internet - Thursday Skypecast on China and business

On Thursday I will host an informal exchange on the internet, a skypecast on China and business. I have been participating in a few of these skypecast and it can be fun, if somebody shows up, of course.
I picked the time (ten in the evening, Beijing Time) because in Asia we are back from dinner, in Europe they are not yet away for dinner and at the American side of the globe, people might partly be awake. Very hard to find the right timing, but if I would do it later, Asia would go to sleep. Apologies for the Aussies.

internet - Wikipedia blocked again

After the initial cheers when the blockade of Wikipedia fell and its traffic surged, now the IP-blocks are back in place again, reports Andrew Lih.
Now, why would that happen? Unblocking the Wikipedia IP-address was - as others also have noted - perhaps because the keyword filtering has been improved, so flat blocks were no longer needed, the censor thought.
It looks like Wikipedia has been used to test that assumption. When my assumption is right (assuming things is very popular in these cases), then the test has failed: the keyword filtering is not good enough to replace the IP-blocks.
So, we use or proxies again. I wonder what effect it has on the Wikipedia traffic.

labor - Only better productivity can avoid labor conflicts - FLA

Can companies in China pay their workers a decent wage, avoid problems with overtime and still make a profit? Yes, says the former South-African labor activist Auret van Heerden, who is now working in China in Business Week. Many of the current problems are caused by the extremely badly work organization in China.

One is that the brands book and confirm orders really late. And they often change their orders after booking. The brands want to order later and they don't want to hold product. Then you add price pressures into that and it is really tough for the supplier [to not overwork its workers]. But the factory often doesn't order the materials until too late and they are often delivered late [to the factory], too. The factory production layout is often a mess, so the supplier gets behind schedule and over budget even before they know it. Then they have to catch up. And to save money, they extend hours, but don't pay overtime premiums. And the suppliers also lack proper training. The styles [of clothing and footwear] are becoming more complicated and are changing more frequently.

The CEO of Fair Work Association elaborates on codes of conducts and auditing procedures, but most important is that companies should get their act together:

Productivity improvements in the factory are very important. I started working on labor rights and got into areas like productivity and supply chain management. I never thought I would deal with these kinds of issues. But until they get resolved, China will continue to have overtime problems.

internet - Haier accused of manipulating the web

A highly detailed document from white-good producer Haier in Qingdao has appeared today on BBS's disclosing its policy to manipulate the internet in a positive way. The interal document (available here in Chinese) orders local branches of Haier to post highly positive articles. Based on 12 keywords on Baidu, the most authorative BBS's will be identified and branches of Haier have to localize five articles they get every week from the headquarters and post them.
The headquarter will check the results and give incentives to branches with good results, if they fail to do their job, they will get a 100 Rmb fine.
Manipulating the internet in such a way is considered to be a nono in the US, where recently Wal-Mart and PR-firm Edelman had to apologize for their mistake when employees had set up a fake weblog. According to Sam Flemming of CIC Date, speaking earlier this week on Mobile Monday in Shanghai, he sees sometimes such efforts to manipulate the internet in China too. "What you would see is 60, 70 highly negative of highly positive comments on a company or brand name," he said. "But considering that every days millions of comments appear on the internet, I consider this not to be a very effective strategy."
Flemming then did not know about the highly sophisticated strategy by Haier.
Haier is an official sponsor of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The company was highly succesful in the 1990s and subject of many articles in international magazines and even a Harvard case study.

internet - Qihoo moves ahead with second round VC-money

The search engine Qihoo got a second round of VC capital of over 20 million US dollar, reports Venture Beat, despite - or maybe because of - a high-profile brawl between founder Zhou Hongyi and Alibaba-chief Jack Ma, also owner of Yahoo China.
Qihoo is focusing its searches on Chinese weblogs and BBS's, making the number three search engine in China to a useful contribution.
Dan Nova of Highlands will be joining the board on behave of the investors and comments on the legal battle:

Nova said he is not concerned about potential lawsuits. Zhou is not a liability, he said, noting that Zhou has demonstrated his prowess and integrity by founding search company 3721 (later bought by Yahoo), and by the fact that his backers at 3721 (IDG, for example) are backing him again at Qihoo. “He’s a rock-star among Chinese entrepreneurs,” Nova said.

internet - What works and does not work in China

Andrew Lih, who is currently working on a book on Wikipedia from Beijing, used the happy occasion of the unblocking of Wikipedia in China to write up some thoughts on what works and what does not work in China.

What doesn't work? Pushing China solely on issues of freedom of speech, civil liberties for the sake of human rights. It's just too easy to dismiss these as meddling, imperialistic Western viewpoints used as wedge issues. Do not forget, China was the victim of imperialistic designs which still have a deep effect on the psyche of Chinese leaders and issues of trust.

What does work? Asking China to join the community, because China's knowledge workers are missing out on the best resource in the world and a resource that US and Indian engineers, scientists, academics and citizens are already using to increase their economic competitiveness. That's the economic argument.

