Chinese tourists boycott France

via WikipediaThe French newswire AFP reports that Chinese tourists are boycotting France as a holiday destination. Last year 700,000 Chinese tourists visited France.

But many cancelled their trips after demonstrators disrupted the Olympic flame's passage through Paris in April, and travel agents in Beijing said they had now been advised to remove France from their destinations from this week.
"It is a catastrophic year for Chinese tourism in France," Philippe Yao, director of the China Comfort Travel agency in France, told AFP on Thursday.

The decision of many individuals seems now to have been followed by also informal instructions of the travel authorities to the travel agencies in China, although there was no official confirmation of that.
I'm not sure how this would work out in real life, since most of the Chinese tourists come in tour groups that would include a larger number of tourist destinations in Europe. Cutting out Paris or France as a whole would not really be convenient. The number of Chinese tourists only going to France seems to be rather limited, but could still have an effect, althought the psychological and political effect seems bigger than the economic one.

Did the Martians also take over your mobile?

via WikipediaI hoped it would have remained a secret a bit longer, but unfortunately a Time-reporter actually finished an AP-story on the unlucky official US-laptop who was supposedly copied during a business trip to Beijing. At the end of the story, a trip from the Beijing airport proved to be an interesting one:

A senior U.S. intelligence official, Joel F. Brenner, recounted a separate story of an American financial executive who traveled to Beijing on business and said he had detected attempts to remotely implant monitoring software on his handheld "personal digital assistant" device — software that could have infected the executive's corporate network when he returned home. The executive "counted five beacons popped into his PDA between the time he got off his plane in Beijing and the time he got to his hotel room." Brenner, chief of the office of the National Counterintelligence Executive under the CIA, said during a speech in December.

Brenner recommended throwaway cellular phones for any business people traveling to China.

"The more serious danger is that your device will be corrupted with malicious software that takes only a second or two to download — and you will not know it — and that can be transferred to your home server when you collect your e-mail," he said.

I might as well admit it: a similar thing happened to me when I visited Beijing in March. But unlike what you might think, it is not the Chinese who did it, it is the Martians. They are actually very kind and friendly people, who will invite me one of their days to Mars. No visa needed.

UPS moving from the Phillipines to Shenzhen

Image via WikipediaLogistics firm UPS is moving its Asian hub from the Philippines to the South-Chinese city of Shenzhen, reports China Economic Review. (h/t AllroadsleadtoChina). UPS is moving closer to its customers, it says.
In the second half of the 1990s I was working for a logistical magazine and actually, following the logistical development in China was then a small part-time job. Since then I have left the job and only now and then I see logistical news passing by that is compared to the 1990s really huge. Like this one.

Dan Brutto, president, UPS International, in a statement put the totally logical view, ‘Given the growth in shipping along the southern rim of China, it now makes more sense to sort and dispatch this volume from a hub closer to our customers. And, in making the switch, because of the growth we’re seeing, we intend to build a new sorting hub in Shenzhen with five times the capacity of the existing hub.’

The UPS Shenzen hub will launch 100 flights per week and its 400 staff will be capable of sorting 18,000 packages an hour.

Ten years ago even finding a kuaidi could be a challenge. Now they are within an hour at your desk, after you give them a call.

Top linkers in May

via WikipediaSome of my fellow webloggers give a monthly overview of the other websites and weblogs that send them most links. A nice gesture that I will not repeat every month, but it is a nice indication of how my network is organized. Here are the top-10 linkers of May:

1. Planetaki.com
   
2. ESWN
3. Gele Draak, a Dutch China portal
4. China.alltop.com
5. New York Times, China page
6. www.netvibes.com
7. Lonely Planet
8. All Roads Lead to China
9. Twitter
10. Danwei
    

A very nice selection of some of the leading information sources on China, but also some interesting surprises.

Gender problems for women hackers

Xiaotian

Always imagined that Chinese hackers were young male nerds, spending days, weeks, months in smokey rooms hitting out to their poor victims? Well, that might be basically correct, but my favorite Dark Visitor tells that women do their best to change that cliche image.

As far as I am aware, the first group of female Chinese hackers to break this mold were the Six Golden Flowers. The Golden Flowers have since broken up and gone their separate ways, but a new and larger group has taken their place, the Cn (China) Girl Security Team.

