labor - The 'trainees' at Foxconn

Bingfeng Teahouse continues to translate comments , now already 9,588 in total, he estimates. Not always clear whether the comments relate to the Shenzhen or Kunshan facility or both.

when CCPBG BU was established 2005 and new business dept hired another 10 k employees to produce PSP, the ordinary workers hired from hubei and henan are paid 200 RMB per month (God curse me to death if i lie about this). foxconn said they are only trainees, but actually these "trainees" did the same amount of work as the long standing workers everyday, that is, 12 hours a day......foxconn leased a "dorm" called "dong-yi" to pack 300 workers into one room. you have to get up 5 am to wash and brush, otherwise you will miss the bus and it a 48-minute walk from dorm to the factory. i see many new workers bring their washcloth because they told me that dorm stop supplying water again, they haven't taken bath for three days.

book - Dutch edition available again

For those who can read Dutch and have for unclear reasons not yet purchased my book on China: this week a new and cheaper edition arrived at my publisher. I have not yet seen the book in the Dutch online bookstores, but it is available here for ten euro.
There is also a German edition available.

internet - Sex og Shanghailiv

Today I registered a 120 visits from Norway, to be specific from the Dagbladet, so I had a look at the story. Of course, it was on the story of the weblog "Sex and Shanghai". The story has a very original picture: the skyline of Shanghai with the firework during Chinese New Year. I did a small story on the issue also for the Poynter Institute and that has partly triggered off this interest among the more traditional media.

media - Censor bans Foxconn stories

In today's episode of our daily Foxconn soap opera , as expected the censor moves in to ban the story everybody knows already. Now, the equally predictable issue of today will be: is the internet going to beat the traditional media or not. Tomorrow more.
Meanwhile, Bingfeng has added a few new statements to his translations that really keep on challenging the Apple report:

...... after i arrived in foxconn, the first thing is to sign the employment contract, ... what makes angry is that the contract says during probation period if i was fired by foxconn, i have to pay foxconn for "breaking" the contract ....... let me tell you the working environment, ... you stand for 8 hours a day to work and you have to stand straight, otherwise you will be punished to stand by the wall like a soldier ...... even you have nothing to do you must stand there!!! only after you experience that, you can understand how unbearable that is. when we come off work, all of us can not control our feet, and in evenings, there are two-hour training courses waiting for you ......no saturady, you have only one day off in one week ... the so-called OT pay doesn't exist, you have to apply for it and chances are that 90% of them don't get approved.

labor - Recruitment firms moving fast into China

It is always nice when your own predictions become true, especially when it happens very fast. In the third week of August the regulations for foreign recruitment firms dramatically changed as they could take a majority share in their Chinese partners on the condition they would be registered in Pudong. That would change the playing field and I predicted that some of the foreign firms would grap that opportunity, if they were clever.
AFX reports now from London:

BNB Recruitment Solutions PLC today announced that its subsidiary, BNB Asia, has acquired 48 pct of the issued share capital of specialist recruitment consultants MRI China Holdings Limited, for 2.4 mln usd.

Not yet a majority, but the British firm is in for another ten percent of the equity. Earlier Careerbuilder.com announced t hey would go into business with 51jobs.com. More will be in the pipeline.

economy - The cultural challenges at Lenovo

Danwei brings their first China Business cast , this time with two expat employees at this succesful Chinese company. "Global management is key", they explain. Nine out of the 15 key managers are now non-Chinese and seems to be heading to an interesting blend of different cultures. Pretty well done. "Let the American talk less and the Chinese talk more."

Update: Just finished listening and I think the right issues came up in the podcast. What would have made it better was when the Chinese employees would have told the story from their perspective too. Perhaps an idea for the second podcast.

labor - From today's Foxconn soap opera

If I would be writing soap operas, the ongoing Foxconn case would be a great inspiration. Yesterday, Bingfeng Teahouse translated the first comments by what is called "former Foxconn employees" who challenge the findings of the Apple investigation into their iPod producer. Today, he reports the China Busines News, whose two reporters got sued by Foxconn, now is getting their own dream team of lawyers together.

meantime, the journalist who has been sued by foxconn left her email at her sina blog in order to collect more facts concerning the ways that foxconn manage and pay its workers, within hours she received hundereds of emails, a lot of data and pics from self-proclaimed "foxconn employees".

