New visa regulations are here to stay - overview

Harder to have residency in China
via WikipediaI justed walking into this comprehensive briefing by the One-Eyed Panda's journal on the current visa regulations in China, based on notes made during an AmCham briefing. It offers little knew compared to what we have already seen in other sources, but puts all the different elements nicely together.
A few elements were new and this is the biggest one I have seen:

These regulations will most like last after the Olympics. The government is really cracking down on F visa holders who are actually residents inside China as they are really residents here, and should therefore be on residency and work permits and be paying taxes.

It means that F-visa will no longer work as a way to have residence in China. Well, at least until the regulations will change again, and they have always changed in a positive or negative way.

Deadly virus keeps on spreading

This other plague from Egypt hurting China, the foot and mouth disease, has started to cause panic as more than 3,000 people fell sick and a 21th child died, writes the International Herald Tribune, quoting state-media in China.

On Thursday the World Health Organization warned that the disease, which thrives in warm weather, could spread in the coming months. It advised child-care centers and schools to stay closed until the spread of new infections was curtailed.

The virus, which has no relation to the foot-and-mouth disease that infects livestock, is easily passed between children. The illness begins with a fever and often leads to mouth ulcers and blisters on the hands, feet and buttocks. There is no vaccine or cure, but most patients recover in a week without treatment. In severe cases, however, brain swelling can lead to paralysis or death. Rigorous hygiene dramatically reduces the spread of the pathogen, which is an enterovirus known as EV71.

Rumor: Multiple entry visas cancelled at the border

via WikipediaAllroadleadtoChina is on top of another breaking visa story that might have strong repercussions for business travelers to China: multi-entry F-visas are being canceled at the border. Visitors can only stay in China for 30 days and for a next visit they have to go through the new more stringent rules for China visas, that would exclude multiple entries.
Rich warns this is only an unconfirmed rumor from the third hand, but he has been remarkable accuraat in the past and the move would fit into the current changes for visas into China.
This change would dramatically increase the bureaucracy for frequent China travelers, many who would not get even a single-entry visa in Hong Kong anymore but would have to return to their home countries.
It also shows that recent protests by the Chambers in China, because the restrictions would hurt ongoing business very much, did not have any effect.

Ctrip goes to the US

Expedia meets a tough competitor
via WikipediaThere is very little news passing my screen these days, but fortunately the diligent people at Golden China Brands pointed me at this interesting news regarding Ctrip, China's leading online travel agency entering the US market.

With more than 19 million registered users, Ctrip processed more than 9 million hotel room nights and 10 million air tickets in 2007. However, more and more English-speaking leisure and business travelers are on the site making enhanced English-language services and amenities a necessity to facilitate China travel and booking.

Ctrip is my preferred online stop for domestic travel in China, their hotels and flights - including the famous discounts at Chinese airlines - seem rather comprehensive and changing your reservations is easier than wiping your nose.
I knew Ctrip was on the right track when on a holiday in Sanya, already some years ago, I met other tourists carrying print-out from the Ctrip-website. User-generated reviews told them how to enter the cordoned off beach without having to pay. That is indeed the way to get business in China.
For my international flights I would mostly rely on Expedia, although they got into some hot air in Europe, because they would not include most of the cheaper international airflights. Now they are teaming up with airline companies like Air Berlin, so their offers from Europe might also improve.
Ctrip cleverly limits itself to its strong point, the China travel business from the US, worth more than US$ 150 billion in 2007. At the same time, Golden China Brands tells us that Expedia is entering the China market. That is going to be an interesting battle, since Expedia has a strong international brand name, but Ctrip seems alsmost unbeatable on the China business.

Is aggregating news (from China) still a viable business model ?

