economy - Tracing a parcel

The tracing-services logistical companies offer, show sometimes pretty strange patterns. A friend in Shanghai is helping another friend in Europe and she has send on the morning of December 2 a parcel to the Netherlands. I had asked them to use DHL, since they are Europe-based and have possibly the better connections. But my pretty independent thinking Shanghainese friend decided that UPS was better.
In the next 24 hours I can see now the parcel has first moved to Hangzhou, I estimate by truck. Next appearance was in the morning of December 3 in Taiwan, so it must have been for political reasons also in Macao or Hong Kong. Now it is on its way to the Philippines, 24 hours after it left Shanghai. Pretty troublesome route, I would say.

Books on logistics

internet - Attending Global Voices in London

I'm planning to attend next week's Global Voices London Summit if I can manage my conflicting agenda, but it really looks like a great event with many interesting participants. The meeting will be held at the Reuters headquarters in Canary Warf and guess: I'm looking for affordable accommodation not too far way from this high-end place. Any suggestions?

former minister Xie Zhenhua

politics - SEPA: a small potatoe crushed

Much has already been written about the sacking/resigning/leaving of the head of China's environmental body, the director of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) after the Jilin disaster. Sun Bin comes with useful background on the basic game rules in the Chinese hierarchy that influence those movements in the powerful bureaucracy. It is very illustrative on how fights are being fought, so well worth a read. (You do need a proxy in China, since the blogspot domain is blocked again.)
Argument: the environmental minister is just a junior minister, betwee heavy weights like province governors and party secretaries. Also the CEO of the responsible state-owned company CNPC probably has a rank at least as deputy-minister. In that system of military-style ranks, combined with different regional responsibilities, the Beijing-based SEPA really has very little clout in Heilongjiang and its has has been sacrificed as a minor offer after the disaster, while the big shots are left alone. (in my summery.)

Books on China's administration

media - Lu Banglie revisisted

ESWN translated a thorough and fascinating Q&A session between Hubei People's Congress Representative Lu Banglie and a Chinese journalist. Lu Banglie succesfully worked on the impeachment of a corrupt official in his own village and then got involved in similar fights elsewhere, like in the Guangdong village of Taichi.
He hit the headlines as he was left for dead by the then-Guardian correspondent during a visit at the Guangdong village. A reporter from the Phoenix Weekly followed the affair, again in a translation of ESWN.

Reporter: "Among 1,502 voters at Taishi village, 584 motioned to recall. That is a minority. If the people in the village were divided into two or more camps, do you understand how the opposition and division came about? You listened to one side of the story and you immediately felt that they were the weaker side who were taken advantage of and you wanted to bring about justice. But do you understand the entire history of the matter? Have you listened to what the other side has to say? Without a full understanding, you cannot determine soberly whether your conclusions were right or not?
Lu: "I feel that I saw it all too clearly. Sometimes, there is nothing that can be done. I had no choice, because my conscience would not let me go. I work completely according to my conscience."

Books on democracy

Celebrating in Qingdao

life - China pushed AIDS-information ahead

Well, I have seen better instructions on Chinese billboards on how to use a condom than this one by the China Daily, where students of the Ocean University of China in Qingdao show what you can do with a condom during the World AIDS Day, yesterday. The government wants to keep the number of HIV cases below 1.5 million by 2010, but it could also amount to 10 million when not more is done.

books on safe sex

internet - Blocked in December: blogspot, typepad, wikipedia

Weifang Radish reminded me that a new month has started with again possible changes into the blocking regime of the internet censor. Indeed, as Weifang Radish notes, somebody of the millions of users of blogger.com has been naughty and their domain name 'blogspot' is blocked again after months of troubleless existence.
That block would then include the official China Environmental News, who today reports about the resignation of the chief of SEPA, China's environmental agency.
Their competitor typepad is still blocked, as it the online encyclopedia wikipedia, who does not deserve this.

