media - Highlights of the BBC-radio China week

The BBC-radio will dedicate next week fully to China and gives here an overview of the highlights. (In China you might need a proxy.) Not all the highlights, as the technology program "Go Digital" with yours truly on Monday (British) afternoon. Click here for "Go Digital".

internet - Craig-like list starts in ten Chinese cities



Ten Chinese cities, including Shanghai, have their own list of free classifieds in Chinese, called Kijiji.cn, modelled after the popular "Craigslist" in the US. I had to promise the organizer not yet to reveal his name, but when it happens, everybody well say, "yes, of course, he would do that".
The wildly popular Craiglist has been received warmly by the consumers, but is one of the reasons traditional media are losing an important revenue stream. The Craiglist has conquered most of the United States and has recently been expanding to other continents too. It is only available in English, so setting up a similar service in Chinese seems to make sense.

life - Very safe sex



ESWN has his already 11th installment of pictures on the life in China, this time indeed some hilarious ones.

life - Why connect Shanghai subway lines so poorly?

Shanghai subway map

Fellow blogger Wang Jianshuo went to the subway station at People's Square earlier in the week, wondering why line one and two connect so badly. A few years ago I could ask officials of the Shanghai Construction Commission that question that bothers tens of thousands of travellers every day. In the early days of the Shanghai subway, there was not yet a huge masterplan as there is now.
As some of us might recall, the first subway line was heavily subsidized by the German government. The Germans at that time thought it was a nice way to develop their relationship with the Shanghai municipality.
"We were so surprised and excited we got the deal," said one of the people involved at the Shanghai-end of the negotiations. "We really never thought we would ever have a second subway line. So we did not bother to think about how they should ever connect."
The German proved to be generous again when the second line was discussed, although they paid less than for the first line. But then Shanghai realized it had a problem in connecting the two and had to build a second subway station on People's Square. Initially, the two even operated as seperate lines and you had to buy new tickets when switching.
When you see how later the Pearl Line connected to line one and two, could see that the learning curve in Shanghai was not very steep. Have not checked the new lines yet, but will do so when the weather gets better.
The German left after the second line the priviledge of funding Shanghai's public transport to other countries, until of course they wanted to build the transrapid or Maglev, but that is a different story.

internet - Is taming the internet possible?

Howard French uses in the New York Times the upcoming NPC to review China's measures to censor the internet. He seems to stick to the viewpoint that it actually works and uses the silence in cyberspace after Zhao Ziyang's death as evidence. I still wonder whether it is just traditional policing or sophisticated software that is doing the job. I go for the traditional policing.
Some of his evidence sounds utterly unconvincing.

According to Amnesty International, arrests for the dissemination of information
or beliefs via the Internet have been increasing rapidly in China, snaring students, political dissidents and practitioners of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, but also many writers, lawyers, teachers and ordinary workers.

Names and addresses would be useful here, since I have personally not that many examples at hand. I was asked by a new committee for the protection of bloggers for those examples, but they had to rely on Iran to find arrested bloggers. What is happening is that some people who had already a reputation for getting into trouble now include the internet in the ways to tell about their viewpoint.
I would rather stick with Guo Liang, who is only quoted at the end of the article, while I think his message is crucial:

"All of the big mistakes made in China since 1949 have had to do with a lack of information," said Guo Liang, an Internet expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. "Lower levels of government have come to understand this, and I believe that since the SARS epidemic, upper levels may be beginning to understand this, too."
The most eagerly watched key word in China today is probably Falun Gong. "I don't know the number, but I would guess every Chinese has received a Falun Gong e-mail," Mr. Guo said. "There is no way to stop it. You can shut down the Web site, but you cannot kill the users. They just go somewhere else online, sometimes keeping the same nickname."

law - Supreme court puts death penalty on the agenda

State media have taken a rather aggressive approach in favor of revamping China's current practise on the death penalty. China tops every black list on human rights, because of the thousands of executions that take place each year. Also the reasons for execution vary very much from province to province and is depending on criteria of the local judges, writes the official news agency Xinhua today.
Officially each capital punishment has to be approved by the Supreme Court, but in a crack down on crime that provision was made invalid in 1983. The plan is now to return to the old situation. The death penalty is already for years under discussion, but also started to show up in the official media at the end of last year.
Today's Xinhua's dispatch is extremely critical, a wording that could come directly from press releases of Amnesty International:

As different courts and judges may have different criteria in applying death sentences, it is likely that a criminal sentenced to death in one province might
receive a different sentence in another.
That is not justice as we understand it.
The anticipated change regarding death sentences is not a simple return of power to the Supreme Court. It represents a deeper understanding of the spirit of modern jurisprudence.

life - The rush hour at the Shanghai subway

Wang Jianshuo is a brave man: he decided to have a look and take pictures at the intersection of the no.1 and no.2 subway lines in Shanghai during the morning rush hour. As a routine user of the subway, it is rather funny to read the account of a car owner joining the daily frenzy.