It would have been better when they had been collecting this kind of material before they wrote the original support, but in many ways this looks like a very interesting and fast moving learning process. It looks that Foxconn got themselves so much publicity, they will now be forced to set up a trade union, although according to Bingfeng the company had already a branch of the Communist Party - who has not been doing that much then.

labor - Apple report on Foxconn disputed by employees

The internet is getting more fascinating by the day. Bingfeng Teahouse has been translating some comments and blogs by what is described as "former Foxconn employees":

foxconn is really vicious, 80% are female workers aged 17-18, some are 15 or 16 years-old, they STAND to work (not allowed to sit), you can image it, standing for 14-15 hours, 20 minutes for lunch. is there any humanity in such a factory? overtime voluntarily? shit! how much base pay they get - 450-580 RMB per month, they have to work overtime to earn as much as 1000 RMB. some work for months without break. there is no media report. local government doesn't care about it, even they know the truth, they won't mind it, how much tax they collect from foxconn, hundreds of millions. the government is certainly very happy with such companies .....

While this kind of reports should be watched with care, they cast a severe cloud on the official Apple report that clear Foxconn from most of the accusations. Just imagine what this could mean: the internet is not only covering nerds, university students and the urbanites, but moving into the factories. Again, it is important to try and verify the claims on these internet reports, but here an important tool is developing.

Bingfeng promises more translations later.

politics - China changes its history books

When I was still studying history, one lesson was a fun one. Reading older history books often told more about the time they were written in than about history itself. In that way, notes the International Herald Tribune , is the revision of China's history books at the beginning of this school term long overdue. The changes are quite dramatical, at least for the richer schools who can afford to replace theier textbooks.

Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese communism prior to economic reform in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once, in a chapter on etiquette.

internet - Was "Sex and Shanghai" a hoax?

The Sydney Morning Herald (first discovered by Marc van der Chijs) suggest that the now famous "Sex and Shanghai" weblog was no more than a hoax set up by a group of artists. They base their conclusion on an email they got:

"We did not anticipate quite the level of anger this would raise," said the message, which said the authors behind the cyber name "Chinabounder" included a British man, an Australian woman, two Chinese men and a Japanese woman.

That possibility was always playing somewhere in the back of my mind, as it should always be. Of course, chances that this email is the real hoax is equally realistic.

Wang You and Weng Bao

media - Foxconn gives in to online opposition

The Taiwanese producer of iPods, Foxconn, has reduced its financial claim against two journalists from 30 million to one yuan. It wanted to sue them after the company was being accused of poor working conditions at its facilities in Shenzhen and Kunming, close to Shanghai.
After those accusations were largely proven to be unjustified, apart from worktime related issues, Foxconn's subsidiary sued two journalists of one of the papers involved, not the UK tabloid that sparked off the original accusations or other Chinese media.
Especially the unprecedented high financial claim, causing the Shenzhen court to freeze the assets of both journalists, triggered off a nationwide outcry, led by China's webloggers. Even the People's Daily, the daily of the Communist Party, condemned the legal procedings in Shenzhen.
Two weblogs, started by internet portals for the journalists, continued to collect thousands of comments from angry Chinese citizens who displayed their anger.
The change has been celebrated widely as yet another victory for China increasingly powerful online community.
The animosity was also fuelled by a widespread feeling among Chinese Taiwanese companies exploit cheap labor and resources in China more than other non-mainland companies.

media - Blogger turned journalist raises important questions

ESWN has today a great post on the Foxconn case, but reaches far beyond that issue: it is about journalism and its future.
First, ESWN discovers he has been acting as an activist and a journalist, as he pleaded for the case of the two journalists who got sued by Foxconn and saw their assets frozen.

Clearly, at this point, I was not functioning as a traditional journalist with an objective eye. I was an undeclared lobbyist!

Roland Soong of ESWN has been carefully trying to avoid such a step in the past, he wanted to stay away from controversy and strong opinions. I always considered him to be a journalist. He decided for his readers what they could read or not, although he tried to decorate that with a nice sauce of objectivity. But he was making journalistic choices and there is absolutely nothing against that, unless you actually deny you are doing it. So, I consider this as a great step forward for a weblogger who is providing a valuable service.
What makes his entry extra interesting is the debate he enters (although a real exchange should still take place) with Richard Spencer of the UK paper The Telegraph who defends himself in his blog for not paying attention to the case of the Foxconn journalists. He has a lot of decent arguments why his paper and most other Western media ignored the issue, while they went into the highest alert when other Chinese journalists to into legal problems, or worse.

If you were my editor, and I came up with a couple of journalists who had their bank accounts frozen in a preliminary hearing, what would you say? For the reader in Chipping Sodbury, I just don't think that makes the grade.