NYT aggregator by The Shifted Librarian via FlickrToday I was asked by the people of Chinadev if I would agree to have the rss-feed of my weblog China Herald included in their news aggregator. A few weeks ago, I was also asked by yet another new news aggregator China.alltop.com and I discovered by accident the new country news aggregator by the New York Times, who included me without asking. A whole row of other aggregators I might have forgotten by now.
Of course, I would not refuse to become included in any service that would bring traffic to my site and they would actually not have to ask me to link to me. But if they would not tell they would start their operation the chances are pretty huge I would never discover them. Do (country news) aggregators still makes sense, if you only collect news from others, without adding any value?
For me they do not, but then, when it comes to China I might not be your average news consumer. I have a pretty decent filled rss-reader, where I would also read the Google-news feed on China and those two together would be better than any aggregator I have seen. When I would need news about other countries or subjects, I would also turn to the search engines. Maybe I would turn to the New York Times to check their aggregators, now I know they have this system.
Do you still use aggregators to get your news?

Work safety high on agenda after train crash

Qingdao's May 4 Square
via WikipediaA severe lapse in work safety has been pinpointed as the cause for Monday's deadly train crash and has triggered off a nation-wide bid to improve the safety for workers, write state-media, here quoted by AFP.
On Monday a train from Beijing to Qingdao, two Olympic cities, derailed, killing 71 people and wounding over 400. Because of the upcoming Olympics the rail track was being expanded, but safety authorities failed to warn the train to slow down. The train then derailed, crashed into the work site and hit another train coming from the opposite direction.

"The work safety situation remains serious, as some regions and enterprises are not taking responsibility and are not implementing safety measures," the People's Daily said, citing a cabinet-level report on the accident.

The World's longest sea bridge

China has opened today the world's longest sea bridge, connecting the port cities of Shanghai and Ningbo over the Hangzhou Bay, report different media. Building of the bridge started in 2003 and shortens the distance between the two important port cities.
The 36-kilometer bridge will change logistics in this part of eastern China dramatically as the Ningbo port might develop into a direct competitor of the already huge port of Shanghai. When Shanghai planned the expansion of its port, sharing its business with Ningbo seemed a logical idea since port city in Zhejiang province has a natural deepsea port. But Shanghai's leaders were so eager to keep the port within its own borders and ecoomic realm, although the building costs for a new deepsea port on the sea were considerably higher.
That was a major disappointment for Zhejiang province, who also had to give a few islands to Shanghai to allow them to build their own port. As compensation Zhejiang goed permission to build the bridge over de Hangzhou Bay. That does create an interesting competitive situation between the two port cities.
The bridge might be availeble all the time. Apart from an occassional typhone, coastal weather can be rough anyway, as I have experienced a few time myself.

May day: Time to rebook China-trips

Still harder to get to Europe for Chinese
via WikipediaWe are now twenty days into the new visa regulations for foreigners entering China. The stories I'm getting are pretty mixed. Short-term business visitors who have all their documentation in order report a very efficient treatment at the Chinese visa-section, even getting their visa done in one day, be it for a higher price.
For the business visitors who used F-visas to longer stays or even permanent residency things are getting tougher and getting a Z-visa seems the only viable solution. AllroadsleadtoChina has done a commendable job in explaining the new procedures for getting invitations for short-term F and exploring the ways to turn to Z-visas.
The real pain will be among the tourists who booked already a trip to China and now suddenly have to come up with documentation they did not knew about in December. This May-break I have seen already quite a few messages from especially backpackers who only bought a ticket, now rethinking their trip. Even people who bought tickets for the Olympics, putting them up for sale. For sure, this year is not going to be nice for tourism to China, let alone its name as a hospitable country for travelers.
The argument that it is still harder for Chinese to get to Europe is valid, but might not help in this image problems.

Carrefour protests largely contained

Haidian district, Beijing
via WikipediaOlympic protests at the outlets of the French retailer Carrefour seemed to have been pretty subdue, according to reports from over the country, summarized by the China Digital Times. Four outlets out opf 112 have reported to have seen protests at the gates.
At the Haidian outlet in Beijing police detailed seven people, reports AP, but no other violence is being reported.

