David Webb continues his excellent series on the Hong Kong Government's proposed constitutional reforms (the first part was on the crooked and rigged corporate voting in functional constituencies). This time he teaches the world's smartest government that 20% of 70 is not 12 and finds the government's proposal clearly breach the Basic Law. There's plenty more of sensible suggestions, and by being sensible are thus disqualified from consideration by the government.
Friday sees the hanging of Australian Nguyen Tuong Van and while I oppose the death penalty I also recognise that Singaporean law is clear on the matter and much gnashing of teeth isn't going to matter one jot, just as unfurling a "Democracy Now" banner in the heart of Beijing isn't going to win you any fans. Amongst the media hue and cry is the self-sustaining spotlight on Singapore's hangman, Darshan Singh. Originally thought to be fired, it turns out he's still on for the job and considers himself the best man for the job (sub req'd):
Mr Singh, 74, has boasted: "With me, they don't struggle. I know the real way. If it's a raw guy [hangman], they will struggle like chickens, like fish out of the water."...Mr Singh has issued a series of contradictory statements in recent days, reportedly claiming he was sacked, then warning no one else in Singapore was trained to do the job - and the results would be ugly if a novice was employed.
But I'm here to help. Coming soon, Singapore's newest reality TV show....
I agree with you that the law is as it is in Singapore and you would know that on the plane but with one caveat (when looking at the larger picture). There is a distinct double standard when the Singaporeans happily hang a mule, who is usually recruited because they are in a desperate state, and then at the same time the Singapore government uses its citizens tax dollars to help prop up one of the regimes that leads the way in drug production - Burma - through investment.
Just let him die. Really. If we really believe that basic human rights are so important, stripping him of these rights for the rest of his life ought to be a more inhumane torture than just taking away his life.
Mr. Singh's comments reveal how every culture, in my opinion, has its fantasies about punishment and power domination. The fact that people even want to know about this from his perspective is a sign both of the normal curiousity that inflames us all, but also of the need for socities to legitimize that certain members of their community keep the rest of society in control.
Mr. Nguyen did not commit murder, instead he should have been granted clemency. The Singapore Govenment is too harsh. They could have used this life to do some work.
I am totally disgusted with Mr. Singhs job. He has tarnished the rest of the Singhs around the World with his job. (Singhs believe in a religion call the Sikhs) we are very respectable people and do not preach on Barbaric, brutal, cruel and degrading and inhuman acts.
We believe in honest living. By hanging some one for a living is not honest living. He seems to make his (victims) the prisioners suffer this is clear as he meantions to the media that they "run like chickens and are like fish out of water". Obviously he finds it fun to see them suffer.
Either he is not a singh, or is giving the rest of the World a bad impressions about Singhs.
He owes an apology to the rest of the Sikhs "Singh" for degrading our name.
We singhs in the rest of the World preach on equality, brotherhood, justice and truth.
MR is never going to be a paying venture but donations help us to cover our costs. More importantly, donations help to solve a serious economic problem. Efficiency says that goods with zero marginal cost should have a zero price but without prices not only is the incentive to produce diminished but so is information about what to produce. (See Coase's 1946 classic, The Marginal Cost Controversy, JSTOR). Donations allow prices to be set at MC while at the same time providing a (noisy) signal about where true economic value lies. In particular, Tyler and I know that we can appropriate more of our marginal product from professional work than we can from blogging yet it is conceivable that our marginal product is higher in blogging. Thus, to decide how much to invest in this venture we markup donations to get an estimate of our social value and we put positive weight on social welfare in our utility function.
If that's gone over your head, it translates as "give money to bloggers". Perhaps this inspires you and you've got left over change after donating to MR? My Amazon wish list is ever-growing and there's only 17 shopping days to Christmas*.
* It should be noted the idea of "shopping days to Christmas" is completely irrelevant in the online world. Also, don't let my Jewishness put you off buying Christmas gifts for me. It's hard to be a Jew on Christmas.
Peasant: 1. A member of the class constituted by small farmers and tenants, sharecroppers, and laborers on the land where they form the main labor force in agriculture.
2. A country person; a rustic.
3. An uncouth, crude, or ill-bred person; a boor.
The word peasant conjures up an image of a dirt poor rural labourer, struggling to make ends meet. Their daily struggle is to survive, let alone enjoy their life. Some see their way of life threatened by the WTO because they believe their local consumers should subsidise them, clinging to antiquated notions of the need for food security and the benefits of farms. Among the most militant is the Korean Peasants League. So can someone explain how this group is able to send at least eight members to Hong Kong for a few days to scout out the protest areas and complain (according to the SCMP report) that the 1 metre fences are 70cm too high? As Hemlock said about "the economic illiterates of the anti-globalization, anti-capitalism movement", they are simply saying "We're too stupid to understand the theory of comparative advantage and it makes us mad as hell." I propose we greet these protesters with sprinklings of cheaply produced foreign rice. That should scare them away.
Do real Korean peasants know their hard earned won are being spent on junkets to Hong Kong?
OK, you've given us a slogan, but not a reason. Why is comparitive advantage a race to the bottom of workers rights? If you understood the theory, you would realise the workers are also consumers. Let me explain it to you:
Country A is the best at making both cars and food.
Country B also makes cars and food, is better at making food than cars, but not as good as Country A at either.
If country A specialises in only making cars, and country B specialises in making food, and they trade with each other, BOTH countries are better off. The workers get cheaper products for the same amount of wages.
That sounds like comparitive advantage is a boon for workers, not a race to the bottom.
This book follows the pattern established by Malcolm Gladwell with The Tipping Point and Blink - take a collection of interesting studies and anecdotes and put them together into a vaguely scientific sounding extended essay. These are what I call "Chinese meal" books - you read them voraciously but finish feeling somehow empty. Wisdom of Crowds is a well written book, as you would expect from a journalist. The basic thesis is simple: crowds often get things right. He gives example after example, and keeps coming back to markets as the ultimate expression of collective wisdom. It's sugar coated Hayek for the masses. It is no lesser a book for that, and is certainly worth a read. At times the "gee-whiz" factor gets a bit much and the book isn't likely to shake your world view, but compared to the cr@p that's on TV these days it makes an enjoyable alternative.
I fully intend to send a copy to Donald Tsang for Christmas.
China is officially not a currency manipulator. It might be convenient for certain America politicians, but the yuan's level is a major contributing factor behind America's trade deficit. Logan Wright tells us this finding is Bush and Snow flexing anti-protectionist muscles.
Today's quote of the day: A woman's vagina is built so that a baby's head with a 10-centimeter diameter can get out. No matter how meaty you think your penis is, it's never going to be bigger than a baby's head. From an article on Japanese penis size (via Japundit).
Jackie Chan: hypocrite. American culture is bad unless it pays you US$15 million a time.
(18:10) Another contender for quote of the day: ...the next time a PAP politician trots out the tired old "Confucian gentleman" line, just tell him to go to Legalist hell. - Dr. Sam Crane on the most un-Confucian Singaporean Government.
A new report on the potential for a bird flu epidemic in China reveals that corrupt or inept officials and bureaucratic problems may hinder efforts to halt the viruses' spread. Not exactly Earth-shattering. What is far more disturbing is the latest numbers on a virus that is already a proven killer approaching epidemic proportions: HIV/AIDS.
The SCMP reports that Vice Premier and former Health Minister Wu Yi has found the problem with dealing with China's AIDS problem:
Vice-Premier Wu Yi yesterday attacked local officials for disregarding national policy on Aids prevention and treatment, as the number of confirmed cases rose to a new high. The official number of people infected with HIV rose to 135,630 by the end of September, up 50,000 to 60,000 from last year, according to the State Council's Work Committee on Aids Prevention and Treatment.
But this figure was only 16 per cent of the estimated actual total of 840,000. Ms Wu blamed inadequate monitoring and testing for the shortfall...But the latest report shows the sharing of needles by drug users has become the most common form of transmission, accounting for 40.8 per cent of infections. Blood transfusions accounted for 23 per cent of infections and sexual transmission 9 per cent. About 23 per cent were infected through unknown means, but it is believed most of these were cases of sexual transmission.
My emphasis on the estimated real total. Ms. Wu also knows why local officials are not supporting national efforts to provide free treatment and education on prevention. It is a combination of ignoring the reality (ie blissful ignorance) and that promoting prevention and treatments could adversely impact local area's image, business and investment (ie AIDS is bad for business). The SCMP follows with the obligatory heart-breaking personal story, in this case a mother and son infected with HIV via a blood transfusion (full story below the jump).
It's a start that someone as enlightened and pro-active as Ms. Wu is leading the national fight against HIV/AIDS. It's a tragedy that such efforts are stymied at a local level by the very corrupt and inept officials the bird flu report is fretting about. Most importantly, instead of panicking about a potential bird flu epidemic, China and other countries should worry about the HIV/AIDS epidemic they already have.
When eight-year-old Zhu Mengchang saw soldiers raising the national flag on Tiananmen Square this month, he told his mother he wanted to be a soldier when he grew up.
Liu Xianhong promptly burst into tears.
It was not that the mother of two was not moved by her son's ambition. Rather, she was beset by the uncertainties lying ahead, because they have both tested positive for HIV.
It was their first trip to Beijing, to petition the Ministry of Public Security over an assault on members of their family by about 30 police officers and security guards during a sit-in outside a Hebei hospital.
The raid on October 17 outside the Xiandewang Coal Mine Hospital in Xingtai put six of Ms Liu's family members in hospital.
"We were sitting in the yard of the hospital. Suddenly a group of policemen stormed in. They all wore helmets and held batons. Then they started beating us. Someone shouted, `Beat them to death. The coal mine will be taking care of this'. Then they beat us for roughly 20 minutes, and so many people collapsed," she said.
Ms Liu's husband, Zhu Xianping, and his parents are still in hospital. Mr Zhu suffered severe head injures and broken bones.
The sit-in was part of their battle to seek compensation and an explanation for her HIV infection through a postnatal blood transfusion at the hospital in 1995. She passed the virus to Mengchang, who was born two years later.
"It [the blood transfusion] was on the first day of the eighth lunar month. I clearly remember the date. It's my daughter's birthday," she said.
"I felt OK after giving birth to my daughter. But the doctor said I was weak and needed a transfusion. My husband said I should listen to the doctor, so I accepted it - the only transfusion I have ever had in my life."
It was only after tests by the Xingtai Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the Zhu family in February that they realised the 400 yuan blood transfusion had cost them more than that.
"My family knew that I was infected with HIV before I did. They didn't want to break the news to me because they thought I couldn't handle it. But I grilled my husband because I found it weird that he was in tears whenever he saw me," Ms Liu said.
Only Ms Liu and Mengchang tested positive for HIV.
Shocked by the news, Ms Liu went to the CDC to try to find out how she and her son had contracted the Aids virus.
"I have never worked outside Xingtai. We are decent people who have never done anything immoral. Experts from the CDC said the only way I could have been infected would be through a blood transfusion, and then I passed it to my son," Ms Liu said.
Attempts to contact Xiandewang hospital were unsuccessful.
A lawsuit demanding compensation of 1.2 million yuan from the hospital was filed in July.
Ms Liu's case is not a unusual in Xingtai, where Aids activist Li Qianji said at least 200 people were infected with the virus through transfusions of tainted blood.
Last year, Mr Li revealed to China Central Television that the Xingtai Blood Centre illegally bought blood from Shanxi province - mainly from the cities of Yuncheng , Linfen and Yongji - from September 1995 to January 1997.
Media reports prompted the Ministry of Health to order the Hebei provincial Bureau of Health to investigate blood supplies in Xingtai in December and January.
Ms Zhu and her family started holding sit-ins almost every day outside Xiandewang hospital after they filed the suit, in an attempt to seek an explanation from the hospital and to settle the case outside court.
Wang Liming, Ms Liu's lawyer, said a civil lawsuit could take up to six months to settle.
"She's HIV-positive and doesn't know how long she is going to live. By settling the case with the hospital, she thinks she can get the compensation to secure her son's medical expenses sooner. And she is willing to accept a lower figure as long as the hospital agrees to settle it," Mr Wang said.
But the family have never had a single meeting with hospital management during three months of sit-ins. Mr Wang said the hospital was unable to provide Ms Liu's medical record, as required by law.
Mr Wang said the Xingtai Public Security Bureau had set up a team to look into the case and Ms Liu would file a lawsuit against those who carried out the assault once the investigation was over.
He added that a ruling on Xiandewang hospital would be handed down soon.
A coal mine branch of the Xingtai Public Security Bureau said the case was under investigation, but denied police assaulted the family.
Beijing emissary and occassional casino operator Stanley Ho has received the word and has shared it with the children of Hong Kong. Despite rumours to the contrary, Beijing already has a timetable for democracy in Hong Kong. If only Hong Kongers would stop asking for it, Beijing will deliver. Sure it sounds like you're dealing with six year olds, but that's what passes for political discourse in these parts. Buried in good ol' Stanley's warnings that Hong Kongers don't know what's good for themselves and should just wait for those that know better in Beijing, comes this:
"I have met some high-ranking central leaders regarding this issue. They told me that I can pass their message to the democrats," Ho said.
"Their reply is: the introduction of universal suffrage will not be later than 2046. Even if we can have democracy in 2046, the central government is still fulfilling its promise made in the Basic Law."
Quick, set up the countdown clock, there's only 41 years left! 2046 is only a mere 39 years later than the Basic Law promised. But you can't rush these things.
This Sunday will see many Hong Kongers out on the streets in the latest example of mob politics. The tycoons and grandees keep telling us these marches don't work, even though they resulted in the toppling of Tung Che-hwa and the binning of the Article 23 legislation. Hong Kongers know better.
David Webb has today's must read on everything that is wrong with Hong Kong's current electoral arrangements and especially the rotten boroughs (functional constituencies) with their veto power, easy manipulation, and perverse incentives, taking the transport sector seat as an example. Incredibly amongst the tycoons that control several votes each, other voters include the governments of Singapore, Dubai, the mainland Government and Hong Kong Government itself! It will make you angry enough to march on Sunday.
Ho ecouraged Hong Kongers to support the government's "reform" legislation because it would send property prices up 20% -- which should serve as a real incentive for the 60% of the populations who can't afford to buy a home at current prices.
Ho urged Longhair to become a "warrior for democracy" by supporting the government's anti-democratic agenda.
Beijing stooge Chan Wing-kee jumped into the fray, saying that it didn't matter how many people turned out for the march this weekend because the government had already decided to ignore them anyway.
Thanks to those that have taken a look and linked to the new Simon World forums. I've added a new index, called The Talk Chamber. I'm going to regularly post questions or topics that can (hopefully) spark debate and discussion. Feel free to spread the word, join in or even post a topic of your own. It's awfully difficult to debate with oneself (although it's been done before)!
An incredible piece on the changing thoughts of Liu Guogong, a former Central Committee member and top ideologue on what's gone wrong with Chinese capitalism (via CDT).
Michael Turton and Andrew Meyer trade thoughts on the impact of cross-straits relations on Taiwanese and Chinese political culture. Proof again that much of the best and most interesting thinking is there for you, for free, in the blogosphere.
I finally got to the swap calculation, and found that there is no meaning or implication for the swap contract. well, there is one, the banks and PBoC expect RMB to stay at exactly 8.08 after 12 months. (but most likely they are wrong)
Philip Borwing rants about the state of domestic helpers and low-paid workers in today's SCMP (full article below the jump). It's a hit and miss affair. He starts out on the right foot, complaining about the unequal application and enforcement of labour laws when it comes to helpers and low paid workers. He also notes the economic and social benefits of domestic helpers. Then he goes off the rails:
At the current level of their minimum wage, it could be argued that domestic helpers are no worse off than the lowest-paid unskilled workers. But the fact that foreigners are prepared to work for half the minimum, or less, does not make it right. It suggests that society tolerates an underclass segregated by race, rights and income.
No, what it suggests is the minimum wage is too high. Minimum wages create an artificial floor in the "price" of labour. As a consequence the price of labour is too high, and fewer people get employment as helpers than would otherwise be able to. At the margin the minimum wage may be too high for those who would otherwise employ a helper, and too high for those who would work for less. That's not to say sub-standard working conditions should be tolerated. Far from it. The government is morally culpable if it does not equally enforce laws for all residents. But that's a seperate and very different issue.
Bowring then points out how much worse off helpers are in Singapore before coming out with this zinger:
Sadly, it is perhaps not surprising - given the tendency of members of Singapore's elite to believe in the superiority of Chinese genes - to find that only women from the "brown" countries of South and Southeast Asia qualify to be employed in this particular form of servitude...they [the helpers] contribute to the economy but get almost nothing back.
His thoughts on Singaporean superiority complexes asisde, there is a major piece of the puzzle missing. Helpers are not compelled to take these jobs. They are also not forced to stay in them. Yet most of them do. Why? Because despite the appalling pay, crappy conditions and terrible work, they are prepared to do it. It beats what they could be doing back home, and they are still earning far better than they would otherwise.
Yes, there's a line to be drawn. There is a need for certain minimum working conditions to protect fundamental human rights. A minimum wage is not one of them. Patronising helpers by telling what's in their interests does not help. These are consenting adults agreeing to labour contracts. Let the market do its job and it generally does it well. So long as governments actually enforce their laws as they should, the system works to everyone's benefit. If you feel guilty about it, pay your amah extra and give her better working conditions. I do.
The shame of an underclass
Does Hong Kong really need an underclass of low-paid contract workers? Do we not demean ourselves by demeaning others? Two recent news items are worth pondering: first, the case of a domestic helper being paid just $100 a month; and second, the fact that the government is to allow the import of 5,000 low-paid workers for the textile industry.
The first case may be exceptional, but what is not exceptional is the widespread underpayment of domestic helpers, especially Indonesians, and the lack of effort by the government (and the Indonesian consulate) to enforce the law.
The textile workers may be exceptional, too, but the exception shows the lack of principle of certain business interests close to the Tsang government - who are demanding special favours - and the government's susceptibility to them.
A social and economic case can be made for allowing foreign domestic contract workers. They enable more spouses to work, thus benefiting the economy as whole as well as the employer household. However, there also seems to be a connection between the easy availability of domestic help for the middle class and the very low birth rate. Instead of making child-rearing easier, it encourages local women to work, and earn, full time.
At the current level of their minimum wage, it could be argued that domestic helpers are no worse off than the lowest-paid unskilled workers. But the fact that foreigners are prepared to work for half the minimum, or less, does not make it right. It suggests that society tolerates an underclass segregated by race, rights and income.
The law at least lays down reasonable working conditions. Thanks to freedom of speech and the activities of the media and non-governmental organisations, abuses do get exposed. Hong Kong has yet to go as far down the road as the likes of the Persian Gulf states and Singapore in relying on a transient underclass. In the oil-rich Gulf, years of dependency both on low-paid, unskilled workers from India and skilled workers from many countries have left a legacy of a native population unwilling to do menial jobs, often too lazy to learn skilled ones, yet expecting high incomes for doing little work as government servants.
The Singapore example is closer to Hong Kong's case. The extent of the exploitation of foreign workers there is seldom discussed. But it came as a shock to learn that foreign domestic workers do not enjoy any legal entitlement to days off. There were howls of protest from some employers when the government recently suggested that all contracts should provide one day off a month.
At present, domestic helpers are exempt from the working-hours and days-off provision of the Employment Act, so leave and wages are determined by individual contracts. Pay averages only 15 per cent of the city state's median. One survey found that 50 per cent of helpers get no days off and only 10 per cent get one day a week - the legal minimum in Hong Kong. Many maids are not allowed out of the house.
Sadly, it is perhaps not surprising - given the tendency of members of Singapore's elite to believe in the superiority of Chinese genes - to find that only women from the "brown" countries of South and Southeast Asia qualify to be employed in this particular form of servitude.
Apart from 150,000 such maids, Singapore also has some 600,000 other "non-residents". Many are well-paid bankers, businessmen academics and engineers. But rather more do the dirty and dangerous jobs, stock the thriving brothel business or otherwise work for wages far below the norms for residents. They contribute to the economy but get almost nothing back.
It's been done before, but few do it as well as Jake van der Kamp. Today in the SCMP he takes to the newest Hong Kong government wheeze to pretend to talk about democracy, the Commission on Strategic Development. It's a read the whole thing effort, reproduced in full below the jump.
Working paper's tone and questions cast democracy as a dirty word
"Social conflict, public jitters and populism have undoubtedly posed threats to our society."
Secretariat working papers,
Commission on Strategic Development
Undoubtedly, you understand and thus when the members of this new commission meet to discuss the big questions of the day, they will just have to take the statement as read. It is undoubted.
Here is a little more along the same line: "How can democratic development be taken forward without undermining economic prosperity, causing social instability, impairing the efficiency of government, and undermining trust between Hong Kong and the central government?"
What we have here obviously is evidence of a mindset that distrusts democracy as rule by the rabble. The civil servants who coined these statements are unlikely to say so directly but it oozes out of everything else they say. They think you are not mature enough to be entrusted with decisions in public policy. Only they themselves have reached this exalted status. Yours is not to reason why. Yours is but to do and die. It is an old notion and it has not gone away.
But why should social conflict pose a threat to our society? Social conflict is rather the best way of determining what directions society should take in matters in which there is reason for dispute.
For instance, there is no social conflict at all about society's resolve that the police should be set to catch thieves and bring them to justice. Where we get social conflict is in such questions as whether government should continue to reclaim our harbour and turn it into the Kowloon Ditch.
On the one side we have government officials saying that reclamation is absolutely required to accommodate traffic projections and demand for office space in Central.