To be honest, I very seldom transit from Line #2 to Line #1 at morning rush time. I heard about the story and know what I should expect, but I was still shocked. Only after I set my foot to the transition tunnel can I understand the meaning of what we call "a lot of people".

media - China week at the BBC

The BBC wil not only do a live-radio panel from Shanghai, as I told you earlier, they have a whole week on China. So, producers are scrambling to get their act together and just now I was called by their technology program "Go Digital", who wanted to interview me for their program later on.
Since this is the BBC, I decided not to make only noises that would fit their agenda, but be my own controversial self. Mostly my story is a bit too complicated for the average mainstream media, but I decided to have a go here.

media - A new name for my WTO column

me (pic by Fritz Hoffmann)
For Chinabiz I already write for ages an almost weekly column that should shed some light on China's that is called the WTO-column. It started shortly after China became part of the WTO, but the issue has not been coming back as often as I expected. At that time I also had a meeting with a director of Shanghai TV who told me that whenever somebody on TV mentioned the WTO, the viewers would switch off. Reason enough to call my column "the WTO column". Fortunately, most of my readers have not switched off.
A larger planned revamp of the Chinabiz-systems takes much more time than expected - it always does - so we will first do some minor improvements and updates. A new name is part of that. We have been tossing around many different names, but perhaps some of you have also an nice idea for a new name.

internet - Obscenities in China's cyberspace


Talking about policing: researchers in northeastern Jilin province discovered that most of the songs from cyberspacce that are popular with the youngsters are riddled with obscenities, or as a Xinhua dispatch describes that those songs are

... filled with dirty lyrics and strange melodies. The survey shows that most
school students are familiar with songs popular on the Internet, especially some
that contain erotic or obscene words.

Welcome in the real world. Research has already very often shown that most of the traffic on internet is generated by the sex industry. Of course the classic experts say they are concerned,like experts always are. I guess overthrowing the government is not allowed, playing games all night is not healthy, no sex, with the internet moving ahead concerned experts will make overtime.

internet - Should I buy a new fax, or not?

The other day I heard an strange noice in a corner of my office. It seldom happens these days, but somebody was actually trying to send me a fax! So much previous century. It was from a governmental department, so that might explain the old-fashioned way of communicating.
Almost ten years ago I bought this fax with a friend, after having spent a fortune first on fax-services in hotels, since we could not have our own phone at the university. Along with the fax came an official looking document.
The sales person saw my suspicious look and said it did not cost anything. It was a fax licence and I should show it in case the fax police would come and inspect my fax. They never came. The system was introduced in 1989, when the students used the fax machines as a way to communicate.
Now, the old thing has become almost obsolete and the noises in the corner of my office indicated that a major decision should be taken. Am I going to buy a new fax machine or not? I guess not. Maybe I should sell my fax licence on ebay?

politics - Feeling sorry for Mr. Tung

While fellow bloggers like T-salon and Simon World list the mostly critical articles now the HK Chief executive Tung is going to leave, Chatter Garden takes another take and links to an article by Tom Plate at UCLA, who actually feels sorry for Tung.

I have seldom met a politician who was more real, warm and caring.

But also:

Tung’s Achilles heel was probably his ineptitude with the news media. He did not like its representatives, did not trust them or even respect them. This was a major factor in his downfall. Contemporary government is to a large extent government by media. Those who understand this (e.g., Clinton) thrive; those who don’t die. Beijing’s leaders, who have been so critical of Tung, do not have to deal with the Hong Kong news media as Tung did. They should realize what hell he has been through.

protest - Demo at People's Square?