One man was stopped as he ran around with a sign that said "Protest Carrefour, Protest CNN" as about 200 bystanders cheered. Two women and two men who were detained wore T-shirts that said "Anti-Riot and Explore the Truth" in English, a reference to deadly anti-Chinese riots in Tibet in March. CNN has been a focus of criticism by Chinese who say foreign news reports on Tibet are biased.

Protesters carried banners and chanted slogans at Carrefour stores in Changsha in central China, Fuzhou in the southeast, Chongqing in the southwest and Shenyang in the northeast, the government's Xinhua News Agency reported.

A short remark on Google.cn censoring of "Carrefour"

Carrefour, also banned at Baidu
by Colin Zhu via FlickrI was more than a bit amazed to see quite some chatter on the fact that Google.cn has also officially blocked the word "Carrefour" as a sensitive word. According to me this is a storm in a tea cup.
When Googled created a few years ago a censored edition of its search engine for China, the world was up in arms. How could a company like Google, the ultimate firm who did not want to do any evil?
Well, it happened anyway and since in China both Google.cn and Google.com were and are available in China and - surprise, surprise - most Chinese internet users used domestic competitor Baidu anyway. Those who picked Google, used Google.com and the traffic to Google.cn was rather smallish.
Now, the censored Google search engine nobody has also started to censor the word "Carrefour". I just fail to see what the news is. It is just a very lazy way of generating sensation, without a real basis.

I don't watch CCTV

No time to watch anyway
by zgware via FlickrMaybe many Chinese do not like CNN, for at least a group of them China's central tv station CCTV is also not a alternative. Danwei picked up a punk song, of the Beijing band Defy:

I don't watch CCTV

I don't watch this fucking channel...

Nice as a contemporary media critique.
Unfortunately, a link at Danwei's site is not working, so we cannot watch it right-away.

Beijing police talks students out of patriotic protests

China Digital Times translates a telling report of activist students in Beijing, who think they are going to discuss a demonstration as suddenly two police officers join the discussion "to chat".

They went on to tell us that it’s good we had a patriotic heart, but we couldn’t compromise the social order and normal traffic. …
“So that’s to say you support our activities but are concerned about the consequences?” we asked. They smiled, and said they didn’t support our plan. … and that patriotism has many forms of expression, “Why do you have to use this method?” they asked.

It is an interesting, down to earth story on how security forces are gently but forceful, try to end possible protests.

In the coming days, not only Carrefour is being tested

Image via WikipediaAs May 1 nears, a holiday in China and a traditional shopping day, Carrefour and other retailers from France prepare to face possibly more unrest at its 112 stores, the Financial Times writes.

Carrefour has become a symbol in China of nationalist anger against foreigners in the wake of recent clashes in Tibet and the subsequent protests against the Olympics torch relay in Europe, the US and Asia.

But it is also going to be a test for the central government, who does not want the anti-foreigner sentiment in China to take over its more balanced ways to deal with international relations. It is going to be a very busy time for law enforcement authorities.

40,000 unique visitors in April

One reason for my traffic
via WikipediaTraffic to the China Herald has been pretty stable over the past year, but this month I can report a small new record: for the first time over 40,000 unique internet users have been visiting this weblog.
Telling exactly where the traffic is coming from is pretty hard. Last year, at the beginning of the year, I noted in a few months time an unprecedented spike in my figures. My estimation at the time was that my hit rate at the search engines had become better, most likely because of changes at the search engines.
Since then the trend has been upward, apart from the Spring festival month February, but not in a very remarkable speed. What has been curious is that whatever I do or not do, traffic remains on the same level. Last month I have been traveling heavily and could not post too much on the China Herald. Traffic remained the same. In de past week I have been able to catch up: it does not mean that many more people find their way to this place.
I guess that the search engines largely define the number of visitors. There are a few stories from 2006 and 2007 that attract every month a huge number of visitors, while I do not really see a good reason for that.
Anyway, thanks for passing by, and when you have time, please tell me why you are here.