On the other side we have people saying that an open harbour is a priceless asset and congestion could be resolved if government did not insist on locating its own offices in a financial district.
Who is right? Who is wrong? I have my own opinions but the point is that we have legitimate disagreement here and the only way to resolve it is to argue it out in public, sometimes heatedly.
This makes for social conflict but it is just the sort of conflict we need. Out of it we will eventually get a decision in which we can be reasonably sure that the relevant questions have been fully explored. Likewise those "public jitters". Life itself is a state of "jitters" about the future.
Full consensus you get only in the grave. If you want to tempt an explosion of public unrest, however, there is no better way than to give "public jitters" no outlet.
Democracy does not create them. They always exist. Democracy only allows them to be expressed.
And what do these anonymous civil servants mean by "populism"? Do they say that our elected representatives are all just a pack of baby-kissers who pander only to the baser instincts of their electorates and who scorn real deliberation of public policy issues?
If so, I would like to hear it said directly.
It is certainly implied and it is a rank insult, both to legislators and to you, dear reader.
But let us turn to the questions in that second statement I quoted.
How can democratic development be taken forward without undermining economic prosperity? Let us do it as a survey. You can do it yourself. In one column rank the world's countries by their wealth. In another column rank them by their state of democratic development.
Strange, isn't it, how the two rankings match so well. What is this talk of democracy "undermining"? The evidence says it is rather rule through edict by bureaucrat that undermines.
Causing social instability. I give you a survey again. In one column rank the world's countries by social instability or police state measures to hide social instability. In the other column rank them from least democratic to most democratic. Once again we have a close match. Where would you rather live, Britain or Chechnya?
Impairing the efficiency of government. Hello, North Korea. Yours is a very efficient government. Your bureaucrats can do what they want unimpaired by democracy of any sort. Your country must be the most prosperous on earth.
Undermining trust between Hong Kong and the central government. What trust? There can only be trust between a government and its people if trust is given by choice. Compulsion is not trust. If the central government wants trust from Hong Kong then it should be prepared to trust Hong Kong. The vote determines whether it does.
But our bureaucrats are determined that they do not want the vote. They do not have to say so. They need only let their mindset determine how they phrase their questions and all is immediately apparent.
Only a few weeks ago it seemed the Hukou system of household registration would be abolished. This system registers people as "urban" or "rural" residents, regardless of where they actually live. Those classified as rural do not qualify for numerous benefits including health care, housing and social security. It means, for example, that Shenzhen, a city of several million, is mostly comprised of "rural" residents (exceptions are made for babes). An added advantage is cities can wash their hands of being responsible for rural residents, so these residents work for peanuts in (sometimes) attrocious conditions.
So reports of the abolition of this system was met with glee. Yet today's Standard reports the Hukou system is to remain and the reforms shelved thanks to pressure from regional and city governments (who are baulking at the cost of actually servicing the people living in their cities) and companies (who are baulking at the potential increased costs of their rural slaves). Another key factor:
The simple fact is that large numbers of newly officially registered residents artificially dilute per-capita GDP, the single statistic on which local officials make their careers.
While President Hu and those in Beijing prattle on about closing the rural-urban divide, the reality on the ground and in the provinces is that large vested interests want that gap to remain. In this case, those vested interests have won.
Kind of makes this "rising power" look more like Puff the Magic Dragon.
Yet another article, same day, Xinhua is slapping itself on the back that China's output of coal is set to increase, easing supply concerns of the dirty, highly polluting carbon fuel. Of the 2.1 billion tons of coal, power plants will consume 1.18 billion. TWO BILLION TONS. That's well over a ton of coal per person in China.
Sort of answers a few questions at once, doesn't it? Dying miners, corrupt officials, poisoned environment. But there seems to be no stopping China now, driven to put coal into its veins to get the high of more industrial production, a few million more US dollars in exports. Let's face it - China has a coal addiction.
But I guess after last week, trying to shift to a reliance on gas, petroleum or indeed anything PetroChina produces must seem not like too attractive a solution...
Even better, the big ad at Causeway Bay is signed from "Shi Tzu Daddy" rather than Laurence. Who's your Daddy?
As Mrs M pointed out, it's not just the staggering cost of putting these ads up. There is the cost of photography, the printing costs and the (admittedly minimal) graphic design, with the Causeway bay ad a different one to the SCMP version.
I have established a bulletin board/forum site to facilitate various conversions that may or may not be related to what I prattle on about here. The link can also be found at the top of the left sidebar.
One set of forums is for discusses one of this city's major hobbies: shopping. There is one setup for Hong Kong and another for Shenzhen. If you have information on good places to go, or what prices to pay (e.g. at Lowu Commercial Centre) or anything shopping related, this is the place for you. That way we can rebalance the information assymetry us shoppers always battle against.
There are two forums for discussing Chinese or Hong Kong politics.
As always, any feedback or comments are welcome. Make sure you visit and comment at the forums often, and spread the word. The more people that use it the better. Topics and threads can be added as needed.
Just read your WTO note and the bit about karachi warning HK's hotels to beware. Well, I walked passed Immigration Tower earlier and the grates were being welded down. If that's not taking precautions...I don't know what is!! ha ha
Actually, when I was living in Convention Plaza, I passed by there every day and it seemed the chief reason they put up abrriers everywhere between immigration and revenue towers was to stop skaters from having some fun.
i guess there was that protest that led to one immigration official dying a few years ago, but that's hardly on the cards at the moment.
Hong Kong in 1938 as the Japanese Imperial Army marched through China: ...sometimes reality is so hard to contemplate, illusions, fantasy and the suspension of reason are the only way for people to get on with life. says Dave. Potentially there are parallels with today's war on terror and especially how "safe" we feel in China.
It seems to be a condition of becoming a card-carrying greenie that you must have two qualities. Firstly you must be an unrelenting pessimist. Secondly you must have a broad knowledge of all the social sciences with the massive exception of economics. The subtitle of this book gives away its premise: how societies choose to fail or survive, not choose to fail or thrive. In short, it's all about evil humans being too stupid/arrogant/short-sighted/greedy/selfish in our unrelenting rape of Mother Nature and our certain path to destruction unless we renounce our ways.
Now, in long...
It's hard to know where to start with a book that can get so much so wrong. Where Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel was an interesting compilation of why Europeans have been the seeming "winners" in the march of societies, this book follows a similar template but on much shakier ground.
As my wise Da put it, the book contains plenty of interesting research and anecdotes. The problem is the misguided conclusions Diamond often draws from them. Often there are glaring contradictions or morally dubious calls. For example Diamond basically lauds the aims of the Zero Population Growth movement and China's one child policy. He also borders on the ridiculous. On page 114, in discussing the Easter Islanders Diamond asks himself why they were thinking as they chopped their last tree down...
Like modern loggers, did he shout "Jobs, not trees!"? Or: "Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we'll find a substitute for wood"? Or: "We don't haev proof that there aren't palms somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering"?
I still can't decide whether to laugh or cry after reading that. Maybe the poor bastard was thinking "I need this to live for just a little bit longer", or even "One day this will make for a trite paragraph for a rich America's rant on the environment".
At times Diamond gets it plain wrong. On page 394 he says the Australian constitution gives a disproportionate vote to rural areas. There are no notes or references to back this assertion and to this Australian it seems outlandish.
I'm the kind of person who, much to my wife's chagrin, can easily stop reading a book if I don't enjoy it. Yet in this case I found myself 400 pages in, still reading despite a record high blood pressure. Why? I can only compare it to the morbid fascination people have as they drive past a car crash. It repels and attracts all at the same time. If you want to read a book that tempts you to throw it against a wall at regular intervals, this is the one for you.
But any book that authoratatively sites Lester Brown in its further reading is understandably built on shaky foundations. Diamond obviously doesn't see the irony in churning out almost 600 pages of hogwash, depleting our precious forests and blah blah.
The most obvious and damning problem with the book is the complete lack of understanding of the modern world and economics in particular. The final section of the book is Diamond's attempt to draw the lessons of the past and apply them to our modern world, trying to alter our headlong path to oblivion before it's too late. He has an attempt at answering "one-liner objections" to his thesis and yet most of his answers fall flat. For example he cannot see that environmental concerns are already being addressed by governments, companies and people because it has become clear it is in their economic as well as environmental interests. He dismisses the potential for technology to help, even though technology since the Industrial Revolution has lead to spectacular improvements in agriculture, living standards and in more modern times cleaner air and water, better forest management and so on. He falls for the common fallacy that our non-renewable resources will suddenly one day stop with dramatic consequences, whereas the miracle that is the price mechanism will help ensure smooth transitions, as it already has. He incredibly dismisses the massive improvements in human living standards (and not just in the rich world), saying it has been too great a cost to the environment but without backing it up at all. He also laments rising living standards for the Third World, because rising living standards (in Diamond's world) automatically means increased environmental destruction. He dismisses being labelled a gloom-and-doom merchant by saying while greenies have got it wrong, so did Julian Simon, so you can be both too pessimistic and too optimistic.
Diamond's problem is he has allowed his politics to overwhelm what his research supports. His lack of faith in modern humanity, in our ability to learn from history (such as what he's pointed out in this book), in our improved understanding and management of nature and the environment, in modern capitalism and globalisation to spread wealth and better living standards and reasonable cost, betrays the key theme of this book: Jared Diamond is smarter than you and doesn't think you deserve what you have.
Amazingly, he hasn't yet started a line of sackcloth.
Another thing that frustrates me about Diamond's writing is his failure to consider counter-examples. I constantly find myself asking "but what about...?" and it's never addressed.
The fellow who is arguing for the "Limits to Growth" point of view has referenced "Collapse."
I haven't read "Collapse," but just from hearing Jared Diamond talk about it, I completely agree with Simon...Diamond's research points more AWAY from Diamond's seeming conclusions than towards them.
Look how few societies he examined. Look how incredibly isolated they were, and what limited land they inhabited. Easter Island and Iceland of many centuries ago...that hardly points to similarities with today's interconnected and technologically sophisticated world.
A correct reading of history points to greatly **accelerated** world economic growth, not stagnation...and definitely not decline.
Mark
Posted by Mark Bahner at November 28, 2005 04:45 AM
Modern world's economy is much about psychology and awaiting. And these two are based on the historical experience that is estimated and adapted to the modern conditions.
Meanwhile things keep getting better for Hong Kong's menfolk: the proportion of married women falls thanks to a gender imbalance, improved educational attainment of women, and a rising trend of Hong Kong men marrying Mainland women.
Welcome to Fantasy Island...."the plane, the plane!"
I got skunked trying to find a hotel for next weekend...We want to get in to visit Santa before Christmas. It fell on the 3rd hotel and the room I got wasn't the first choice. They may not be full...but it is getting awfully tight.
In a desperate attempt to squander the world's remaining resources and to continue to have as little money and sleep as possible, Mrs M has fallen pregnant yet again. Luckily maternity gear is high fashion these days.
Congratulations! I'm looking forward to it. This means even more great posts from you on those sleepless nights, no doubt with an especially surly, snarky, sleep-deprived edge.
Congratulations Simon, on the imminent increase in the size of your tribe. It is far from a minor announcement though, except in the sense of the little one being under 18 years old - but that may be the pun you intended.
Yes, for the sleep deprived posts, more taking the Mickey please.
Following on from yesterday's linklets, Anti has translated the piece by Zheng Bijian on the direction of the Chinese Communist Party in the 21 century. It clearly demonstrates both the fears and logic that drives the current leadership. When is Anti going to team up with ESWN?
A first hand review of Hong Kong Disneyland concludes ...yes, there are plenty of great ways to spend HK$1,000 in Hong Kong – and none of them involve Mickey Mouse.
Some of the readership may already be familiar with Wang Lei, the pleasantly proportioned girl from Harbin crowned Miss Asia 2005. Those fans from Hong Kong will be pleased to know she has moved to the booming bordertown just north of us. But the granting of permanent residency to her immediately has created a rather large outcry from many migrants from other provinces that have been slogging away in Shenzhen factories without becoming eligible for official residency.
Official residency confers many benefits, including healthcare, social services and education for children. While China is in the process of scrapping these residency laws, they are very much still in place. Given that Shenzhen was just a fishing village 25 years ago, about 90% of the population don't have that official status, which you can apply for only if you've paid RMB80,000 in taxes, or are sponsored by a big company. Or it seems, if you're really hot. They acted immediately after she let it slip that: "Shenzhen is my second hometown and I wish I could become a real Shenzhen citizen."
How did the Shenzhen government justify the quick turnaround on her application? It was because of her "special expertise" in the "cultural industry." Xinhua provides the beefs from migrant workers up in arms about this, but then concludes the article in its signature bland, understated way:
However, some who call the city home supported the decision to make Wang a registered Shenzhener, believing her example will encourage young people that excellence in any industry can bring success.
"Trade blocs lower their sights still further for HK talks" screams the front page of the SCMP on the upcoming WTO* talks. Being a silver lining kind of city, we're told this is a good thing:
Key members of the World Trade Organisation have acknowledged they will be unable to agree on a framework for a trade liberalisation pact at next month's Hong Kong summit. They have only outlined a road map for concluding the current trade talks by the end of 2006.
Activists readying to stage protests at the six-day gathering said the leaders' acknowledgment meant demonstrations would not be as volatile as predicted..."It is obvious now that not much will be coming out from the summit. Everyone involved has adjusted their expectations. Since not much is going to happen in Hong Kong, protests will not be as heated as people had thought," one activist said.
"Today the [South Korean] government declared a death sentence for 3.5 million farmers," said a joint statement from the Korea Peasants' League and six other farmers' unions. "We hereby declare an uncompromising struggle against the current government. and we will stage campaigns to stop foreign imported rice from entering our ports and set fire to foreign rice storage facilities."
This is in reaction to the passing of a slight liberalisation of Korean rice imports, raising the quota from 4% of comsumption to almost 8% in return for a 10 year grace period before liberalising imports completely. Some thanks. What a shame they won't be visiting us.
Nice post, Simon. I like your suggestion of Wanchai Take Over. I've always also liked Waste of Taxpayer Outlay and Wankers Tired of Onanism. In its previous incarnation (GATT), I quite liked General Agreement to Talk and Talk...
A bureaucrat's instinct when faced with a problem is to cover it up. And so it has proved in Harbin, where a toxic chemical spill into the Songhua river has finally been confirmed. Rumours had swept Harbin on Monday of some kind of water trouble, which lead to scenes of panic buying and water hoarding amid the confusion. The government cut off the water supply "at wee hours Wednesday" (could Xinhua be in the pun business?), leaving a city of almost 4 million literally without water. The chemical spill has passed Harbin at around 5am this morning and supplies have resumed again, although would you drink that water?
Far more interesting will be whether the chemical plant where the explosion occurred will be investigated and prosecuted if (as seems likely) found negligent. Much depends on how long media focus remains on Harbin.
Perhaps because I come from Sydney, Australia, a city and country constantly worrying about water supplies, I find the next water story staggering. It all began back in 1989, when Hong Kong reached an agreement with Guangdong to secure water supplies for the Big Lychee. That agreement gave Hong Kong priority access to Guangdong's water (which supplies 80% of Hong Kong's water needs), in return for Hong Kong paying well in excess of normal rates. In typical style the deal allocated a rising amount of water to Hong Kong to allow for growing water usage over the years. According to the SCMP, Hong Kong is due to receive 810 million cubic metres a year of water from the East River. But because public servants have no idea how to guage future demand, it has turned out Hong Kong has used less than its full allocation. The twist is Hong Kong has already paid for that water. So what does it do? It dumps it in the sea! Between 1999 and 2003 more than 500 million cubic metres of water, which at the agreement rate of HK$3.085 a cubic metre represents HK$1.5 billion worth, was dumped because Hong Kong's reservoirs were full.
The new agreement is a step in the right direction. Hong Kong will guarantee to buy a minimum of 600 million cubic metres and pay only for what it uses. In return it will increase the per unit price by 10%.
Haste makes waste, but waste is a hasty bureaucrat.
It goes beyond bureaucracy, of course, doesn't it, Simon?
China is a land ruled by man. So, to me, that means indecency at the appropriate times, manipulation and the horror of denial and obfuscation is prized over law.
Rule of law became an important ingredient to a stable society precisely because humans in a system that prize cheating will do anything and harm other people in the outcome.
Sometimes I get the feeling that if I was a Chinese, I would be pissed off at my country's government, and I would really like to get them out.
I'd take a more economic tack - people are driven by self-interest and incentives. When those incentives are properly conceived, individual self-interest leads to a greater overall good - the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. At other times self-interests and incentives can be destructive to the greater good.
"The Communist Party of China is a party that seeks peace, harmony and reconciliation, unlike the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union" - Zheng Bijian says Chinese Communists will not go the way of Soviet Communists. Who was it that talked about historical inevitability? It brings out into the open how the collapse of the USSR and Communists there still worries Beijing today.
Ah well, it was a cool idea for a post. As for blogger responsible for that erroneous story on East Asia Watch, well, 'Shinkansen' it back to Japan.
Ugggh...bad pun. But Simon thanks for appreciating my little diatribe about government monopolies...:) When are we going to get that beer? I am leaving Friday for Singapore but will be back Tuesday.
It's time again for the Jamestown Foundation's China Brief and while the previous edition was on the lame side, this time it's a cracker.
1. Willy Lam says America and China remain strategic competitors despite the recent summit rhetoric. It's essentially a pessimitic look at relations, saying under surface pretentions lie numerous disputes and tensions. The key quote: What is increasingly worrisome about Sino-U.S. ties, however, is that despite the rhetoric, not much has emerged from their efforts to nurture supposed areas of common interests...In internal meetings, Hu has warned CCP cadres to raise their guard against Washington’s alleged efforts to export democracy and other “ideological poison” to China. Hardliners in Washington, for their part, are monitoring the relentless aggrandizement of the PLA juggernaut with increasing unease.
2. Next is a look at Hu's visits to Europe and the mix of active diplomacy amid trade frictions. It concludes Europe will continue to be a key target for China’s active diplomacy, but the visits of Hu and Wen indicate that China is working to deepen ties without necessarily pushing for quick resolution of some of the issues it claims are important. By focusing on ties with individual member states, China may serve itself well in the future, but the frequent contradictions in European policy and national interests of member states mean that it unlikely Beijing will achieve all its aims in the near term.
Should bird flu break out as a human epidemic, we are told Hong Kong is the safest place in the world to be. Except, perhaps, for Sir Gordon Wu, who has managed to piss off not just the expected thousands of pro-democracy demonstraters on December 4th but also Chief Executive Donald Tsang and the pro-Beijing camp:
Wu [said] protests undermine the rule of law, weaken stability and jeopardize Hong Kong's economy. "Taking to the streets on December 4 is meaningless and not an effective tool to fight for universal suffrage," he said.
Any tips from Sir Gordon on meaningful and effective tools would be most welcome.
One property tycoon's "mob politics" is another's "people power". If there's no other effective form of representation, how are Hong Kongers expected to express themselves? Especially when previous protests have managed to scupper the Article 23 legislation and lead to Tung Che-hwa's resignation. Against that Wu's Hopewell has failed for 20 years to get its massive Wan Chai redevelop rammed through the normally tractable Town Planning Board.
Peter Gordon in The Standard lauds the new US$100 laptop as the latest tool to close the "digital divide". It is an interesting development, especially if it ends up doing most of what a US$1000 laptop can do. But they will do more good on the shelves of Wal Mart than in poor villages.
There are few phrases more meaningless than "digital divide". It is meant to represent the gap between the technological haves and have-nots, under the theory that those with the technology will get richer while those without will be left behind and get poorer. It has been deemed vital, by the patronising elites that be, to close that gap to help the poor help themselves.
Let's start with an experiment. You are going to be sent to run an isolated farm for 6 months, on your own, and you can take one piece of technology with you. What would you choose? You might well say a piece of farming equipment (if you could carry it). You more likely would say I can't live without my iPod. Most likely you would say I need my mobile phone to keep in touch with the outside world. More importantly, if you ask a poor farmer which they prefer, my money's on the mobile phone.
Mobile phones are immensely useful technological tools, and especially for the poor. Typically poor countries have limited infrastructure and communications networks. Roads don't work. Fixed phone connections can take months, cost a fortune and still not work. The post can take ages and still not get through. Mobile phones circumvent all of these problems. Farmers can check on weather forecasts, demand for their crops and market prices. Often villages share mobiles, with airtime being rented out, making useage even cheaper. Pre-paid phone plans eliminate the need for credit checks or bank accounts to get set up. And it is user-friendly technology. A study found a rise of 10 mobiles per 100 people boosts a developing country's GDP by 0.6% (via The Economist (sub req'd)).
Mr Gordon writes:
The US$100 laptop might be just as disruptive to the status quo in the technology world as it promises to be in poor and illiberal societies and for much the same reason: it will challenge accepted truths.
Replace US$100 laptop with US$30 mobile phone, and he's got it right. And such phones are on the way. The Economist article linked above notes Motorola has been contracted to supply 6 million handsets at less than US$40 each, and there are a new set of chips that could allow sub US$20 phones.
Ironically only a few pages away in The Standard is an article by Johan Norberg on globalisation which uses mobile phones as an example of its massive benefits.
In countries where people are surviving, barely, on a dollar a day, it is a complete no-brainer that mobile phones are the way to go. A third of the cost of the cheapest laptop, they are more immediately beneficial to users. A laptop might help school kids learn better, but they will probably do even better again if their parents are doing well enough they can send the kids to school, the teachers are well fed and well paid, the school house has a roof and materials for teaching and so on. That US$100 could be far better spent than on a laptop.
