the WTO-regulations, the central government pointed at the severe problems it saw in convincing local government departments about the importance of this change. For those familiar with China that is no news: government departments in China have a strong tradition of autonomy and much of the change in this country should be seen as efforts of the central government to regain lost regional influence, or local resistance against those efforts.
Legal changes in Beijing are in the best case the start of a process, and the future has to prove whether they can be firmly rooted.

One of the clear successes of the past year, has been the gradual improvement of life at the country side, at least to such a degree that millions of farmers decided staying home was smarter than joining the sweatshops in Guangdong. While under Jiang Zemin a 400 million Chinese were lifted out of poverty, his efforts focused mainly on the larger cities. Those have effectively developed into economic engines and a comparison with India – where politics is traditionally geared towards the country side – shows that this was a smart choice.
That caused outside China much criticism, as the gap between the rich and the poor grew. But since more people became rich and fewer poor, even in those years, that never triggered off the social unrest the outside world sometimes expected. It is reversed, prolonged economic growth and effective efforts of the government to relieve the pressure on the country side has caused more social unrest than ever.
Poverty has never been a great way to empower people. Change is more often triggered of by people who know they can make a change, for example by not showing up at work anymore.
Foreign and domestic companies have discovered this already, sometimes in the hard way, as HR-managers suddenly have become this year a hot commodity. A very well-paid hot commodity, that is. It might only be the beginning of much more change.
Strength and wisdom for 2005: a lot of us will need it.

Fons Tuinstra

economy - Textile cities prepare for the future


Necktie city and sock city look ahead to a quota-free world, in a vivid description by the New York Times.

economy - Local protectionism hurts WTO-conditions

Amy Gu points rightfully at an article in the (unlinkable) South China Morning Post where the first Chinese ambassador at the World Trade Organization (WTO) points at the obstacles for China's accession into the organization. Sun Zhenyu points at the lack or understanding about what the WTO is about at a local level in the Chinese administration.
My viewpoint is even stronger than that of ambassador Sun and Amy Gu: From the beginning the WTO-accession was part of an effort by the central government to get more influence on the traditionally rather autonomous regional government organizations. You can download here the pdf-file with my article on 'Beijing's secret WTO-agenda'

NGO's - A useful site on biodiversity



Single Planet points us in one of its scarce entries to this rather useful site on biodiversity in China. It brings also together an interesting coalition of NGO's, government agencies and companies. Now when they would get some people blogging and an RSS-feed, that would really be adding value.

labor - Wal-Mart to open three stores in Shanghai

The US retailer Wal-Mart obtained permission to open three stores in Shanghai in 2005, the People's Daily announces. Wal-Mart is a late-comer in China's most booming city. Efforts to get access in the past was refused by the Shanghai Municipality because of its anti-trade union attitude.

Wal-Mart was forced to accept trade union branches in China, something that only happened with one of its stores in Canada. Since the official trade union in China is pretty hapless, it remains to be seen whether this means a real change.

While the retailers is popular with consumers for its low prices, it gets those prices by squeezing everything out of its suppliers, who love the turnover, but hate the way they are forced to cut cost.

book - Now also at Amazon

science - US visa rules damage academic exchange with China

The story about how the US visa rules damage ties with China I heard already more than a year ago in the US, the American Chamber of Commerce told us this summer that commerce lost 30 billion US dollar for this reason, but now there is also scientific proof. Scientists Zhang Yaping and He Shigang asked for Science Magazine their academic colleagues and guess: the US visa rules do hurt academic exchanges.
"The result is lost opportunities to present new research at important international conferences or to participate in scientific collaborations. This situation even affects some of the most prominent scientists in China, such as the vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the director of the Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences, CAS," they write.
An article in scidev.net (obtained through the excellent Chinese internet research mailing list) points at more information indicating also fewer foreign students in the US for what used to be a booming industry, where between 2003 and 2004 the number of Chinese students to the US dropped by one third.
"Much of what you are seeing [in this poll] is a reflection of the past," says Dennis Murphy, spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security in a reaction.

