And now: Baidu.tv

That's China has a nice follow up on my earlier story where I told how a European company "obtained" the name Baidu and used it for their marketing in Europe. That is of course not done, but Baidu has not taken any action and now, according to That's China, the company has also bought baidu.tv. And they are looking for a VC: hope that VC employs a few good lawyers.

Prof. Liu's ignored call for justice

Liu Cheng

Recently professor Liu Cheng, one of the academics who has been working on China's new labor law, returned from a lobby tour in the United States. He supported the pro-labor forces who accused US pro-business organizations of eroding the Chinese draft labor law for their own interests.

Liu has been one of the moderate forces in the Chinese discussion on the labor law, compared to some of his colleagues in Beijing. When I visited his office at the end of last year (I have never met Liu personally) and discovered both the Chinese and foreign discussion on the labor law were following different tracks. So getting Liu to the US seemed a good idea.

Yesterday I got a powerpoint presentation with his arguments, but initially I decided to ignore the issue here on this weblog, since compared with the past, it did not entail really new arguments. And a Chinese professor lobbying the US in favor of a Chinese law could have been a nice story when he left, but this was old news.

So, I decided mainly to inform the members of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents and told them they could get a copy of the presentation if they were interested. Now, I'm 30 emails further and it looks like some people are getting a bit excited. Also for the people at Shanghai Amcham Liu's lobby tour was news and they are supposed to be on top of that discussion. I'm mainly amazed that one of my emails seems to be much more effective than a lobby tour in the US.

So, if you are to interested in this presentation, do drop me an email.

Hello sister cities in China

A little detail in the otherwise brilliant speech of premier Wen Jiabao to the Japanese Diet confirmed my earlier observations that this is a bloody big country. This is what Wen said and that triggered my imagination:

There are now 233 pairs of sister cities, and over 4.8 million mutual visits were made in 2006.

Imagine: this is only Japan. In my own Holland there are also a few sister cities, and what about the rest of the world. The positive side for China is of course in the second part of the sentence. These sister cities tend to travel quite a lot. Having sister cities was a nice instrument in the early days of China's opening up, but let's be honest, nowadays it is just an excuse for a trip on tax-payers' expenses.

Is not attributing a little bit stealing?

I'm too busy making some money so I cannot bother you each hour with a breaking story. But every now and then I see a nice story and write that up with proper attribution. That is not only because attribution and linking to the original source is a golden rule on the internet. It is also not because I think it is fair to pay tribute to the original source, kind of intellectual property thing. Sometimes original sources are simply wrong and it is always nice in those cases if you can pass on the blame to others you have quoted.
This week I picked up a funny story about bibles that became too expensive because of Chinese smokers. Of course I linked back to the original story in the Dutch newspaper, and that newspaper said it picked up the story in the German magazine Der Spiegel.
Now, this story turned up today at the rather obscure China newsportal Jongo. I'm monitoring their home page because they have no rss-feed (so what else to do?) and I will meet some of their people on Monday to talk about possible cooperation. Now, it is ok to call this article "Jongo News", since they ad their own tidbits. But where are the attributions? It does not mention my weblog, the Dutch newspaper or Der Spiegel. Of course, they add their own things, but this comes close to, eh, stealing. Can I now admit this story was a fake? Just to expose this kind wrong doing? Only people who read Dutch or German will know the truth.

Update: Even Der-Spiegel readers who missed the story link back to this weblog.

Baidu Japan blocked

The new Japanese service of China's largest search engine Baidu, got blocked, discovered Yee today. We already started the count-down at the end of March as we discovered large amounts of soft porn on this new service. You can get to the porn from China when you use a proxy like here, a test we did only for scientific reasons.

A new nail house in Shenzhen

Isn't it a beauty? Simon World cuts-and-pasts from the otherwise unlinkable South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Mr. Choi and this wife got inspiration from the earlier success in Chongqing:

He admits he has been inspired by a Chongqing couple who held out for 11 days, while their house stood on a mound in the middle of 10-metre-deep pit, until the developers paid up. "The couple is my model. I'm sure I will win this battle as they did," Mr Choi said of the pair, whose home was dubbed the "coolest nail house" - slang for holdouts who refuse to be hammered down while their houses stand erect like nails after those around are demolished.

Rounding up more unusual suspects

Du Xiangcheng

The anti-corruption fight caught a few unusual suspects. Du Xiangcheng, himself a anti-corruption fighter in Hunan province, was caught with a Russian prostitute. Of course, many - especially those with an internet connection - expect here foul play.

