A new labor contract law; so what? - the WTO column

(Later also at Chinabiz)
On January 1, 2008 a new labor contract law will be in place and alarmist messages from the legal front keep on appearing on my radar screen. If I believe those messages, after the turn of the year the Armageddon will come over us, or at least those who employ people in China. So, I took a deep breath and listened to the arguments of those who want us to prepare for the worst. What happens next year?

Employees in China cannot work longer than forty hours per week and if they make overtime, the employer has to pay.
Employees cannot be sacked at a will, but only for well defined reasons.
Employees can no longer be forced to sign non-competitive agreements, unless they belong to the senior management.
Employees can sue you, if you break the law as an employer.
Shocking isn't it?

If you were used to do all these nasty things, January might be a month to mark in your agenda for a move to Cambodia. Of course, some employers got used to the fact that employees had hardly a chance to defend themselves in court and if that is the society you want, you might have a problem. But have Western companies not always claimed they would do better than average? That their presence in China is would be beneficial for the Chinese workers, that they would do things differently from many Taiwanese or Hong Kong companies?

Pardon me, if I look at this situation with European eyes, but the largest problem seems to be the enforcement of the law, not the law itself. The old labor law was only marginally enforced, because economic growth was key under the Jiang Zemin regime. As long as you contributed to that growth, you could get away with a lot. Decent companies that still wanted to comply with the law were in a disadvantaged position. Now, if the upcoming law is going to be better enforced, also with the new powers given to the employees to secure their rights, that would be in the interest of all the better companies, isn't it?

In one way or the other, the coming months are going to be interesting. The new law is one of the flagships, introduced under the banner of a harmonious society. Some elements of it might cause, when the new systems come into place, some less harmonious feelings. One of the rumors was, for example, that Chinese law firms were already rounding up large numbers of disgruntled employees to start an avalanche of law suits early next year. While employers who have followed the law in the past would have nothing to fear, I'm sure that some extra-legal control mechanisms of the government would also prevent massive disruption of the production process.
The local labor bureau's will be very careful in handling new cases, since no bureaucracy likes to get in the forefront as long as is unclear how the execution of the law will work out. Private lawyers might think of making a handsome profit on labor-related cases first, but they are also part of the licensing system of the ministry of justice, that will use its power when individual lawyers try to disrupt this harmonious society.

So, perhaps the end is near, but not because of the upcoming labor contract law.

Fons Tuinstra

The losing environment

The story that the central government is having a hard time in keeping the environment high on the political agenda against local resistance is not new, but Howard French in the International Herald Tribune brings it very well documented.

The energy campaign required local officials to raise electricity prices as a way of discouraging the growth of large energy-consuming industries and forcing the least efficient of these users out of business. Instead, fearing the impact on the local economy, the regional government brokered a special deal for the Qingtongxia Aluminum Group, which accounts for 20 percent of this region's industrial consumption and roughly 10 percent of its gross domestic product.

Local officials arranged for the company to be removed from the national electrical grid and supplied directly by the local company, exempting it from expensive fees, according to an electricity company official who asked not to be named, an official of the aluminum company and the official Web site of the nearby city of Shizuishan. As a result, Qingtongxia continued to get its power at the lowest price available

.Read more here.

China's internet users discover new freedoms

Tom Doctoroff

In a comparison between young internet users in China and the US, a survey - the young digital mavens - by JWT and IAC discovers that the internet is much more integrated part of the life in China than in the US.

The findings show how readily young Chinese are taking to the Internet and its possibilities-for example, almost five times as many Chinese as American respondents said they have a parallel life online (61 percent vs. 13 percent). And while fewer than half of the 1,079 American respondents agreed that "I live some of my life online" (42 percent), a sizable majority of the 1,104 Chinese respondents agreed with the statement (86 percent). The two random online surveys polled 16- to 25-year-olds.

