Internet traffic is up again

Just checked my figures and I noticed that traffic to this weblog has gone up, not dramatically, but still. While we still have a week to go, today I passed the figures of February. Daily visitors according to Awstats is around 1,600 per day, while it was last month around 1,300. The number of visitors through RSS-feeds is pretty stable at 1,850.
Not sure how to explain it, but the change in lay-out seems the main reason for the spike (and the lack of spike at the RSS-feeds, since there you do not see the change). A few people let me know that the navigation on the site is much easier after the revamp, and it was of course about time I changed my awful previous lay-out.

Xi Jinping

White smoke for Shanghai's party secretary

It took a while before previous rumors proved to be false, but the former Zhejiang party secretary Xi Jinping has now moved to Shanghai, write state media and international agencies.
Xi Jinping belongs to a family that has been associated with economic reforms in China since they took off at the end of the 1970s. He belongs to the so-called princelings, the son of a former communist leader Xi Zhongxun.

Maria Trombly

Outsourcing journalism to China

You thought that China was good in making only teddy bears and jeans. Think again. Maria Trombly writes in a great column for the SPJ International Journalism Committee about her Shanghai-operation in working for mainly US-based trade publications.
Reuters has already been outsourcing to India, but Maria takes that process a step further, using staff in India to leverage the poorer language skills in China.
From her apartment in Shanghai, she recently moved to a real office, but the real action is online.

... once we had the online editorial workflow system set up, it became easy to plug people into it anywhere in the world. So there's a copy editor in Paris, for example, who uses the database to fact-check our payments stories and to answer questions from editors in Chicago while we're all asleep. And a reporter in India, Jojo Puthuparampil, uses the database to to file information on payments and securities stories. Jojo is great -- he's the most experienced of my writers, with several years covering business and stock markets for Indian papers. And he writes in fluent English, with only the occasional British "colour" or "centre" throw in.

I have been seeing Maria's operation take off from the side-lines, so can vouch her record is a pretty accurate one. What is missing is the blood, sweat and tears behind it. It sounds all very easy in the way Maria describes her China operation, but it is not. You do need an almost pathological optimistic outlook on the world to succeed her. Maria fortunately has.
In the already longer term discussion on the future of the foreign correspondent, Maria Trombly has added her own solution.

O yes. Maria is going to be one of the prominent people in our upcoming China Speakers' Bureau once she finds the time to answer some basic questions we asked her. We are sure that will be done very soon, so drop us a line if you are interested in hear Maria speak.

Jumping in the sea, joining the Shanghai stock exchange

After much talking and discussing, even a minor trust crisis, we are going to make the jump into the unruly waters of the Shanghai stock market.

Of course, my first loyalty goes to my investors, who have given my their very conditional trust. After we have made our move, we can you the might of this weblog and you can push the rate up higher. We talk again on this on Monday.

Shanghai stock market: waiting for US$ 78 bn to soak up

The mood at the Shanghai stock market remains optimistic as it prepares to soak up US$ 78 billion worth of previously non-tradable shares, report different media. That is the beginning of a much larger operation as there are still US$ 250 billion worth of shares that will be released on the markets in the years to come.
The rumor of a similar operation caused at the beginning of this century a plunge of the stock market that continued till last year, because shareholders feared the loss of the value of the existing stock. China's state-owned companies typically only floated one-third of their assets on the stock market, keeping the majority under governmental control.
But unlike the situation at the beginning of this century, now the shareholders have more confident in this massive operation, partly because also the liquidity of the market is no problem and the government want to dose the process without disturbing the market too much.

The brewing tea-for-urine scandal

No shortage of nice stories these days. I have not yet blogged about the tea-for-urine scandal that emerged in the hospitals in Hangzhou, but could have happened everywhere in China. Investigating reporters handed in ten tea samples in stead of urine for testing in ten Hangzhou hospitals. Five got the advised to take a rather expensive treatment for an ailment they did not have.
"Patients have become the ATM-machines for the hospitals," the Southern Metropolis Daily commented.
That is of course no news: the health care is badly organized in China. Doctors get a too much salary, so they are inclined to make money on the sales of medicine and expensive treatments. Of course the doctors and the hospitals are to blame, but also the government seems to be unable to deal with this rather key industry in many people's lives.
This is going to have a long tail too. No wonder in some cities medical staff has to wear protective helmets against angry patients and their families.

