protest - Dongzhou officials try to change bullets into bombs

An amazing account in the New York Times that tells how Dongzhou official try to convince their villagers that the death and wounded of December 6 have died from self-made bombs in stead of official bullets. Who follow the newly-invented official story can get money, the others risk a beating.

"Local officials are talking to families that had relatives killed in the incident, telling them that if they tell higher officials and outsiders that they died by accident, by explosives, while confronting the police, they must make it sound convincing," said one resident of the besieged town in an interview. "If the family members speak this way they are being promised 50,000 yuan ($6,193), and if not, they will be beaten and get nothing out of it."

Another villager, who, like other residents, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear or reprisals, said families of the dead who agreed to invoke accidental explosion as the cause of death had been offered $15,000 each.

eXinXin in action

media - Catering for China's visual needs

I'm really fascinated by the transformation of a real girl into our semi-virtual lady friend eXinxin. Her weblog documents rather detailed how the process from girl to cartoon is taking place.
Chinese online consumers are much more visual, I wrote earlier. EXinXin is certainly catering for a need.

The Chinese consumer

Dingzhou party boss

media - 'Too little, too late' in Dingzhou riot trial

The Dingzhou party boss and 26 other defendants stand trial for their role in one of the bloodiest riots in the village of Shengyou, six months ago, under their jurisdiction, Reuters reports. State media are reporting widely about the trial, suggesting that it should also serve as a signal for other local communist rulers.
In the village, located in Hebei province, six protestors were killed in June.
"Too little, too late," comments our anonymous journalist blogger. "But official Chinese press didn't run this story without the nod of someone high up. This is a signal." The upcoming Dongzhou trial will show if he is right.

Ruling China

meet eXinXin

media - From a borderline journalist

In journalism there are a few basic rules that are more or less holy. Thou sall not make up things is one of them, so when Danwei started to write about the new virtual celebrity, Xinxin, I started to wonder if I should bother you with it. Why bother making things up, since real life is already complicated and interesting enough.

She is being touted as China's first virtual celebrity, a little like the Eidoru of William Gibson's novels who exist only as bits and bytes but become more popular than flesh and blood actors and singers. e Xinxin is a real human being, but many of her 'performances' are as model for the cartoon and video game characters that use her name.

When you have to deal with China it is already though enough to make a distinction between what is true and what is false, especially in the media. Western media do not do their job necessarily better, but they have at least the ideology that says you should not make things up.

On virtual realities

media - We are the center of the world

My colleague Thomas Crampton is helping out a colleague at the International Herald Tribune in getting comments on his assumption that English is the langua franca, the leading language, not only among business people and academics, but also for the media.
Example that should prove this - in my view false - assumption is a breaking news story in a French magazine that never made it into the rest of the world press, because it was only available in French.
While I do admit that it would be useful when all world citizens would have one language in common, this is not the case. Only three percent of the Chinese internet users would peek over into non-mainland websites, not because of all kind of censorship, but because they cannot be bothered. I'm quite sure most of the French - note that the headquarter of the IHT is in Paris! - feel the same about this. Even finding English-speaking French academics or business people is quite a bit of a challenge.
Everybody thinks they are the center of the world, the English speaking world, the Chinese, the Spanish, the French and, yes, sometimes even the Dutch. You watch your news and I do not see the internet changing things that fast: cultural and linguistic barriers are too important.

Learning Chinese

internet - Bokee gets a payment platform

China's largest host of weblogs (depending on how you define weblogs of course) bokee has signed a deal with 99Bill Corporation on providing its users a payment platform, reports the Blog Herald. I do not want to be nasty, but having a payment platform does not mean you actually do get payments. I had already forgotten about the little button on my weblog that allows visitors to donate money to support my volunteer work and that is not because I get donations every day. Still wondering about the revenue model here.

labor - Illegal migration from China to stay

"...during a long time ahead, irregular migration of Chinese will be continued as an endless stream," concludes James K. Chin, of the centre of Asian Studies at the University of Hong Kong in his paper on snakes and snakeheads in China.
The research is based on seven years of field world. Have only skimmed through it, but looks a usefull contribution to the discussion on international labor. Later more.

Howard W. French of the New York Times

media - Should we blame the journalists?

Our anonymous journalist blogger brings up a fascinating dilemma I have been struggling with myself quite often. Under the title "Here's a sloppy story" he or she blames Shanghai correspondent Howard French of the New York Times for disclosing the names of some of the Chinese journalists who did not write about the Dongzhou-shooting.

