If you have any questions or concerns please respond to toni.zhou@ogilvy.com
The Daily China News Update is produced by Charles Silverman
(03/04/13)
Business & Economics
Newswire
Exclusive: China eyes market forces to drive forex reform agenda (Reuters) ........... 4
China Monetary Tightening Pressure Eases as Growth Rebound Slows (Bloomerg) 6
Print
Signs of nightmare scenario in China's latest economic data (South China Morning
Post) ..................................................................................................................................................... 8
Online
Why China's State-Owned Companies Make More Cars Than They Can Sell
(adage.com) ....................................................................................................................................... 9
The ‘Pi’ Effect: How Ang Lee Boosted Taiwan’s Movie Industry (THE WSJ CHINA
REAL TIME REPORT BLOG) ....................................................................................................... 10
An Entrepreneur’s Bone-Chilling Story Of China Business And Betrayal Writ Not So
Large. (chinalawblog.com) ......................................................................................................... 10
China's Broadband Fees Drop 30% As More Households Come Online
(chinatechnews.com) .................................................................................................................. 12
China's Baidu Unveils Group Buying Service (chinatechnews.com) ........................... 12
Youku-Tudou Made Net Losses Of USD18.2 Million In Q4 2012 (chinatechnews.com)
............................................................................................................................................................ 13
China to Have 60 Million 4G LTE Subscribers By 2016 (techinasia.com) ................. 13
Youku Tudou Sees Narrowing Losses in First-Ever Post-Merger Financials
(techinasia.com) ........................................................................................................................... 14
Baidu Handles 5 BILLION Search Queries Per Day (techinasia.com) ......................... 14
Dear Apple, Amazon, Google: Here’s Why Chinese Consumers Hate Your
Ecosystems (techinasia.com) ................................................................................................... 15
Hugo Boss Follows the Money to China, Launches Own E-Commerce Store
(techinasia.com) ........................................................................................................................... 17
Lei Jun: China’s Startup Scene Needs More Angel Investors (techinasia.com) ......... 17
Expose Blasts Qihoo 360 as ‘Cancer of the Internet’; Qihoo Denies Everything
(techinasia.com) ........................................................................................................................... 18
Chinese Celebrity Blogger Han Han Talks Weibo, WeChat, and Why User Numbers
Are Bullshit (techinasia.com) ................................................................................................... 19
Will Sina DNA stand in the way of its new Weibo ad system? (technode.com) ........ 21
Digital books cost way cheaper than the print in China but are not cheap to create
at all (technode.com) ................................................................................................................... 22
Luxury Goods: Meet the Experience Hunters (siliconhutong.com) ............................ 23
Politics & Law
Newswire
Protesters' land vigil continues in Shangpu, Guangdong (AFP) .................................... 25
Top Leaders Agree on Posts Ahead of China Congress (The Associated Press) ...... 25
China's graft-fighting Xi tells party future is on the line (Reuters) .............................. 26
A push for change in China as new leaders take the helm (Reuters) .......................... 28
China says U.S. routinely hacks Defense Ministry websites (Reuters) ....................... 30
Print
China divided on TV 'execution parade': judicial resolve or crude voyeurism (The
Guardian) ........................................................................................................................................ 30
Leadership Shift in China Hints at Path (The Wall Street Journal)............................... 32
China's peaceful rise less likely (The Australian) .............................................................. 34
China’s labor camps come under scrutiny (The Washington Post) ............................. 36
Online
Cheng Li: High Expectations for China’s National People’s Congress (THE WSJ
CHINA REAL TIME REPORT BLOG).......................................................................................... 38
Hard Landing Ahead for China’s Local Governments? (THE WSJ CHINA REAL TIME
REPORT BLOG) .............................................................................................................................. 40
Debate Swirls Around China Execution Broadcast (THE WSJ CHINA REAL TIME
REPORT BLOG) .............................................................................................................................. 41
Chinese law enforcement; Live television and dead men walking (Analects Blog) . 42
Veteran muckraker forced to leave paper (China Media Project) ............................... 43
The Ralls Wind Farm Case: Not Quite Dead Yet (chinahearsay.com) .......................... 44
China Legal. Not Hong Kong Legal. Not Taiwan Legal. Not Macau Legal.
(chinalawblog.com) ...................................................................................................................... 45
Government Now Restricting Inquiries Into Property Holdings (chinasmack.com)
............................................................................................................................................................ 46
Miscellaneous
Newswire
China Sets 5th Manned Space Mission for Summer (The Associated Press) ........... 52
China Volunteers Rescue 900 Dogs in Cramped Truck (The Associated Press) ..... 52
Beijing restaurant removes 'racist' sign after fury (AFP) ............................................... 53
'Zombies' infest Yale social network account (The Associated Press) ....................... 54
Print
HK curbs on milk formula spark debate on social media (South China Morning
Post) .................................................................................................................................................. 57
Spill in China Underlines Environmental Concerns (The New York Times) ............. 58
Online
Finding a Cure for Asia’s Ales (THE WSJ CHINA REAL TIME REPORT BLOG) ........... 60
Chen Kaige: Beijing Air Pollution Strangling Creativity (THE WSJ CHINA REAL TIME
REPORT BLOG) .............................................................................................................................. 61
Your 2013 CBA Playoffs Preview: Can The Beijing Ducks Repeat As Champs?
(beijingcream.com) ..................................................................................................................... 62
German TV Crew Attacked In Hebei Province Just Outside Of Beijing
(beijingcream.com) ..................................................................................................................... 64
In Online Poll, a Majority Support Gay Marriage in China (tealeafnation.com) ...... 65
Business & Economics
Newswire
Exclusive: China eyes market forces to drive forex reform agenda (Reuters)
Nick Edwards
March 3, 2013
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-china-currency-reformbre9220fs-20130303,0,7737756.sto
ry
BEIJING (Reuters) - China is set to use swelling offshore holdings of its tightly-managed currency worth around
1 trillion yuan ($160 billion) to justify a landmark shift in tactics to relax capital controls.
The shift means the People's Bank of China (PBOC) will abandon a time-table approach to liberalizing capital
controls, favoring instead a series of reforms tied to soaring foreign demand for yuan to give more freedom to
invest offshore currency deposits on the mainland.
Sources with knowledge of the latest PBOC thinking say the bank believes the strategy shift would shield the
economy from the risk of a 1997/98-style Asian currency crisis that could be triggered in the wake of
liberalization.
"Responding to foreign demand for renminbi products would be the best way of maintaining momentum for
capital market and capital account reforms," a former top official in the PBOC's international division told Reuters,
on condition of anonymity.
"The bank is very worried about opening up the capital account because when it does, it knows that anything could
happen," the former official said.
"But if you give investors a market-based reason to hold renminbi (yuan) they will."
Investors expect China to make its currency basically convertible by 2015, or 2020 at the latest, and have
anticipated that monetary authorities would do so according to a series of time-tabled steps. The new approach
adds more uncertainty to the route Beijing may take to full currency flexibility.
A more flexible approach to currency liberalization widens the range of possibilities for policy tweaks, such as
raising quotas for offshore yuan to be invested onshore, making changes to asset allocation rules for such
investments and widening participation in domestic money markets.
"This would clearly be a way for technocrats to sell it to the government," said Zhang Zhiwei, chief China
economist at Nomura in Hong Kong. "Allowing more foreign investors to come in and introduce capital inflows to
balance out capital outflows. And it responds to market forces."
Foreign firms already hold about four times more Chinese currency than they can invest in the country, based on
Reuters calculations of official data on cross-border trade settled in yuan, which leapt 41.3 percent to 2.9 trillion
yuan in 2012.
But that belies the risk of sudden capital flight, particularly if strict currency rules are rapidly lifted, which worries
the PBOC.
By the textbook definition of "hot money" - the change in foreign reserves minus net exports and foreign direct
investment - China suffered a $214 billion outflow in 2012, twice as big as that during the 2008 global financial
crisis when funds flocked to safe havens, according to one external adviser to China's monetary authorities.
Last year was also the first year that China suffered a capital account deficit since 1998, the height of Asia's crisis.
VOLATILITY STORM
These forces are at work even with strict currency controls and the PBOC worries that a build-up of yuan stranded
offshore would further discourage foreigners from holding the Chinese currency if a storm of volatility were to hit.
China's efforts to promote the yuan as a settlement currency for cross-border trade in goods is part of the solution,
designed to make the yuan more desirable globally.
The inability of foreigners to freely invest currency on the mainland that they accumulate offshore is becoming an
obstacle to Beijing's efforts to make the yuan a true dollar alternative.
"Improving international access to domestic capital markets is key. Without this, there is no chance for the yuan
to become a true reserve currency," said a second former PBOC staffer, now researching the yuan's role in the
global financial system for a think-tank linked to the central bank.
"The Chinese government takes this issue very seriously. I think new measures will come after the NPC," the
source added, referring to the annual meeting of parliament, the National People's Congress, which begins on
March 5.
By the end of the congress, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang will likely have been confirmed, respectively, as president
and premier, as China inaugurates its next generation of leaders.
SUBTLE SHIFT UNDERWAY
With roughly 12 percent of all trade with China - the world's largest trading nation - now settled in yuan, it is
already creating pressure in the global financial system.
"The trade share of China is rising so fast that this has become an issue for central banks," a representative of one
G20 central bank in Beijing said.
"Trying to become part of the yuan money market as a way to off-load yuan accumulating offshore is likely," he
added.
Most offshore yuan is held in Hong Kong, with sizeable deposits stacking up in London and Singapore - global
trading hubs for foreign exchange and home to many major multinational firms that are fast acquiring yuan
through cross-border trade and which want more freedom to actively deploy it.
Subtle shifts are already taking place that signal the PBOC's emphasis on letting market demand increasingly
determine the pace at which it relaxes capital account rules.
Regulators have authorized a pilot program for individual firms, such as Shell China, to use surplus foreign
exchange for business needs, helping reduce trapped cash and raising working capital efficiency.
Guo Shuqing, the head of the China Securities Regulatory Commission said in late 2012 that the quota of offshore
yuan allowed to be invested in domestic capital markets would be raised by 200 billion yuan, though he did not say
exactly when.
China's state news agency, Xinhua, said separately that rules on inward offshore yuan investments would be
eased so investors no long had to put 80 percent of funds into bonds.
The Bank of England said in February it would set up a currency swap line with the PBOC to finance investment and
trade and use it to support financial stability in the face of a sudden shortage of yuan liquidity in response to
market demand.
South Korea's central bank has gone a step further, agreeing in December to utilize its $59 billion swap agreement
with the PBOC to lend yuan and won to trading firms to settle invoices.
"This could not have happened just because the Bank of Korea wanted to do it. This can only happen if there is
very close cooperation between China and Korea," said Gene Kim, regional head of global markets, North Asia, at
Standard Chartered.
"They are working together and it shows the willingness of policymakers to move forward," he added.
An official with the Development Research Centre, the think-tank that provides policy blueprints for the State
Council, China's cabinet, said ensuring smooth capital flows into the country was at the forefront of policymaking.
"Capital flows and the willingness of investors to invest in China is something that concerns the new leadership,"
said the official, requesting anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media. "They know stable capital
markets and stable capital flows are essential to China's economic development."
(Editing by Kim Coghill)
China Monetary
(Bloomerg)
Tightening
Pressure
Eases
as
Growth
Rebound
Slows
By Bloomberg News - Mar 3, 2013
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-03/china-monetary-tightening-pressure-eases-as-growth-reboundslows.html
China may hold off tightening monetary policy after growth in services and manufacturing weakened,
underscoring challenges for the nation’s leaders as they open the annual session of parliament tomorrow.
Expansion in industries including retailing, transport and banking, was the slowest in five months in February, an
official survey of purchasing managers showed yesterday. Gauges released two days earlier pointed to
manufacturing growth cooling.
Premier Wen Jiabao will outline economic policies at the start of the National People’s Congress in Beijing as the
government grapples with sustaining a recovery from the slowest growth in 13 years without triggering a
resurgence in consumer and asset-price inflation. While the government has pledged to boost incomes and
consumption, last week’s decision to intensify a three-year crackdown on the property market may damp the
nation’s rebound.
“China’s recovery is mostly based on fiscal and monetary stimuli unleashed in the fourth quarter of 2012 mainly
through infrastructure investment and a housing market recovery,” said Shen Jianguang, chief Asia economist at
Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. in Hong Kong. “The private sectors are still struggling with an overcapacity problem.”
Property Crackdown
Tougher property rules will slow down the “positive impact” that rising housing market activity has had on the
economy in recent months, said Shen, who previously worked at the International Monetary Fund and European
Central Bank. “However, the government can’t tolerate further price increases.”
A services industries gauge fell to 54.5 in February from 56.2 in January, the National Bureau of Statistics and
China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said yesterday.
The federation’s manufacturing PMI released March 1 dropped to 50.1, the weakest level in five months, while a
separate gauge from HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics fell to a four-month low of 50.4. Readings above
50 indicate expansion while those below signal a contraction. HSBC will release its services index tomorrow.
The PBOC is “fully confident of controlling inflation this year,” Deputy Governor Yi Gang said in Beijing yesterday.
While the nation faces “some” pressure, he estimated the consumer- price index will rise about 3 percent in 2013,
compared with 2.6 percent last year.
Inflation Goal
Premier Wen may announce an inflation target in his speech tomorrow. Policy makers aim to keep consumer-price
gains at about 3.5 percent, Bloomberg News reported in December, citing two bank executives and a regulatory
official briefed on the matter. Wen set a goal of 4 percent for 2012.
Moderating inflation this month will relieve pressure for tightening, Song Guoqing, an academic adviser who sits
on the central bank’s monetary policy committee, said March 2.
Song, one of three academics who sit on the PBOC’s monetary policy committee, said inflation will be “relatively
low” this month due to slowing food-price gains. Compared with January and February, the pressure for tightening
monetary policy and macro- economic controls “has in my view been relieved,” he said at a forum in Beijing.
Song, a Peking University professor who studied economics at the University of Chicago, was appointed a central
bank adviser in March 2012. The People’s Bank of China has limited powers, with the State Council having the final
say on interest- rate moves. The nation has kept benchmark borrowing costs on hold since July last year. The key
one-year lending rate is 6 percent.
Price Gains
Consumer inflation eased to 2 percent in January from a year earlier after a 2.5 percent increase the previous
month, government data show. UBS AG estimated February’s rate was 3.3 percent while Mizuho forecast 3
percent, as a Lunar New Year holiday pushed up food prices, according to reports last week. The statistics bureau
will release the data on March 9.
The PBOC drained cash from the financial system in each of the two weeks after the holiday that ended on Feb.
15, boosting speculation that it was tightening amid concerns inflation will accelerate and real-estate price gains
are excessive.
The central bank withdrew a net 5 billion yuan ($803 million) last week and 910 billion yuan the previous week,
the most since Bloomberg started compiling the data in 2008. It sold repurchase contracts for the first time since
June on Feb. 19, taking out funds from banks after they lent the most in two years in January.
Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said on March 1 the funds were drained to remove cash injected before the Lunar New
Year festival, according to a report on the Securities Times website that day.
Economic Growth
China’s economy expanded 7.9 percent in the final three months of 2012 from a year earlier, the first pickup in
two years. The pace may accelerate to 8.2 percent in the three months through March before slowing to 8 percent
in the fourth quarter, according to the median estimates in Bloomberg News surveys in February.
The property curbs detailed March 1 come as China prepares to complete a once-a-decade leadership handover.
Communist Party chief Xi Jinping is set to become president and Li Keqiang will replace Wen as premier at the end
of the NPC. Among the challenges they will inherit are environmental degradation, widening income inequality
and surging home prices that have put ownership beyond the reach of millions.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Xin Zhou in Beijing at xzhou68@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Panckhurst at ppanckhurst@bloomberg.net
Print
Signs of nightmare scenario in China's latest economic data (South China
Morning Post)
Alarming declines in export orders and job prospects on the mainland conjure a vision of dark economic times that
some say are already here
Tom Holland
http://www.scmp.com/business/article/1173842/signs-nightmare-scenario-chinas-latest-economic-data
There is a nightmare scenario for China's economy, and it looks something like this:
With the euro zone sunk in recession and high unemployment in the United States depressing household
consumption, weak international demand weighs heavily on China's export sector.
Anxious to maintain growth rates and job creation, the authorities in Beijing sanction an increase in domestic
credit in the hope that easier access to funding will encourage firms to step up their pace of investment.
New lending, both directly by the country's state-owned banks and indirectly through shadow-system institutions
like trust companies, duly surges.
Unfortunately, things don't quite work out as Beijing intended. With many industries already suffering from
overcapacity following the 2009 to 2010 investment binge and profit margins under pressure as a result,
companies, especially in the private sector eschew further capital spending on new capacity.
Instead, borrowers channel the funds into high-risk speculations in the property, commodity and equity markets.
Asset prices pick up smartly, creating the impression of a robust economic recovery.
Meanwhile, with the credit taps open once again, local officials seize the opportunity to launch prestige
infrastructure and property development projects in the hope of advancing their own careers. The number of
unproductive vanity projects mushrooms.
The consequence is a rapid rise in liquidity, which soon pumps up dangerous asset price bubbles and consumer
price inflation.
At the same time, with company profits suffering, employment prospects deteriorate.
Consumption among those not lucky enough to be riding the asset bubbles stalls, and real economic growth slows
deeply. Suddenly China's leaders find themselves in one of the nastiest situations economic policymakers can face:
stagflation.
If they keep the credit taps open, the asset bubbles and the inflation rate will only get worse. If they close off the
supply of credit and tighten monetary policy, growth will slow even further, asset prices will collapse, and they run
the risk that many of the new loans will turn bad, triggering a banking crisis that could weigh on growth rates for
years to come.