But aren't cheap mobile phones also about closing the "digital divide"? Perhaps. We could also talk about the "nutrition divide", the "environmental divide", the "sport divide" and numerous other meaningless divides. Who cares? The reality of the world is there are haves and have-nots, rich and poor. If you want an example of a place largely without such divides, North Korea awaits. The common fallacy is to confuse absolute and relative wealth. Just because I'm not as rich as Bill Gates does not mean that I am not well off. If our general standard of living is rising, albeit unevenly spread across the population, that is a better outcome than worrying about relative standards of living across that population. I'm all for the rich getting richer if it means the poor get richer as well.
Cheap mobiles are dynamic tools that could rapidly advance the well being of many. There is a demand and so there will be a supply. Mobile phone makers are faced with saturated and mature developed markets. The emerging and developing world presents masses of potential, with smaller profit margins but far greater volume.
Mobiles have ancilliary benefits too - often poor countries are those that are mismanged and repressive. The communication networks that mobiles form also allow for the rapid flow of information. As even China is discovering, controlling the internet is possible but controlling far more numerous mobiles and text messages is a monumental challenge. Once people can talk and talk widely, controlling what they say becomes impossible.
Let's close the mobile/globalisation divide. We will all be better off.
Thoughtful and interesting post, Simon. You might also mention that mobile phones are way easier for poor governments to put up. Much easier to put up a tower than it is to string thousands of miles of cables. In fact, private consortiums, much to the horror of the far left NGO's and anti-globalization forces, are doing just that.
New rules on reporting bird flu in China. By reporting, it doesn't mean the press, but rather to Beijing. Press reporting on bird flu is still tightly controlled. What it implies is Beijing is still not confident it has a firm handle on information on bird flu from the provinces.
To get some idea of the amazing number of Chinese bureaucrats there are shuffling along in government-owned cars, consider this: maintenance and operation of official limousines in 1999 was taking up 3.6 percent of the national budget and costing 300 billion yuan (HK$287.88 billion). That was nearly three times the 107.64 billion yuan China was admitting to spending on the national defense budget, although of course the unofficial defense budget runs much higher, to about 20 percent of GDP. In the 1990s, the average number of official limousines grew 27 percent a year. Nearly a quarter of all government procurements in 2004 were for limousines for bureaucrats. Probably one out of every two cars you see on a highway in China is operating at government expense.
It is, quite frankly, staggering. It also generates second order effects: the huge number of cars on the road drives demand for more roads, creates traffic congestion, leads to pollution, needs more parking stations and increases demand for fuel. Most importantly, where are all these cadres going and why? Shouldn't public servants use public transport like the rest of the public?
everyone at the rank of deputy-minister or up for an Audi A6, and all the gas/etc paid if refueled at the specific gas station, and a driver.
it is not a lot given that the Chinese officials are underpaid. they should probably increase the salary instead. (like Sing and HK).
what they should do is probably give a fixed budget for each of the official.
---
btw, the Standard guy got GDP and state budget mixed up. 20% GDP would be 20% x 13 trillion = 2600 bn RMB.
As Sun said, government jobs underpay...but they get alot of good stuff (cars, housing, healthcare), that counter the low pay. Private sector jobs pay more, but the chances of you getting the extras are slim.
A Chinese fellow at the China Reform Forum wrote an interesting PRC perspective on why the US should stop their dual-track policy of containment and engagement of China. His argument is that China poses no obvious threat to the US, and does not have the wherewithal to pose such a threat in the forseeable future. Because I have heard his point of view repeated by others, I'd like to discuss it in this forum.
I find his arguments fail to take seriously the fact that many Americans do regard China as a threat, despite evidence that it is far from the biggest contributor to the ballooning American trade deficit. Why the irrational fear? It is not just fear of an abstract growing trade gap - it is for their jobs, for their security in the Pacific, and most of all, for their way of life. How can they not when the author concludes thusly:
Sooner or later, the decline of US primacy is inevitable; history has taught us so. My advice is: Uncle Sam, watch the rapid development of globalization and multi-polarization. They will gradually bring to the world a new democratic international system which would welcome no primacy at all. Hence the United States might be the last primacy in human history and it really need not worry about the emergence of any potential challenger.
Chinese foreign policy, and perhaps Chinese in general, are viewed as being incredibly pragmatic in both foreign and domestic relations. Yet that last statement, which sounds very utopian, is becoming part of the Chinese message to the world as it brandishes its peaceful credentials.
In any case, Americans are far less likely than Europeans to agree with such statements. The American concept of self-reliance has always extended to its foreign policy, and the prospect of a happy multipolar world sits about as well with Americans as losing their sovereignty altogether. Naturally, China I am sure feels the same way when America lectures it on how to run itself. Certainly the North Koreans resented it on China's behalf, calling them 'relevations of fascist hysteria.'
For how long, I wonder, can China and America talk at cross purposes past one another? And for how long can people like us not be forced to take sides?
How can a country that threatens to destroy one of its own provinces (Taiwan) with missiles and has missiles big enough to reach the United States, along with a store of hydrogen bombs, and has even threatened to use those bombs on America, not be considered a threat? The fact that China is also building a blue-water navy capable of sending fighting ships around the world and is using them to confront Japan and other countries in Asia not be a threat? Saber rattling is a method of dipolmacy for the Chinese. Now they are building sabers big enough to actually do harm on a global scale. If people can't see the threat in this, they are just keeping their eyes wide shut.
In The Economist's article on the new face of globalisation (sub req'd) there's one hell of interesting chart (if you think charts can be called interesting, you're an economist):
Simply eyeballing the chart leads to what should be an obvious conclusion - China's share of America's growing trade deficit has been, at the very best, a constant proportion of about 25% of the deficit. In quantum terms, China is about $200 billion of the $800 billion deficit, whereas 5 years ago it was around $100 billion of a $400 billion deficit. Where's the rest coming from?
Seen the price of oil lately?
But it's not so easy to bash the Saudis (with a currency linked to the US dollar), the Russians, the Norwegians and the rest of OPEC.
More on the China copper trading scandal. After the previous scandal involving oil trading by a Chinese company in Singapore, surely someone in China's leadership is going to notice a pattern emerging?
China's Panamian moves. By way of contrast, what is China doing in the Straits of Malacca? Related is China's growing ties with Africa. Not having a moral dimension to your foreign policy let's you develop ties with everybody!
George W. has come and gone from the Rising Neo-Celestial Empire, leaving some memorable images of his stay behind. There was of course his standard talks with Chinese leaders, reminding them of the fact that such things as human rights, democracy and a floating currency exist; they in turn reminded him of the fact that Taiwan was theirs and always will be. One day, America may not be able to lecture China on its own turf, but until that time the Chinese CCP leadership will keep their well-practiced frozen smiles on their faces. That out of the way, he talked some shop, cut a few deals, and made friendly speeches, and just happened to be in town at the same time that China placed a US$4 billion order for 70 Boeing 737s, and may be purchasing another 80 more jets from the American aerospace giant.
In short, Bush was told - we can be flexible on trade and the currency. But not on anything else.
But Bush's two most symbolic moments were outside of the Ren Min Da Hui Tang. The first was his visit to one of five Protestant churches in China, where he attended a service and signed a book asking God to bless all Christians in China. It was in fact the church he attended when his father was Ambassador to China in 1974 and 1975. Shadows of the American religious enterprise to China years ago - if you think Procter and Gamble is excited about the Chinese consumer market, wait 'til you see the evangelicals. That is the market Bush seemed particularly interested in opening...
Bush decided to also show he is a man of the people to both Chinese and American audiences by riding his bike with 6 would-be Chinese Olympians. No accidents this time - he asked them to 'take it easy on an old man', and also reminisced about riding through the hutongs as a kid in Beijing.
Speaking of Dad, he had actually come to China a week before to smooth the way for a PR exercise, and it seems his trip certainly helped in making the visit go off cordially. But one can't help but laugh a bit when the jet-lagged Bush couldn't find his way out of a press conference room (via Crooks and Liars)...perhaps a Freudian desire not to return to a hostile electorate.
Some Chinese insurance compnies are taking a big chance on the possible spread of avian influenza among humans as an opportunity to expand their business. Beijing Minsheng Life Insurance on November 7th was first to launch a policy that would pay the insured if they are infected by the H5N1 virus. Four days later, Shenzhen based Hua-an Property Insurance followed. The Hua'an policy costs 100 yuan for each 200,000 yuan of compensation. It is valid for a year for anyone aged 3 to 70. Analysts say the odds are that the two insurers will make money given what they consider is the low probability of a serious pandemic.
A couple of interesting implications. Firstly these insurance companies are putting the chance of dying from bird flu in the next year at 0.05%, and that includes their profit margin so in reality it's even lower. You won't read that on the front page of the panicky press. Secondly this could be a great opportunity for these Chinese insurance firms to expand offshore - imagine the demand around the world for these kind of products. Thirdly, it's good to see the private sector becoming part of the policy solution in preparing for bird flu. Lastly, this is a perfect example of innovative capitalism at its finest - a pricing of risk in response to clear demand. All from the heart of Communist China.
Eventually the world will learn it can sometimes learn from China.
$100 a year for $200K of coverage just for bird flu? It's a rip. I can get $250K of term-life coverage covering everything except war and skydiving for $250
On her way back from APEC, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo enjoyed a day out at Hong Kong Disneyland with her family. She does not qualify for the current HK$50 discount on the admission price for locals. But the SCMP confirms anecdotal reports that HK Disneyland is woefully patronised.
A South China Morning Post headcount of visitors to Disneyland has revealed that fewer than 13,000 people visited on a weekend day less than a week after the amusement park introduced discounted rates for Hong Kong residents. Disney and the government have refused to reveal the park's daily attendance figures, but a count of visitors entering Disney carried out by the Post last week showed that 12,972 people visited on Sunday November 13, and 11,399 entered last Wednesday.
At the same time, David Webb is again asking the HK Government to install independent directors on the HKITP board, despite a promise in 1999 to do so. HKITP is the company overseeing Disneyland and has four Disney and 5 Government ministers as members. The Government put in about HK$22 billion out of the $27.5 billion the park cost, and got a 57% equity stake. Disney themselves have said the park has cost them US$100 million this year in losses.
If you can't work out why the Government put up 80% of the money for a 57% equity stake and 55% of board members, don't bother applying to join the world's best public service.
What's the point in being the rulers of an authoritarian society if even your own cadres won't listen to you? The SCMP:
Steps must be taken to strengthen central government power because Beijing's policies and decrees are increasingly being ignored by local authorities, a state-run newspaper warned yesterday. In a signed article headlined "Why the central government's decrees cannot reach outside Zhongnanhai", the China Youth Daily said action had to be taken to promote the central government's legal authority and to stop widespread disregard for its policies...In theory, the mainland is one of few highly centralised places in the world. But in practice, regionalism has run wild following two decades of market-oriented reform, analysts say...another example was local-level distortion or dismissal of the central government's macroeconomic policies.
But it said the most obvious example was the widespread failure of local governments to follow central government orders to improve safety in coal mines and to close unsafe operations.
Analysts have suggested that economic growth and its accompanying disparities among mainland regions - along with diversification of political, cultural, and social life - have driven the country's political decentralisation.
Mo Jihong, a constitutional law expert with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Law, said the article could mean the central government would get tough on regionalism...promoting the rule of law and judicial independence were the solutions to widespread malpractices...The China Youth Daily article cited several reasons behind the widespread malpractices, but added that the most fundamental one was the backward nature of the legal system.
The only other problem is trying to fight hundreds or even thousands of years of culture and political history. Today's system effectively micmicks the "tribute" system of imperial times. Nationalisation and centralisation is a relatively novel concept - Mao tried it with disasterous effects. Since Mao's death the country has largely reverted to provincial and regional power bases with lip-service paid to Beijing as necessary.
Anyway, hasn't Beijing heard of subsidiarity: the idea that matters should be handled by the smallest (or, the lowest) competent authority. Oh hang on, it says competent.
I have somehow become part of the Executive Committee for the Hong Kong Anthropological Society, a very worthwhile organization that provides anthropology-related talks to members and guests. While many of the organizers are anthropology professors and students at Chinese U, Hong Kong U and other local Hong Kong universities, it also has a healthy contingent of 'lay' members like myself. The talks are great, and free: the voluntary membership fee is only HK$200.
Professor Peter Cave, a Japan expert at Hong Kong University, wanted me to publicize a rather interesting-looking roundtable discussion to be held on its campus on the 29th of November. Details are as follows:
'Japan, China and Asia: Where Do We Go From Here?'
Relations between Japan and other Asian countries, especially China, are as important today as ever. Therefore, as part of its 20th Anniversary events, the Department of Japanese Studies at The University of Hong Kong will attempt to contribute to the mutual understanding between Hong Kong and Japan, as well as between Japan and the rest of Asia. For this purpose, we have set up a Roundtable Discussion between experts from Japan, China, Hong Kong and the U.K.
Speakers:
Dr Caroline Rose, Leeds University ( U.K.)
Professor Fujiwara Kiichi, University of Tokyo ( Japan)
Dr Wang Yizhou, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences ( China)
Mr Frank Ching, South China Morning Post ( Hong Kong)
Roundtable Discussion (Open to the public)
Date: November 29, 2005
Time: 4pm-6pm
Venue: Wang Gungwu Theatre, Graduate House
Registration: http://www.hku.hk/japanese/forum.htm
Organized by the Department of Japanese Studies, The University of Hong Kong
This event has been made possible by a contribution from the Shun Hing Education and Charity Fund.
It's official - China's director of statistics has decreed that China will grow at 8% for the next fifteen years, thereby allowing China and its population to arrive at the middle-income rank of countries globally. His department, known esoterically as the Calculation Department of National Economy of the National Bureau of Statistics, is in charge of making important pronouncements on the state of the nation. But they have been notoriously unreliable over the years, as Simon has pointed out in these pages, and given how boldly and confidently Mr. Xu Xianchun has made his prediction, one wonders how much it is a forecast and how much a statement of intent.
As some of you may know, I was a research analyst at an investment bank in a previous career, and also made predictions for a living. I learned during my time that if you were right about 60% of the time (yes, another statistic) you could be mighty pleased with yourself (uh huh, just like the meteorologists).
I also learned that it was when people made incredibly confident predictions like: "There is no end in sight for the growth of the Internet economy" (circa 2000), "There is no conceivable way Hong Kong will ever become a considerable port of trade" (circa 1844, Montgomery Martin, HK Colonial Treasurer) or "China will grow at 8% for the next 15 years" (circa 2005) that they are most likely to end up with egg on their face.
Don't get me wrong - it could happen - and I would be as happy as anyone else to see the continued growth of China's middle class (which will result in political liberalization). But no economy of China's size has ever grown this fast, at any time in history, without some speed bumps. Woe betide the Central government if they do not prepare for that eventuality.
Thanks for the compliment, Gordon. I just wish that growth were not just an economic or even a normal political issue, but one that threatens the very legitimacy of the Chinese state. Because then 'soft landing' scenarios would be much more viable.
One problem is that current econometric methods can't really account for China's (or many other countries', for that matter) true performance. There needs to be a figure for something like "GDP growth minus bad loan growth". The big empty buildings in Shenzhen were added to GDP when built, then when they're torn down and replaced, the demolition expense and the NEW new big empty building are added again. Something's missing from the equation!
But 8% for 15 years? Nah, it's going to come to a screeching halt in 3 years, in a giant traffic jam.
Hi Sam, yeah, I agree, the Chinese growth is on steroids, and when all the overcapacity from the overdone fixed capital investment starts kicking in, the country will feel the side effects. No nation is free from the business cycle, certainly not late 19th-century America with its heady cocktail of easy lending, public corruption and rapid growth.
Do you ever see two articles in a newspaper on the same day and wish they combined them together? I did, today, in the Hong Kong Standard. But then again, that's the function of columnists and fulminating bloggers like ourselves. One was about how Hong Kong office rents went up 75% in the third quarter of 2005 from a year ago and 17% from just three months ago! Shocking stuff. Central has become one of the most expensive places to work in the world. Respect your cubicle! It's only going to get smaller.
But then came the bombshell about how Sir Donald 'Bow-Tie' Tsang's new office digs right on the harborfront in Central (prime office space in case I need to spell it out) will be 'alright' because the harbor views of buildings behind the new Government HQ will not have their views overly blocked by a 130 to 160 meter tall building (30% more than the height of the CITIC Tower) than will minimize efficiency, maximize exclusivity for our leadership and apparently not drain the public's purse at all.
HA! Believe me, if Tsang's administration takes a turn for the worse, Tamar-gate will become a big issue. Doesn't the Donald realize that that the Tamar site is poisonously bad luck for government civil servants? The Harbourfest was held there for goodness' sake!
Why, what was wrong with harbour fest? It was good to see people out and about and enjoying music after the awful months of SARS.
Besides; we had Prince, Rolling stones and other great artists in town....bring it on i say!
And for the building, who cares? do u think the price in rent comes down if instead of governement building they stick another "tallest building in the world"
You want cheaper offices? look in wan chai or sheung wan....or taipo, this is market driven economy for you.
Hi Chris, I agree that HarbourFest was cool for the consumers - but it was rather a waste from the perspective of the Hong Kong government and has shadowed everyone that has been remotely involved in the project - I merely used it as a foil for trying to dissuade them from their action of moving their office to the harbourfront. But as Dai Tou Laam alludes, if Mike Rowse was accompanying Sir Donald on his trip to Washington then it must be ancient history. Particularly now that the government thinks nothing of wasting a couple billion dollars on a new HQ.
And yes, actually, I do have a problem with the government deciding to take the most prime location currently available in all Central for their own use - when they could actually go anywhere in Hong Kong (think Kai Tak). I mean, if Germany, Burma or South Korea can move their capital, why can't Sir Donald just move out of Central! The fact is that the Hong Kong taxpayer is getting totally screwed by losing out on the accumulation of funds from the land sale of this prime plot of land, particularly now as rents and office property values have soared.
And yes, it would make a difference if another IFC2 were built. The GFA of that building is a couple million square feet.
I'd much rather a park on the Tamar site than a government HQ. More urban greenery please, Mr Tsang.
Posted by Tiu Fu Fong at November 17, 2005 02:24 PM
Point taken on the harbour fest even thoug I seem to remember that half the cost was paid by amcham and a quarter or so by the tickets sales, so the all thing was greatly exagerated by the media claiming 100 milion wasted, when in fact it was 20-25 mil, which in the great scale of things isn't much. All by memory so i might be wrong.
As for a prime location, i am sorry but immagine moving the white house in Denver or buckingham palace in southampton.
best regards
To paraphrase, of course, the chorus of the famous Beach Boys tune. I have read, shall we say, with interest, that the city government has declared their women the city's top tourist attraction. Apparently the Sichuan babes from Chongqing (yes that's Chungking for you Nationalists and HK Indian food-lovers) trumped the city's other major export - oops, I mean attraction, Sichuan hotpot.
I mean, I have heard from everyone that's been there that the city is an ugly place, but I do find it strange that the city government would declare open season on its own women for legions of domestic tourists, many with a penchant for whoring. Allow me to quote in closing for the city's explanation of why their women are the hottest:
The city's climate and migrant background have made it a place famous for beautiful women, the paper said. High humidity and cloudy skies are good for their skin, while the bumpy roads and spicy food help to shape their slim figures, it said.
CQ was the temporaty capital in the "anti-japanese war" 1937-45. KMT bureacrats and rich businessmen brought their mistresses from all over China to CQ.
When the war ended, these mistresses each got 8 more years in age, and most were conveniently left behind. They stayed and passed their beauty genes there.
Indeed, we will note the reports of your visit with interest, Lord Curzon! As Simon alludes, with his previous post, it does seem an extraordinary place. Unfortunately, the shortage of women vis-a-vis men does not seem to have improved the lot of women in the short-term...
Now Sun Bin, that theory to me is more plausible than bumpy roads! I hadn't thought of that angle. But then on the other hand, there must have either been a LOT of mistresses to affect the aggregate gene pool to such an extent in just 3 generations, or the mistresses and their KMT paramours were EXTREMELY prolific...
Forget cosmetics. Let's start marketing Sichuan hotpot at Harvey Nichols and Lane Crawford!
And Hunter, I like the fat jigglers concept - sadly though, that is not just a 1950s phenomenon and is still with us today, judging from all the ads on the Hong Kong bus system...
Not long ago, in Beihai Park, in Beijing, my friends and I were corralled by two incredibly cute little Chinese girls, say 9 or 10 years old. They were actually little human advertisements for Sichuan. They had memorized a two-minute, rhyming English soliloquy about Sichuan. I don't remember much of it, swooning as I was with a systemic cuteness shock, but I do remember the line..."and the girls are hot! Just like our Chengdu hot pot!"
Thanks for the great thoughts and comments in response to my post on collaborative blogging (and feel free to keep adding more thoughts and opinions). I am going to follow the great suggestion of Spirit Fingers. Potential contributors will have a 2 week trial period of posting here. At the end of the two weeks the you, me and the contributor can all look at the result and decide if there's a mutually compatible future in the offing. If anyone is interested, let me know.
I'll be travelling the next few days with limited blogability. I'll leave you all in Dave's extremely capable hands. Alternatively, feel free to use the comments to talk about whatever you like - that's right, an open thread.
I'll start - there was an interesting story in The Standard the other day which I forgot to link asking a simple question: while Beijing may get all the stadia ready for the Olympics, they are lacking far behind on the technical side of things i.e. actually running the sports and events themselves. Is that a microcosm of China? All surface, no depth? Form over substance?
And on a completely different note, what is it with people who wash their hands before they go to the toilet? After is good hygiene, before is perverse.
