protest - China's new nationalistic revolution

Just returned from a 12-hour investigation of the anti-Japanese demonstrations today in Shanghai, where at least a 30,000 people participated, despite explicite disapproval by the government. Too tired to write a full report just now, still going over the pieces my colleagues have been doing too.
The efforts of the Shanghai government to contain the spread of anti-Japanese feelings clearly has failed. The massive police force seemed to have only one task: not to provoke the demonstrators and that has been felt by shop owners - mostly Chinese - who saw their property destroyed because they had some Japanese text on their window.
This is going to have a severe backlash in the relations with Japan, including Japanese packing their bags in this rather racist climate.
Again: more tomorrow.

protest - Government moves against demo

State-owned enterprises and other workunits in Shanghai have asked their workers not to join tomorrow's anti-Japanese protest in the city, say different sources affiliated with government units. Urgent meetings were called on Friday to convey this message.
"I share the anti-Japanese feelings," says an accountant of a state-owned real estate company, who tells about the meeting. "But our company has also many Japanese customers, that is more important."
The starting point of the meeting has also been shiften from the Bund or People's Square to Xujiahui, those sources said. The last minute change might cause additional uncertainty, that might have an influence on the number of people attending. The change was needed because of the length of the original route.

Books on the Chinese state

protest - Police speaks against anti-Japanese demo's

Police in both Beijing and Shanghai have called upon the citizens in their cities not to participate in "unapproaved march activities", according to the French newswire AFP. It is the first time authorities speak out against the marches. A demonstration is planning in Shanghai in the morning from the Bund and will go to the Japanese consulate in Hongqiao, probably at the beginning of the afternoon.

CSB - China First Speakers' Bureau to launch softly



Online business information provider Chinabiz is announcing the soft launch of a new service: the China First Speakers' Bureau. From the beginning of next week it will start registering potential speakers and develop its first business.
Talks with US-based speakers' bureaus have been conducted over the past few months and a formal cooperation is expected to start shortly after the summer break. Speakers' bureaus offer a professional service to conference organizers, companies, government departments and other organizers of meetings in need of professional speakers. In the months till the summer China First will use to organize its domestic database. People who are interested in the service can ask for a 'speakers' kit' here. Also general information on our business will be available from next week.

Books on speaking in public

protest - A long march in Shanghai

I obtained this drawing of the route of tomorrow's demonstration in Shanghai via Danwei and Interfax. This is going to be a bit of a long march!

Other maps on China

internet - Shanghai webloggers moved
The Shanghai Webloggers have moved to Yahoo and you can register or re-register here or (if all works out) in the column at your right hand side. Next meeting will be as scheduled on April 20, most likely with a set of podcasts from the Fudan Middle School.

Books on internet communities

protest - A "mass exodus of Japanese companies and nationals"

Sylvia Yu

One of the more disturbing predictions concerning the ongoing anti-Japanese unrest come from the Beijing-based author and journalist Sylvia Yu (discovered thanks to t-Salon), currently writing a book on comfort women at CBC.

Unless diplomatic relations between China and Japan are smoothed over quickly, I do foresee an eventual mass exodus of Japanese companies and nationals. The Japanese already view China as a hostile place for them to live. Now, with millions of Chinese hitting the Japanese in their pocketbooks, where it counts, this could, in an ideal world, lead to some backtracking and serious review of the recently-approved textbooks. China really doesn't need Japan economy-wise, since numerous countries are lining up to invest. But Japan needs China more than ever to revitalize its sagging financial state.

Books on comfort women

Why China’s stocks will fall more – the WTO column

Shanghai Stock Exchange

(Also at Chinabiz and BNN)
It is spring again and just like the little birds spreading their wings, bankers and other securities specialists, both foreign and domestic, hit the media with their new predictions on the future of the stock markets. “The bottom has been reached,” they always say without blinking an eye. It gives me a good mood, just like the little birds, since you know that at least some things in this world never change.
Of course they have been wrong for the past four year and they will be for the next four, but who blames those little hungry creatures? They are hungry, they need to eat to, they cry for attention, they cannot admit there are not enough worms around to feed all those investment bankers.

