economy - Heating up or cooling down?

The World Bank is joining the debate on whether the Chinese economy is actually heating up of cooling down. In its China Quaterly Update (sorry no English translation yet around) it argues that China has been able to cool down domestic demand and investment growth, "despite the higher than expected growth".
(A bit low on blogger these days: a cold, bordering to flu, is keeping me and many other Shanghainese busy>)

law - Beijing eases visa requirements drastically

Beijing Municipality will allow foreigners to extend their visa for six to twelve months, without a limit to the number of extentions, the China Daily reports today. Up to now, only two extentions of each three months were allowed.
It is expected that other larger cities with larger numbers of foreigners will follow the example.

internet - Skype international

(a contribution to tidbits at the Poynter institute, I submitted just now)

For months I have been wondering why my favorite VOIP-provider Skype teamed up with tom.com, one of many subsidiaries of Hong Kong tycoon Li kai-Shing. The deal, signed in October last year, triggered off a marketing campaign that really seemed not needed.
Long before tom.com came into the picture groups of giggling female students from Guangzhou or flirting women from Beijing would call me over Skype to practice their English or improve their vocabulary on specific subjects. The number of Chinese users of Skype was rather impressive from the very early start.
But for months after Skype and tom.com signed the deal, the subway in Shanghai was plastered with adds for an international VOIP service that seemed to be selling already very well without any marketing effort. Why would an internet service, global by nature, team up with local player?
Today I was invited to download the official edition of Skype, after they left their beta-status and discovered a few abnormalities. While the service was working perfectly, I was initially unable to ‘share’ my experience with others. Only by using a proxy and making sure I had signed off under my own user name, I could invite other to use the same service.
Other services have paved this way for international companies to enter the market in China. Yahoo’s China edition is limited compared to the British one I use, and QQ even added their key-word filtering system to the users’ computers. Most Chinese users will react in the same way I did, by not trusting the Chinese edition and downloading the international ones.

life - Attending the YPHH in Shanghai

This evening I will be attending the Young Professional Happy Hour in Shanghai. Maybe I'm not that young, but happy enough to go.

internet - Why can you not share Skype in China?

An odd discovery. Today I got my updated skype VOIP-software, now the application has officially left its 'beta' status. Skype is not only good quality for a fair price, it is also encrypted, so it makes sense to share it with more friends in China.
Strangely enough, despite the heavy traffic they must be having because of their updated software, everything went very fine, until I tried to go to the section of their website where they try to encourage their users to share their experience with others. My screen went blank.
I kept on trying it, but could not get to that specific page. I did not think anything about it, until I was by accident using my proxy and discovered I could get to the page. Until I logged in again, and then I could not go to that specific page.
Now, why wants Skype its Chinese users not to share? Maybe an arrangement with their partner in China, Tom.com? I never saw how such a local partnership could make any sense in a system that is global by nature. Maybe Skype does not want to be _that_ global?
You can still include others, but only when you use a proxy and are not signed in, and then you would also not get rewarded for signing up others.

Update: I tried to invite myself for Skype by using one of my Chinese email address: the invitation never arrived. So, when you invite people, make sure you use a non-Chinese hotmail or yahoo address.
Update 2: Just got the invitation! Previous update should be skipped. Chinese email addresses can be used.

law - China's airlines form a cartel and talk about it

Making price arrangements in industries might be banned and even prosecuted in North America and Europe, in China airliners not only agree to prevent competiton, they even inform the Financial Times about it. Protecting the interests of the consumers is just not as important in China.
Fortunately, some of the quoted analysts do not think it will survive:

Li Shurong, of Shening & Wangguo, said price agreements can seem effective
at times of high demand but meant little in quiet months. "This kind of alliance
is unreliable," he said.

media - What is cool in China and other questions

A few times a week I get an email of somebody who urgently needs some information on China. When they are Dutch or German, I can blackmail them into buying my book, but otherwise I would depending on my mood write them a nice email back.
I just downloaded the first official edition of skype and see right away good ways to use that application. So, I got this morning an email from Pamela, who is studying journalism at the Erasmus university in Rotterdam. She is making an article on what is cool in China ("Deadline next weekend!") and is trying to outsource the basic research to me - unpaid of course.
Now, I wrote her back and explained her how she can call some of these cool youngsters herself. This is going to make my life easier. Btw: you can write her too! How cool!

power - Clash on power stations puts environment on the agenda

The already widely reported efforts by the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) to halt the construction of illegal power stations in January is developing into an bureaucratic internal warfare of a huge scale. While 22 of the 30 larger projects have been stopped, according to a release of the news agency AFP, projects of the powerful Three Gorges Dam has bluntly ignored the order.
"The builder had been told to stop construction of the US $5 billion Xiluodu Dam in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River because it lacked environmental assessment reports," AFP reports. Officially SEPA can only fine the company US$ 24,000, pocket money compared to the capital at stake.
When the projects would not have been stopped, they would have increased China's current power generating capacity thirty times. Foreign firms in the industry have left China last year, as they saw no way they could make money anymore. The ongoing clash might also put the environment as a more serious issue on the political agenda and make the previously rare powerless SEPA a more serious institution.