When approached by French about why his Netease.com news site didn't run that particular piece of news, Fang replied, "We don't have this news on our Web site. I can't speak. I hope you can understand." "I'm not the right person to answer this question," said Li Shanyou, editor in chief of Sohu.com. "It's not very convenient to comment on this." OK. Fang sounds pathetic and Li sounds fishy. Is it just me or does anyone else feel the NYT wasn't being kind enough to two fellow journalists? Not in the sense that he didn't quote their words truthfully -- my gut tells me he did. But is it necessary to use their names, if they weren't able to give you any concrete answers? To me, a simple line like "Chief news editors at two of China's leading Web portals declined to comment on why that piece of news was absent from their sites" would suffice. Being Chinese, I could tell Fang was trying to be nice. And whatever little information he gave the NYT could reflect badly on him and his employer when this news clipping went to someone's desk this morning. Everybody could tell this is a very sensitive story, and any journalist caught with their names on record speaking to the New York Times could face some form of retaliation.

Chinese journalistsworking for the state-owned media are in a strange position. I know them often as very knowledgable and I have used their information often, indeed, mostly anonymously to protect them. They are often very much opposed to the restrictions they have to work under and are happy to tell me, anonymously. But they are also part of the system they often say they want to change.
After the Second World the Netherlands had this fascinating discussion on mayors who remained in function during the German occupation. Some said they had to stay on to prevent worse, others had resigned because they did not want to work under the German occupation.
Every country has a similar set of discussions and they are just to complicated to give a simple answer. Yes, I do think that journalists who maintain censorship are responsible for keeping the system in place. But are they in a position to change things? I wonder that too. Stuff to think about, for sure.

Books on journalism

economy - Fixing China's GDP-figures

I have seen other media, apart from Business Week, seen writing about the subject, but must have lost these reports in the flood of information hitting my computer these days. China is going to revamp its economic figures, including their GDP-figures, in an effort to get in line with international practises. Unconfirmed rumors say GDP will end up 20 percent higher after the revamp, expected next week.

"You could say China is actually 20 percent richer than anybody initially thought," Qu Hongbin, an economist for financial services firm HSBC Corp. in Hong Kong, said Wednesday.

I and my fellow China observer Ari van der Steenhoven do have to disagree with Qu's assesment and when the official GPD-figures only go up 20 percent, we have to conclude that the beancounters have not done their work correctly.
Based on the financial lives of my friends in Shanghai, my estimation would be that about half of the economy is not covered by the official system. Van der Steenhoven, who has more experience outside Shanghai itself, would disagree and estimate it on 90 percent of the economy. In any case: 20 percent is far too little.

Update: The Financial Times has some more background.

The revision is also expected to show the economy is less reliant on investment and more driven by consumption than previously projected, two trends that Chinese leaders have been trying to encourage.

Information on economic growth

economy - Underwriters trying to cash in on Baidu

Well, we all knew from the beginning Baidu's IPO would be hot and create a bubble in the second China/internet dream that would cost ignorant US investors a lot of money. During the first bubble this was just standard procedure, proving that donkeys are more sensible than those investors. Now the underwriters have decided to sell off their Baidu stock before the bubble is down, making some of the regular commentors like Billsdue really upset, since they do not stick to their original promises.

If the company reneges on such a visible promise made in the IPO prospectus, how can investors have any confidence in what Baidu says? The Guardian has an interesting article on Baidu, and especially the ongoing piracy issues that surround Baidu's operations. Like I said, if I were an insider I would want to dump my shares as soon as possible.

What a nasty world! Sue them, I would say, but that is probably going to happen anyway. And save some money for a good China expert who has no direct financial interests in these deals.

On the Chinese stock markets

law - Mixed signals on Dongzhou-shootings

Chinese government and party officials are sending different signals on the Dongzhou-shootings, where the commander got detained after ordering military forces to shoot at demonstrating villagers, writes the Washington Post.

The Chinese government said Tuesday it had reached "no conclusion" on the fatal police shooting last week of rural protesters in southern China, in a remarkable sign of uncertainty within the Communist leadership about how to handle an incident that dissidents are comparing to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Very remarkable indeed.