Since the summer of 2001 shares on both the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges have been falling. Sometimes they fell fast, sometimes not that fast, but the general direction was south. On individual stocks some people did make some money, but only when you were or very smart or a crook and preferably both of them at the same time. There were two main reasons for this very stable direction the share prices took.
First, they were hugely over inflated. Because of the enthusiasm to buy stocks in the first decade of the stock’s existence, there was no relation between the price of stocks in China and their real value.
Now, that also happens outside China and is euphemistically called a “technical correction” by experts who have to explain an earlier too optimistic approach of the market. Now, why is taking the “technical correction” in China already four years?
What triggered off the dramatic change was the suggestion by the financial authorities back in 2001 that they were looking for ways to bring the so-called non-tradable state-owned shares to the stock markets. About two third of the shares of listed companies is held by government departments. The idea was to finance the empty coffers of the social security system in that way.
That implied a tripling of the existing liquidity of the stock markets and since then investors have been running for their money. And the plan to refund the social security funds got into problems, since the value of the state-assets dwindled with each new rumor.

Both issues have not been dealt with and have been impeding the stock markets greatly. According to recent count at Chinese media, the country has now over one thousands plans to deal with the dilemma. More important, after letting this wound fester for four year, Chinese media suggest now that in May the first experiment with four or five companies, floating their state-owned shares, might be taken. Getting it over with is probably the only possible way to get China’s stock markets in a better condition in the long run, although the coming years might be hard, very hard.
Professor Xia Baisan of the management school of Fudan university said in the Financial News: “I’m not optimistic about any coming plan, it may pull the market down in geneal, although the stocks picked for the test may rise. No matter what plan it adopts, the stocks must be sold. There is no actual benefit for investors.” The investors should prepare for the last, final run out of the markets.

Books on China's stock markets

internet - Why technology-driven censorship research does not work

The Washington Post summerizes yet another investigation into the way the Chinese internet filters work. The problem this that the focus is purely technological and that is part of the problem I have with this kind of research.
This kind of research only makes sense with observation made on the ground. Strategies to go around the often-failing filtering technology is so common place that controlling the internet is an illusion. But since this illusion matches the classic way of framing the China-story by the Western media, top-down, evil and powerful, papers like the Washington Post just repeat the assumptions of the researchers without asking any critical questions.

Books on censorship

protest - Anti-Japanese demo planned in Shanghai

The unthinkable seems to happen: even in business-like Shanghai anti-Japanese protests are planned by students at different universities, I hear from different directions, for this Saturday morning. There is still confusion about the starting place, some suggest it will start at People's Square, Danwei thinks it might also be Xujiahui. Also, there is some confusion on the timing.
Obvious target is the Japanese consulate at Wanshan Road in Hongqiao. Now, that could be a bit of a walk, especially from People's Square. But even from Xujiahui. Hope we get some busses.

Andrea of t-salon links to this front page FT-story, suggesting that the less-than friendly relations between Beijing and Tokyo could derail the reform of the United Nations.

Books on Shanghai

protest - A village government on the run

After the riot

Simon World is doing an excellent job in keeping track of the stories appearing in other media. Times had an excellent story, but for one reason or the other (Hello, Nanny) I cannot get it anymore after been able to read it earlier today, so unfortunately, no quotes since I forgot to save it earlier.
Simon took over a story from the unlinkable South China Morning Post at his site.

Inside the school compound, 14 cars lie upside down, windows smashed, interiors ripped up, number plates bent. A police uniform is draped over one car - a trophy. On the other side of the large school yard lie dozens of buses. Their tyres have been slashed, and windows smashed. Some have been heaved on their sides.

Thirteen plants, operational since 2002, are blamed for a wide variety of environmental plagues. The riot has caused a massive number of wounded, but stories of deaths are being denied.

