labor - Beijing cabbies shun passengers in protest

Non-violent resistance notes that taxi drivers in Beijing are having a protest against the increased rent they have to pay their companies. As usual, the Chinese media ignore the protest, this journalist says.
More than one third of the taxi drivers seems to be involved, ignoring hotspots like the airport and the railway station.

In my only cab ride today, the cabbie told me that he expects at least one third of the city's cabbies to be taking the day off. "We are shunning in particular places like the airport, and the railway stations." It may take people hours there to get a cab. He said he saw the senior city officials and dozens of police vehicles near both train stations today -- to watch out for potential unrest as well as ask taxi companies to force their drivers to go there.

Update: Danwei has (a little bit) more on the slowdown of Beijing taxidrivers.

economy -- Xiangyang market definitely closed down

Wang Jianshuo confirms Shanghai's most famous market with fake products, Xiangyang market, has closed its gates on June 30 to give new to new real estate. Of course, it would go against the image the government would like to give.
In that way Xiangyang market was what soft drugs and the red light district are for Amsterdam: a major draw for foreign tourists. I wonder what is happening to the thousands of peddlers in the surrounding streets - I do not think they will move away from their loyal customers.

art - Struggle pictures against foreign companies

Sun Bin gives a nice overview of propaganda art, mainly focusing on foreign companies. They all get their piece, not only CocaCola, also Pepsi, Gilette, Intel, Louis Vitton, even Parker and Chanel.

labor - Mounting unrest at Chinese universities

Daunting labor prospects have triggered off student violent protests at several Chinese universities. According to different assesments this year up to 60 percents of the graduates might not land into a job, forcing the government to suddenly reduce the intake of new students. At the business school of Zhengzhou University Shengda Economic, Trade and Management College students went at a rampage as the university of Zhengzhou downgraded their degree last month.
Radio Free Asia notes many more protests at private universities, that tend to be more costly than state-run universities.
The reason for the student unrest is similar to the end of the 1980s, when diminished job prospectects triggered off protest that led in the end to nation-wide riots and demonstrations, ending with the crackdown of 1989.

foreign protest in Beijing

media - Mixed feelings about protest against Tibet railway

Tim Johnson reports rather sceptically about the small protest by a group of foreigners at the day the first Beijing-Lhasa train takes off. I have seen similar sceptical reports elsewhere of this protest that only seemed to target foreign reporters in Beijing.

While the issues touching on Tibet are of interest, what troubled me is that the activists are generally Westerners rather than Tibetans. Their banner was in English, not Chinese or Tibetan, and few people in front of the train station took notice or were able to read the banner. So without complicit Western media to document the event, it would have gone unnoticed.

Of course: also tourists should be banned from Tibet, internet connections, airplanes and McDonalds. The protest only serves a small community of activist, who do not like to see that Tibetians enjoy a greater prosperity. I believe that a better connectivity serves Tibet best, as it increases the choices they have. It might destroy the image of a never-existing fairy tale about Tibet, but I could not worry less.

labor - iPod sweatshop accusations overhyped?

The news the Apple has used sweatshop-like conditions in the Chinese factories where the fashionable iPod has been made, have seriously damaged the company reputation. But also questions have been raised in the quality of the report and the truthfulness of the accusations.
Andrew Lih summerizes the hype and looks at the reports in the Chinese media, who have investigated the situation. The qualification 'overhyped' is justified, Lih sees room for improvement too:

But Apple has typically enjoyed from 30-50% margins on their products. That’s much higher than other industry norms. Stepping up working conditions at Foxconn to comply with Chinese labor laws (which are already very modest) can be accommodated by that cushion. Shareholders will be happy, Steve Jobs can sleep better, and Chinese workers will be happier. Win-win-win?

labor - China faces both shortage and oversupply of cheap labor

When you look at labor issues from a macro-economic perspective, the messages from China can be rather confusing. Howard French of the New York Times warns today of a damaging shortage of cheap labor as its population grow older and older over the coming years.
On the other hand, Reuters points at the graduates of this year, 60 percent of whom might not find a job, despite a booming economy.
Both stories are probably true at the same moment, just as you see similar confusing stories on other issues, whether you write about real estate or human rights. Just talkiing in general terms might be good enough to fill up empty space in print media, you have to be rather specific to make the story worthwhile and trustworthy in the Chinese conditions.

media - Audiences skip TV in large numbers

For readers of this blog it might not be news, but new research shows a huge drop in falling audiences. Even at the country side, 85% percent of the viewers skip commercials and the largest loss is among the most attractive income levels, says AdAgeChina.

Poor programming, boring ads and commercial breaks that last up to 20 minutes have lowered interest in television in China, particularly among viewers with higher income and education levels, according to a survey conducted last April by Horizon Research Consultancy Group.

media - Restrictive draft rules draw fire

Rebecca MacKinnon summerizes the developments on the rather restrictive draft law published last weekend, threathening media with fines if they publish 'incidents' without prior approval. Most interesting - an unapproved - disclosure is that the sections about the fines in the draft law was even new for the authors of the law.
From Caijing Magazine:

The story quotes Yu An, a law professor at Tsinghua University and a member of its drafting committee, as saying, "I have no idea how this clause was added into (the bill). It was not there when the experts first discussed (the bill)."
Ying Songnian, a member of the NPC's Civil and Judicial Affairs Committee who will be one of those reviewing the bill, told Caijing, "based on our experience with SARS, only information openness would help calm people down, and make disaster-relief efforts more effective."

