Placeholder for arms-sales-to-Taiwan entry

More on Hillary's speech

"From my vantage point in Shanghai, I can say that the news of Google possibly leaving the country was briefly a topic of discussion several days ago but hasn't been brought up since. My prediction is that, if Google leaves, Baidu will temporarily monopolize the market before facing competition from a domestic startup. Yes, Google will take a lot of top computer science talent along with it, but top talent will continue returning to the mainland from overseas to make up for the brain drain. And I don't think Google's departure will significantly impact the ability of Chinese people to circumvent censorship or government repression, as there are dozens of sites and forums discussing Party mishaps and injustices that are officially censored in the state news organs.

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A momentous 40 hours, leading to Clinton/China/Internet

"Amid this unprecedented surge in connectivity, we must also recognize that these technologies are not an unmitigated blessing. These tools are also being exploited to undermine human progress and political rights. Just as steel can be used to build hospitals or machine guns, or nuclear power can either energize a city or destroy it, modern information networks and the technologies they support can be harnessed for good or for ill. The same networks that help organize movements for freedom also enable al-Qaida to spew hatred and incite violence against the innocent. And technologies with the potential to open up access to government and promote transparency can also be hijacked by governments to crush dissent and deny human rights."

"On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress, but the United States does."

"In the last year, we've seen a spike in threats to the free flow of information. China, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan have stepped up their censorship of the internet. In Vietnam, access to popular social networking sites has suddenly disappeared. And last Friday in Egypt, 30 bloggers and activists were detained." 

"As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics....

"Those who disrupt the free flow of information in our society or any other pose a threat to our economy, our government, and our civil society. Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences and international condemnation...."

Continue reading "A momentous 40 hours, leading to Clinton/China/Internet" »

Interesting China/Google discussion; housekeeping note

About the stakes for China in the Google showdown

"Analogously, in the information revolution following the introduction of the printing press, censorship in Catholic countries (especially Spain) had a similar "non-effect" initially because  there was an active black market in banned books. However, in less than 50 years, in the Protestant countries, where the press was not controlled, people of the crafts-producing class were able to become literate and change the way they produced goods. Over time this new way of producing goods became capitalism.  

"In Spain, Italy, Portugal and to lesser extent France people of the crafts-producing class did not become literate. They continued  producing goods in the same way as they had in the past. Soon they were out competed by Holland and then England where better goods were produced more cheaply. Over time this had a profound economic impact on the wealth and power of the various countries.

"Innovation by the "out group" based on access to the benefits of the new information technology that creates new sources of wealth and power. I would conclude, therefore, that China, having made Spain's decision to control information, is now out of the running for world leadership."

Update on Google/China-ology

"1.  While I can empathize with everyone outside of China who is lauding Google, I believe it is so easy for people to praise something like this for which they make no sacrifice themselves.  What I would like to ask those people is "If you were living in China would you want Google to leave now?  Really?" and "Are you now not buying any products or services that benefit China's government in any way?"

Continue reading "Update on Google/China-ology" »

Last on Haiti, China, and Taiwan - plus more Google

"Many civil society organizations in Taiwan are also mobilizing around the earthquake relief effort, such as the Tzu Chi Foundation, the largest humanitarian organization in the Chinese-speaking world, with operations in over 40 countries. They just began a global fundraising effort for the earthquake relief, and Tzu Chi doctors and volunteers from the US and the Dominican Republic are preparing relief efforts. Their last aid mission to Haiti was in 2009, after a series of hurricanes that had struck the island."

"Despite China's muted practical response to the Haitian earthquake (for a variety of reasons), did you know that the news here in China is virtually wall-to-wall Haiti?  Why?  It's an excellent excuse for not devoting any reporting time to Google.  I don't think I've seen a single report on Google on the official news, and even Phoenix [from Hong Kong] tacked it on as a 30-second spot following about 25 minutes of Haiti coverage.  It's almost as if they said "Thank God, there's some REAL news we can cover and avoid mentioning Google."  If they didn't have Haiti, they might actually have to talk about it."

More on Haiti, China, and Taiwan

"About the unified theory. I just wanted to point out the significance of Haiti having diplomatic relations with Taipei rather than Beijing as a factor in China's rather muted and limited response to the unfolding disaster. After the tragedy of Sichuan 2008, the rather more generous donations to other disaster locations, and as a country with a large disposable income, I can see no other reason for such a 'quiet' offering from Beijing.

"In agreement with a point made by one of your email commenters, this reaction (if I read their motives correctly) would also be indicative of a reaction more 'petulant child' than 'globally responsible stakeholder'.

"I wonder how much aid Taiwan is sending."

China and Google: what we know

"I just had an interesting comment from a Chinese person - 'do you think Google will desert us?' That person is not an activist but a very proud Chinese person in their 30's who's living the China dream but also a good global citizen.  When I asked why would it matter they said 'Google is like a symbol it's our connection to the outside world.' that person has an MBA from a top European University."

"it's worth remembering that this is a lose-lose-lose scenario. The most likely outcome is that Google loses access to an important market, Chinese customers lose access to its services, and the government loses face."

Unified field theory: Google, China, Haiti

"I've been particularly interested in your recent observations that China appears to be heading towards a "Bush-Cheney" stage.  Indeed, in Copenhagen, with Liu Xiaobo, with Google, with Green Dam, and a series of other events, it appears that China is attempting to assert itself in the world, but thus far the performance is rather clumsy.  [Background here.] The fact that this comes at a period of perceived American decline is clearly exacerbating global tensions and will likely further inflame Sino-U.S. relations.  If America under Bush was a blundering giant...than that's exactly what China is turning into.... 

"I see a China right now that is clamoring onto the world stage, trying to be taken seriously, and flexing its muscles everywhere from Copenhagen to Palm Springs (see Adam Minter's blog Shanghai Scrap on that). At the same time, the world, alongside Google (the company most emblematic of 21st century global values) is starting to recoil. At home, the Chinese are busy building for the future, but out in the world, China looks like an anachronism. Web-filtering software? Picking on Australian film festivals? Please. This is not the behavior of a mature world power but the actions of a teenager that thinks the world should conform to her demands.

"It is through this lens that American and Chinese responses to the crisis in Haiti are particularly telling...but no one in the media has picked this up yet, at least not as far as I've seen. It begs the question: what is a true superpower?  What role does China really have in the international community if she is simply an economic power and a seemingly irresponsible stakeholder?

"There are some moments in international affairs that put global power relations into perspective, however. The U.S. is committing $100 million to Haiti, plus probably untold amounts in private donations from aid organizations and religious groups.  President Obama is deploying 5,000 troops including the 82nd Airborne and sending in a carrier task force. American companies are mobilizing humanitarian efforts, and there will likely be dozens of search and rescue teams from across the U.S. trying to land in Haiti. Miami Dade county alone is sending an 80-man search and rescue team.

"China is committing $1 million and sent 50 guys on an Air China plane.

"Yes, there is geographical proximity to consider [plus China being on average still very poor], but if this isn't the most obvious display of the massive combined military, economic, and soft power the U.S. can bring to bear if it chooses, then I don't know what is. To me, this shows the still enormous gulf in both power and the responsible use of power between China and the U.S.  For all its faults and recent woes, the U.S. can and will step up and perform the duties demanded of the only indispensable nation.  China, in spite of breakneck growth and a booming economy, cannot and will not." 

One more from the Google-China mailbag

"China's cyber attack on Google will highlight heightened cybersecurity concerns amidst escalating tensions with the US. The major risk for the bilateral relationship is that Beijing could lose an important support base in Washington as the US business community increasingly turns sour on it. Beijing almost certainly won't allow Google to operate an unfiltered search engine in China, which will amplify the issue in the next few weeks. This episode will also bring to the forefront Beijing's commitment to "innovation, Chinese style," which has meant increasing reliance on securing IP on the cheap through either theft or discriminatory industrial policies....

"China is unlikely to yield to Google's intentions to not censor its Chinese search engine. Beijing's immediate response has been guarded, however, reflecting the fact that it was thrown off balance by Google's announcement and is still grappling with how to manage the volatile situation...

"Google's high-profile move has the symbolic significance of making very public what has been private griping among foreign entities for years. Such griping could quickly become much more public and vocal, prompting the US business community, which drives US-China politics in Washington in many ways, to weaken their support for US-China trade and other issues...

"The path that China has taken in this realm is likely to encounter further resistance from US and global companies....  It also exacts significant reputational damage to the country as a whole. As China is attempting to increasingly leverage its "soft power" around the world, the image it is projecting at this point is more unsettling than soothing."

- The emphasis on the Chinese government being "thrown off balance" by this news rings very true. A known strength of the Chinese style of leadership is getting big projects done in a hurry, like road building. A known weakness is decision making in time-sensitive, surprise-development, crisis management circumstances, like now.

- As I mentioned many times while living in China, I always noticed when the fire hose of state propaganda and angry Chinese "netizen" sentiment was turned against Japan (for any number of reasons) or France (over the Dalai Lama) or briefly Mexico (over the swine flu -- it's an odd story). As an American, I was relieved at those times that the fire hose was not being turned against the US. The hose is about to be turned in our direction.

- As an experienced friend in China wrote very recently, this whole situation can turn out either "win-win" or "lose-lose." The mutual win would be if the Chinese government could find a way to accommodate Google's new refusal to "filter" its searches any more (not to mention if it could stop the intrusions on Google's servers); that would allow Google to win by playing an ongoing part in China's development. The all-around loss would be if Google is frozen out in long term from what will eventually be the largest internet market, and if China suffers the various distortions that will come from balkanizing itself from the rest of the world's info flow. I think we'll have a sense soon of which way this is heading. So far the Chinese government has lain low -- see the "thrown off balance" point, above -- but we'll see whether both sides want to make this a louder disagreement or a softer one.

Opening up the Google-China mailbag

"I have no sympathy for Google. I'd like to describe the situation as 始乱终弃----it's a Chinese phrase that describes a person who starts an illicit sexual liaison and ends up getting hurt and dumped. Google compromised the integrity of its core service by giving people censored search results as if they are not in order to make money "in the long haul". Now it looks Baidu, a late comer and emulator, will continue to dominate the Chinese search market. Google's prospect of of meaningful profitability is looking dimmer in the long haul. So it chooses to exit in this spectacular fashion.

"The complaint about the gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists being hacked seems a telltale sign that this is just a PR drama. It sounds so plausible, even romantic. A shining youthful hi-tech brand that represents personal freedom and infinite possibilities of the digital age refuses to bend over further in front of an anachronic and repressive authoritarian state machine, out of principle. Give me a break! There is nothing new in Chinese hacking into gmail or corporate and government infrastructures. Four years ago I and other friends of Dai Qing's got a fake email from her gmail account. I had to reformat my hard drive because I opened up an innocent looking attachment from my friend XX XX, whose  email account was hacked. The Chinese have been doing this kind of things since before Google entered the Chinese market.

"But hypocrisy aside, I do think the strong reaction to and universal support for Google's announcement indicate something important. This may be a harbinger for something that China hopefully will take seriously. It shows it may be too early for China to be so arrogant, and that its rise as a superpower cannot rely solely on its economic might. It has to earn the respectability of the world. It also shows that seemingly small matters will matter someday down the road. Calling the Dalai Lama a wolf in sheep's skin, lecturing Obama that as a black man he should distance himself from the Tibetan spiritual leader because he represents slavery, and letting a sub-cabinet level official wag a finger in front of the American president during a Copenhagen meeting, etc. These are all small matters. But people remember them. When you put them together with the more serious matters such as giving a writer 11 years for writing an open letter, maintaining an overly selfish currency regime, aggressive trade practices and energy deals, and now bullying the beloved Google, it creates a narrative that can prove to be very costly for China.

"This narrative updates and unites the old ideological cliche about communist regimes with negative feelings about China that are more emotional and maybe even cultural. It may make people feel, more than think, that, after all, this rising power is more of a dragon than a panda.

"I still try to hold on to the faith that China will not be like that. When I listened to people like Qin Xiao, the Chairman of China Merchant Group, the country's largest, and best managed, private bank, spoke recently on the Caijing annual forum and later in New York during the National Committee event, I felt very hopeful that they represent China's future. I hope the massive negative reaction from the United States to the Google incident will strengthen their hands in China by showing those Machiavellian officials that behaving in a stupid, mean and arrogant way does have a cost, and that their way will only lead to a dead end. You may get away by offending an hurting some people sometimes, but not many people all the time."

The Google news: China enters its Bush-Cheney era

Placeholder for Google and China story

What happened in Copenhagen, #4

"A familiar situation. When all are to blame, each of the culprits tries to point the finger at the one, only, uniquely blamable fiend who spoiled it all. Personally, in this particular circumstance I found the US President's decision to arrive at the last minute and put on the pretense of saving the day as objectionable as the resistance of the Chinese to discarding Kyoto and being blamed as the main destroyers of the planet's climate balance. What about an equally penetrating inquest on the true motivations and behaviour of the US and other key Western delegations?"

"This really caught my attention - hard to imagine a Chinese official shouting at a foreign head of state!  

"So, I checked and in the Chinese media it was reported that representatives of Brazil, India and South Africa were meeting privately with Wen Jiabao and the Chinese team, when Obama "impolitely" ( "失礼") [shiji - rudely, lacking manners] entered the meeting uninvited. The Director of China's State Environmental Protection Agency, Jie Zhenhua, gestured and exclaimed, "Get out!"  to Obama. Premier Wen then instructed the translator not to translate this 'extreme outburst' and personally left the room in order to speak with Mr. Obama. See http://www.chnqiang.com/article/2009/1222/mil_12610.shtml. [A nationalist-toned site called 强国网.] Sounds like Premier Wen was very diplomatic.
 
"The headline for the piece suggests that at least in certain quarters, Xie's actions were viewed positively:  中国雄起:铁血解振华愤怒指着奥巴马命令其出去!  Something like "China's Might Rises Up: Valiant Xie Zhenhua Angrily Points at Obama and Orders 'Out!'"

"I have been following your posts on the objective of the Chinese delegation at the Copenhagen. It seems like you are only citing English sources. My casual reading of the Chinese media (mainly the Southern Weekly) [the relatively independent paper also called Southern Weekend in English, which did the interview with Obama during his visit, and whose editor was later punished for doing so] is that the Chinese was upset that the developed countries had been trying to go back on principles behind the Kyoto and Bali agreements. The Chinese press have played up a story about some "secret" draft the Danish host was circulating without the input of the China and other developing countries at the beginning of the conference. [This also got a fair amount of coverage in the US.] Obviously, one should not trust the Chinese press entirely. But it strikes me that in this case it might be easier to infer what the Chinese want from reading the Chinese media. Whether what they want is reasonable is a separate matter.

"I think the notion that the Chinese is set against all deals is simply ridiculous. They are only against all deals that developed countries thrown at them. Developed countries would be against any deal too if it were the Chinese and India doing all the proposing."

What really happened in Copenhagen, #3

"The big surprise was India. After sending some mixed messages before the conference, New Delhi finally made it clear that as far as it was concerned the meeting was about long-term strategic options. It questioned the good faith of the Western negotiators, with at least one Indian strategist pointing out that some of the same people involved in credit default swaps that contributed to the collapse of the global financial system were involved in setting up carbon trading. In some quarters, the financial crisis has substantially undermined trust in Western-backed financial mechanisms.