Spoofing the Chongqing house struggle

Yan Bing, the husband of Wu Ping, has now also reached celebrity status. Another pick up from Global Voices.

Mrs Wu Ping receives the media

Citizens report from the Chongqing site

John Kennedy documents for Global Voices the fallout on the internet of the Chongqing house of Mrs Wu Ping.
Many first hand reports from citizens who went to the place themselves.

I just got back from the scene. It’s not as busy there as I’d imagined, about two-three hundred Chongqing residents standing nearby on the bridge, on the railway track, supporting old Yang, just sixty to eighty meters away from old Yang’s fortress! Someone named Lin is down there organizing everyone to shout to old Yang, ‘be brave..!’ Old Yang flashed the flashlight over a few times in response! Old Yang is staying strong, keeping calm!

Who needs TV here?

the Chongqing house

Also Mr. Wuping now jumps into action

Venture 160 is on top of things after he earlier today translated the CCTV-interview with Mrs. Wuping, now he has the story (and the picture) on Mr. Yang Wuping who has re-occupied the house, waving the Chinese flag from the roof.

Now the Wuping's have secured the help of the central government in their struggle, the case is fast becoming a dimension faster. Without doubts there will be thousands of potential Wuping's watching this repport, where the central and local political forces collide, rush out to buy a flag and wait for a crew of CCTV to arrive. This mouse is going to have a very long tail.

Hundreds of thousands join the stock exchange

Billsdue is back blogging with a pointer to an article showing that in one week about 100,000 news accounts were being opened to join the Shanghai stock exchange. Those numbers have never been achieved in the past, when 50,000 new accounts was considered to be a high number.

Mrs Wuping

Chongqing's incredible house gets a face

You might remember the pictures I published earlier (as this many others) on the incredible house in Chongqing and the many stories that were emerging on the internet.
While the local media could not publish about the most famous house in Chongqing, the stories kept on spreading on the internet, often hardly based on any facts. But that forced national media like CCTV to bring the story and Venture160 did a great job in translating the interview. It is a very nice combination of story-lines and illustrates how courts, property developers, local government and the media interact, with the internet as a major destructive force (from almost every perspective.)

Internet rules in China's big cities

Jan van de Bergh links to this otherwise unlinkable article in AdAgeChina, indicating how fast the internet is taking over from the traditional TV. Shanghai is already on its knees - as we might have noted ourselves alrady. Cities like Chengdu are following fast:

"Many surfers regard news on the internet as being more trustworthy. Six out of ten surfers in Shanghai consider the web to be the most helpful information source, while TV came first with only one out of ten people. Online media also achieves dominance in terms of being viewed as the most helpful source when making actual purchase decisions in Shanghai (30% for online versus 11% for TV).

In Chengdu, meanwhile, TV remains king, but this is probably because the penetration of computer ownership there lags behind Shanghai. However, the dominance of TV in Chengdu, and other second-tier cities, will be short-lived. Already one-fifth of young adults in Chengdu rate the internet as their most preferred leisure activity, while TV captures the hearts of one-quarter. It is just a matter of time before the internet also dominates TV in most of China's second-tier cities. And once it does, you will see change occurring like a revolution--in media, commerce and culture."

Now, what would it be nice if ad revenue would follow this trend.

New media hangout in Shanghai

Maria Trombly - who else? - has initiated a tradition that used to be so common among journalists and other media people: a weekly hang-out with alcohol. This evening is the first get-together at the Literature Club at Julu Lu 677 (near Shanxi Lu). Start at 8 PM and it looks like I will drop in, although it might be a little bit later.

Dell goes for cheap

A few interesting left-overs from yesterday. I'm doing too many things these days that cannot be blogged. But the news that computer manufacturer Dell is going to produce cheap computers in China was special.
I have been blogging about Dell's strategy in China before and just as other companies like Ikea and Best Buy, who came to China and seemed to give up on their core business model: offering consumers a cheap offer.
The suggestion: foreign companies have a hard time to compete on price with their domestic competitors. Now, Dell resumes also in China its competitive approach.

Would you do a brain scan in China?

