Some referrals make a difference

Shaun Rein, making a difference

Linking to websites and weblogs is a way to exchange traffic with other online participants that you value - or incidentally despise. In terms of numbers those referrals do not mean that much. Per link I would get seldom more than one hundred extra visitors. They are of course the more high-value visitors compared to those looking for sex through the search engines, but compared to the over five thousand daily visitors, their number is small.
One exception I have to make now. One of our speakers, Shaun Rein, mentioned this weblog in an article for Seeking Alpha.
In a few days time, I had hundreds of extra visitors, coming from that specific article. I would call that a link that makes a difference. Thanks, Shaun!

Missed: the Hong Kong sex scandal

HK print media win

I'm missing out on a lot of major stories - or are there just more stories these days? - including the Edison Chen sex scandal in Hong Kong. Of course ESWN gives the most comprehensive overview of what has happened. Thomas Crampton gives an overview of the lessons for print media to learn.
While Thomas is still able to distill three valuable lessons for print media, it still has some very distinct Hong Kong character. There are very few place in the world where print publications are still as important as they are in Hong Kong, and can make money through a scandal like this. They are so much part of the life in Hong Kong and that partly explains also their success.
In the mainland print publications would never have allowed themselves to take the same advantages, explaining their relatively declining position in the media scene. On the mainland, the internet has taken over the function that is in Hong Kong still done by the sensationalist print magazines.

Labor law is already having effect - expert

Auret van Heerden, president and CEO of the Fair Labor Association, notes already positive effects of the just-adopted labor contract law, he says in an interview with Newsweek.

Implementation and enforcement are traditionally the weakest points of labor law in China. But I've never seen a law attract so much public attention. At the factory level people are talking about it everywhere. One of the things about the law is it doesn't rely on outside labor enforcement. Once you've got a written contract, there are all sorts of avenues open to a worker: the labor department, labor tribunals, or through other grievance mechanisms. So what you're seeing here is a change of approach where the government is saying, "We'll create a proper contract between workers and employers and give workers the means of enforcing their own contracts." The effect has been immediate. There have already been strikes about it; there have been employers who have panicked about the commitment the law would require, so they've tried to lay off or outsource workers.

While Van Heerden sees an upward price-pressure for the companies in China, it is not a dramatic 40 percent caused by the labor law as some of the enterprises have suggested.

The cost pressures are tremendous. There's no doubt about it. I just don't think the law alone is leading to a 40 percent jump. It's a series of pressures. For the low-cost assembly business, some of them will have to move [out of China], definitely. But I don't think the Chinese government is that concerned. They want to promote high value-added production, and they don't think China's economic future lies in low-cost assembly. They want to see businesses move up the value chain.

A cheerful look at China's housing crisis

It is always a pleasure to read a well-informed article on China, like this one on the real estate crisis in China by the Financial Times.
In the beginning I feared this would be another "China will fall apart" piece, like I have seen them before. The problems in the real estate are huge, so much is clear, as the government tries to stop the fast growth of the past few years and the fallout of the US markets might also have their effect. But the conclusions are remarkable relaxed and far away from the traditional fear mongering media use to beef up their circulation.

“The next phase for the sector is consolidation, rather than bankruptcy,” says Mark Lo, a credit analyst at BNP Paribas in Hong Kong. “The better names will simply buy projects from, or enter joint ventures with, the companies that have liquidity problems.”

Falling for government propaganda

I got this AP-story from a journalist in Shanghai who was soliciting my opinion about the article. He did not call back, so he might got already some printable comments from other internet experts. I'm not sure that what I have to say would fit into the way how Western media try to frame their China-stories.
Regular readers know that the stories carries at least two key words that trigger off my anger. First, it is the word "crackdown". Most people living outside China associate that with large numbers of police cars carrying away innocent citizens.
Then, there is the word "China", who is carrying out that crackdown. I know, I make the mistake sometimes myself (and got here rightfully scolded for doing just that), but "China" in itself is the wrong word. You should identify the government department behind it. If it is the Ministry of Culture, we just ignore it, since they tend to rule their country by press releases. When it would be local public security departments, it could be more serious, at least in some localities.
What happens in this case is that AP is copying a Xinhua propaganda piece, creating the impression that 1. there is actually going to happen something; 2. what is going to happen might actually be bad.
The chances of anything happening at all, beyond some token action at best, is very small. Most government officials are so busy in writing this kind of nonsense, they would seldom have time to take any real action. The nicely coined action is meant to reassure people that the government is taking care of them, preventing crimes - however you would define those crimes. That message, meant to reassure its citizens, turns into something evil in the hands of Western news agencies.
Of course, those news agencies have to make a living too, but I wonder why especially the more seasoned correspondents would actually take those propaganda stories serious enough to report them. Isn't there enough real news. And then more ignorant media start to copy those AP-stories. And it is all fake, very fake news.