"India didn't like or trust the proposed deal and wanted to show the West that a compliant India could not be taken for granted. Just as important, it wanted to show that, should a perceived fair deal with the West not be possible, it had other options, namely a closer relationship with China."

Much more on the implications of an Indo-centric (or Indo-Chinese centric) interpretation in their essay.

2) An article to be published tomorrow in the Sydney Morning Herald, billed as "the first detailed interview since Copenhagen with Western media by a Chinese official." In this version of reality, China's ambassador for climate change, Yu Qingtai, tells John Garnaut that far from China being the culprit, someone else was to blame. The real obstacle to agreement was the United States, plus rich countries in general:

"Yu Qingtai, told the Herald that the climate change summit was "a step in the right direction", but repeatedly blamed a breakdown of trust at the conference on rich countries ganging up on China.

" 'During and before Copenhagen there was a concerted effort by a small group of developed countries who believed that by joining hands [they could] force us to go beyond what we are responsible for or capable of,' Mr Yu said.

" 'But Copenhagen proved that those attempts will not be successful. In fact they should have known better. So what the developed countries need to learn from this whole process is to make up their minds whether they want to pursue confrontation or co-operation with China.' "

What really happened in Copenhagen, #2

"China's reported actions could be seen to reflect its disagreement with developed countries on how future mitigation burdens should be allocated considering historical responsibilities, rather than a flat-out desire to block any long-term deal as Lynas suggests. [Ie, the US and Britain have been polluting for centuries; why shouldn't China have the same chance?]...  These are substantive differences among the countries that need to be worked out, and we do not get any closer to resolving these differences with accusations of bad faith. In any case, China and the rest of the world will have an opportunity to demonstrate the full extent of their commitment to addressing climate change in the coming year..."

"- The world treated COP15 like a trade treaty, not a peace treaty. Every country, not just China and the U.S. came to the conference to debate on terms and needs specific to their own country, even though the effects of global warming are distributed globally... If the world needs the biggest emitters, not every country, to sign onto cuts to launch a global low-carbon economy, perhaps much of the work on a climate treaty should be left up to talks at the G20...

"- However powerful China may now be -- or however powerful people wish to perceive it --the most powerful actor on the climate stage is the United States, led by President Obama.... But his role in the future will be determined in no small part by the success of climate legislation in the U.S. If he can succeed at convincing the United States that a low-carbon economy is a sustainable economy in every sense of the word, he will be able to make the U.S. a leader at climate talks and assure an American economic advantage...

"- The fragile sense of trust exposed in the aftermath of Copenhagen cuts both ways. For a good-faith deal to come about, the West and China specifically both need to work on improving not just their relationship, but more fundamentally, how they perceive the other. The summit has illustrated China's ascendance to world power, even as it reinforces the country's role as leader of the developing world. We owe it to China to keep the pressure on, as they are the world's largest polluter, and maintain big expectations commensurate with their strength. But we also need to keep reality in mind, recognizing not only the country's limitations but its suspicions that the developed world wants to limit China's growth.

" - The leaders of the developing world have a lot to do. The developed world has to do more. If the US and rest of the developed world can cap emissions and innovate to meet new standards, they will not only be addressing their historical responsibilities and kick-starting a global low-carbon economy. They could well be assuring their own economic futures. New standards would lead to technologies they could sell to rapidly developing countries like China, which will need such solutions as their own standards increase."

And there's a lot more. For the moment, these two additions to the analysis; later, we'll pull the threads together and see what they suggest about what happened last month and what should happen in the months to come.

Bonus: for the completely opposite perspective, a blunt dismissal of the "it's our turn to pollute" claim from China and India, from Willem Buiter in the FT last summer, here. Offering it now in the Rashomon spirit; sorting-out later on.

Back to China and Copenhagen: what actually happened?

"Chinese diplomacy at this meeting overall was somewhat puzzling. Second-level Chinese officials showed up at critical meetings of heads of state on Friday afternoon - the kind of clumsy tactic that Beijing is usually far too smart to employ. The open dissent at the Friday evening meeting - including having one member of Wen's [premier Wen Jiabao] delegation shout and wag his finger at President Obama - suggests that Wen had lost control over his own negotiating team (Wen told the translator not to translate this official's initial outburst and then simply ignored him the second time he raised his voice). Was Wen going beyond the limits of his negotiating authority? Were members of his negotiating team protecting their personal flanks back in Beijing? Whatever the explanation, this initial Chinese foray into the middle of a global conference with extremely high stakes highlighted that Beijing still has some work to do as it assumes more central roles in global negotiations on financial, nuclear and other issues."

Krugman, protectionism, and the RMB

"The real damage of Smoot-Hawley, [Pettis] says, was less economic than political. Other countries understood that the United States was trying to protect its trade surplus and therefore its workforce. They didn't like it as a political matter, and they struck back.

"If that were to happen again... the real counterpart to Smoot-Hawley would be Chinese protectionism--or rather, any effort by China to defend its huge trade surpluses, as the U.S. once did. China's government is unlikely to rely on outright Smoot-Hawley-style tariffs. Instead it could increase subsidies to exporters; it could try to push the RMB's value back down, after three years of letting the currency rise; it could encourage manufacturers to restrain wages; it could impose indirect barriers to imports, as with its recent pressure on China's airlines to cancel outstanding orders for Boeing and Airbus airplanes. By early this year, China's government was in fact doing every one of these things."

Another moment to note, for Liu Xiaobo (updated)

"Significant if true" follow up (China in Copenhagen)

"The points Mark [Lynas, on the Guardian's site] made in the article is too judgmental and biased. Actually Premier Wen attended two meetings with President Obama. Another fact he fails to mention is that CO2 emission per person in China is only 1/4 that of US, 1/2 of Europe. Great Britain is a service-based economy and no longer a World Factory even a century ago, but someone has to produce clothes, cars, and toys. right? Yes, They are made in China (also for Chinese) now with coal-based industry. So what? Put a tariff on these products ,move back manufacturing, put a halt to China's heavy industries? No offense, but China is really still a very young man towards modernization and may never enjoyed a lifestyle many of us envied so much. Is it fair to accuse a young man to stop growing up as an adult? [JF note: This is a familiar image in Chinese discussions.]

 "Of course China's economy needs restructuring, and this will surely proves very hard. From a high-carbon economy to low-carbon economy, the transition nowadays seems more like a international politics issue than an internal economic issue. On the way to a greener economy, Mark really should make less accusations with more understanding and patience."

"It is with a sort of sad bemusement that I read the Guardian account of the Chinese action at Copenhagen. There are a couple things which indicate that the writer might be somewhat insufficiently well-informed, not the least of them the assumption, prior to being wrecked at the conference, that China somehow would like to do things within nearly 200-member multilateral regimes, when in fact the very philosophy of the larger Chinese diplomacy, for the past century, has been dead-set against using such a regime in a positive, rather than negating, manner. I am not sure what exactly possessed Mr Lynas, the writer, to assume thus, but it is certainly not familiarity with Chinese methods.

Continue reading ""Significant if true" follow up (China in Copenhagen)" »

A story that, if true, is important

How do I know China wrecked the

Copenhagen deal? I was in the room

More on those crazy 44% of Americans

"I am just back from a whirlwind eight day business trip to BJ and SH where I am doing work for an American financial services company. I wanted to let you know a few things:

"I used Postcards from Tomorrow Square as part of my trip preparation and it was terrific help on a number of fronts. [Forgive the self-promotional inclusion of this note; relevant in context - JF.] Coincidentally I found myself having a 5 star gourmet lunch at the Tomorrow Square hotel restaurant, where after some uncomfortable formalities with my Chinese hosts we ended up having a remarkably open and lively conversation about the realities of being a Shanghai businessperson, among other things... (some hopefully pertinent points below).

Continue reading "More on those crazy 44% of Americans" »

At last there's proof: 44% of Americans are crazy

If you want to think about China this evening...

Yet more on expelling China's long-time foreign teachers

1) Circumstances naturally vary place to place and institution to institution. Some people say they're having no trouble staying on, at whatever age; others, that a crackdown really does seem to be under way.

2) Lots of other countries have mandatory retirement ages of 55, 60, 62, etc; and if visas there are tied to jobs, foreigners sometimes have to leave.

3) Historically Chinese institutions have used age brackets, or other "categorical" exclusions, as an excuse to move out people they wanted to expel for other reasons.

4) What seems to be an age-related crackdown might actually be aimed at people who have been in China for a long time -- a related but different objective.

"We taught for three and half years on a series of extended student visas in China.

"We were also paid in cash once a month.

"There is always a work around in the PRC if there is sufficient guanxi." ["Connections" -- for more, see here.]

"I am not an English teacher in China, though I have lived here for 11 years and have known several. As everything else goes here, there are exceptions to the sixty rule. I know a man who is 65+ and teaching in Shandong. He has been in China for longer than I have been here, and I assume that he will be here a lot longer too. I cannot imagine that he is the only one.

"My understanding is that much of this depends (surprise! surprise!) on who know, how well you know them, and how much your university is willing to fight for you to stay. Also, being good at your job and being high profile is not necessarily the best thing to be if you want to continue on past sixty. That sort of 'success' draws attention....

Continue reading "Yet more on expelling China's long-time foreign teachers" »

More on the ousted foreign teachers in China

"Just a word regarding Mr. Bishop's situation. I am just hearing from two of my expat friends who have been teaching in Chengdu for 3 and 4 years each, that a new visa regulation is being enforced, which will force all but a very select group of people to leave the country for at least one year after having been there for 5 years more or less continuously.  Whats that all about? Great teachers who like their jobs and would be happy to stay are forced to leave the country for a year? I don't want to know how many of them will find a job some place else in that year off and never come back."

"I read your article on the banning of teachers over the age of 60 in China and I just wanted to let you know that this is not true across the country.  For years, we [a volunteer group] have been sending  60-100 teachers a year to teach in a number of universities in China and for the most part, they are retired, over the age of 60 and the schools are now saying that they should be under the age of 80!  Many of the teachers we send are for short-term summer and fall classes, but many stay on for long-term teaching assignments.  I suspect that they are watched closely to see that their characters are acceptable before the offers of longer contracts are made."

China quote of the day

Updates: Mullen/Obama in US, old/fat in China

"If so, shouldn't that be 'Phat Mr. Fang?' Nuances count in translation."  Good point.

Foreign teachers in China: 老师 who are not too 老

"China is purging foreign teachers over the age of 60. No new visas. and no exception I know of anywhere in the country. I am on a forum that connects hundreds of teachers here. Smart ain't it? Thus, no retired teacher, those with the most training and experience and the least likely to chase young Chinese women, can be hired into schools that desperately NEED trained teachers who have actually earned their degrees from accredited institutions."

"7.5 years at the same shop. We were honored with the 'Friend Of China' medal in recognition of our teaching efforts. Many modernizations and upgrades of our department were initiated by Sallie and myself. We have the only room dedicated to the use of English I know of in China (It is equipped with furniture and several hundred DVDs we purchased ourselves, two computers connected to the Internet, a satellite TV system providing access to foreign English language broadcast, and many books and magazines.), nightly full length English language films free of charge to the students, a student newspaper, mid day English free talks, 'seminars,' and an 'English only' rule within the building resulting in acknowledged improvement in oral English skills among the faculty and student body. The decision is being made by people who have no connection with, or concern for, the quality of English language instruction in China."

Chinese view of greatest threats

From an American traveling in China

"I have just returned home to Connecticut after a month in northwest China.  I know you've probably exhausted yourself in venting your outrage at the pitifully poor coverage of the Obama visit to China by our 'mainstream' press, but I'm writing to add just one more voice to the chorus of people with on-the-ground experience in China, who can't seem to wrap our heads around what actually happened and what was reported. 

"I was literally stopped in the streets of Yinchuan [Ningxia autonomous region, pretty remote, where these pics were taken], due to my being easily spotted as an American, by people of all walks of life who spoke and gestured enthusiastically about the impact that this American president was having and would have on their very lives.  It was exhilarating for me, having all too often suffered through explanations about why American leadership doesn't 'get it' where Asia is concerned.  My dinner conversations were enlivened in ways I wouldn't have imagined even three years ago.

"In a region where one dares not discuss the 'human rights' agenda of the West, we talked openly and loudly and positively, frequently led by young aspiring Party members, about Obama's subtle but effective challenge to China's leadership to open up the society.  Almost all of my university colleagues and most of our students have Facebook accounts and use Twitter in this remote region of China, and all are upset... yes, angry... that they can not communicate using what they know are the most popular social media tools in the West.... 

"As one who has long been worried about the direction of our fourth estate, I'm feeling little comforted by what I read and watched in our Western press and cable news while in China.  As an American far from home, especially during one of our most hallowed of holidays, Thanksgiving, I felt even more distant from that proverbial 'City upon a Hill.'"

More on "many nations of China"

Shortly thereafter the Shanghaiist had a further riff on the theme, with maps of China representing the mental images of people from different parts of China. For instance, China as seen by people from Shanghai:

And according to people from Hong Kong:

Asian politics, American politics, press fail (updated)

Before the Afghanistan speech, two more views on China

"Those media people who portraited Obama's visit to China as a failure simply had little idea about Chinese political culture. The way the Chinese government does things is that they cannot give people the impression that they are yielding to other governments' pressure. So if you come to lecture the Chinese government, you'll be disappointed. But if you come and show your respect and humility, you may well get what you wanted. Last time the Renminbi was re-evaluated [allowed to float], it did not occur when American politicians were lecturing China to do so, but when the shouts from Washington were relatively mild. This time, China stressed that its announcement of carbon emission targets was a "voluntary" action, even though we all know it had something to do with Obama's visit. [JF note: This all rings 100% true to me.]

"When it comes to international reporting, American media is generally too quick to draw conclusions and too much on the surface. Maybe now you can have a better idea of why so many well-informed Chinese people are often so frustrated at American media's coverage of Chinese affairs. It is not because they are just "Chinese nationalists", as American media like to believe."

"Just a thought -- is it possible that the media's negative portrayal of Obama's China trip is giving the Chinese government cover to be more conciliatory than it otherwise might have been? As persuasive as Obama might be in private, the Chinese might be reluctant to give him the appearance of a major "victory" over them; but since his trip has been viewed as a "failure," they do not lose face when they make concessions.

"Perhaps the media actually helped Obama's case!"

The humiliating Obama-in-Asia failures mount up

"WASHINGTON -- The United Nations nuclear watchdog demanded Friday that Iran immediately freeze operations at a once secret uranium enrichment plant,  a sharp rebuke that bore added weight because it was endorsed by Russia and China...

"Administration officials held up the statement as a victory for President Obama's diplomatic efforts to coax both Russia and China to increase the pressure on Iran. They said that they had begun working on a sanctions package, which would be brought before the United Nations Security Council if Iran did not meet the year-end deadline imposed by Mr. Obama to make progress on the issue....

"In recent weeks, the Obama administration has been painstakingly wooing Russia and China, the two permanent members of the Security Council most averse to imposing sanctions... Persuading China has, so far, proven more difficult. After meeting with Mr. Obama in Beijing, China's president, Hu Jintao, said nothing about additional pressure on Iran.

"But administration officials said that behind the scenes they had been working hard to get China on board, and expressed hope that those efforts would pay off.... Rahm Emanuel,  the White House chief of staff, said China's support on Iran and its decision to set a climate change goal on Thursday showed that Mr. Obama's trip to Beijing was producing results despite criticism of the visit. "This is the product of engagement," Mr. Emanuel said, adding that it was "a direct result" of the trip."