That's the nightmare scenario, and some of the gloomier private sector economists believe that's exactly the
direction in which China is now heading.
It is always a mistake to read too much into one data point, especially when it straddles the Lunar New Year, but
over the last few days, a number of analysts have noted the alarming deterioration in export orders and
employment prospects that showed up in the manufacturing purchasing managers' indices for February (see the
first chart).
At the same time, credit growth, especially through the non-bank shadow market, continues to expand rapidly
(see the second chart), helping to lift property prices.
If this really is the nightmare scenario unfolding, however, don't expect to see the evidence showing up in China's
headline growth and inflation figures.
On past experience, Beijing's number crunchers will take the economy's figures for nominal growth, and adjust
the deflator they apply (which they don't disclose to the world at large) to show a solid real growth rate and a
modest implied economy-wide inflation rate.
If that prospect is too pessimistic for you, I should point out that there is a handful of even gloomier analysts who
believe the nightmare is already upon us, and that China's real growth rate last year was closer to 5 per cent than
the official 7.8 per cent rate announced in January, while the true inflation rate was far higher than official
numbers imply.
Let's hope it's all just a bad dream.
tom.holland@scmp.com
Online
Why China's State-Owned Companies Make More Cars Than They Can Sell
(adage.com)
China Changan Group Can Make 700,000 Vehicles a Year, Sells 15,000
By: Yang Jian Published: February 28, 2013
http://adage.com/article/global-news/china-s-state-owned-car-makers-care-overcapacity/240088/
Overseas observers often fret about overcapacity in China's auto industry.
But the problem afflicts few foreign automakers or private Chinese companies. At least three state-owned
automakers, though, have amassed huge surplus capacity and are in no hurry to reduce it.
Why? Because the state-owned companies have no reason to align output with demand. They subsist on
government subsidies and profits generated by their joint ventures with foreign automakers.
State-owned China Changan Group Co. is in the worst shape. Two of its subsidiaries, Hafei Automobile Industry
Group Co. and Jiangxi Changhe Automobile Co., can build as many as 700,000 small cars and microvans, yet they
sold only 15,000 units last year because of bad management and poor quality.
Chery Automobile Co., China's largest vehicle exporter, has four assembly plants with a total capacity of 900,000
vehicles. Yet it sold fewer than 500,000 units last year.
Other state-owned companies are in bad shape, too. FAW Car Co. could produce 400,000 vehicles annually, but
it sold only 205,000 cars last year.
If these automakers were private, none could survive. But because they are state-owned, they enjoy close ties
with local governments that favor them with huge subsidies.
Take Chery. Operating far below its capacity, the company has lived on government subsidies of $65 million a
year. Likewise, Hafei and Changhe receive local subsidies from Heilongjiang and Jiangxi provinces. They also are
propped up by the Changan Group, which gets financial support from the central government.
State-owned automakers also have been kept alive by their joint ventures with foreign automakers. FAW Car, for
instance, has suffered huge losses over the past year. But its corporate parent rakes in profits from joint ventures
with Volkswagen and Toyota.
In addition to the big state-owned automakers such as Changan or FAW, dozens of small state-owned automakers
make very few vehicles. They all survive on local government subsidies.
Keeping these inefficient automakers alive eats up taxpayers' money. But China is not a democracy. The
government can use tax revenues to keep these companies alive as long as it wants.
--Automotive News China--
The ‘Pi’ Effect: How Ang Lee Boosted Taiwan’s Movie Industry (THE WSJ CHINA
REAL TIME REPORT BLOG)
March 1, 2013
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/03/01/the-pi-effect-how-ang-lee-boosted-taiwans-movie-industry/?
mod=WSJBlog
In Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi,” protagonist Pi didn’t expect to find a tiger on his boat, at first struggled to survive, but
in the end emerged for the better. The same might be said of Taiwan, whose fledgling film industry the movie’s
Oscars have thrown into the spotlight.
More than half of the movie, based on the Man Booker Prize-winning novel by Yann Martel, was shot in Taiwan
over five months in 2011. Mr. Lee has said that his choice to film there made economic sense and allowed him
more flexibility than Hollywood. Indeed, in Taiwan, modest movie budgets are the norm, and local filmmakers and
production crews often take pride in pragmatic problem-solving.
But it wasn’t an easy ride. Mr. Lee has called the movie “a test of faith.” It took four years and 3,000 people to
make. The film also tested its 100-odd Taiwan crew members. They converged in the central Taiwan city of
Taichung along with Mr. Lee’s Hollywood team, which included members of visual-effects company Rhythm &
Effects (the company last month filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S.). The crews occupied the
disused Taichung Shuinan Airport, turning hangars into sound stages, and a runway into the site for a 6,750-ton
water tank, used to shoot the scenes of Pi stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger.
According to several of the companies that worked on the film, Mr. Lee’s exacting standards were an eye-opener
for the local team, and the impetus for Taiwan’s film industry to step up its game.
Take Babylon Pool Systems Co., a Taichung-based company that engineers waves mostly for waterparks. Hired
to simulate ocean waves for the film’s lifeboat scenes, the company presented Mr. Lee with a dozen or so options
that mimicked various weather conditions.
See more on this story at Scene Asia
An Entrepreneur’s Bone-Chilling Story Of China Business And Betrayal Writ Not
So Large. (chinalawblog.com)
By Dan Harris on March 1st, 2013
http://www.chinalawblog.com/2013/03/an-entrepreneurs-bone-chilling-story-of-china-business-and-betrayalwrit-not-so-large.html
I started the Inc. Magazine story, “Betrayed in China: One Entrepreneur’s Hard Journey East,” with much
anticipation. The writer of the story had interviewed me a bit regarding the story (and I show up in the sidebar
at the end) so I knew him to be a really sharp guy with an penchant for accuracy and detail. And I just loved the
sub-title: “Adam Kasha was proud of his from-the-gut approach to doing business in China. Then his partnership
with a Chinese trading agent went spectacularly bad, and he realized he was being taught a hard lesson in how
things actually work.”
I knew it would have gems for those doing business in China and, more importantly, I was salivating at the
thought of being able to add adding it to the following pantheon of our “writ large” posts:
China Polyester Writ Large.
Fake Pens In China Write/Writ Large
Barbie In China Writ Large
One Small China Restaurant Writ Large. Really Large.
China Truck Manufacturing Writ Large As Global Trade Microcosm.
China Suburbanization Writ Large
China Traffic Laws As Government Policy Writ Large. Channeling Benjamin Cardozo
China Face. China Heart. Gaming And Internet Businesses Writ Large.
Floating Houses, Conflicting Laws, And Really Nice Governmental Officials. China Law Practice Writ Large.
Now I am not so sure. It makes for great reading, no doubt, but I am just not sure how much it really applies to
doing business in China.
The first 2/3 of the story read like a primer on how not to do business in China. As I was reading that portion, I
kept thinking of how it would make a great business school case study of how to set yourself up for failure in China.
Our erstwhile hero’s mistakes were almost too many to bear. This cannot end well, I kept thinking.
But then, just as the protagonist’s back was against the proverbial wall worse than it had ever been before, he
(Adam Kasha) pulls a rabbit out of a hat and all of a sudden starts realizing that he can no longer deal with his
Chinese counterparties as though they are just like the people he knows in Ann Arbor, Michigan. No, a wiser Mr.
Kasha is going to go “all native” on us now heed the advice he was given in 2002 by the Chinese man he is now
fighting: “When doing business in China, trust no one.” Or as, Mr. Kasha somewhat more subtly puts it, he now
realizes that “what trust amounted to for an American in China …. [is] created by the possibility of future business,
or by a financial incentive. That wasn’t really trust. It was a practical, amoral trellis to help the little green vine of
trust grow.”
Spoiler Alert: Mr. Kasha becomes a Machiavellian-esque tactician, outwits his Chinese partner, and saves the
day/the shipments/his company’s relationship with Wal-Mart.
Does it make for a great story? Yes. Are there lessons to be learned from this story, beyond the level of trust
one should display? Probably. Are there lessons to be learned from The Dark Knight? There are, but as a
simple China lawyer, I am just not sure I am the one to be dishing them out. And since it is late on Friday, I am
not even going to try.
So I turn to you, dear readers, for some help on this. What are the takeaways from the Mr. Kasha goes to China
story? Or were his mishaps so obvious and his comeback so fact-specific that the story’s value resides solely with
its literary merit?
China's Broadband Fees
(chinatechnews.com)
Drop
30%
As
More
Households
Come
Online
March 1, 2013
http://www.chinatechnews.com/2013/03/01/19156-chinas-broadband-fees-drop-30-as-more-households-com
e-online
More Chinese netizens have access to faster Internet from their homes, according to latest figures.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China just held a webinar in Beijing covering the growth
of broadband services. During the meeting, Miao Wei, minister of MIIT, said that in 2012, China's fiber to the
home project entered over 49 million new families' homes, reaching a total number of 94 million total households
now covered.
At the same time, the number of fixed broadband Internet users increased by 25.1 million to a total of 175 million.
The country also added 19,000 broadband sites in rural areas to expand the broadband popularization. The ratio
of broadband users using a bandwidth of 4M or above increased by 23% to now reach over 63%.
Over the past 12 months, many cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou implemented free bandwidth upgrade
projects. For example, China Unicom's broadband users in Beijing who formerly use a 2M bandwidth enjoyed the
upgrade to 4M for free. Meanwhile, the broadband fee was indirectly lowered by binding the broadband with
mobile phone services. Some small- and medium-sized Internet service providers even launched lower service
fee options to compete with mainstream providers.
According to Miao, the average broadband fee decreased by over 30% in 2012, which improved the cost
effectiveness of broadband services in China.
In 2013, MIIT will launch a broadband special campaign, aiming to add 35 million fiber to the home users; over
25 million fixed broadband Internet users; and 18,000 rural broadband sites. Moreover, the government ministry
will focus on broadband access or upgrades for 5,000 schools in poor rural areas, and it expects to raise the ratio
of 4M or above bandwidth users to over 70%.
China's Baidu Unveils Group Buying Service (chinatechnews.com)
March 3, 2013
http://www.chinatechnews.com/2013/03/03/19171-chinas-baidu-unveils-group-buying-service
Following the launch of its group buying navigation service, Chinese search engine Baidu Inc. has now launched
its group buying business T.baidu.com, which is currently only available in Beijing.
This new business is reportedly being managed by Baidu's LBS department.
Baidu has been struggling over the past year as it has seen its market capitalization drop by more than 30% to
now sit around USD32.4 billion.
So far, the construction of Baidu's group buying site has not yet been completed and the related service is only
available for users in Beijing. The new site has five channels, including restaurants, beauty, entertainment,
lifestyle services, and travel.
For payment, Baidu's group buying currently cooperates with banks, but has not yet teamed with third-party
payment service providers. Baidu's own payment platform is also unavailable on the website.
The subdomain T.baidu.com formerly belonged to Baidu's social product, which was terminated by Baidu in
August 2011.
Prior to this, Baidu separated the group buying navigation service from its comprehensive website navigation site
Hao123.com in June 2011.
Youku-Tudou Made
(chinatechnews.com)
Net
Losses
Of
USD18.2
Million
In
Q4
2012
March 4, 2013
http://www.chinatechnews.com/2013/03/04/19161-youku-tudou-made-net-losses-of-usd18-2-million-in-q4-2
012
Chinese Internet video provider Youku-Tudou Group announced its unaudited financial report for the fourth
quarter and the entire year of 2012.
According to the report, the company's net income during the fourth quarter was CNY635.8 million, which was
about USD102.1 million, and it was a year-on-year increase of 30%. At the same time, the company reported net
losses of CNY113.6 million, which was about USD18.2 million; while the net losses decreased by 43% compared
with 2011.
The report also showed that Youku-Tudou's comprehensive gross profit in the fourth quarter of 2012 was
CNY116.3 million, a year-on-year increase of 60%. Its purchase of tangible assets like fixed asset equipment
reached CNY24.4 million. Its purchase of intangible assets reached CNY111.1 million.
For the entire year of 2012, Youku-Tudou's comprehensive net income was CNY1.8 billion and its net losses were
CNY424 million.
By December 31, 2012, the company's cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments reached a total of
CNY3.8 billion.
China to Have 60 Million 4G LTE Subscribers By 2016 (techinasia.com)
Mar 3, 2013
by C. Custer
http://www.techinasia.com/china-60-million-4g-lte-subscribers-2016/
On Friday, Telecommunications Research Institute expert Mo Yi announced new forecasted data which predicts
China will have 60 million 4G TD-LTE subscribers by 2016, and will account for around 40 percent of the world’s
TD-LTE users. That certainly sounds like good news for China Mobile, the company that will be operating the
nation’s TD-LTE network.
It also seems like a pretty optimistic proposal for a nation that doesn’t even have a 4G network right now. But
China Mobile has been waiting for years to roll out its TD-LTE network and has test stations in many major cities
already. There are signs that Chinese authorities may permit the operation of a commercial TD-LTE network
before the end of this year. If that happens — and it’s still definitely an if — that would give China Mobile’s network
two full years to grow into that 60 million number.
But could the network grow fast enough? Assuming the network is launched late this year or early in 2014, China
Mobile would need to average around 2.5 million new subscribers each month to hit the 60 million mark within two
years. If we look at the company’s 3G growth numbers, that certainly seems possible; the company added more
than seven million users this past January alone.
Ultimately, though, whether or not 4G catches on will likely depend as much on the pricing as anything else. China
Mobile’s 4G plan in Hong Kong costs between HK$48 and HK$188 ($6-$24) per month, which is pretty affordable,
but the plans for mainland China are likely to be priced differently, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Youku Tudou Sees Narrowing Losses in First-Ever Post-Merger Financials
(techinasia.com)
Mar 1, 2013
by Steven Millward
http://www.techinasia.com/youku-tudou-2012-q4-financials/
It’s over six months since the merger between China’s top two video-streaming sites was approved by
shareholders, so the newest financial report for Q4 and full-year 2012 is the first one ever from the merged entity
that has the rather awkward name Youku Tudou (NYSE:YOKU). The financials reveal narrowing losses for the
company, which retains its two separately-branded video sites.
Q4 revenues were US$102.1 million, up 30 percent from the final quarter of 2011. But it all amounted to a net loss
of $18.2 million for the final three months of last year – though that was at least down 43 percent from 2011 Q4.
Chairman and CEO Victor Koo looked on the bright side, highlighting that the losses had “narrowed materially
despite sales disruption brought on by the reorganization of our sales team after the merger.” He added that the
company is “optimistic that the second half of 2013 will see more revenue growth momentum and cost synergies”
as the Youku and Tudou sites look to cut down on overlap, especially on things like pricey licensed video content.
Before then, Youku Tudou is aiming at “between RMB 480 million and RMB 520 million” ($76.5 million to $82.8
million) in revenues for 2013 Q1.
Focusing on the sites and their content, Dele Liu, Youku Tudou’s president, hailed a growing mobile user-base as
well as “ongoing growth in traffic” in general.
The merged company, across its two sites, sees as many as 310 million unique viewers each week who generate
1.6 billion hours of video each month. Comscore reckons that Chinese netizens watched a total of 4.1 billion hours
of videos, TV shows, and movies in just one month last summer.
Youku and Tudou are up against a number of strong rivals from major Chinese web companies, such as Baidu’s
iQiyi, Tencent Video, and SohuTV.
Baidu Handles 5 BILLION Search Queries Per Day (techinasia.com)
Mar 1, 2013
by Anh-Minh Do
http://www.techinasia.com/baidu-handles-5-billion-per-day/
Latest stats from Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU): they’re handling over five billion search queries per day.
Okay, let’s look at what that five billion means first. As Kaiser Kuo, director of international communications at
Baidu, stated:
That figure includes search queries on all of our vertical search areas, our community sites, our Baidu Union
partner sites, across all devices. Of course the overwhelming majority of those are from China, but we do have
searches from on average over 130 countries.
Thus, this staggering number consolidates every search query across all Baidu domains. Nevertheless, that’s still
bigger than what I estimate to be Google.com’s daily search queries, which is based on a release from Search
Engine Land August last year, nailing Google search queries at 100 billion per month. If my math’s right, that
means about 3.3 billion per day.
I’ve reached out to Google for their numbers, but no response as yet.
Keep in mind, this does not include Google’s many other domains like Youtube, Gmail, Google Apps, and more.
But it’s still a lot.
Dear Apple, Amazon, Google: Here’s Why Chinese Consumers Hate Your
Ecosystems (techinasia.com)
Mar 1, 2013
by Steven Millward
http://www.techinasia.com/apple-google-why-chinese-consumers-hate-tech-ecosystems/
Chinese consumers love your gadgets – that’s great news. But the bad news for Apple, Amazon, Google, and
many more companies is that Chinese netizens hate your ecosystems. They really don’t want to be trapped in
your walled garden. In an age of platforms and extended web services, that’s a huge monetization problem for
tech companies entering the world’s biggest market.
Android, without the Google bits
This aversion to tech ecosystems in China is seen most starkly with Google’s mobile OS, Android. An estimated
189 million smartphones were sold in China in 2012, and as many as 86 percent of those were Android devices.
But that huge user-base hasn’t translated into popularity for Google’s other apps and services.
Why not? Google has long had a rough ride in China, starting with the Great Firewall blocking YouTube back in
2007 – never to become accessible again. Many more Google services were later turned off by Net Nanny, as
some scandal or spread of information made it more convenient for authorities to shut down these channels. Later
the GFW blocked Picasa, Blogger, the AppSpot engine. More recently, some apps that are much more central to
Android, like G+ and Google Drive, got blocked as well. That certainly hasn’t helped Google’s ecosystem, but I
don’t believe it’s the leading cause of Chinese consumers being keen to remove the Google bits from Android.