Richards points here at a crucial challenge for the new online media. He has a clear picture in his mind when he writes a story: there is this auntie in Chipping Sodbury who has to appreciate the story. It might be an important story for China, for the media experts, but not for this auntie in Chipping Sodbury. With my background in traditional media I suffer from the same dilemma. I have been dealing with many different media, TV, radio, print and now the internet, but I do need to know for whom I'm writing the bloody story. Marketing people will call that target groups, but for me that often boils down to individual people I know personally. I need them as a reference point.
That person can vary, depending on the medium you are working for or the audience that is reading it. It can sometimes be my mother in the Netherlands, the academics on a China Internet mailing list or my business friends in Shanghai. Without such a reference point I'm lost. Sometimes I would call them in advance and discuss a story to find out what really makes sense to them.
Now, in theory the internet has destroyed much of the old barriers. Time, place and certainly the high costs of producing stories have been breaking down or are in the process of doing so. But does that mean I can work without those reference points? I do not think so.
The old question, for whom am I doing this, is still relevant, even though I have in theory a global audience I can reach every moment of the day. I see a tendency among many global internet projects of just ignoring that paramount question: for whom am I doing it? As a journalist the moral indignation Roland Soong showed at ESWN is important for making your initial choices, but that can only be a starting point. The next question is: where is my audience?
Now, obvious, sometimes that problem is solved by itself. Some online services work so well, they generate automatically an audience although the producers have never asked themselves why and how they are setting up their service. Call me old-fashioned, but I still need my mother in Maasbree, Mark Schaub in Shanghai or Randy Kluver in Singapore as a reference point. For the time being I want to cherish this little handicap.

internet - More sex in Shanghai

Ok, you sex-monsters. Yesterday I noted a spike in my visits and especially to my Amazon-shop. Today, compared to yesterday, traffic has doubled. But maybe you are not the intellectuels I thought you were: still nobody has actually bought a book today. Shame on you.
China Bounder of the Sex in Shanghai show has still not been located, but the traditional media have taken up the hunt too, writes Jonathan Watts of The Guardian , who saw his emails unanswered. But he has some nice figures:

Traffic on the Sex and Shanghai blog has surged from 500 hits to more than 17,000, thanks to a swarm of castration threats, anti-British rants and attacks on women who sleep with foreigners.

I wonder how you get those figures on traffic without actually talking to the owner. More tomorrow, I fear.

media - Voices divided on Foxconn-case

Danwei summarizes Chinese media voices on the high-profile Foxconn case, where the Taiwanese manufacturer singled out two reporters for publishing negative stories and got their assets frozen with a claim of 30 million Renminbi. While outrage has been rather common on the internet and in the Chinese media, Foxconn is also getting support from a range of media, notes Danwei.
Take Zhou Kecheng:

Are the China Business News reporters and editorial board worthy of our sympathy? No. This is because at present we cannot determine whether their report was factual. If their report truly was misleading, then they not only should compensate Foxconn for its losses.

The problem of course is that Foxconn sued two reporters, something that seems unlawful, in stead of the publication. Bingfeng Teahouse continues to give new links on this case.

Update I: CRS Asia points at a questionnaire by Sina where the online community has been asked about the Foxconn case. Over one thousand people per hour vote on the issue and most disagree with the approach Foxconn had chosen.

Update II: ESWN covers the often highly emotional reporting from the Chinese side. Earlier Imagethief covered the Foxconn side from a PR-perspective.

economy - Fan Gang returned to action

Yet another development I have missed. Professor Fan Gang has become a member of the monetary policy committee of the People's Bank of China, China's central bank. For a presentation in Australia he will talk about the nonsense of talk about upcoming revaluation of the Renminbi, writes AFX here. He is a person to watch. Non only is he a very nice person, speaks perfect English (although he picked it only up after he returned from the US, he told me once), he might have a more relaxed way in dealing with publicity too.
In the second half of the 1990s he was so much wanted for conferences and meetings on China, I sometimes wondered whether any other Chinese professors would ever match his popularity as a speaker. Fortunately, that has changed and more Chinese speakers are able to get a message across. Fan Gang seems to have dived more into the corporate business, but might appear a bit more in his new function.

internet - More about sex in Shanghai

I knew of course than when I started to write yesterday about the problems China Bounder got into with his Sex & Shanghai weblog that would be rather benificial for the traffic to my site. Sex works all the time, and Andrew Lih even noted that even a basically a-sexual website like Wikipedia get quite some traffic from sex-related searches. And wikipedia even has no pictures! Visits went through the roof, thank you all.
I discovered more. People who search for sex in Shanghai do read books. My counter at my Amazon-book store went crazy. Unfortunately, boys and girls, clicking on the links it really not enough to prove you do more than only think about sex. It is about time you actually buy some of those books.
Anyway, when you buy more books, I might put more sex into this blog. Who knows, even more pictures. Just prove you are worth it.

economy - And what has happened to Haier?