The website for the China Girl Security Team was registered on 12 Mar 2007 and currently has 2,217 members. The leader of the group Xiao Tian, is only 19 years old.

Always good to put a face to things.

Humor with Sichuan characteristics

lille abe via FlickrChina Digital Times gives a great overview of Sichuan jokes related to their earthquake. The outside world has never associated China much with humor, it mostly was a culturally too distant humor. But these Sichuan jokes are great:

* An old man in Beichuan, dragged out by a Russian rescue team. The first thing he said was “This is one hell of an earthquake, it shook me all the way to a foreign country!”

More at CDT.

Shanghai police will check foreigners' visas from tomorrow

via WikipediaThe Shanghai Daily confirms a rumor that was also twittering around: the Shanghai police will check more regularly the visas of foreigners from tomorrow.

FOREIGNERS in Shanghai should carry their passports with them for random checks by police, according to the Exit-Entry Administration of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau.

While there would be routine checks at the border, at airports or hotels, in Shanghai it would be rather uncommon for the police to enter public places to check passports or do so on the street at random.
I remember one incident at Park'97, one of the first really popular places, indeedfrom 1997, in Fuxing Park where the police came in and started to check on passports. To the mutual embarrassment of both the police officers and the foreign guests, almost nobody could produce a passport. We never heard of a similar exercise since then, but perhaps times are changing.

Economist debate on the Olympics

Blimey, our friends at the Economist are organizing an online debate on the Beijing Olympics! The more debates the merrier, but in this case they have for the first time an all-out new media initiative, including even Facebook.
The moderator, Franklin Daniels, also executive editor of The Economist , suggests they have had more of these debates, but since they have not told me before, they might as wel not have had them.
I believe the debate has now started, so better join them before it is over again.
The starting point could have been better. The question whether Beijing should have gotten the Olympics or not - the central question of the debate - has become obsolete seven, eight years ago when the Olympics were granted to Beijing. But then, it is hard enough to find a decent starting point for any debate, I think I should forgive the organizers. I will try not to forget them and check back every now and then.

Red flag from analysts for China Mobile

barrier for China Mobile
via WikipediaA few days after the first announcement from the central government about the restructering of the Telecom industry, analysts see in China Mobile the biggest loser, writes Market Watch today. Today it is China's largest telecom provider and in capitalization the largest in the world, but the other two players might get more policy support.

Macquarie [Securities] said regulations designed to curb China Mobile's dominance could include one-sided rules on number portability, caps on its share of cellular subscribers, forced differentials in service charges and handicaps in the form of higher interconnection charges with other networks. Additional regulation could see China Mobile offer low-cost roaming to its competitor and rules that require it to open its relay towers to support the radio electronics of other carriers.

After the earthquake: internet as crisis management tool

Image by Mexicanwave via FlickrWhen the story of the May 12 Sichuan earthquake broke through Twitter, it was obvious that the largest disaster in more than a decade would be dealt with different, because China was online now. Sam Flemming of CIC has neatly summerized the many different ways online tools have been helping in the aftermath of the crisis.

• A BBS helping a military helocopter to find a good place to land
• Spreading information faster than ever
• Finding missed persons
• Dealing with the grieve

The figures are just amazing:

For anyone who knows China, the fact that the Internet and Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) served as a central platform for the nation to share the latest information, to help out and to grieve should come as no surprise. At last count, China has 210 million Internet users and likely now has more users than any other country in the world. Chinese netizens are also among the most engaged in the world, with some reports suggesting that 98% have created content for BBS, blogs and other forms of IWOM. The netizens were out in full force during the week following the event: major portals hosted over 23 million netizen comments and blogs with over 12.6 million comments.

More at the special edition of the IWOM May Watch.

Update: Here is a neat example of the power of the internet, translated by Global Voices. Increasingly tents for survivors of the earthquake are showing up at places they were not meant for, like up-scale communities in Chengdu. Needless to say this is causing an outcry.

IT-firms: great in applications

compelling picture by Shanghaiist

The other day I was called by a journalist from a US-based technology magazine who was looking for Chinese companies ("they do not have to be big") that had developled great new IT-stuff.
That was a tough challenge. There is no shortage of Chinese companies who have done great things in applying existing or even rather simple software into great applications. But investing stuff, I could not come up with a good example. 't Does not mean that Chinese firms only act as copycats of US inventions, but are really creative in using them in a new way,
Fortunately, Venturebeat.com comes with a review of Diangping.com that has made really new use of basically existing applications.