Far more crucial to this ecosystem aversion is something indicative of a healthier side of the Chinese web – lots
of quality competition. Regardless of the Great Firewall or anything else, Chinese consumers love to pick and
choose and mix and match – and get the best deal. We’re talking about consumers who’ll haggle for an hour to
save a dollar. And so if there are better apps and services out there, then screw your ecosystem. For cloud storage,
Chinese smartphone users could install apps from Baidu, or Shanda, or numerous startups. Over 30 million users
have opted for Baidu NetDrive already.
Same for email. Same for web video.
It even applies to sourcing Android apps, with Chinese Android fans choosing to scour a wide range of third-party
app stores for games and apps rather than using Google Play.
All that freedom of choice reinforces the general dislike among Chinese netizens of being locked in a walled garden.
Using Android generally demands having a Google account and having a Gmail address – but not every user wants
to be coralled into this.
Apples are not the only fruit
Apple might have been pushed down to an ignominious sixth place in terms of smartphone sales in China recently
– well below Android handset makers like Samsung and Lenovo – but the iPhone and iPad are still examples of an
astonishing gadget success in the country. Yet the whole Apple ecosystem hasn’t been so warmly embraced.
This is despite Apple having built up the most rigid ecosystem (probably an oxymoron, as ecosystems are fluid
and adaptive in nature) that mandates having an Apple ID, syncing via iTunes, and not customizing your phone’s
UI in any meaningful way. Almost inevitably, a lot of Chinese iOS owners have flipped the bird at all these
restrictions and – as is the case on Android – have been greeted with plenty of locally-made resources that can be
used as alternatives.
For example, those who dislike iTunes as a domineering music player and App Store combo can instead try out
iTools, which is made by a Shenzhen-based startup.
Admitedly, piracy is also an issue, and for some people it’s a motivation in opting out of Apple’s restrictive
environment. As we explored recently, there are lots of piracy and jailbreaking resources in China for iPhone and
iPad owners.
But ultimately, as with Android, the Apple ecosystem aversion is mostly down to Chinese consumers being keen
on using things from local competitors, even if – in avoiding iTunes, iCloud, etc – it makes their experience more
fragmented and involves signing up for a bunch of different apps.
Who cares about the Kindle?
All of this bodes very badly for Amazon. Just because Amazon is a huge name and runs China’s fifth-largest
e-commerce site, it doesn’t mean that Chinese netizens want to jump aboard its broader hardware and web
platform. In fact, all available evidence suggests a strategic nightmare ahead.
Amazon has launched its Kindle e-bookstore and apps in China but it has not yet launched other cloud services or
any hardware here. Since Amazon makes some of the most locked-down hardware, and its Kindle Fire tablet is a
parallel-universe version of Android, it sounds like a potential disaster as a raw example of a product that’s totally
unsuited to the Chinese market. Yes, China loves Android, but only in its own image. The Amazon AppStore
sounds like a no-go here as well.
The hardware, too, will be coming into a market dominated by well-established local rivals who already have
e-bookstores linked to their e-readers, such as with Shanda’s Bambook or Dangdang’s Doucon.
Be water, my friend
Yes, it’s a tough market. But openness seems to be massively important – both to Chinese consumers, and to a
company’s chance of success in this market. While the Android situation might sound bad, it’s still great for Google.
The search giant can still say to developers: “Hey, come develop for Android, because Chinese smartphone buyers
love it. Yes, there’s piracy and they refuse to use Google Play, but you can still monetize from ads – yes, our own
ad platform – and you still get access to the world’s biggest smartphone market.” I believe it’s only a flexible and
adaptive ecosystem – like Android – that can perform such a feat. Plus, Android is responsive on hardware
price-points, and adaptable and customizable at a software level.
It’s rougher for Apple in China, where the company’s you’re either with us or against us approach to their users
often forces many to jailbreak, where they’re then more likely to become app pirates. From that point onward,
Apple has no more means of monetizing those users on its platform.
It’s also a cautionary tale for Microsoft in China as it starts afresh with Windows Phone. As established as Microsoft
is in China, it’s still in no position to enforce Hotmail/Outlook as a starting point for WP users, and its Marketplace
for apps risks being as restrictive as Apple’s.
Of course, local web companies are not immune to all this. China’s biggest e-commerce company, Alibaba, has
been met with a frosty reception with its attempt at a mobile OS of its own – and that’s despite having hundreds
of millions of local users on its online stores. The nation’s top search engine, Baidu, is also finding it tough to
persuade its search users to try out its apps ecosystem – like Baidu Maps, which lags behind local mapping
experts Autonavi in terms of users – in the face of strong competition in every single sector. That leaves China’s
numerous web giants scrapping over users for every single app and service – it’s unrelentingly rough, but it’s the
only way.
So my advice on pushing your tech ecosystem in China is, essentially, to listen to Bruce Lee: Be water, my friend.
(Lead image credit: Our photoshop contains this sketch from DeviantArt)
Hugo Boss Follows the Money to China, Launches Own E-Commerce Store
(techinasia.com)
Mar 1, 2013
by Steven Millward
http://www.techinasia.com/hugo-boss-launches-ecommerce-store-china/
In the giant shopping mall that is China’s internet, luxury brands need to have a well-crafted online presence to
catch the attention of China’s quite young midde class. That’s why fashion brand Hugo Boss (ETR:BOSS) launched
a new Chinese online store this week that promises next-day delivery in major cities, and gives the option of
cash-on-delivery for 200 cities nationwide.
Hugo Boss has decided to follow its own path with this standalone website and store, rather than opting to open
a virtual storefront on a major Chinese e-shopping platform, such as Tmall. The down-sides for Hugo Boss include
less passing traffic and the risk of not being visible enough in Chinese search engine results.
As spotted by JingDaily, Hugo Boss is following the lead of other fashion brands, like Coach and Zara, in opening
standalone e-commerce sites in the country.
Along with e-commerce storefronts, luxury brands need to do some imaginative social media outreach in order to
reach younger consumers. According to the recent ‘Digital IQ Index’ report, fashion labels like Coach, Dior, and
Burberry are doing the best social marketing in China.
(Source: JingDaily)
Lei Jun: China’s Startup Scene Needs More Angel Investors (techinasia.com)
Mar 1, 2013
by C. Custer
http://www.techinasia.com/lei-jun-chinas-startup-scene-angel-investors/
Lei Jun wears a lot of hats (he’s Xiaomi CEO, the board chair at Kingsoft and an angel investor) and is one of the
most respected figures in China’s tech scene. As one of the wildly successful Xiaomi’s co-founders, he’s also
someone worth listening to when it comes to China’s startup scene. In a recent interview, the Beijing News asked
him what he thought the differences were between Silicon Valley and China. Here’s what he said:
The biggest difference in the startup environment between [China] and the US is that China doesn’t have enough
angel investors, and there is not enough money being invested.
Domestically, over the past couple of years there have been more and more angel investors, but it still hasn’t
become a major social trend. There are maybe 10,000 people in China doing angel investments, so there’s a big
difference between that and America. If China had a million angel investors, that would allow Chinese
entrepreneurs to really show off their talent.
Lei Jun is also a legislative representative to the People’s Congress this year. It’s largely a rubber-stamp congress
with little policy influence, but in the interview Lei Jun said he hopes to make adjustments to China’s corporate
laws that should make angel investing easier. Here’s hoping!
(Beijing News via Sina Tech)
Expose Blasts Qihoo 360 as ‘Cancer of the Internet’; Qihoo Denies Everything
(techinasia.com)
Mar 1, 2013
by C. Custer
http://www.techinasia.com/massive-expose-blasts-qihoo-360-cancer-internet/
China’s Qihoo 360 has a lot of enemies. I’m not just talking about Baidu, either; lots of net users dislike the
company for its dirty tactics and China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) has printed
publicly that the company has engaged in behaviors most people would call fraudulent. But a recent expose
conducted by an independent investigator and printed in the National Business Daily– supposedly the result of
months of investigation — suggests that Qihoo is doing an awful lot more than most of its users are even aware
of.
The National Business Daily (hereafter: NBD) report presents a laundry list of accusations about Qihoo software,
backing many of them up with illustrated screenshots demonstrating what’s going on behind the scenes. Among
the many allegations: that Qihoo’s 360 Safe Browser contains a massive security flaw that messes with users
Windows DLL files, that it can expose users’ passwords, that it tells users sketchy online payment sites are safe,
and that it is making connections the user isn’t aware of even when it’s just loading a blank page. The report also
contains more familiar charges like Qihoo products masquerading as official Microsoft patches, forcibly deleting
competitor products as “unsafe”, etc.
Qihoo 360 has categorically denied all of the allegations contained in the report in a post on its official BBS forums.
From Qihoo’s official translation of its response, provided to Tech in Asia by a Qihoo representative:
The article appears to be an “aggregation” of most of the past false allegations and claims made by our
competitors and our foes. It takes those claims from sources such as an “anonymous individual”, a person who
lost a lawsuit against us, and a former malware/virus creator, without any basic fact checking. It also completely
ignores all the clarification and statements Qihoo 360 has made regarding these false claims, and even ignore [sic]
high-profile court rulings in the past, in order to portrait [sic] a totally biased story against Qihoo 360. We are not
surprised that someone hates us so much that it [sic] keeps record of all those [sic] garbage and is willing to
recycle it in the public domain over and over again. It is not difficult to conclude that there has to be huge
economic interest of our foes behind such [an] outrageous attack. We take it very seriously!
In its statement, Qihoo also says that it has filed a complaint against NBD with GAPP (a government organ that
regulates the press) and that it plans to sue NBD in court, and will additionally sue “anyone who intentionally
spreads such rumor for defamation.”
When asked to respond directly to specific allegations contained in the report, a representative from Qihoo
refused, saying that previously published statements should serve as a sufficient response to any questions the
report raises. Later, however, the company did publish a number of clarifications that directly address some of the
report’s specific allegations.
It is clear that Qihoo’s management considers this report and other “attacks” to be related to its competitors. In
a public statement yesterday, Qihoo CEO Zhou Hongyi told reporters that the report and others like it were related
to Qihoo’s decision to enter the search engine field. Zhou said that the NBD report was an attempt to “smear”
Qihoo. “I think that the essence of this is that 360 decided to take on the big players in China,” he said, “as long
as we keep doing search, these kind of smear attacks will continue.”
Qihoo representatives declined to produce any evidence backing up the implication that its competitors are
somehow behind the NBD report. A Qihoo representative did link me to this article, which suggests that several
of the sources in the NBD report are being paid by Tencent to publish attacks about Qihoo. However, the article
contains no evidence to support these claims, and its author is an anonymous Tianya user identified only as
shengsheng72011.
After an extended exchange of emails with Tech in Asia, a Qihoo representative implied that Qihoo does have
evidence its competitors are behind the NBD piece, but declined to share any, writing: “Sorry mister, the
evidences are for the court proceedings.”
Although it obviously doesn’t contain any evidence of a connection to Qihoo competitors, the NBD report does
admit that the independent investigator making these claims is biased — he told the NBD he is openly opposed to
Qihoo 360, which he considers a “cancer” that should be “cut out” from the internet. His fundamental beef with
the company comes from what he interprets to be its frequent violation of the principle of least privilege. Least
privilege is a widely accepted computer programming concept that says that any given program should only be
automatically given access to what it needs to access to function. Qihoo, the investigator says, breaks this
principle frequently.
(You can think about “least privilege” sort of like a repair man: if he shows up to your house and you aren’t home
to let him in, he’ll generally just come back later instead of breaking in on his own. Software that ignores the
principle of least privilege is more like a repair man who just walks into your house and starts making repairs
whether you’re home and aware of his visit or not. The investigator who spoke with the NBD put it even more
bluntly: Qihoo is like a residential manager who, when he gets reports of a dog barking, just breaks into the house
and shoots the dog. In other words, the investigator is saying Qihoo’s software does way too much in the
background without making it clear what is happening and asking the users’ permission.)
Of course, the principle of least privilege is not a law, and even if Qihoo’s software is violating it, there isn’t
necessarily anything illegal about that. It does, however, raise privacy concerns for some users. Qihoo
representatives refused to respond to a direct query about whether or not the company’s software violates the
principle of least privilege.
As with most things relating to Qihoo these days, the NBD report has spiraled into a pretty ugly he-said she-said
mess. We’re a bit tired of that story here at Tech in Asia, so in the coming weeks, we’ll be conducting our own
investigation into Qihoo’s applications to try to assess what, if anything, they are doing wrong.
If you have expertise in web security and would like to assist in our investigation, please get it touch with us:
editors(at)techinasia(dot)com.
Chinese Celebrity Blogger Han Han Talks Weibo, WeChat, and Why User Numbers
Are Bullshit (techinasia.com)
Mar 1, 2013
by C. Custer
http://www.techinasia.com/chinese-celebrity-blogger-han-han-talks-weibo-wechat-user-numbers-bullshit/
It’s been quite a while since we talked about Han Han. The Chinese writer/blogger/race car driver has long been
known as one of China’s most popular — and most daring — web celebs, but he has been comparatively quiet over
the past year.
Late yesterday, he broke his silence on to share a short post on his blog in which he discusses his impressions of
Sina Weibo and Tencent’s WeChat. It’s a pretty interesting post, so we’ve translated select sections of it below for
you to enjoy (links added by us, though).
On Weibo Followers:
Personally I think weibo follower numbers are just a way of fooling both yourself and others. I won’t comment on
other people, but among my followers [he has more than 11 million], there are definitely plenty of zombies, and
weird and inactive followers. In short, there’s definitely some water content [i.e., padding in the numbers].
[...] The way some internet companies count things, this short essay is already 300,000 words long. If Weibo lasts
long enough, I look forward to the day when the first V user has more followers than there are Chinese internet
users, or even more followers than the world’s total population.
On Weibo Culture:
Weibo definitely has its advantages; it makes it harder to hide news stories, makes speech more free, and in some
very specific moments it’s the only thing you can use. But at the same time, it also makes us deceive ourselves;
if you say some sentence or some line is taken from your post and retweeted thousands of times, you feel like
everyone on the street is passing along your now-famous saying [...] and even the cacti in the Taklamakan desert
are talking about it.
[...] The state of things on weibo is actually a lot like Chinese society, one in a thousand people has a little bit of
an identity and the ability to speak out, four out of a thousand people are just trying to promote themselves, and
the other 990 are just grass people. When the wind blows dirt across grass, optimistic grass believes it is the wind
and pessimistic grass believes it is the sand. As for the last five people, they’re out pretending to be the
one-in-a-thousand [who can actually make an impact with their posts].
On WeChat Culture:
Now it’s much more likely that [I will] open WeChat instead of Weibo. My circle of friends is getting more and more
active, and a lot of the people around me who would fit into the group of 990 people [mentioned above] can find
more of a feeling that they actually exist in their friend circles on WeChat. At least on WeChat their posts will be
seen by the people who should see them, and it won’t be like being ignored and overlooked with zero reposts and
zero comments on Weibo.
On Tencent and Microblogging Also-Rans:
I’m not trying to come off as advertising for Tencent here; Tencent has also done some crappy things. And as far
as other websites’ weibo services [besides Sina and Tencent] [...] I suspect there are fewer active users on these
sites than there are people in my residential community.
On smartphones and life:
As a writer, taking a non-smartphone out with me is very necessary. I haven’t done enough, haven’t traveled far
enough. [...] This is just my personal mindset and reflection, but there are so many lively faces and beautiful
scenes [out in the world], I think this year I can waste less time looking at screens. These two “micro” services
[Weibo and WeChat] are good, but they can’t encroach too much on my life. The world is vast; if you’re Chinese
get out and have a look around.
When I wrote recently about the Weibo vs. WeChat war, a number of commenters expressed skepticism that the
two services were really competing given how different they are. In Han Han’s post, we can see that the services
compete at the basic level of fighting for users’ attention in the limited time they’re willing to spend on social
media, but I think Han Han’s point about how Weibo and WeChat make you feel is also a very important one.
Weibo can make you feel very important when a post goes viral, but that’s mostly an illusion. WeChat doesn’t offer
that same kind of thrill, but it does give the feeling of actually being heard to the many people who don’t have
massive followings on Weibo and have trouble getting anyone’s attention there.
Will Sina DNA stand in the way of its new Weibo ad system? (technode.com)
By Tracey Xiang on February 28, 2013
http://technode.com/2013/02/28/will-sina-dna-stand-in-the-way-of-its-new-weibo-ad-system/
Wang Gaofei, the newly assigned lead of Sina Weibo, revealed the self-serve bid-based ad system under test with
a screenshot (below) of the dashboard for advertisers. The picture shows it is CPM-based. It is estimated offerings
will include display ads shown next to the content of paid posts.
(See Image)
As early as the beginning of 2012 we heard that Sina was developing such a system, having verified accounts to
carry ads and sharing advertising revenues with them. Micro-task, a similar system launched later in September,
was taken as the result. (So did I.)It turned out it wasn’t what Sina was meant to make sense-making money with.
It echos what Charles Chao, CEO of Sina, said on the latest earnings conference call that they didn’t expect to earn
much money from Micro-task.
Having verified accounts in a revenue-sharing ad program is a sense-making move. There has been creative
content marketing on Weibo platform, in the same way with Micro-task, operated by third parties.
Sina DNA?
The screenshot would remind many of the advertising program, called “Sina Blog Ad Sharing Plan”, developed for
Sina Blog platform around 2008. It is an AdSense-like ad program that was meant to leverage the large pool of
celebrity-turned bloggers who were convinced to set up blogs on Sina Blog platform and started trying out the
cool-back-then thing.