media - "Zhao Yan is a national hero"

Well, a rather different view from Julia Zhu on WOW in the ongoing opinion pieces on the Zhao Yan case. "One teacher in our university told us that no matter which country, there is this inevitable clash between the government and the press," she writes. "In the fierce conflict between the interests of journalists and the interests of governments, it is always the journalists' side that is hurt; the only difference among countries is the degree of hurt."
She declares Zhao Yan to a national hero. "Loving his country so much, though he knew it might be dangerous, he didn't hesitate to challenge authority and expose defects in the government when he discovered them. As a Chinese journalist-to-be, I know that's what I should possess: bravery and enthusiasm. And I also know that there is something I should be aware of: Though media will never defeat government, it can make a difference by waking the public up to reality. This is the most important duty of the press."
(Seems that just like at the Fudan journalism school, almost all students are female.)

media - How patriottic can journalists be?

WOW continues its serial on the arrest of New York Times' research Zhao Yan with a piece of Charlotte Li. While I agree with her that comparing China with "donkey droppings", as Mr. Kristof has done in his column in the same paper, there is as much in her piece I do not agree with.
The first time I got a different take on my very European perspective on how journalists should view their own country, was on my first trip in the US, in South Carolina where I watched a game of American football from the press tribune. In the Netherlands journalists at least try to prevent to get nationalistic feelings in their way, as they assess also their own country, government and people in a very critial way. In South Caroline I watched how the whole stadium not only raised to sing the national anthem - that was quite ok with me - but including the press tribune cheered up the very militaristic show before the game. This I had only seen in documentaries on the Third Reich, I felt at the time. Journalists should keep a distance. It was not only in the US I felt at odds with the attitude of many of my colleagues, it was very much comparable to those in China.
What goes wrong in Charlotte Li's piece is that she advises to decide on the basis of facts, but has to admit she is not very much aware of what had happened to Mr. Zhao Yan. "Yes I know little about the detention of journalists in my country," she writes. "But I think the police had proper reasons to arrest Zhao Yan." Journalists should never assume somebody is right, especially not when those people or institutions have a powerful position.

media - Three ways to get into trouble

Oops, I did not realize that the first pieces would hit cyberspace right away. Lianne Li identifies three major ways for Chinese journalists to get into trouble: routine arrests, oppositional voices and corruption.
"Journalism in China is never considered, as in some western countries, to be the independent fourth power of the state," she writes, "and to serve the citizen's interest. State and party has to come first. Although it's true that journalists are given the right of reporting freely, political matters are required to be reported under the rules of the party; the disclosure of any unchecked information is bordering on leaking state secrets."
While she seems to agree quietly with the first two reasons to curtain the Chinese media, she opposes it when corruption is a driving force. She adds: "If no prevention is taken, there will be no chance for those righteous voices to be heard, no matter how loud are the promises for freedom of expression. The reason why these righteous voices are so vulnerable is that they have little legal protection. China's media legislation is far from being mature; the lack of protection for journalists working to expose corruption places them in a precarious position between right and wrong. The tragedy of Jiang Weiping is not merely his own, but belongs to an entire generation of journalists."

media - Journalism students discuss the Zhao Yan case

The weblog of the journalism school of the Beijing Institute for foreign languages will start a discussion on the Chinese journalist Zhao Yan, working for the Beijing bureau of the New York Times, by agents of the Beijing state security bureau in September 2004, their website announces.
"Since it is a journalism story that goes to the heart of the ages-old conundrum of how to balance the people's right to know with the sworn duty of a government to protect national interests," the announcement says, "as English language journalism majors, Mr. Zhao's case and his continued detention became a part of our studies. And our writing. Consequently, a series of opinion and commentary essays representing a wide range of thoughts on the issue will follow in these pages. We believe you will find much food for thought on a complex dilemma."
The pieces start with an overview of the English language articles on the case.

life - Tips for tall people

Yao Ming

One of my regular commentors, Shanghai Slim, is looking for advice. Who might think that behind that name hides a skinny Shanghai girl is wrong. "I'm a relatively tall fellow," he writes, "1.9 meters, which maynot be much by Dutch standards, but puts me in the"Jin Mao" category in China. This means that the onlyoff-the-rack clothing I can buy in Shanghai are shortsand short-sleeved shirts."
Since I'm slightly under the Dutch average, I have very few problems in buying clothes in Shanghai. Maybe somebody else knows where Yao Ming and all these other tall people turn to?