One of Diangping’s most popular features, for example, is a way for users to vote and discuss their favorite dish at a restaurant. This is specifically important in China, because there are literally thousands of dishes; some restaurant menus are books, with more than 100 pages of options. A basic review of a restaurant is hardly good enough for a first-time diner because one wants to know what to order besides, say, the kung pao chicken. Check this article out for an English-language summary of some of Diangping users’ favorite Shanghai dishes, like these delicious-looking fried buns pictured.

Ban on travel abroad for officials

Yangzhou via WikipediaThe central government as banned all trips abroad for China's officials, the Dutch website Gele Draak reports. The site reports that a Chinese delegation of 32 officials from Yangzhou, supposed to attend a conference on water and environment in Rotterdam and to visit the Dutch city of Breda in June, have cancelled their participation.
The ban has not yet been reported by other sources I have seen. It seems to be a general ban, Yangzhou is about 2,000 kilometers away from the earthquake in Sichuan.
The Dutch conference has now been postphoned and will be organized on another moment. The organizers said they were disappointed.

Update: I got an informal confirmation of the nationwide ban on travel. The main explanation is that China wants to save costs, now it needs all its resources for Sichuan. An official announcement is expected later. So, a few more trips might be cancelled and organizers worldwide might have to revise their plans. Anyway, getting 32 officials from a little town in China seems a bit crazy anyway, even if that would include their concubines.
The government order has been classified as "secret", explaining why we have to tell you.

Has China Mobile been screwed by the 3G-deal ?

by genta_hgr via FlickrMore details and analysis are merging on the reform of the telecom industry in China, like here at the Digital Watch. Especially the deployment of the third generation mobile phone (3G) has all the trademarks of a compromise, with all the disadvantages of it.
The three new telecom companies will each get a license for a 3G network. Plus8Star has the most thorough overview:

There will be three 3G licenses issued (CDMA 2000, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA) for three operators (China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile).

It looks that the merged China Netcom and China Unicom are going to keep China Unicom as a collective brand name, which would make sense, since the latter one has more name on mobile communication and that is going to be the key section of the industry in the coming decade.
So, China is going to roll out three 3G-systems, that is like building three sewage systems. Under 2G or the European GSM or the American CDMA were picked by a country and the infrastructure was focused on that.
By rolling out three systems, there will be a massive destruction of capital (but I do not think the foreign telecom companies will complain about that), while it is very unclear whether exchange between the three systems will be possible, especially outside China.
China Mobile, now the most powerful of the telecom companies, seems to have gotten the worse deal with the China 3G-system of TD-SCDMA. It has to invest much into building a new system, where it would have preferred to build upon the existing GSM-network. The number of mobile handsets will be limited and its customers will most likely not been able to use them outside China. Interesting times.

China Red Cross tried to deal with tarnished reputation

via WikipediaThe China Red Cross has come again under scrutiny of China's internet users. Initially it was accused for lack of transparency, because it did not want to explain what was happening with the funds it received for the victims of the Sichuan earthquake.

Now the vice-chairman of the Sanya Red Cross Society China has been attached, writes ChinaCSR.
According to Sohu.com, a viral Internet video has been spreading online showing Wang shouting to a group of donors and asking for a 5% management fee for the donations they make. As the release of the video coincided with the Sichuan earthquake, many netizens think that Wang was trying to charge a management fee for the donations made for the earthquake relief. The video has seriously undermined the image of Hainan Provincial Red Cross Society, the supervisory agency of SRCS.

This time action has been taken and Wang Li has been removed from her duties.

Update: One of my readers writes in an email:

FYI - the standard management fee by GONGO's is 10%. How is it that the press is not aware of this, and shouldn't this be part of the conversation? Not that the Red Cross is innocent, and shouldn't be expected to be transparent, but perhaps reports would better serve their readers to understand the fact that first response NGOs cost more than relief organizations and that without the Red Cross, the alternative would have been a disaster.

GONGO's are the NGO's working as a part of a government entity.