Blogs who applied and were approved by Sina would show display ads on their homepages and articles pages. It
didn’t work out and was shut down later. Reasons? Many people would tell you that Sina is merely a media
company that doesn’t have DNA to make a tech tool perform well.
One of Sina bloggers disclosed that he received only 52.14 Yuan with over three million visits in the past years.
He blames the Sina system who showed baby and maternal products on his tech-themed blog. When it comes to
Weibo, outsiders, based on their knowledge about Sina, don’t believe it can do well in data-mining which would
help improve the performance of targeted ads.
(See Image)
the dashboard of Sina Blog Ad System
Another problem with Sina Blog, according to a friend of mine who was working at Sina Blog then, is bribery. Sina
Blog homepage and pop-up windows at the south-east corner of the screen, where a majority of readers access
blog articles, show links of articles selected by editors every day. Bloggers who wanted to get more publicity
started bribing editors to get placements on those pages.
It’s unknown why Sina would shut down the system altogether. Now, there are also placements on Weibo handled
by editors. Rumors about bribing Weibo editors are not rare to hear.
It is widely agreed that what helped Sina Weibo became popular and its core competence is the celebrity pool.
Weibo became so popular after the ordinary found that they could follow or kind of interact with celebrities they
otherwise had no way to approach. And Sina, as an experienced media operator, always knows what topics would
be attractive to audiences.
It’s no secret that Sina used the same way for promoting Sina Blog, leveraging famous people, to operate Weibo.
When Sina decided to build the Weibo, those editors were asked to persuade celebrities one by one to sign up to
it. Without its over eight hundred editors’ hard work, Sina couldn’t become one of the best media brands in China.
Does the failure of Sina Blog ad system tells the Sina DNA? If so, let’s wait till the official launch of the Weibo ad
system to see whether the mechanism designed can avoid the old problems.
Digital books cost way cheaper than the print in China but are not cheap to create
at all (technode.com)
By Tracey Xiang on February 28, 2013
http://technode.com/2013/02/28/digital-books-cost-way-cheaper-in-china-but-are-not-cheap-to-create-at-all/
Dangdang, one of the leading online book retailers in China, made 3 million Yuan in digital book sales in 2012 but
spent approaching 5 million Yuan in formatting text files received from conventional publishers, according to
Wang Xi, vice president of the company. He complained that what they got were half-products is frustrating.
Chinese publishers or other content providers would simply send e-book sellers plain text. Dangdang spends 100
– 200 Yuan on reorganizing the layout of an average book and up to 1000 Yuan for well-designed picture books.
Some digital book retailers, such as Tangcha and Duokan, may spend more on redesigning every single book,
purchasing fonts and the like.
If 5 million Yuan isn’t a big deal for a book seller like Dangdang, it must be a huge cost burden to everyone that
wants to offer up to millions of digital titles.
Another problem on cost with Dangdang is content licensing fees publishers ask are high and not based on the
book content but kind of on how eager they want to make one-time money. Publishers would ask a price for
several hundred titles no matter what books they are.
Duokan, an e-book platform that was acquired by Xiaomi last year, hasn’t turned a profit after having invested 30
– 40 million Yuan in formatting and helping publishers promote digital titles in its two-year history, disclosed by
Hu Xiaodong, its vice president. Not only would it do the formatting and layout for every book, but also do
marketing for third-party books on its own platform or through other marketing channels like social media.
There were only one thousand titles on sale in 2012 and Duokan hopes the number to grow to 20 thousand by
2014.
Duokan now has over 30 thousand paying users, out of seven million registered readers. The monthly sales are
about 30 thousand items that each is priced at around 8-9 Yuan, and more than half of first-time buyers would
purchase again. He concluded that one million paying users could help Duokan break even. He estimates there are
over 50 million reader pool in China to monetize and believes they can obtain the one million to pay on Duokan
platform.
CITIC Press, a publisher who also operates a digital book business, thinks the point is the poor performance of
digital sales. It’s no wonder publishers wouldn’t be willing to organize the layout of digital books for only several
hundred Yuan went to content providers for a whole year, according to Huang Peijian, head of the digital media
division of CITIC Press.
Digital sales are too low. It is said, on average, only 1% of total sales with publishers are from digital sales. Motie
is one of the few that performed better with a 10% in the digital sales.
CITIC PRESS started distributing digital rights from 2010. Till last year it has returned 1% of its total revenues.
However, Huang Peijian seems patient, saying it takes time for digital book market to grow in China that even
Amazon’s entry cannot make a sudden change.
Luxury Goods: Meet the Experience Hunters (siliconhutong.com)
MARCH 1, 2013 BY DAVID WOLF
http://siliconhutong.com/2013/03/01/luxury-goods-meet-the-experience-hunters/
Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the Hutong
Warming-up a little
1453 hrs.
The Chinese New Year holiday is a period where many of China’s well-heeled consumers travel abroad, so it was
no surprise that CCTV ran a story on how many Chinese consumers use their trips not just for sightseeing and
relaxation, but for buying luxury goods. The national broadcaster took China’s 80 million international travelers to
task for spending $30 billion abroad last year buying luxury goods, and criticizing them for not spending that
money at home.
Laurie Burkitt at The Wall Street Journal picked up the story, noting that Chinese duties raise the price of Rolex
watches, Gucci shoes and Louis Vuitton purses between 30% and 50%. One can see why the government is
concerned: that’s somewhere between $9 billion and $15 billion in lost import duties, plus the lost value of rents,
income taxes for shop workers, etc. The brands are starting to realize where the bread is landing: Gucci is
apparently halting all domestic Chinese expansion plans.
Luxury is an Experience, not a Purse
The media coverage of this transnational luxury buying spree implies that a hunt for bargains is all that sends
these buyers abroad. Yet while price is doubtless an important motivator, there is more to it. What most analysts
– and probably a few brands – are missing is the unarticulated value luxury consumers place on the experience,
those intangible factors that makes buying the purse, the shoes, the watch, the dress so deeply satisfying.
One factor for Chinese in particular is mental comfort. It is not much fun consuming conspicuously in an
environment that heaps growing opprobrium on bling buyers. Better to go somewhere where your purchase is at
least taken in stride, if not celebrated. These days, that means buying in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, New York,
Beverly Hills, London, Paris, or Milan – not Beijing or Shanghai.
But there are other factors that make up the luxury buying experience, factors captured in such post-buying
questions as:
Where did I buy this?
What was the service like?
Did the salespeople make me feel at home?
Why was the experience special?
What was different about buying there than in China?
What was I able to get there that I couldn’t in China…or anywhere else?
Any and all of these factors have the potential add greater meaning to the purchase, make its acquisition more
gratifying, and deepen the relationship with the brand. Equally important, they add to the “show-off” or “shai”
value of the item. The new owner not only gets to show-off the bauble to her friends, she also gets an excuse to
relate the trip, the circumstances, and the feelings she took from the purchase process itself, all to the admiration
(or envy) of the people whose respect is important to her.
Some Brands Get It
On a vacation trip in 2008, my wife bought a limited-edition LeSportsac Tokidoki handbag designed by Simone
Legno at the LeSportsac store on Waikiki. The store was a delight, the location superb, the service was so good
that even my son and I felt good about coming into the store, and that is saying something. My wife had never
heard of Tokidoki before, but the whole experience of buying the bag was such a delight that she came back the
next day to buy one for her mom. To this day, five years later, she still talks about the bag, and has a deep affinity
for LeSportsac.
Christine Lu of Affinity China is out ahead of the industry. She has begun leading luxury shopping tours of the U.S.
for Chinese ladies that go beyond high-end store-hopping. Shops on Rodeo Drive, Park Avenue, and Waikiki are
prepared in advance, provide engraved invitations, put on private fashion shows with Chinese narration, serve
champagne and chocolates, and arrange to have purchases taken back to hotels while the ladies continue their
day. As a bonus, Christine will bring along a Chinese celebrity or two, and tweet/blog/weibo aggressively, raising
the profile of the trip and making mere attendance prestigious. The stores who work with her get it: the
experience is every bit as important as the quality or design of the items that go in the bag. Expect these kinds
of events to grow into a trend, traveling trunk shows where the groups come to the stores.
So all of this is interesting to be sure. Here is why it is important.
Today, it’s Price, but Tomorrow it Won’t Be
Understanding the non-price factors that drive Chinese to buy abroad is going to grow in importance. At some
point the Chinese government will figure out that it needs to take steps to keep the luxury dollar at home beyond
lame propaganda campaigns to shame buyers as unpatriotic. That will mean eliminating the price difference for
buying at home. Either the government will have to start levying duties at airports and ports of entry (insanely
hard to do and guaranteed to cause congestion at China’s overwhelmed airports and borders,) or they will need
to eliminate duties altogether.
It is anyone’s guess on which course Beijing chooses, economic logic notwithstanding. When that happens, luxury
brands will have their own choice to make: they can either play the zero-sum game, doing nothing and watching
overseas purchases slowly leech back into China; or they can play the growth gambit, sustaining patronage
overseas while building sales in China.
I’m betting the brands will want to do the latter, so I expect to see them taking steps to improve and even
differentiate the buying experience for Chinese luxury consumers. At the very least, we will see more luxury
stores with Chinese speakers and creating the kind of buying experiences that Affinity China is teaching them to
offer.
I expect it will (or should) go beyond that. The brands will realize that simply offering a cookie-cutter experience
in every store worldwide misses the point for their clientele. Each city, each store has to offer a different but
equally compelling experience that reflects the brand in a unique way. This starts with store layout, but also
speaks to decor, merchandise, and layout that reflects the location, and even offering items that are exclusive to
that store. Let’s face it: even Disneyland has learned to differentiate its parks worldwide. Can luxury brands be far
behind?
It is a truism (or should be one) that long after the price of an item is forgotten, the experience is remembered.
Price will bring China’s increasingly sophisticated luxury customers in your door, but the experience will form the
basis of a lasting relationship.
Politics & Law
Newswire
Protesters' land vigil continues in Shangpu, Guangdong (AFP)
Saturday, 02 March, 2013
Agence France-Presse in Beijing
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1167492/protesters-land-vigil-continues-shangpu-guangdong
Villagers were locked in a tense stand-off with police yesterday after angry protests over land rights.
Residents of Shangpu, in Guangdong province, have occupied the village square since last Friday amid claims that
corrupt officials were selling local land, the US-based Radio Free Asia website reported.
Right now, both sides are in a stalemate, but there is no more fighting. Police have blocked roads to keep other
people away
Hired thugs employed by local officials attempted to remove the protesters on Sunday, but were repelled in angry
scenes which saw 30 cars being smashed, RFA said.
Police arrived to clear the square and became caught up in the clash, it added.
Six people were arrested, said the website of the local Jiexi county government. Authorities have since called on
the protesters to clear the square.
Residents said demonstrators continued to occupy the square, in a protest echoing a dispute in nearby Wukan ,
which became a symbol of resistance against corruption last year.
A resident said: "Right now, both sides are in a stalemate, but there is no more fighting. Police have blocked roads
to keep other people away."
Another villager confirmed the road blockage and said 10 or more people had "suffered serious injuries" since the
tensions started. He said officials blamed the residents for the troubles.
Top Leaders Agree on Posts Ahead of China Congress (The Associated Press)
Feb. 28, 2013
http://world.time.com/2013/02/28/top-leaders-agree-on-posts-ahead-of-china-congress/
(BEIJING) — China’s top leaders circulated a list of future government officeholders who will be appointed at the
annual legislative session that starts next week and completes a once-a-decade leadership transition in the
world’s most populous nation.
A draft of an administrative reform plan to be discussed at next week’s National People’s Congress session was
also distributed at Thursday’s meeting of the ruling Communist Party’s Central Committee, which includes the
country’s top 200 officials.
March’s annual NPC meeting — the highlight of China’s political calendar — will see new Communist Party leader
Xi Jinping appointed as state president for the first of an expected two five-year terms.
Others to be appointed next week include the head of the NPC and its advisory body, the head of the supreme
court and top prosecutor, and government ministers, including those responsible for overseeing fiscal policy and
commerce. Urbanization, emission cuts and improved public services are also expected to be among the themes
of the session.
“We should deeply promote the separation between government administration and corporation management
and build a government with a nature of service that is … highly effective and loved by people,” said a
communique issued at the close of the Central Committee meeting chaired by Xi, who rose to the party’s top spot
at its national congress in November.
While the NPC session is largely an afterthought to the party congress, observers have been closely scrutinizing
it for indications that Xi plans to lead China in a new direction. So far, there have been few such signs, with the
59-year-old career party official hewing to his predecessors’ stance of promoting rapid economic development
while maintaining rigid one-party political control.
China’s top leaders are almost all drawn from among the most experienced and politically reliable of the party’s
more than 82 million members. While NPC members are allowed to vote to approve leading appointments, they
are given a choice of candidates and no open hearings are held.
China credits its system with maintaining order and economic growth, although liberal scholars and civic activists
say slowing growth and increasing anti-government protests may make the system untenable. Government
expenditure on domestic security already outstrips the national defense budget, and huge swathes of restive
western China that are home to the Tibetan and Uighur minorities are under lockdown.
China's graft-fighting Xi tells party future is on the line (Reuters)
By Ben Blanchard and Benjamin Kang Lim
BEIJING | Sun Mar 3, 2013
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/03/us-china-politics-xi-idUSBRE92202020130303
(Reuters) - China's ruling Communist Party will only be able to mark its 100th birthday in eight years time if
officials can learn from the selfless sages of the past, party chief Xi Jinping said in remarks published on Sunday,
taking another swipe at corruption.
Xi, who will take over the reins of state power from outgoing President Hu Jintao at this month's annual full session
of parliament, has made fighting pervasive graft a central theme since assuming the top job in the party and
military in November.
The Communist Party marks the 100th anniversary of its founding in 2021, one year before the second of Xi's two
five-year term ends and he steps down as party chief.
"Only if the capabilities of all party members unceasingly continue to strengthen, can the goal of 'two 100 years'
and 'the dream' of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people be realized," Xi said in a speech marking the 80th
anniversary of the Central Party School, which trains rising officials.
"Two 100 years" refers to both the party and the People's Republic of China lasting at least a century each.
The People's Republic turns 100 in 2049. The Communists swept to power and founded the republic in 1949 after
winning a civil war and forcing Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang, or Nationalist, troops to flee to Taiwan, which
Beijing still claims as its own.
The concept of "two 100 years" has been alluded to in state media over the past few weeks, but this is the first
time Xi explicitly mentioned it in his speech on Friday, which was carried in whole by the People's Daily, the party
mouthpiece.
Xi has warned in the past that corruption threatens the party's very survival and launched a campaign to prevent
waste and graft. He also banned the 2.3 million-strong People's Liberation Army from binge drinking and told it to
be combat- ready.
The Chinese leader peppered his latest speech with references to aphorisms from virtuous officials and
philosophers from ancient China, including Confucian philosopher Mencius (372 to 289 BC) and Zhuge Liang (181
to 234 AD), a statesman and strategist lauded to this day for his wisdom and devotion to his monarch.
"Leaders and officials must study China's fine traditional culture ... which contains extensive knowledge and
profound scholarship," Xi said.
"Spare no effort in the performance of one's duty until the end of one's days ... I will do whatever it takes to serve
my country even at the cost of my own life, regardless of fortune or misfortune to myself," he added, quoting two
classical texts.
But party members must also not forget the teachings of Karl Marx and late Chairman Mao Zedong, Xi said.
SURVIVAL
Stability and survival remain the Communist Party's watchwords as the world's second-largest economy grapples
with an upsurge of protests and social tensions over growing inequality, environmental degradation and graft.
Ensuring the party makes it to its 100th anniversary and does not go down as just a footnote in China's long
history is one of Xi's key challenges.
"Even the Nationalist Party is over 100 years," one source with ties to China's leadership told Reuters, referring to
Taiwan's ruling party and onetime rival to the Communists in running all of China which was founded in 1912.
"If the Communist Party cannot reach 100, it would only be a dot in China's 5,000-year history," the source said,
requesting anonymity to avoid any repercussions.
"The Communist Party turning 100 will be Xi's most important (set) event during his 10-year rule."
(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
A push for change in China as new leaders take the helm (Reuters)
By Ben Blanchard
YUANGUDUI, China | Sat Mar 2, 2013
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/02/us-china-parliament-idUSBRE9210D220130302
(Reuters) - For Chen Qiuyang, the new Chinese leadership that formally takes over this month can radically
improve her life by doing just one thing: providing running water in her village in a remote corner of the
northwestern province of Gansu.
"We have to carry water from the well on our shoulders several times day. It's exhausting," Chen, who looked
older than her 28 years, said in Yuangudui village, resting on a stool outside her home after completing another
trip to the well.
Communist Party chief Xi Jinping takes over as China's new president during the annual meeting of parliament
beginning on Tuesday and bridging the widening income gap in the vast nation is one of his foremost challenges.
Xi has effectively been running China since assuming leadership of the party and military - where real power lies
- in November, and has already projected a more relaxed, softer image than his stern predecessor Hu Jintao.
But there will be pressure on him to tackle problems accumulated during Hu's era like inequality and pervasive
corruption, which have given rise to often violent outbursts in the world's second-biggest economy, sending
shivers through the party.
Outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao will likely address these issues in his last "state of the nation" report at the National
People's Congress to nearly 3,000 delegates, whose ranks include CEOs, generals, political leaders and Tibetan
monks - as well as some of China's richest businessmen.
China now has 317 billionaires, a fifth of the total number in the world, and is on track to overtake the United
States as the largest luxury car market by 2016.
Yet the United Nations says 13 percent of China's 1.3 billion population, or about 170 million people, still live on
less than $1.25 a day.