I'm going to establish a committee to look into it, and once I deem you all mature enough to vote, I'll let you know and take the results under advisement.
It's that time of year again: the Weblog Awards 2005 have begun, and there's a Best Asian Blog category. Which means we need to start talking about the Asian Blog Awards for this year.
If you click one link today, make it this one: robotic relief. A reminder that Japan is the world's second biggest economy. Along the same lines, China's official purveyor of skin is going great guns.
Are chickens chicken about needles? China plans to vaccinate China's 14 billion chickens against bird flu. This leads to two questions. Firstly, will such mass vaccinations help eliminate bird flu? Secondly, how is it they can produce 14 billion doses of chicken vaccine but Roche will take years to make mere millions of Tamiflu doses?
Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes Minister on committees:
Well, it's clear that the committee has agreed that your new policy is a really excellent plan but in view of some of the doubts being expressed, may I propose that I recall that after careful consideration, the considered view of the committee was that while they considered that the proposal met with broad approval in principle, that some of the principles were sufficiently fundamental in principle and some of the considerations so complex and finely balanced in practice, that, in principle, it was proposed that the sensible and prudent practice would be to submit the proposal for more detailed consideration, laying stress on the essential continuity of the new proposal with existing principles, and the principle of the principle arguments which the proposal proposes and propounds for their approval, in principle.
Donald Tsang's expanded Commission on Strategic Devlopment has 153 members, only 10% of whom are democrats, even though they are around 40% of the imperfect Legco. But it's not about the numbers:
A government source said the purpose of the body is to engage in lively debate - not to reach consensus agreement. "It'll serve as a useful vehicle for meaningful exchanges. So democrats should not focus on their numbers but whether they can offer outstanding views," the source said.
"With the enhanced role of the commission," Tsang said, "we will spend more time with the public in discussing preliminary policy ideas before we formulate a policy." He likened the commission to the role that yeast plays in baking bread saying the discussions will yield a "soft, fluffy loaf" of policy, acceptable to all.
More like a souffle. Isn't the idea the policies are fashioned via consultation with the public, legislators and key stakeholders? What are civil servants, the chocolate chips? Isn't this committee merely doubling up on work that should be done by Legco? Will the public servants who formulate policy (and in Hong Kong, they formulate as well as implement) be happy with a renewed committee adding their $0.02 on every policy?
Of course they will be - it was their idea to restart this committee in the first place. Much better to have an unwieldly group of 153 going nowhere fast rather than listening to those pesky members of the public. Souffles do not rise twice.
A report today that some Hong Kong gourmets paid US$111,000 for a huge white truffle, that they then donated to charity. One can always see tell-tale signs of excess in any market, and it's usually the 'gourmets', 'gentlemen', and other dilettantes of this world that exhibit them. Pride before the fall...
Slowly but surely blogging is morphing: while plenty of solo sites exist, more and more sites are adopting a group blog model. ESWN is appealing for like minded people, Jim has been joined by Paul and Shank and Asymmetrical Information has taken on a third blogger to name three recent examples. For some time I've been fortunate to have Dave as a faithful contributor to these pages, not to mention the various contrubutions of guest bloggers during my breaks.
There are several factors that drive this trend. Firstly as sites evolve and develop followings, those readers rightly expect and demand output to keep them coming back. However bloggers have day jobs, families and lives outside of the cyberworld (believe it or not). Just as mainstream media products are the collective efforts of many contributors, some blogs will imitate their erstwhile rivals. Spreading the blogging load allows sites to evolve into a more continuous stream of output and hopefully thus (hopefully) make them more useful and so draw more visitors.
To that end I have a question and a request. The question is simple: would you like to see this site evolve in such a way, with a roster of 3 or 4 regular contributors? A diversity of views around this blog's major themes of China and Asia (with occassional diversions and tangents) can only be, in my opinion, a good thing. But I owe it to you, the reader, a chance to comment. The alternative is to carry on as now, while acknowledging there will be times where output may drop to zero for stretches of time.
The request is also a simple one. Would you be interested in joining the SW team? The requirements are simple: be able to type coherently in English, have an interest and opinion on the themes of this blog and be able to make regular contributions. If you've never blogged before, you need not worry - the software is simple enough for even me to use. If you already have a blog, I would ask that if you make the committment to becoming a contributor that you take that committment seriously. I am not looking for cross-posters. For example Dave posts daily on his site, with its different theme of Hong Kong and Asian history, while making regular posts on this site of more contemporary nature. If I am going to give you the keys to this car I need to feel confident that you will drive it responsibly, and that you will drive it regularly! The rewards are a regular and diverse readership, vibrant comments and a chance to make your voice heard as part of the democraticisation (or atomisation) of opinion.
If you are interested, have a comment on moving to a group blog or other feedback, leave a comment or send an email to simon-[at]-simonworld-[dot]-mu-[dot]-nu
a group blog is definitely better, but what will be the difference between, let's say, the Simon World contributed by simon, eswn and dave, and the ESWN contributed by eswn, simon and dave?
Personally, I think blogs work best when they are primarily the work of one person. I read blogs which are written by people who seem to know what they are talking about, and cover interesting (to me) areas ... as soon as you move to a 'group blog' the focus and style gets less clear, and often I find it is less interesting.
One of the strengths of blogs is that anyone can setup their own - why have 2 people co-blogging when they can each have their own blog? If they're both writing interesting stuff, I'll subscribe to both of them.
As for frequency of posting: As more people subscribe to your feed, this become less relevant. People will be notified when you put up a post - whether it's an hour, a day or a week after your previous one.
So long as the additions' posts measure up to the quality set by Dave and yourself, I wouldn't object to the extra content. But if they're just going to offer tabloid humor and snark, you should send them my way (AP could always use more sensationalism and snark).
The idea would be any new co-authors would be someone I would want to read myself. I'm not looking for clones.
Bingfeng- I don't pretend to do what ESWN does, and don't pretend I even could. I sometimes disagree with ESWN and he with me. I would say our two sites occupy different niches. I wouldn't ask to be a guest blogger on ESWN and I doubt he would want to be here - while I have great respect for that site, it's not what this one is about.
Dave - I've thought about that. The problem is one of time. People don't have all day to surf the web and read sites and while it's not so hard to go from site to site, it's certainly easier if the posts are in one place rather than spread across several sites. Point taken about feeds, but they still represent only 10-15% of readers to this site at the moment.
Chris - we all need tabloid - it's what made Rupert Murdoch rich.
I think the greatest advantage of a group blog is consistency. If one author goes on vacation, or has a real busy week, the blog is less likely to suffer. It boils down to diversifying your portfolio, especially when one person can't be expert in every subject the blog seeks to deal with. I'm not a Japan-guy, for example, so I'm glad we have monocrat at EAW to pick up the slack on Japan posts.
The danger, of course, is turning into something like NRO's The Corner, which has become nearly unreadable.
First off, Simon, thank you for your kind words. It's been a pleasure co-blogging on your site.
I would encourage all those talented would be-bloggers to come out of the 'lurking' phase and join the adventure. It's great fun, if you have many opinions about Asia, China and Hong Kong you can get a good deal off your chest instead of grating on your co-workers or loved ones.:) As Simon mentioned, it is indeed easy to use his system, really no prior experience with blogging or html is required... you'll just need to pass the Simon M litmus test of creditable (and humorous) acidity!
Hunter - again a good point, and something I'm wary of. That's why I'm limiting it to only a smallish roster, under the assumption at any one time one or two contributors will be unable to post.
Dave - you've set a high bar for newer contributors...if worse comes to worse, I'll just outsource it to India!
I like the current format. If you want to include an extra person, then perhaps you could give them a 1 week trial run and see how the readers like their posts.
The best collaborative blog (if you could call it that) is the Tech Central Station. It is more a series of columns, rather than a blog...but that is why I think it works.
What I find refreshing with some collaborative blogs are that one person takes over for a period of time...rather than mixing in different writing styles on the fly. That is...Simon does the bulk of the work...then Dave fills in when Simon is away. That works and is accepted, I think, by most readers.
I'd love to be more active on my blog...but as anyone has seen by the month of October...it was a brutal month for REAL work. Someone's gotta pay the bills.
I think it's a great idea, and I like Spirit fingers' suggestion. Sometimes another voice can be different, but really complementary, enriching the whole site. I read "coming anarchy" and "Chicago Boyz" often, and really enjoy the interplay of people who aren't clones of each other, yet still operate in the same intellectual universe.
I wish I could find a couple of co-bloggers myself. I've gotten tired, overworked, and bored with it, but don't want to quit. Anybody who thinks they're too lightweight for Simon's place, but would still like to put up a short piece or two, give me a call.
Group blogging is the only way to go and the only way a blog can survive the test of time. Face it -- we can't post everyday, but if we don't, people stop reading.
In China, official performance is famously linked to growth in the sector the official oversees. For regional officials, regional GDP growth has always been a decisive factor for promotion, for instance. It is the same for industries. However, Shangqiu City in the central province of Henan has carried this to an extreme. For many years, the central government has made efforts to promote cremation. Thus Shangqiu's Cishen town recently ordered that each village achieve an annual goal of cremating six of every thousand residents. That means six out of every 1,000 must die each year so that their remains can go up the chimney. The order doesn't spell out what the local government will do if fewer than six die in any given year.
China baldly announced today that it was stepping up law enforcement cooperation efforts with Zimbabwe, that African breadbasket economy turned into a basket-case thanks to the idiotic, repressive, anti-Western, autarkist Robert Mugabe.
According to the China Daily article I reference, the public security departments in the two countries will learn from each other's methods "in a bid to crack down on crimes against the two countries and the two peoples." They are going to focus on keeping order at border-crossings and "create a better environment for people to people contact," whatever that means.
Sadly, I am sure Mugabe's thugs could learn a lot from China's PSB. Let us hope China has no more lessons to learn from a tinpot dictator that plays the anti-colonial card whenever he's in trouble, and whose reign has long outlived its usefulness.
I have been stunned over the last four years as Bush has spent money like a drunken sailor in Washington while giving money back to the rich, with no plans to pay the piper - despite pretending to stand for small government. What I've found even more shocking is the fact that his economics advisers and Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan have stood by and watched the madness alrgely approvingly.
Now that Greenspan is becoming a lame duck and about to hand over the reins of the US (and world) economy over to his successor, perhaps he feels comfortable giving more of a 'reality-based' commentary. He said that the US's soaring trade deficits "cannot persist indefinitely." He added that "at some point, investors will balk at further financing." No kidding, Al. Of course, and certainly if US deficit spending careens along its crazy current trajectory.
Perhaps the other lame duck, the one in the White House, ought to take heed of that fact as he prepares to head out to Asia, home to his biggest bankers. As Bush talks to China, the fastest-growing owner of US Treasuries, and persuades them to drop their fixed exchange rate, I hope the little light goes off in his head that warns him that that would entail them selling off most of their US currency holdings and converting them into Ren Min Bi.
But then Alan backed off in his statement from lecturing his golden boy, saying that there was little "US policymakers can or should do to stem this natural evolution of market forces." Oh really? How about spending less foreign money?
Whenever we have female visitors, they are typically taken by Mrs M for a journey across the border into the wilds of China. By border I mean Lowu train station and by across I mean the 50 yards from that station to the entrance of Lowu Commercial Centre. I don't know of any other shopping centre in the world to have books dedicated solely to navigating its depths. By depths I mean 6 floors of near endless tiny shops, all seemingly hawking the same thing: fakes. The major categories are all fast moving consumer goods: DVDs, wallets, handbags, glasses, golf clubs, clothes, shoes. There is the "jewellery" section, an electronics lane, several eateries of varying quality and assorted odd shops. There are tailors who will copy any design or picture you provide, and a marketplace of materials for those clothes.
Two main questions arise from a visit to Shenzhen. The first is whether there is more to the place than the shopping centre? The short answer is no. Readers from Shenzhen, feel free to correct me. However aside from "Wonders of the World", Shenzhen is not a tourist town. The second is when it comes to protecting intellectual property rights and these so-called drives against piracy, China is nowhere. I stood and watched how efficiently the entire place packed away the copied goods as soon as a cockatoo* gave word the cops were around. Once the cops left, it all came out. Obviously the triads are behind much of what goes on, but it occurs in such staggering scale that local authorities must surely be involved or at least bribed to turn a blind eye.
One shopkeeper told me the rent of a small stall in the Lowu Commercial Centre costs RMB25,000 a month in a high traffic area and RMB9,000 a month in more out of the way corners. When I say small, these stalls we maybe 5 square metres. Larger stores no doubt cost significantly more. That's an awful lot of fake handbags, DVDs and whatever else each store needs to sell. Hazarding a guess, many of the stores are likely owned by the same person/group, stocking exactly the same goods. Yes China is a big country and its police cannot be everywhere, nor can reps from the fashion companies. But if China wanted to get serious about protecting IPR, it could. That's not to say I agree with governments doing brands' dirty work for them - far from it. But if China really is committed to getting rid of piracy, it needs to visibly raise the cost of doing that business. Mass arrests, confiscations, public trials, visible patrols. And not just the retailers, but the gangs, corrupt government officials and manufacturers driving it all.
It's possible, but not probable. The costs are slight and the profits large. As a business it employs many and provides many with goods they could or would not otherwise buy. There is a slight sacrifice in quality, but compared to the savings it is deemed worthwhile by the huge numbers of customers. If the brands and movie companies want something done, they need to do it themselves. In other words, they need to quantify the cost of piracy to their business and invest those amounts in protecting their brands. The taxpayer doesn't benefit from police enforcing anti-piracy laws, but the brands and their bottom line does. Let them pay for it, for real.
fashion brands don't care that much about it. The people who buy fakes wouldn't ever buy an original.
CDs and movies are different, though. But if you can't buy a dvd copy, you can just download it nowadays. It's a lost battle.
this is probably the biggest reason why counterfeit goods is hard to control in developing countries (plus inefficeint policing). not just china, we have these in thailand, malaysia as well.
you got more in china because it is the 'world factory'
One of those rare times when I not only disagree with you, I disagree strongly. With a population higher than HK and average per capita income higher than even Shanghai, it's extremely wrong to write off Shenzhen so quickly.
Granted it is a difficult place to navigate if you don't speak Chinese or have Chinese friends with you. When you get away from Luo Hu and the horrendous shopping mall (perhaps by taking the brand spanking new subway system), you will find that parts of the city are really beautiful, from the tree- and art-lined streets of Overseas Chinese town to some great public parks and the beach and bar area over by Shekou.
From the shopping perspective, aside from Wal*Mart and Sam's Club, get away from Luo Hu to where the local Chinese actually shop and there are many alternatives to knock-offs.
And the food ... authentic Sichuan and Hunan cuisine that simply can't be found in HK; seafood at half the price of here; great little streetside barbecue shops.
And my favorite sauna palace where a two hour massage costs 80 RMB - another 25 to kick in a one hour foot massage. And this joint will give me a free ride to Huanggang if I'm there too late for the train, or just let me spend the night in one of the massage rooms (color TV that gets HK stations) for no extra charge.
Okay, maybe not a tourist town per se, but there is a reason so many HKers spend so much weekend time there.
Hi Simon, as my father-in-law has been working in Shenzhen for several years and I go quite often to visit (and sometimes to shop), I feel I should add to this conversation.
Until I had left the Lo Wu area, I tended to agree with you - it seemed just an endless assortment of cheap DVD shops, restaurants, clothing stores and tailors', hotels and massage parlors.
But having the use of a car really opened my eyes. There is a beautiful park, just to the east of the city, where one can walk, hike or jog and that includes a fossilized forest. There are also a number of nice neighborhoods in the city that gleam and sparkle and look nicer than most buildings in Hong Kong (although you never know how well they are built).
I take your point that it is not really great for tourism - I enjoyed visiting the Minsk aircraft carrier, but without a car getting around is a pain, and it is extraordinarily difficult to know where to go, especially for the tourist destinations outside of the city that have a much longer history than SZ itself.
But thanks to our local contacts, we were able to visit fabulous furniture shopping malls in Futian and other places where my wife and I, surprisingly, were able to buy or make-to-order some fabulous furniture at a fraction of the cost in Hong Kong. Many of the designs are copied from somewhere, but the shopping experience itself has improved, with attractive store layouts aimed at China's middle and upper class. (And I love my Bosch power tool I bought at the Shenzhen Wal-Mart!).
So let me say this - I agree with you about Shenzhen with regards to LuoHu. But if you know someone locally that can show you around the other city districts or further afield, Shenzhen can actually be quite interesting.
Again point taken, although we made the effort to get out - went to Donren for example. Next time I'll suss out advice from you all and do a different trip.
What Spike and HK Dave said. Despite working and living in HK five days a week, I still have an apartment in the Futian district - in the same bldg I lived in when I arrived there more than two years ago - and thoroughly enjoy the neighborhood. Trees, friendly outgoing people, a wide variety of cheap, mostly good food, close to the subway blahblah.
Lohu ain't Shenzhen any more than, say, the Ladies Market is Hong Kong. Or something like that.
Regarding the ESWN story.
I'd like to make a public apology to Roland for the errors edited into the story (not major, but irritating and done without my knowledge or input) and to anyone else quoted who may wonder why what they said or sent me got slightly mangled or awkwardly worded.
The irony is that I used to labor on The Standard's copy editing desk and made a few editing errors myself.
Sometimes it's a B-grade hell on both sides of the line is all I can say.
The SCMP reports on the book deal on the Kissel case:
US true-crime author Joe McGinniss is writing a book on the bizarre murder of Merrill Lynch banker Robert Kissel by his wife, Nancy Kissel. The book, planned for publication in late 2007 according to a source close to the author, will tell the tale of a seemingly perfect marriage that ended in a bloodbath when the 41-year-old Michigan-born Kissel served her husband a sedatives-laced milkshake and bludgeoned him to death in their Parkview flat on November 2, 2003...The story will also shed light on the victim's elder brother, Andrew Kissel, who faces federal charges that he defrauded millions of dollars, and is under house arrest in Greenwich, Connecticut.
The book, acquired by publisher Simon & Schuster, will mark McGinniss' return to the true-crime genre after a 15-year absence. The author will be working with the co-operation of the victim's father, William Kissel.
McGinniss began his career as a Philadelphia journalist. He is best known for his book The Selling of the President 1968 (1969), which provides a stunning account of the marketing of Richard Nixon during that presidential campaign. The book landed him on The New York Times bestseller list at the age of 26.
Another of his famous works, Fatal Vision (1983), chronicled the chilling murder case of Jeffrey MacDonald, a Princeton-educated physician who was convicted of slaying his pregnant young wife and their two children. His other books include Blind Faith (1989) and Cruel Doubt (1991).
I read Joe McGinniss's 'Miracle of Castel di Sangro'. A highly disappointing book about the author learning the inside scoop of a football team in Italy that performed above all expectations, and then betraying all of their confidences in paperback and profiting from it.
Can't say I expect much from this book. Anyone else want to take a stab at it? Simon?:)
Interesting that a man accusing people of focusing solely on the financial gain associated with the custody of the three children would sell out his entire family for financial gain. It certainly gives pause to his claims about who truly is looking to protect his grandchildren Yet another interesting perspective on the family profile. Perhaps the patriarch of the family is the one responsible for its demise?
aye..now we know why he spent the entire summer at the trial - not mourning his sons death as it appeared to the jury but taking notes to profit from this mess.
Posted by canyoubelieve at November 17, 2005 07:21 AM
Interesting: If I recall his comments following the verdict, the father of the deceased made quite a spectacle of himself, accused many people of trying to distort the memory of his son, and that he wanted only that his son could now rest in peace and the children be given the chance to grow with the memory of their loving father. I fail to see how his contributing to a book and having all the sordid details and accusations published into handy paperback form is going to help accomplish either.
In fact, the book will only further cast the children back into the spotlight that they recently escaped. It does seem painfully clear that neither he nor the sister now have nor did they ever have the children's best interests in mind.
And what about his other son? He'll move on from his current troubles and be reminded that his own father published the details of his misdeeds? What about the children of this son? Or don't they deserve the same consideration as his other grandchildren?
There is something strange going on. Or am I missing something here?
I do wish the people who write under pseudonyms to this web site wouldhave the courage to direct all inquiries directly to me, William J. Kissel at acorn39@msn.com.
Hiding behind an untraceable pseudonym is not the correct way to post one's thoughts - if they are legitimate.
"Robert's children can now go on and have a wonderful life ahead," says William Kissel.
Many are hoping the children can find some normalcy here in the Northwest, far away from the memory of their father's murder and their mother's betrayal.[Notes:Story]
Hollow words from a man looking to exploit his own grandchildren for financial gain.
Posted by canyoubelieve at November 17, 2005 11:01 PM
If Mr. William Kissel does do a book, Im sure that he does it to set the record straight...To rid the lies that have been said about his loving son and my friend Robert!!
Thank you for your email. It is good to hear from a true friend.
These people that write under pseudonyms are pathetic people. If they have something to say, why don't they put their name to it. They are wretched, dispicable, cowards whose only words convey the venom in their own souls.
On what basis you you state that I am willing to exploit my own grandchildre?
You are misenformed and, I believe, would rather spout venom than find out the truth.
The article in the SCMP was wrong. Their is not any connection between Joe McGinniss and myself. I shall impart to him whatever information I have that is pertinent to this tragedy.
I sat in court for four months, listening to the unsubstantiated lies spewing forth from Nancy Keeshin. And a book now, by a reputable author shall, I hope, bring everything together so people like you will go back into your hole.
If you have anything to say, tell it to my email at acor39@msn.com. If you cannot sign it with your real name, do no write me.