More on uprisings in China

internet - Chatroom warriors mess up CNN poll on Japan




The People's Daily proudly announced today that in an online CNN-poll 94 percent of the voters stated they did not want Japan to get a permanent seat in the US Security Council. There is a bit of backgrounds to reveal about the almost one million voters in this poll.
The so-called chatroom warriors, China's underground internet forces who jump on anything that might raise the temperature on the already often heated debates at the internet, have been campaigning extensive to get Chinese voters to join the poll. For those who were unable to read English, instructions were give to find the exact spot on the page, so they would not by accident vote 'yes'.
As far as I know it is the first time the chatroom warriors take on a 'foreign' poll direct in this way. Not knew is the way how the central authorities make use of the sentiment at the internet for their own purposes, without mention this useful background.

internet - This ant says 'no'



This morning I have sent this email to the members of the Shanghai Webloggers Meetup:

This morning I got an email from the central committee of themeetup organization telling me that they will start chargingorganizers 19 USD per month for their work as a volunteer. Ofcourse we are free to charge you again a fee for being amember, but then I would become an accountant to. So this antwill say 'no', as will many other ant-organizers, I believe.Later today I will resign as an organizer. The system willremain active anyway. I suggest that we move our emailaddresses to a free mailing list after we discussed this duringour next meeting. No reason to change anything else.

protest - The successful Japanese push to revise history

ESWN has an excellent dissection of the background of the ongoing Chinese anti-Japanese protests: the success of the Japanese ultra-right movement to revise its country's history. It puts the focus there where it should be: in Japan. Worth your attention.
First, they started to ask questions about the history, with the purpose of planting doubts:

Example: The "comfort women"? Were all of them forced into sex slavery? Well, apparently, some "comfort women" actually "voluntarily" went into service because they could earn a better living than staying home. The Japanese military's paper trail does not identify who is who. Was the ratio 20%-80% or 80%-20%? Nobody knows, so any surviving "comfort women" today may just be a willing participant back then. Therefore, the "comfort women" phenomenon may just be a matter of exaggeration. All we can say is that 'experts' are in disagreement.

After that, 'the market' was ready for the ultra-right view on the Japanese history.


Books on comfort women

Chinese emotions and the ‘feel good’ factor – the WTO column

(soon also at Chinabiz and BNN)
Shanghai - One of the more interesting misunderstandings among freshly-arrived foreigners about Chinese is that they expect their new employees or colleagues to be rather detached, almost emotionless human beings. That is one of the strongest clichés about Chinese, and very, very wrong.
Some of the events over the weekend might have shown again how wrong that idea is. Most of the anti-Japanese rallies seemed rather harmless and caused hardly any real damage. But the riot in Zhejiang, where thousands villagers have beaten up scores of officials and police men after two elderly women got killed during an environmental protest, shows what happens if you hit a raw nerve in China.
I know I should not generalize, about Americans, Dutch or Chinese, but I will do so here because that seems the only way to deal with deep-rooted clichés.

Chinese are very short-fused, emotional people, who would rather follow their instinct and feelings than make decisions based on rational arguments. All too easy characteristics that are actually more Japanese than Asian, have made watching the Chinese behavior into a rather confusing activity for the un-inaugurated.
That starts with an angry Jiang Zemin, who read the more juicy paragraphs of “Shanghai Baby” to the full Polit-bureau, to illustrate why this book should be banned. It ends at the office next to yours.
Last week I ended up half a day in a trading company and witnessed an illustrative scene. On the surface the European boss and his Chinese assistant seems to get along pretty well. She was joyful, running from phone to fax, seemingly enjoying her work for a boss who did not speak any Chinese and would be pretty helpless without her.
But on the phone, in Chinese, she was delaying upcoming appointments and discussing new jobs. When her boss was gone for lunch, I carefully made some inquiries. “Are you happy in your job,” I wanted to know.
The real story spat out, even before I revealed I already knew part of the story. “I will start tomorrow in a new job,” she said. “He has not paid me over last month, and he did not give me the fulltime job he promised me.”
Obvious, she had not told her boss anything. “He is a nice guy,” she argued with herself. “And I wanted to tell him today over lunch, but he thought meeting his friends was more important than having lunch with me. Anyway, he did not pay me, why should I feel any loyalty?” We closed a pact and I promised I would not tell her boss until she would have started her new job.

Relations in China, even business relations, always contain this dose of emotional attachment. Since written contracts and verbal agreements have a limited value, the question whether you like a person – for whatever reason – and feel attached to him or her – in whatever way – is more crucial than outside China. Governments can partly outsource this work to their diplomats, but on a business and personal level, you become important.
There might be very pragmatic reasons for people to stick to written agreements. It saves a lot of time and trouble and it might lead to more business in the future. But when you neglect the ‘feel-good’ factor in business, you are creating potentially huge and unnecessary problems for yourself.