While parliament is a regimented show of unity that affirms rather than criticizes policies, income redistribution is
likely to be a hot topic, along with other issues like ministry restructuring, corruption and the environment.
In January, the State Council, or cabinet, issued a new fiscal framework designed to make rich individuals and
state corporations contribute more to government coffers and strengthen a social security net for those at the
bottom.
But tackling China's wealth gap will need more than just taxes. Analysts say state-owned enterprises will have to
be privatized and the household registration, or hukou, system that prevents migrants from enjoying the benefits
of urban citizens, will have to be dismantled.
"Fiscal reforms and changes to let private firms advance and the state retreat will decide whether this round of
reforms can succeed," said Xia Bin, an economist at the cabinet think-tank Development Research Centre and a
former central bank adviser.
"There is definitely no way out," he wrote in the latest edition of China Finance, a magazine published by the
central bank.
HOT TOPIC
Many groups have said they will make sure that message is heard at the parliament, even though the session
typically acts more as a talking shop for decisions already made by the party rather than approving new laws. On
its closing day it will formally vote in Xi as the new president and Li Keqiang as new premier.
A group of private businessmen will meet on the sidelines to push for privatization of state firms, which they view
as a "vital second round of reforms", according to a person knowledgeable about their plans.
A separate forum for private steel producers will air grievances about preferential loan access for state firms, even
though the state firms were less profitable than their more flexible cousins in last year's volatile steel market.
The champions of the private sector argue that private firms generate nearly 60 percent of China's economic
growth and 75 percent of jobs.
Favoring state firms that thrive on political connections rather than market discipline skews the economy,
undermining future competitiveness, they say.
Some export-oriented companies have ceased manufacturing and are simply speculating in property or the grey
finance market.
"Private firms are having a hard time," said Xu Qing, general manager of Zhongbohong Urban Development Co,
a unit of privately owned property and investment firm Boao Hungkai Enterprise Group in Guangzhou.
"I believe top leaders have seen the problems and I'm cautiously optimistic about reforms."
Without reforms, China is at risk of falling into the "middle income trap" after three decades of breakneck growth,
the World Bank warned last year.
Growth in the world's second-biggest economy slowed in 2012 to a 13-year low, albeit at a 7.8 percent rate that
is the envy of other major economies.
The annual economic growth target is likely to be set at 7.5 percent for this year, the same as in 2012.
Many analysts believe China's growth will be nearer 5 percent than 10 percent by the end of this decade without
reform, making it even harder to tackle the gap between the rich and the poor.
LONG WAY
China's Gini co-efficient, a measure of social inequality, stands at 0.474 according to official estimates, well above
the 0.4 level that analysts view as the point at which social tensions may come to a head.
A 0 score on the Gini scale denotes perfect equality and 1.0 complete inequality.
For now, such statistics are a long way from Yuangudui, where government support boils down to repaving rutted
roads, building latrines and subsidizing planting of potatoes, a cash crop.
But the villagers are fully conscious of the inequality plaguing China, even if some of them had never heard of Xi
Jinping before he showed up last month on a visit.
Most young people have left for the provincial capital of Lanzhou, where they can make 1,000 yuan ($160) a
month as construction workers, far more than the income from farming.
"The rich get richer while we in the village are getting poorer," said Guo Lianying, 32, holding out his hands to
symbolize the growing gap.
"This is a problem the general secretary has to solve," he added, using Xi's formal title as Communist Party boss.
(Writing and additional reporting by Kevin Yao and Lucy Hornby; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
China says U.S. routinely hacks Defense Ministry websites (Reuters)
BEIJING | Thu Feb 28, 2013
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/28/us-china-usa-cyber-idUSBRE91R0C120130228
(Reuters) - Two major Chinese military websites, including that of the Defense Ministry, were subject to about
144,000 hacking attacks a month last year, almost two-thirds of which came from the United States, the ministry
said on Thursday.
This month a U.S. computer security company said that a secretive Chinese military unit was likely behind a series
of hacking attacks mostly targeting the United States, setting off a war of words between Washington and Beijing.
China denied the allegations and said it was the victim.
It has now provided some details for the first time of the alleged attacks from the United States.
"The Defense Ministry and China Military Online websites have faced a serious threat from hacking attacks since
they were established, and the number of hacks has risen steadily in recent years," said ministry spokesman Geng
Yansheng.
"According to the IP addresses, the Defense Ministry and China Military Online websites were, in 2012, hacked on
average from overseas 144,000 times a month, of which attacks from the U.S. accounted for 62.9 percent," he
said.
The comments were made at a monthly news conference, which foreign reporters are not allowed to attend, and
posted on the ministry's website.
Geng said he had noted reports that the United States planned to expand its cyber-warfare capability but that
they were unhelpful to increasing international cooperation towards fighting hacking.
"We hope that the U.S. side can explain and clarify this."
The U.S. security company, Mandiant, identified the People's Liberation Army's Shanghai-based Unit 61398 as the
most likely driving force behind the hacking. Mandiant said it believed the unit had carried out "sustained" attacks
on a wide range of industries.
The hacking dispute adds to diplomatic tension between China and the United States, already strained by Chinese
suspicion about Washington's "pivot" back to Asia and arguments over issues from trade to human rights.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Print
China divided on TV 'execution parade': judicial resolve or crude voyeurism (The
Guardian)
Two-hour broadcast showed four foreign prisoners being led to their deaths after being charged with murder of
Chinese sailors
Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing
guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 March 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/01/china-execution-parade-tv
Naw Kham's wry smile belied his macabre circumstances. "I haven't been able to sleep for two days. I have been
thinking too much. I miss my mum. I don't want my children to be like me," the 44-year-old Burmese druglord,
chained to a chair, told a Chinese TV interviewer.
On Friday – two days after the interview – the Burmese freshwater pirate was executed for allegedly murdering
a crew of Chinese sailors on the Mekong river in October, 2011. His last moments were aired on state television.
In the two-hour live broadcast, black-clad police officers hauled Naw Kham from a detention centre in southern
China, bound him with ropes and chains, and bundled him on to a bus bound for the execution site. Three of his
alleged henchmen followed in similar fashion. They were each killed – off camera – by lethal injection.
The broadcast elicited a polarised response in China. Some saw it as a reassuring show of judicial resolve; others
compared the TV special to a Mao-era "execution parade" – an unjustifiable transformation of somebody's last
moments into a crude propagandistic lesson.
Experts said the broadcast, which juxtaposed Naw Kham's final march with bold displays of Chinese judicial force
– armed Chinese patrol boats on the Mekong, rows of Swat police– was intended to convey an unambiguous
message.
"I think [the broadcast] is compatible with what the government wants– to show the Chinese people that the
government is serious about protecting them within the country and outside," said Shi Yinhong, a professor of
international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.According to official accounts, the Chinese sailors were
transporting fuel oil, apples and garlic along the busy Mekong shipping route in two cargo ships, the Hua Ping and
the Yu Xing 8,when they were ambushed near the Golden Triangle, a notoriously lawless area bordering Thailand,
Burma and Laos.
When Thai authorities reached the murder scene, they found 12 dead sailors – one on the boat, and 11 by a
nearby port – some of whom had apparently been blindfolded, gagged with duct tape and shot in the head at close
range. One had her neck broken. Another was missing. Nearly one million methamphetamine pills were found on
board.
Chinese web users reacted to the news with horror and Chinese authorities sent gunboats down the Mekong,
causing some to question China's long-standing foreign policy of non-interference in other countries' domestic
affairs. Shipping on the river briefly came to a halt.
Naw Kahm soon emerged as a prime suspect. China's official media portrayed the manhunt to find him – a
cross-border effort involving 200 people – as similar to the US search for Osama bin Laden. The state-run Global
Times reported last month that China's drug enforcement authorities considered using an unprecedented drone
strike to bomb him out of his mountain hideaway in north-eastern Burma. He was captured in Laos last spring and
promptly extradited.
State media identified Naw Kham's three henchmen as Hsang Kham from Thailand, Zha Xika from Laos and Yi Lai
of "unknown origin". The four prisoners were sentenced to death last autumn for intentional homicide, drug
trafficking, kidnapping and hijacking.
A high provincial court rejected their appeals, yet a Reuters investigation in early 2012 cast doubt on the
allegations and raised the possibility that a nine-man anti-narcotics unit within the Thai military was responsible
for the massacre.
On China's most popular microblogging site, Sina Weibo, response to the execution were firmly divided. Some
users praised the government's hard line on crimes against Chinese citizens abroad; others decried the live
broadcast as unnecessarily cruel and voyeuristic.
Lawyer Tao Jiamei called it an infringement of China's own criminal procedure law, which dictates that executions
"should be announced, but should not be publicly exposed".
Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said public executions were
fairly common in China until the early to mid-1990s. They were formally banned in 1979. "Sometimes, in the early
days, people were executed right away in stadiums," he said. "Then the practice actually shifted to taking these
people away, generally on a truck, to be executed elsewhere."
Human rights groups say China executes up to 8,000 people per year. The exact number is considered a state
secret.
Leadership Shift in China Hints at Path (The Wall Street Journal)
By JEREMY PAGE, BOB DAVIS and LINGLING WEI
March 3, 2013
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324539404578337730375477450.html
Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping, President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice Premier Li Keqiang
leave after attending the opening session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing on
Sunday.
BEIJING—China begins a Parliament meeting this week that will unveil the final personnel changes of a
once-a-decade leadership transition and provide some clues about the new administration's commitment to
address mounting social, economic and environmental problems that many Communist Party insiders fear are
eroding its grip on power.
Xi Jinping, who replaced Hu Jintao as Communist Party leader and military chief at the start of the succession
process in November, will assume his third, largely ceremonial post as state president during the meeting of the
National People's Congress, or NPC, which begins on Tuesday and is expected to last about 10 days.
Li Keqiang, who ranks number two in the new Party hierarchy, is due to replace Wen Jiabao as premier and chief
steward of the world's second-largest economy, and will face questions from local and foreign reporters for the
first time in that role during a news conference at the end of the Parliament meeting.
The roughly 3,000 deputies to the rubber-stamp Parliament are also expected to approve the merger of some
ministries, a GDP growth target of 7.5% for 2013, a substantial expansion of the military budget and
appointments to dozens of top state and government posts, according to analysts and diplomats.
Among the key personnel changes, Zhang Gaoli, another member of the Party's seven-man Politburo Standing
Committee—its top decision-making body—is expected to become executive vice premier and an influential figure
on the new economic team, according to one party insider with direct knowledge of the matter.
That person also said that Mr. Xi's successor as vice president was expected to be Li Yuanchao, the current head
of the Party's powerful Organization Department who has overseen experiments with limited political reform
within the party, but who missed out on a place on the new Politburo Standing Committee. Mr. Li's promotion to
a position that normally commands a seat in the Standing Committee will raise his international profile and make
him a front-runner for elevation to the top governing body in 2017.
Wang Yang, another person with a track record of relatively liberal economic and political reform who missed out
on a Standing Committee slot last year, is expected to join the economic team as a vice premier, although it
remains unclear if he will be in charge of finance, industry or agriculture, according to the party insider.
The Parliament meeting will be an early gauge of the new leaders' commitment to carrying out broad changes in
China's economy that Messrs. Hu and Wen talked about for years, but did little to accomplish—remaking the
economy so it relies more on domestic demand and less on investment in capital-intensive industries at home and
demand for Chinese exports abroad.
Mr. Xi has raised public expectations of reform since November with a series of strong statements on corruption
and government waste, and by using his first official trip to go to the southern city of Shenzhen, where former
paramount leader Deng Xiaoping famously relaunched market reforms in 1992 following the political turmoil of
1989.
As part of an austerity and efficiency drive launched by Mr. Xi, delegates to the NPC—and a parallel meeting of a
consultative body to Parliament—have been instructed to eschew banquets, welcoming ceremonies and wordy
speeches, while police have been ordered to minimize traffic controls in the capital.
But the new leadership has so far given few details of its economic reform agenda, or how it plans to address other
issues of growing public concern—especially severe air, soil and water pollution and rampant abuse of power
within the party, which was highlighted last year by the scandal surrounding former Party highflier Bo Xilai.
One substantial change that Parliament is expected to approve is a plan to streamline the State Council—or
cabinet—by, among other things, merging the Railways Ministry into the Ministry of Transport, a move that many
analysts believe is linked to the crash of a high-speed train in 2011, and the dismissal the same year of the
railways minister, Liu Zhijun, on corruption charges.
Agencies monitoring food safety—another issue of huge public concern following a string of scandals in recent
years—may also be merged, and greater powers given to the State Oceanic Administration, the agency
responsible for maritime patrols around disputed islands in the South China Sea and East China Sea, according to
Chinese academics familiar with the plans.
Chinese experts say the restructuring is designed to cut down red tape, enhance interdepartmental coordination
and break apart vested interests in the bureaucracy. But many analysts are skeptical, arguing that more
fundamental changes are needed, such as forcing all officials to declare their financial assets publicly, to enhance
government transparency and accountability.
The restructuring is also expected to be less aggressive than an earlier plan that could have affected the economic
planning, energy and information technology bureaucracies as well. "It is most likely not going to be the
supercharged overhaul that some were floating a few months back," said Damien Ma, a China expert at the
Paulson Institute, a nonpartisan thank tank.
On the economic front, analysts are looking for specific proposals that could lift the incomes of ordinary Chinese,
an essential ingredient in rebalancing the economy.
Such proposals could include easing restrictions on migrants that make it tough for them to get pensions and
children's education, raising dividend payments by state-owned enterprises and using the money for
social-welfare payments, and changing fiscal policy so localities rely less on income from the sale of land seized
from farmers.
"The new administration will likely decide whether the current growth model can last for long," said a Citigroup C
+0.33% analysis.
In many ways, the policy direction is already set by China's current five-year plan which covers 2011 to 2015 and
broadly endorses the rebalancing goal. Messrs Xi and Li were members of the previous Politburo Standing
committee that approved the document. Liu He, a Party economist who helped write the plan and is expected to
be a senior economic adviser to Mr. Xi, wrote that the "logic" of the plan involves boosting domestic demand as
export demand wanes—a transformation that is difficult to choreograph.
The 2013 GDP growth target of 7.5% isn't a forecast. China has grown faster than the target for the past 18 years
at least—and often by a wide margin. Rather the target is meant to signal provincial leaders that the era of
double-digit economic growth has passed and that they need to depend less on big investment projects.
There is mixed evidence about whether the message is getting through. On the one hand, local governments have
reduced their 2013 growth targets by an average of 0.5 percentage points from 2012, according to a Nomura
analysis. On the other hand, the governments continue to rely on infrastructure spending to boost growth, rather
than taking steps to boost consumer spending, such as cutting taxes.
A 7.5% growth rate "is not a bad rate to give the economy room to make adjustments," said Andrew Sheng,
president of the Fung Global Institute, a Hong Kong think tank. Last year, China's GDP grew 7.8% and is widely
expected to grow somewhat faster this year.
Another question that may get a clearer answer is what Mr. Li means when he advocates further "urbanization"—a
catchall phrase that he uses in many of speeches. About half of China's population now lives in cities, where
incomes are much higher than in rural areas. A further increase in the urban population could put more money in
the pockets of China's migrants to spend on cars, televisions, appliances, real estate and the other accouterments
of middle-class life.
To encourage further urban settlement, China needs to change restrictions on migrants, say China economists,
including issuing them residence permits to live in the cities where they work. Only then are the migrants entitled
to the pensions, health care and public education for their children that encourages them to spend more freely.
But few Chinese cities are ready to pay for additional social spending.
"There may be more concrete announcements than before on policies needed to ensure more balanced
urbanization by expanding the provision of public services and affordable housing to migrants," said RBS
economist Louis Kuijs, a former World Bank China expert.
But Mr. Li's talk of urbanization may have deepened other economic problems, including risking a re-emergence
of a real-estate bubble as developers and buyers prepare for a big increase in the urban population.
In January, prices of apartments in Shanghai increased 35%, compared with the year earlier period, following a
36% increase in December, year-to-year. On Friday, China's government announced a number of policies to curb
real-estate-price increases, including stricter enforcement of a 20% capital-gains tax on apartment sales.
The plans released at the NPC are part of a process in which the new leadership develops its economic policies.
More detailed proposals are expected by an October Communist Party gathering.
—Tom Orlik
contributed to this article.
Write to Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com, Bob Davis at bob.davis@wsj.com and Lingling Wei at
lingling.wei@wsj.com
China's peaceful rise less likely (The Australian)
BY:JOHN LEE From: The Australian March 04, 2013
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/chinas-peaceful-rise-less-likely/story-e6frgd0x-1226
589469155
SOME four years before the outbreak of World War I, British author and politician Norman Angell published The
Great Illusion, a best-seller that argued war was obsolete between closely integrated economies. At the time,
many of Britain's elites who correctly believed that war was bad for business welcomed Angell's thesis and
chastised those lonelier voices warning that there could be darker days ahead.
Excited by the potential opportunities provided by a rising China, this same sentiment is carried by many of
Australia's business and political elites today. This benign view of rising powers rarely plays out in history.
And as the reporting of the Chinese navy locking weapons-guided radar on to Japanese naval forces twice in the
past three weeks reminds us, the chances that China's rise can be managed peacefully is becoming less rather
than more likely.
First, some history. Before WWI, Angell's logic, that the disruption to the international credit and trading system
in the event of a big war would be catastrophic for the major powers, was seemingly impeccable. Until 1914,
annual trade volumes in Britain, Germany and France were 52 per cent, 38 per cent and 54 per cent of GDP
respectively, with much of the trade between these three powers.