Update: Daai Tou Laam gives an overview of the recent reports in the unlinkable South China Morning Post and AP.

life - Kill the bureaucracy

A you know, I alway enjoyed dealing with the Chinese bureaucracy. It is their system, they can ask me to write applications while standing on my head, but that is not going to annoy me. China has not only invented the bureaucracy (although the French have also claims here), because of the size of the country, it is a forceful power you cannot change as an individual, so you comply or ignore the b-people.
Unfortunately, much of my current days in Europe include similar fights with the bureaucracy, that seems to be able to match even the worst excesses of what Chinese bureaucrats have done to me. I cannot go into details, but the honor of being able to drive me crazy is equally shared by both Dutch and Belgium government departments. I would have loved to get it off my chest, but I might still need those b-people. Also writing on my weblog unfortunately has to include some self-censorship.

Update: Guess the bureacracy you have to deal with is always worse. Lawyer Gao Zhisheng got his license revoked for not reporting he moved his office. Crackpot Chronicles points to a NYT article.

Books on the b-word

internet - How to view Wikipedia in China

Marc van der Chijs suggests a good alternative to read the blocked Wikipedia encyclopedia in China, apart from using the traditional proxies. He uses the Gollum Browser.

media - Two crises and a WTO-meeting, too much to handle

The environmental crisis in Heilongjiang has turned into a political crisis after a vice-mayor of Jilin killed himself and the central government called off a high-end investigation. The social crisis in the Guangdong village of Dongzhou has turned into a stale-mate while protestors and WTO-delegates are screaming for their piece of the limited attention Western media can give to this part of the world.
Asiapundit reports about an anonymous journalist blogger who complaints about the sudden lack of interest in the Jilin benzine crisis. Major Chinese media had prepared stories, but they have been shelved, including a major investigation, after a suicide of an involved vice-mayor in Jilin. This step gives free way too all kind of rumors:

The 100-ton-or-so benzene and nitrobenzene in the Songhua, according to government sources there, was not accidently flushed down the sewer but DELIBERATELY LEAKED. Again, no guarantee for the authenticity of this information but in the absence of true, open news coverage rumor would have to do, for here and for now.

Howard French summerized yesterday the latest on the shootings in Dongzhou and signals that the Chinese media again have been ordered to tone down, after the commander who ordered the shooting was detained. An act that could only be done with involvement of president Hu Jintao himself or people close to him.
The HK bloggers continue to follow the WTO-meeting and get much press coverage, even though according to all WTO-standards is seems a pretty dull get-together.

It seems too much for most traditional media, three major events in a row. Well, for this weblogger it certainly is.

internet - Very light blogging

Fortunately, I'm not the only one who has trouble in keeping up with the online life. Traveling, severe bureacratic crises, hope it will die out by the end of the week.

politics - HK bloggers focus on WTO meeting

Hong Kong seems to have changed into a state of emergency, different Hong Kong based bloggers, like Simon World report:

* The Coke machine won't be refilled all week.

Update: More WTO-news from Hong Kong here at Curbside.

Books on globalization

Muzi Mei

internet - Hundreds of hits looking for Muzi Mei

I just had a short look at the traffic of this site and strange features seem to pop up every time. Today I found out that hundreds of hits indicate an unprecendented interest in Muzi Mei.
Hey, I'm not complaining, but why is she good for 1,990 search hits and 'China' only for 427?
Could it be this article in the Independent? For this one in Time it seems to late, unless many US teachers are giving out assignments to their students.

economy - 'China overtakes US as major high-tech supplier'

China will be a bigger supplier of IT-products than the US over 2004, according to the International Herald Tribune, quoting a OECD-report that will be published tomorrow. While both the IHT and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are both respectable, I first had a thorough look into that assumption.
Ten years ago I was taken to a larger number of Chinese high-tech parks where assembling washing machines was considered to be high-tech.

Data in the report due to be published Monday show that China's exports of information and communication technology - including laptop computers, mobile phones and digital cameras - increased by more than 46 percent to $180 billion in 2004 from a year earlier, easily outstripping for the first time U.S. exports of $149 billion, which grew 12 percent from 2003.

(Figures are quoted in US dollars)
China is also matching the US in terms of trade, the report reveals.
I wonder whether in today's jargon assembling mobile phones and computers is that much different from assembling washing machines ten years ago. It would make much more sense to compare R&D investments, where China also has improved much. Manufactering is just a different ball game, even when it is "cutting edge technology".

life - Looking for a hotel in Beijing?

Shanghai-based Asiapundit has a very strong preference.

Guides on Beijing

Sam Crispin

economy - Where is the money going to?

Sam Crispin, my favorite advisor on real estate business in China, gives in a Chinabiz column a grim overview of the market in Shanghai for the last six months of the year. Prices have gone down 20 to 30 percent and most projects have come to a stand-still. So, where is all the money going to now the real estate is not a way out anymore?