On what basis you you state that I am willing to exploit my own grandchildre?
You are misenformed and, I believe, would rather spout venom than find out the truth.
The article in the SCMP was wrong. Their is not any connection between Joe McGinniss and myself. I shall impart to him whatever information I have that is pertinent to this tragedy.
I sat in court for four months, listening to the unsubstantiated lies spewing forth from Nancy Keeshin. And a book now, by a reputable author shall, I hope, bring everything together so people like you will go back into your hole.
If you have anything to say, tell it to my email at acor39@msn.com. If you cannot sign it with your real name, do not write me.
I would like to know how Simon, with all his self-proclaimed expertise, allows people to post to his web site with phony email addresses.
Would Simon please reply on site. My email address goes nowhere.
Posted by Pitiful Simon at November 21, 2005 11:59 PM
People are able to use whatever email address they like - I do not track whether they are "real" or not. However I do track IP addresses. So for example, 'Pitiful Simon' is from 69.172.163.115, and uses Adelphia to surf the web. If necessary I can go directly to Adelphia to complain if any IP address results in spam or abusive comments.
If people are so cowardly they do not use their real email, that's up to them. We can all judge the value of those comments based on that. Bill has been open and upfront about his email address, which rather refutes many of the accusations thrown at him. He is proving to be the high minded one in all of this.
I never much cared for Prince Charles. As an Australian (small "r") republican, he is the offspring of a Greek anti-semite and an in-bred German, who by dint of genetics is wealthy enough to not have a real job and famous for being himself. He decided he preferred a pruny hag over a young hottie as a lover and feels he is qualified to pontificate on whatever he likes because he's, you know, royal. But perhaps I need to alter my view. Turns out Prince Chuck has made a habit of sharing his "real" thoughts on various events with around 100 of his nearest and dearest. Just three days after President Hu visits the UK, lo and behold the Prince's thoughts on the Hong Kong handover ceremony are shared with the world:
In the journal, he described Chinese diplomats at a ceremony as "appalling old waxworks", the paper [Mail on Sunday] reported.
He also allegedly called a speech by then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin as propaganda, and slated the function as an "awful Soviet-style" performance. The newspaper reported that the Prince wrote: "After my speech, the President detached himself from the group of appalling old waxworks who accompanied him and took his place at the lectern. "He then gave a kind of "propaganda" speech which was loudly cheered by the bussed-in party faithful at the suitable moment in the text."
He considered the ceremony a "ridiculous rigmarole" (unlike, say, a royal coronation). Perhaps we've finally uncovered Hemlock's identity? The SCMP relates this interesting bit:
Prince Charles also talks of his flight arrangements for the handover ceremony. Initially, he was puzzled "as to why the seat seemed so uncomfortable" before discovering he had been put in club class while political dignitaries had been seated in first class. "Such is the end of empire," he writes.
His royal posterior is not used to such seating. I can reveal other parts of the report...
Rather bumpy landing at yet another colony of ours...my our ancestors got around a bit. Flew in over some shanty town called "Kowloon" and could see what the poor dears were eating for breakfast. It certainly didn't look like kippers and tea. Rather attractive stewardess on the flight, reminds me a bit of Camilla...
Got off the plane in the usual regalia and discovered that summer here is hot. And humid. It's a little squidgy in my underpants! Met some fat Englishman who tells me he's the Governor here, which is nice as he seems like a good Tory. No dobut he'll be back here one day flogging a book of his experiences while everyone remembers what a great chap he was, even though they all despise him now...
They've put me up at a rather nice place called Government House. Good old colonial place, but could do with a fishpond or two...
My, there are a lot of Chinese here...
It turns out I'm here to yet again witness another bit of the Empire dropping off and going its own way. Not a word of thanks for all the things we've done for them. This time they won't even join the Commonwealth. At least I got a tour of the nice new airport - plenty of British firms doing work there. Nice way to sneak a fair bit of cash I believe we had stashed here back to the Old Dart. That Patten chap isn't as dumb as he seems...
The handover ceremony was a miserable affair and such is my lot that I had to sit on stage, stay awake and smile. It's not easy. No wonder Mummy didn't want to come. The Chinese army came marching in - might need to get the troop at the Palace to come over and learn a few things...
Ha Ha, Simon, that was really quite a nice bit of improv with the last quote. Still, some diplomatic shockers from Bonnie Prince Charlie eh?
I've always thought anyone that was, in his own words, 'intensely passionate about farming' was a bit suspect...but then I've lived with concrete under my feet almost all my life.
I've always had a bit of a softspot for Charlie-boy. Maybe because he had the misfortune to be the offspring of a Greek anti-semite and an in-bred German, who by dint of genetics has to do a job I'd really hate, and couldn't avoid being famous for just being himself. Oh, and of course I approve that he preferred a pruny hag over a dumb blonde, and is willing to occassionally speak his mind.
I think he'd make a great king: he's daft, a bit simple, a bleeding heart, easy to take the piss out of, and eminently ignorable.
"Prince Charles has launched legal action against Associated Newspapers over its publication of extracts from his diaries in the Mail on Sunday."
http://news .bbc .co.uk/1/hi/uk/4450116.stm
I don’t agree with HRH the Prince of Wales on a lot of things, but I have to hand it to him on (a) organic farming; and (b) his right to have his own opinion in these diaries.
I agree with him on a great deal in what he has written—name a speech from a post-1949 Red Chinese “leader” that is not propaganda—and you wonder why the Prince does not speak his mind more often. Probably because that Dimbleby interview backfired so badly.
But for once, I hope the guy wins his lawsuit—copyright alone would say that he should. Or the Mail can darn well pay for republishing his journal extracts.
Now, if HRH would blog as well as he has diarized, then he would earn a great of respect from me. Why not be the first royal from a ruling house to go online, express himself, hear what we have to say in return, and get wit’ the programme?
You know what Prince Charles sounds like? He sounds like somebody who is really unhappy being a prince. He sounds like a whiny 14 year old boy who is dragged to church every sunday by his mommy. Oh Drats- more official duties to perform.... geez- they put me in club class... great- more politician I don't care for.... what's this fatso's name again?... this kowloon place- what a dump.....
If he is so unhappy performing his princely ceremonial duties- why doesn't he just quit? Just pretend he's gone crazy- not the first british monarch to do so! I don't know who looks more like old waxwork- Prince Charles with his forced, sad smile, or Jiang with his mechanical evil grin.
I get nostalgic every time I read about former Governor Chris Patten. I didn't always agree with what he tried to do, but his touch with the local people was Clintonesque. The former Conservative Party Chairman that ended up as Hong Kong's last Governor by being voted out of office ended up being the most savvy politician to have graced the city's political stage in modern times. He always knew when to talk tough, when to tell jokes, and when to give totally unprepared Hong Kong Chinese people big bear-hugs.
I like him particularly when he strongly advocates my deep belief that Hong Kong is a mature society that is ready for democracy, as he did yesterday:
"This is an extraordinarily mature society," the popular ex-governor, who is on a four-day visit, told business leaders. "People are asked to make very difficult choices everyday of the week. They are capable of making more."
Of course, he knows better than anyone that this city, wealthier than virtually any borough in Britain, has had the requisite capacity to make decisions for some time. But time has mellowed his tongue and shown him the value of tact with respect to China (and his former subordinate), as shown in a Q&A session reported by the Standard:
Asked during a talk at Hong Kong University later Thursday for his views on the latest reform package proposed by Chief Executive Donald Tsang, Patten ducked the issue.
"You know my view on democracy very clearly. If you don't, you must be living on Mars, or maybe in Pyongyang," he said. "I'm not going to set myself up as a football referee and comment on his [Tsang's] performance, but I'm sure Tsang will do the best possible job for Hong Kong."
I moved to Guangzhou in the summer of 1996 and I was captivated by Gov Patton's final months in office. A very saavy politician that really grew and nurtured the trust of the Hong Kong people. The best memory I have are of watching TVB News in Guangzhou...and when they would begin to show a report of one of his walk-abouts, the censors would put up the test pattern and cut off the report. Beauty.
Chris Patton for UN Secretary General!
Gleaned from a piece of research that came across my desk today:
If Evian water were sold in (oil) barrels, it would go for around US$500 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude oil closed at US$58.93 a barrel.
Taking it further, beer goes for HK$10 per 375ml bottle*,which equates to US$544 an oil barrel. Take a bottle of reasonable Aussie red, retailing at HK$110 per 750ml bottle**, that makes US$2,989 per barrel. The outrage isn't that oil is so expensive, it's that alcohol is!
At 46 times the cost of a barrel of oil, no wonder he's smiling
*In supermarkets. In LKF it goes for HK$50 (or US$2,720 a barrel), which explains why Allan Zeman is always smiling.
**No wine or beer was consumed in the making of this post, but it may well be consumed after it.
Along the same lines, some wonderbrain did a comparison between movies and videogames. He took the average price per minute of a Hollywood studio production times the average amount of time that someone spends playing a videogame and decided that if games cost the same to make as movies, they would cost $13 billion US each. I'm sure that knowing this makes me a better person but not quite sure how.
I was in Vevey recently, a small town south of Lausanne in Suisse, across the lake from the town of Evian. The best thing about Vevey (besides the mountains and the lake and pain au chocolait) was that when you turned the taps on to drink water, it was Evian mineral water that came out.
Oh pooh frances, that's nothing. In Hong Kong when I turn on the taps not only does water from Hong Kong and somewhere else foreign run out but it is tea-coloured and therefore saves buying Lipton's muck.
Besides, chez gunlaw uses 15 cubic metres (3,300 imperial gallons to the peasants) of alleged water monthly at a cost of HK$60. That therefore means that alleged water costs the same as petrol before price gouging, assorted rip-offs and 600% tax- check your credit card slip.
Could Muslim extremists be this stupid? Or is it security paranoia ahead of George W. Bush's visit to China? Could elements from Xinjaing be involved? From the American Embassy in Beijing:
The Embassy has learned that Chinese police advised hotels that Islamic extremist elements could be planning to attack four and five star hotels in China sometime over the course of the next week. Chinese authorities have assured the Embassy that they are taking appropriate security measures and investigating the possible threat thoroughly. American citizens visiting Chinese four and five star hotels should review their plans carefully, remain vigilant with regard to their personal security, and exercise caution. Reports should be made to local police if one notices unusual activities in or around these areas.
The SCMP repeats the alert, rings a few people and finds most have no idea what's going on:
The warning did not say if the extremists were from within the mainland or abroad...A police spokesman in Beijing told TVB news last night it was not aware of the threat. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had not received any notification from police and was trying to understand more about the situation.
Is it likely? Who knows. If extremists really want to drag China further into the war on terror by embarrassing them when hosting President Bush, it would be a monumental tactical and strategic blunder. But since when has logic and strategy been terrorists' strong suit?
The problem with these terror alerts are the danger of the "boy who cried wolf" syndrome. While it is prudent to err on the side of caution, surely there is a balance to be struck between the issuance of these alerts and saving them for when there is a genuine threat. What does it mean to review their plans carefully, remain vigilant with regard to their personal security, and exercise caution? Does the embassy assume that at other times people don't do these things? OK, I've reviewed my plan carefully, now what?
Ah, but if it's viewed as an act of backside-covering, that's a different matter. In that case governments and embassies have a bias to over-issuing alerts. Sometimes alerts are justified: Australian Prime Minister John Howard's alerts came just before police smashed a major pontetial terror event. But in and of themselves, these alerts matter little. They offer little constructive advice and are typically too broad and vague. In the post September 11 world, everyone is more vigilant as they get on with their lives. Crying wolf doesn't help.
In what can only be described as a massive "up yours" to the Americans from the Chinese, Shaky sends this:
The Chinese Ministry of Public Security informed the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on November 10 that Chinese security authorities have determined that the source of a reported threat against four and five star hotels in China is not credible. The United States Government is not aware of any other information of any threat against hotels in China, including Hong Kong. Our warden message(s) of November 9 and 10 on threats to hotels is therefore retracted.
How embarrassing. Who was saying something about wolf?
The Chinese Ministry of Public Security informed the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on November 10 that Chinese security authorities have determined that the source of a reported threat against four and five star hotels in China is not credible. The United States Government is not aware of any other information of any threat against hotels in China, including Hong Kong. Our warden message(s) of November 9 and 10 on threats to hotels is therefore retracted.
From: Shanghai, ACS [mailto:ShanghaiACS@state.gov]
Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2005 2:23 PM
Subject: Warden Message: Terrorist threat in Guangzhou
Warden Message
November 13, 2005
The United States Government has received credible information that a
terrorist threat may exist against official U.S. Government facilities
in
Guangzhou. This threat also may exist for places where Americans are
known
to congregate or visit, including clubs, restaurants, places of worship,
schools or outdoor recreation events.
American citizens in south China are advised to be aware of their
surroundings and remain alert to possible threats. Americans living or
traveling in China are encouraged to register with the U.S. Consulate
General in Guangzhou through the State Department's travel registration
website, . By registering,
American
citizens make it easier for the Consulate to contact them in case of
emergency.
U.S. citizens planning to travel to China should consult the Department
of
State's country-specific Public Announcements, Travel Warnings, Consular
Information Sheets
, the
Worldwide
Caution Public Announcement
and other
information, available at . Up-to-date
information on security conditions can also be obtained by calling
1-888-407-4747 in the U.S. and for callers outside the U.S. and Canada a
regular toll line at 1-202-501-4444.
American Citizen Services Unit
United States Consulate General Shanghai
1038 West Nanjing Road, 8th floor
Shanghai
Tel: (86-21) 3217-4650 ext. 2102, 2103, 2114 Fax: (86-21) 6217-2071
Email: shanghaiACS@state.gov
http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/shanghai
This message is unclassified based on the provisions of E.O. 12958.
In one of Colombo's few skyscrapers, a battery of analysts is crunching numbers and writing equity research reports. But they won't put their name on them. Ghostwriters of international finance, the young analysts at Amba Research work in complete anonymity for the world's biggest investment banks and for a third or less of the cost of a junior analyst in New York, London or Hong Kong..."At a cost of one third to half of an onshore analyst, our clients get 75 to 80 percent of the functionality," said Amba co-founder Brad West at the firm's marketing office in Singapore.
Amba hires young accountants or MBAs in Sri Lanka and India, puts them through a five-week equity analysis course and then subcontracts its staff on a one-year basis to clients. Firms like Amba pay their analysts US$10,000 (HK$78,000) to US$25,000 per year and charge their clients upwards of US$50,000 per year. That compares with a total cost of US$150,000 to US$250,000 for a junior analyst on Wall Street or in the City of London, West said.
The head of research at a European bank that makes extensive use of firms like Amba said that outsourced analysts typically don't work on deal research, communicate with clients or corporates, or publish under their own name...But the banks are not eager to admit they outsource research, as they worry about perceptions of research quality. "They would rather admit to income tax evasion than to outsourcing," West quipped. The secrecy works both ways. Amba clients have code names, and "to talk about who your client is a firing offence," he said...
Industry players say that equities research outsourcing is part of a third wave of outsourcing known as "knowledge process outsourcing," which focuses on highly skilled jobs such as investment research, medical diagnosis and legal work. Analysts estimate there are only about 1,000 to 1,500 people working in equities research in India and Sri Lanka; half of them for so-called "captive" units of global investment firms...Industry players say that the growth of research outsourcing in South Asia has not yet led to job losses in Europe or the United States.
"Outsourcing has allowed research firms to be more thorough and to cover more companies," said Joseph Sigelman, co-chief executive of Chennai- based OfficeTiger.
Asks West: "The interesting question is what the banks will do during the next sharp downturn in global equity markets: will they cut back on in-house research or outsourced research?"
There are plenty of students slaving away in expensive business schools in the hope of landing those high paid analyst jobs in Wall St and London. Yet it only takes 5 weeks and one-tenth (the article says "third or less" - clearly fractions weren't this reporter's best class) of the wages. And equity analysts are just the beginning. Any enterprising academic could outsource their research in their quest for tenure. Likewise governments could save a fortune by outsourcing chunks of their public service. One day even bloggers could be overtaken by the outsourcing menace.
Hi Simon, nice blog entry. I actually used to work with those guys at Deutsche five years ago. I hear the outsourcing thing is working well - and unlike junior analysts, the outsourcers are not really interested in going on marketing trips - or at least they don't ask for client interface... the industry heads still need to scan through all the research and make occasional corrections, but by and large I hear it works great...
Well, yes, it does add a little pressure. But then it also makes it clearer to senior management when hiring junior analysts that their marketing skills and ability to put clear investment themes together should be their key criteria.
Hu Jintao recently made a speech on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly that sounded suspiciously like John Lennon's most famous solo song, Imagine. Just compare the speech to the song:
HU: Eradicating the current unfair world economic order are preconditions to the world's balanced development, and in turn, harmony.
LENNON: Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of Man, imagine all the people, sharing all the world...
Yes, he speaks of tolerance, of the world living in peace and harmony, which he said was a 'traditional' Chinese characteristic. While Lennon's Marxist ideologies must bring on nostalgia in Mr. Hu, I'm sure his favorite line in the song is: "...and no religions too."
"Lennon's Marxist ideologies"?! How witty! Good thing he got shot through the heart, right?! Maybe you should add that Marxist ideology bit to his Wikipedia entry.
I was merely trying to point out the utopianism of Hu Jintao's latest speech. If you can't take a joke, just don't read it. What sucks is your lack of net etiquette...
The (mis)-rule of Disney law in Hong Kong. And on the Mouse that Could (with Government help), I paid HK$25 billion and all I got was this lousy theme park. It begins Leptospirosis, or Weil’s disease, is a water-borne disease found in rat’s urine. One of its many unpleasant side effects is that sufferers are sometimes struck blind. The Hong Kong government may have contracted a case, because it’s apparently been blinded by a piss-taking rodent. Yep, it's today's must read.
A conference on new media and social transformation in Hong Kong, preparing citizen journalists (a term that reminds me of citizen arrests) for the upcoming WTO meeting.
In a sea of blogs, finding good ones is a challenge. Amongst the diamonds in the rough is Zen Pundit by Mark Safranski. If you ever need brain food, Mark's the goto guy. He has organised a roundtable on the topic of Globalisation and War, and has asked myself and some esteemed company from academia, think tanks and beyond for their thoughts on the issue.
The first three posts on the topic are up, with additional posts to come from Austin Bay, Dr. Sam Crane, Adventures of Chester, Paul D. Kretkowski and Professor RJ Rummel. It should prove good reading in the days ahead, and I'll update this entry as new posts are made. I've taken the liberty of reposting my contribution below the jump. Yes, I'm incredibly flattered to be included in such august company. I'll let you judge if my piece holds up against the others.
The upcoming WTO conference in Hong Kong has everyone on edge. Hong Kong’s security forces are preparing for the inevitable anti-trade protests. The governments’ participating are inching towards an agreement, but it is by no means certain. Hong Kong’s government frets it will play host to a giant farce, with nothing agreed and everyone’s time wasted. Yet the WTO represents one of the greatest economic achievements of the modern era: trade liberalization. And Hong Kong embodies the free trade spirit better than almost any place on Earth.
Can an economically integrated and trading world go to war? It certainly managed to in 1914. China’s ongoing stirring of nationalism, especially against the Japanese and Taiwan, serves a political purpose that is at odds with the economic benefits trade and investment between these places. On the other hand, China has become in the naughties what Japan was in the eighties to America – the trade and economic bogey-man. There are plenty on both sides of that fence that can envisage war between two of the world’s biggest trading partners. It might not be good for Wal-Mart but a confrontation over Taiwan is a possibility.
And yet globalization could well act as a mitigating circumstance. Will China’s rulers, for all their bluster, squander the value of their massive holdings of US government debt, the massive benefits that export-led growth has brought to China’s economy? Certainly one consequence of globalization is it has made war more costly. Not just first order costs, but broader economic costs as well. Upping the costs and reducing the benfits of going to war makes globalization a force for moderation and peace.
But wait, there’s more. The flipside of this is the globalization of war and especially the global market for military weapons and technology. Pakistan made a business of exporting nuclear technology. It is widely thought China has exported military technology to unsavory regimes, and North Korea is famous for its missile exports. So in that regard globalization has become a force for war.
There’s more again. China’s opening up to the world through globalization has seen it create a vigorous appetite for commodities and energy. With its leadership primarily focused on economic growth at almost any cost, combined with a “flexible” ideology and foreign policy, has meant China has formed alliances and invested in far flung corners of the world that are inherently unstable or alien to liberal democracies. There are examples from the Middle East, Central Europe and Africa that all fit into this category. Whereas it could be argued that America’s foreign policy is not solely or even primarily driven by economic concerns, China’s is and that leads to allies you wouldn’t want to take home to your Mum. Chalk it up as another minus for globalization.
But I’m not here to finish on a pessimistic note. I am a firm believer in free trade and globalization for both its economic benefits, especially to the poor, and as a driver of a more peaceful and safer world. The globalization of culture is often characterized as the “Disneyfication” (or McDonaldisation, or Hollywodisation, whichever American cultural icon you choose) of the world and is derided as a “bad thing”. But these companies and groups provide products that are popular with consumers the world over. No-one is forced to visit Disneyland, or eat a Big Mac, or watch a movie. But people want to. Moreover America remains the favoured destination for immigrants and would-be immigrants the world over, including in China. The American dream is a global one. This success sometimes drives envy, but America’s prosperity is widely admired. The foundations of that success? Liberal capitalist democracy. If globalization can bring images and ideas of liberal capitalist democracy to those who live without it, it can only serve to drive people to aspire to such a society. America’s model is not the only one. But it is the biggest and most successful (and note that I’m an Australian). As people grow richer in countries like China, they will start demanding more secure property rights, rule of law, less tolerance of corruption, more say in how they are governed. Globalization makes countries richer while at the same time constantly exposing populations to the most successful economic and political model the world has devised.