By 1913, Britain had become the leading market for German exports. Capital flows between the three countries
almost doubled in the first decade of that century. The people-to-people and cultural connections between
Western European states were far more profound than China's with Japan or the US today. But we know what
happened in 1914.
Fast-forward to the situation in East Asia now. While China is Japan's largest trading partner, they share a rivalry
that spans several centuries. Moreover, there is good reason to believe that tensions between China and Japan
(and the US) are likely to worsen even if more optimistic scenarios about regional economic integration come to
pass.
One reason is structural and strategic. When Japan re-emerged as Asia's greatest economic power after World
War II, it remained a relatively inhibited military power because of the postwar constitution imposed on it as a
defeated power - a situation that was tolerable since Japan also emerged as a key ally of the US-led "hub and
spokes" security system .
But China's re-emergence is fundamentally different. China has not emerged under the US security umbrella and
sees itself as the "natural" paramount power in Asia. Neither is China an inhibited military power, with defence
expenditure outpacing gross domestic product growth for the past decade.
Blocking future Chinese ambitions are a still-dominant US and its reinvigorated system of alliances, notably with
its most powerful ally in Japan.
China's still somewhat dysfunctional and opaque authoritarian system is also relevant and, in fact, blameworthy.
To be fair, both sides have frequently pushed the boundaries over the disputed islands in the East China Sea. But
the growing evidence that the People's Liberation Army - more assertive, reckless and uncompromising than the
country's civilian leaders - is increasingly calling the shots in Chinese policy and diplomacy is of deep concern.
Unlike Japan and every other prosperous country in Asia where civilian leaders are firmly in control of national
policy and diplomacy, PLA officials have consistently led the escalation of hostile words between the two countries
in the past few years.
Just a fortnight ago, Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu of China's National Defence University accused the US "global tiger"
and Japanese "Asian wolf" of both "madly biting China".
Claiming that "of all the animals, Chinese people hate the wolf the most", Liu warned that "China was a peaceful
nation but would fight to the death if seriously attacked".
In contrast, senior Chinese officials rarely deviate from the diplomatic line of advocating calm and restraint. But
Liu was neither reproached by his civilian masters nor asked to withdraw his words.
Perhaps Chinese civilian and military leaders are acting out prescribed roles of good and bad cop. Even so, studies
and surveys reveal that, having fanned the flames of a virulent nationalism to entrench the CCP's rule since the
Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, the PLA is very popular with Chinese elites schooled on a curriculum
emphasising the country's suppression and victimisation by foreign powers (including the Japanese).
In an authoritarian system that still ultimately relies on Mao Zedong's maxim that "political power grows out of the
barrel of a gun", it is no easy thing for civilian leaders to silence PLA officials. This is particularly the case since the
military's brashness, combined with impressive advances in military capabilities, is coming to represent a nation's
pride associated with the return to a Chinese-led Asian Century.
An undisciplined and largely unaccountable military, fuelled by hubris and supported by double-digit annual
budget increases from a deeply insecure regime, is rarely a force for stability and restraint.
Civilians in China are officially in charge of foreign policy. But in a system where the extent of the CCP's control
over the PLA is still indeterminate, contested and opaque, the possibility of a rash decision leading to retaliation
and unintended escalation - by the PLA navy against a Japanese vessel on the high seas - is that much higher.
The Chinese and Japanese navies may yet stand down for the moment. Angell was spot-on then, and even now,
that there are no winners in a war between two economically integrated giants. But even 100 years after his time,
it pays to remember that it was Norman Angell and not the naysayers that mistakenly embraced "the great
illusion".
John Lee is the Michael Hintze fellow and adjunct associate professor at the Centre for International Security
Studies, University of Sydney. He is also a non-resident senior scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC
and a director of the Kokoda Foundation in Canberra.
China’s labor camps come under scrutiny (The Washington Post)
By William Wan, Sunday, March 3
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinas-labor-camps-come-under-scrutiny/2013/03/02/4bc
0e12e-81b5-11e2-a350-49866afab584_story.html
BEIJING — It wasn’t until Li Xifeng began vomiting blood that she was given a real break.
Sent to one of China’s more than 300 labor camps with no trial or criminal charges for petitioning on behalf of her
jailed husband, she said she was forced to glue pieces of plastic to the top of bottle caps — thousands of bottles
a day, seven days a week, with little sleep or water and nutrition-less food. For seven months, Li, a farmer by
trade, said she worked until her body gave out and forced guards to take her to a hospital.
“You eat so much bitterness there, more than anyone should deserve,”she said of her imprisonment, which
stretched from 2009 to 2010.
After decades of stonewalling, Chinese officials have begun to address public concern over the camps, slowing
their use and signaling that a parliamentary meeting of China’s top leaders in Beijing this week could bring
broader changes.
That prospect has thrust the camps forward as an early litmus test for how serious China’s new top leaders are in
vowing to reform broken and corrupt parts of the government. But it has also invited skepticism from human
rights activists and legal scholars who have long regarded China’s legal system as a source of injustice.
The obstacles to reform have also become increasingly apparent in recent weeks as government officials have
backtracked from the initial idea of abolishing the labor camps entirely, even though they operate outside the
legal system.
A big hurdle, legal experts say, is that authorities have grown dependent on labor camps as an expedient way to
silence critics. Police can send people to the camps for up to four years with no judicial process. Citizens have been
punished for crimes as trivial as writing an unflattering blog post about a local official. Some prisoners are there
because of their religious practice or because they have tried to raise complaints about local injustices to central
authorities.
The camps provide what is essentially free labor to state ventures. But critics say the practice has also
undermined the government’s claim to abide by rule of law.
“They know it’s bad for China’s soft power abroad and for legitimacy at home,” said Jerome Cohen, a Chinese law
expert at New York University.
“Reeducation through labor” sites began under Mao Zedong in the 1950s as a way to deal with political enemies.
Statistics are hard to come by, but according to the government, in 2008, 160,000 people were held in 350 such
facilities throughout China. Comparisons to other countries are difficult because of China’s inconsistencies in
reporting data and common practice of detaining people who have not been charged.
Stories abound of the harsh conditions at the camps: sleep deprivation, freezing temperatures, regular beatings,
barely edible food and little respite from the relentless pace of factory work.
Li, 56, was sent to a camp in Hebei province after trying to appeal her husband’s imprisonment. She said she
wasn’t allowed a single shower during her seven months there. Over time, her body ached and she grew frailer.
“It’s only after I began vomiting blood, and they found my condition was quite serious that they released me,” she
said. “To avoid me dying in there.”
Even now, Li sometimes daydreams of the camp being consumed in some fiery explosion if only to put an end to
misery of all those continuing to suffer there.
In January, China seemed poised to end all such camps, when the ruling Communist Party’s top security official,
Meng Jianzhu, was reported by state-run media promising to “halt” the labor-camp system once China’s
parliament approves the measure at its March meeting. But in following days, official reports changed the wording
of that announcement from “halt” to “reform,” suggesting Meng’s proposal had encountered internal opposition.
In the face of such ambiguity, legal experts say China’s leaders could go in myriad directions to deliver on its
promise of reform — from reducing the maximum years a person can be confined to a labor camp to involving
lawyers and judges.
The biggest fear among human rights experts is that the coming reforms will simply be used to add a legal veneer
to the current system, further entrenching its existence.
To abolish them in one swift move raises difficult questions, said Wang Gongyi, a retired researcher for the
Ministry of Justice. “For instance, what do you do with the tens of thousands who are supposed to serve out their
time in the camps?”
But the momentum is clearly shifting against the camps, he said, noting that internal government statistics
showed the number of detainees steadily declining all last year. “Clearly the top leaders have reached a consensus
about the camps, but they are still arguing about what comes next, what do you replace it with and how do you
handle the consequences.”
Zhang Jie contributed to this report.
Online
Cheng Li: High Expectations for China’s National People’s Congress (THE WSJ
CHINA REAL TIME REPORT BLOG)
March 1, 2013
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/03/01/cheng-li-high-expectations-for-chinas-national-peoples-congr
ess/?mod=WSJBlog
China’s top leaders will gather in Beijing Tuesday for the highlight of the annual political calendar – the National
People’s Congress. This year’s event will be especially important as it installs Xi Jinping as President, and provides
clues as to the policy direction for China’s new leadership.
China Real Time caught up with Cheng Li of the Brookings Institution, an influential observer of Chinese politics,
to get his view on what to expect.
China Real Time: Some people’s expectations for the NPC seem to be quite low, why is that?
Cheng Li: Many observers are cynical about any substantial policy changes. That’s due to resistance from
powerful interest groups, lack of consensus in the leadership, and because Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang need time to
consolidate their power and place their people in the right places.
In addition, some of China’s leaders may not want to generate high expectations prior to the NPC meetings. That
helps reduce political pressure and could pleasantly surprise the public and business communities if there are
major policy initiatives.
There’s also a historical precedent for having big policy decisions come at the third plenary meeting of the Central
Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in October following the NPC meeting rather than at the NPC meeting
itself.
You have higher expectations?
I believe that we will see the announcement of some important policy initiatives at the NPC, for several reasons:
First, there is a sense of urgency on the part of Mr. Xi to lift public confidence by initiating major policy changes,
especially to please the middle class and to do so now rather than waiting another seven months.
Second, Mr. Xi is now in his “honeymoon period,” and he should cash in his political capital to carry out new
policies promptly.
Third, in contrast to the previous 10 years when there was often policy deadlock resulting from the factional
infighting of the top leadership, Mr. Xi now has a six-to-one concentration of power in the Politburo Standing
Committee — a great advantage that should allow him to do substantive things .
And fourth, Li Keqiang is under tremendous pressure to demonstrate his leadership ability. Evidence seems to
suggest Messrs. Xi and Li understand very well their need to support each other. Their different policy
preferences can also complement each other, resonating well in different sectors and with different classes
throughout the country.
Still, some eagerly awaited policy changes – like land and hukou reform – are not in the interest of the middle
class, and so we may only see lip service paid to some of these policy areas. But from the perspective of the
Chinese leadership, the interests of vast numbers of farmers, migrant workers and urban poor should also be
addressed.
The priority, I believe, will be to promote growth in the private and service sectors to further develop the middle
class.
One of the big changes people are looking for is reorganization of government. What do you expect here?
There’s a far-reaching plan under discussion to downsize from 28 government ministries to 18.
The National Development and Reform Commission may end up with a smaller role, with less power to approve
investment projects and a narrower focus on macro-planning and research. The Ministry of Railways may be
merged into the Ministry of Transport. The Ministry of Science and Technology may be abolished, with science
functions merged into the Ministry of Education, and technology merged into Ministry of Industry and Information
Technology.
The Ministry of Agriculture will grow to encompass both the Ministry of Water Resources and Forestry Bureau.The
Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the Ministry of Civil Affairs will merge to form a new ministry
that may be called the Ministry of Social Work. The National Family Planning Commission may be merged into the
Ministry of Health.
The financial regulators—including banking, insurance, and securities—may be merged into an enormous
administrative bureau.
We might also see the merger of bureaus dealing with ethnic affairs, religious affairs, overseas Chinese, and
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao.
All of these changes are subject to last minute alterations. The participants of the Central Committee meeting,
held a few days prior to the NPC meeting, may reject or modify some of the plans. We won’t get all the details
at the NPC, but there is a very high degree of certainty that we will see many of these organizational changes.
What does this mean for policy?
Each of these restructurings has a policy implication.
The NDRC will be reduced to focusing on micro-economic control, especially in terms of the lengthy bureaucratic
approval process of projects, and this will provide more autonomy to local governments and accelerate market
reform.
Merging the Ministry of Railways into Transport paves the way for a more market-orientated railway system.
The establishment of the Ministry of Social Work may allow for better coordination and implementation of policies
regarding employment, social welfare, social security, and social assistance, especially in terms of helping
migrant workers settle down in urban areas.
Changes to the Family Planning Commission could have implications for the one-child policy.
The overall objective is to change the function of government, introduce more market mechanisms, and focus on
service. Mr. Xi also wants to improve policy efficiency and reduce tensions between different departments.
It is encouraging to see the leadership emphasizing the notion of “service-oriented government.” The new
leaders also claim that they want “small government,” however, the irony is that they will achieve it by creating
“big ministries.”
We also expect big personnel changes, correct?
The NPC will select a new State Council, and of the top 10 leaders (premier, vice premiers, and state councilors)
confirmed at the meeting, seven will likely be newcomers. At least half of the ministers will be first-timers. This
major restructuring will involve a large number of personnel changes, and a few rising stars will emerge as
primary contenders for the next Politburo in 2017.
It is also speculated that the People’s Bank of China will no longer fall under the leadership of the State Council
and instead will become a more “independent” institution of the same government rank as the Supreme People’s
Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate. Some scholars in China believe that this proposed change can be
viewed as a sign of, or even a significant step to, the reform of China’s banking system.
How do these changes reflect the overall strategy of the Xi leadership?
The new Politburo Standing Committee is not known for its political reform agenda. In spite of — or because of —
these top leaders’ weaknesses and liabilities in terms of fundamental political reforms, they will likely opt for
bolder and more aggressive economic reforms to lift public confidence.
The leadership will likely alter the current “strong state sector, weak private sector” environment by adopting tax
cuts, increasing loans to private small and medium enterprises, and crafting preferential policies for the services
sector.
Environmental protection, food safety and public health will likely be discussed in detail at the NPC. A richer,
larger and healthier middle class in China would also help to stimulate domestic consumption. The government
restructuring seems to be in line with this kind of thinking.
– Tom Orlik
Hard Landing Ahead for China’s Local Governments? (THE WSJ CHINA REAL TIME
REPORT BLOG)
March 1, 2013
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/03/01/hard-landing-ahead-for-chinas-local-governments/?mod=WSJ
Blog
China’s use of land sales to fund local governments is no longer on such solid ground, according to a top legislator.
Just a few days ahead of the annual session of China’s National People’s Congress, which gets under way on
Tuesday, Li Shenming vented his frustration with the government’s investment-driven economic growth policies
and its reliance on selling land-use rights to fund local government operations.
He called for urgent changes and suggested that time was growing short for a policy shift.
“It’s getting so bad that if (local governments) don’t sell land, they can’t even pay salaries,” said Mr. Li, a member
of the legislature’s Standing Committee, a grouping of its senior members.
“How long can this ‘land fiscal policy’ last? Another five years?” he moaned in front of an audience at a financial
forum.
Local governments generally rely on land sales — and taxes on property transactions — for a hefty chunk of their
revenues. That often makes them a reliable friend of property developers and makes them more than a little
eager to eager to sell off land.
But that formula has been sorely tested as the central government continues its prolonged clampdown on
property speculation, banning purchases of multiple homes and squeezing credit to property developers. Revenue
from land sales fell 14% nationwide last year, official data show, due to the central-government campaign.
The constant push for more land sales ensures lots of development projects – some of them of questionable
economic value. It supports an economic growth model that relies on investment for economic growth, and has
been widely criticized as one that won’t be sustainable over the longer term. And it often leads to forced evictions
of farmers or urban residents to make way for development projects, at times endangering social stability.
Mr. Li, who is also an economist and the vice president and deputy party chief of the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences, a top state think-tank, estimated that proceeds from land sales account for over 40% of revenue for
most local governments.
Economists have called for broad reforms of China’s fiscal policies by giving local governments more authority in
setting taxes, and allowing them to expand trial projects setting annual taxes on property values, rather than just
property sales. The tax reform is currently being tested in Shanghai and Chongqing.
China’s legislators gather for a two-week session that generally is confined to endorsing policies set by
Communist Party heavyweights but also allowing legislators to blow off a bit of steam. If Mr. Li’s pre-session
outburst is an indication, land policies could be a steamy topic.
– Liyan Qi
Debate Swirls Around China Execution Broadcast (THE WSJ CHINA REAL TIME
REPORT BLOG)
March 1, 2013
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/03/01/debate-swirls-around-china-execution-broadcast/?mod=WSJB
log
It was a throwback to a different era on Friday afternoon as China’s state television broadcast live footage of
police leading four foreigners to their executions after being convicted in the 2011 killings of 13 Chinese sailors on
the Mekong River in Thailand.
The spectacle was striking, though hardly a boost to China’s soft power.
One by one, the men were bundled with rope and led the deaths, followed by a gaggle of photographers snapping
images. A debate raged online Friday over whether China Central Television should have broadcast the images.
The live footage, argued one user of Sina Corp.’s Twitter-like Weibo microblogging service, would serve as a
warning to those who target Chinese abroad. “Chinese also have dignity,” the user wrote. “Those who kill Chinese
will also pay a price.”
Indeed, China’s central government has recently faced growing pressure from the public to better protect its
citizens abroad. Besides being threatened by gangs on the Mekong, overseas Chinese are also being targeted in
Africa, South America and elsewhere for their country’s perceived growing wealth and political influence.
Official news agency Xinhua reported Friday that the four men died by lethal injection in the southwestern city of
Kunming. Naw Kham of Myanmar has been described by Chinese state media as a Burmese drug lord. Xinhua
identified others convicted in the murders as Hsang Kham from Thailand, Zha Xika of Laos and Yi Lai, whose
country Xinhua said was unknown. Naw Kham was arrested in Laos in April 2012 and later extradited to China.
The live coverage of the men preparing to be executed, while extremely unusual, was a reminder of Chinese law
in decades past when public executions were relatively commonplace.
The October 2011 attack on the Chinese cargo ship traveling down the Mekong occurred in a part of Southeast
Asia known as the Golden Triangle. The region where Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet is a hotspot for
production of heroin and other illicit drugs and serves as home to violent narcotic gangs.
China temporarily suspended cargo travel down the Mekong following the attacks and a subsequent outpouring of
public concern. China later announced it was launching joint patrols of the Mekong together with Thailand, Laos
and Myanmar — a development heavily trumpeted in the state press that served to underscore China’s early
security inroads abroad.