Other findings on the Chinese users:

• For 80 percent of the respondents "digital technology is an essential part of how I live" (US: 68 percent);
• 25 percent does not feel OK when they are without internet access for longer than a day (US: 12 percent);
• 42 percent feels sometimes "addicted" to the online life (US: 18 percent);
• 48 percent feels that things online are more intense than offline (US: 12 percent);
• 61 percent has felt strong emotions because of online interactions (US: 47 percent);
• 51 percent of the Chinese internet users have presented themselves online as somebody else (US: 17 percent);
• 66 percent says "Online interactions have broadened my sense of identity" (US: 26 percent);
• 77 percent says that internet helps making friends (US: 30 percent);
• 32 percent admits that the internet has broadened their sex life (US: 11 percent);
• 73 percent goes online to share opinions with others (US: 43 percent);
• 79 percent thinks it is good to be able to express opinions anonymously (US: 42 percent)

"For young Americans, the Internet provides an incremental increase in the huge range of options they enjoy in life, but for young Chinese it represents a steep increase in choice-and this is reflected in the strength of Chinese response to questions about opinions and interactions online," says Tom Doctoroff, JWT's CEO of Greater China and Northeast Asia area director. While most American youth grew up taking for granted both interactive technology and the "let it all hang out" ethos it has encouraged, these are new concepts for young Chinese. "Our findings show that Chinese youth experience this new emotional space-the 'emobytes'-more intensely than young Americans."

Tom Doctoroff is also a speaker at our Chinabiz Speakers' bureau.

Breaking news: Ken Carroll has a blog

Ken Carroll

For somebody who is so dedicated to the new media as Ken Carroll, it took him a long time to get online with his weblog. But now it is there, hitting out to The Economist, in a great bloggers' tradition of setting the mainstream media straight.

I love the Economist, but it ran an incredibly weak article today - False Eastern promise whose sub-heading tells us that the ‘craze for teaching Chinese may be a misguided fad’. The craze for teaching Chinese may just be a fad? May be a fad?

Deaths counted as Three-Gorges starts to take its toll

A bus with 30 people on board covered by a mudslide in the Three-Gorges basin was a highly symbolic incident, as the central government tries to reverse the negative news about former premier Li Peng's favorite project.
After a highly charged domestic discussion about the dangers of the Three-Gorges dam was banned from the media, the government started to give a positive angle to the current development.
Massive landslides into the basin, now killing at least 30 people in once incident, have not helped. AP reports:

The landslide tore a 50-meter (-yard) gash on a mountainside Tuesday morning and heightened concern that the massive reservoir of the Three Gorges Dam, 200 kilometers (120 miles) away, was wreaking ecological havoc in the region. Work crews clearing the rubble found the wreckage of the long-distance bus Friday morning, a local official and the government's Xinhua News Agency reported.

"If you have faith, you will be saved"

Jezus' sister

Reading fascinating reports from China, that often do not make it into the mainstream media, happens at least a few times per week. I lack the time to write about all of them, but this week had a few very nice ones.
At first, the was the issue of the ant-farmers in Shenyang, who took their protest to the streets, after the company they had been working for mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind debts for thousands of farmers. "Ant-farmers" you might wonder. Yes, the ants were used for a nutritious food (indeed: code for an aphrodisiac) that seemed to be doing pretty well in the market. According to Reuters:

The investors -- many of them laid-off workers or farmers -- put their savings into Shenyang's Yilishen Group for a scheme in which they raised ants to provide ingredients for a health tonic promising an aphrodisiac boost.

For every 10,000 yuan ($1,350) they paid the company as "deposit", investors were promised a dividend of 3,250 yuan

ESWN reports today about the arrest of the sister of Jesus. Mrs. Zhou from Zhongshan city was asking up to 200,000 rmb to heal cancer patients and owned three villas and a considerably piece of ground.