Zhou Liangluo, party secretary of the Haidian district in Beijing, got also entangled in corruption accusations. It seems major cleaning up time before the new political season starts after the summer.

Weekly gathering at the Cotton Bar

Why did I go this evening to the Cotton Bar, the weekly journo-drinks set up by Maria Trombly? (It's me on the right, the best picture) Nice conversations, nice people and every week a bunch of old and new friends.
Pictures were made by the famous Shanghai author Wang Lili who will leave next week for a month to Melbourne, where she will interview the Chinese mayor of the town and do other exiting stuff. (More naughty pictures only on request.)

Heavy smoking makes bibles too expensive

Chinese men are smoking more heavily and that has made the bibles worldwide more expensive, I read in a rather christian newspaper from the Netherlands. For cigarettes the same kind of paper is being used as for printing the bibles and this smoking habit is not only killing the smokers, but also the sales of bibles.
The German Bible Association has complained about this in the German weekly Der Spiegel. Sales of the bible in Europe are declining, but it is unsure whether only the price is an issue here.

Viewing Ma Lin

Henk Sneevliet, Marin or Ma Lin

I mentioned the plan already earlier in the week, but the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club is going to organize a small viewing of a very solid Dutch documentary on Ma Lin or Henk Sneevliet, the Dutch guy you can see at the little museum at Xintiandi on the establishment of the Communist Party in China.
If you are interested in China's history in the 1920's and think you can stand a 90 minutes simultanously translation from Dutch into English, let me know. There will be limited seating, but those who reply now will get a preferential treatment. The viewing is most likely going to take place the week after the May holiday. (And if you know somebody who can translated Dutch into English, do let me also know.)

VC's planning to leave video sharing

Silicon Hutong points at this Reuters' article on the upcoming collapse of video sharing in China. I have been writing about the upcoming problems earlier this year, but now we seem to see a clear "abandon ship".

"If video-sharing sites rely on their own resources and capabilities, I don't see much prospect for profit," said Liu Bin, chief analyst at the Beijing research firm BDA China.

While the loses are still relatively small for the VC's, the lack of money-earning capabilities has been one of the weak points of the industry anyway. Reuters mentions a study by data firm iResearch trying to make us believe the industry can generate 3.4 billion Rmb by 2010, but that seems an extreme form of wishful thinking. An overwhelming majority of the now close to 500 video sharing ventures seem unable to make any substantial money.

Established Web companies like Tom Online, SINA, Sohu.com and Netease.com, which market watchers believe are considering expansion into video sharing, have a
bigger chance of success in the online video business, as they already command a high level of traffic and have deeper pockets, analysts said.

And Tencent of course.

What to do about child labor?

Today a confusing moment when we got our lunches delivered in our office. My office manager Scott and I looked at each other when we saw the delivery boy. "He should have been at school," said Scott, rather to the point.
It was very obvious a new arrival from the country side in Shanghai and he was away before we realized what had happened. Child labor you do not see that often in Shanghai, unless you would include the pressure of parents and schools on children to perform also child labor (and actually, it is).
We used this company before and it was the first time they used a child to deliver, so I'm still thinking of what to do. Maybe have a chat with the boy tomorrow and see if he wants to talk, but today he looked really scared.
What would you do?

J.P. Morgan gets 90 bn Rmb offered for new fund in one day

A new mutual fund by J.P. Morgan Flemming received in one day time 90 bn Renminbi (US$ 11.6 bn) of subscriptions, Reuters reports, more than ten times its own estimation.

The oversubscription ratio is one of the highest seen at any fund since China's stock market bull run began a year ago, and suggests new Chinese investors are continuing to enter the market, fund managers said.

Originally the fund wanted to raise eight billion Rmb in the market, but has decided to increase the figure to 10 billion Renminbi. The rest of the money will be returned. Dealing with a larger amount of capital would be rather difficult to deal with in the current market situation. Also regulators have installed a cap of 10 billion Rmb.
The success shows not only that there is enough money still available in the market. The reputation of J.P Morgan's China International Fund Management Co. has been very successful with their mutual funds in the past, another reason for its current success.

Crime at the internet: QQ

Virtual China has dived into the legal aspects of virtual property. (The link to the article did not work properly, so you have to find it from the home page.) Between the lines interesting facts show up regarding the crime at the internet.

CNNIC reports that 61% of gamers have had virtual assets stolen and 77% feel that the current online atmosphere is unsafe for virtual assets.

That means the internet is a rather unsafe place to be, worse than anything in the real world. The number of reports on virtual theft is really astonishing.