Nonetheless, the pomp surrounding the men’s execution on Friday drew concern in some corners. Well-known
Beijing lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan wrote on his verified Weibo account on Friday that the executions’ wide exposure
through state television, “not only violates ethics, but also violates the Criminal Procedure Law’s” death penalty
regulations. That law says the carrying out of death sentences should be publicly announced but not made into a
public spectacle.
–Brian Spegele. Follow him on Twitter @bspegele.
Chinese law enforcement; Live television and dead men walking (Analects Blog)
Mar 2nd 2013
by T.P. | BEIJING
http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2013/03/chinese-law-enforcement
FOR better or worse, China shares with America both vigorous support for capital punishment and an infatuation
with reality television programming. The two came together in macabre fashion on March 1st when state
television carried a live broadcast of the final moments of four convicts as they were paraded and led away for
execution by lethal injection.
The case has gripped the country, provoking sharp commentary online about the merits of the death penalty as
well as the decision to broadcast the spectacle. It also highlighted a new point of similarity between China and
America: a determination to act aggressively, even in foreign lands, in going after baddies.
None of the condemned men were Chinese. But they were convicted in November, in Yunnan province in
south-western China, for the murder in 2011 of 13 Chinese crew members serving on two cargo boats hijacked on
the Mekong river in northern Thailand. The bodies of the victims were found floating, bound and blindfolded, in the
river.
A Burmese drug lord, Naw Kham, was identified as the ringleader. Of the three others executed moments after the
cameras cut away on Friday, one was Thai, one was Lao, and was identified as stateless.
After the murders, China launched armed patrols on the Mekong extending beyond its own borders. Chinese
police were also part of an operation that apprehended Naw Kham in Laos in May 2012. He and the other suspects
were dispatched to China for trial. They were convicted in November, and lost their final appeals in December.
One report in the state media compared the pursuit of Naw Kham to America’s hunt for Osama bin Laden. “It was
the first time that Chinese police were conducting a manhunt for criminals who were all foreigners based
overseas,” reported Global Times.
The newspaper also revealed that China had considered using a drone attack to kill Naw Kham’s gang, after
believing that they had tracked the men to a mountainous area of north-eastern Myanmar. The plan was rejected,
"because the order was to catch him alive”, the paper claimed, quoting the director of the anti-drug bureau in
China’s Ministry of Public Security.
An American expert on unmanned aircraft told the New York Times that China is not yet “ready for prime time
using armed drones” and may still lack confidence in its drones, operators and control systems. But the expert,
Dennis Gormley of the University of Pittsburgh, predicted this could change with “a few more years of determined
practice”. When that time comes, he added, the Chinese "surely will have America’s armed drone practice as a
convenient cover for legitimating their own practice.”
Veteran muckraker forced to leave paper (China Media Project)
By David Bandurski | Posted on 2013-03-01
http://cmp.hku.hk/2013/03/01/31597/
The doyen of Chinese investigative reporting, Wang Keqin, is once again on the move. Editors pressured Wang
into resigning earlier this week after his newspaper, the Economic Observer, came under pressure from
authorities for a series of hard-hitting reports. [READ Wang's review of investigative reporting in China].
A former CMP fellow, Wang is China’s best-known investigative reporter. Over the past decade he has tackled
scores of sensitive stories, from systematic corruption in China’s taxi industry to the spread of HIV-AIDS through
careless and unnecessary blood transfusions. He was forced out of his previous newspaper, the China Economic
Times, in 2011 after a spate of hard-hitting reports, including a 2010 expose about the mishandling of tainted
vaccines in Shanxi province.
(See Image)
Pressure over Wang Keqin’s reports has reportedly been mounting at the Economic Observer in recent months.
Officials were particularly upset about a report the paper ran last summer exploring disastrous effects of record
floods that hit Beijing in July.
According to the Weiboscope, a tool created by researchers at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism & Media
Studies Centre that measures trending topics on the Sina Weibo platform, Wang Keqin’s exit from the Economic
Observer is among the top topics being discussed in the past 24 hours.
(See Image)
In a post made to Sina Weibo yesterday, Wang Keqin shared details with his more than 400,000 followers about
the clearing out of his desk at the Economic Observer the day before:
Yesterday I cleared out of the @EconomicObserver. These are the petitioning materials I received over a period
of ten years at the China Economic Times, two tons of them. For other people these might just be waste paper;
for me, they represent the trust and hope the people place in me. The things stacked here are misery, blood and
tears, but I’ve always seen them as treasures. They go with me wherever I go. I can throw away my furniture, but
these cannot be discarded!
昨日我搬离@经济观察报 ，这是过去十多年我在@中国经济时报 时，全国各地上访者给我的上访村料，足有两吨重。对别人而
言，可能视为废纸；对我而言，却是民众对我的信任与期盼，虽然堆着的全是苦难与血泪，但我一直视其为宝贝，走到哪里带到
哪里。家俱可以扔，信任不能丢！
The Ralls Wind Farm Case: Not Quite Dead Yet (chinahearsay.com)
March 2, 2013
http://www.chinahearsay.com/the-ralls-wind-farm-case-not-quite-dead-yet/
I’ve successfully made it through the first work week at my new in-house job, so I’ll reward myself with some
blogging.
You may recall the Ralls case, where some Chinese investors (backed by SOE Sany) purchased a U.S. firm that
owned several wind farms. However, the siting of one of these was problematic (too close to a military installation)
and, long story short, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) decided that the deal should be
unwound. The case then went up to President Obama, something that usually doesn’t happen with CFIUS matters,
and he went along with the decision.
Then Ralls sued, challenging Obama’s decision on several grounds. The last time I wrote about this, I essentially
called this whole thing a loser, since the underlying statute that deals with CFIUS says that such a presidential
order is not reviewable by the courts. In other words, the law specifically says that the court should throw out the
challenge.
And this is what happened. I’m about one week late with this, but a Federal judge handed down a decision in the
case on February 22. Of the two parts to the ruling, one was expected and the other part was not, although in my
mind it is quite welcome.
The first part was all about this non-reviewable issue. The court summarily dismissed those claims that directly
challenged the president’s decision. Nothing exciting here. The law says the decision cannot be reviewed, and
that’s the end of that.
But wait, that’s not the end of the story. Part two addressed another claim that I didn’t really take seriously when
I read about it before. It still might not go anywhere, but it does intrigue me. Here’s the language:
Count IV of the Amended Complaint will not be dismissed to the extent it alleges that the President’s “Order
Regarding the Acquisition of Four U.S. Wind Farm Project Companies by Ralls Corporation” of September 28, 2012
violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution by depriving Ralls of
property without providing adequate opportunity to be heard or an adequate explanation of the reasons for the
decision.
The issue here is that these CFIUS decisions are barebones rulings. President Obama’s decision here similarly just
said “You can’t do that” without any reason whatsoever, beyond “national security.” That sucks and has always
been a hot issue with respect to CFIUS. Goes to transparency and such. Here, we’ve got much more than a simple
transparency complaint of course.
The due process challenge is obvious: the government shouldn’t be able to summarily deprive someone of
property like this without even an explanation, much less some sort of hearing, etc. Sounds reasonable to me. I
realize of course that the big wild card is national security, and I suspect that’s the issue that will decide the matter,
probably in favor of the government (if I had to guess).
So . . . cool stuff. We’ll see whether Ralls actually takes the next step and pursues the due process claim further.
I kind of hope they do, just to see what happens when these CFIUS complaints get more press.
Have a nice weekend.
China Legal. Not Hong Kong Legal. Not Taiwan Legal. Not Macau Legal.
(chinalawblog.com)
By Dan Harris on March 3rd, 2013
http://www.chinalawblog.com/2013/03/china-legal-not-hong-kong-legal-not-taiwan-legal-not-macau-legal.ht
ml
I have given four China law speeches in the last month (two live and two via webinars, here and here). Three out
of the four talks generated questions as to whether what I had said applied to Hong Kong or to Taiwan. My
answer in all instances was a resounding “no.”
Mainland China has its own legal system, separate and apart from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. In thinking
about the laws of those places, you should think of them as different countries. Now there are definitely some
instances where the laws in Mainland China are different for companies and/or legal matters coming from Taiwan,
Hong Kong or Macao, but those instances are not terribly common and they become even less common when the
matter involves a Western company. Your default position should always be to assume that the laws are different
and to always assume that whatever you do in the PRC will not carry over to Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macao.
For example, when we do NNN Agreements for our clients, we make clear that the Agreement we will be
drafting ”will apply only to PRC China manufacturers. It does not cover Taiwan or Hong Kong or Macau companies
that may handle manufacturing for you as intermediaries. If you will be dealing with companies from Taiwan or
Hong Kong or Macau (or from any country other than the PRC), please let us know so we can make allowances for
that.” We do the same thing for our OEM Agreements as well. In my future talks, I am going to early on make
clear that my speech is confined to the PRC.
I thought of all this today after reading a post on the China IP Insider Blog, entitled, IPR: A territorial animal,
emphasizing how intellectual property rights are “territorial” and what you register outside of China does not
constitute registration in China:
Since working on the China IPR SME Helpdesk I have organised and attended scores of events on various
intellectual property (IP) topics. Following presentations from legal experts we always allow some time for a
question and answer session. The most common question asked by European businesses is a variation of the
following question:
“If I have a (insert trade mark or patent) registered in (insert EU country). Is it valid in China?”
The answer is easy; it’s a resounding no. Intellectual property rights are territorial due to the fact they are offered
and governed by each country’s legislation. Although some international treaties exist, they generally only
facilitate the application process in different countries.
The post goes on to note that the fact that China currently exists in a “one country, two systems” situation only
exacerbates the confusion, but that “the IP systems in Mainland China differ from those in Hong Kong, Macau and
Taiwan and different registration is required in each territory.” It then does a really nice job postulating as to why
so many people get it wrong regarding the universality of IP registrations:
Through dialogue with many European Helpdesk users I have identified that one reason why many people
presume IP rights skip borders is that intellectual property is sometimes considered a moral right. Additionally,
with such easy access to information internationally through the internet it is very possible that a trade mark
registered in Italy for example can easily be seen by a Chinese competitor if the Italian company uses the internet
to sell or market their product.
And as to why this mistaken belief in the universality of IP can be so deadly:
Unfortunately this can lead to problems for your European business. China is a first to file system which means
that the first person to register the trade mark is the legal owner in China even if the trade mark has been used
by a different company in another country. Whether obtained morally or not, possession is not just nine tenths of
the law, it is the law!
It concludes by advising that the “best way to protect your intellectual property therefore is to protect it in every
market you operate in (manufacture, sell, may move into in the future etc.),” or as we say here, File Your
Trademark In China. Now.
Government Now Restricting Inquiries Into Property Holdings (chinasmack.com)
by Ryan on Sunday, March 3, 2013
http://www.chinasmack.com/2013/stories/government-now-restricting-inquiries-into-property-holdings.html
The following article attracted an incredible 320k+ people participating in its comments section with 15k+
comments…
From NetEase:
Multiple Areas Now Strictly Restricting the Use of Names to Look Up That Person’s Property Information
Summary: Recently Fujian, Jiangsu and other areas have sped up the launch of regulations for inquiries into
property information, imposing restrictions on the “looking up property by person [name]” type of inquiry that
allows people to input a name to look up properties under that name. The city of Yancheng in Jiangsu province
claims that individual housing/property information has been released irregularly in certain areas, leading city
residents to worry about the safety of their housing/property information. Media have claimed that the frequent
“House Uncle” and “House Aunt” incidents have turned the housing information system into a nightmare for some
government officials.
[Note: "House Uncle" and “House Aunt” refer to recent media stories involving certain individuals being "exposed"
as owning large amounts of property that they apparently should not have been able to afford. "House Aunt"
refers to 68-year-old Li Yunqing, who supposedly had 24 properties registered under her name, with a total value
approaching 15 million yuan. To netizens, this seemed like a clear case of corruption, as it seemed impossible to
acquire so much real estate on an engineer’s salary.]
Since the last half of 2012, the frequent occurrence of “House Uncle/Aunt” incidents have made the housing
information system a nightmare for some government officials. Recently, some areas have sped up the launch of
regulations for inquiries into property information, with these regulations specifically restricting the “looking up
property by person” method of inquiry where one can input an individual’s name to look up how many properties
are registered under that name. Until now these types of regulations were rarely seen.
(See Image)
Man holding paper with “Investigation” written on it:
“I hear you have 24 houses.”
House Aunt: “Where?! I currently only have 6 houses!”
Zhangzhou, Yancheng Prohibit “Looking up Property by Person”
On February 16, the Fujianese city of Zhangzhou issued a statement, that in order to “improve the handling of the
public release of property rights information and the protection of privacy,” Zhangzhou recently launched the
“Provisional Procedures for Property Registration Information Inquiry.” According to these procedures, except for
those applying to inquire about one’s own property information, or inquiries assisting public security authorities
and similar government organs, it is strictly prohibited to use [only] a person’s name in an inquiry, [and such
inquiries may] only be made with the specific address of the property or the building ownership certificate number,
while inspection workers are required to keep property rights information confidential. The city of Zhangzhou will
also strengthen the implementation of relevant accountability mechanisms.
The city of Yancheng in Jiangsu province recently launched the “Yancheng City Property Registration Information
Inquiry Management Measures (Provisional),” implementing conditional inquiries and restricted inquiries on
property information. Apart from personal, public security authorities, the Housing and Social Security
Department, attorneys, and the like going through certain procedures, it is “uniformly prohibited to ‘look up
property by name’” in all other circumstances. The measures claims that individual housing/property information
has been released irregularly in some areas, “leading a portion of city residents to worry about the safety of their
individual housing/property information, with various circles of society also being rather concerned.”
According to this reporter’s understanding, after the the “House Uncle/Aunt” incidents, the Beijing Building
Committee has internally clarified the regulations, and private individuals are not permitted in any circumstance
to make similar inquiries. During the Guangzhou “House Aunt” incident at the end of 2012, a Guangzhou City
Discipline Committee investigation showed that the information was released by a supernumerary [a temporary
worker not part of the regular staff] at the Panyu District Exchange Registration Center, who without any approval
made an inquiry in violation of regulations. The investigation also showed that the funds 68-year-old “House
Aunt” Li Yunqing used to purchase her property all came from legal income such as compensation for the
demolishing of property she inherited from her parents, and there was no violation of laws or regulations.
China’s Property Information Inquiry Systems Getting Stricter
Property registration is an important system in property rights, and also one used throughout the world. By
making registrations public, not only does it guarantee the person in question’s rights, it also makes third parties
aware of changes in a property’s status, allowing them to avoid suffering losses. Every nation generally permits
public inquiries into registration information, however, because it involves personal privacy and commercial
secrets, there are varying opinions just how open inquiries should be. Although the scope and degree of how
publicly open residential registration information is varies from country to country, in general they all restrict it to
“looking up person by property”, with “looking up property by person” under tight control. However, in
present-day China, this type of control has deeper implications, and therefore is frequently the subject of hot
public debate.
Looking at the evolution of China’s property registration information inquiry system, the control of inquiries is
trending towards stricter restriction. In 2006 the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development launched the
“Provisional Procedure for Building Ownership Registration Information Inquiry,” adopting the “looking up person
by property” format. This measure is is clear-cut, “with respect to property ownership records and information
collected by property registration organs, employers and individuals may make public inquiries.”
However, in the “Property Rights Law” implemented in 2007, the openness of registration information was
reduced somewhat, restricting the inquiry and reproduction of registration information to “the rightful owner and
stakeholders.” In 2008 the Housing and Urban-Rural Development Ministry issued “Housing Registration
Management Provisional Measures” stipulate that individuals and employers may inquire into registration records
about a property’s basic status (primarily referring to its natural status) as well as any rights-restricting statuses
such as being seized or mortgaged; After the rights-holder presents the relevant documentation and materials,
they can make an inquiry or make a copy of the relevant information of that property’s registration. Jiangsu
Yancheng’s local regulations enacted this time used the “Housing Registration Management Provisional
Measures,” implementing conditional and restricted inquiries. Reporter: Wang Su.
(See Image)
A government official hiding multiple real estate property holdings uses “privacy” to stop Chinese netizens from
investigating information on property holdings.
Guangzhou
Even Individuals Bearing the Owner’s Original Identification Card Cannot Look Up Number of Real Estate Holdings
This reporter learned that starting in early January, property inquiries in Guangzhou were becoming increasingly
difficult, where once it was only necessary to provide the building’s address to make an inquiry, now it is
necessary to have the specific building title/deed number, registration code, and provide relevant valid
documentation in order to make an inquiry.
Many second-hand real estate agents and mortgage workers told this reporter yesterday that inquiries into
property ownership information in Guangzhou became strict around January of this year. According to many real
estate agents and mortgage workers, previously making an inquiry only required either the real estate’s
title/deed number or the address, but beginning in January it became necessary to simultaneously provide the
property’s title/deed number, address, registration code, etc. before it was possible to make an inquiry.
Previously, possessing an person’s original identification card allowed one to look up the amount of property held
in their name, but now only spouses can make inquiries with such documents. Previously, it was possible to make
an inquiry by simply entering one’s ID number, now in principle it is required to provide the ID card itself to make
an inquiry, and if you are unable to provide the original ID card, then it must be reviewed by multiple people
before the inquiry can be made. “If it shows that someone has more than three pieces of property under their
name, then it is necessary to go to the government affairs center to execute a written application, and only after
gaining approval can one look up detailed information.