Update: Just bumped into yet another AP crackdown story.
At least here they identify the GAPP as the organization behind it. Not sure if you have been watching video products, and especially games. Quite a lot of horror there: my estimation, very little is going to happen.

Provinces block environmental rules - SEPA

SEPA's Pan Yue

Pan Yue, the head of China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) complaints that critical environmental regulations are being blocked by provinces and financial institutions, writes the Financial Times.
Last year SEPA got the power to exclude extremely polluting industries from getting loans, but despite making a blacklist, the effect of the new rules is almost zero.

The announcement on the Sepa website said the agency had forwarded an initial list of 38 companies who had seriously transgressed environmental regulations to the banks last July.

Altogether, since the programme’s launch, the names of about 30,000 companies with less serious breaches have been reported to the banking authorities.

“Some were banned from getting more loans and two companies (of the 38) were even asked to give up the loan they received previously,” Sepa said.

But Sepa said its successes were only “partial” and far from the goal the agency had set for itself.

“The reason is that some provinces are not following the green credit plan, and even if they are, it’s only superficial.”

Yet another example that shows that good intention alone are not good enough to trigger off change. SEPA has traditionally very little real power and it is interesting to see whether these public complaints will help.

Human rights: is the glass half full or half empty?

The decision by Steven Spielberg to pull out of the Beijing Olympic Games because of its lack of action in Dafur has put the human rights discussion right again at the middle of the international discussion, and NGO's like Human Right Watch grab the opportunity to broaden the scope of Spielberg's action.
What I like about Spielberg's action is that he focuses on one very concrete issue that truly needs international attention. Unfortunately, that is seldom the case. See here:

Human Rights Watch has urged that sponsors not only press China’s government to end its support of governments such as Sudan and Burma that commit massive abuses but also that they encourage Beijing to improve deplorable human rights conditions in China itself.

By not including the huge achievements China has made in the field of human rights, organizations paint a picture of China that is to a large degree a false one. It is based on a wrong idea on what is happening in China and what kind of push the central government needs to go on the route it has already chosen. The classic official answer is to point at the 600 million Chinese citizens that have been lifted out of poverty. While that is of course true, it would never justify gross infringements of the human rights in other fields. But there is more to say about this subject.
On major areas dramatic progress has been made:

• The central government has changed the rules for capital punishment, putting it in the hands of the highest court and limiting the freedom of provinces to set their own standards for executions.
• New laws have created tools for workers and trade unions to fight more effectively for their legal rights.
• Arbitrary detention has come under scrutiny and is not longer happening on the scale it happened in the past.

Of course: the glass is only half full. China still executes more people than all other countries together, despite the major changes. Putting new labor laws in place does not automatically mean labor abuses will go away. Arbitrary detention still happens, although it might not be as common as it used to be.
But by not identifying those major improvements human right organizations not only give a false picture of what is happening in China. They also fail to understand what forces in China would need support in getting those reforms faster and effectively in place. In the long run it would also rob the human rights organizations of their moral authority in scrutinizing cases of human rights abuses.
Traditional media need a simple messages and NGO's have been training for decades on their Pavlov-reaction when they want to reach those old-style media. But as it becomes easier to understand the processes taking place in China, the cliches of the past should erode. The time for simple messages is over.

Update: Nice, a translation of my entry.

Gagging sporters does not seem smart

You wonder why people still write novels, while reality itself can be so amazing. The news that sport people had to sign a gagging order before being admitted to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, as the British media disclosed, is nothing short of amazing. The Countdown to Beijing's overview of the mayhem:

The British Olympic Association (BOA) has backed down on its plan to stop athletes making political statements in China under pain of being sent back home and will reword the contract they all have to sign before going to Beijing.
One newspaper report said they would be given media training to help them respond to any awkward questions about human rights or Tibet this Summer.

It is not yet clear who had the brilliant idea of adding a new gagging clause to the already 32 page contract sporters have to sign. The British might have done so, but many other countries are going to check what their sporters have been signing to allow them to go to Beijing. And whether this was a clever idea that originated from the IOC, from the Beijing Committee. This is not yet over.

Visiting London for our speakers' business

My plan to talk to some of the Europe-based speakers' bureaus is getting in place, at least for the London-leg of my plans. Got some enthusiastic reactions from a couple of people and will most likely visit London on Thursday and Friday. The initial plan to limit my trip to one days seems a bit too short. If there are any bloggers or others around for drinks on Thursday late afternoon, do give me a shout.