Update: Message for the Silicon Hutong: flickr and scoopt have not yet been blocked, as far as I can see. Hope you did not bet too much on a blockage, since it is almost fully unpredictable. And people keep on using proxies of course, at least the three percent of the Chinese internet users that has an interest in non-prc servers. (Still a three million though.)

life - Eating in Shanghai

A friend of me is on her way to Shanghai and I promised a list of four decent restaurants in the city, since she and her colleagues have to kill four evenings. A list of one hundred would have been easier. They like Chinese, but do not want it every night. Since it is for business, pricing is no issue.
First, for the better local food, I would still go to 1221 at Yanan Road 1221, indeed. (phone: 6213 6585) I have not been there for a year or so, but should be still alright. Meilongzhen is out, do not go there, too much middle-of-the road food you can get cheaper at the street.
Excellent is of course also Casanova at Julu Road 889, building 3-4 (phone 5403 4528), very stylish, so you might sometimes even forget about the very nice Italian food.
For one reason or the other she started to murmel herself about M-at-the-Bund, but I always thought their PR was much better than the food. The sight on the Bund is hard to beat, although more classy restaurants have popped up at the Bund. I would rather go for their neighbors Jean George at Three at the Bund, with a fine French cuisine, 3 Zhongshan Yilu, 4th Floor (phone: 6321 7733)
One evening of course has to be at Xintiandi, and on there so much is to pick from. Perhaps for foreign business people T8 would be a nice pick. They could mix it up with New York, says this review. House 8 at the North Block of Xintiandi, Taicang Road (phone: 6355 8999).

Of course: reservations in advance are advised.

Update: They did not take my advice serious and only called the restaurants the moment they were already sitting in a taxi. Yesterday, on their way to Three on the Bund they discovered Jean George was fully booked. They changed the plan and I directed them to the Indonesian restaurant Bali Lagune in the Jing'an Park. Now they tried to book T8, were too late again and will now try Va Bene at Xintiandi, since they were already there. 1221 has been stricken from the list as being to shabby. Also, they are not really sure they want to try local food. The stupids!

Books on China and food

economy - Why TiVo will not work in China

What would the world be a nice place when you could transplant a successful business model from the US to China. That would save a lot of China-experts a lot of work and they could retire. Yesterday some messages on my radar suggested that the popular TiVo service would enter the China market, with the help of a Chinese company.
TiVo, for those who are not familiar with the US broadcasting systems, allows viewers to tape their popular shows, skip the commercials and see them at a moment they like. Since one-third of every TV hour in the US is covered with boring commercials, that is a very much appreciated service.
Fortunately, the new joint venture starts in Taiwan and has mainly the ambition to enter also the rest of greater China. Not sure about Taiwan and Hong Kong, but at this stage I do not see how there could be a market for TiVo on the mainland.
Actually, I discussed such a service with a few people of another company earlier this year. We had a laugh, a drink and decided to focus on many other proposals with potential.
First, in China there is no market. Unlike the US, most TV-viewers love commercials, because they are often much better made compared to most of the domestic TV-shows. While it is very hard to make any money out of Chinese pockets, I do think that charging people for watching commercial would be more viable than the reverse.
On top of that, most of those boring Chinese TV-shows are repeated relentlessly. The chance of missing a show is rather unthinkable, so often they are showed on TV.
In case there would be a market, there would be a third reason why TiVo would not be successful. It would be banned. A service set-up by a Taiwanese company that would hurt the income of state-owned TV-stations! How much more politically incorrect you can get in China?

Books on media in China

economy - World Expo 2010 gets go-ahead

The cheers have been limited to Chinese media, but on December 1 the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai got its go-ahead from the organizing committee in Paris. The BIE passed, not fully unexpected, the report of Shanghai's vice mayor Zhou Yupeng on its progress and now real business can be done. Delegates of the Bureau of the Shanghai World Expo Coordination are expected to knock at many doors of other governments, foreign and Chinese companies to solicit their cooperation at what might well be the last World Expo, a tradition that started in 1851 in London.

Books on the world expo's

internet - Bingfeng Teahouse reveals new banned words

In this fast-changing society almost anything can get banned from one hour on the other. Bingfeng Teahouse discloses the latest sensitivity.