Just received a message from somebody who says there has been a demonstration of close to 300 people in front of Shanghai's city hall today. The issue is unclear. Have not been there myself, but my source says there is a lot of police around, stopping also Chinese journalists from talking to the protestors. Any information out there?

media - Tsunami-training for journalists in Shantou

Shantou University

My efforts to organize locally a training for Chinese journalists going abroad, after some of them returned rather shocked from Indonesia, did not really work out. A typical Chinese problem: very reluctant to invest into their staff and the quality of their product.
Last night an interesting follow-up emerged. My friend Andrew Lih of the journalism school at Hong Kong University asked whether I was interested in joining a tsunami-training he would be participating in at the journalism school of Shantou University, for about 30 Chinese journalists. That seems a nice way of using the efforts I had already invested. And when it works out, there might be a wider interested for this kind of training. He started in a for him classic way: setting up a wiki.

media - BBC unblocked a little bit, Danwei
author Jung Chang

Author Jung Chang will be one of the participants in a live BBC radio broadcast from Shanghai. For the happy occassion, the BBC website will be unblocked, so we do not have to get our proxies working, Danwei discovered. The BBC is the only mainstream media company that is still blocked by the Chinese internet censor.

media - Journalist's lawyer sees rights suspended

From the Committee to Projects Journalists (thanks for the tip, China Digital News):

Authorities in Shanghai have suspended the law license of Guo Guoting,
defense attorney for three jailed journalists as well as a number of other
dissidents and members of the Falun Gong religious sect. The suspension throws
into question the defense of imprisoned writers Shi Tao, Zhang Lin and Huang
Jinqiu.

Click here to read more.

politics - HK leader Tung steps down

Tung Chee-hwa
The politbureau in Beijing has accepted Tung Chee-hwa's resignation, reports The Standard today, ending days of strong rumors about the future of Hong Kong's impopular leader. Tung has been in charge of Hong Kong since the take-over by China from the British rule in 1997.

life - Tomorrow: Wine tasting at YPHH in Shanghai

Before I forget to tell you, tomorrow evening is the monthly YPHH wine tasting event at Senses at Jianguo Xilu from 6:30 PM. There is a fair chance I will attend, as will some other people I mentioned today in this weblog. Mark Schaub and his girlfriend Connie. Also Maria Trombly will be there, although rumors says she is also in the middle of moving places. And a few others I hope.

internet - Why so many chat-systems?

This morning an email from my friend and colleague Maria Trombly, a pretty dynamic lady, although she has a heavily outdated website. Since I went online, I have become rather addicted to the new way of communicating, first by experimenting with ICQ (now largely dumped, because others are better), then expanded to MSN messenger (dabei233@hotmail.com), then added Yahoo messenger (tuinstranl@yahoo.com) as orginally their conference systems were pretty cool - although the quality sucks. Now, I'm mostly on Skype (fonstuinstra), but keep often the others running too. Hey, I do not want to miss out on anything.
Maria want to talk to me urgently on AIM, the only bloody chatting system I'm not using. And, I'm not going to register for this, Maria. Time for some cooperation, just like using the phone systems: even though it concerns different operators, mostly you can still call each other.

internet - Second month with 10,000+ visitors

February was not only the first anniversary of the China Herald, it was also the second month my weblog scored more than 10,000 visitors, with a daily average hovering around 400. Thanks for passing by.

NGO - Anti-globalists prepare for December

Hong Kong papers report on the preperatory meeting of anti-global groups in Hong Kong as they prepare for a WTO-meeting there at the end of the year. They have asked the local police for an international NGO liason officer.

According to Margrete Strand Rangnes of conservation group Sierra Club in the
United States, the presence of such an "international NGO liaison officer''
during the last ministerial meeting in September 2003 in Cancun, Mexico, was a
significant factor in explaining the lack of violence there.

Hong Kong blogger Simon World thinks it is all a big joke, but cities who had their visitors coming along might think differently.

blogging - "Survival is not mandatory"

The habit of starting a book or a longer article with an applicable quote can work out pretty well. I'm just working on the second part of Mark Schaub's installment on fraud in China, called "the enemy within". This time - the article will be online by the end of the week - he uses a Chinese proverb:

Of all the thirty-six alternatives, running away is best

His first article had a quote of Donald Rumsfeld:

As we know there are known knows. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

But the best quote of today comes from Microsoft's superblogger, Robert Scoble. From the first chapter of his book on corporate blogging (co-authored by Shel Israel):