A good friend just passed by, his face somewhat in tatters. A few days ago he fell while playing soccer in Beijing on the tarmac and was a few seconds unconscious. Now he needs to get a brain scan, since he still feels a bit dizzy and his family wants to be sure nothing is wrong.
Now, there is no shortage of brain scanning equipment in the Chinese hospitals. Doctors love to buy it, since it is a fast way to get some money under the table. Only nobody uses them, because they are too expensive. The doctors have very little experience and lack the skills of interpreting the results. So my friend decided to go to Hong Kong for the scan, despite the extra costs.
What would you do?

Nanny hitting out to weblog hosts again

Danwei signals that foreign weblog hosts like Livejournal, Xanga, and Blogspot are on the hitlist of the internet censor again. As usual there is not really a clue why this is happening. The comments give some good additional information.

Update: Yee gives some tips on how blogspot-users can circumvent the block.

Another online addiction

Don't say I did not warn you in advance. Do no click on any links here, they are fatal for your productivity.
I already mentioned I signed up for Twitter. That was ok and if you want, you can find me here.
But what was really a very cool application is this map, Twittervision, where you can follow the global conversation. After ten minutes you think it is boring and then somebody else in Shanghai pops up. And you see your own contribution passing by. Now they are trying to get somebody in Greenland twittering, those twitterholics, but that might be a tough call.

Anothr.com drives me crazy

I have been reviewing a new RSS-reader that works over Skype, Anothr.com, some time ago. Then I was not 100 percent positive, but saw some advantages. I kept it running, also to check their performance over a longer time, but it looks like I'm going to kick them off.

Sometimes, nothing happens for days. Not that bad, since I use my regular Google RSS-readers. But then at some days, like today, they keep on sending me the same two or three feeds. Looks like I'm going to erase it.

Twelve companies take pledge against child labor, excessive overtime

Twelve global companies had committed themselves during a meeting in Shenzhen not to work with companies that use child labor or ask excessive overtime from their workers, China CSR reports.
The companies include Brookstone, one of the larger retailers in the US, and Kesa Electronics, the third largest retailer of electronic products in Europe.

They say that price will not be the top priority they consider in their negotiations with the goods suppliers, and they will immediately terminate cooperation with any factories that are found to employee children or ask employees to work too much overtime.

The pledge was done during a Global Sources Private Sourcing event in Shenzhen. The move comes at a moment when traditional ways of upholding corporate social responsibility by companies of monitoring their suppliers is becoming increasingly less useful, as suppliers finds easy ways around the policing by their customers.
No details on how the pledge will be executed were available.

Google translation tool works only in a few cases

After last week's initial enthusiasm about the new Google translation tool, I decided to ask different people to check how the translation works out in their languages. I was able to investigate 14 different translations and the results do not look that good. For languages I do not speak I got help from my audience, most of the translations into English I checked myself.
Perhaps Google offers a huge improvement compared to for example Altavista's Babelfish, but in most cases the translations are not really usable.
What goes reasonably well, is translating Chinese into English, but the other way around is a disaster, for reasons mentioned here. Chinese has too many homonyms and Google gets only 50 percent right - and you have to guess what fifty percent.
The only good score - in both directions - is for Russian, other languages do poorly.
Philippe: "you have to guess from the context what it actually is supposed to say". German into English sucks, I concluded after trying to translated a chapter of my book on China into English.
Joerg Kilian thinks the service also sucks in German and retranslated a German translation into English of my entry on Chinese airplanes:

Not in the foreseeable future, I think. The condition gremium of China, the highest administrative organ, announced that the country would be ready for a larger commercial area (surface) for at least 150 passengers, rainsing the reported media.
After five decades development things were ready the official newsagency Xinhua reported. If I would be responsable I would let them try something more harmless like movable telephones.

I think it is the general problem. You could make sense out of it, when you know the original. But that defies the need to use a translation tool.
Mariab on Italian:

the translation of your blog in ITALIAN is quite inaccurate, actually in some parts is not really understandable. I think it works only for simple phrases with a quite linear structure.

Juan Pablo Cardenal:

translation into Spanish not good. Very confusing.