China’s new way to capitalism – The WTO-column

Microsoft's Bill Gates
(later also in Chinabiz)

When Bill Gates coined last week at the World Economic Forum the Chinese style of developing their economy as a “brand-new way to capitalism”, he probably did not have the tribulations of China Unicom in mind.
Since its start in 1994, the company did get its part of the erratic policies, that drives managers in this country, Chinese and foreigners alike, so often into despair. When it started off it was not meant to be a success, but was mainly ‘proof’ for the outside world that the de-facto monopolist China Telecom competition would be possible.
When then-premier Zhu Rongji at the end of the 1990s actually finished off China Telecom’s monopoly, he had another present for China Unicom. Next to its emerging GSM-network, Unicom was forced to deploy also a CDMA-network, a present of Zhu for his US-partners during a state visit.
So, when China Unicom lost senior managers to its competitors, earlier this year rumors emerged its might be split, not split and then partially merged with China Netcom, there was actually nothing really new happening.

So what did Bill Gates have in mind when he displayed his concept of this already heavily disputed road to a ‘brand-new capitalism’, with low wages, intelligent leadership, low medical and legal overhead, and huge surplus labor pool? Well, compared to Gates’ home country that might constitute a difference. But despite those low wages, and perhaps because of the low legal overhead, companies like his Microsoft find it anyway hard to make any money in this Chinese market.
He must also not have thought about the market for generating power. This beautiful example of the Chinese way of doing business shows also its overwhelming inefficiency. Trying to make use of the current shortage of electricity, local governments started to build illegally power generating unites that would have led to 30 times the current power capacity – if the central government had not stepped in after construction had already started.
Foreign industries have fled this battlefield of extreme irrational investments, since it was obvious that even because of the lack of coal it would be highly unlikely those power stations would ever be able to become operational.
This pattern of irrational investments into overcapacity is all too familiar. Putting a real figure on this kind of inefficiency is hard. For each dollar worth of product produced in China, it uses between four and eight times the energy the US needs, depending on what way of counting is being used.
In theory, in this brand-new way to capitalism, smart governance could make China even more competitive than it is already, when it could reduce its inefficient usage of resources. But in China the problem with smart policies is that they often do not survive in the chaotic and uncertain way China develops. Bill Gates still view China in the classical top-down way it should operate according to the outdated communist handbooks on how to operate a country.
In real life China is extremely hard to administer. That is a pity in the case of smart policies, but a blessing for the less smarter ideas. In this gigantic experiment with the chaos theory often the most ideal solution surfaces. But certainly not always.

Fons Tuinstra

economy - Competing for a job in China

Stay at home, I advise American and European job seekers, who intend to fly to what they think is this promised land of unprecendent economic growth. This story in the HR-newsletter of Chinabiz, shows that for certain occupations in the big cities, competition is still tough. Every post for a secretary job got an average of 237 applications, while their qualifications went up. Least competitive was the job of landscape engineers, where only 36 resumes per vacancy were reported.
Heavy competition is also reported from journalims jobs, where word prices of 0.1 renminbi (= 0.08 US dollar) are common among local media. Stay at home, I would say again.
Only one of of ten urbanites would go to a different boss after Chinese new year, research suggests. That number might be higher outside the larger cities.

ties - An offer Chen Shui-bian has to refuse


The first direct flights between the mainland and Taiwan (over Hong Kong, but without touching down like in 2003) sparked off new speculations about possible new negotiations between both enemies, triggered of by statements made in Beijing.
Jia Qinglin, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) said according to state news agency Xinhua that, "the Chinese mainland stands ready to talk with whoeverwilling to play a part in cross-Straits consultations and ready toexplore new ways of problem solving through consultation with all political parties, organizations and representative personalities in Taiwan who recognize the 1992 consensus, oppose "Taiwan independence" and support the development of cross-Straits relations."
I failed to understand what is new here.

economy - China as the world's "change agent"

I did not have enough time to really blog about the World Economic Forum in Davos, but this article of the New York Times focuses nicely on the important China-angle of this annual conference. The quote of the conference comes from Microsoft's Bill Gates, who called China "the change agent for the next twenty years".
While China dominated the conference, I did not discover any real new development. Of course there was no news about any revaluation of the renminbi and when you live in China, you already know the central government is doing what it can to protect intellectual property. Unfortunately, that is relative little.
Interesting is the observation in the NYT-article on how few Chinese business people attend the meeting. "Davos's history is as a European and American conference," said Chen Feng, the chairman of Hainan Airlines Company. "People come here to relax and ski. China's culture is not about skiing." "Davos's history is as a European and American conference," said Chen Feng, the chairman of Hainan Airlines Company. "People come here to relax and ski. China's culture is not about skiing."
And the article continues: "Mr. Chen, an irrepressible entrepreneur who worked the hallways like a Davos regular, is one of only four chief executives of major Chinese companies at this year's conference. He said more of his peers had come to previous meetings, but had found the experience uncomfortable."
More here at the WEF-weblog, and some more candid observations at the weblog of Rebecca MacKinnon.