US Chambers crying for top-managers

via WikipediaThe Wall Street Journal summarizes an old, but every day more urgent problem foreign companies are facing: the shortage of qualified top managers to run their businesses in China. The three American Chambers of Commerce have joined forces in their complaints:

Difficulty in finding, training and retaining managers was named as the top operational problem by 37% of the 324 companies responding, more than issues such as regulation, bureaucracy or piracy.

The poor state of the education at China's universities is one of the reasons cited for the shortage of qualified managers.
One other reason, and that one is for obvious reasons not directly addressed by the survey, is that the larger companies are not able to convince larger numbers of staff with a Chinese background to return to China.
When I talk to these Chinese managers they still feel going back to China would land them in a second rate job, both in financial term and as a part of an international career track. Headhunters in Shanghai have been telling me that the traditional gap in payment between Chinese managers and foreign managers of the same level has disappeared. Whether that is true or not is partly irrelevant, since Chinese managers in those larger companies would not believe it has changed.
That issue has not been brought up by the US Chambers, because they came to China for the competitive salaries. The salaries of the workers do not matter that much in the equation, but when the higher management is getting competitive salaries, that might make a big change. That change bigger companies want to delay, but that delay might not last too long when they are serious in getting more top-managers to China.

Trade Union identifies labor problems at paper company

Hong Kong
by thomaswanhoff via FlickrEarlier I pointed at reports where China's richest woman in 2006 Zhang Yin got into problems because of labor misuse at her paper company. Those reports suggested that Zhang Yin was trying to fight off those allegation by pointing at a foreign plot to bring here into problems.
Today Xinhua came with an official statement, that did put the NGO SACOM in a much friendlier light:

The report, jointly compiled by Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) and student unions of two Hong Kong universities after investigation into the companies' mainland subsidiaries, condemned Zhang's company as "shameful among Hong Kong companies" because of unsafe working conditions, bad welfare treatment and other issues violating labor laws and regulations.

The Guangdong trade union repeated it had send in investigators herself and confirmed problems with workers' rights and the severe use of penalties.

A new virus alert in China

Image via WikipediaWhile the Beijing Olympics draw near, all possible disasters come down on China, now including now a virus that has already killed 20 children, reports Reuters, and is spreading fast. Just like when the SARS virus hit the country, there has been a long delay in reporting the disease. The virus was first discovered in Anhui, but has also spread to neighboring provinces.

The enterovirus 71, or EV71, which can cause hand, foot and mouth disease, began spreading in Anhui province's Fuyang city in early March, Xinhua news agency said, but was only publicly reported on Sunday.

Just like the SARS-virus, it does not have a cure yet and has been spreading very fast, even according to official figures, who mostly underreport those incidents. The Ministry of Health does no effect to hide the potential problem in her own newspaper:

"The current outbreak may be just a beginning," the Ministry of Health's Health News newspaper said. "We cannot exlude the possibility that the virus will spread further."

'Free Tibet' flags, made in China

Authorities in southern China have stepped in after workers realized they were making 'Free Tibet' flags in their factory, reports the BBC. Initially the workers had no clue what kind of textile they were about to ship, when they saw similar flag on TV-broadcasts. They then checked the meaning on the internet
The factory owned said he also did not mean what the 'Free Tibet' flags stood for.

The authorities have now stepped up the inspection of cars heading to the Shenzen Special Economic Zone and onwards to Hong Kong.

The Olympic torch is due to tour Hong Kong on Friday. It will then travel to a series of cities in mainland China before reaching Beijing for the start of the Olympic Games in August.

I'm not really surprised this is happening.
(h/t Isaac Mao at Twitter)

For some Olympic sponsors enough is enough

Mia Farrow
Genocide Intervention Network via FlickrHuman right activists have been increasing pressure on the companies who are sponsoring the Beijing Olympic Games, but for some the limit has been reached, writes the International Herald Tribune.
Nine of the 19 sponsors under attack did agree to meet Mia Farrow of "Dream for Dafur" agreed to meet her or went even further, but got last week anyway mostly bad marks as "Dream for Dafur" cited too little progress.
Some of them decided not to take it. For example CocaCola:

"For an organization that has not eased the suffering of a single individual on the ground in Darfur to criticize those who are helping thousands every day is more than ironic," a Coca-Cola spokesman, Kelly Brooks, wrote via e-mail. "This is not a report card on sponsors' good works, this is simply a report card judging companies solely on the basis of the Dream for Darfur yardstick - a company's willingness to publicly pressure a sovereign nation to intervene in the activities of another country."