Yet more evidence of pathetic failure of Obama trip to Asia

Thanksgiving special: more evidence of failure of trip to Asia!

Yesterday on Xinhua.net -- announcement of the 40-45% reduction target for emissions:



I am thankful for the prospect of more such failures ahead. (And to Jeremy Goldkorn and others for leads.) And on this festive day am thankful to have decided not to bother linking these stories back to the "humiliation and disaster" coverage of the trip to Asia while it was going on. Gratitude all around.

Ever wonder what a Chinese travel show looks like?

Last words on Obama and China

"The Great FireWall question at the Shanghai town hall came directly from the blogger briefing arranged by the Embassy and consulates in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

"I attended the briefing and live tweeted it. The bloggers included Anti and Bei Feng, two of the loudest voices calling for open media in China at the moment, but also Rao Jin from AntiCNN.com. The most common question, asked several times by different bloggers, was if Obama knew about the Great FireWall and if he would do something about it."

Manufactured failure #6: the wrapup

"I am known for having had a pretty consistent focus on human rights in my work as a journalist [JF note: this is very true], so the comments that will follow should not in any way suggest that I believe in a de-emphasis in human rights with regard to China.... But the problem with the way the press has covered this is there's a kind of implicit premise [that...] is misleading, I think. Maybe disingenuous is even a better word, because it seems to suggest that if Obama had pulled a Khrushchev and banged his shoe on the table on these issues and really jumped up and down and made a lot of noise, then this would have achieved a markedly different result for the better. I don't think there's any evidence of that. It may have made certain people in this society feel better about themselves, but if the goal is changing behaviors in China or obtaining political or diplomatic results with China, I think the evidence is the contrary."

2) From the U.S. government official who has appeared twice before, these final comments on the trip and its consequences:

On atmospheric payoffs of the trip:

"Two of the press conferences, in Japan and South Korea, both began with the same elements. In Japan, Prime Minister Hatoyama got up and gushed that "my friend Barack calls me 'Yukio.'" Then the Korean press conference began with [president] Lee Myung-bak saying, 'We have become close friends.' That says something. Those are not just routine polite words. It meant that Obama is profoundly popular in those countries.  Hatoyama's poll numbers are high but dropping, Lee Myung-bak has been embattled, though recovering. But both saw it as enormously important in terms of their own agenda to be identified with Barack Obama. In my mind, the personal popularity and respect for him is a strategic asset. And not one that gets you results in a day. If you have foreign leaders who see their own fate tied up with Obama, that becomes a chip you can draw on. If you need a last minute shift on climate change, they do not want to separate from Barack Obama. Everyone wants to be his best friend."

"Here are the things we tried to do. Number one, he made a robust statement in Shanghai. Number two, have that reach as many tens of millions of Chinese as possible. You can argue about the degree of success, but the message got out. They had a chance to see him in a setting no Chinese had seen before. And beyond that was to be explicit and direct in the private meetings about the importance of our values and the effect on our relations. And then we put in references in the press conference statement to Tibet and the Dalai Lama, and the importance of rule of law, freedom of expression, protection of the rights of minorities, which was an obvious reference to the Uighurs and Tibetans. We went straight to Tibet in the statement, saying that we consider it part of China and urge direct negotiations with the Dalai Lama."

Continue reading "Manufactured failure #6: the wrapup" »

Manufactured failure #5: views from China

"In your series, you touched on the Shanghai town hall, quoting from President Obama's opening and his response to the Twitter/Great Firewall question, and gave voice to a White House insider as to the power of his words and their likely reach inside China. There's been some buzz among western journalists about how the town hall "reached no one".

"I've been monitoring the China internet in the wake of the town hall and, based on my observations of these things over the years I'm very much leaning toward the White House insider's view -- that the reach was vast and deep, in the many millions or tens of millions, though not necessarily entirely positive. But the comment from President Obama that I think will have the most impact inside the firewall was not the one about US principles that you quoted in your followups. It was this one:

'Now, I should tell you, I should be honest, as President of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn't flow so freely because then I wouldn't have to listen to people criticizing me all the time.  I think people naturally are -- when they're in positions of power sometimes thinks, oh, how could that person say that about me, or that's irresponsible, or -- but the truth is that because in the United States information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear. It forces me to examine what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis to see, am I really doing the very best that I could be doing for the people of the United States.'

"Wow! As a resident of China for two decades and a Mandarin-speaking China-watcher for three decades, I can say without any doubt that those words will resonate far more deeply -- and potentially more "subversively" or "destabilizingly" -- than any overt thumb-in-the-eye hectoring that any foreigner or foreign leader might muster, in public or private. Those words are ***precisely*** the kind that Zhongnanhai [Chinese term equivalent to "the Kremlin"] fears the most, and rightly so."

Continue reading "Manufactured failure #5: views from China" »

Manufactured failure #4: more on Obama's trip

Continue reading "Manufactured failure #4: more on Obama's trip" »

Manufactured failure #3: insider's view of the Obama trip

"I don't care if someone criticizes us, I just would like it to be accurate and in context. I fear I am learning that is not the skill of some in the White House Press corps. They are experts on horse races, and so that is the way everything is cast."

"In thinking about the trip, the things we were trying to accomplish were all basically long term things. We were not looking for 'deliverables' or one-day stories. You've now got eight or nine countries among the G20 that are Asia-Pacific countries. The historic shift of power and influence from West to East is reflected in that number.

"Obama is very focused on global issues, things like climate change, financial imbalances, non proliferation, energy issues. We saw all the countries on this trip as players on those global issues. Of course China is important in particular, but also Korea and Japan and the ASEAN countries. So we saw this as a way of developing relationships that would be helpful to us as we tackled these issues coming down the road. 

"We've got Copenhagen [climate talk] coming up in mid-December. We have Iran heading increasingly likely toward Plan B rather than Plan A, pressure rather than inducements. North Korea. And the Copenhagen session is very far from a done deal. The countries we dealt with are all key players here. And on the economic side, you've got the whole issue of rebalancing the global agenda. None of those is something where you come out of a meeting and say Eureka. They're all part of a long process and a long game.

"The other thing we had in mind, which has to do with the whole "rising China" phenomenon: we wanted to solidify the relationship with China. To show them that we're not going to have a fluctuating policy. That we know what we're doing, and understand that we are dealing from a position of strength. And at the same time, to all our traditional allies [Japan, Korea, etc], we wanted to reinforce their sense of comfort that our relationship with China won't be at their expense."

Continue reading "Manufactured failure #3: insider's view of the Obama trip" »

Manufactured failure #2: the press, Obama, Asia

"In almost every analysis of the trip, Chinese officials were portrayed as optimistic and newly emboldened to stand up to American interests and Obama was cast in the role of the meek debtor, standing with hat in hand. The line is that little was achieved and Obama was stifled, literally by state television and figuratively by the Chinese upper hand in the power dynamic."

"I find that the Washington reporters tend to be typically the most subject to this instant scorekeeping. This is part of the game of Washington reporting. They're at the bleeding edge of this phenomenon that I think is distressing in terms of the approach of the press to serious questions. Everything is shot through this prism of short-term political calculation as opposed to thinking seriously about stuff. You can't be an expert on every question, and so you're part of the Washington press corps and if you're really good and really diligent, you're going to be expert maybe in a few things and one of those things might not be China."

"Even through a veil of censorship and propaganda, the Chinese people managed a clearer view of Obama's visit than the US media did."

"Washington's ambassador to Beijing hit out on Friday at negative US media coverage of President Barack Obama's visit to China, saying it failed to take into account important progress on many issues...

"The trip was the top news story in China, drawing strong interest from the mainland public who, surveys suggest, are largely positive in their view of the American president.

"However, much of the US media coverage was strongly negative, accusing Obama of failing to gain concessions on key issues such as Iran's nuclear programme and climate change, as well as being weak on human rights."

"I attended all those meetings that President Obama had with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao," Huntsman said, referring to the Chinese president and premier. "I've got to say some of the reporting I saw afterward was off the mark. I saw sweeping comments about things that apparently weren't talked about, when they were discussed in great detail in the meetings," he said.

Manufactured failure: press coverage of Obama in Asia

"President Barack Obama's first visit to China on 16 November will produce positive rhetoric, but achieve little on a range of issues from North Korea to economic rebalancing. Washington and Beijing will continue to highlight areas of mutual cooperation and interests, but domestic political agendas will pose serious constraints on the extent of near-term progress....

"Little to be expected on economic rebalancing and trade... Obama will likely raise the currency issue as part of a broader economic rebalancing framework. But the Chinese will continue to reject greater emphasis on the rebalancing issue, because Beijing interprets it as Washington shifting more of the blame on China for the global recession....

"No bilateral agreement will be reached on emissions reduction targets that might precipitate an ambitious global climate change treaty next month in Copenhagen. Obama's more modest task is to prevent China from aligning too closely with the G77 developing country bloc in global negotiations, although he has limited bargaining chips to encourage cooperation from China." [emphasis mine]

"President Barack Obama's first visit to China met the modest expectations set by the White House, making some progress on creating a more expansive relationship and on clean energy and climate change cooperation...Obama appears to have effectively reassured Beijing that the US does not intend to contain China's rise, creating a framework for mutual assurance that could augur a more mature relationship in the longer term.

"The US-China presidential summit involved a genuine attempt by both sides to push toward closer cooperation -- producing a robust joint statement that highlighted a range of common interests. In particular, Obama's first visit to China saw deliverables on clean energy and climate change cooperation, as expected. By dampening Copenhagen expectations in Singapore, Obama avoided a potential collision with China at next month's meeting... But Chinese domestic politics prevented Beijing from publicly discussing contentious issues such as currency and economic rebalancing during the trip...

"While policy disagreements and trade frictions will continue in the near term, Obama took an important step with a very public reassurance for Beijing that the US does not seek to contain China's rise. Beijing's receptiveness to this appeal indicates the intent of both countries to reduce the mutual distrust that has colored aspects of the relationship -- from currency, military engagement, and Taiwan to human rights and climate change. The Obama administration's more public approach, if successful, can promote longer term stability by engaging China on a broad range of issues within the context of a more mature and pragmatic relationship -- and in preventing specific, contentious issues from defining the relationship."

More on Nine Nations of China (updated)

On Obama's Asian diplomacy -- #2

"Relating to comments on the Shanghai town hall, enough of the parsing of what he said on issues and how he said them, I think the most significant sentence was "That's why I'm pleased to announce that the United States will dramatically expand the number of our students who study in China to 100,000." Even without details (per year (I hope) or over what period, college and/or high school students, how funded, etc), I am surprised you have not remarked on it (and that the NY Times did not even report it). It is of major significance."

On Obama's Asian diplomacy -- #1

"Those documents put forward a simple vision of human affairs, and they enshrine several core principles -- that all men and women are created equal, and possess certain fundamental rights; that government should reflect the will of the people and respond to their wishes; that commerce should be open, information freely accessible; and that laws, and not simply men, should guarantee the administration of justice....

"And that is why America will always speak out for these core principles around the world.   We do not seek to impose any system of government on any other nation, but we also don't believe that the principles that we stand for are unique to our nation.  These freedoms of expression and worship -- of access to information and political participation -- we believe are universal rights.  They should be available to all people, including ethnic and religious minorities -- whether they are in the United States, China, or any nation.  Indeed, it is that respect for universal rights that guides America's openness to other countries; our respect for different cultures; our commitment to international law; and our faith in the future.

"I am a big believer in technology and I'm a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information.  I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable.  They can begin to think for themselves. That generates new ideas.  It encourages creativity. 

"And so I've always been a strong supporter of open Internet use.  I'm a big supporter of non-censorship.  This is part of the tradition of the United States that I discussed before, and I recognize that different countries have different traditions.  I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet -- or unrestricted Internet access is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged."

"I'm a big supporter of non-censorship" is ungainly. But what's wrong with the statement as a whole?

Foreign leaders do not typically go to other countries and frontally criticize the way those places they're run -- at least not if they're smart, or serious. For instance, when Hugo Chavez made his famous "I smell the devil!" crack after following G.W. Bush to the podium at the U.N., this was not a sign of his wanting to do business with America. Yes, you got Chavez's point, in all its gross clownishness. Who could miss Obama's point in Shanghai? Would we welcome a French or German prime minister coming to a US town meeting in the Bush years, shortly before a negotiating session at the White House, and saying, "Of course we condemn waterboarding, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib"? I condemn those things too, but is that the shrewdest thing for a foreign president to say while here?

More later, but I thought the words stand up well and got across the intended message.

What "green collaboration" might mean in practice

Further on local reaction to Obama's Shanghai town hall (updated)

"Obama's performance this afternoon reminded me of nothing so much as an overly coached American businessman on his first trip to China, so concerned about what he should or should not say that he forgets what he wanted to say in the first place."

"I agree with you on Chinese officials' lack of skills in communication and persuasion (part of this is due to political inward-looking, as you said, but the other part is cultural---Confucius said "a gentleman should be modest in speech but quick in action", and so eloquence in public speech, oration, etc, is never highly valued in Chinese tradition.)

"With regards to Qin Gang's [the foreign ministry spokesman] comment on Obama, Tibet, and slavery, however, I think he (as well as many other Chinese people) is genuinely thinking that the Chinese and American cases are comparable, or genuinely believe there are some valid points in Chinese views on Tibet that westerners tend to ignore, and they want to bring these points to the fore. I know you are a big Obama fan and obviously not a fan of Mao or Hu Jintao, but I think no one is really making personal comparisons. Now, Qin Gang's view (and the Chinese view) might be wrong---by the way you didn't explain why it's wrong on your blog---but it does not mean he cannot express his view. Why shouldn't Qin or any other Chinese official express their genuine opinion (be it right or wrong), but pander to Western thinking or adapt their expressions to suit Western ears?

"To me Qin's comment does not reflect a Chinese communication problem, but rather the vast difference between Chinese thinking and Western thinking on Tibet (after all, most westerners want to believe Seven Years in Tibet while most Chinese do not). Not that China does not have communication problems---the problems abound---but this is not a good example."

Obama's town hall in Shanghai just now

Were you possibly wondering...

"Nine Nations of China"

More on Mao, Lincoln, the lamas, etc

"Thank you for pointing out the strange logic of the foreign ministry spokesman in this bizarre lecture to President Obama. I have been living in the U.S. for twenty years and as a citizen for the last ten, but i often can't help feel ashamed often by remarks like these.

"I know I shouldn't, but I lived my first 26 years in this great country [China] after all. What a shame it is represented by such cynical officials. I say cynical because I think they often know better than what they say. They say it that way because it is not only safe but potentially profitable politically. They don't really care about the effect of their remarks globally. Their audience is inside the ministry and the government. I once had lunch with [a very prominent government official], while he was [in an important position] in the Washington embassy. He said when he wrote reports to the ministry, he needed to know what the ministry's opinion was so he would not be too out of line.

"Maybe this is true for all bureaucracies, but it is practiced to such a degree for so long in China that it is one of its most deep-rooted diseases. Reading the histories of Qing and Republic of China, once sees many examples of how officials often opted for the politically safe path at the expense of national interests. Today, one also sees the same practice in dealing with tough political issues such as ethnic tension. Because harsh measures and blaming the "splittists" is always safe and potentially rewarding for their careers, they become the only chosen policy options, even when that create more problems for the county in the future and draw international scolding."