Books on teahouses

announcements from the backoffice

A small update on the changes that took place during past month, for others who have weblogs and might want to compare notes.
First, it has been very busy in getting updates and new services. Firefox 1.5 is now running, although I still have no clue what it might improve. I have Skype beta 2.0 in place and apart from a host of smaller justifications, skype now also offers video and has become also in this way a competitor for other chat and VOIP-services.
I have started tagcloud as a way to improve connectivity. It looks cool, but I'm not yet sure it really helps. With Clickcast I can now really do some podcasting, especially after the guys of Powergramo provided me with their latest edition.
And for those who think I'm talking like a geeky nerd: if I can use this, you can too.
I just signed up for a new service Google's Adsense is providing. They allow advertisers now to put their ad on this or any other site they like. In the past this selection happened more at random, but under pressure of the competition they are now offering better service, at least that might be the idea. Very soon you should see a new addition to the ads on my weblog, allowing you to use this service directly.
Meanwhile income has gone up over the past few months, it actually tripled on a monthly basis compared to the summer. Apart from more traffic (more about that later) Google seems to be giving a increased compensation. I have not yet tried the similar Yahoo-service, but I have seen cool software that allows you to use both.
Google Analytics I have installed to get more information on my traffic better, but for the time being, I'm not yet happy about their performance. So I stick for my figures to the systems my host ipowerweb is offering. (At this stage the service of ipowerweb has deteriorated severely: getting access is rather problematic, so I'm considering moving my weblog to a better service provider).
This month the average number of visitors has gone up to 1,300 per day, a daily increase of 400 compared to October. I estimate that the total number of readers is around 2,000 if I add the RSS-feed readers, since they are not included into this traffic (and do not add to my income, I have to admit). The number of readers through RSS seems to be rather stable, as the number of subscribers through bloglines hovers around 130 for ages.
The upsurge has already started since the summer, although has never been as high in absolute numbers as last month.
The referrals from other weblogs go up, although not over the whole line. Among the topscorers in November (October in brackets) for the whole month are Simonworld, 158 (74), ESWN, 34 (42) and China Digital Times, 65 (39). In terms of numbers those referrals (once the strength of any weblog) are becoming less relevant, although this traffic does signal still qualitatively interesting cross-traffic.
Otherwise, no clue why traffic went up. The month has not been that much more eventful compared to other months. One theory is that the improved functionality of search engines might cause the spike. Would be interesting to hear similar reports from others.

books on new media

Toodou's Marc van der Chijs: not shooting

internet - Toodou.com: no legal action against podlook.com

Podcasting is just taking off and competition is heating up. Co-founder Marc van der Chijs of the succesful Chinese podcasting company Toodou.com reacted on an earlier entry in the China Herald on his competitor podlook.com, who was portrait at one of the leaders in Chinese podcasting.
Marc van der Chijs commented:

Coincidence? The logo is almost the same as the Toodou.com original logo (a potato with a headphone) that we used until video's became bigger than audio files. And the name (pineapple in Chinese) also has some similarity to Toodou's potato.

All this is no reason for legal action, Van der Chijs says in a reaction. While his competitor claims to host 15,000 podcasts, Toodou says it has 17,000 entries, increasingly video's.
Van der Chijs: Podlook is not really competition, more a directory like the American podcastalley.com.
He also mentions that Toodou has picked by the Chinese Fortune magazine as one of the 50 fastest-growing companies this month and was picked by the Chinese weekly San Lian as one of the top-5 innovative websites.
Now Toodou is working with a TV-serie "Yesterday once more" searching for a star. Candidates can send a movie of themselves to the site.
On Monday evening I will interview him for my own podcast on his business in China.

books on podcasting

Worrying silence on the WTO – the WTO column

(later also at Chinabiz and the wage indicator

This month it is four years ago China entered the WTO, at the time a clear sign the country was prepared to enter a fast globalizing world market following international standards. The accession was part of a huge push by the Chinese government to sell the WTO to its own citizens, as it was obvious that it would be a hard sell. At the time the Chinese media pushed the WTO in a classic campaign-style to its audiences.

Four years later, while its foreign trade partners are mildly positive about China’s commitment in opening up its markets, the lack of official enthusiasm compared to its accession four years ago is a worrying sign.