Bank interest rates are lower than rental yields and the stock market remains a lottery without the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas. Real estate is the only place to soak up surplus savings and while some of that money may float down the Yangtze to other markets they remain very much uncharted waters for most investors.

Our other columnist Paul French mentioned last month that foreign investments also were stalling, giving a grim picture of the current state of Shanghai's economy is the money is going nowhere anymore. Has the central government succeeded in bringing Shanghai on its knees?

On China's economy

cartoon by Hugh McCleod

media - Why the HK new media conference was important

ESWN politely disagrees with my complaint that you cannot take the new media conference in Hong Kong serious if you cannot access the event remotely. I joined yesterday the Global Voices 2005 summit at the Reuters headquarters in London.
ESWN finds the meeting was tremendously important, although even the South China Morning Post will not write about this event:

Will it make a difference? I believe it will, and someday I will recount how this conference affected myself and possibly others. Personally, I already have a few personal projects spinning in my head. I won't discuss them until they come close to fruition. I cannot tell you what they are, because some of them are cynical and manipulative in a malginant sense for what I consider to be a good outcome. For now, I will just say that the sight of watching Chinese blogger Michael Anti mesmerizing the InMediaHK team at the legendary 7/1 Bar will be one of my fondest memories of all time.

And on the lack of funding:

This conference was made possible by the dedication of InMediaHK members (who are all volunteers!) on zero budget, using their personal networks, to take advantage of the fact that many speakers and participants would be in Hong Kong for the WTO MC6 conference. This was an opportunistic conference without a mega-budget. However, the participants would not be here if they did not believe it would make a difference.

The question then is of course, how a regional conference like the one in Hong Kong and Global Voices could find synergy. In London about one hundred people came together representing this one year old project in different regions of the world. Asia was a bit underrepresented because of the location.
The fast development of Global Voices - they are now looking for their first paid managing editor to run the servive - shows how good they were able to combine different resources. Within a year they have become a serious player, Reuters potentially sees as a partner to cooperate with. Living in a city where the traditional media are as backward as in Hong Kong, makes that much thougher.
While GlobalVoices organized a energizing conference, they also avoided to make clear choices, to put it into extremes: are they going to be a Blogger Liberation Front or becoming a newroom of cheap correspondents for Reuters? Nobody did put the choices forward that blunt, creating a combination of very good feelings and a sense of lack of direction.

The HK conference automatically focused much more on China, summerized ESWN:

One of the questions that came out of this conference: Are you an optimist or pessimist about China? I am resolutely an optimist. I spoke about what I read right now on the Internet in China today was unthinkable five or ten years ago. And I believe this is irreversible. Michael Anti (in Chinese) might have placed his bet as follows: he would be a pessimist -- if everything comes through, he would be delighted in spite of losing money; if it all flops, he would at least wind up with the money. Dear reader, what is your bet?

Next time both organizations should seek some cooperation.

books on new media

protest - Xinhua confirms three fatalities in Dongzhou

In a rare admission the state news agency Xinhua admitted police had shot three villages in a protest against a powerplant. Speculations suggested as much as twenty people had been shot in the remarkable incident, while over forty were missing, according to this report in the New York Times.
While protests against land deals and corruptin have become rather common, while even violence by the local government to quell those protest are a standard procedure, having official police forces opening fire on their citizens is fairly uncommon. According to Amnesty International is was even the first time since the student protest on 1989 this happened.

Xinhua said in an overnight report that villagers in Dongzhoukeng and Shigongliao attacked the plant on Monday and Tuesday last week.

"The first assault on Dec. 5 (Monday) caused a seven-hour suspension of the plant's power generation," Xinhua said.

"In the second onslaught, over 170 armed villagers led by instigators...used knives, steel spears, sticks, dynamite powder, bottles filled with petroleum, and fishing detonators."

Protests expanded to a second powerplant, not part of the original protest.
The French newswire AFP reports, quoting the Guangzhou Daily, that the official who ordered to open fire has been arrested.

Update: Blogs for Industry gives a decent summery of the economic background of the coal-fired generator at Dongzhou.

Links to my old bibles

internet - Beggers online Ltd.

One of the stories my Dutch colleague in Beijing told me when we struggled us a way through the beggars with dirty children in front of her compound was that she expected there would be a work unit handing out the children in the morning.
Well, if those days ever excited, they are over now as the begging trade turned online. The Shanghai Daily reports about beggars who ask for money online. Business is booming, says the report, that might of course be a fabrication. Beggars seem to be following journalists: it is anyway too cold to go out these days.

information on online business