On November 10, a "sacred" rite was being held inside a private villa on Taiping street in Minzhong town. In the hall of the villa, "Little Goddess" sat underneath a cross hung on the wall. A tablet with the words "The Greatest Miracle Doctor Underneath The Heavens" hung on the wall by the side. Several "believers" knelt before her and kowtowed. In front of them were the bottles of mineral bottle that these believers have brought with them. After they put the money into the mooncake box on the table, "Little Goddess" turned the mineral water into holy water that could cure every possible disease. But before the rite could be completed, the Zhongshan police charged into the villa and arrested "Little Goddess" Zhou. According to one of the arresting police officers, a family of four at the scene begged the police to let Zhou go, because the police was arresting a good person.

The translation includes an interview with the sister of Jesus. I guess the human right watchers must be making overtime now all this juicy information becomes available.

Paris Hilton exposed to Xialongbao

Paris Hilton eating Xiaolongbao

The visit of Paris Hilton to Shanghai has made quite some people excited.
At least she must have had some good advisors, offering her the only Shanghai dish that is worth the trip to this place: Xiaolongbao.
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China doubles airflight capacity

Good news for flight travelers in China. From Thursday new regulations will be in place that double the capacity for civil airplanes in the country, writes the Financial Times. China will follow international standards for the separation of airplanes.
Other restrictions like the vast military control and the lack of sophisticated radar control in some parts of China will remain in place, but the stakeholders react enthusiastically:

Tony Tyler, chief executive of Cathay Pacific,described the easing of vertical separation limits as “a big step forward.” He added: “At cruising altitude, this is effectively doubling the capacity, which is very good news. We’re very pleased to see it happen.”

Bloggers mainly link to their own comfort space

Danwei has a nice follow-up on the research that disclosed that only 6 percent of the Chinese bloggers link now and then to website or weblogs outside China. Research in the US shows that this is not a typical Chinese feature, but - as far as figures are available - US bloggers have the same habit.
If I remember well, the Chinese research also showed that most blogs would link to other blogs in their own region, rather than to websites elsewhere in China.
I have not seen any research on weblogs in the Netherlands, German or Belgium, but I'm quite sure that there is very little overlap between countries and cultures. Even when people do speak the same language, like the Dutch and a part of the Belgians, that does not mean they really talk to each other.
Despite the technological possibilities, people tend to stay within their own comfort zone. That makes those weblogs who don't even more important.

When is child labor a good idea?

Pictures of cotton-picking children in Xinjiang have caused a bit of a stir and The Opposite End of China dives right into the debate. After a decent summery of the upheaval, our teacher Michael Manning, living in Xinjiang, hits out:

Now, I'm no great advocate of exploiting children for labor, but does anyone else out there agree with me that the critics are going a bit far on this issue? At the school I used to teach for in Korla, the older kids spend about two weeks every autumn picking cotton on one of the local collective farms. Sure, the kids gripe and the work is hard, but I see a lot of benefit in giving these children ― who are lucky enough to be growing up in modern China rather than, say, China forty years ago ― a taste of the backbreaking labor that most Chinese engage in on a daily basis. I think it's a great idea to force children to pitch in for the "greater good".

A blanket ban on child labor, without looking into the specifics of each situation, can have very reverse effect. Unfortunately, it is not a discussion where there is a lot of room for subtleties, like I found out when I interviewed working children in Indonesia in the past who defended their right to work. But very good to hear some contrary voices.

Military disrupt Guangdong air traffic

Thousands of passengers saw their air flights delayed at Guangdong's at the Baiyun airport in Guangzhou. While the English-language Chinese media said they had no clue, Chinese media pointed at the obvious culprits: exercises by the military.
Delays were also reported from Hong Kong and Macao and are expected to last for at least a few more days.
While it is not happening often, unannounced military exercises have cause earlier this year also delays in the Shanghai-Beijing air route and have caused undisclosed economic damage. The already damaged image of Chinese airlines companies who have often delays does not get any better in this way.