Hear, hear. This argument might still not be popular amongst some of China's critics. But unless self-satisfaction is your target (and the funding of quite some NGO's is still based on China-bashing) it does make sense to develop a strategy that works.

economy - Price war expected between MBA-programs

Most of the famous Chinese universities have signed up with a wide range of foreign universities to deliver MBA-courses in China. For example Fudan in Shanghai has already five of such arrangements, who have to compete for students.
One of the ways to do so succesfully in China is by lowering the prices and discussions at some of the BBS's suggest that just this is going to happen. Cheapers found offer at this stage is a 14-course MBA-course in financial management at Tsinghua in Beijing where a program together with Virginia University costs 59,500 Rmb (US $7,500). When you actually want to go to Virginia University you pay an extra 43,500 Rmb (US$ 5,500). That price will go down, we are sure.

media - SFCC-lecture on Aids

The Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club is hosting a gathering on HIV where Chung To, founder of the Hong Kong based Chi Heng Foundation will be speaking on tackling prejudices. Those are two reasons to go, since the SFCC has not been active in the past few months. The meeting will be held at the third floor of FACE (building 4, Ruijin Park), on November 22 at 7:30. Non-members have to pay 50 Rmb,

telecom - China Unicom backs out of first 3G-tests

For the upcoming rush towards the deployment of the third generation mobile communication, China Unicom seems to be the first casuality. One of its top managers said the smaller of the two current mobile providers did not participate in the first purchasing order for TD-SCDMA phones, AFX writes. China Mobile, China Telecom and China Netcom do participate.
Unicom was always expected to have not enough deep pockets to rollout a nationwide 3G system by itself and a combination with China Netcom has been suggested. Since not participating would mean a certain death in the long run, perhaps Unicom will try to focus on expanding its current GSM or CDMA from 2 into 3G.

media - Editors rebel against SCMP chief editor

Over eighty newsroom staffers of the South China Morning Post have signed a petition against their editor Mark Clifford. Clifford fired two editors after they made an inhouse spoof of the paper for a colleague, writes Asia Sentinel (h/t to Danwei).
Clifford tries to do what even the Chinese censor cannot do: stop spoofing. Danwei:

If Clifford loses his job at the SCMP, perhaps SARFT will offer him a job heading up an anti-online-spoof task force. There's always room for another hack with no sense of humor in China's media regulatory bodies.

from the ABC little chick site in Xanga

internet - An ABC-chick in Shanghai

Mostly I tend to ignore weblogs by just-arriving foreigners. They are all a little bit the same, dealing with the same boring problems, based on the same prejudices about China they cannot escape, even when they are here.
The famous China Blog List is still a tool I would use, but very seldom I would be inclined to visit the new blogs. When they are worthwhile, they will pop up at my radar screen in another way. Now, I had to make an exception for a relative newcomer, an ABC-chick in Shanghai. (Unfortunately, on blogger, so you have to use a proxy.)
Judging from the comments I'm a late-comer in finding this weblog. It is not a racy as its male predecessor Sex in Shanghai, but certainly fun to read, although the number of entries is really low. A little taste:

I have to admit, I am one of them. Giving the other beautiful girls a fierce glance, but in fact it is just another worthless envious gaze. We girls know what we are doing in this club: we are not there because of the tasty drinks, not because of the cool music, but because of the guys, to get as much attention as possible from the guys. In Shanghai it is also much easier to hook up than in Belgium. The reason for that is the boost of my confidence everytime I'm in Shanghai. A sweet smile will take you far enough to catch the guy's attention.

Since it shares the same tune in its URL (Chinaboundress) as Sex in Shanghai there is room to suspect a nice little set-up by creative sociologists who want to explore the online behavior of the English-language internet in China. But, hey, as long as they can write well, who cares?

Update: The dime only fell very late. This weekend we had a bit of a drinking session with James Farrer, a good friend and the most eminent sociologist on sex in China, who was over for a short trip from Tokyo. This kind of research is right up in his alley. He had lost his voice, he did a good job at drinking, so I did not ask him too many questions when he evaded mine on why he was in China. If I would know about it and was bribed enough to shut up, I would not have written this. Anyway, truth will prevail, although we do not know yet when.

internet - Community building is key

Chen Luyi of the China Web2.0 Review also gives his report of yesterday's Mobile Monday, I reported about earlier. He quotes also the CEO of Wangyou, Ye Ling, who said he was earlier misunderstood by Robert Scoble when he compared Wangyou with YouTube. I reported on that discussion, so amplified that misunderstanding.
Building a community is what makes Wangyou different, and a similar sound I noted yesterday from other online ventures too. There is still a discussion possible on whether Chinese sites can also compete globally, but stressing the community-building talents is key. And such a feature is very hard to transfer to a global stage.