Partly the lack of enthusiasm for the WTO has political reasons. Since December 2001 a new government has taken over. The WTO was a pet-project for the former Prime Minister Zhu Rongji and the new government has changed priorities on many fields, including the WTO.

Who now looks at the Chinese media, might find it hard to notice the WTO at all. The environmental crisis, AIDS, bird flu: No shortage of problems in China and as the media work as a mirror of the official political agenda the lack of enthusiasm is clear.

Later this month the WTO will have its first meeting on Chinese soil, in Hong Kong, and even that event still has to hit the domestic media in a grand way, like you would expect for a major international event.

While the assessments of foreign trade partners about China’s way to deal with its membership of the WTO is largely positive, there are good reasons for China itself to be less enthusiastic about especially its trade partners in Europe and the US. The haphazard re-introduction of quota on textile and the way both trade partners blackmailed China into accepting those restriction has been no encouragement for official enthusiasm for the WTO and certainly the industries involved have been very upset about this wave of protectionism that has been hitting Chinese industry.

In total, China and its citizens have still won greatly from the globalization on trade, despite all the negative fallout. China has lifted the majority of its people from poverty in the past twenty years, although there is still much room for improvement and it has come at the expense of many other developing countries in the world.

That lack of official enthusiasm for the WTO and disgust about the protectionism of its European and American trade partners could easily have a more negative effect. Now Chinese companies simply rely to smart ways to avoid quota and other restrictions. When the lack of empathy of Europe en the US continues, the Chinese government might be less committed to stick to its part of the WTO-deal.

Books on the WTO

The Wumizhou restaurant

life - Eating against AIDS

What beter way to fight for a good cause in China and getting a full stomach? The Shanghai Daily reports about Shanghai's first restaurant with an AIDS-theme, following other examples in Thailand.
The Wumizhou restaurant in the Jing'an area offers for the adult customers information and free condoms. The paper only indicates it is a Chinese restaurant, but gives no review of the food.

Books on Aids

internet - The leading podcast directory

Podlook.com is the leading podcast directory in China, writes China Web 2.0 Review in a rather comprehensive review. Apart from a rather solid looking set of features, also over 15,000 podcasts already. That is what you call 'booming'.

media - Openess after Heilongjiang spill shortlived

Chinese media went on an unprecedented rampage, looking for the truth, after the benzene spill in the Songhua river shocked Heilongjiang, the central government and the world. Both foreign and domestic media speculated that this disaster in the way state-controlled media would report about this kind of disasters.
It would make sense since most cases of the media censorship are efforts by local or provincial governments to avoid problems with the central government. It would not be the first time. When the central government ordered an end to the cover up of mine accidents, coverage has gone up dramatically. It does not really help the miners, who still get killed in unprecedented numbers, but the media to report about it.
But early conversations with Chinese colleagues show that the Chinese media have been put back in their cage again. Media looking for the truth might be more dangerous for those in charge than benzene.

Update: Howard French addresses the same issue in the International Herald Tribune and quotes comments at the internet:

A glance at the proliferation of blogs and other online commentary here makes that clear. Chinese censors have been busy blocking comments like these, but they have simply been too numerous.
"Any government that lies to public does so for two reasons: incompetence and shamelessness," read one Web posting. Another read: "The reason for the panic was that the public was not sure how many other serious facts the government had concealed."Yet another, sounding downright Lincolnesque, read: "When a lie comes into being, there must be more lies to cover it up. The result is serial lying. However, these lies, like numberless other lies, will all eventually be revealed."

Song Junde

internet - Merger of three networks in five year - prof

Sometimes you see announcements coming from the central government that make perfectly sense, but where you would still need a 'wait-and-see' attitude. Even the writer of this Xinhua dispatch was not 100 percent sure when he or she noted the announcement of professor Song Junde that China would merge internet, telecom and broadcasting networks within the next five years.
Song Junde is professor at the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunication, so certainly in a position to know about those plans.
But the regulating bodies in charge of those three networks will not just happily merge: that will be a major struggle, only comparable with the split of China Telecom by former prime minister Zhu Rongji. Such a move will imply a major powerstruggle and I will certainly talk to some of my experts to see what their feeling is.