blogging - Global flames online

Andres Gentry (you need a proxy to get there) has started a set of profiles of webloggers in Asia and after Far Outliers and Simon World, I have the honor of being interviewed. Now larger parts of the world outside Asia prepare for a shopping spree at Wal-Mart and other peace-encouraging thoughts, this is my take on how weblogging and the internet contributes to world peace:
Q 17A. Where is the most accurate news on China found today: in foreign media or Chinese media?
A: Assuming that there is one accurate way of reporting on China (or any other subject) seems a rather traditional US media approach that still cherishes the illusion of 'objective' reporting. It assumes that there is one truth and not different options at the same time. The interesting part of being at crossroads is that you see two different ways of framing sometimes the same story. In that way both foreign and Chinese media distort the facts both to make them fit for what are their audiences. In theory the internet could change those way, but what you see is mostly fierce China-bashing on the Western internet and uprisings of patriotic feelings at the Chinese internet. Getting a conversation going between those two forces would be probably a project that is as interesting as hopeless.

economy - Twas the night before Christmas

Paul French has a Chinese take on Christmas at Chinabiz:

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The workers were tired, from the hours so long
Christmas was over again in Guangdong

(more here)

blogging - Danwei discloses the new Muzi Mei blog

Do I hear the sound of crashing servers? Most likely, as Danwei tells us where to find Muzi Mei's new weblog. For those new to the Chinese blogosphere: The former Guangdong-based journalist Li Li published under this pen name last year a weblog that focused on her rather frequent sexual encounters. That cause a bit of an uproar and apart from a short visit to Germany, things had become rather quiet around her.
Danwei does not sound excited: "thoughts about having a man to hug whom you can put away in the wardrobe when you've had enough hugs and a description of an Internet webcam chat session with an enthusiastic exhibitionist. You know, the usual stuff."

law - Change with Chinese characteristics

At two moments in the past few days China dealt in its own special way with change. First it announced that a new law on religious freedom would be in force on March one, and then China announced that next year the jury would be installed in the judicial process.
People correctly pointed out that this was nothing new. Both features are already part of the official legal structure and so we are not talking about something new. Freedom of religion is already part of the Constitution, although that did not help very much. The right to strike has been strickend from the constitution, but that does not stop 16,000 people in Shenzhen from doing it.
By reafirming existing law, or even parts of the constitution, the government still can give a sense of direction. That might not be as shocking as some western media bring it, it still is a clear signal.

blogging - Moving to movable type

Activities are slowing down, a trip to the US has been delayed, so I'm running out of excuses for an exercise I should have done much earlier: a transfer from blogger to movable type. The current layout has become a nuisance, no good commenting system, too slow in downloading and a load of other stuff.
I just downloaded the guide on how to transfer from blogger to movable type in 35 steps, that is for those who know what they do. Wish me luck. I will take my time, so do not expect anything right away, apart from some technical hiccups.

Media - Second farmers' advocate arrested

Police in Fujian have detained the journalist Li Boguang on criminal charges, AP reports from Shanghai. After the arrest of Zhou Yan, currently working for the Beijing Bureau of the New York Times, Li is the second of the group of writers who took on the plight of Chinese farmers in "An Investigation into China's Peasantry".
Their prize-winning book on life at the country-side is officially banned, but widely available in and outside China in pirated editions.

NGO's - China puts religious freedom in its laws

The religious rights of its citizens will be from March 1 protected by law, write domestic and foreign media. The country has also admitted it was a mistake monks have been prosecuted during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in a still rare move of trying to get even with its historial disasters. China has about a 100 million believers, official figures say.
Much of the execution will be in the details, that will only be clear after the laws are in place, but it seems yet another step, consistent with other efforts to establish a civil society in China.

travel - California through Chinese eyes (continued)

Three Chinese chefs travelled California, and had their viewpoints noted. A report by a BBC-colleague sparked off an exchange on this weblog. Shanghai Slim continues the debate in the comment sections: "And how could chefs, of all people, fail to appreciate San Fancisco's outstanding international culinary culture (more restaurants per capita than any other American city)? Did they only get to eat in Chinatown dives?"
For the full exchange, look at the comment section here.

labor - Shenzhen strikers hit the blogosphere

I thought I would have a quiet weekend and then I had to send out this article to a few news outlet: Labor unrest is increasingly hitting the economy as migrant workers would rather stay at home and work in the booming agriculture. Especially southern China has been hit by a shortage of labor that has made it easier for disgruntled workers to get into action. Ten days ago the 12, 000 workers of a Wal-Mart supplier, a sino-Japanese joint venture walked out. Interesting detail of the story, writen by Howard French of the New York Times, was that the workers, banned from organizing themselves, used SMS-messages to stay in touch with each other.
Now also a weblog has emerged, maintained by the strikers, reports Blogger Isaac Mao. The strike, now ten days old is continuing without any indication of a result, the blog says.