life - Identifying a hotel in Shanghai

The other day it was a hit again. "Shall we meet in the Marriot hotel?" asked a person who wanted to meet me.
I had not clue where to go to. Hotels are emerging in this city like mushrooms and as a Shanghai veteran people just think you know all these five- and fourstar hotels. Of course, I could not admit I did not know where this person wanted to meet, so I used a trick. "What Marriot Hotel?" I asked.
Even if there would be only one Marriot Hotel, this person would possibly not know and certainly would not be willing to admit that. So my days was saved. Later I looked it up at the internet: there are at least two Marriot Hotels. The Holiday Inn has already three, the Radisson two. And the Regal has two, but one was not even at my list. Even hotel-websites can make mistakes.
The upsetting part is: while hundreds of rooms are added regularly to this city's hospitality industry the rates are going up. This city is getting even crazier than it was.

internet - Found another Jajah-subscriber

You might have followed my trouble in getting my Jajah-account in place. Now that is working fine, only identifying other Jajah-subscribers (a prerequisite for free calls) has not been that easy. Even keeping my friends in Europe on the system is hard, since you are kicked out if you do not make calls for two weeks. Receiving calls does not count.
Well, thanks to a little scanning of the internet I found Ting Ting, a Fullbright scholar who is in the process of getting very frustrated in Yunnan. And jules is actually having a Jajah-account. His phone was busy, probably getting calls from all those other Jajah-people. I will try later again.

Update: Ah, had not seen this before but here is an explanation of Jajah in manderin,

labor - Trade union complaints about Chinese companies

The trade union in Zimbabwe has complained about the Chinese companies in their country and their lack of environmental awareness, African media report. It says the government seems to be protecting the Chinese investors.

politics - Lei Feng banned from condoms

The nifty businessman from Ningbo who sold condoms from the Lei-Feng brand, has to take the national hero of the package, AP reports.

internet - Wimax heading for China

As the deployment of 3G is still lingering, alternative equipment for mobile broadband communication will hit China at the beginning of 2007, says Hwan Woo Chung, a vice president of Samsung Mobile Wimax in CIO.com. Wimax is providing at low cost, lower than 3G, broadband connections that are faster than those provided by 3G.
Wimax is mostly seen as an alternative for 3G for example in rural areas with few customers, but could easily develop into a competitor if it is put in place on a larger scale before 3G. His current customers in China want to use Wimax for special events, says the Samsung representative, not for national deployment.

internet - Wikipedia faces new challenges after lifting of the block

Last week the IP-block on the Chinese wikipedia suddenly disappeared and our Wikipedia-man Andrew Lih had a fast peek at the stats. They have gone up to the roof, at least showing that the blocking sceptics (and I was one of them) have been wrong: IP-blocks do bring down the traffic quite a lot.
Now wikipedia faces new challenges, as the floods of the internet really open. Andrew Lih:

This sharp growth is certainly exciting, but it will truly test this community to absorb this volume of newbies so quickly. Get those neutral point of view and wiki markup tutorials in place.Before the lifting of the block, a quarter of the active contributors were from Hong Kong, another quarter from Taiwan. The rest were a mix from Singapore, Malaysia, US, Canada, PRC and other places. That’s going to shift in a major way, starting this week.

Keeping your fingers crossed is not going to be enough: some people will have to work really very hard. Good luck to them.

internet - Mobile content moving fast

Just returned from a very pleasant and useful Mobile Monday here in Shanghai. Have been shaking hands with a few fellow webloggers and some of my readers I had never met before, like Chen Luyi of Jiaotong University, who recognized me from the picture on this blog, as did a few others.
The subject of the evening, user generated content of UGS, was a good choice. It is big in China and it is going to be even bigger when 3G is taking off very soon. No comprehensive story here but a few highlights of the evening.
I liked the application Mu Rong of Peptalk showed us. You do not have to be much of a profet to see how especially the youngsters are going to take the online conversation mobile, using this nice platform. Very soon you have to buy your girlfriend virtual presents here.
Sam Flemming had the most analytical approach. A few of his remarks and the discussion it sparked off:
- According to Alexa QQ is already much bigger than MySpace. Although we all have our misgivings about Alexa's way of counting, it is still a measurement.
- Baidu is winning from Google not because of its search function, but because of its community-like bonding with its users, for example in BBS's. Community building is big in China, as also Marc van de Chijs of (amongst others) Tudou.com noted, who made a surprise appearance at the panel.
- When you compare online conversation in China and the US, in China there are ten times more messages on mobiles compared to the US. Mobile is a hot issue.
- User generated content is becoming mainstream, pushing away the established media. New stars are born on the internet, not like in the past on Chinese TV.
- Blue collar workers use more often mobiles than the internet; they tend to focus on pictures rather than text and, boy, you can see a lot of bad working places.

politics - AIDS: from a crime to a health crisis

The New York Times has a great, eh, also shocking story about 31-year old Almijian, a former heroin addict in Xinjiang province. He explains how he avoided to get AIDS, unlike his friends who shared needles, women and ultimately also AIDS.
His treatment with methadone illustrates also the great shift in the attitude of the government towards AIDS, from treating its victims like criminals into health victims.
It does not change the gruesome figures from Xinjiang: ten percent of China's AIDS-cases is from this muslim province.
(I will replace the link with one from the International Herald Tribune, when the story is available there.)