As globalization brings economic growth, it will bring political growth. Countries that are economically successful and growing do not, as a rule, go to war. In a world where there are numerous flashpoints and delicate balances to be maintained, globalization is a key force pushing towards peace. It is that complicated. And that simple.
ESWN will love this. A poll has seen the Hong Kong public give Legco a "satisfaction" rating of 28%, as opposed to 23% dissatisfied with Legco. Chief Executive Donald Tsang's satisfaction rating is 58%. What headline would you come up with on those stats? The SCMP came up with this:
No sex please, we're Japanese, or Singaporean, or Indian, or Indonesian, or Hong Kongers, or the Chinese etc. Given Asians take up the bottom 9 places in this survey, one could question the survey's methodology, especially in allowing for cultural norms when responding to surveys on your sex life.
You decide. Which would you rather stroll down and around to do your shopping? Well, reality-check time: Causeway Bay's retail space is more expensive than the Champs Elysees or anywhere in Paris for that matter (the Champs-Elysees is not my favorite shopping area in the French Capital, but I'd certainly take it to the unregulated chaos of CWB).
I suppose in Hong Kong, which, when you take out all designated park land, is the most densely packed place on earth, space comes at a premium. But what a premium! The linked article in the International Herald Tribune leads with an old story, of how Dublin Jack's on Cochrane Street was forced to close when its rents were doubled from HK$140,000 a month to HK$280,000 a month. I also found out that the retail space on the ground floor of Chungking Mansions on Nathan Road is going for HK$350,000! That's a lot of cash per cockcroach. No wonder only those triad-run electronics shops of the bait & switch technique do well there.
The greed of retail space owners has no bounds in Hong Kong. They also have no long-term vision. It is truly terrifying what effect they have on neighborhoods. An example - the Ho Man Tin area I grew up in used to have many restaurants and charming shops on Waterloo Road. Then retailers jacked up prices just before the Crisis in 1997, so only real-estate agencies peddling their sorry retail spaces could afford it. Then after the crisis, the property agencies went bust too. For awhile there were few shops on my road, ecept for the 'bare concrete walls' variety where they sell everything for HK$10. The nice restaurants never came back - they had to move on from a business with such fluctuations in cost.
What will this mean? It'll mean that restaurants in Hong Kong will go back to being mediocre, cost-driven enterprises with no sense of customer service. I understand the retailers feel like it's finally their time after 8 long years, but doubling rents, really - a litle moderation please!
I'll respectfully disagree, Dave. If landlords are so short-sighted they choose to double or triple rents, that's their right. Either someone who can justify paying that rent will fill the space or it will lay empty, at a cost to the landlord. With the notable exceptions of heritage and public buildings, that's the way it should be. You can't outlaw stupidity, yet.
A packed CWB is testament to the high value of retail shops there. It's packed because that's where the shops are, and the shops are there because it's packed. Everyone wins.
you can compare this with 'tax and social security' in the west. the difference being the drivers for such 'tax' calculation.
i am not sure if i can say whether this is good or bad
upsides
1. simple and easily run (for inland revenue)
2. encourage efficient use of space and hig volume biz (why McD is profitable despite low price)
downside
1. land area is not necessarily the best measure for tax
2. compromised quality of liffe unneccessarily
3. encourage bubble in property market
No, you're right Simon, it is their prerogative to increase rents. I am not suggesting any official rental cap at all - I am very much against rent control. I am more decrying their short-sightedness, because when their tenants dry up again during the next downturn (which may come soon), they won't have any stable, long-term tenants again. They don't seem to be willing to learn lessons, or to create voluntary street- or neighborhood-based associations that suggest how much rents should go up or down. Those associations, around the world, tend on average to be more sensible about jacking up rents without wiping out their golden-egg laying geese!
I am also suggesting that tourists with a choice of international shopping venues may start thinking twice about coming to shop in districts where your inhalations are limited by the crowds around you...
Sun, I agree with you, that's why Hong Kong's middle class pay tax rates of about 50% when you add in their bank property payments...
I'm off to Shenzhen on Friday, which could be interesting in light of today's SCMP story. It's got the typical Chinese mix: unpaid workers, riot police, a corrupt and bankrupt company, and a press crackdown:
Riot police came to the defence of the mayor of Shenzhen after a meeting with former PLA engineers over compensation ended with the workers trying to stop him from leaving. Mayor Xu Zongheng held the urgent meeting last night at a local school in Futian district with more than 3,000 workers of a state-owned enterprise. The workers - most of them former members of the People's Liberation Army's engineer corps - were angry about the compensation they received during the latest state-owned enterprise reform. They also demanded the authorities release two colleagues arrested last week for arguing with government officials.
The mayor promised to revise the compensation scheme and pleaded with the workers to call off their protest. He also said the new company would not sack any of those involved in the protests in the next three years. But the workers were not satisfied. They booed the mayor when he left the school and tried to block his car. Riot police were rushed in to disperse the crowd. Several hundred workers then marched to the nearby police station and shouted slogans demanding the release of the two arrested workers...
The incident was hugely embarrassing to the Shenzhen government, which had tried to clamp down on coverage of the dispute. Several Hong Kong reporters were detained on Sunday for covering the protest and were not released until 3am yesterday.
...the construction company was badly managed and riddled with corruption. The Shenzhen government decided to turn it into a private business last year. Mr Li said auditors sent in to examine the company's books found it on the brink of bankruptcy and much of its money was missing. He said the company's senior management disappeared, leaving behind huge debts.
Photo below the jump, my emphasis in the story. The instinct for Chinese governments remains to clampdown, to supress, to cover-up. But the story still got out and in this era of mobile phones and the internet, supression won't always work. Even if you're the mayor of Shenzhen.
Clearly The Don is enjoying his overseas jaunt. According to the SCMP, he's just revealed the major barrier to universal suffrage in Hong Kong:
Hong Kong has to convince Beijing that universal suffrage would not bring a "foreign" element to the city, Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen says. Speaking in an interview with Stephen Sackur on BBC World's programme Hardtalk, Mr Tsang spelled out the key condition for achieving full democracy.
Asked if he believed Beijing wanted Hong Kong to move quickly to universal suffrage, Mr Tsang said: "I believe this is something [about which] they will need to be persuaded. As soon as we are able to demonstrate that Hong Kong will not splinter off into some foreign element with the nation as a whole, I think we will be there."
That shouldn't be too hard to do? Unless "foreign elements" means democrats, in which case we have a perfect example of circular logic. Below the jump are the relevant parts of the Basic Law. No foreign elements there. Bring on universal suffrage!
The absurdities keep coming too. Last week it was those unruly British soldiers as compared to the angelic PLA garrison we have now (mind you, the PLA are restricted to barracks and couldn't afford the cab fare to Wanchai if they were released, but nevermind):
...he told the BBC the city had had no elections in 140 years of colonial rule. "We started rather late in the day. Look at the progress we have made in eight years."
Hong Kong also didn't have electricity 140 years ago, but look at the progress we've made since then.
Most revealingly, The Don plants himself firmly on the fence when it comes to telling us who he represents:
As chief executive, I am responsible to the people of Hong Kong. I also have a responsibility to [Beijing]."
The question remains to whom is he more responsible: the seven million people of Hong Kong or the seventy cadres in Beijing?
Article 44 of the Basic Law
The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be a Chinese citizen of not less than 40 years of age who is a permanent resident of the Region with no right of abode in any foreign country and has ordinarily resided in Hong Kong for a continuous period of not less than 20 years.
Article 45 of the Basic Law
The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be selected by election or through consultations held locally and be appointed by the Central People's Government.
The method for selecting the Chief Executive shall be specified in the light of the actual situation in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and in accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress. The ultimate aim is the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures.
Article 67 of the Basic Law
The Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be composed of Chinese citizens who are permanent residents of the Region with no right of abode in any foreign country. However, permanent residents of the Region who are not of Chinese nationality or who have the right of abode in foreign countries may also be elected members of the Legislative Council of the Region, provided that the proportion of such members does not exceed 20 percent of the total membership of the Council.
Yes Simon, and it also totally ignores the compadres across the Straits that have gone Democratic with a big 'D'. Are they foreign? If they are, does that not imply they are a sovereign state?:)
I am being facetious of course, but really there is nothing alien about Chinese culture and democracy. Culture changes - just look at Max Weber's characterization of Confucian cultures as being mired in imperial despotism. Things move on, and democracy is a system, not a cultural import.
Nobody believes Chinese leaders who claim they're powerless to tackle intellectual property violations. They don't seem to have any problem in stamping out things they deem offensive, such as democracy.
Update (10:01) Harry Hutton's update on a burning issue is the real quote of the day.
As you may well know, the first person worldwide successfully prosecuted and sent to jail for using the software BitTorrent was Chan Nai-Ming, aka "Big Crook." He has been put away for illegally downloading and distributing "Red Planet", "Miss Congeniality" and "Daredevil."
I know as bloggers we often tend to have sympathy for such people. But doesn't he deserve the slammer for his lousy taste in movies?
Ha Ha! Shades of A Clockwork Orange...! Makes for an interesting blog meme: what would be the one movie you would hate most to be forced to watch over and over again?
I was actually forced to watch Dr. Doolittle on the plane twice on United returning from the US, and that was bad...but in terms of someone forcing my eyelids open, condemned to eternity sort of sisyphean movie-watching, I would have to say Alexander. Or maybe Highlander 2.
""For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared"
http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/03/20/saint_augustine_on_electronic_piracy.html
Well, I think Hong Kong is trying to make a point on intellectual property these days, and is taking a non-triad dominated area of intellectual property violation with which to do it.
As for the St. Augustine quote Dan, well, 5th century Roman North Africa probably didn't have too much of a conception of intellectual property. I am not scholar of the scriptures, but I do remember a certain commandment that said: "Thou shalt not steal."
Here's another good reason for Chinese consumers to learn English - they are getting ripped off by scam artist-mobile handset manufacturers with imitations of foreign brands. Here in this Korea Times article, the Korean giants LG and Samsung are despairing of actually being able to stop the counterfeiting.
Branded phones, as you'll see in the pictures in the article, refer to SAMSUMG, SAMESONG, or SAMSONG. How many shops in China are selling their phones? TWO-THIRDS.
And you still wonder why Chinese tourists stay in crap hotels but spend like sailors in our stores?
Too bad China's too terrified of unleashing the beast if they were to allow the creation of strong consumer lobbies and advocacy groups in the country...
Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara stirs the pot on US-China policy and relations, with such gems as if thrust into a war with China, "the US, which reveres human life, would surely lose."...China, unlike the human-rights-valuing US, would not fear the loss of large numbers of human lives. Meanwhile Dr. Sam Crane asks I Ching about Sino-Japanese relations. The answer is good.
For a far more interesting and nuanced view of Sino-US relations, try Thomas Wiegand's piece on why America and China need each other.
Counting China: the plethora of statistical yearbooks at every level of government. Unfortunately often those numbers are derived by the same cadres who are measured by them, and typically the numbers don't reconcile between one level and the next. That aside, there can be interesting nuggets in the deluge of numbers.
Rebecca MacKinnon has more thoughts from the CBC, saying "everybody is somebody", which is kind of meaningless and only applies if everybody has a modem, an ability to write and something to say that somebody else reads. But I get what she means and there is a great summary of the key points from the conference.
Even Donald Tsang is in on the act. The Don tells us HK on verge of economic 'golden era'. Meanwhile today's SCMP front page tells us home prices have been cut 10% as home sales slide. These guys can work in show business when they've finished in politics. Maybe they already are.
Local tycoons breathed easier after this weekend now that the Legislative Council has seen fit to abolish estate taxes, taking HK$1.5 billion (US$200 mn) out of annual revenue. They have done this to make the city more attractive as a financial centre.
Hong Kong has always been considered a city where rags-to-riches stories can happen. Certainly that was true in earlier ages, like when Superman Li Ka-Shing began his career as a plastic-flower salesman in the 1950s. But over time, as the city has matured, the number of moving trucks from North Point to the Peak has slowed considerably. One wonders what effect this highly regressive tax break will have, and whether taking funds away from areas like English or Mandarin education is a good thing for the city. Certainly, one could argue that it will attract more wealthy immigrants, and having that capital at close hand would be good for Hong Kong.
But one thing it will definitely reinforce are the imperial, dynastic cycles of the local landed elite. Chinese have always loved the family business structure, and most companies here are some form of them. In an age when professional management is groomed to take over from company founders (like Newscorp now, for instance), Hong Kong tycoons have stubbornly stuck to handing over the reins to their sons. And this article I read about Victor Li's imminent inheritance of the Li Ka-Shing empire was particularly illuminating in this respect.
How can you resist this story about how Asia's most powerful man put his 10-year old son in a high chair at the table during Cheung Kong board meetings?
Continue reading if you are a blogger, familiar with American speech laws, or are considering doing business with Nation Master. Otherwise, I apologize for the off-topic post and hope the rest of your SimonWorld reading is pleasant and enjoyable...
So what does al Qaeda, Hu Jintao, and NationMaster's John Steinmetz have in common?
The American Library associated as said it is worth a look, while the folks at WorldChanging like its visualization resources, while they dislike its questionable support for Mozilla browsers. Other sites, such a Kent's, give no description at all.
But here is one.
Nation Master will bill you even after you cancel.
Confused? Let's try again
nationmaster.com will bill you even after you cancel
I first joined this site when I needed raw data for my graduate thesis. In the end it was useless for me, but the site is a good waste of 15 minutes.
nationmaster.com is not worth the three quarterly payments I made, the two after I stopped using or, or the one after I first demanded a refund.
The bill implies someone named Luke Metcalfe is involved in this scam. Well Lucas, if you're reading, stop it.
Any everyone else: avoid Nation Master.
Update: PS: This isn't an April Fools joke. They really are thieves.
Obviously, this isn't the only case of censorship in the world. Rebecca MacKinnon has documented much worse, while parliaments chip away freedoms in Russia and America.
Breaking news - photographic evidence of the first case of the new bird flu infecting local Hong Kong wildlife. Parents are advised to keep children well clear of the infected area...
The leader on globalisation in The Economist, as expected, provides a stirring summary of the benefits and urgency of further globalisation, despite growing opposition. It contains this gem:
a bill before Congress devised by one of New York's senators, Charles Schumer, threatens a 27.5% tariff on imports from China if that country does not revalue its currency by an equivalent amount. In Mr Schumer's view, presumably, far too many Chinese peasants are escaping poverty.
Heh. The best jokes include a liberal dash of truth.
A great story from today's SCMP on the difficulties of translation and negotiations between the Americans and North Koreas, in an interview with senior State Department translator Tong Kim. These kind of pieces are invaluable in their first hand accounts of back room negotiations. Story below the jump:
With the North Koreans, translation is a minefield
Without an understanding of concepts like private property, commercial transactions and choice, how do you explain to a communist about renting office space in the US? The question sounds like the start of a joke in search of a punchline, but this conundrum faced Tong Kim during his 27 years as a senior translator with the US State Department. He has been party to some of the most sensitive negotiations between the US and communist North Korea.
The difficulties of his job were highlighted when representatives of the two countries discussed opening liaison offices in each other's capital. One US negotiator was tickled at the idea of a North Korean real estate agent pounding the streets of Washington in search of office space.
"Not only is there no transaction between people or between entities in North Korea, but no brokering system by real estate brokers. So this kind of stuff doesn't translate very well," Mr Kim said. "As an interpreter, you are meant to say what is said without adding. But once you know yourself that `this guy will have no idea what I am talking about', you have to give them almost a lecture."
For more than a decade, Mr Kim attended almost every high-level US-North Korea meeting. Since his retirement, he has ruffled feathers in Seoul and Washington by using his intimate knowledge of diplomatic proceedings between the two states to question the viability of an agreement reached at multilateral talks two months ago over Pyongyang's suspected nuclear weapons programme.
Mr Kim has described the statement of principles hammered out after three previously fruitless rounds as a "linguistic minefield", full of "hidden meanings and obfuscations".
According to the statement - agreed by the US, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia - North Korea has committed itself to "abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes". But Mr Kim says the verb pogi hada (to abandon) used in the Korean translation "can be interpreted to mean leaving the weapons in place rather than dismantling them".
"There are a lot stronger words than [abandonment], like dismantlement or elimination or removal. Why did we agree to a less clear term, such as abandonment? Only because that's the term North Korea insisted on adopting and everyone gave in. I think that's a reflection of the reality the US is facing in the context of the dynamics of the six-party talks," he said.
However, Mr Kim's tenure at the State Department had its own share of controversy - most notably, at the US-North Korea talks in October 2002 that sparked the existing standoff. After that meeting, US negotiators claimed North Korea had admitted to an enriched-uranium programme. The claims were subsequently rejected by Pyongyang, which declared its officials had said only that North Korea was "entitled" to pursue a nuclear weapons programme.
In the ensuing controversy, attention focused on the work of the translators, including Mr Kim. The veteran translator still believes North Korean officials admitted to pursuing an illegal and covert nuclear programme. But he also has criticisms of James Kelly, lead US negotiator.
"If I had been Jim Kelly that day, I would have said [to the North Koreans]: `This is what I heard. Is this what you meant?' This would have given the North Koreans a second chance to confirm. We didn't have it. The result: controversy."
The first of Mr Kim's numerous visits to North Korea were hardly less memorable. In 1991, he accompanied a delegation led by retired general Richard Stilwell. Even before the talks began, lead North Korean delegate Kim Young-nam, then foreign minister, almost stopped the meeting in its tracks with a reference to South Korea's long history of demonising the North Koreans.
"We just walked in. It was a big, big conference room with a wide table. There was Kim Young-nam. He was sitting there along with his aides. Then there was Stillwell and his colleagues, and me ... and Kim Young-nam began speaking to us, and his first sentence was: `Do you see horns on my head? Are my eyes red?"
According to Tong Kim, the North Korean leadership were sending a very clear message. "Later, what I thought he was saying was: `You don't understand about us. You're wrong about us, you've got to learn about us'."
When I was in the hotel in Pyongyang a month ago and was a bit buzzed and exhausted having not slept more than 3 hours each day for the past four days I slipped up and said to one of the guides "So who, other than Kim Jung-Il is the richest person in North Korea?" I laugh now cause it was beyond moronic. But at the time I can say there were few language barriers to the grave look I got from my guide as he told me "Never ask that question again".
The Don continues his world tour, spending 15 minutes with Tony Blair and reporting "Tony thinks I'm great, because Dick Cheney told him so." Is he telling Dick and Tony something he's not telling us? Meanwhile back in the city he's meant to be running, a poll tells us the most Hong Kongers want universal suffrage by 2012. More fool us - it's becoming clear the Chief Executive works not for his shareholders (Hong Kongers) but for his board of directors in Beijing.
This is not to be fatalistic about the prospects of democratic reform but it is to say that the objective of achieving universal suffrage will not be achieved without a determined struggle. Lamentably, it will not come about by believing the words of the chief executive.
As I've said before, both The Don and Beijing are missing a great and painless chance to make a great leap forward, engender a cultural revolution and complete the path to universal suffrage. They are the fools if they miss the chance.
November 2005: Beijing promises the people of HK full democracy just as soon as the city is "mature enough" and everyone can be "relied on" to vote Communist.
December 2005: HK organises a gigantic rally in support of universal suffrage. Lee Wing-tat, Emily Lau and Martin Lee wave joyously to the crowd. Longhair gets another haircut. Organisers say 1,000,000 people attend the march. Police estimates put the number at 38. Beijing says the unrest is a result of the city being "overtired".
March 2006: Despite continued Legco protests, Donald Tsang insists HK is "not mature enough" for democracy. He backs up this claim by pointing out a high prevalence of acne among civil servants, the local fondness for Hello Kitty and the large percentage of office ladies still living with their parents. Longhair protests by leaving a case of Spot Remover at Tsang's office.
July 1, 2007: 2,000,000 HK taxpayers [there are that many? - Ed.] take to the streets in an orderly pro-democracy march. Appalled at such "immaturity", Beijing demolishes the Legco building. Lawmakers must now meet in a bouncy castle.
December 2007: Donald Tsang, anticipating his second term in office, says that everyone's skin is looking better, but you "still need time to grow". Beijing backs his comments, while secretly funding another giveaway of Disney toys at 7-Elevens across the city.
December 2016: Having created a new law giving himself an unprecedented third term in office, Tsang makes a special appearance in Legco chambers [Ed. - I thought they were demolished? Or is this Tamar?]. "It's just your hormones speaking," he says in response to cries for universal suffrage. Beijing is too busy to respond as party members are reportedly out shopping for designer goods.
April 2030: Chia set up a space station on Mars. In what is described as a "controlled experiment in self-governance," astronauts are allowed to vote on chicken feet- or fishhead-flavoured capsules for dinner.
July 1, 2036: Longhair dies while leading 3,000,000 peaceful protesters in a democracy march (police count 12) after his four-metre-long gray locks are caught in Emily Lau's electric wheelchair.
October 2045: In a passionate plea for democracy that stuns the city, Tsang, now 100, bald and incontinent, appears in nappies for his last policy address and pledges to the city: "Goo-goo ga-ga." Beijing dismisses the outburt as "baby-talk".
July 2046: Beijing announces Hong Kong is finally mature enough for full democracy. Citizens are asked to vote either "in favour of the Communist party" or "against those opposed to the Communist party".