James Lilley

Here's why the China trip matters

Those silver-tongued spokesmen in Beijing

"He is a black president, and he understands the slavery abolition movement and Lincoln's major significance for that movement," said Qin.

"Lincoln played an incomparable role in protecting the national unity and territorial integrity of the United States."...China's stance [in opposing Tibetan "splittists" was like Lincoln's, Qin said.] "Thus on this issue we hope that President Obama, more than any other foreign leader, can better, more deeply grasp China's stance on protecting national sovereignty and territorial integrity," said Qin.

• Black slaves in the South, before the arrival of the Union armies = Tibetan peasants under the lamas' rule, before the arrival of Mao's forces;
• Lincoln with his steadfast insistence that the Union not be sundered = Mao and his successors with their steadfast insistence that the PRC not be "split."

Doing Business in China: Legalese (updated)

Doing Business in China: Lost in Translation

The other shoe drops at Caijing

Two notes about Nien Cheng

"I was sorry to hear about her passing.  Four years ago, after reading her book, I wrote to her and she invited me over to her apartment near the Washington Cathedral.  I was just finishing up Chinese language training in DC and was about to be posted to Shanghai.  I was surprised by how lively and sharp she was.  She was 90 but appeared to be 70.  She was very well informed about life in Shanghai even though she had been gone for decades.  When I asked her if she would ever return she said she had been invited by the Chinese government but she would never return to be used for propaganda purposes.  Besides, she said, it would be too painful.  She loved Washington.

"After living in Shanghai a couple of years I wrote to her and shared with her my view that Shanghai was a relentlessly materialistic city.  She replied that she had been told by her friends that it had become a city without a soul.  I offered to send her photos of the places she described in her book but she asked me not to.  She didn't want to look back."

"I did have the pleasure of meeting Nien Cheng and having a pleasant chat with her in her apartment in Washington.  She sent several Christmas cards to me over the years.  And yes, she was an elegant lady.  You've got that right.  It will have to be one of those things you always regret (and we all have them) because I can assure you, she would have appreciated your comment about how much you liked her book.  She would not have minded at all. She would have been deeply touched by you telling her so.  She exhibited surprise that anyone still remembered her book after so many years when I told her that very thing.  But being a person of faith, myself, I would like to tell you that I sincerely believe she is in a place where she knows how you feel.  She was a Christian of strong faith.  So hold your memories of seeing her dear to your heart.  I only got to see her once."

Nien Cheng

Doing Business in China: Who Holds the Purse?

Doing Business in China: An Eastern Perspective

Background on Nook v. Kindle

"Nook advantages
"- More open with ePub, Android OS, and lending
"- My guess is Amazon will copy lending
"- In store WiFi. Users can go in stores and access lots of content from entire books to free publications. Len Riggio, founder and CEO of B&N fought to have comfortable seating in the stores and has prevailed against naysayers thought it would waste valuable space. I think you'll see even more space allotted to this. There's lots of space devoted to music that will be replaced with nook areas.
"- The color touch display really brings the ease of use to ebooks much as Apple did with iPhones.
"- Much larger bookstore that includes Google books
"- Holding. Easier to grip with a contoured and soft touch back. Works equally well for right and left handed."

Health-related follow up: can Asians drink? (UPDATED)

"I read your post on Doing Business in China, and I wondered to what extent the prevalence of alcohol in after-hours business gatherings is complicated by the alcohol flush reaction common to so many people of East Asian descent.  I am an American of Chinese descent with this particular genetic variation and I find that the unpleasant side effects of alcohol consumption interfere with any desire to drink until intoxication.  Given the frequency of this condition, do business people in China simply accept the situation as normal or is there a demurral from overconsumption, where someone may take one drink as a courtesy and then decline politely thereafter, so as to avoid such intoxicating effects?"

Doing Business in China: Drinks and Deals

This is heartwarming! (From Shaanxi to Carnegie Hall)

Today I see in the New York Times that he and Zhang Family Band were at Carnegie Hall over the weekend! That's Zhang Ximin in the red shirt in the NYT's picture, below.

More on Chinese air

Doing Business in China: A Piece of the Pie

I love the English-language Chinese press (chap. 17,825)

Continue reading "I love the English-language Chinese press (chap. 17,825)" »

First-hand experience with Chinese air, pro and con

"I check the BeijingAir Twitter every time I'm headed there for work. I thought I'd report an anecdote from a friend who has worked in China since the 1970s and lived there for many years (though moved back partly to raise children in a more healthy environment!). She had MRIs performed on her lungs some time ago and they indicated significant scarring and other damage, despite the fact that she has never been a smoker. She has never complained of any symptoms or health problems but clearly some damage was done."

"We were back in China for a couple of weeks this past summer to visit my former students in Beijing and then to travel in Hunan for a week or so.  I think the air has improved.  It was mostly blue skies, even in Beijing, which I rarely saw when we lived there for 10 months in 2003-04.  I think you are right to conclude that expats do get over the problems once they leave.  At least we haven't had lasting health problems -- at least not yet."

The air over there

"I just returned to the US after a four-year tour in Shanghai. I major reason for returning was that I knew that living over there was terrible for my health. I always told myself that I couldn't live in that poor environment for five years. Aside from the terrible air quality, I did four stints in hospitals for food poisoning.

"But since I have been back, I have found that recovery has been easier than expected. I am now running about four to six miles four times a week. I think it may have been like living at high altitudes - you body gets used to being deprived of oxygen and becomes more efficient. 

"Plus, just having the space and good weather adds to the motivation. As I am sure you know."

Doing Business in China: From Supply Chains to Supply Networks

Doing Business in China: Keeping Employees Happy

Festival of links, part 1

"Calorie labeling could result in changes that do not rely primarily on alterations in consumers' food choices. Menu labeling regulations may encourage chain restaurants to offer more nutritious or otherwise improved menu offerings, which could be profoundly influential. [italics Kummer's] Public health experts have shown that creating "default" incentives to improve well-being is essential to improving public health. By indirectly influencing restaurants to offer more lower-calorie items, menu labeling regulations could help encourage such default options for consumers."

"Yuppie avatar Starbucks immediately changed its default milk from whole to 2 percent, so it wouldn't have to admit that a Frappuccino could amount to practically as many calories as you should eat in a whole day... Just this week, [a NYC official] told me... Burger King began a new ad campaign telling how customers could eat a full meal for 650 calories or less. McDonalds took .7 ounces and 70 calories out of its standard portion of french fries. Dunkin Donuts introduced an egg-white breakfast. KFC put grilled skinless chicken on its menu--not something anyone expected to see at KFC."

Doing Business in China: What is Communism?

Doing Business in China: Kissing in Public

Doing Business in China: Battling Pirates

Press items roundup

The big parade

Two other nice summaries: a live blog from the WSJ's China staff here; and a comparison of the parade to the movie Hangover here.

Here's one of the groups that came soon after the tanks. As I say, I'm relieved to see this chaos diversity, which reflects some of the wild range of Chinese life. Congrats to all involved.

Doing Business in China: As Good as Their Word

I take it back

Beijing, 3am

Local boys make good, China version

The moment of truth on the show, as the Wolf dutifully claps for the just-announced winner, Song "Social Conscience" Wenming, who raises his hands in victory.

Doing Business in China: Porcelain Skin

A nice offhand allusion in the NYT

"China's government at times resembles an exasperated parent trying to rein in a pack of rebellious children. Its edicts are persistently flouted by censor-dodging Internet users, wayward local officials and rioting Uighurs."

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, Besuboru dept

"The Japanese love besuboru, reflecting the phonetic phenomenon of lallation, reversing "r" and "l." "

Weight, class, and Wal-Mart

"i wonder if your seeing fewer overweight people than you expected when you got back to the states might be, at least in part, a function of class. this is a point i'm somewhat uncomfortable making, but it shouldn't be ignored. people who, just as a for instance, run and listen to npr and read (not to mention write for) the atlantic are both likelier to be fit and likelier to associate with people of the same ilk. (as a nation, we've not only gotten fatter but also, as you know, much less likely to mix with people who don't share our educational or cultural background.)

"i remember walking  through harvard yard back in 1986 during the university's celebration of its 350th anniversary. the place was awash in alums, and there was something noticeably different about most of these people. it wasn't that they were expensively dressed or looked like preppies, i realized. it's that almost everyone was so *trim.* none of  these people would likely be found shopping in wal-mart, where waistlines look a lot different.

"as an aside: i've long thought it would be an interesting commentary on the stratification in this society to have political candidates asked during a debate if they'd ever shopped at a wal-mart. i have to think that very few could honestly answer yes--and the higher the office the fewer the yeses. to think that a democracy's leadership class should  have no connection (other than owning stock--or, in hillary clinton's case, being once on its board) to the biggest corporation in the country, how strange! back when the biggest corporation was gm or exxon, even the wealthiest people likely had *some* dealings with it, even only being chauffered in a cadillac."

Reactions on Chinese tires

"WSJA(9/15) Heard On The Street: Tires, Chickens, Common Sense
   (From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ASIA)
   By Andrew Peaple
"Fought over the likes of bras and bananas, trade wars always give off a whiff of the absurd.

"With a measure of good sense, a spat between the U.S. and China involving tires and chickens won't devolve into a trade war as well."

"I was a senior International Trade consultant with 2 major firms in China 2003-2007.   Approximately one third of the over 100 projects I managed during that four year period involved assisting foreign companies (US, EU, some Japanese) in defending themselves against either investigations by, or anti-competitive practices perpetrated by, the Chinese Customs authorities. 

"I believe that I can safely say that without fail, each project of this type that I was involved in was predicated by a distortion or willful misunderstanding of both Chinese and WTO/WCO trade law and operational norms by the Customs authorities.  Nor were these actions limited to provincial backwaters (though the most egregious did take place there); many of our projects involved Shanghai or Beijing Customs entry ports.  Practices such as demanding improper HTS classification of goods (HTS classification determines applicable duty rate) or arbitrary valuation of goods (the Customs declared value upon which duty and VAT are assessed) are practiced daily throughout the country and cost foreign companies substantial amounts.

"I very seldom see this issue addressed in any article concerning China trade and thought I would bring it to your attention."

Continue reading "Reactions on Chinese tires" »

A few more random return-to-the-homeland notes

If you're in Princeton this afternoon....

About those Chinese tires

Continue reading "About those Chinese tires" »

Doing Business in China: The Elusive Chinese Internet

I love this on so many levels

Book list: Repeat After Me

The 60th anniversary celebration is almost here!

Tank practice parade two days ago

An unintentionally evocative picture of a lone man and a tank.


And a photo of a women's militia unit that is more in the spirit of the way I usually saw soldiers (and people in general) carrying themselves in China.


This should be interesting. Very sorry I won't be there to see it in person. (Thanks to various readers in China.)

Harmonic convergence dept: frogs, China Daily, etc

The editorial is about universities in Australia making things "hot" (get it?? ho-ho!) for international transfer students, including those from China. Great headline too:

Well done all around. Let's learn from Asia! Thanks to numerous informants.

Why the China Daily will always be my favorite newspaper

DVD series: The World's Factory

DVD Series: Carrots in the Washing Machine

Another traveler to Yunnan

Continue reading "Another traveler to Yunnan" »

If you thought the Olympic opening ceremony was impressive...

From the magazine: Field of dreams in China

Two quick updates: flu in China, 64-bit code

"I'm not an immunologist or anything remotely close.  But I wonder if China is actually hurting themselves by so aggressively stopping the spread of H1N1.  The current incarnation of H1N1 seems to be less lethal than the variants that we normally deal with.  Wouldn't it be better to let this variety of H1N1 spread so that people build up immunity to this mild version of H1N1 and then if H1N1 becomes more lethal they will already have some immunity?

"By the way, while I was at university this summer in Beijing, a student living on the sixth floor of a dorm became ill with H1N1 and the police came with buses and removed about 60 people from that floor."

"I have nothing to add to the "huge pages" discussion. I promise.

"But I would like address Mr. [Ken] Broomfield's closing statement which, I believe, is misleading:

Continue reading "Two quick updates: flu in China, 64-bit code" »

DVD series: The Two Chinas

Remaining holiday-festival updates, #9 - 999, all in one place

Continue reading "Remaining holiday-festival updates, #9 - 999, all in one place" »

Festival of updates #8: Chinese/US attitudes on race, flu

Festival of updates #7: NYT hit-and-miss

Festival of updates #2: China business!

"I was born in China and raised in its countryside in a small, mountainous village. I've worn a suit and tie in tier-1 metropolises, donned hard hats in tier-2 and 3 cities, and marveled at the rapid growth in rural areas like my hometown. When someone wants to ask me about China, I ask: Which one?"

My visit to the Motley Fool

The Real China

TSA / Amelia followups

"Happy ending..." you say, at the end of today's piece.

But probably not for the "....variety of craftsmen and suppliers who happened to come up with the right part for the plane...." not to mention the likely large number of simple voluntary workers on such a project.

Case in point:  My 76 year old mother, who is the non-flying secretary of her local EAA [Experimental Aircraft Association] chapter, was a volunteer member of a group which recently completed the restoration of a Viet Namese era artillery spotter plane.  She, and the other 60 and 70 something year-olds who restored that Piper took great pleasure and pride in what they did, and the results - in fact, they're planning to do another plane in the not-too distant future.  What a shame it will be if their ability to make some contribution, and derive a sense of satisfaction and worth from the effort, is prevented by the TSA's bureaucratic nonsense.

As a conservative, I did not vote for President Obama. Nonetheless, it's my hope that some of the sillier things instituted by the Bush Administration would get thrown out.

Why hasn't the Obama Administration acted to clean up the public image of TSA? Specifically, why hasn't TSA stopped making people take off their shoes? It's the silly tip of the iceberg of silly security theatre.

I'd think that the President would win himself a lot of independent votes by getting rid of this rather ridiculous measure. Have any ideas as to why it hasn't happened?

Xu Zhiyong released

"Black, and very, very lucky."

President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky. And that pretty much sums up the 44th president of the US as he takes a well-earned summer break after just over six months in the world's biggest and toughest job.

If you're in Seattle-land

A reminder that we've left Beijing

And my first thought is: this is not what you'd see three miles from Zhongnanhai [seat of power] in Beijing. Actually, that was my second thought. The first one was, "where is the camera?" -- and the deer were blase enough to stick around while I got it.
 
Yes, yes, I know that deer are the new rats of American cities, graceful but nonetheless troublesome supersized vermin. Still, the stark difference in circumstances of daily life in the two capitals -- the background sights, the routine nuisances and pleasures that shape consciousness -- makes it remarkable that officials of the two governments can communicate about issues as well as they do. Here is what I would see when I walked out my front door in  Beijing, about as far from Zhongnanhai as my DC house is from Pennsylvania Avenue:

More on the detained Chinese lawyer

Important and negative Chinese human rights development

Ever since the first indictments came, I have feared something like this would happen, but to know they actually detained Dr. Xu, a highly respected lawyer and a people's representative of Haidian District [the northwest university/tech district of Beijing], just as they do to any other petitioner is just shocking. This means that nobody is safe from random detainment, or free from the fear of it.