"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory."—W. Edwards Deming

media - More photographers than ever per square mile


A pleasant get-together of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club in the Vault bar at Three at the Bund, where for the occassion they had normal size wine glasses. They were famous for having really very tiny ones. At the occassion Dutch photographer Aart Kooij sold his book "Faces of Shanghai", asummery of four years in Shanghai, as he will leave very soon for Europe.
The number of professional foreign photographers working from Shanghai is really amazing, and many of them were there. Both Fritz Hoffmann and Greg Girard, the veterans of Document China were present, but also Dvir Bar-Gal.
A fe photographers I never met before, like Yuko Sato, who has a really cool website. You cannot buy anything there, but very tasteful set-up. More photographers were there, on who only arrived five days ago and was of course out of business cards. And more are on their way, they announced.

internet - Proxy helps in downloading podcasts

Last week I complained that downloading podcasts was such a hard thing to do here in Shanghai. Today i switched on my proxy to download also some BBC programs, like "In Our Times". The BBC is the only of the mainstream media I know who did not get unblocked and has to be accessed through a proxy. And just guess: the downloading does not stop anymore. I'm now downloading item 36 out of 43. It is still unclear whether I get every time the full podcasts, but for sure this is an improvement for podcasting in China.
Update: I have been cheering too early. Just as I was posting this message, the bloody system stagnated again. First a happy hour with the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents' Club and then I have some time to look at what has happened.

blogging - My favorites-lists


Wang Jianshuo started this list of his favorite places in Shanghai, and was followed by Bingfeng Teahouse who posted his own list. I haven't come around it yet, but it seems a nice theme for the next Shanghai weblogger meetup, where we can compare our lists. Those who have no weblog yet can send it by email or pigeon, and we can also review those lists of people who cannot make it to the meeting.

internet - Shanghai beats the Netherlands: 1:0

For a longer stay in Brussels in the coming year or so, I have to get a lot of bureaucracy done. I will not bother you with all the details, but today Shanghai has beating the Netherlands in letting me do their bureaucracy online.
To get my birth certificate in my Dutch home town, I have to ask my mother to mobilize my 80-year old uncle, the last family member to live in this city, so he can fetch it in person. They are still living in the 19th century!
Unlike Shanghai, where I need to get a certificate that proves I have not been able to build up a criminal record here. First information look not very promising, until I stumbled on the official site of the Shanghai Municipality, offering that service online. I must admit, I only discovered it by accident, when I found this fascinating list of FAQ's, like: What is subrogation inheritance?
I guess this is all very useful, when you can find a question that is relevant for you. Anyway: step one is done.

book - Speaking at the German Chamber



Just got invited for a speech at a meeting of the German Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai on
March 31 in the Hilton Hotel. Will pick some nice misunderstandings from my book. Details will follow later.
Update: Meeting will start at 7 PM at the second floor of the Hilton.

internet - Voice from the past: Wang Dan

Last week I got an article by Wang Dan, former student leader at the 1989 Tiananmen Square and currently residing in Hong Kong, here in a translation by ESWN. I want to quote some parts, since I very much disagree with what Wang Dan has to say. He says all the right things people outside China want to hear, but who are at least doubtfull when you are living in China yourself. ESWN counters already some of his arguments too.
Wang Dan says:

Today, we still do not have a good way of countering the brute violence used by
the Chinese Communist government. Even from the viewpoint of the
inevitable democratic reform that will come, we cannot predict how the broad
masses will deal with the government's violence in China.

And:

We believe that as more Chinese netizens can access foreign website, the
Internet discussion groups will increase geometrically. At that time, the
Chinese government will face much more severe pressure and make them
leery of political oppression. The pace of democratic reform will increase as a
result of the free dissemination of information. The accumulated political
problems will not be permitted to continue indefinitely. A growth of an
Internet discussion community will enable discussants all over China to link up
and communicate, and make them more effective and coordinated to sketch out the
future democratic society.

With ESWN I have my doubts here. It is a very naive view on China and ignores the country's realities as they have developed since the early 1990s. Whether you like it or not, the one-party system has proved to be more stable than expected at the early 1990s and is stronger than ever. Not the central government has gotten more grip on the society, I would see there a certain erosion of power. But the balance of power between different regional and bureaucratic power houses has created a stronger regime, not one that is on the way out as Wang Dan suggests.

NGO's - Wen asks civil society to step in anti-corruption fight

An interesting paragraph in the Xinhua-dispatch yesterday on premier Wen Jiabao's speech on anti-corruption measures:

[Wen] pledged to accelerate the process of transforming the functions of
government by allowing enterprises, business associations and intermediate
agencies to play due roles in handling matters that "should not be handled by
government."

Another clear indication the central government is working on a strategy of strengthening civil society.