Who do you trust? - the WTO-column

Since a few years the PR-firm Edelman is asking the Chinese, well, at least 140 of them, who they trust. I find it addictive reading, despite serious misgivings I have about this and this kind of research.This week a new edition was due.
First, what is trust? Edelman investigates the trust in the government, businesses, media and the NGO's. Considering that most Chinese have no clue what non-governmental organizations might be, that question look a bit tricky to put it mildly. What would be been an interesting other category would have been the question where the respondents would trust themselves. I guess it would vary very much from day to day, but that is probably also likely for the other categories. You cannot put all governments, businesses, media and NGO's on one pile and still try to make sense out of it.

Having said that, the results are interesting too. The relatively low trust of the Chinese respondents overall is not that surprising, interesting is that compared with the earlier two years even that low trust is dropping. Was the overall trust in the government over 50 percent as the only of all categories, this year less than a majority of the Chinese trust the government - or should be say governments, since they often have to deal with a multitude of governments who might be rather different.
With 42 percent trust, the government has double as much trust as the other categories, the media, the businesses and the NGO's. All their percentages have been dropping.

Compared with the regional results the Chinese results are not that far out of line with what similar investigations (according to my gut-feeling) would produce in for example Europe - the US are of course a a rather peculiar position when the question of trust in the government would be asked. Trust in general is low, although China reports a highest trust in the government and a lower trust in the media.

Chinese still seem to trust their bubbling stock market, they trust their companies to make a nice return, their banks to cough up their money when needed. That kind of trust is hard to valuate, but perhaps more important than the more generic questions.

Fons Tuinstra

Low trust in media reports

Thomas Crampton discusses and Edelman report on who the Chinese trust most as an information source. Thomas focuses on the results for the media and, while foreign mass media are trusted more than domestic ones, neither of them get a majority.
Also internet media with 48 percent the winner are mistrusted by the majority of the Chinese, according to this research.
Interesting is that the overall trust in all institution is falling: the government, the NGO's, businesses and the media. Even the government, who in the past was an absolute winner in getting the trust of the majority of the people in the survey is this year back to 42 percent. Now, the base of 140 respondents is pretty low, but they seem to have been caught at a pretty bad day.

Three-Gorges discussion decleared dead again

Remember this wave of honesty hitting news agency Xinhua when it quoted a scientist who confirmed the worst environmental fear concerning the Three Gorges Dam? Well, those days are over and Beijing Newspeak does an excellent job in documenting the short-lived internal bureaucratic struggle.

The candid discussion about the Three Gorges project in September is widely believed to have been conducted for political purposes. By releasing this news ahead of the 17th Communist Party Congress, Hu Jintao and co could distance themselves away from a project that they inherited rather than implemented. The change in heart did deserve applause no matter whether or not it was engineered. Ecological ills can’t be repaired by denials. But it wasn’t much fun for the Three Gorges officials attending the congress. They entered the Great Hall of the People as fellow Party members sniggered behind their backs at the woeful job they had been doing.

In the long run, Hu Jintao had to back off again, just like he had to do is so many other bureaucratic backlashes against the intention of the central government to really put the environment high on the political agenda.

Loan freeze: what will the banks do

In a desperate effort to cool down the economy the financial authorities have banned the banks from giving out loans, at least until the end of the year. A link to an article in the Wall Street Journal that takes us to the different options of what might happen.

Environmental powerhouse supports Tongji University

Dr. Klaus Toepfer

The Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club organized this evening a very interesting lecture by Dr. Klaus Toepfer (70), who recently joined the faculty of the Tongji University in Shanghai.
After a largely domestic political career, his rise to fame started as the minister for the environment in Germany twenty years ago and was later asked to head the UNEP, the environmental organization of the United Nations.
By combining a thorough knowledge of both environmental and political processes he is able to bring back rather complicated issues to its basics.
Dr. Klaus Toepfer graciously accepted our invitation to join the Chinabiz Speakers Bureau and you can call us to check his availability.