The Internet Crime section of the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau says they get roughly ten reports PER DAY of stolen virtual assets, which are hard to know how to prosecute given the current status under law. Should they be classified as robberies? Fraud? A judge in Shanghai says that virtual asset cases often cause vigorous debate inside China's courts as to whether they should be classified as crimes or not.
Back in Shenzhen's Nanshan district, legal cases on record have clearly established that 1 Q coin equals 1 RMB, and that Q coins clearly have the attributes of property. Likewise for virtual equipment that can be bought and sold in a market. However, the status of QQ numbers is less clear. Can they be defined as property? Because the value of QQ numbers is hard to estimate, it then becomes hard to define QQ number theft as criminal theft.

More at Virtual China on the legal debate.

McDonalds says no wrongdoings found

An investigation by the labor authorities in Guangdong province has not shown any wrongdoings on the side of the company, McDonalds says in a statement, according to Bloomberg.

"Our interpretation of those laws has been correct,'' McDonald's China unit said in an e-mailed statement, citing an official finding by the Guangdong Labor Authority.

Together with KFC and Pizza Hut, McDonalds has been part of a months long uncover operation by a Guangdong paper. A formal complaint at the Labor Bureau forced both the labor authorities and the Chinese trade union ACFTU into action.

The article did not mention any results for the investigationsin KFC and Pizza Hut.

Update: Also Yum, the owner of KFC and Pizza Hut have been clear, All Roads lead to China has read in the Wall Street Journal. The score:

1.5 points to the Union who closed McDonald’s and were able to to highlight the need in the public eye to find ways to protect workers in the foreign food service industry
1 point to the students whose plight was the center of a media frenzy for a week
0 to Yum who stuck to their guns and neither conceded they paid too little nor let the union leverage the situation in
-1 to McDonald’s who are now moving their union discussions up a level as a result of the controversy

Shanghai FCC out in full force

Members and would-be members of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club (SFCC) gathered this evening at the Foreign Culture Club at Julu Lu (now, do not mix up those two). It was a bit of a bummer that the staff could not be convinced of the concept of a happy hour, but otherwise it was rather pleasant company.
Two fellow bloggers, Maria Trombly of course, and Chris from Asiapundit, who I had not seen for a very long time.
To my own amazement another five, six people (hello there!) voluntarily admitted to be readers of this weblog, so perhaps the digital divide is narrowing. Of course, the normal bunch of ignorant dinosaurs was also represented.
Asiapundit came, a bit reluctant, with a disclosure I had not yet seen on his weblog. Of course we all knew that his lovely baby was taking up much time and energy, but he showed this evening also his new business card. He became "public affairs manager" of HSBC. That happens when good journalists get babies: they need to make money. Fortunately, he has a nice boss, Dan Dan. I have never been seeing much in bosses, but Dan Dan would be ok.

Should I keep on ignoring the US WTO trade complaints?

US trade representative Susan Schwab

Up to now I have been perfectly able to ignore the Washington based paper mills, who are trying to get the WTO into a trade complaint procedure. But others, like China Hearsay, do take it rather serious, at least, they spend a lot of time on it.

I have been holding a short poll in the office and 100 percent of the people I asked said this is not going to mean anything and I should continue to have a life. We all know that the power of the central government to change this country is rather limited and that - even if the WTO would be able to come up with a verdicts - it would not mean anything.

What do you think?

Update: Got at least one honest reaction from a lawyer who says that the legal play is only very interesting for nerdy lawyers like himself. I can go out and have a life.

Chinese universities: no competition

None of the Chinese universities reaches into the top-100 ranking of research competitiveness in the world, reports China in Transition, based on research done by researchers at the Research Center for Chinese Science Evaluation of Wuhan University.
Beijing University ranks 192, followed by Tsinghua at 196.
There is also good news:

Nevertheless, research competence of mainland China institutions moved up to No.16 in the world from last year’s position of No.22, according to the study.

"A blatant display of media imperialism"

When intellectuals, even if they are only undergraduates, get offended, it is mostly fun. Some undergrates at the London School of Economics think this is 'media imperialism". And they get high end support. Danwei discovered they have offended at least a few of the people with this funny movie:


Here is Danwei's defense. The movie got a pretty good rating at YouTube, but that might chance of course now we have discovered its real character.

Striking crane operators win pay raise and union

Crane operators in the port of Shenzhen went on strike last Friday, AP reports, and resumed work at the beginning of the Sunday after they got a pay raise and were allowed to set up a trade union. Details are still lacking.