Smoot-Hawley redux watch

"If the parallels continue with the 1970s, what might we expect?  First, hostility directed away from the United States and towards China. ... Once your economy is so large that whatever you do affects global economic architecture, the "free rider" option [of permanent trade surplus] begins to close.  If you manage your economy in such a way as to maximize exports and trade surpluses at a time when global growth is sluggish or non-existent, you are willy-nilly forcing other countries to run trade deficits.  What happens if they refuse to go along?"

Well, I have a new favorite newspaper

My general policy is: if something is already On The Internet, no need for me to mention it too, unless it is in some cranny where many people might overlook  it. But the artistry here forces an exception to the policy. After the jump, an early indication of the Onion's prowess in the "learning from China" field.

UPDATE: It is worth going to the Opinion page, as illustrated below, and clicking on the "Internet allows free exchange" story.


_____

Continue reading "Well, I have a new favorite newspaper" »

Pictures from Urumqi

Let a thousand flowers bloom again, Atlantic style

For years we had perceived China as a state galloping ever forward, en route to peer competitor status with the United States and its military. We forgot that foreign and defense policy emanates from a country's domestic conditions, and that if its domestic conditions are less than harmonious, its policy toward the outside world, too, may be less than robust. In other words, China's rise cannot be taken for granted. To wit, China is also grinding away at its environmental base. Its water table is diminishing, along with the nutrients in its soil. But the regime cannot afford to slow down its economic growth for fear of a popular eruption far broader than what we just saw in Xinjiang....Remember, nothing is destiny.

A Uighur speaks about pork

"Han Chinese only" simply is a discrimination.  Uyghurs are desperate to have jobs and long have been complaining about "Han Chinese only" requirements.  Uyghurs don't eat pork, but "Handling pork" doesn't mean eating pork. That ad includes not only chef position but also waiter/waitress and supervisor positions, which don't require to taste the food.  In fact, I've seen many Uyghur students both in United States, Europe and Japan work as waiters/waitresses. They don't eat pork and bacon,  but happily perform the task. They have no problem with carrying the plates, and cleaning them. 

"The job ads I've sent to you earlier [quoted after the jump here, and very much worth re-checking] was posted on Kashgar Teacher's College web site. One of them is about "Dean of College" position, which also has "Han Chinese Only" requirement . The other ad is about several positions, including computer instructor and lab assistant position.   Most of them have "Han Chinese Only" requirements, which explain that an Uyghur can not apply for the jobs even if she/he has the similar educational background and skill set to her/his Chinese counterpart, simply beacuse she/he is Uyghur.     

"Postal service is a government institution in China. "Postal Hotel" [the one with the "Han only" sign] is Postal service owned company. The Kashgar Teacher's College is, an institution which has has more than of half of the student population is Uyghur, also a government owned institution.  If the job ads by government institutions are so discriminative, the situation in private chinese companies is anybody's guess."

Continue reading "A Uighur speaks about pork" »

Full Aspen session, Fallows v Ferguson, now posted

On Uighurs, Han, and general racial attitudes in China

Regarding the "no Uighurs" sign, that type of thing is pretty common in China.  Many advertisements for foreign English teachers will include something like "Whites only" or a "Looking for Caucasian teachers" sentence somewhere in the text.  Additionally, many a native speaker have flown from their country to China only to find upon arrival that  regardless of the applicant's qualifications, the job could only be performed by a white person.  At these times the Chinese are usually polite and a little embarrassed (most Chinese are very nice people and mean no harm), but they will remain very firm in their conviction that a person with darker skin than theirs could not possibly make a good teacher.

I have experienced this on a number of occasions.  But after living in China for a while I realized that what we would consider racism in the West is simply a deeply ingrained cultural characteristic of mainland Chinese people.  White skin (the Chinese like to consider themselves white) and or being a Han (the dominant ethnic group) means a person is good.  Dark skin or not being Han means a person is inferior (and more likely to be a bad guy/a thief/incompetent etc.).  It does not equal KKK style hatred.  It does not even mean a Han Chinese wouldn't be friends with a person from India or Africa.  It simply means that if a person is non-white or a member of certain Chinese minorities, they simply are to be considered less smart, less competent and less trustworthy than the average white person or Han. [Ed note: This accords with my observation, with the caveat that I have observed this all as a middle aged white guy. Early discussion of Obama in China fit this pattern -- but changed after he took office.]
 
On a lighter note, the Chinese are not inflexible and when exposed to nice people of color they usually will change their minds quickly.  [Agree, as with Obama.] However, the tendency towards ethnic and racial chauvinism is a current running through Chinese culture that is unlikely to change in any meaningful way anytime soon.  "Truths" are rarely challenged here.

Your mentioning the sign ["Han Chinese only"] in Xinjiang provides half the question.  It's pretty obvious why the Uighurs are angry, but that doesn't explain why Han Chinese in Xinjiang are angry. I think that if you see this simply as a majority group trying to crush a minority group, then you miss the fact that the average Han Chinese in Xinjiang probably feels as oppressed and repressed as the Uighurs, and since they are competing for the same pool of jobs.  Just because you are Han Chinese doesn't mean that you are going to be in the Politburo.

Continue reading "On Uighurs, Han, and general racial attitudes in China" »

Haibao is happier now!

Atlantic interview with Eric Schmidt

Continue reading "Atlantic interview with Eric Schmidt" »

Weekend Xinjiang / Uighur / 愤青 update, #2

"Have you noticed the reaction in Turkey?  Here's what appeared in today's two big papers.

"The nationalist Hurriyet reported the riot "has claimed the lives of hundreds of ethnic Uighur Turks." The other big daily reports the released breakdown of the death toll but as background reported the retaliatory attacks by Han against Uighurs but did not mention Uighur attacks against Han. And the Prime Minister stepped in to declare that the riot was "almost genocide."

"I'm amazed that despite the free flow of information, open parts of the world can still live in different universes.  A reader in London will read an article in The Times about the "butchered" Han family while on the same day a Turkish reader will read about the massacre of Uighurs."

"To be frank, I'm astonished to see such a big post [the "Han Chinese only"] sign, explicit, yet cold. If I were a Uighur that could read Chinese, I would have felt so insulted. Last time, one of my Canadian friends told me he that when he traveled in Austria, he saw an advertisement to let room saying "no Jewish or Northern Italians" (I forgot the original German word he used that actually means people from Northern Italy.) My Canadian friend was obviously very much annoyed by that advertisement. So was I. Then I had worsening impression of Austria after that.

"Anyway, thanks a lot for giving me more insights in the situations in Xinjiang. I've never been there personally. The fact that I, being a native Chinese, rely on this source of information to understand Xinjiang, is funny, though. The Chinese media should have done better job. I don't know whether you have heard of Phoenix TV, a mandarin TV station. They have good reputation for giving objective and insight reports on different issues. [Agree]

"Are you from US? I heard in US, there is a law that guarantees the proportion of employees from different ethnic groups hired by each employer should resemble that of the whole society. Is it true?"

"And, because the problem is bigger, discrimination against minority (and favoritism toward minority, as adding grade points to minority for "Gao Kao" [the nationwide university admissions exam]) is not actually that unique, or big, a problem.

Continue reading "Weekend Xinjiang / Uighur / 愤青 update, #2" »

Weekend Xinjiang / Uighur / 愤青 update, #1

"You discussed Chinese people's "tone of response to outside criticism" in recent posts. I agree that many Chinese people do not react well to outside criticisms, and that's certainly something worth their self-reflection. But around this particular event-time, it would be helpful to put these people's emotions within the context of many foreign media's portraits of the unrest in Xinjiang:

"1. Initial western media reports tend to gave readers/viewers the impression that most of the dead must have been Uighur demonstrators killed in police gunfire (this might have been most western journalists' assumption, as Christian Science Monitor's Peter Ford conceded). And when it was later discovered that actually most of the dead were Han Chinese (often murdered brutally), many western media reports only mentioned this crucial fact in passing (often buried deep in the middle of their reports), or simply ignored it (e.g., NBC's July 10th Nightly News). The impact of such portraits on the public opinion in the West is clear: numerous people on Twitter, perhaps the majority of the commentators in the first couple of days, condemned the perceived Chinese police's slaughtering or even genocide of Uighurs. Wouldn't an ordinary Chinese person get emotional over such media portraits and the resulted public perception?  

Continue reading "Weekend Xinjiang / Uighur / 愤青 update, #1" »

The Uighur issue in perspective

Continue reading "The Uighur issue in perspective" »

More on "No Uighurs"

I came cross your website and read the article "No Uighurs Need Apply" written by Shannon Kirwin [ie, quoting S.K.], hinting the unfair treatment of Uighurs by Han. It showed how ignorant she and your web editors are, because you don't even know that Muslims don't touch any pork while Hans do. In addition it'd be a humiliation and insult to Muslims if you ask them to work in Han kitchens. I think it's typical that you Westerners are so unfairly to spread twisted information around the world, while smiling to your local Han friends.

"No Uighurs Need Apply"

"I completely agreed with Glenn Mott's analysis of the riots as a variation of the same race riots we have experienced in the US.  In large part the frustration with the Chinese regime that many Uighurs expressed to us throughout our travels in Xinjiang seemed to stem from everyday insults and degradations such as the one pictured here.  We were also told by people in several different cities that there is an unofficial policy of denying ethnic Uighurs passports until they reach retirement age, particularly if they are applying to visit Mecca. 

"Just to describe the scene a little more, the hotel, the 邮政宾馆, is located on a major street corner that is a neighborhood gathering spot for fruit peddlers, motorcycle taxi drivers, and residents.  The sign is enormous and impossible to miss."

Cornucopia of updates #7: Great Firewall

Cornucopia of updates #4: Xinjiang

"The state apparatus has become dizzy with success in dealing with unrest. This gives little hope that further mass outbreaks will not be violently crushed. It also demonstrates that social upheaval will not pave the way to democracy. The party is too strong and confident to allow change from below."

"What we saw this week should be familiar to us as Americans. This was a race riot, not a political insurrection. It is what a young Chinese engineer I had lunch with today called an ethnic "brawl" with Uighurs and Hans throwing rocks over the heads of police in between. We should notice there is progress at the central government level--foreign journalists are in fact being given some access to Urumqi--though social networks have been cut, and Xinhua is carefully editing for fullest grim effect on the Eastern Chinese psyche.

"But with no public space in the media to cultivate a civil society, to debate and discuss grievances, and none on the horizon, the Han and Uighur of Xinjiang are caught in a hopeless deficit for information about each other's grievances. This is the same all over China (between developers and farmers, and between local government and petitioners, for instance) lacking a public space for civil discourse, lacking rule of law, lacking release and resolution except in private conversations and ultimately, into the streets they go."

Uighur faces

Continue reading "Uighur faces" »

One more viewing tip on the 'Chimerica' tape (updated)

More Chimerica, Ferguson, Fallows, Kaiser Wilhelm, etc

Fallows v Ferguson at Aspen (updated)

Toe back into the online pool

More on Chinese lack of interest in Iran

"I think it's good to keep in mind that Chinese folks tend to have a certain antediluvian sense of detachment when it comes to foreign affairs, sort of almost pre-war British John Bull-esque isolationist vintage. They just don't care particularly about what happens in foreign countries. They really couldn't give a whistle if a foreign country is communist or democratic or whatever. They just want to be left alone to make their wages and buy their house and cars.

"And I think that detachment is probably much more powerful than any silly, heavy-handed government innuendo and propaganda, at the end of the day. Everyone paid more attention to Europe and America, that's true, but Europe and America are important and rich and to be emulated in their wealth; toward the developing world, the feeling is sort of a disinterested bemusement from the average man-in-the-street.

"So I think the best way to view the Iran coverage in China is, frankly, to ignore it. Government press might have (really stupid) agendas to pursue in relation to this, fighting the colour revolutions and so on, but the average man couldn't care less. And it's quite exactly the same thing when that clown Hugo Chavez is feted in the Chinese press; he's viewed more as a curiosity than as some glorious David, hero of the Developing World-cum-Israelites.

"And I personally think that, for China at least, this is not an unhealthy attitude. Splendid (Sino-)Isolation ought be cause for relief for the rest of the world.

"....Another thing I forgot, and this is I think how someone used to describe the pre-war British, is that the Chinese generally find foreigners funny. Not serious, not genuinely dangerous, not heroic and considerable (as an European might for MLK, or an American for Thatcher or both for Mandala), but nice and funny in a harmless sort of way."

Iran in China

Political education

ALL freshmen of our school are mandated to join the 60 Anniversary National Day parade. They will be taken to a special training ground set up outside of Beijing where training will continue from early July (after final exams) till Oct. 1st. Those who are tall and fit will be selected to march; those who are not selected will have to be trained as volunteers. Students are threatened by their Party Advisers with not being able to graduate if refuse to join the National Day parade.

Continue reading "Political education" »

More on Beijing air (updated)

Researchers found that particulate air pollution did drop by about one-third during the two-week Olympic period. But coarser particulate matter, PM 10, exceeded levels the WHO considers safe about 81 percent of the time, while the smaller particulate pollution PM 2.5, which can cause more serious health consequences, exceeded WHO guidelines 100 percent of the time.

Sigh, out of range again

Me [my friend]: Do you know what that huge round thing protruding on the top of the main CCTV building is?
Producer: What?
Me: It looks like either a misshaped radar or a helicopter landing pad...
Producer: Why are you asking?
Me: Just curious.
Producer: Well, don't be curious. You know it's a very sensitive period here at CCTV, because of Fang Jing's "spy-gate" incident. Don't ask such sensitive questions.
Me: Why is it sensitive? That huge thing is right there on the very top of your landmark. Everyone could see it, even from far away. You've never thought about what it is? Nobody asks about it?
Producer: No... No one. Seriously, stop asking about it!

If you've been wondering about BiggieSu

The next time you're in Shaanxi....

Reverse angle equity, and 再见北京

Updates: education, quarantine

Apropos of the thread about the Chinese testing system, several of our very best students earned very high marks in the English section of the recent 'further study' battery that determines whether or not a student may continue their higher education. In spite of their excellent performance in their major subject, they are crippled in their attempt to attend any Chinese college or university for post graduate work because they were a few points deficient in the politics portion of the examination.

No matter how well one does in other parts of the test, failure to pass the politics (read 'indoctrination certification') portion disqualifies a student from any further education except under very diminished circumstances. Imagine the flowing tears and heartbreak surrounding graduation 2009. Even our Chinese colleagues are incensed.
 
That grinding sound you hear is enamel coming off my teeth.

Our wacky government, chapter 21,472 (updated!)

OK, one mystery solved (updated)

Journal of the plague year, #2

 My mom was on all the major news outlets yesterday... "Woman has been diagnosed as a  confirmed case ..."  She had a slight cold which she caught at [a college graduation ceremony she just attended in the US] but was all better by the time she got on the plane. She had no fever, no cough, no physical symptoms of the flu. However, during one of the numerous times they measured her temperature while she was in quarantine, she was found to have a "fever" of 0.2C above normal.

Continue reading "Journal of the plague year, #2" »

Paradise Beijing, final edition

For tales of another flu quarantinee

Departing questions

Journal of the plague year (Shanghai edition)

When I landed in Shanghai on Saturday afternoon, a team of medical officials wearing white bio-hazard suites boarded the plane with heat wands and measured everyone's temperature. All passengers were required to remain in their seats while they went around to each individual to check them for physical symptoms of H1N1. These measures had become standard protocol in China due to fears of a H1N1 outbreak. We all passed the inspection and were let off of the plane. I thought I was free to enjoy my two weeks in China.

