Number death sentences drops 15 percent

At the beginning of 2007 an old rule became reinstated, giving the Supreme People's Court in Beijing a final say for all death sentences in the country. Up to then decisions were made on a provincial or local level, not only causing a number of death sentences that was higher than in all other countries combined, the reasons for getting a death sentence could also vary greatly from province to province.
While it was certainly not close to an abolishment of the death sentence, something people and institutions inside and outside China have been pleading for, it created a tool for the central government to have influence on the issue. Numbers are never given, but a top-judge disclosed that the number of capital punishments had dropped in 2007 by 15 percent, here according to Reuters.
That percentage is lower than I would have expected, when the new measures came into place. A bit more transparency would be in place. I do expect that the highest court, having set up a whole set of new chambers to deal with the flood of death penalties, might be rather reluctant to overturn large number of verdicts in the first year.

Christine Lu sets off Shanghai video interviews

Christine Lu

Christine Lu of the China Business Network has arrived in Shanghai for a few weeks of vlogging: video reportages and interviews from the Shanghai business scene. You might see here the coming weeks some of the usual and unusual suspects - including yours truly.

Popular protest stops expansion Maglev

Shanghai municipality has pulled the extention of the Maglev train from the projects that will start this year, writes the Financial Times, quoting Shanghai mayor Han Zheng. It was caused by now much published protests in Shanghai. The protests were larger than ever and from both sides - the citizens and the government - rather peaceful.

SARFT wants Tudou to cease operation - blogger

Isaac Mao, Shanghai-based VC and blogger, reports at Twitter that SARFT wants Tudou.com to cease its operation. Tudou.com is the world's largest video hosting firm, claiming three times the traffic volume of number two, YouTube. The State Administration of Radio, Film and TV, is China's censor for the audio-visual media.
Earlier Pacific Epoch reported that China's central TV station canceled a partnership with Tudou, calling it "unhealthy".
Last year SARFT caused some consternation by ordering that all of the hundreds of Chinese video hosts would have to be state-owned, like all of the existing traditional media. The cold seemed out of the air as SARFT decided to grandfather the existing operations. Now, the pendule seems to move - against all expectations - against the biggest player in the industry.
One of the sticks of hit Tudou, says other reports, was the availability of porn. Managers of Tudou have always claimed that strict checks would prevent them from getting into trouble with the authorities, but as the volume increases, checking content is more difficult.

Isaac Mao is also a speaker at Chinabiz Speakers.

Update I: Danwei comes up with more details, although that does not mean we have now a better clue of what is going on:

The accusations of pornographic content are absurd: Tudou is one of the least salacious video hosts out there. Lots of the smaller ones seem to be trying to compete by pushing the boundaries of what's permitted, but Tudou and the other big ones don't have the same sexy, sexy movies. Copyright infringement's a different story, but there again, Tudou is no worse than any of the others.

Update II: Another, equally inconclusive update by Kaiser Kuo, with a few more juicy details:

Other industry insiders have intimated to me that Tudou had been somewhat cavalier in pursuing compliance with the new SARFT/MII regulations on Internet audio and video broadcast, but most believed that when the date of implementation, January 31, passed without incident, and when SARFT clarified the regulations in a statement the following week suggesting that non-compliant sites would be given a period to resolve problems and restructure so as to be compliant, and would be permitted to apply for a proper license, most industry insiders believed the worst was probably over. However, in conversations with highly-placed industry insiders earlier this week, this reporter was given strong indications that another shoe was yet to fall. Without mentioning Tudou.com by name, these insiders intiated that a “black list” was making the rounds and some form of punishment would be meted out.

Debate on US, China and Ecuador

This morning I joined a radio program called Wereldnet of the Dutch public radio. (If you understand Dutch, you can click here.)
First question: what would you have chosen, Clinton or Obama? Discussed China's march into Africa and got interesting support from Ecuador.

Super-ministries still on the agenda

At least that is what the Financial Times says today. Reorganizing the administration and streamlining the chains of command are on the agenda of the central government for quite some time, but opposing forces have been going against this attack on the traditional way of running the country. It sergeants, the political power brokers on a lower level, have no interest in this kind of transparency and the plans look like the "He loves you, he loves you not" dismantling of daisies.
I thought it was called off for the session of the National People's Congress (NPC) this year, but the FT seems to have different information.
One of the hot topics will be that ministries will no longer be able to run their own companies, now often the power basis of the more powerful ministries. Obvious questions: who is going to run those state-owned companies then? Will the central government get it their way?
My guess: in the end they will, but not yet. For the lower governments there is too much at stake and they might not oppose openly, but use some nice backstabbing.