It might be very hard to get this draft law passed, considering the opposition. Getting it executed would also be hardly impossible and would kill the traditional media even faster than they are being killed now by the internet.

telecom - 3G: delayed or not?

VNU-net quotes analysts saying they expect the 3G-network only to roll out in China after the licenses have been issued in the second quarter of next year. I'm not very eager to quote analysts on anything, since they all have their own agenda, but since I'm now becoming one myself, I should treat them with a bit more respect.
I have no indication there is really going to be a delay, although the infighting between the possible holders of the licenses has become very intensive. Delaying is a standard procedure in China when the temperature goes up, but with the upcoming Olympic Games getting closer, a fast decision is to be expected.
I do not believe in a long delay. Large scale tests are already going on, more are expected and I do expect a smooth transfer of the test period into the real operation.

internet - "TCP reset" as a censorship tool

Andrew Lih explains for lay people the way how the key word filtering at the internet is working, a discovery of researchers at the University of Cambridge. The Great Firewall is using same rather simple techniques that 'reset' your internet connection when the filters discover a banned word.
Apart from the already existing techniques like slightly changing the banned words, this is a nice addition to the tools to circumvent the firewall and heavy users of the internet might want to look into this way to ignore the firewall.
It supports my assumption that the censorship tools in China might be rather clever use of fairly simple techniques, not as elaborated as one often might think.

Tim Johnson

media - More foreign correspondents start blogging

At least two foreign correspondents in China have started a weblog, I discovered. Tim Johnson of Knight Ridder started in April at China Rises, Richard Spencer of The Telegraph has already quietly started in December.
That is a a rather new development. Chris Myrick at Asiapundit was one of very few foreign correspondents having a successful blog for already a long time. Howard French has one at A Glimpse of the World, but that is more a useful clipping service in stead of a weblog.
Modern times are arriving, even at the foreign correspondents corp. Did I miss anybody?

Update: Just discovered this blog by the Times (UK) correspondent Jane Macartney. Maybe time to start a special category?

telecom - Funding for 3G getting into place

The China Development Bank has provided China Putian, or Potevio, with a loan of 20 billion Renminbi (2 billion euro) to let them develop their TD-SCDMA business, China Tech News reports. TD-SCDMA is the Chinese standard for the third generation mobile phones.
Never ever has a domestic bank issued such a substantial loan, CTN says.
It is an additional show of support by the central government for the development of this Chinese standard.
The China Development Bank's target is to increase China's competitiveness in the world.

media - Can a law shutter up disclosures?

ESWN points at a potentially troublesome draft law that bans Chinese media from disclosing incidents, without being authorized explicitly to do so. That would be reversing the current situation where government authorities sometimes desperate try to ban some stories after media have been picking them up (and internet portals passing them on within minutes).
The article shows why this law most likely is not going to work. ESWN quotes Xinhua:

These pitiless statistics shake up people's hearts: In 2005, there were more than 540,000 public incidents of all kinds, causing about 200,000 deaths and direct economic losses of 325.3 billion yuan.

Now, it would take quite a bit of organization to issue licenses for all those incidents. My take? Even if this law would be adopted, it will prove to be unworkable very soon.

media - Is the Party over?

Letters from China points at the performance of prolific blogger Wang Xiaofeng at traditional TV, where he has been pushing the envelop by wearing this t-shirt.
Perhaps the TV-makers and the audience have missed the irony.

media - Emerging new media organizations

(tomorrow also at Poynters' Tidbits)
Now the boundaries by time, place and capital much of what made the old media into media are being eroded as internet access grows, new kinds of media organizations are emerging. But what is making a media organization especial now the old, natural restraints allow everybody to go global, at any time and at almost no costs?
This week I attended an exciting example of how those new media could look like in Amsterdam, where representatives of 17 countries, making over 30 websites discussed how their originally academic project of the wage indicator could develop into a media operation too. The project collects online information on wages and labor conditions, started in 2001 in the Netherlands, expanded last year to eight other European countries and is covering now
some of the larger economies including the US, Brazil andIndia.
China and Japan are on the agenda for coming year when the project expects to expand to 25 countries. The site allows visitors to use a scientifically approved salary checker and tries to draw in enough surveys to match the requirements for academic publications.
The country teams consist of researchers of prestigious universities, a media organization and a social organization - often a trade union. From the start the ambitions were higher than only making boring academic reports for dusty shelves: in a fast globalizing world, its wants to give leveraged information on wages. The focus is ideal for a successful internet project: is making money not the hottest online subject after sex?
"We are now in a position where - after the Netherlands - other countries are delivering valid data," says Paulien Osse, director of the Wage Indicator Foundation and a former journalist herself. "The first projects to compare salaries between countries are getting in place and are very promising."
For the journalists - or content managers as they are called in the new media parlance - it was the first effort to pull efforts together on a global scale. "Really a very useful meeting," said Lorena Ponce de Leon, the web-editor of La Nacion, one of Argentina's largest daily papers. "People did have a very diverse background, and had very different qualities in working on the internet, but that is part of the excitement. By working together we can improve a lot."

Disclosure: I'm the project manager of the China Wage Indicator.