Continue reading "Journal of the plague year (Shanghai edition)" »

Winding up

This does not bode well

Continue reading "This does not bode well" »

Getting used to China, in two pictures

Last two about June 4

Today [several days ago], a few other foreigners and I were looking at an MSNBC retrospective (miraculously, not blocked) of the important day that happened recently, and just of reveling in the amazing photos and videos with lots of "wows" and stunned silences. 

A 23-year old Chinese girl we know very well was sitting next to us and peered over, and said, "What's that?  What's going on?"  We tried to dissuade her; since in many ways it's not in her or our best interest for her to see, but she forced herself into our huddle and was looking, and noticed all the Chinese people wearing headbands, the blood, the violence, the shouting at the police, and so on.  So she started asking, shocked by the fact that this had to be somewhere in her homeland, "What is this!? What's going on!? Who are these people?!  Where is this?!"  She was just awestruck and horrified.
 
So we told her the whole story from the W perspective, making diplomatic but honest allowances since most of us don't truly believe that "things" are generally that bad at all; certainly not here and now.  But she just listened to us, staring at the videos and pictures, and none of us could see her face, which was bowed intently at the computer screen and veiled by her long hair.  All of a sudden, she started weeping.  Just weeping.  She had had no idea that it had ever happened. 
 
It can be really hard to live here, but it's something like this that makes me love this country and these people, especially here in my city of residence.  Where others might see darkness, sadness and ignorance, it's often possible to see hope, beauty in the struggle, and real, unedited life.

 I am currently living in Shanghai, a recent US college graduate and English teacher (born in '84). I have a Chinese girlfriend (born in '89), and since we began dating some months back I have mentioned TAM to her a few times.

Continue reading "Last two about June 4" »

June 4 report #1: Beijing (long)

We were tourists and took many many photos, even asking the plainclothed police who were keeping their eye on us to take one or two. We didn't get hassled; in fact, aside from the ridiculous numbers of cops, obvious and otherwise, there seemed to be no difference from when I was there two weeks ago, showing friends around. Time: 8am. Persons: myself, another Chinese-American, and two white guys. Just wanted to add that data point to your blog, especially in light of the note of caution you posted.

I went to the square at noontime, expecting to see pretty much what we saw last night: the square off limits, people walking along the roadside or staring at the flag and Mao's giant portrait.

Continue reading "June 4 report #1: Beijing (long)" »

Today in Beijing

June 4 news coverage update

If you want to compare speculation with analysis...

Personally, I favor another scenario, equally speculative: Perhaps the North Koreans have stepped up their war rhetoric and war preparations because China wants them to do so. I can't prove that this was the case--no one else can prove any of his theories about North Korea, in fact--but I can look at the evidence...

North Korea is a puppet state, and the Chinese are the puppeteers. They could end this farce tomorrow. If they haven't done so yet, there must be a reason.

Two more about June 4

First and foremost, to hear a student-aged person saying "don't give up freedom" and read Yuhua's op-ed on NYT are like reading romanticizing of that history. What i read in these, call me detached or cynical, are their own sentiments and emotions unrelated to what actually happened 20 years ago, rather than true and fair understanding of it, which is what i want to read and remember. I don't deny those people have their own faith and dreams, sometimes glorious. But celebrating their faith and dreams through memorization of that history is absurd. Feels like ripping the history of its true meaning and rewriting it for one's own sake. And this is a lot worse than forgetting or misreading history.

Second, I don't understand why the (managed or controlled) oblivion of that part of history should be such a big event. There are tons of other events in modern China history that we don't know or remember. So why single out this particular part of history? Was it because of the fact that death occurred to thousands of unarmed students? Well, if that's case, we should lament a thousand times for those died during the great famine, political movements and culture revolution, not to mention the millions killed during the civil war. I can clearly remember that we were taught during high school that in each of the great campaigns in the civil war, tens of thousands of enemies were killed. Great military successes. But we were never taught in the same book that those were also human beings, killed in that large number and then forgotten (I guess they were probably not part of "the people" Yuhua was talking about). I don't mean to be sarcastic or cold-blooded about this. What i want to say is that our history is never short of such carnage episodes and since we have forgotten or ignored so much of it, why pick this out in particular and romanticize it. Only to make it sound very very very absurd!

Continue reading "Two more about June 4" »

Followup on solar panels and climate issues

Your latest post of  the roof with solar-thermal heating device in Kunming is a typical picture of Chinese city, especially of those second or third-tier cities. People in these cities mostly live in the apartments built in the last two decades. Solar heating device became extremely popular around 2000, for its cheapness, and governments then don't care about its impact on the outlook of the city,ie,barely any regulation.

Continue reading "Followup on solar panels and climate issues" »

Lost memory of June 4, update #2

Could you please blog, "Chinese people, don't give up on freedom, ever."

Lost memory of June 4, update #1

Chinese government is embarassed by the incident 20 years ago. It is never a glorious thing to shoot at your own citizens. So it keeps silent on the issue.

But I don't think this is the main reason to students' indifference. There are plenty of resources about this on the internet. This is a staple topic in Chinese internet discussion forums, usually with great vehemence on both pro and anti government sides. The main reason I think is there was not really any support among general population for overthrowing of communist government even back in 1989. There was not any strike. (If there had been a general strike, the communist government would probably have fallen).

The general population watched the events unfolding in Beijing before June 4th warily but also with amusement. Unlike the participants in the demonstration, for the "silent majority", the events happening in those few months are far from the defining event in their lives. It is no great surprise people in China don't attach much importance to them.

And for most of young people, they don't have a lot of grievances against the government. People have lots of personal freedom as long as they don't touch politics. As for those political-minded, the communist party is always eager to recruit them. There are ample economic opportunities to absorb their mind and energy. They don't identify with the students 20 years ago the same way young people in US don't identify themselves with protesters during the Vietnam War.
___

Continue reading "Lost memory of June 4, update #1" »

Well, here's one way to respond to the flu threat

Change of Venue
Due to the concerns of the H1N1 virus, the Chinese government has banned gatherings of groups larger than 50 people at all government facilities. Due to this new circumstance, we are no longer able to host the forum at the [xxxxx]. We have now changed the venue to the [xxxx] Hotel. The schedule of the forum will remain the same, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

Win in China screening - Tuesday in NYC

Lost memory of Tiananmen

The first is that the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests amounted to a one-time release of the Chinese people's political passions, later replaced by a zeal for making money. The second is that after the summer of 1989 the incident vanished from the Chinese news media. As a result, few young Chinese know anything about it.

What do you notice in this view of Kunming?

Beijing construction triptych #3: Opposite House

Herdict: now, in Arabic and Chinese!

Back to the gaokao....

Am enjoying posts on the gaokao. As it happens, the Irish education system functions virtually identically. The "Leaving Certificate" is taken by every Irish student in their final year. It consists of three core subjects (English, math, a language), plus three tertiary subjects; your results in each subject add up to a single score (max of 600); this score is the sole determinant of undergraduate college admission. There's much hand-wringing over students' foreign-language abilities--or lack thereof--even after years of study. It's often criticized for excessive emphasis on rote learning. And it is ultimately brutally fair: students rank courses in order of preference, and a computer program fills them by allocating places to successively lower-scoring students.

Despite the similarities, I've never heard accusations of a lack of creativity in students... and having gone through school in Ireland and college in the US, I can't say I noticed much difference in creativity or critical thinking. All of which may mean that the Chinese education system (or at least its superficial attributes) are not the problem.

(As it happens, I never sat the Leaving Cert, so I don't have direct experience with it. Unlike the gaokao, you can't sit it early, so I dropped out of school and taught myself the A Levels (British equivalent) instead. Also, I guess I should qualify the US/Ireland comparison. At college, the students were certainly smarter on average, but I don't think they were relatively more creative.)

I'm another foreign university English teacher in China. I'm currently in Yantai, Shandong Province. I'm an experienced teacher from the U.S. and I've been in China for almost three years. One of my standard classroom practices is to pose a general question and ask for responses. I find that after a couple of weeks, when the students have gotten used to me, most of them are willing to risk raising their hands and offering their opinions.

One of my regular discussion subjects is the students' experiences so far with the Chinese educational system. More than any other, this one is greeted with groans and rolled eyes.

Continue reading "Back to the gaokao...." »

Beijing construction triptych #2: Guomao

Next picture: the Guomao intersection in Beijing, where Jianguo Lu meets the East Third Ring Road. Our apartment building is just off screen on the lower right corner of the picture; subway entrances are on the other three corners but not on ours:

Continue reading "Beijing construction triptych #2: Guomao" »

As a reminder ....

Now I truly feel like Mr. Beijing

"Thirteen kilometers south of Tian'anmen, deep in Fentgai district, likes the purgatory of Beijing air travel: Nanyuan Airport. Only travelers with frightening karmic debt end up here -- and all clients of China United Airlines, formerly a military carrier, which bases its operations at Nanyuan."

Beijing construction triptych #1: Mandarin Oriental

For you fans of Chinese reality-TV

Compare and contrast: "quarantine" in the US and China

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In case you've been wondering about Macau

"If a president of most companies we know were to stand up in public, after having recently posted a solid rise in quarterly earnings amid a bearish economic environment, and announce he is looking to cut nearly a quarter of his workforce, his audience might be forgiven a gasp of astonishment. Not when that president runs the Las Vegas Sands Corp.

"This week, the company's recently installed president, Mike Leven, announced in Las Vegas that he was going to cut another 3,000 to 4,000 jobs at the Macau subsidiary, taking the total workforce to around 13,000-14,000 from its current level of around 17,500, and down from a high that once scraped the 20,000 mark. This is despite the fact that the Venetian Macao posted a 10 per cent rise in first-quarter EBITDA and continues to hoover up the city's visitor market... Job cuts and the redrawing of organization charts seem to have become routine at Macau's most profitable gaming concessionaire as it struggles under the weight of a massive debt load.

"Needless to say, the Venetian Macao is not a happy camp for an expatriate to be in at the moment. Given that locals are protected by divine right to employment in an election year, every Filipino, Nepalese, Malaysian, Singaporean and, yes, American and Australian that walks the floors of LVS's Macau properties can be forgiven their long faces...

"A black joke doing the rounds yesterday was that all of these cuts could be made without having to go beneath the vice-president level."

About corruption, meritocracy, and "fairness" in Chinese life

The anonymous reader blamed that China gaokao system is brutal.  I got news for him:  The reality in China is brutal.  A population of 1.4 Billion makes any resource and opportunity extremely scarce.  This is why a fair system is so important: if you deny the poor the educational opportunity to climb the social ladder by reserving the precious slots in elite school for those who have, the next thing will be that the poor overthrow the elite class physically, as it happened several times in Chinese history.

Continue reading "About corruption, meritocracy, and "fairness" in Chinese life" »

Chinese newspaper discussion of the "creativity" problem

The article notes that mainland China had a large number of entries and won many minor prizes. But it had no real successes -- and the question was why.
 
The three overall grand-prize winners were all young women from American high schools, shown here. For individual best-in-category prizes -- 18 total according to People's Daily, 19 total according to Intel -- all but one went to American students. That one exception was from Taiwan.

What's the problem?  The article discussed some obvious barriers -- language, resources -- but quoted a number of Chinese authorities saying that the real problem lay in the way Chinese schools taught people to think for themselves -- or, didn't. Too much emphasis on rote, detail, and following procedures; too little encouragement to reflect about the process of discovery. An analysis very similar to what we originally heard from a foreigner. I do not pretend to be able to follow arguments in the Chinese press with any nuance. I offer this (tipped from a contact at Intel, then labored-through by me) as evidence of a parallel, and obviously authorized, Chinese-language discussion, and as a resource for any Chinese reader who might have missed it.

Very interesting flu-quarantine diary

My wife and I are in perfect health, but after flying to China for my college friend's wedding we're being quarantined in a remote hotel for seven days. The reason: Our flight from our home in Havana included a layover in Cancun, and China is taking no chances with swine flu.

Never mind that we were in Cancun for only two hours, that we didn't leave the airport and that Mexican doctors with electronic thermometers checked us for fever on arrival and departure. Never mind that when our Continental Airlines flight from Newark touched down in Shanghai, we and everyone else on board were not allowed to leave our seats until health workers clamored aboard and pointed a blue beam at our foreheads to take our temperatures.

The Mexican stamps in our passports -- my wife is Chilean, I'm American -- are enough for authorities to pull us out of line at immigration and send us to a medical room where attendants in white lab coats take our temperature yet again and give us surgical masks...

After 3 1/2 hours, a man in uniform -- speaking by phone with a communist official everyone calls "the leader" -- announces we will be confined to a hotel room for seven days.

We say we'll simply fly back home. He tells us that isn't possible.

Cross cultural exchange

"The official dance troupe of the Dallas Cowboys (a US National Football League team) perform with local elderly at a downtown park in Shanghai."

More Chinese education! Or, is it really "Chinese"?

China, Eastern Europe, Japan, it's all the same story. No, it's not a legacy of Communism. The saying here in Japan is similar to the one mentioned by the teacher in Eastern Europe: "The nail that sticks out, gets hammered down."

I cannot get my students to voice an opinion for love nor money. They do not want to call attention to themselves; stand out from the crowd, or be different in any way. This is the Japanese way. If, by chance, they do have an opinion, they keep it to themselves.

As a result, they are totally incapable of creative/critical thinking or problem solving abilities.

Continue reading "More Chinese education! Or, is it really "Chinese"?" »

US no-show at Shanghai Expo: the hows and whys (updated)

A.  Cost. Shanghai Expo 2010's [one of the US contenders] $61 million pavilion budget - down from an earlier $84 million budget - is inordinately expensive, and surely the most expensive national pavilion after the elaborate Chinese design.  "For that kind of money [$61 million]," an experienced American businessman in Shanghai told me. "You could build a thirty-story residential tower on that site and still have money left over. But these people want that money for a two story pavilion." In comparison, Germany's elaborate pavilion design is projected to cost US$40.8 million; Norway's elegant structure, a comparatively minor US$22 million. And even those might be overpriced. At the Beijing 2008 Olympics, major commercial pavilions were built for around $1000 per square meter - that is, less than US$5 million. So far, Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc., has failed to provide a detailed public accounting of how it plans to spend its proposed US$61 million, leading to wild and unsubstantiated speculation among experienced China hands in Shanghai.

Europe, America, China respond to the flu

I have a colleague, a native German, who went to Germany last week and reported that the general attitude was that Americans were being crazily hysterical about this. It makes sense to me that a) the Chinese are really being hysterical, b) Germans are calm, and c) we're somewhere in between.

If you look at the medical safety net in each country, this makes perfect sense (plus the big worry that this could combine with bird flu, which they have in China. H1N1 seems to be easy to catch but rarely serious; bird flu is hard to catch but often fatal; flu viruses seem good at swapping DNA within host nuclei. If the same person had both bird flu and H1N1, this could lead to something really bad).

Continue reading "Europe, America, China respond to the flu" »

More Gaokao: a Chinese "red-diaper" perspective

I have been following the discussion on your blog, on the subject of Chinese gaokao, with interest. Now, before I go on, I feel compelled to state the facts: I had taken the SAT, and received 2400 on it (Yes, one of the less than few hundred a year ones with this result. It is utterly insane in my opinion.) So, I do want to make it clear that this isn't a loser's rant against meritocracy.