Shanghai leads in online consumer trading

Shanghai is leading the country in online sales with 2.37 billion Reminbi (US$ 306 million) in the first quarter of 2007, the Shanghai Youth Daily reports based on figures from the Shanghai Statistical Bureau. The number two, Beijing, sold one billion Renminbi (US$ 129 million) less than Shanghai.
Interesting is that Shanghainese internet users also buy different products online than elsewhere in the country. Cellphones, computers, phone cards and other IT-related products dominate there, but Shanghainese purchases top in cosmetics, perfume and body care products.
There are no statistics on the gender of the buyers, but the figures suggests that also Shanghaise men buy for women.

Google sorry for stealing

Google in China has apologized to Sohu.com for 'lending' the database of Sogou, its input system for pinyin. Google offered their excuses just ahead of a press conference by Sohu where it wanted to vilify its competitor for stealing. The ongoing discussion will get an interesting twist here.

Company, government ruin internet user's life

Zhang Zhijian

Pharmaceutical worker Zhang Zhijian has spent nine months in jail on criminal charges after he reposted a report on the internet, writes the Beijing News, here in a translation by ESWN.
The report detailed accusations of a Hainan-based pharmaceutical company Kongliyuan bribing local officials. Zhang was arrested and accused of damaging the reputation of the company. Zhang said the report was correct:

Based upon my understanding of this industry, I feel that it is basically true. When I think about Kongliyuan's speed and number for the reviews, they lead the nation. In truth, they don't have the ability to do so. From my professional view, I feel that the contents of this essay should be correct.

Finding himself in jail and out of a job for reposting a report, written by some else, makes him still very angry, after he has left jail.

I was innocent to begin with. Why did they deal with me that way? I'm just an ordinary worker. I am not a company president or a department manager. I have nothing personal against Kongliyuan. I only re-posted an essay on the Internet. I don't know why they defined that as a criminal offense.

More at ESWN.

NGO's help to build roads in Jiangxi

Nineteen villages in Jiangxi Province are part of a rather unique project in China, where NGO's take the lead in building roads and other infrastructure, writes Reuters.

Chris Spohr, an economist with the [Asian Development Bank] ADB in Beijing, said the government's readiness to take NGOs on as partners showed its commitment to spreading the benefits of prosperity more evenly.
"It suggests that terms like 'building a harmonious society' and 'government role transformation' are not merely rhetoric, but are being at least cautiously explored and pushed ahead," Spohr said, referring to two stock phrases the leadership has employed to etch out its priorities for reform.

Jongo: News portal in Web1.0 style

Last night an ad at this weblog brought me to Jongo, an English language newsportal I had seen before , but was not sticky enough to keep my attention. As a newsportal it looks rather excellent. Nice lay-out, they seem to have all the important news and although their interviews are rather boring, they do an effort to use multimedia effects.
The problems is more that they use the concept of a newsportal and that is very much 1990s. They seemed to have missed out on much of the developments of the recent half decade that makes the internet so much more a conversational tool. Jongo talks like an authority, they bring only "Jongo News", although I have seen it earlier at Reuters. Trying to become a new brand in the news industry is, I think, a losing proposition. CNN might be able to hold on to it a bit longer, but no way you can establish a new brand in such a way.
Then, the tools for conversation are lacking: no rss-feeds, no feedback or comment section per article, no links to other sources.
The operation looks like a well funded one, but I'm afraid this is not going to work in the long run. News has become a commodity and for the digital vanguard their RSS-readers has become their portal. The rest will stick to paper or the online copies of the old media.

Good news on China's education

Positive news and China's educational system mostly do not mix that well, but here we have an amazing exception. The magazine of the New York Times gives an in depth overview of efforts to reform the educational system.
Kaiser Kuo pointed at this possible revolution in Chinese education and just like him, I'm not even going to try and summarize it. You have to read it yourself.

Update: The magazine has hidden itself meanwhile behind a firewall. You can get the same article for free here at the International Herald Tribune.

FEER is still around

Just imagine: while writing the previous entry I discovered that the Far Eastern Economic Review or FEER is still around. For those who did not hang around in Asia in the past century, FEER and Asiaweek used to be leading English language weeklies. Asiaweek has been finished off when AOL and its owner Time-Warner "merged" (at the time it was more a take-over by AOL). FEER, owned by Dow Jones, reduced to a monthly publications, but then disappeared from my radar screen as also their journalists lost their jobs.
But they are still there and even more, they not only have a website, but also RSS-feeds. They for sure know how to please the digital vanguard. That is more or less where the good news stops, because most of their articles are - despite the RSS-feed - behind a financial firewall and I would not be able to link to them.
From what I can see, it looks like the academics have taken over most of the writing. And they only take it when you do not publish it elsewhere, for example on your weblog. The issue of a financial compensation is not mentioned.