economy - PC market grows, Dell drops

China's PC market grew 10.8 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2005 in terms of shipments, Beijing-based research firm Analysys reports. Sales went up from 18.5 billion Renminbi 2.3 billion USD) over the third quarter of 2004 to 20.3 billion Renminbi (2.5 billion USD) in the third quarter of 2005, indicating a declining profitability.
Half of the market is business related, as home users keep on prefering DIY-computers. Lenovo is market leader with 32.4 percent while Dell, the largest foreign PC-producer in China, dropped to 7.5 percent as the market moved to smaller cities and SME's, where domestic producers are stronger.

law - Hospitals: any way to grab money

Most older urbanites still get their medical costs reimbursed and for the family of a deceased Harbin citizen the costs itself could not have been the issue. According to the Shanghai Daily the 75-year old teacher made 1.4 million Renminbi (YSD 175,000) during his 67 days of treatment and the family purchased medicine for an additional 4.1 million Renminbi.
Remarkable was that on one day the teacher got 94 blood transfusions that pumped enough blood into his body for two healthy people. What has happened to the seperately purchased medicine never became clear. The hospital also did the last test on 8 August, two days after he died. It is not known what the test showed.
This fraud even went the authorities too far and up to the central government teams have been sent to Harbin to investigate.

media - Beijing Media sees trouble grow

The Hong Kong listed domestic media conglomerate Beijing Media suspended trade on the stock exchange, writes the Shanghai Daily. Once the single and most successful example of a Chinese media company going public, it has now returned into the opposite. The media industry still is different from other industries in China.
Beijing Media found a way out of the condrum how to avoid the state-control on the media, by focusing on selling advertisements for the Beijing Youth Daily, not unlike the construction the Shanghai Daily has developed.
Last December it earned USD 116 million by going public at the Hong Kong stock exchange. Corruption charges caused a dive in the share value and accusations of fraud are being investigated.

NPR's Rob Gifford

media - An NPR-correspondent returns home and is shocked

NPR China correspondent Rob Gifford returns home after six years and is shocked when he sees what people back home, he tells PJNet Today.

... my advice to editors is not to play down what their reporters should be reporting (I can't believe I even have to say that) and just to let reporters say the truth, the facts, even if that doesn't fit with our stereotypes - otherwise we might as well all pack up and go home, we are simply not doing our jobs as reporters and editors. To audiences, of course, I would also say, think for yourself, and be aware that the media (sadly) is not always objective - and CERTAINLY don't always take what your government says (whatever nationality you are) as gospel.

The interview stops short of trying to explain why - in this case - Americans get a distorted picture of China. That cannot be blamed to, or solved by, individual editors or correspondents. NPR might still be an exception but most news and information has to entertain, contribute to the bottom line of their increasingly profit-oriented operations.

internet - A new tool to connect: TagCloud

I just installed this marvelous new tool: the TagCloud. (You can see it in the right column) I saw it in action at Global Voices and just wondered how it worked. Very simple, even I can do it.

Super girl

media - TV: the threath from within

The succesful Supergirl show on Hunan TV last summer shows a new threat for the state-directed TV-stations in China. The viewers get something they like and 400 million of them get wild.
The NYT tells here the story and analyses the follow-up now local management want to prevent the dust from settling down.

Hunan TV is also facing increasing competition from foreign media companies trying to break into a market that already has MTV and Nickelodeon cartoons. The News Corporation, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, came here two years ago and agreed to jointly finance and produce television shows with the Hunan station. But Hunan TV could benefit from new restrictions placed on foreign film and television companies in August by the Chinese government.

Often censorship is not that strong outside the big cities, explaining why this experiment was possible in a far away province.

law - A judge destroys a provincial law and causes a panic

The International Herald Tribune desccribes the case of a young judge who decided that a national law prevealed over a provincial law and caused an uproar. It caused a national debate.

Governor Zhang, having his first glass of water

media - "Creating an explanation", governor

More statements are emerging from Governor Zhang Zuoji, this time through Time magazine.