Continue reading "More Gaokao: a Chinese "red-diaper" perspective" »

Visas in the time of flu

Continue reading "Visas in the time of flu" »

Twitter-scale reaction on new ambassador to China

Not sure exactly which Chinese people Paul Krugman met...

"Each time I raised the issue during my visit, I was met with outraged declarations that it was unfair to expect China to limit its use of fossil fuels. After all, they declared, the West faced no similar constraints during its development; while China may be the world's largest source of carbon-dioxide emissions, its per-capita emissions are still far below American levels; and anyway, the great bulk of the global warming that has already happened is due not to China but to the past carbon emissions of today's wealthy nations. And they're right...But that unfairness doesn't change the fact that letting China match the West's past profligacy would doom the Earth as we know it."

In defense of the 高考: Chinese, foreigners rally to its support!

I just read your posts on the nationwide college-admissions exam, the gaokao.  While I agreed that this system did focus too much on memorizing books and exam preparation, it cannot be replaced for the current sociaty.  The advantage of this universal exam system is relative fairness.
 
Yes, there are much unfairness in the exam system, i.e. Beijing and Shanghai got too many quotas for the colleges entries, minority groups got extra points, and some can get in based on their privilege and wealth.  However, this system is the most fair and practical one compared to all other alternative systems.  The American system including essays, reference letters, community service experiences...all too subjective and easy to manipulate in China.  The privileged ones will benefit even more from American system and squeeze the poor talented ones out of the best schools. 
 
I am all for a reformed education system to promote innovation.  But the first thing the education should achieve is fairness: the best students can be selected to get the best education. 

Officially done with my college study today, I feel I just have to say something about the discussion on China's education. I don't think gao kao is the problem in China's education.

Continue reading "In defense of the 高考: Chinese, foreigners rally to its support!" »

Further on the 高考

Earlier this year, I decided that one of the things that stifles creativity in China more than anything else was high school. All Chinese students are required to take an all inclusive, end-all, be-all exam at the end of their high school careers called the Gao Kao.. If I can remember from the top of my head, this test includes physics, biology, math, politics, Chinese, English, history, geography, and maybe 3 or 4 others.

Because this is the only grade that actually matters in high school, it's the sole determiner for students going on to college. There is no college essay, interviews, etc. The only thing that matters is the gao kao.

Continue reading "Further on the 高考" »

Today on Chinese education: shadow of the 高考

Having taught English here for the past year, mostly to recent high school and college graduates (and a few primary and middle school students), I have had countless opportunities to hear what Chinese students have to say about their educational system.

They don't like it that much, and it goes beyond ideas about critical thinking and creativity. They have said that they find it a very stifling experience, filled with long days focused on boring books and lectures with rote assignments to ensure that they've memorized the essential facts (and pre-decided interpretations) and mastered the essential skills.

Continue reading "Today on Chinese education: shadow of the 高考" »

Expats in China: NOT being called in for health checks (updated)

May 12

Here it comes: more on Chinese & non-Chinese education!

I had a pretty low opinion on Chinese education when I was in China. Certain subjects such as history and Marxist philosophy are just crammed in without any critical discussion. But when I came to US and worked as TA for a top state university, I changed my mind a bit. Almost none of my students (first-year economics) are interested in understanding the materials critically. Most of them are just looking for a good grade. Also the math preparation some of my students received are so inadequate, I doubt they would be able to graduate from high school in China, not mentioning entering a top university. My classmate told me a story that one of his student could not do 7*7 by hand. From what I read in newspapers about quality of inner city schools in US, the situation may be even worse than I see. So the conspiracy theory one of your reader talked about that the poor quality of rural area schools is set on purpose by Chinese government to keep people ignorant is far-fetched. Compared with some of the public schools in US where so much resource are spent with so few results, I think the education system in China is not so bad.

I don't think Nobel Prize is a valid measure to compare different education systems. Most of the best scientific talents in China are attracted to US, studying and working here. This alone can make any comparison meaningless. Also scientific research in US was weak till 20th century. I remember reading Schumpeter's discussion about why there were so few first-rate American economists till very late in the 19th century, his explanation was that the best talents in US were attracted to entrepreneurial adventures in a fast growing economy. Similar things may be happening in China right now.

I've been reading your series on Chinese education because it so greatly resembles my daily life as an English teacher. The thing is, I don't teach in China, I teach in a Eastern European country.

Continue reading "Here it comes: more on Chinese & non-Chinese education!" »

For expats in China: being called for health checks?

I was informed this past Friday by my school's Foreign Affairs Dept. that we should report our "health status" by 3 pm daily. Only the foreign teachers have been asked to report their health (whatever that means, we are still not really sure) according to my Chinese colleagues. I was wondering if you had A. heard any other reports of such behavior and B. Does this indicate that the virus is in Hangzhou? (It doesn't seem likely if Chinese teachers aren't also being "checked") Or is this just another example of over-response (since none of us have been out of the country in over a month)? 

While I'm at it, a Chinese and an American view on Chinese education

The articles that you have featured are focused largely on University students in China. I teach English in the public middle schools (what we call grades 6, 7, and 8). The problems in Chinese education show in the University students, but to fix them you need to look at what's happening with students who are much younger.

Continue reading "While I'm at it, a Chinese and an American view on Chinese education" »

Two non-Chinese views on Chinese education, management, etc

My connection with these effects is through working with second- and third-tier Chinese suppliers to US-based companies.  My job was to improve the production process (mostly electroplating, with some heat treating and stamping/machining) enough to assure consistent results.

After a personal run-in period, I finally got it through my head that even my own (Chinese) engineers were extremely reluctant to deliver bad news.  Furthermore, their definition of "bad news" was far broader than I could have imagined.  This leads to a lively chase when Step 1 is "Identify Problem(s).

We did our best work when we had a late night and stopped for their kind of Chinese meal. 

Continue reading "Two non-Chinese views on Chinese education, management, etc" »

A Chinese view on Chinese education

I do not doubt  that some reform in the educational system de-emphasizing rote learning would be helpful, nor do I deny that there are anxieties among Chinese educators in promoting "creativity" or "critical thinking."

But just to point to the other side of the story, I would like  to suggest that it is not clear whether "liberal art", or anything  being taught in school, can improve "critical thinking". In fact, as  [an attached article] points  out, "critical thinking" is not a skill like reading or carpentry that  can be taught, but rather something attached to a specific set of  knowledge.  And the American schools' efforts to actively promote "critical thinking" have at best a mixed track record.

Continue reading "A Chinese view on Chinese education" »

I hope they're not just taunting me

Clash of the titans: Harvard v. China

Some years ago I assigned my class of Harvard freshman a paper describing the college they would create if they had unlimited money. I did my best to convince them to take a zero-based budgeting approach: to reinvent the whole notion of "college" from the ground up. Of the 30 papers I got back, 29 described something that looked very much like Harvard, except a little farther out of town. The single exception came from an Alabama girl whose paper began, "My idea of the perfect college would be to spend four years in bed with Aldous Huxley."

So I had at least one live one, which is more than Randy Pollock had. But not by much. The Harvard admissions office seems to be just about as effective as its Chinese counterparts at screening out the undesirably creative.

Self-inflicted embarrassment dept: Shanghai Expo update (updated!)

Three related articles about education and values in China

Paradise Beijing, late spring edition (updated)

One more on China, India, and the Western media

I was pleasantly surprised to read the email you published from an overseas Chinese citizen who thinks the western media treats China unfairly and that he would like to see China being treated the way India gets treated.  As an Indian who lives in the US, I have many many Indian friends who complain that the media here only talks about the poverty in India, that they emphasize only what's wrong with the country and not what's going right with it, that they talk only of the poor and not of the middle class.  Etc, etc.  

I think both these complaints -- the Chinese and the Indian -- are, in some sense, two sides of the same coin.

Continue reading "One more on China, India, and the Western media" »

First they came for the Mexicans. Then, the Canadians...

Chinese officials in Changchun pulled the group aside after their plane landed in the northeastern city on Saturday, according to Martin Deslauriers, a Quebecer who is part of the language exchange group.

An official came on board and asked all the Canadian passengers to present themselves, Deslauriers said. Health officials then took them to a room at the airport to have their temperatures taken, he said. No one in his group had a fever, but they were still informed they would be placed in quarantine, he said.

And there they'll be for seven days. The story suggested that some students were disgruntled but others were considering it as much an adventure as an ordeal.

Policy point: At one level, this is as arbitrary as the more widespread quarantining of Mexican passport holders, discussed in many posts here -- and more obviously nutty. Canadians? Is it because they come from someplace close to Mexico? If so, isn't there some other big country right in between those two? What about all its citizens? Therefore, by this train of reasoning, the case shows the unprincipled power of the Chinese state etc.

But I am more struck by the additional element of illustrating how uneven, inexplicable, and anything-but-thorough the application of that power can be. For one thing, this appears to be policy free-lancing on the part of the local authorities. The story quoted its student interviewee thus: "Deslauriers said the students have been told by officials that the quarantine is a provincial measure and not part of a national plan by the Chinese government."

And, it's a "quarantine" that appears to be in the tradition of "quarantine theater," like the "security theater" so familiar at airports around the world. The students have to stay inside the hotel -- but apparently the staff that serves them comes and goes normally! Now, if any of those staff members held a Canadian passport... I hope everyone keeps feeling fine.

More on the Western media and "beating up" on China

I am also an overseas Chinese, but I don't share the sentiment the Chinese reader has shown in his two messages to you. I'd like to share with you my opinion of his take on the role of the media, and China's human rights issue.

I am always suspicious of the whole concept of a united "Western Media" against China as if Fox News, Le Monde, and Süddeutsche Zeitung were controlled by a multi-national Central Propaganda Department. As a Communications major, my understanding of the news media is that they should truthfully report and inform to the best of their knowledge. It is not the job of the Western media (or media of any origin) to "encourage" and babysit a foreign country. Maybe it's time that the Chinese try getting used to the fact that every Western country is "unique" as well, some of them believe in things that we do not believe, and it's OK.

Continue reading "More on the Western media and "beating up" on China" »

How it's playing here

WSJ on detention of Mexicans in Beijing

Gustavo Carrillo, a 36-year-old manager of a Mexican technology company in China who lives in Beijing, was taken off his Continental Airlines plane Saturday and rushed into quarantine at a Beijing hotel. He had traveled to the U.S. from China on a business trip and hadn't visited Mexico.

Mr. Carrillo said health officials took the temperatures of other passengers after the plane landed, but didn't check his after they saw his Mexican passport. Instead, they led him down the aisle past gawking passengers. "It was embarrassing and humiliating," he said.

According to accounts from Mexicans in the hotel, Mexican travelers arriving on various flights from Mexico and the U.S. were singled out by health officials who boarded the aircraft wearing white protective suits, masks and rubber gloves. They led away Mexican passport holders. Several travelers said Chinese television camera crews surprised them at the doors of their aircraft as they emerged. They said the filming continued through the windows of an isolation ward at the Beijing Ditan infectious diseases hospital.

"We felt like we were in a zoo," said Angel Yamil Silum, a 27-year-old business student, who arrived in Beijing with his girlfriend Saturday en route to Bangkok for a holiday, and ended up at Ditan and then the Guo Men Hotel.

More on public health, PR, and China's role in the world

"Western journalists are accustomed to the shrewd answers from their own politicians facing offensive/aggressive questions. It's well known that they, the western politicians, are afraid of negative reports for their own political skins. Therefore you may also assume that Chinese officials should behave the same way, if they ever want to be accepted by the western world.

"Unfortunately, I have to say that three years stationing in China has not made you thinking like a Chinese. For most Chinese officials, their reaction toward negative western media reports is mostly about domestic consumption. They have to be resolute and principled when it comes to rebutting the 'western defamations' driven by 'ulterior motives'. It's not only about national pride, but has more to do with not being perceived by Chinese people as weak and not being able to stand up to hostile westerners. This may help you better understand why nationalism is so useful for communist government."

Continue reading "More on public health, PR, and China's role in the world" »

Latest touch in Chinese-Mexican relations

One Boeing 777-200 plane of CSA will leave Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, at 9 p.m. Sunday for Los Angeles before flying to Mexico to repatriate 120 or so passengers there, said a CSA spokesman....It is expected these group of passengers will be in the Pudong Airport in Shanghai at 11 a.m. Tuesday.

Mexican government protests detentions in China

Flu news from China: Mexican citizens being detained

- A family of tourists -- two parents; a son age 8; and daughters ages 6 and 4 -- were staying in a five-star Beijing hotel. Like all foreigners in China, they had presented their passports for inspection on arrival. Their passports were from Mexico. At 4 am last night they heard a pounding on the door. Public-security officials asked them to come to the hospital for a few quick tests. In fact they were taken to a hospital and not allowed to leave. They received no drugs or treatment of any sort and were placed in a room where the beds and sheets still bore the marks of the previous ill and bleeding patients. They managed to contact Mexican officials by phone -- which was the first the Mexican government had heard of their situation. There is no indication that they are sick. They were assured that they would be treated as well as "any Chinese citizen." (!) This evening, another family of three has been taken from a hotel because they are Mexican.

- As international flights arrive in Beijing, from any destination, passengers are being asked to show their passports before the plane comes to the terminal. Those with Mexican passports are not allowed to enter the city. They have been taken to a hotel for quarantine and are still there. Some 40 to 50 people are now being detained in this way. To be clear, this is not being applied to people who've recently been to Mexico, or who are showing signs of disease, or who have been exposed in some other way. It has been purely a matter of whether they are Mexican citizens.

- A Mexican official in Guangzhou booked a round trip flight to Cambodia. On arriving back from Cambodia (ie, a million miles away from Mexico), he too has been detained, on the basis of his passport.

PR wizardry on display

Three scenes from the subway (includes subversive panda content)

More good news about Chinese maps

On language schools and weirdo ads

Dear Mr. Fallows,

I happened to recently read your blog of April 14th 2009, entitled "More on weirdo language school ads (updated)". As the person in charge of recruiting new instructors at Gaba language school, I was somewhat disturbed by the several inaccuracies referenced as "testimony from a 'former English teacher in Japan". I would like to bring these to your attention.

Firstly let me mention that the ad pictured is not reflective of current Gaba advertising. It was a poster that last ran over 6 years ago. Current Gaba advertising is significantly different in theme. Please see the J-peg attachment of our current advertising as a sample. While the ad certainly was "unique" and I won't quibble with the fact that some might even find it 'weird', I would hope that the fact that this ad is from 2002/2003 could be mentioned somewhere in the copy.

Continue reading "On language schools and weirdo ads" »

Tech and cultural followups on that Air China flight

I enjoyed your post about Chinese having "the serenity to accept the things [they] can't change," though your hypothesis may need some honing.

A few years ago I was on a plane that landed in Zhengzhou due to a cracked windshield. We were stuck in Zhengzhou for over 12 hours - including a time in the middle when we were bussed to a hotel - and the entire time the passengers berated the Air China reps for not being able to provide information as to when we would be leaving except that we would not have to wait overnight. At times the Air China reps were essentially surrounded by a scrum of passengers all yelling until finally at about 4am we were able to get back on the plane.