Thanks to the search engines I use, I stumbled by accident into this article on China's management style ; it just raised on question: what has happened to Haier?
For the newcomers in China it might make sense to explain who and what Haier actually is. Once upon a time there was a very inspiring CEO of an almost bankrupt company called Haier in Northeasther Qingdao. His name was Zhang Ruimin and he was able to turn this white-good manufacturer into a very profitable operation.
Haier became the first Chinese brand to open a factory in the US, in South Carolina.
The outspoken Zhang Ruimin was the darling of the journalists, foreign and Chinese, and Zhang appeared on almost every cover of US magazines. Haier even made it into a case study for Harvard Business School, creating the idea here was something emerging that might look like a Chinese style management, an indication of how Chinese managers would try to follow the example of Japan in going global.
Since then going global has become a key element of China's international policy, be it with not too encouraging results at this stage. So, the question is justified: what has happened to the first example of China's global aspirations? For years it has been quiet and Zhang Ruimin has disappeared. Am I missing here something?

internet - Sex blogger closes his website

Marc van der Chijs was the first one to note (at least on my radar screen) that the now famous China Bounder has used a new feature of blogger.com and only allows invited people on his site. A pity, just as he was making his international break-through. There is a huge debate going on in the US blogosphere whether Sex and Shanghai can still be called a blog. And a more urgent question: should I subscribe? When I cannot link to this blog, reading hardly makes sense.

Update: His stories are still showing up on my RSS-reader, but that might have happened before the site was closed.

media - Why Foxconn is evil

The Taiwanese iPod company Foxconn is suing two Chinese journalists and has asked a court in Shenzhen to freeze their assets, have noted many media. Foxconn was the supplier of Apple's iPod's, got accused by a British tabloid for its poor working conditions at facilities in Kunshan and Shenzhen, but was largely cleared after an investigation by Apple. The Bingfeng Teahouse summerized some of the links here.
So, I was largely confused by the stories when the Taiwanese decided to sue two journalists. Many Chinese media had followed the story, since the Taiwanese do have a bad reputation in the mainland. But normally Chinese journalists are not being sued in court. Most Chinese media have a close relationship with parts of the government and you have or more efficient ways to get what you want, or private parties just put up with what they write, since getting into trouble with them is causing only more problems.
Non-violent resistance now explained it to me and I must agree, Foxconn is an evil company.

Words in the Chinese press circles are, that FoxConn, therefore Hon Hai, had deliberately picked the two journalists from China Business News to sue in a painstaking plot to harrass and intimidate media outlets and journalists. After all, China Business News was not the only newspaper that doggedly followed the iPod sweatshop story. It seems that FoxConn, before launching the much criticized lawsuit, had also considered targeting 21st Century Economic Herald, another popular business newspaper who had similarly covered the story. But FoxConn's lawyers, after much investigation, found out that the 21st Century reporters who were involved in reporting the story had solid, formal employment contracts with the paper -- therefore, unlikely to be held as legitimate defendants in a court.

He expects this is going to be "Foxconn's worse PR crisis in the mainlaind", perhaps more negative than the original stories the journalists were going after.

The arrogance and viciousness of the Taiwanese electronics giant is simply unbearable.

While protected by the state, Taiwanese companies do have a very bad reputation among Chinese and this story might act as a trigger.
Here is the first story by Non-violent resistance about the issue.

internet - Sex in the city gets a Chinese turn

The sexual adventures by a foreign teacher in Shanghai were only discovered in China itself after his blockspot-site got unblocked a few weeks ago. This foreign (and pretty tame) male version of sexblogger Muzi Mei. But, as Marc van der Chijs also noted, there comes an extra dimension to it when a foreigner is doing this kind of stuff so publicly.
First the "Who Is Chinabounder" site sets up a witchhunt", trying to "ferret" the writer out. Some of the commentors says "this is funny" as more details emerge, but I tend to disagree here. Says one commentor:

leave chinabounder alone, guys. I am Chinese. Although I don't agree with him on many issues, I don't mind reading his words. After all, you can not rid off the prejudice by shutting him up

But the issue has been liften on an, eh, higher, level by professor Zhang Jiehai of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences who really goes after out English-language teacher. (Here in a translation by ESWN).

Today, with tremendous anger, I will tell you the story of an immoral foreigner and I call upon all Chinese compatriots to get together and kick this immoral foreigner out of China.

This is how it is: Several days ago, a friend told me about a blog run by an English man in Shanghai. I read it and I was shocked, angered and disgusted ... after I read his blog, I had only one idea: This is intolerable and this piece of garbage must be found and kicked out of China!!!

In his blog, he used extremely obscene and filthy language to record how he -- a foreign language teacher in Shanghai -- used his status as a teacher to dally with Chinese women, most of whom were his students. At the same time, he did everything that he could to insult, debase and distort the Chinese government and the Chinese men.

At least our teacher has noted the dangerous turn this story has taken. Cultural Revolution style prosecutions at the internet are unfortunately not uncommon. This has become a story to watch.