Change with Chinese characteristics

Howard French picks up this beautiful entry at the blog of Mark Leonard, the executive director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. (No direct link available). Leonard describes how he discovered how China is changing, especially on the level of think tanks and intellectuals. You should read the whole story, but I loved this way of describing how change takes place in China.

The new right was at the heart of China's economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. Zhang Weiying has a favourite allegory to explain these reforms. He tells a story about a village that relied on horses to conduct its chores. Over time, the village elders realised that the neighbouring village, which relied on zebras, was doing better. So after years of hailing the virtues of the horse, they decided to embrace the zebra. The only obstacle was converting the villagers who had been brainwashed over decades into worshipping the horse. The elders developed an ingenious plan. Every night, while the villagers slept, they painted black stripes on the white horses. When the villagers awoke the leaders reassured them that the animals were not really zebras, just the same old horses adorned with a few harmless stripes. After a long interval the village leaders began to replace the painted horses with real zebras. These prodigious animals transformed the village's fortunes, increasing productivity and creating wealth all around. Only many years later—long after all the horses had been replaced with zebras and the village had benefited from many years of prosperity—did the elders summon the citizenry to proclaim that their community was a village of zebras, and that zebras were good and horses bad.

A very accurate way of showing how change takes place in China.

Are China's media part of the WTO-agreement?

Both the EU and the United States have started to push China to open up its financial services as part of its membership of the World Trade Organizations (WTO), writes the International Herald Tribune.
China's information monopolist Xinhua is trying to expand its position in the financial services and - at least in theory - Chinese enterprises can only get access to the blessings of Reuters, Dow Jones, Bloomberg and other financial information services through an outlet of state-owned Xinhua. So in legal terms the regulator (the state) is monopolizing the financial information services.
It is an old debate that emerges every time when Xinhua is moving on this lucrative market, but needs a few remarks.
First, the practical implications of this monopoly are limited. Foreign companies can easy subscribe to the foreign services outside China and in real life Chinese companies can do the same, since most who need those services will have at least a subsidiary in Hong Kong. Not being able to set up an office in the Shanghai stock exchange is of course a nuisance, but that seems to be part of the game as it always has been played.
The W.T.O.-agreement has always left out the media industry from the discussions, since it would be clear that China would never agree on a level playing field for the media. That has always been accepted by the other countries, just as other industries, considered crucial for its defense, were excepted.
Giving up on the monopoly on financial media would open the box of Pandorra, China's negotiators tried to keep closed during those lengthy negotiations. When the financial media are no longer regulated, it is very hard to keep the information monopoly in other fields of the media industry.
So, it still is laudable that both the EU and the US are trying to push the envelope, but it seems a rather symbolic effort. China, on its part, would rather leave the W.T.O. than give up on its media control. Nobody is willing to to that far, and China's negotiators at the W.T.O. will know that.

China's rich dive into art

Rupert Hoogewerf or Hurun

The Hurun Report published yesterday in Beijing the 2008 Hurun Contemporary Art List, an overview of both artists and works of arts hitting the hot art market in China.

Although prices for Chinese contemporary art have been soaring, its proponents argue that it has plenty of upside potential. They compare prices for Chinese art with the reported GBP50 million achieved by Britain’s Damien Hirst for his work ‘The Love of God’ in 2007, or more realistically perhaps with prices in the millions regularly achieved at auction in London and New York by artists such as Jeff Koons or Martin Kippenberger. Its detractors might counter by pointing out that oil painting is not securely rooted in Chinese culture and will eventually give way to ink painting, while also pointing to the prices of contemporary art in more developed economies such as Korea and Japan, which have remained considerably less speculative.

Rupert Hoogewerf is also a speaker at Chinabiz Speakers. Do drop us a line when you are interested in getting him as a speaker.

(h/t Shanghaieye)

SEPA might become a ministry

The governmental department in charge of the environment, the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), might get promoted into a ministry during the upcoming session of the National People's Congress, reports AP.
That might help to give the rather powerless department a bit more strength in its fight against pollution, but the effect seems to be rather symbolic, like most of China's struggle to fight off the environmental decay.
In China ministries cannot command as much power as they would in other countries, where ministers are often involved in the day-to-day business of running in country. In China ministries work on a much lower level with limited influence on the real decision making. Power remains based on the state-owned companies or other institutions they would have under their wings, and unlike for example the Ministry of Information Industry (China Mobile) SEPA has rather little powerful backers.