I've seen airport rage in the States but never with that kind of herd mentality, though I do appreciate the fact that Chinese seem to be able to yell and create a disturbance without actually being all that mad down inside. There were moments of levity among the passengers in between the rage. Perhaps the facts in my experience were different enough to give the passengers the sense that they could control the outcome of the situation whether true or not. Also, the youtube of the Hong Kong woman going apeshit when she missed her plane comes to mind. [More about the Hong Kong episode here.]

Your comments about the delayed flight from SZ to BJ strike a nerve, though, because just last week I had a very different experience flying from Chengdu to Shanghai, also on Air China.

Continue reading "Tech and cultural followups on that Air China flight" »

Back to Beijing #3 (even better news)

Somehow I find this droll

Back to Beijing #2 (better news, Air China dept)

Continue reading "Back to Beijing #2 (better news, Air China dept)" »

Local press: interview in The Beijinger

JG Ballard in Shanghai

A main dining room. Note big-screen TV on the wall, de rigeur for high-end Chinese dining parties. In rear of room, clothed in unplanned conformance with room's color scheme, is my wife.


For an extensive and fascinating account of one Ballard fan's search for the author's boyhood home, complete with maps, satellite views, and much better pictures of the way it looks today, check here. RIP.

Torture from Afar

Harmonic convergence, Yunnan tea style

China v. Japan: the packed-train factor

That brought back a flood of memories from Tokyo's train and subway commutes.  My most vivid were from when I lived a year in Yokohama and commuted into Tokyo first on the JNR Negishi-sen, the blue train.  The worst was the morning, crammed in and unable to move - invariably forced  to look over the shoulder of a guy immersed in a porno comic book.  When it got too much I got out and boarded the next train.  But robbery was never a problem, ever. 

My favorite story was forgetting my purse on the upper rack exiting in Yokohama from the Yokosuka line enroute to Yokosuka - the end of the line - and going there the next morning to retrieve my handbag and sign a form verifying that everything was still there. 

We women didn't fear the pick pocketers so much as those who rode the trains to take advantage of the crowded conditions to let their hands wander.  I think it might have been Jean Pearce [a local writer] who recounted a story when an outraged American woman, accosted on a crowded subway, grabbed the offending hand, raised it and said in Japanese, "Whose hand is this?

More on weirdo language school ads (updated)

I worked in Japan a few years ago for the now defunct Nova Corp, and Nova had an extremely strict non-fraternization policy, which was a key selling point. Nervous moms would sign their daughter up, safe in the knowledge that the wouldn't have to worry about little gaijin [foreign] babies a year down the line.

Continue reading "More on weirdo language school ads (updated)" »

Now this doesn't make me feel all that great....

Brilliant advertising imagery? Or.....

Shanghai Expo and looming US embarrassment

Happy Easter from Beijing

More on petty crime

There's more artistry in Africa. Once I stopped to take a look at a group of people surrounding a poor old man lying senseless on the pavement. My sadness was compounded by the feeling, seconds later, that his friends had consoled themselves with my wallet. Artsy setting, soft touch. Times have changed.

In the days before there was a huge highway called Xizhimenwai, there was a wonderful two lane street with bike lanes.

A friend and I got on the 360 bus to go to Xiang Shan.

Somewhere past the Beijing Zoo, I noticed a little guy standing at the stop waiting for a bus. I don't know why he caught my eye, but he did.

Continue reading "More on petty crime" »

Where was that subway SWAT team when I needed it?

Bomb security: Israel v China

In Israel there are thousands of explosion containers, but they are just holes in the ground, roughly one foot deep, lined with some metallic or plastic sheet. The Hebrew name is "bor bitahon" (you'd pronounce it "Bawr Bee-tuh-HONE") literally "security hole". The logic would be that the good Earth will do the job of containing a significant proportion of the impact, with people feeling just a tremor. (A Chinese metal box could be blown to dangerous flying smithereens if the explosion is loud enough.) The Israeli version is also cheaper if you must deploy it everywhere, including schools, malls, streets, parks, etc.

What is this?? (SWAT team in the subway dept)

It's not wholly legible in that shot, but the label says "Suspect Bomb Container." Even gives a url, www.jwgk.com, with lots of interesting info in Chinese and, to a limited degree, in English:

Write your own caption dept

Paradise Beijing, springtime edition

That tricky old language barrier (China, Tibet, and France)

This is puerile, but it made me laugh

More on Chinese cyber-spying

These hacker groups seem not to be working for the Chinese government. They don't seem to be coordinated by the Chinese military. They're basically young, male, patriotic Chinese citizens, trying to demonstrate that they're just as good as everyone else. As well as the American networks the media likes to talk about, their targets also include pro-Tibet, pro-Taiwan, Falun Gong and pro-Uyghur sites.

The hackers are in this for two reasons: fame and glory, and an attempt to make a living. The fame and glory comes from their nationalistic goals. Some of these hackers are heroes in China....And the money comes from several sources. The groups sell owned computers, malware services, and data they steal on the black market. They sell hacker tools and videos to others wanting to play. They even sell T-shirts, hats and other merchandise on their Web sites.

If anything, the fact that these groups aren't being run by the Chinese government makes the problem worse. Without central political coordination, they're likely to take more risks, do more stupid things and generally ignore the political fallout of their actions.

What should we make of this Chinese cyber-spy story?

"Attributing all Chinese malware to deliberate or targeted intelligence gathering operations by the Chinese state is wrong and misleading... The most significant actors in cyberspace are not states.... In China, the authorities most likely perceive individual attackers [ie, teenagers in internet cafes] as convenient instruments of national power."

Outflanking the cheese beagles

I just flew into Beijing on the evening Northwest flight Monday night. They still use the old terminal, and there were no dogs nor, for that matter, anyone looking at luggage, just a guard at the door to keep the people outside from coming in to meet their friends.

So at least for now, that's probably the way to bring in your contraband.

Springtime comes to Beijing.... (updated)

I feel like an idiot, but... [UPDATED]

Things everyone in China knows, but...

•  No one uses voicemail. When some one calls you on your mobile phone, you generally pick it up. Mobile calls take precedence over face-to-face conversation, which is generally interrupted by a call. [Too many times to count, I have seen people take mobile-phone calls while giving a speech or presiding at a meeting. It's the norm, not something rude.]
  
  
• China uses SMS more intensively. SMS may have become entrenched because of the low cost of sending text messages. The first thing Chinese do in the morning is check their IM first, not their email. [Though, this assumes they turned off the phone at night!]
  
  
• Instant messaging, combined with SMS, is a hugely popular means of communication. China's leading IM platform, QQ (Company: Tencent (HK:0700)), has 350 mm users-over 50 times the audience of Twitter! [Two days ago on the Beijing subway, I counted 25 people in the same car as me all typing out or reading text messages and only two actually talking on the phone. Also, you're never out of mobile-phone coverage in China -- on subways, in elevators, wherever. Discussion of reasons some other time.]
  
  
• Only 56% of all Chinese internet users have email addresses. [If you want to reach a busy American, you send email to the Blackberry. That gets you nowhere here.]
  
  
• Ownership of PCs is much lower, especially in 2nd and 3rd tier cities, where heavy PC usage is at Internet cafes.
  
  
• Unlike the West, where e-commerce was Web 1.0 and social media is Web 2.0, China's internet usage started as a social phenomenon first and is just now moving to more utilitarian purposes.

Harmonic convergence! Two of my obsessions in one place!

Also on the brighter side: better news on Chinese cheese

 

The company's founder, the Dutch agriculturalist Marc de Ruiter -- I assume this is him, in Mr. Cheese pose from the site -- says they're available in many places in Beijing and elsewhere, though I haven't noticed them at our local haunt. (Jenny Lou at Jianwai Soho.)  His cheeses aren't cheap, but they are very good. My favorites were the cumin and onion-and-garlic varieties.

De Ruiter places great stress on his company's organic-farming and fair-trade policies. I hadn't known about the online order site, which I will now try. Go to hell, sniffer beagles. I can work around you.

Shanghai, Beijing, and the face of Chinese cities

This is an incomplete, opening entry on a subject that's increasingly on my mind: who is responsible for the look and feel of today's enormous, expanding Chinese cities, and who is happy and unhappy about their emerging character.

Two reasons it's on my mind at the moment:
 - Spent several days again in Shanghai, my former home, after being away for eight months;
 - Recently went to the top of Beijing's first true skyscraper, the newly-opened Park Hyatt hotel, and saw the city from an entirely different perspective while on the building's 65th floor.

This is not a "which do you like better?" discussion, which I've learned to finesse in a way that is both politic and true. Having now spent an equal amount of time based in each city, my wife and I have learned to appreciate the virtues of both. Their virtues are different, as Chicago's are from LA's, but are both real. (In short: we've learned more from being in Beijing, and we enjoyed the texture of daily life more in Shanghai. We feel fortunate to have lived in each place.)

Rather the question is why the look and feel of Beijing seem so clearly to represent the direction Chinese cities are heading. To oversimplify what this means: although Shanghai probably contains more people than Beijing, it feels smaller. The roads are narrower, they're more likely to bend or twist, the city unfolds on a smaller scale of neighborhoods and courtyards and little houses. Beijing is bigger and squarer and broader and more grandly imposing. To illustrate: a photo of the intersection outside our building in Beijing, followed by a place we were walking ten days ago in Shanghai.

Crossing the street at the Guomao intersection, as I do when leaving my apartment each day in Beijing:
 


Looking across a street in the French Concession district of Shanghai:

Yes, yes, I could have chosen pictures of each city that looked more like the other -- a little hutong in Beijing, an elevated highway in Shanghai. But anybody who has been in both cities recognizes the difference in tone and scale. This view southward from the Park Hyatt's 65th floor China Bar -- which really is the first time this view of Beijing has ever been available (since airplanes almost never fly overhead) -- gives more of the idea.

 

A few more pictures, and the question they suggest to me, after the jump.

______

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Correction: Chinese coal mine deaths

So if China's rise is not undone by the risks that have been evident for years--pollution, water shortage, corruption, the widening rich-poor social gap, safety standards so primitive that on average more than 250 people die each day in coal-mine accidents--might China prove vulnerable to Soviet-style discontent born of a slowing economy?...
My guess is No. [And on to the main argument of the article.]

First signs of an upturn?

Cheese-beagle update

Apropos the cheese beagle...no more than 2 minutes after you left baggage claim yesterday the little fellow came sniffing up your track... he left carousel 40 with a rather hang-dog look! No fun at flight 889 for him!

Well, this is weirdly annoying! (cheese-and-beagles dept)

Perhaps the ban on cheese is in retaliation against some nations that banned import of Chinese milk products during the melamine scandal. It doesn't hurt anybody much because the Chinese people find cheese revolting (I am told) so they don't miss it, and the cheese exporting nations don't export much to China anyway, so they don't get hurt either. Only the cheese eating, beer quaffing expats get hurt unless they can thwart the beagle.

The war against cheese is on

I also live in Beijing, and, like you, I tend to bring back cheese with me from my trips out of the country. But recently, while traveling back from Spain right after Chinese New Year, I, too, encountered the beagle brigade. Having never seen them before we weren't sure if they were after drugs or food, but when one came to our cart as we waited for our luggage at the carousel and sat down, we knew it was a "food beagle". The agent asked us if we had "food", to which I ventured a meek "yes, a bit", and he asked to see our bag. As it happens, all that we had at that point was our carry on baggage and one suitcase, with our remaining suitcase--the one containing several kilos of ham, chorizo, and cheese--revolved around the carousel, but among our carry ons was a duty free bad from Barcelona airport that contained one wheel of cheese and some turron. The agent confiscated the cheese without a word of explanation, and then asked if there was anything else. We volunteered the turron, but that was not an issue, and then he asked me to open my camera bag. When that proved to have no contraband they moved on, we grabbed the remaining suitcase off the carousel and high-tailed it out of there. But before we got too far, a Chinese guy who had seen the episode told us that there is now a ban on importing dairy products, though why that was the case--and why the agent did not explain it to us--is a mystery.

I have heard stories about other people bringing cheese who had their kids play with the beagle to distract it, and I know of someone else who managed to bring in quite a bit of NZ cheese a few weeks ago, so implementation of the new rule is--surprise!!--sporadic.

Contraband cheese and other random jet-lagged notes from the road

In local news...

Technology as friend of tradition! (Chinese language dept.)

3) The new characters are easier to write but harder to understand. A nonobvious point but an important one. Consider the English word pronounced "for." When spoken, it could be ambiguous. When written, it's immediately obvious whether we mean for, four, or fore.  Same with "right" -- potentially confusing when heard, immediately obvious when read as right, write, wright, or rite. And -- strangely -- characters have a counterpart to this problem, made worse by simplification. (This is not even getting into the related but different topic of words pronounced the same and distinguishable mainly by their characters-- as if the for/four/fore problem came up all the time.)

The two characters below, which mean "east" on the left and "happy" or "enjoyment" on the right, are very easy to tell apart in traditional form (ignore the little dots on the side; part of my home-made effort to illustrate the characters.) :

Here is how much more similar the two of them look when simplified -- again "east" on the left and "happy" on the right:

The "extra information" in the traditional characters is what made them more cumbersome to write, but also easier to tell apart. (Again, think right/write/rite/wright: suppose they were all spelled rite!) Now, here is the interesting part:

Increasingly, Chinese people don't actually have to write (rite? right?) out these characters by hand. More and more, they key them in with mobile phones or at computers. And when they do that, it's just as easy to "write" a traditional-style, complex, information-dense character as  a streamlined new one. (Reason: you key in clues about the character, either its pronunciation or its root form, and then click to choose the one you want.) So -- according to current arguments -- the technology of computers and mobile phones could actually revive an important, quasi-antique style of writing.

Much more on the debate here and here. In practical terms, my bet is that nothing will change. But if you're interested in language or the relationship between technology and styles of thought, it has to be interesting. Or so I contend.

Two brief media notes about Tibet

Two more on Chas Freeman and China

I have known Chas Freeman ever since we were next door neighbors at the State Dept's Chinese language School in Taiwan over 35 years ago. (At the time he was studying Hong Lou Meng; most of us were struggling with Hong Qi) He's damn smart, speaks his mind, dedicated to the best interests of the United States, and has little tolerance for bullshit.  I cannot think of a better choice for NIC chairman than Chas.

To deal effectively with China, Americans need to understand it in terms of its own complexities and authentic aspirations. This is unlikely to be achieved by officials engaged in writing narrowly focused and highly tendentious reports mandated by Congress to justify the single-issue agendas of our military-industrial complex or, for that matter, our humanitarian-industrial complex. Nor can it be accomplished by analysts stir-frying intelligence to suit the political appetites of those they work for....

Predictions about China based on a priori reasoning, ideologically induced delusions, hearsay, conjecture, or mirror-imaging have been frequent and numerous. They have racked up a remarkable record of unreliability. To cite a few relevant examples: contrary to repeated forecasts, the many imperfections of China's legal system have neither prevented it from developing a vigorous market economy nor inhibited foreign investment -- of which China continues to attract more than any other country, including our own. China's failure to democratize and its continuing censorship of its media, including the Internet, have not stifled its economic progress or capacity to innovate, which are increasingly impressive. China's perverse practices with respect to human rights have not cost China's Communist Party or its government their legitimacy. On the contrary, polling data suggests that Chinese have a very much higher regard for their political leaders and government than Americans currently do for ours.

Chas Freeman and China

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Own worst enemy, Tomorrow Square edition