Fons Tuinstra

people - What is Philip Murtaugh doing?

Philip Murtaugh

This weekend a new guessing game emerged: what is Philip Murtaugh, the recently resigned GM China chairman, going to do next? First rumor said he had joined Ford China to repeat the wonder he had performed at GM: building up a company against all odds.
The China Media Watch noted that Chinese media suggest he might join his former Chinese partner SAIC to oversee their international operations. That would indeed be another kind of challenge.
I would take a break, maybe write a book.

Are we doomed ?- follow up

Reader Rob Creemers writes, after reading my previous WTO-column Are we doomed? that he just finished reading the book "Collapse: How societies choose to fail or survive" by Jared Diamond. "It makes you feel cold," he writes.
"Great column and congrats to you for speaking out. I remember the Club of Rome report. I did all of the things you talked about in your column," writes Irv Beiman. "I TOTALLY AGREE with your comment about the stores air conditioning/cooling the STREETS, and personally said something to the Xu Hui mayor at an AmCham meeting. His reply: “We need fresh air….”. He just didn’t get it at all. What is needed is a major educational campaign, which the government is good at. The focus of the campaign should be on energy conservation."

internet - Nanny gets nasty on Zhejiang riot

The massive riot in the village of Huankantou, Zhejiang province, where two elderly women got killed on Sunday and dozens of police men got hurt still does not seem to be over. While the original dispatch of Reuters is still available here, efforts to download other recent material about the riot caused my internet connection to collapse. That is a traditional way (at last up to a few years ago) to punish internet users who searched for banned words. Since Huakantou got added pretty soon, the situation might even be worse than it looks.

protest - Call for a one-month boycot of Japanese goods

Bloggers are calling for a one-month boycot of Japanese goods during May, reports Danwei. The effect of such a call might cause much more damage than the occassional broken window we have seen during the weekend.
At both the Financial Times and Interfax Japanese companies have already expressed their concerns for more damaging actions. While it might be expected that traditional media will not openly support such a boycot, the word might get out much more easy on the internet.

protest - More police overtime in Zhejiang riot

Police seems to be making much overtime thise days. A massive police force has clashed with villagers in Zhejiang on Sunday, writes Reuters. The riot got really violent after two of 200 elderly women got killed by police in an effort to disperse them during a protest against a chemical factory. The two were run over by police cars, some villagers said. Others said they died in custody.
Angry villagers attacked and 50 busses with 3,000 police men, military police and other security guards were brought to the scene. The police claims 50 of their people had to be brought to the hospital and five are said to be in a more serious condition.

economy - Black March for MNC turning into black April

A famous P&G product

The China Economic net just wrote down some thoughts on why so many famous foreign brands got into big trouble on the Chinese retail markets in March. Heinz, KFC, Carrefour and P&G got all their bit of heat.
The trouble of P&G with their skin product SKII was new for me, but it did not take much effort to find extensive coverage in the Chinese media. Basically, adds of P&C contained claims for their skin products that were false, a consumer said, and P&G agreed to pay US$ 24,000 in fines for their claims, writes the China Daily.
Now this is intelligent promotion, I would say. Next thing when I run into one of their SKII products, I will check their claims and see whether it can reduce enough of mine wrinkles. And millions of other consumers will also try to produce a claim against the company.
Less intelligent was their website for SKII, I discovered while looking for a nice illustration. While looking for their China-site, I found this one. Some PR-company is going to loose their job over this.

protest - An overview of the anti-Japanese riots

Danwei pic

Many good overviews of the anti-Japanese riots all over China in de past few days on the internet. Danwei has a colorful one, although their initial critical review ("What a wank") did not return. Simon World has certainly the most comprehensive overview. Revealing are also the real eye witnesses, like this Swedish guy, who not only noted the usage of much Japanese equipment to record the events in Beijing. He is rather critical about the 'official' press reports:

Since it is not everyday I watch something that makes the front pages of the international press I find it interesting to compare their reporting with my own
impression. My only complaint would be that when it is a large focus on the smashed window, therefore sounding more aggressive than it actually was. This is also the case when it comes to the reported numbers, often citing the highest numbers available, while this was not a very large demonstration.

life - One of the better places to take me to

The red villa

I pass the 'Villa Rouge" in Xujiahui Park on average twice a day and never felled inclined to go inside, I actually only discovered the name when Cliff Kuang of The Economist invited me for lunch there today. A surprisingly nice villa, stylish decorated and good food. Even affordable, well, for Shanghai standards. And on a five minutes walk from my current residence.
But, oh, so empty. Cliff had made a reservation, but we could not have missed each other: we were the only two guests. Surprising, since it got so many positive reviews in the many magazines.

art - Chen Yifei (59) dies suddenly

Chen Yifei

The famous artist and Shanghai socialite Chen Yifei has earlier today suddenly died at the Huashan Hospital in Shanghai. He suffered from a heavy bleeding stomach and no explanation have been giving, according to local journalists familiar with the story.
Chen Yifei has been a dominant factor in the cultural life in Shanghai and China at large and met both admiration and envy for the business-like way he developed himself into a brand name for art.

Update: AP has more about the sudden cause of his death:

Chen was admitted to Shanghai's Huashan Hospital on April 6 after suffering from stomach pains and died Sunday morning of gastric hemorrhage, said Dennis Wang,
an executive with Beijing-based Huayi Brothers and Taihe Film Investment Co.Chen, who also worked in film and publishing, was directing "Hairdresser," a film financed by the Huayi Brothers in China's eastern Zhejiang province when he became ill, Wang said.

Are we doomed? – The WTO-column

(Later also at Chinabiz and BNN)

“If the present growth trends in industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.”

Does this sound familiar? No, this is not another report on the devastating effects of China’s fast growth on world resources. This is a – slightly adopted – statement from the report “Limits to Growth” published in 1972 by de Club of Rome, a non-governmental organization that predicted doom and gloom unless we would put a limit to our economic growth.
I looked it up after reading just another report on how China’s economy growth, low energy efficiency and need for resources will put a heavy mortgage on the world’s future. There are both huge differences and some similarities between what happened at the end of the nineteen sixties, beginning of the seventies and what is happening now.
First, the Club of Rome proved to be highly efficient in the way it brought its message. Their report and many other publications were discussed both during the classes at my middle school, at papers and at TV-programs. It helped that the world when through a – political – oil crisis in 1973, showing the real effects of an energy crunch. Despite an unprecedented economic growth up to that moment, at our middle school we were very much focused on all those things that would end our recently gained economic paradise: energy shortage, pollution, and of course the threatening nuclear war.
That sense of urgency helped to turn around some of the worst predictions and in that way the Club of Rome was highly efficient. We as world citizens felt responsible for its survival and many new daily habits were introduced. We closed doors and windows to preserve energy, switched off lights, we started to separate garbage into different categories and took more often public transport in stead of the car – yes, I’m from Europe as you might notice.
Not all of these acts proved to be that useful later on, but it gave you the feeling you did your bit to save the world.
Focus of the Club was mainly North America and Europe, since those were the biggest culprits then.

Thirty years later, environmental outlooks are very grim again. China’s economic booms is transforming world markets as it goes on a rampage for oil, steel and other resources. Official reports warn against for the heavy damage worldwide if China, followed by India do not change their ways of boosting their economy. Nobody even dares to suggest that China should limit its growth, as was suggested to the world in the 1970s: that would even be worse than asking the country to give up its one China policy.
While also the official reports from China mirror the worries about the country’s environmental future, there seems to be no efficient method to get the message across to lower governments or its citizens. The temperature will be rising very soon and department stores will do their best to use their airco’s to cool down the shopping streets in Shanghai. But rather than trying to stop this useless spillage of energy, China rather engages into building more nuclear power plants, and destroying beautiful resources by building dams to produce more energy.
There are some encouraging signs that a civil society is emerging especially in the area of environmental protection. But what is needed is a Club of Shanghai or Beijing who is as effective as the Club of Rome was more than thirty years ago.

Fons Tuinstra