Or Johnson & Johnson:

"At Johnson & Johnson, we've worked hard for years to help the people of Darfur, which is consistent with the commitment of Johnson & Johnson to contribute to better health around the world. Given the complexities of the tragedy in Darfur, we are disappointed that Dream for Darfur has used such a narrow context by which to evaluate the company's response," a spokeswoman, Lorie Gawreluk, wrote via e-mail.

More at the International Herald Tribune.

Is a fish a good symbol for a funding organization?

I'm helping a funding organization to make a brochure about their China-projects and they asked me to look at the lay-out of the brochure. They were pretty eager to be as political correct as possible, so they wanted to know whether the symbols they used could not have a bad connotation in China.
I of course asked some of my Chinese friends to look at it, but they could not find anything wrong. Most obvious symbol that was used was the fish, lots of fish were going through the lay-out. Now "yu" has more meaning than only fish, it can also mean wealth or having a lot of money.
Maybe the design was politically correct, but having to much fish in your lay-out might still be the wrong message a funding organization wants to give to its partners.

Competition wins from cooperation in China's politics

Looking for easy to sell cliches
via WikipediaI was just rethinking a bit what would have to change in my previous book, subtitled "15 misunderstandings about China and the Chinese" to make it up to date, when I stumbled on this great article in The Guardian that sets the tone right away:

If institutional infighting were an Olympic sport, China would sweep the medals at August's Games.

The article mainly focuses on China's financial industry:

But the cost of inadequate regulatory teamwork is rising as the economy becomes more complex, said Stephen Green, head of China research at Standard Chartered Bank in Shanghai.

"We are moving to the stage where we do need more coordination, but we get more competition instead. You can see that across the environment sector and energy policy as well. It's at the stage where it's holding back reforms," he said.

But the same goes rightfully for the environmental policies, energy policies. In that way my argument that China is not a top-down organized government, but a battlefield of infighting bureaucracies, each trying to keep or expand their own turf, is still very valid. It proved to be a misunderstanding that was hard to sell to the outside world, who often prefers to stick to outdated cliches on China. But taking off the lit and look what the engine is doing, is still the only way to get a bit of an understanding from China.

Amsterdam preparing for its own pro-China demonstration

by Darcie via FlickrAmsterdam will see on 10 May its first pro-Chinese protest ever, as far as I can remember. The preparation at debated here at the Geledraak, the leading Dutch site on all things concerning China. About 3,000 participants are being expected.
No matter how you think about the reasons for demonstrating, the meeting is most certainly going to be a watershed in how the Chinese community in the Netherlands (and probably in some other countries too) is operating.
Up to not so long ago the Chinese community in the Netherlands was hardly noticed. While other ethnic minorities were part of the extensive consulting process in the Netherlands and were eligible for governmental funding, Chinese preferred to keep a low profile. Only a few years ago, the Chinese community was formally accepted in different representative organs for minorities.
The political roots of the Chinese community were very diverse, perhaps one of the reasons for a lot of people to shut up. Some had fled their motherland for economic or political reasons, or a combination of both. Being Chinese was more part of a cultural identity, where political connotations were ignored as far as possible.
That is now changing very fast as the immigrants from mainland China in this community have been growing fast, and with them also extensive pro-China feelings, that have now become the most vocal voice in the debate. In that way the demonstration on May 10 is going to be a telling event for the Chinese community in the Netherlands.

Update: And here is the official invite if you are interested.

Tudou gets US$ 57 million in 4th round

Getting into a new league
via WikipediaTudou.com co-founder Marc van der Chijs publishes a press release on the fourth round of funding for the world's largest video hosting company after YouTube. That brings the total of Tudou's funding on US$ 85 in three years time.
Compared to other investments in other industries still a fairly small investment but for an internet company Tudou has been breaking a record:

As far as we know, this the largest round of funding ever for a Chinese internet company.