Democracy is a game with 49% following 51% whole heartedly. Otherwise there will be civil wars everytime there comes big dividing issues. In HK the majority, save at 70%, has to follow the say 5%. We do not get universal suffrage because we are not united to the extent that over half of the population takes to the street. We want democracy,..... we'll follow the 'silent' MAJORITY--- we're tasting our own medicine!!!
It seems Hong Kong overflows with organisations who's sole purpose is to act as a front for its "President" or "Chairman". There's David Akers-Jones's mob, for one. Another would be Dolores Ballabares' United Filipinos in Hong Kong. Doug Crets tells us Dolores has engaged her mouth without her brain.
The Asian Migrants Coordinating Body and the United Filipinos in Hong Kong - local organizations that assist migrants - announced Thursday the beginning of month-long protests that they hope will "junk the WTO."
According to Dolores Ballabares, chairwoman of the United Filipinos in Hong Kong, up to 5,000 migrant workers will next week turn the SAR into a carnival of parades, singalongs, door- to-door protests and street-corner teach-ins. "As migrants, we are calling to junk the WTO, because we believe it affects domestic workers and our profession here in Hong Kong," Ballabares said..."What the Hong Kong government is doing is implementing the policies of the WTO," Ballabares said.
She said that this was part of a twofold struggle, since most migrant workers come to the SAR to escape the same policy in their home countries...The actions, which are part of a global campaign to "defeat the agenda of neo-liberal globalizations that destroy [migrants'] lives," begin with an education series on November 6. Migrant worker representatives will conduct open-air teach-ins at the Star Ferry terminals, on the streets of Central and wherever they can gather a large number of migrants. On November 13, migrant workers will sing songs in Central at lunchtime and during evening commutes. Then comes "embassy hopping," when migrants from six Asian countries will protest at their respective embassies.
The highlight, according to organizers, comes on November 27 with the Hong Kong People's Mardi Gras "against globalization and the WTO."
What a month of fun November will be.
Dolores would like to junk the WTO because free trade has allowed hundreds of thousands of her compatriots to escape crushing poverty, chronic corruption and incompetent governance and make a living for themselves while providing the largest source of foreign exchange for the Philippines. If not for the minimum wage even more of Asia's poor could find a chance to do the same, while sending back money to family in their home country. At the same time in those home countries exports have often proven the only viable and growing sector in economies shackled by cronyism, rigged markets and corruption. Free trade has proven to be a boon for economic growth in both developed (ie employer) economies and developing (ie employee) economies. So Dolores should be encouraging Hong Kong to implement the policies of the WTO, rather than organising a spreading of the ignorance she is so deeply steeped in.
I would like Dolores or any of her co-loonies to provide an example of the agenda of neo-liberal globalizations that destroy [migrants'] lives. All I see is pig-headed populism.
The Hong Kong government's immigration policy of excluding all foreign domestic workers from being considered as "ordinarily resident" and, therefore, ineligible for unconditional stay could face scrutiny in the High Court if leave is granted for a judicial review next month....[Justice Hartmann] agreed to adjourn the hearing until December 12, when he will decide on whether to grant leave for a judicial review.
The Immigration Ordinance states that a permanent resident can be "a person not of Chinese nationality who has entered Hong Kong with a valid travel document, has ordinarily resided in Hong Kong for a continuous period of not less than seven years and has taken Hong Kong as his place of permanent residence before or after the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region." However, "a person shall not be treated as ordinarily resident in Hong Kong while employed as a domestic helper who is from outside Hong Kong."
In short, Dolores is cursing the people she should be thanking and missing the story she should really care about. Does her organisation have elections?
A few months ago I blogged about an incident at a Malaysian hotel where some Chinese guests were outraged by being handed out hotel dining cards that had a picture of a pig on them - indicating that they were consumers of pork. It was indeed a grave misunderstanding - local Chinese would have understood, but the mainland visitors did not - similar to how baby food in sub-Saharan Africa did horribly until makers realized that Africans generally put pictures of the food on the bottle... In any case, I felt in general that the growing power of China in Asia and the World would eventually spell changes that Malaysia may need to make with regard to discriminatory laws against its own Chinese minority.
It seems, on this holy Islamic Day of Hari Raya Puasa, celebrating the end of Ramadan fasting month, that Malaysia has slipped out a rather interesting announcement - that henceforth, all international airports in Malaysia would carry messages in Mandarin as well as in Bahasa and in English (as well as occasionally in Japanese). The fact that Mandarin has not been an official language despite almost 40% of the population being Chinese has been very significant (with reasons dating back to the Chinese Communist insurgency in the 1950s). But could this change, in response to growing throngs from the mainland, be the crack in the door? Perhaps the Malays may finally start to take a long, hard look at their country, and ask why they legislate affirmative action for themselves with their Bumiputra laws (to the economic detriment of the Chinese) when they constitute over 50% of the population. Mr. Badawi, give your people a fishing rod instead.
Its nice to hear KLIA is offering Mandarin announcement. For your info, its offer Arabic, too.
I doubt it's the Chinese tourist because their level of visitation has been drop by half (http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v3/news.php?id=154817).
In my opinion, I think the tourist dynamic is changing. Its use to be luring the Chinese tourist but lately, there is a surge in the Middle Eastern tourist coming into Malaysia. If the trend continue, there might be arabic sign in the future.
As for affirmative action, nothing will change. Why change, when things is moving just fine?
changes because
1. birth rate difference
2. more importantly, policy guided self-identification. i.e. when there is a cross-marriage, the idenitification shifted toward bumi for 'affirmative treatment'. (same situation in china, when people identify biase toward minority)
Thanks for the correction, Jing. When I lived in neighboring Singapore from 1982-1991, it was around 38%. I had no idea that the demographics had changed so much in the interim.
All the more reason though, why a majority population should divest itself from laws that benefit it at the expense of a minority, and also root out a chief cause of corruption and corporate malfeasance in the country. In my view, it is a chief reason why the country is not more competitive. It should not be a racial issue, but has unfortunately become perpetually so due to the 'sons of the soil' rules.
The cliche says life is cheap. However, in an extraordinary story, it turns out in China life can be extremely expensive indeed. Just yesterday the NYT, Forbes and several bloggers were all over the story of American businessman David Ji'skidnapping or arrestin China.
Do you know something or are you just supposing? It could be that he's prepared to flip on a big case, but it certainly seems like the "donation" is what got him off.
Yuan's lawyer said he will testify against a privincial secrtary (who is Liaoning's party sec?) who accepted bribery of 120M RMB. the corruptor also is involved with drug trafficking and conterfeit money.
The reason this was delayed till the last moment was because his wife had to go directly to the central govt (presumable because local govt is also corrupted).
we will know whether this is the true reason if
1) the party sec is tried
2) if his money were donated.
China's rapid economic change can drive social and political change. For example the system of hukou or residency permits have for a long time restricted rural residents from claiming benefits when they move to cities. But the massive and ongoing migration from poor farms to richer cities has put pressure on this anarchonism. These migrants have made a mockery of the idea of residency permits, with conservative estimates of 87 million people living in areas with permits. And now the growing shortage of cheap migrant labour has forced cities and provinces to concede the system is broken.
Up to 11 provinces are contemplating abolishing hukou. This would allow rural migrants access to the same health, education and social security benefits as city dwellers. It will also end distinctions based on where you are from rather than where you live. The move is also considered part of the effort to close potential unrest over China's income gap between the rural poor and richer cities. Given the new 5 year plan's obsession with stability, more of these measures recognising economic reality are likely going forward. Another example was the recent doubling of the income tax threshhold.
But a key question remains. Are the cities ready for this change? Suddenly recognising the rights of 87 million (and likely more) people will put incredible strain on city resources. The China Daily report notes a previous effort to abolish hukou in failed:
In November 2001, Zhengzhou, capital of Central China's Henan Province, offered free permanent registration permits to people with relatives already living in the city. Increased pressure on transport, education, healthcare and a rise in crime forced the city to cancel the measure three years later.
The same report has a comment from the Beijing Public Security Bureau which notes that most large cities are similarly unprepared for a rapid transfer. Such a change will only happen gradually. Joseph Kahn's IHT story notes this change has been coming since 2002:
The central government first declared that it intended to do away with the hukou system at the 16th Communist Party Congress in 2002, and has been making incremental changes since then. The overhaul got a major boost in 2003 after a college-educated migrant in Guangdong Province, named Sun Zhigang, was beaten to death in police custody after being detained for vagrancy. His death brought nationwide outrage and led to the abolition of vagrancy laws.
"We knew it was a dead duck after they abolished the custody and repatriation system," or vagrancy law, said Nicolas Becquelin, a researcher for Human Rights in China based in Hong Kong. "The police had no power to enforce the hukou laws."
The key point is this: facts on the ground can push governments into changes they may not want to make. Even if they don't realise it, changes like this bolster those of us who believe China's economic changes will eventually force the collapse of the CCP and lead to democracy. Either way, this is a significant turning point in realising the old system is broken and a new one is growing before our eyes.
Great post, Simon. I totally agree that the authorities are doing it as a a way to relieve pressure on local, rural government ill-equipped to handle the rapid pace of change in China. For too long China has ignored the rights of the thousands of migrants who have made the imperium en imperio of China's major cities run properly by doing jobs the city-dwellers would not perform - effectively, the illegal Mexicans of China. This legitimizes their residency and makes official what is already fact - that million of Chinese have left the countryside for the opportunities in urban areas.
I mention the Mexican parallel because in a sense it poses as many issues as a similar legitimization would cause in America. China's social safety net, as hole-ridden and as dreadful as it is, will have to be extended to these migrants. They will have the opportunity (unlikely though it may be for most of them) to officially climb the socioeconomic ladder without having to pay bribes, and yes, as you say, they will have a voice that may make them a political force.
I wonder if anyone has researched into the correlation between this and the fact that the migrants (mainly the earlier generation) are getting more powerful economically (and hence all politically) ?
[many rised to the rank of manager, some started small biz, a couple billionaires are migrant themselves, i think.]
Thinking about it more, this represents a turning point in another sense: one of the last vestiages of totalitarianism is giving way to the new China, whatever that might be.
Put this in the "sports I never knew existed category": soft tennis, now being played at the Almost Complete Waste of Time East Asia Games in Macau:
Tennis had traveled to Japan by the late 19th century, but there was one problem - there were not enough furry tennis balls. So the Japanese improvised, creating an alternative rubber, furless ball. The game of soft tennis was born.
Rallies appear to have less pace than regular tennis, but the balls still zing - perhaps due to the skidding. The rallies can be just as long as clay-court tennis. It is harder to overpower your opponent than in tennis because the game is slower. Aces are rare. Soft tennis athletes serve overhead, but also underhanded. Spin is a key technique. The appropriately spun ball can just drop dead and catch your opponent flat-footed.
Less than two months after Disneyland Hong Kong opened, Frederick Ma said Wednesday that the government could sell off its 57 percent share in the theme park.
"In the long run, the government may consider, in the light of the big market, [the] small-government principle to divest its shareholdings in the company [Hong Kong International Theme Park Limited, a joint venture between US-based Walt Disney Corporation and the Hong Kong government], at an appropriate time when it is in the overall economic interests of Hong Kong to do so," Ma said during a Legco meeting...
Hong Kong Disneyland, Walt Disney's 11th theme park, is the only Disneyland to enlist a government as a shareholder.
"Big market, small government" in action:
Estimated spending on HK Disneyland by the HK SAR Government:
Reclamation and infrastructure works (roads, the Inspiration Lake Recreation Centre, decontaminating dioxin-laced soil and compensation to fishermen) = HK$13.6 billion
Land acquisition and clearance compensation = HK$1.6 billion
Equity injection into HKITPL = HK$3.3 billion
Loan to HKITPL = HK$6.1 billion
Waived claim to MTR Corp for dividends payable as support for the Disneyland Resort Line = HK$931 million
Total spent for HK$3.3 billion equity stake = HK$25 billion
Likely proceeds from privitisation, if Disney agrees (and I'm just guessing) = HK$3.5 billion
Combined with the repayment of the loan, total return to HK taxpayers = HK$9.6 billion
Do you have a copy of the contract? If so can you please send it to me.
The privitisation isn't really the point of this post. The point is even if they privitise the HK taxpayer is massively out of pocket on this park, having subsidised the whole edifice to the tune of HK$15 billion using the Government's figures.
wow, thomas barnett, how did he managed to know that without setting his foot in china?
i was told in many occasions how powerful these companies are.
the mayors relies on tax revenue, and various economic figures (GDP growth, etc) for their careers.
each year they would even hold a meeting to assign tax responsibilities with the major companies (and the amount of 'tax refund' to compensate for over-reported revenue/profit)
then they are at the mercy of these corporate heads. changhong is responsible for perhaps 80% of mianyang's GDP.
they could be all legal (although there may also be corruption), for this to happen (but recently tax refund was forbidden)
Actually Sun Bin, Barnett has been to China several times for his professional work and has had access to both academics and cadres. I believe he even adopted a girl from China about 2 years ago.
Yakov is a Russian expat comedian who was famous for jokes that involved the phrase "In Soviet Russia..." or somesuch. (e.g. "In America, you check books out of library. In Soviet Union, library checks you out.")
Posted by Matt McIntosh at November 3, 2005 10:56 PM
someone in Beijing has decided that now would be a good time to switch on the Mouth-Frothing Anti-Democrat Diatribe Machine – albeit at a low setting. The manufacturer claims it will divide and isolate democrats, but in practice it seems to draw them tighter together and remind 70 percent of the Hong Kong public why they voted for them. A timetable for universal suffrage would be illegal, it hisses. Sifting through the mendacity and half-logic the device has spat out, I find a desperate but vaguely sensible point – that a timetable for universal suffrage could be too long as well as too short – and a cheering pat on the head in conclusion…
The apprehension that ‘universal suffrage would be forever delayed’ is by no means warranted.
The writer refers to the Fifth Report on Constitutional Development as “actually the implementation of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee’s April 26 decision.” That’ll be news to the Hong Kong Government, which thinks it’s the result of extensive consultation with the people of the Big Lychee (for whom it won’t be news).
The Big Boss doesn’t think it’s funny. He is worried that the pan-democratic camp might turn tough and muster enough brainpower to recall that China originally guaranteed Hong Kong autonomy over political reform after the first 10 years of reunion with the glorious motherland. That’s why Annexes I and II of the Basic Law read the way they do. It’s what Beijing’s Lu Ping spelt out in 1993. A mealy-mouthed British report last year buried it in paragraph 56*, but otherwise it all goes unspoken in polite society. “What if they look us in the face and come out with that?” the visionary tycoon wonders. “What do we say?” I think about it for a few seconds.
“Simple,” I reply. “Beijing’s broken its promise. What’re you going to do about it?”
*The report is the Six Monthly Report (January - June 2004) on Hong Kong by the Foreign Secretary. Paragraph 56 reads:
The British Government was surprised by the intervention of the central authorities on these issues. In 1993 Lu Ping (then Director of the Hong Kong and Macau Office of the State Council) stated that "how Hong Kong develops democracy in the future is entirely within the autonomy of Hong Kong" (People's Daily of 18 March 1993, quoted in South China Morning Post of 30 March 2004). Moreover, although Article 158 of the Basic Law gives the NPC Standing Committee the power to interpret the terms of the Basic Law, Lu Ping reportedly told the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce on 26 April 1989 that the NPC Standing Committee "would restrict itself to interpreting only the provisions which are the responsibility of the Central Government or the relationship between the central authorities and the SAR". We do not consider that the formation of the Legislative Council concerns the relationship between the central authorities and the SAR. We consider, therefore, that the 6 April Interpretation together with the 26 April Decision place new limitations on the autonomy of Hong Kong which appear to be inconsistent with the Joint Declaration.
Meanwhile, if anyone can clearly decipher the China Daily rant about demands for a timetable for universal suffrage, you're a better person than me. As I've said elsewhere, Beijing is missing a golden opportunity to use Hong Kong as an arms-length testing ground for universal suffrage and full democracy, with little cost to itself and with plenty of kudos to be gained. It doesn't look like the powers that be will be able to overcome their short-sightedness and use their imagination. That's what you get when you're ruled by engineers.
Singapore's former Prime Minister has taken another leaf out of the China book and said that there can be such a thing as too free a press. The SCMP:
Former prime minister Goh Chok Tong has defended Singapore's pro-government media industry from international criticism, saying a liberal press is not necessarily good for every country...Lee Hsien Loong, said Singapore's government and economic performance proved the city-state's system worked.
"Western liberals often argue that press freedom is a necessary ingredient of democracy and that it is the fourth estate to check elected governments, especially against corruption," he said in a speech on Monday night. "But a free press by western standards does not always lead to a clean and efficient government or contribute to economic freedom and prosperity."
The article doesn't mention if he provided examples to support this last statement, but I doubt it. Singapore was ranked 140th out of 167 countries for press freedom, while China was 159th (and Hong Kong 39th). As if to back up the ex-Prime Minister, the SCMP notes China's enlightened policy to coverage of bird flu:
ontrols over reporting on bird flu outbreaks have been tightened, despite Beijing's pledges to employ "complete openness" in the fight against the potentially catastrophic virus.
In a recently issued directive, the Publicity Department ordered newspapers to seek approval from the authorities before publishing any reports on new outbreaks of bird flu and any animal or human deaths which result...
Apart from the reporting of outbreaks and any deaths they cause, news about an exercise to prepare for the closure of ports in the event of human-to-human transmission of H5N1 has also been kept under wraps. Authorities were wary that news of the drill could spark speculation that human cases had been reported, according to government sources.
As a vote of thanks to Singapore, it appears PBoC's Huijin Investments has rejected Singapore's state-owned Temasek Holdings from taking a 10% stake in Bank of China (although Bloomberg contradicts the Caijing Magazine report). Why the rejection? The SCMP again:
"Huijin is BOC's major shareholder and at present it does not agree with Temasek becoming a strategic investor," a senior China Banking Regulatory Commission official told the South China Morning Post...The eight-member board of directors at Huijin, which controls 78.15 per cent of BOC, voted to reject the deal because Temasek's investments were seen as excessive, according to a report in Caijing magazine...
"What the government wants to do by allowing foreign strategic investors is to bring in the products, the management skills and the banking technology, and Temasek is not actually a bank," said Frank Gong, the chief economist at JP Morgan. "Temasek clearly doesn't bring as much to the table as Bank of America and Royal Bank of Scotland," added ABN Amro banking analyst Simon Ho, referring to the two banks' investments in China Construction Bank and BOC, respectively. "It brings a lot of money but not banking technology per se."
Journalists adopting unethical tactics to pursue stories are ruining press freedom and destroying the credibility of the media, industry representatives warned yesterday. The accusations came after two reporters from a Hong Kong-based publication allegedly broke into Canto-pop star Gigi Leung Wing-kei's room in China World Hotel in Beijing last month while she was there to attend a Ferragamo fashion show...
Tam Chi-keung, vice-chairman of the Journalists' Association and convenor of its ethics committee, condemned media members who worked "under the umbrella of press freedom but were actually destroying it".
And you thought Western paparazzi were bad. At least you know in Hong Kong your personal data and privacy are well protected by the mis-named Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data. Right? Ummm...the SCMP one more time:
A privacy watchdog has found no reasonable grounds to launch an investigation into the disclosure of e-mail subscribers' information by Yahoo! that led to the imprisonment of a mainland journalist.
Commissioner Roderick Woo Bun told a special Legco panel meeting on information technology and broadcasting yesterday that Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) had only disclosed information related to an office of a Chinese newspaper. He said that according to a verdict of the Changsha Intermediate People's Court in Hunan , "the information disclosed by Yahoo! ... to mainland authorities was only about the Contemporary Business News office in Hunan, which is not personal data".
To sum up: free press is bad for you, agreeing with China won't get you a piece of their banks, being a celebrity sucks, China learnt nothing from SARS and your email isn't private. Welcome to the Asian Century.
There's another possibility to consider with Avian Influenza: that the Chinese govt has learned its lesson from SARS, but is helpless to apply that experience in the face of bureaucracy: no one wants to report bad news without being able to report it "solved" at the same time. That results in a near-guarantee of hesitation.
Bureaucracy swallowed the Mongols and made them Chinese. Bureaucracy swallowed the Manchus and made them Chinese. I'd say the Communists resisted for a few decades in the Mao Zedong Cult of Personality, but especially after the demise of Deng Xiaoping, the Bureaucracy trumps Communist ideology.
I wouldn't be surprised if we start hearing that the Eunuchs of the East Chamber are plotting against President Hu...[grin]
Thanks Doug. Maybe I'll try more "summing up" in future.
Nathan - interesting interpretation but I'm not that optimistic. Manadarins' natural reaction is still to cover-up and evade, not be open and deal with the problem. And that applies to far more than just health issues.
Bates Gill is not just a spoonerism of the world' richest man. He is a noted expert on China and amongst other things, the HIV/AIDS problem in China. Meanwhile China has a well-known penchant for fiddling statistics, especially as many public servants are measured by these statistics. Worst of all, often the same person compiles the numbers they are measured by. But sometimes this can hide positive trends for fear of ridicule. The SCMP reports on Bates Gill's observations:
Beijing may be keeping new estimates of the number of HIV infections on the mainland secret because they are lower than previously published figures and could undermine the government's credibility...This could be the reason why the official HIV figure had remained at 840,000 for the past two years, said Bates Gill, a China expert at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
"What I've heard is that with further modelling and more fine-tuning of their approaches, they now ... have come to the conclusion that the number may be actually lower than 840,000," he told a briefing in Beijing. The new estimate had not been made public because of concern about the political impact of such an announcement, he said.