At a meeting on that same day [November 22] held on a first-floor conference room at Harbin's Peace Village Hotel, according to someone who was present, Heilongjiang Governor Zhang Zuoji explained to 400 local and provincial officials why Harbin had first deceived its population: his bosses at the State Council in Beijing hadn't approved an announcement on the leak. Unable to report the real reason, he said, the city of Harbin had "created an explanation." Only after the people of Harbin panicked did the State Council approve the second, truthful statement.

internet - The China weblog number game

Guessing how many weblogs there are in China has reached a new height with the estimate of the Beijing market research firm Analysys, estimating the number at 33.4 million weblogs at the end of the third quarter, according to the IDG-news service, up from 14,5 million in January.
Analysys looked in the number of registered users among the total number 105 million internet users China had in September according to the Ministry of Information Industry. It does not yet say what percentage of the weblogs is actually active.
Deductions from the earlier internet research by Guo Liang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences suggests that earlier this year only 4.5 million weblogs were active, but in a period of explosive growth that figure might get outdated very fast.

Heilongjiang governor Zhang Zuoji

media - Lies in good intend, the governor

Now a spillage of 100 ton of benzene has passed Harbin and is on its way to the Russian border, tough questions are being asked about the initial cover-up of the disaster.
Bingfeng Teahouse translates some of the explanations given by the governor of the province, Heilongjiang, Zhang Zuoji.

...we were worried that the public can not take the sudden disaster; and we needed to consider the foreign relations, worried that (the disaster) might influence the relationship between china and foreign nations. with the support of the central government, we corrected this "lie of good intention" in less than 10 hours, and announced the whole truth to the public and got their understandings. after this incident, we know that we must safeguard the public's right to know and participate when sudden disaster happens".

Of course: there are too many of those lies with good intentions, but that will not stop this time many more questions te be asked. The Financial Times puts it in perspective: getting timely information is not only a problem for the public, but even for the central government. Even though the Ministry of State Secrets has decided that casualities of (natural) disasters are no longer a state-secret in September, simple decisions in Beijing might not change an traditional attitude that fast.
Zhang Zuoji is apart from governor of Heilongjiang Province, Member of the 16th CPC Central Committee, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Heilongjiang Provincial Committee, Member of the Standing Committee of CPC Heilongjiang Provincial Committee.
ESWN has been documenting the water crisis in Heilongjiang most thorough.

internet - Just found: China Politics Links

Thanks to the Yahoo Blog Search I stumbled into this great resource with many useful links to China's politics: the China Politics Links, set up by professor William A. Joseph. Very thoroughly developed with, for example, links to all reviews of the Mao biography by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday.
Unfortunately, the site has no RSS-feeds, so I cannot include it on my blogroll, but I did bookmark the site, a bit of an outdated way to save information, but very glad to make this exception.

internet - Monitoring Google Analytics

Knowledge is power, goes the old saying, and for an online life search is knowledge. Today I'm no longer missing the plop of the daily papers on my doormat, as Google, MSN and Yahoo are defining my horizon today.
The arrival of a new Google-tool like Google Analytics seemed a nice addition to the tools I already use to monitor traffic to this weblog, including Google's own Adsense. Like Edwyn Chan I like their there Geo Map that visualizes your readership.
There is only one problem: Google Analytics gets only one third of my traffic, compared to other systems. Even Google Adsense that would filter out part of the traffic, signals many more hits. There are more strange observations. It was not amazing that most heavy traffic is coming from Beijing and Shanghai, both in the hundreds of visitors. Stranger is that Hong Kong is not mentioned, while Macao has a few hits. Taipei has at least a few hits, but Tokyo is lacking. In Australia only Sydney show up, while I got emails from other parts of the place. Google Analytics says that a quarter of my visitors is returning, other monitoring systems say more than half.
It is simply not doing its job: perhaps I need to be patient. Any more observations?

life - Shanghai starts monitoring for bird flu

Shanghai will start checking the temperature of international passangers entering or leaving the country from Monday to stop possible bird flu from spreading, the People's Daily writes.

A passenger who has a temperature of over 38 Celsius degrees will be further examined; in case the person has been to a bird flu-hit area or had contact with birds or poultry, treatment at a designated hospital is required.

Systems are still in place at the two airports since the SARS-epidemic hit China in 2003.