Earlier this year the video hosting industry seemed to get into some governmental trouble as the regulatory body (that is how we call the censor if we are in a good mood) , the State Administration of Radio, TV and Film (SARFT) tried to expand its turn to the online video hosting. That threat seems to have been put under control, at least for now.
Congratulations, Marc and Co!

More on the Carrefour debate

Carrefour by myuibe via FlickrDanwei gives its summery of the Carrefour debate in the Chinese media. It reports on a heated debate on a TV-station between opponents, really not that common for censored Chinese TV that tries to avoid all too sensitive subjects.
Southern Weekly had an interview with one of China's leading diplomants, Wu Jianmin, former ambassador to France and the Netherlands:

Some self-styled "patriotic" actions have damaged the interests of these staff, damaged the interests of China and damaged China's image. If there are many excessive actions people don't know what you might do next. They can't be sure about you and their misgivings and anxiety about you will increase. Patriotism is a good thing, but it must be guided by reason. Patriotism must be in line with core national interests.

The central government is trying to reign in the nationalistic forces, but that proves to be not that easy.

Crisis management at Carrefour: too little, too late

Sam Flemming of the IWOM

Where would we be without the internet? Carrefour would not have had its national boycott and we would not have known how incompetent its management reacted on the fast emerging crisis. ESWN translates a piece at Sina, depicting the (lack of) crisis management. We follow (anonymized) PR-person Li Kuan of Carrefour in Shanghai, who smells after a few days that something is rotten:

After quickly looking up the earliest Internet posts, Li Kuan got worried. "Although Carrefour was not the initial target, this affair occurred under very special circumstances ..." But Carrefour headquarters did not give a clear explanation of the situation and its potential actions. This point was confirmed from another public relations worker at a Carrefour branch office. The branch office found out about this affair only on April 13, and they thought that April 13 was the first day when the Internet posts and mobile phone SMS went out for the Carrefour boycott. Thus, they were two days behind the headquarters in terms of awareness about the situation. It is not known what emergency meetings were held at Carrefour headquarters over those two days. But the slowness of communication was surprising. From April 14 on, the media began to descend on Carrefour. According to inside information, Carrefour did not have a consistent message when the media showed up. "The headquarters did not tell the various local public relations people what to say or respond. Everything was based upon their own careful handling by virtue of professional experience and guesswork!"

The power of the consumer emerged and has hit Carrefour by surprise. Only after a while counteraction started to emerge. One of the sound explanations is that Carrefour has been focusing on government relations since its start in 1995, when it faced major regulatory problems. It failed to understand fully the voice of the consumers, especially the internet word of mouth, as our speaker Sam Flemming of CIC would put it. Sam Flemming has been repeating his warnings as enterprise after enterprise found itself at the mercy of the emerging vocal consumers.
If you are interested in retaining Sam Flemming for a lecture, key note or otherwise, do get in touch with Chinabiz Speakers or drop me a line.

Update: Got a twitter from somebody who is more familiar with the Carrefour organization. He suggest that Carrefour is so decentralized, there is nobody who would make such a crisis plan. The only plan that they have is a plan to repatriate their foreign expats in case a new SARS crisis emerges.
Some more details from the same source. Carrefour in China now has an annual turnover of three billion Euros (which does not say much about its profitability). It has 49,000 employees, 500 of whom are expats. Only three percent of the company's worldwide sales come from China. Of its 112 China-stores 15 have been disrupted by the recent upheaval. It puts all a bit more in perspective and might explain why Carrefour has not really been very upset by the scale of actions up to now.

Online censor tries to stifle Carrefour discussion

via WikipediaGlobal Voices got some early signals that the online censor tries to quiet down the heated debate on the Carrefour boycott on the internet. Search engine Baidu notes that it has become a banned word and bloggers got told to remove Carrefour stories.