My advise: do not use it when translation is really important, the chance to create misunderstandings is just too huge. It reminds me of several situations where translators were not too sure about their own skills and just prayed nobody of the delegations they were helping would speak both languages. They are very good in holding up appearances. It is partly psychological: you want others to understand you, so you all too easy assume they do so.

A new magazine on Asia I must have missed

I might be giving away a secret here, but there seems to be a new weekly around, English language and published in Hong Kong. It seems to have been around since the end of 2006 and they have been doing a good job in hiding themselves.
Today I get an invitation for a 6-month free trial and that is of course an offer I cannot refuse. I rushed to their website, to check their online presence. There is a website but that is almost all I can report. There is no content and certainly no updated content. There are no names of contributors, although the email I received indicates that Jasper Becker is involved. But otherwise no clue.
No online commentaries are possible, no track back, but then, who needs it when there is no content. I guess I might get in a few weeks time an envelope with content. Might report on that if it is worthwhile.

Update: Ah, it is only six weeks. We will see.

Can China compete with Airbus and Boeing?

Not in the foreseeable future, I think. China's state council, the highest administrative organ, announced the country was ready to build a larger commercial plane for at least 150 passengers, media reported.
After five decades of development, things were ready, the official newsagency Xinhua reported. If I would be in charge, I would let them first try something more harmless, like mobile phones.

Mark Clifford

SCMP loses its chief-editor

Mark Clifford, chief editor of the South China Morning Post, will leave his post after only one year on the job, reports Rebecca MacKinnon. He leaves the SCMP before the major changes he has helped to prepare, have taken place. One of the key changes was merging the print and online operation of the now still unlinkable SCMP. His year at the Post has been marked by many incidents.
Clifford will become the executive director of the Asian Business Council.

Amazon keeps on refusing my business

I got little feedback on my complaint that Amazon was no longer shipping their books to China. One person actually used my weblog to order a book that I could not get.
So, to avoid any possible misunderstanding, I tried it again, on different addresses and always I got this message. Seems that I have to ship the books to people who might take it along in their luggage when they come to China.

HR-experts more positive about China's talent pool

In their verdicts about China's talent pool, I see a remarkable change towards a positive assessments, compared with the first decades of China's development. This is what Irv Beiman writes in his latest column for Chinabiz:

My prediction: During the next ten years China will experience a dramatic improvement in strategic management. This will build on tangible improvements in
national infrastructure and intangible improvements in organizational infrastructure that are being put into place. There will be an increasing emphasis on defining strategic objectives via strategy maps, measuring progress toward those objectives via balanced scorecards, and using a consistent high quality strategic management process to drive the activities and adjustments necessary for success.

He is reacting on an earlier piece by IMD-professor Bill Fischer, who wrote:

This is all about the Power of Soft-Power, and, ironically, although we've often spoken, in this column, of the unrelenting economic burden of China's vast population; when it comes to soft power, this same vast population becomes a reservoir of ideas, ambition, and talent. In this revolution, it's the individual that is the engine of the Sinocization of our future. What a reversal of fortune and perception: Chairman Mao used to speak of the singular power of China's masses, but what we're seeing here is the massive power of single Chinese.

Over the weekend I had a meeting with a seasoned HR-director with a long-term experience in China. His major challenge, it has been said here before, is dealing with the headquarters in trying to explain why he is doing the things his way in China.

Still no progress on the 3G development

China's two weeks of formal decision making are over and still no word on the licenses for the third generation mobile communication, 3G. Business Weeks goes so far to suggest that what seemed a clear winner, China's own standard TD-SCDMA, is because of the ongoing delays has turned into a sure loser.

So even when TD-SCDMA is finally ready, Chinese telecom operators are unlikely to embrace it. Chances are at least one of the state-owned operators will have no choice but to use it, but as a consolation prize they will also be allowed to operate the more popular and proven global standards.

A lot of political prestige has been connected to this project. While China is doing economically very well, developing its own standards has been high on the agenda, but met with very little success. When the TD-SCDMA is going to be a receipt for disaster, we might see some political consequences too.

Registered for Twitter

I have seen so many messages passing by on Twitter, I had to try it myself. Now, I'm on it. I can invite all my friends on my email contacts to join me, but that is rather intrusive. So, I will leave it with this message. Feel free to sign me up, if you are too on Twitter.