Lies, damned lies and statistics

Regular readers of this weblog know they can wake me up at night for some nice faulty statistics or other manipulations of the truth. China Rises comes with a few very nice examples, picked up from the Far Eastern Economic Review, so that magazine must still be around.

“We ignore the fact that of the 3,220 Chinese citizens with a personal wealth of 100 million yuan ($13 million) or more, 2,932 are children of high-level cadres. Of the key positions in the five industrial sectors -­ finance, foreign trade, land development, large-scale engineering and securities -- 85% to 90% are held by children of high-level cadres.”

I agree with Tim Johnson that it is very unlikely the figures are true. Just editors love these things and so sometimes journalists or academics make them up. It sounds good. He found another one:

Now I see the World Bank says 20 of the world's 30 most polluted cities are in China. And here's a story that says 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities are Chinese. So which is it? And what are the cities?

It is nice entertainment and should be treated like that.

Double happiness for Shanghai's journo's

Sneevliet or Ma Lin

Coming week will not see one, but two happy hours for foreign correspondents in Shanghai, a true record after very little activity.

The official Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club will host an official happy hour on Tuesday in that club that is confusingly called the Foreign Culture Club at 889 Julu Lu from 7PM. While everybody seems to be welcome, provided you RSVP here, it is going to be an effort to get the club going again. So, if you intend to be a regular at these meetings, better be there.
On Thursday there is of course Maria's happy hour at the Cotton Bar at the corner of Anting Lu and Jianguo Xilu. Official start at 8PM, but if you want to enjoy the tail of the real happy hour, do get there before.

This week, when all is well, I will also receive a DVD with a TV-documentary on the Dutch revolutionary Sneevliet, in China better known as Ma Lin, the representative of the Comintern who attended the establishment of the Communist Party in China. It focuses on his time in China. Sneevliet or Maring (his code name) was instrumental in forcing the Chinese communist to team up with Russia. That choice was of course very important for China's development until the 1960s.
The documentary was shown on Dutch TV in December 2006 and I ordered it for a viewing at the Shanghai FCC. I actually paid money for the DVD and last week I called the TV-station to find out where my DVD was. They were a bit upset about my call, since they obvious do not like to work as hard as we do in China. Anyway: there is still a small logistical problem, since the production is in Dutch, but it will be soon on the agenda of the Shanghai FCC.
There is very little English literature about this communist secret agent, but if you have deep pockets you can order Tony Saich's The Origins of the First United Front in China: The Role of Sneevliet (Alias Maring). In Dutch there is slight more avaible.

Has Google Pinyin been stolen from a competitor?

A debate is emerging on the internet whether Google has for its newly released pinyin input system stolen the vocabulary of its competitor Sogou. When the US search engine would have committed such a gross infringement of the intellectual property of a competitor, even though it would have been done by local staff, that would put the company in a difficult position.
There are two different takes up to now. Yee and others point at awkward similar mistakes Google seems to have copied from the vocabulary of Sogou. The fact that Google has failed to respond to the accusations is already seen as an admission of guild.

China Web2.0 Review is an authority here and writes:

My take is that further discussion on this similarity case is not necessary. If Google really infringes Sogou’s intellectual property rights, they would sue Google. Is it possible that they all licensed vocabulary library from the same source? You will never know it.

I tend to disagree with both at this stage. The pinyin system seem to be much more than a vocabulary and you would have to compare more than only the vocabulary to substantiate the accusation - although Google does seem to have a problem here.
The fact that Google did not react at all is of course not good, but if they would have denied guild after the first rumors would have emerged, you would know they would not take the accusation serious at all. Google needs to have a thorough internal investigation, and they could have told us that.
I also do not agree with the argument that because Sogou has not started a court case yet, there is probably no case. Also Sogou needs to investigate the case and the systems is only out. Preparing a court case takes a long time and does not yet indicate that Sogou has already taken a position here.

Xiamen citizens fight against chemical plant

Citizens at Xiamen island fight against a huge chemical plant near their city center, John Kennedy reports at Global Voices. Desperate appeals appear on the internet:

The voices of the people will always have their limit. That the local government values GDP so highly and takes protecting the environment so lightly will be the sorrow of our grandchildren!We’re telling the truth. Central government, please save us. Save the hard-earned fruits of our labors! Save the homes in which we so tiredly live!