"Clearly the immediate reaction might be, `Oh my God, they really are meddling with the numbers and they're trying to put forward a picture which is less serious than it actually is'," Mr Gill said...
The estimate of 840,000 HIV-positive cases was arrived at using modelling techniques, and was the result of a co-operative effort between China, the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids. The central government had only directly diagnosed HIV in 120,000 people, said Mr Gill, who regularly travels to the mainland to meet Ministry of Health and other senior government officials. "What I'm saying is that nine out of 10 people or so in China today - according to the government's own statistics - who are HIV positive don't know it," he said. "And the government doesn't know who they are or where they are."
So there's good news, but we can't be told about it. That aside, the main issue is the one I've put in bold in the quote: dealing with the potential for a wider HIV/AIDS epidemic in China. Forget about bird flu. The stigma of AIDS, combined with old fashioned values and widespread ignorance, means China is at the cusp of a potential widespread problem. A problem that can be prevented if the political will is there.
Bird flu has pushed AIDS far from the front page, so in that sense it has already started affecting human health.
Well, I'm very surprised that it has taken this long, especially considering all of the ongoing campaigning that Mrs Amanda Liu has been engaged in to get it blocked since last July. Blog-city was blocked not too long after my China Daily article drew her attention to The Horse's Mouth, the Angry Chinese Blogger and Keving in Pudong, though she had been campaigning before then to get Dave's ESL Cafe blocked - she was outraged by that site's open forum. She claims that Dave Sperling made changes to the accessability of his forum only after my China Daily article was published, though his decision has to be seen in the context that he was already under constant pressure from Mrs Liu and her lobby group. He stood to lose an enormous amount of revenue if his site were to be blocked on the mainland, as mainland educational institutions now make up his biggest market after South Korea.
When I wrote my China Daily article (which I stand by), it wasn't my intention to help get any of these sites blocked, mind you! I need to stress that I think. Having said that though, I can't help but to feel as though Richard has got his just desserts. I know I will be crucified for having said that, but... Look at it this way: Richard was receiving complaints about the length of my comments to his site, and because he is so concerned about maintaining site traffic, he seized on the first opportunity he got to drive me away - when KLS mentioned that I had been copying and pasting without always acknowledging my sources. I apologised for that, but Richard proceeded to instigate and to encourage a witch hunt (which KLS himself was critical of). This, mind you, came only days after I had offered to assist Richard financially on his arrival to Shenzhen, in response to his open request.
When I mentioned his full name once in my China Daily article, he claimed that I was being malicious, saying that he didn't want his full identity associated with his Peking Duck site. Well, that's odd, because I first discovered his site via the evworld site, and on this site Richard was openly promoting his Peking Duck under his full name! He simply wanted to paint me out to be Mr Evil incarnate, and what's more, he then spread a rumour that I had written a letter or an email to his past employer, revealing him to be a homosexual. This is an outright vicious lie.
So I can't help but to feel as though he has got his just desserts really - having his site blocked on the mainland will probably make it difficult for him to continue to attract new readers in the same numbers that he was previously able to do - and that is what he appears to want most, because he is out to make money from advertising revenue. As he himself recently wrote, "Show me a blog that is objective, and I'll show you a site with no traffic, no comments, etc." Well, that just about sums up what the Peking Duck is really all about then, doesn't it? It's not about being fair, balanced, objective. It's about giving people want they want - a daily dose of China-bashing dribble to get off on, so that he can make a little money through advertising.
MAJ - it's not about money. I also accept advertising in order to defray the costs in running this site. Trust me when I say the revenues are not significant enough to make a difference either way.
As for the banning, I don't believe it's a major issue. The blog is in English, and those reading from the mainland are likely already adept at using proxy servers and the like.
As for the biases of blogs, Richard's right. No blog I know of pretends to be a neutral, objective news source. It's all about opinions.
Well, the money isn't much I know, and I'm not saying that there is anything fundamentally wrong with him trying to make money from his site - my point is, he wants to use his site to make money, even if it is just a little, and that means maintaining decent traffic. I suspect that he drove me away because he was worried that my lengthy comments were scaring away too many readers. He actually said that to me, in fact, that he had received many complaint emails about the length of my comments.
If he is going to operate a blog, which occupies a public space, then he has to be prepared to accept criticisms of both his ideas and opinions, as well as his blog. When I wrote a reasonable criticism (without making any personal attacks) which China Daily published, he responded by launching into a smear campaign against me, and he also tried bullying you and Bingfeng into not giving me a space to express my views. His behaviour at that time was outrageous.
I have published all sorts of personal details about myself online - even my address and phone number! If somebody finds it, and advertises it elsewhere online, then that is my problem! I have to take responsibility for that - if I make such details public by putting them online, on a public space, then I have to accept that this information is public, and was made public by me. The same applies to Richard. He promotes his site under his own full name on one site, so he has no right whatsoever to criticise me and to demonise me for citing that information elsewhere online. Period. No rational personal could possibly argue otherwise! Numerous other sites also mentioned him by his full name - including this one.
It is a perfectly reasonable criticism to make - that his blog is biased and ethnocentric, that it is lacking in objectivity. If he can't handle that, then he shouldn't run a blog, should he?
Not everybody will be able to access his blog from the mainland - not everybody will be bothered, and not everybody knows how to set up and to use proxy servers. And not all proxies work - I cannot access TPD using a proxy server from here in Shenzhen, yet I can access blog-city sites using proxies. Another person on some other site has mentioned that they too cannot access it from Beijing, even when using a proxy.
I'm sorry if I seem a little harsh, though you are right, it is no big deal that his juvenile hate site has been blocked here on the mianland of China - some will miss it, most will not.
The first comment I ever posted on TPD was deleted almost immediately - why? Richard mistook me for somebody else. That somebody else, who has kept in contact with me ever since, and who resides in Shanghai, will be meeting me for the first time this weekend at a pub in Wan Cai. We plan to celebrate over a few beers! Maybe Mrs Amanda Liu, who is from Guangzhou, would care to join us, if she has a Hong Kong pass.
Last July I wrote an article which was published by The China Daily on what I see as the disappointing ethnocentrism of many English-language China blogs. The article excited a heated response from many readers, and soon afterwards, three of the four blog sites that I had criticised were blocked: The Horse’s Mouth, the Angry Chinese Blogger and Kevin In Pudong. All three of these were hosted by blog-city.
A few days ago the other site that I focused on, The Peking Duck, also fell victim to the mainland’s censors.
What is my position on this?
The question of China’s internet censorship is a problematic one, but I believe that China’s internet censorship practices need to be viewed in the wider international context.
All countries have internet censorship policies. Since at least 1995, most governments around the world have been addressing the problems of material on the internet that is illegal under their offline laws, and in most cases, have concerned the issues of political speech, the promotion of or incitement to racial hatred, and pornographic material.
Different countries have to date experimented with a variety of means when censoring the internet. In the United Kingdom and Canada for example, government policy has been largely to encourage self-regulation within the internet industry.
In Australian Commonwealth law, we see instead the government mandated blocking of access to content deemed unsuitable for adults. This has been the case in Australia since January 2000. The ABA (Australian Broadcasting Authority) has the power to monitor the internet, investigate complaints and to require that Internet Service Providers block or remove internet sites anywhere in the world deemed offensive. Web sites, newsgroups and databases are all subject to censorship, as are personal emails. This approach is also the one used here in China, as well as in Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam. Some of these countries require internet access providers to block material while others only allow restricted access to the internet through government controlled access points.
China currently operates the most extensive, technologically sophisticated, and broad-reaching system of internet filtering in the world. According to a study conducted by OpenNet Initiative, which is a partnership between the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, and the Advanced Network Research Group at the Cambridge Security Programme at Cambridge University, China’s legal regulation of the internet is extraordinarily complex: “The legal regime comprises requirements and prohibitions issued by multiple bodies and administrative agencies [and there are] at least a dozen entities [which] have authority over internet access and content in some form. These rules frequently overlap and restate prior provisions. Conforming to these requirements is made more difficult by the broad, sweeping definitions that many regulations employ. Overall, China’s legal controls over the internet have expanded greatly since 2000, indicating increased attention to this medium of communication.
Moreover, the number of regulatory bodies with a role in internet control has increased. This may indicate intra-governmental competition for a voice in shaping a medium viewed as vital to China’s economic growth and political stability.”
Content control in China then, occurs through informal as well as formal measures. Thus, the Internet Society of China pressures content and access providers to agree to a “Public Pledge of Self-Regulation and Professional Ethics.” Companies often accede; Yahoo! agreed to the pledge in 2002, and filters content available to users at its Chinese language portal. Internet regulation in China is based on the philosophy that “one is responsible for what one publishes.” Thus, Internet companies in China practice a high degree of self-censorship. Internet Service Providers perform self-censorship, including using employees who lead teams of volunteers to monitor and moderate chat rooms and bulletin boards. China can thus filter content through voluntary, informal measures, as well as via formal legal or technological means.
Users, in effect, act as an additional regulatory mechanism, and many citizens view internet regulation as necessary, and monitor Web sites, chat rooms, and bulletin boards for inappropriate content, reporting violations to the authorities.
One such citizen is Mrs Amanda Liu, who heads a lobby group based in Guangzhou, and who responded on the pages of The China Daily to my article. She wrote, on the 25th of July:
"You raise two very good questions to which I would like to answer with things I have read in the writings of the late Chief Justice of the United States, Oliver Wendell Holmes.
No one has the right to cry fire in a crowded theater anywhere. No one has the right to provoke a panic, nor to excessively disturb the established order. That is not Chinese thinking - that is American jurisprudence.
1. Are those who host websites responsible for the content displayed therein in the Modern Age?
Absolutely yes. A website is a tool. It can be a tool for good; it can be a tool for evil. If it fosters hate, warmongering, criminal elements, extreme political views whose sole purpose is to perturb the established order, then yes, it should be shut down. And the keeper of the website should either be sent to jail or should be fined.
If the website, on the other hand, provides a forum for reasonable, intelligent provocative discussion in a non-threatening and non-bellicose manner, then no, the website should not be challenged, provided, however, it does not violate any of the laws, rules, nor regulations of the country in which it resides or in which it is read.
3. A case in point from which I began my entire campaign for website responsibility from Westerns, particularly Americans, resident in China and living off the public purse.
As I have said now three times, on Dave's www.eslcafe.com, in the Off-Topic China Forum, there was a seven-page posting on how American should wage nuclear war on China and how it should destroy our cities.
That posting is completely beyond the pale of what is acceptable. And there were many other others.
So thus it became necessary to wage a campaign to restrict that website, and with the help of all of my friends in Guangzhou, we were successful.
David Sperling, the owner of the website who resides in California (sperling@eslcafe.com) was forced to make all of the obscene, violent, extremely China-bashing forums private. He perfectly understood that he risked having his entire site banned for hate mongering, etc.
So to answer your question in a few words: Intelligent discussion, even simple discussion is welcome on any BBS provided it does not violate nor flaunt the established norms of the country either in which it is viewed or in which is it hosted.
As demonstrated, in the case of Dave's Web Site, which actively discussed maiming and killing Chinese citizens and destroying our country, that is simply ultra hatred. And thus it had to be restricted.
And frankly, we are still working to have the entire site shut down. It has gone too far."
Mrs Liu corresponded with me several times by email, pledging to not only continue with her campaign to have Dave’s ESL Café blocked, but also the four English-language China blogs that I discussed in my article.
Whether or not Mrs Liu and her friends were justified in their efforts to get such sites blocked depends on the following two questions: (1). What kind of internet materials should China have a moral right to block? And (2), do the blogs in question fall into this category of being socially unacceptable?
China’s State Council Order No. 292, promulgated in September 2000, established formal content restrictions for Internet Content Providers, with its Article 15 specifying nine restricted, relatively vague categories of information that cannot be produced, copied, published, or disseminated, comprising data
1. Which are against the principles prescribed in the Constitution;
2. Which endanger the security of the State, divulge the secrets of the State, overthrow the government, or damage the unification of the state;
3. Which harm the dignity and interests of the State;
4. Which instigate hatred, discrimination among the ethnic groups, or destroy the unity of nationalities;
5. Which break the religious policy of the State, spread evil cults or feudal superstition;
6. Which spread rumors, disturb the social order, and damage the social stability;
7. Which spread pornography, sex, gambling, violence, murder, terrorism or abetment;
8. Which insult or slander others and thus infringe upon others' lawful rights and interests; or
9. Which involve other contents prohibited by the laws and administrative rules.
All societies need to strike their own balance when it comes to protecting the rights of individuals and the rights of the wider community. Freedom of speech for example, is indeed negotiable, even in Western societies, where various forms of censorship are also practiced in the interests of protecting the wider community. Apart from defamation laws, television and film ratings and internet censorship laws, racial vilification laws also exist in most Western countries. These racial vilification laws differ slightly from country to country, but let us take Australia's racial vilification laws as an example. The law there forbids the public airing (including the use of websites) of any messages that can be shown to cause "insult, humiliation or distress" to an individual or group of individuals based on their ethnicity, nationality or religious affiliation. This is how a "hate" site is defined. Hate sites do not necessarily need to incite hatred - they need only to cause "insult, humiliation or distress" to be classified as a "hate" site.
The racial vilification laws of New Zealand, Canada, and most Western Europeans countries are almost the same in this regard. And these laws are often put into practice. In 2002, an Australian man by the name of Frederick Toben for example, was ordered by the Australian Government to shut down his website which claimed that the Nazi holocaust did not occur because it caused some Jewish Australians considerable "distress".
China has every right to formulate its own laws, and it has every right, just like every other country, to ban websites and other publications that cause its own citizens "insult, humiliation or distress," or to censor information in the interests of maintaining social cohesion and stability. It's not difficult to charge many Western critics of China with a failure to see human rights problems in Chinese terms. This is not to say, of course, that Chinese society ought not to be open to criticism by foreigners and Chinese nationals alike, but rather, that such criticisms need to be based on empirically verifiable research, and that any conclusions drawn need to be fair and balanced, and that the people of China ought to be judged in their own terms, not according to the values of Westerners. The right balance struck in protecting the rights of the individual against the rights of the wider community in one country, may not necessarily represent an appropriate balance for another. You can often borrow ideas, but you can't borrow situations.
So in answer to the first question, I have to say that I believe China, like all other societies, does indeed have a right to censor internet sites as outlined in Article 15 of the State Council Order No.292. The criteria used in fact, is very similar to those used by most Western countries.
If you accept this, as I do, then the blocking of The Peking Duck and The Horse’s Mouth, etc., all hinges on whether or not these sites can be reasonably classified and regarded as “hate” sites – and here is where the real controversy I think, lies.
Readers familiar with the sites in question will of course be able to make judgments for themselves, but for those of you who are interested in knowing my view on this matter, you can scroll down to the first two articles posted on the “China Articles” page of my blog, where I have already discussed the question of whether or not they constitute as “hate’ sites in some considerable detail.
MAJ, I've got numerous problems with what you've said, but time does not permit me to go into detail now (although I will tomorrow).
But there's one glaring fault in your logic: in all those other countries, the people get to elect those that make the decisions. What China does is legal under its own legal processes. So was the processes followed by Stalin and Hitler in their states at their times. Being legal does not mean being right. There is a vast difference between screaming fire in a crowded room and blogs, even if they are considered offensive or out of order. I've never seen someone's life threatened due to what they read in a blog. If China's process was an open one, subject to widespread debate in the media and public, your arguement might hold water. But when imposed from above to protect those in power, it falls over.
Not to mention one other key difference - with blogs you have a choice to not read them. There's no compulsion. With the "Fire" example, there is no choice in the matter to reacting to the comment.
Yet again, that word "choice". It's a massive difference.
Interesting response Simon, and I appreciate your views, but as I have argued in detail already in an article I wrote on my blog, the CCP does have a legitimate right to govern - it does, contrary to what you may like to hink, have a strong mandate. This is painfully obvious - the vast majority of mainland citizens continually express general satisfaction with the present status quo, and the overwhelming majority say they do not want multi-party elections at this stage in China's development. Now look, I'm not merely parroting CCP propaganda when I point this out - independent U.S., Taiwanese and European researchers have all reached the same conclusions from their own studies, some of which have been conducted on vast, national scales. The academic world accept these findings - the last such study that I am aware of was presented in Taipei at last year's 32nd Sino-American Conference on Contemporary China. It's conclusions were accepted. Anyone who lives on the mainland knows very well that the vast majority support the right of the CCP to govern - purely by the strength of anecdotal evidence. You only have to teach here, or talk to people you meet, to gain such insights.
So the first fault you talk about I reject. The empirically verifiable evidence shows that the CCP does have a popular mandate to govern, and to legislate and enforce its laws, as does the anecdotal evidence.
Your second objection is interesting: you say that people have a choice not to read them. Well, in Europe and Australia, this line of reasoning has been rejected several times already in law. It was raised in particular during the Frederick Toben case in Adelaide. The Australian courts rejected this very argument, and ordered his site to be closed down. Toben's lawyers argued that his site was an academic history site, and that people have a choice whether of not they read it. His main argument was that the Nazi holocaust didn't occur. The courts rejected his defence on the grounds that many people will indeed be directed to his site, not knowing what to expect, and once they open it and begin reading it, they may find the contents disturbing, offensive, humiliating, etc. The mere knowledge that such a site exists then continues to haunt.
And those who do "choose" to read hate sites can have their world views distorted (especially those who are young and impressionable) - and this, of course, can influence not only attitudes but also social behaviours. This is EXACTLY why hate sites are defined in law, and why most countries outlaw them. If this logic of yours was reasonable and flawless, then there would be no such need for vilification laws that outlaw published materials - be they books, magazines, online sites, films, etc.
If the CCP are so comfortable with their popularity and mandate, why don't they allow elections? Clearly they'd win if your polling is correct. Of course they may need to release the press to be truly free, stop co-ercing those they rule with threats and promises and seperate the party from the state, but they'd still win hands down.
I find your second line of reasoning ironic. You are applying the logic and court ruling of a liberal democracy (Australia) and using it to justify the blocking of "hate" sites in authoritarian China. The key difference is in australia Mr Tobin had a chance to represent and defend himself in a court of law, against a law that was passed by a freely elected parliament, that was widely debated in the press and community.
I understand where you are coming from, but I think you are missing the whole point here. It is not relevant whether or not the CCP are comfortable with the idea of introducng multi-party elections - of course they do not want to compete for the right to govern. The point too, isn't whether people like you and me feel as though the two-party system is better than the one-party system. What matters is what most Chinese themselves think, and the reality is that at the moment the overwhelming majority are satisfied with the one-party system, and are either in no hurry or have little interest in adopting a system based on multi-party elections. What matters only is that at present, the majority are satisfied with the present system. The CCP, at present, therefore have a popular mandate to govern and to introduce laws. Period. Whether you personally like China's system or not isn't relevant, is it?
You might not like the idea of authoritarian systems of governance, be it the Chinese model, or the Singaporean model, or whatever. So what? I prefer the system we have in Australia too! But what you and I think is not relevant here. What matters is that most Chinese mainlanders are comfortable with authoritarian systems of governance, they believe in it, and they are satisfied with it - at present at least.
The crucial point that I am making is this: the CCP has a popular mandate, it therefore has a legitimate right to legislate laws and to enforce them. The rest of the world needs to respect that. We may not agree with all of those laws, but the majority of mainland Chinese do. Period.
Thank you to everyone else who also linked and visited.
As usual, some stats for October:
* 29,965 unique visitors made 64,929 unique visits, reading a total of 144,141 pages,and drawing 13.02 GB of bandwidth.
* This equals 2,095 visitors per day reading 4,650 pages each day. In other words each visitor reads 2.21 pages on average. Each visitor returned on average 2.16 times during the month.
* 243 subscribe to this site's feed via Bloglines and 191 via Feedburner.
* 66.2% of you use IE, 19% Firefox, 3.1% Safari, 1.8% Mozilla, 1% Opera and 1% Netscape to browse this site. 85.8% of you use Windows, 5.7% Mac, 1.4% Linux.
* 12.7% of visits were via search engines, of which Google was 70.5% and Yahoo 22.8%. The top search phrases remained "Nancy Kissel", "Robert Kissel" and "Icered", and happily "Simon World". Luckily I'm number one for that last search.
* The most visited individual page was "Asia's sad obsession with Nazi-ism".
China's economic system is described as a socialist market economy. In reality it is a muddle of capitalism and central planning, with murky statistics and transmission mechanisms and little clarity as to how the whole edifice functions. Who would be an economist in such an environment? Let this is the same country funding part of America's massive spending binge (along with Japan and the Middle East), becoming one of the world's biggest economies and with influence not just over its own 1.3 billion people but pretty much everyone on the planet through its influence in commodity markets, geopolitics, production and more.
Which means it's a worry when Professor Xue-liang Ding of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology says the mainland has at most five qualified economists, and that some of China's more famous economists wouldn't qualify in western universities' postgraduate programs. I cannot find the original article in the China Youth Daily but I look forward to a translation.
It doesn't look good for the dismal science. What if the rest of the world catches on? A small sample should prove the point:
USA - tens of thousands of economists, GDP growth rate 3.6%
Germany - tens of thousands of economists, GDP growth rate 0.6%
Japan - tens of thousands of economists, GDP growth rate 0.4%
China - 5 economists, GDP growth rate 9.4%
A regression analysis leads to only one conclusion - economists are bad for economic growth*.
* Don't start going on about causation vs. correlation. That's exactly why economists get a bad rap in the first place.
![[boomerang]](http://simonworld.mu.nu/boomerang2.gif){kind=small}
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by Jared Diamond