As it is understood, at present there are normally two types of property inquiries; one type is to inquire for
information directly relating to the building itself, for example the building’s [square footage], validity period of
property rights and title/deeds, and whether or not there is a mortgage. This kind of situation mostly involves
buyers inquiring about property they wish to purchase. The second type of situation is checking the number of
buildings/property under in an owner’s name, and their specific circumstances, etc. which came about after the
limits on house purchases.
In the middle of October 2010, in order to comply with the government policy limiting purchases [of property,
intended to cool down a hot real estate property market and rising housing prices], the Guangzhou Municipal Land
Resources and Housing Administrative Bureau started the “Individual Property Holdings Inquiry Service” and
“Family Member’s Property Holdings Verification Issuance Service” so that city residents qualified to purchase a
homse can enjoy [special] loan interest rates for their first or second home, as well as confirming that they qualify
to purchase a home, etc.
This reporter learned from the Guangzhou Municipal Land Resources and Housing Administrative Bureau that
there are currently only four ways to look up information on real estate property under an individual’s name: The
owner presenting valid identification; another person presenting the owner’s ID and a signed declaration of
agency; [an applicant] bearing an official letter from public security authorities; or a spouse presenting valid
identification inquiring about their spouse’s real estate holdings.
Since the occurrence of the “House Uncle/Aunt” incidents last October, inquiries into property information had for
a time attracted no small amount of discussion from city residents. With regards to searches and inquiries
becoming tougher, one person from the Guangzhou Department of Housing Management expressed that it was a
necessity. “The House Uncle/Aunt incidents and inquiries becoming tougher have a definite connection, but it is
not completely because of that.” Last night, an individual from the Guangzhou Housing Management Department
said, “The biggest lesson the House Uncle/Aunt incidents taught us was that we absolutely must manage our own
people [staff] better.”
The individual from the Guangzhou Housing Management Department expressed that the service had previously
been provided with a focus on the real estate purchase limit policy, and had overlooked the individual privacy of
city residents, so now they will focus more on protecting city residents’ personal privacy. They will be stricter with
the internal management of the Housing Management Department, increase regulation of external inquiries into
real-estate property information, operate by the book, requiring valid ID before an inquiry can be made. Reporter:
Qiu Yongfen
(See Image)
Red Line: “Looking up property holdings by person”
Hand: “New Regulations”
Woman: House Aunt
Man: “I’m House Uncle!”
Shenzhen
Cannot Use Business Owner’s Name to Retrieve Property Information
When looking up property information, the [name of the] property owner may not be used to conduct the inquiry.
More than half a year ago, the Urban Planning Land and Resources Commission of Shenzhen Municipality drafted
the “Shenzhen Urban Planning Land, Real Estate, and Maritime Records Referencing Measures (Draft for
Comment)”, simultaneously soliciting suggestions from society. According to this draft, the looking up of property
information should comply with strict regulations. Even spouses looking up each other’s property information
must provide documentation proving their relationship. As for [cases where] a staff worker in the department
responsible [inappropriately] divulges a city resident’s property information, legal action may be pursued in
severe cases. Yesterday, this Southern Metropolis Daily reporter learned that, currently, this draft is still in
processing, and has not yet been officially implemented.
At the beginning of last year, Shenzhen police launched an operation with cracking down on illegal criminal
invasion of citizens’ private information as its goal, arresting a total of 325 people and incarcerating 76. During the
operation it was brought to light that property information sold by a criminal gang had originally come from
someone inside the Shenzhen Land and Resources Department, causing a public uproar. Therefore, the
“Shenzhen Urban Planning Land, Real Estate, and Maritime Records Referencing Measures (Draft for Comment)”
tightened the management of property information.
The draft legislation stipulates applications to look up property rights and records (including those of maritime
holdings and their contained structures, buildings and fixtures); [in addition to] the original registration document,
[individuals] must provide the following documentation: registration form for looking up records, and proof of
identity. If it is a staff worker of a government organ lawfully conducting official business that needs to look up
land, real-estate, and maritime records, they must provide a work ID or proof of conducting official business. Also,
representatives from arbitration and notary institutions who must look up land, real-estate, and maritime records
to carry out arbitration or notary functions, must provide a work ID. Attorneys retained by clients who must look
up land, real-estate, and maritime records during the provision of legal services must provide an attorney’s
license. Property owner representatives [such as homeowners associations or property management companies]
who must look up land, real-estate, and maritime records must provide identification or other identifying
document issued by a public security organ, owner committee establishment documents and a letter of
introduction.
What deserves attention is that this draft also clearly stipulates that the registration form for looking up records
submitted by the inquirer should be clearly filled out with the real estate’s location (room number and location) or
ownership certificate number, as well as the matter that is being inquired, and that the real-estate owner’s name
may not be used as the criteria to conduct an inquiry. Spouses and family members looking up real-estate
property records involving their spouse or other family members must submit a registration form for looking up
records, the relevant proof of identity required, as well as provide documentation proving that they have a spousal
or familial connection to the person whose real-estate information is being looked up.
Previously, in the 2001 “Shenzhen Urban Planning Land and Resources Bureau Records Checking Regulations”,
regulations for making real estate inquiries were rougher, without the detailed regulations aforementioned.
Currently, in actual operations, ordinary Shenzhen city residents can make inquiries about their own property
information at the property management department with individual proof of identity, and with a marriage
certificate they can make inquiries about their spouse’s property information. However, some agents going
through special channels can use a person’s name to make an inquiry about holdings under that name.
(See Image)
Left: “Must be public, transparent. Perhaps this way we
can expose a homeowner’s illegal income…”
Hat: Real Estate Property Information
Magnifying Glass: Inquiries By Name
Right: “This way will infringe upon personal privacy
and commercial secrets, no, no!”
Comments from NetEase:
独行弥勒 [网易陕西省西安市网友]：
Who would be afraid of leaking the number of houses/buildings they own? Only those people who got their houses
through dishonest means! Is this to protect them?
Don’t use the guise of protecting city residents to protect corruption!
a347956596 [网易广西柳州市网友]：
Houses one round, cars one round, how many rich people are left? Officials steal, robbers steal, how can we love
the fucking party? Oil prices go up, food prices go up, and only [those in] state industries live well! Rice is
expensive, meat is expensive, do I have to pay taxes on my farts too? The big are corrupt, the small are corrupt,
and they’re corrupt all the way down to little security guards! You can’t live, you can’t die, government offices
everywhere are all tied up! Talk is fake, actions are fake, are you all not afraid of being cut into mincemeat? Dad
is a government official, son is a government official, even the mistresses of government officials are government
officials!
[Note: The original Chinese text of this comment is like a rhyming poem.]
网易湖北省襄阳市网友： (responding to above)
Taiwan’s Lung Yingtai says: Don’t hope for an enlightened monarch, but instead strive for a system that can keep
power caged. Don’t kneel for some fairweather official, but instead strive for a system that can hold supervise and
hold government officials accountable. Don’t sing the praises of some great leader, but instead strive for a system
where you can elect and impeach those in power. Don’t talk about support and thanks, but instead strive for a
system where one can speak and move about freely. Don’t wait for some hero, every one of us is the strength to
move walls!
A good system won’t demand that you support it, but instead educates you on how to defend your rights. A good
system won’t tell you that it’s great, but instead tells you how to fight for your rights. A good system won’t
demand your thanks, but instead tells you how to hold it accountable. A good system won’t demand that you
praise it as wise, but instead tells you how to monitor it. A good system lets you shout criticisms, rather than
thanking it for its kindness!
看着看着我就碉堡了 [网易广东省深圳市手机网友]：
No buried silver here [figuratively, protesting one’s innocence too much, inadvertently revealing what one intends
to hide].
胡可磊我是 [网易德国网友]：
I actually want to let people check, it’s just a shame I can’t even afford a house.
网易江西省南昌市网友：
A teacher has students write an essay at home about the nation, the party, society and the people.
Little Ming doesn’t understand the connotations of these words, so he goes and asks his dad.
His dad tells him: “The nation is the biggest, just like your grandma. The party is the one with the most power, the
leader of the family, just like me. Society is the one that works for the Party and the nation, and it has to listen
to the Party, just like your mom. The people are the smallest, and whatever they say nobody will listen, just like
you.”
After dinner, Little Ming wanted to write the essay, but he still didn’t really understand these things,
so he went to ask his grandma, but his grandma was already asleep.
Little Ming went to look for his dad, but dad and mom happened to be exercising in bed, and as soon as his dad
saw him come in, he boxed his ears.
There was nothing Little Ming could do but wipe his tears and go back to his room and write his essay on his own.
The next day, his dad received a call from the teacher: “You must be Little Ming’s father?”
“Yes, what’s the matter?”
“It’s about Little Ming’s essay.”
“Was it written poorly?”
“No, it was written excellently, but I suspect he might not have written it himself…”
“What did he write?”
“Little Ming wrote: The nation is sleeping, the Party is playing with society, society is moaning, and the people are
crying.”
天龙宫 [网易河南省三门峡市义马市网友]： (responding to above)
As long as it involves the interests of government officials, our country will immediately launch corrective
measures. Those that involve the interests of the ordinary common people, unless something extreme appears,
otherwise there won’t be any changes.
wfw9999 [网易山东省泰安市网友]： (responding to above)
I had hoped to see follow-up support from the central government and government officials exercising
self-restraint, I never imagined it would be just the opposite, of government officials madly fighting back, with the
central government’s words like a fart. What hope does our country have left?!
神耀天威 [网易广东省珠海市网友]： (responding to above)
Indeed, the counter-attacks by local government gorillas [phonetic pun with “officials”] are very direct, very
penetrating, and very shameless!
网易湖南省郴州市网友: (responding to above)
Every time God opens a window, a corrupt official immediately blocks a door!
da铁 [网易北京市网友]：
It was unacceptable for an individual’s private information to be divulged in the first place, and since everybody
advocates a sound legal system, the action of so casually divulging an private information is a serious criminal
violation, and if you can’t even get this right, don’t ever bring up a sound legal system or whatever again in the
future.
鸟毛之乡红太阳 [网易广西贵港市网友]： (responding to above)
Making some fenqing posts doesn’t represent how great you are, but instead makes people despise you. Our
country is developing, it’s difficult to escape a windy path [a path that includes mistakes], everyone has to look
at things correctly. You guys need to remember, as a member of society, if you yourself don’t respect your
country, it shows that you don’t respect yourself, and then how can you make other people respect you?
Remember, children don’t begrudge their mothers being ugly, dogs don’t begrudge their families being poor,
don’t conduct yourself worse than a dog.
That everyone can go online and make comments shows that everyone has a certain knowledge and experience,
and from this issue, it’s not difficult to see progress in our country’s legal system and the increase in media
supervision [of government]! You all only know to blindly attack! Speaking all high and mighty, as if you guys are
the most noble of character and sterling integrity.
Miscellaneous
Newswire
China Sets 5th Manned Space Mission for Summer (The Associated Press)
Feb. 28, 2013
http://world.time.com/2013/02/28/china-sets-5th-manned-space-mission-for-summer/
(BEIJING) — China will send three astronauts to its orbiting space station this summer in a mission that’s part of
preparations to establish an even larger permanent presence above Earth.
The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft will take flight sometime between June and August, the country’s manned space
program said in its statement Thursday. The craft will deliver its crew to the Tiangong 1, where the trio will spend
two weeks conducting tests of the station’s docking system and its systems for supporting life and carrying out
scientific work.
Two Chinese spacecraft, one of them manned, have docked already with Tiangong 1 since it was launched in
September 2011. China has been extremely cautious and methodical in its manned missions, while hoping to
avoid accidents and loss of life that could tarnish one of the nation’s most successful and prestigious scientific and
engineering undertakings.
The station is to be replaced in around 2020 with a permanent space station that will weigh about 60 tons, slightly
smaller than NASA’s Skylab of the 1970s and about one-sixth the size of the 16-nation International Space
Station. China was barred from participating in the International Space Station, largely on objections from the
United States over political differences and the Chinese program’s close military links.
China’s ambitious space goals also include plans for sending a rover to the moon, possibly followed by a manned
lunar mission. China’s manned space program launched its first astronaut, Yang Liwei, into space in 2003,
becoming the third nation after Russia and the U.S. to achieve that feat. The upcoming mission would be China’s
fifth manned space flight.
China would also be the third country after the United States and Russia to send independently maintained space
stations into orbit.
China Volunteers Rescue 900 Dogs in Cramped Truck (The Associated Press)
BEIJING March 3, 2013
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/china-volunteers-rescue-900-dogs-cramped-truck-18640043
The head of an animal rescue center in China said Sunday that volunteers have rescued about 900 dogs that were
being transported in poor conditions in a truck.
Chen Mingcai of the Chongqing Small Animal Protection Association said that a travelling citizen became
suspicious of the truck and called police, who detained the truck driver on Friday night.
Chen said he was later contacted by a netizen who had seen a photo of the dogs left in the truck on the entrance
of an expressway in southwestern Chongqing city.
He said that by Saturday afternoon volunteers from the animal center and other animal lovers who had seen
postings about the dogs on social media had arrived at the truck wanting to help the dogs. Chen says three people
were injured in clashes with suspected dog sellers who had also turned up.
Volunteers said the truck was on its way to Guangdong province in southern China, where dog meat is often
served in restaurants.
Chen said the dogs were weak, two had died in the truck that had travelled from neighboring Sichuan province
and some had given birth to puppies. He said many dogs looked like they were pet dogs and that one dog owner
had found his lost dog on the truck.
The dogs are now being taken care of by about 40-50 volunteers in Anwen town. Chen said they were waiting for
local authorities to carry out checks on the dogs and he wasn't sure what would happen to the dogs now.
A man who refused to give his name from Anwen Town Police sub-station confirmed that the dogs were now in
Anwen but had no other details.
Calls to Qijiang county police department rang unanswered.
Beijing restaurant removes 'racist' sign after fury (AFP)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gBNe2YjRyupbb6bAzoluvNjhln_w?docId=CNG.35c1755
a38f1d8d285b55d8f38343648.281
BEIJING — A defiant Beijing restaurant manager refused to apologise Thursday despite removing a "racist" sign
barring citizens of states in maritime disputes with China, along with dogs, following an international outcry.
The notice in the window of the Beijing Snacks restaurant read: "This shop does not receive the Japanese, the
Philippines, the Vietnamese and dog(s)" in both Chinese and English.
But despite taking down the sign after accusations of racism, the manager said he had no regrets and would not
apologise for any offence caused.
Images of the sign went viral in Vietnam and were splashed across newspapers in the Philippines on Wednesday.
Both are involved in bitter territorial disputes with China over islands in the South China Sea.
The manager, surnamed Wang, said it was taken down "because it was a lot of bother".
"I don't have any regrets," he told AFP. "I was just getting too many phone calls about it."
He seemed surprised at the attention it had generated but said he would not apologise for any offence caused,
suggesting it may have been misinterpreted.
"Maybe people misunderstood our meaning... it only said we would not serve customers from those countries," he
said.
The sign's wording was particularly inflammatory as it recalled China's colonial era, when British-owned
establishments barred Chinese from entering.
A sign outside a Shanghai park supposedly reading "No Dogs and Chinese allowed" became part of Communist
propaganda, and was featured in the 1972 Bruce Lee film "Fists of Fury" -- but many historical experts say no such
notice ever existed.
The restaurant sign provoked an outcry in Vietnam and the Philippines, generating thousands of posts on
Vietnamese social networking sites and newspaper comment threads.
Filipinos greeted the photo with a mixture of fury and amusement. "Blatant racism at Beijing Restaurant,"
journalist Veronica Pedrosa wrote in one widely-shared tweet.
China and Japan have a separate acrimonious dispute over islands in the East China Sea, and ongoing
disagreements about Japan's colonial past.
The cramped establishment's specialty is soup made with pork offal and gravy-soaked biscuits. "This is what old
Beijingers like to eat," a white-hatted chef said.
'Zombies' infest Yale social network account (The Associated Press)
March 2, 2013
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/03/02/zombies-yale-social-network/1958779/
BEIJING (AP) — U.S. universities have responded to China's exploding demand for American higher education
with branch campuses and aggressive recruiting. Now, some are trying to boost their brands by casting photos
and other snippets of campus life out into the confounding sea of Chinese social media.
How confounding? Consider the mystery of the Chinese Yale zombies.
That's "zombies" as in "zombie followers" on Sina Weibo — the hugely popular "weibo," or microblogging, site
that's roughly akin to Twitter and has attracted more than 500 million followers since debuting in 2009. A common
feature on Chinese social media, these zombie accounts could represent actual users who lurk inactively online.
But often they're fake, mass-produced accounts that mindlessly follow (hence the name "zombie") and artificially
boost another account's follower numbers — and thus prestige.
Since its debut in December, Yale's new Sina Weibo account — sharing photos and other assorted items from its
Ivy-covered Connecticut campus — has exploded in popularity, apparently far faster than any other U.S.
institution's.
While other prominent universities have patiently accumulated at most a few thousand followers in more than a
year of operation, Yale's been adding nearly that many daily, and has passed 140,000. The only other foreign
university even remotely close to that figure is, oddly, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia. Yale's Weibo
account is ranked 30th in popularity among educational institutions overall, better even than several well-known
domestic institutions like Nanjing and Zhejiang universities.
True, Ivy League Yale does have a famous name, longtime ties to China (it graduated the first Chinese person to
earn a degree from a U.S. college in 1854) and 1,000-plus Chinese students and scholars currently on campus.
That likely explains some of the growth. But Yale also appears to have attracted a mysteriously large battalion of
walking dead accounts, with pages and pages of followers that rarely if ever post themselves and have few if any
followers. Analytic software also points to some geographic oddities that could also raise suspicions of fake
accounts, and many followers have disabled the feature allowing them to receive private messages.
Whence these zombie Yalies? After inquiries from The Associated Press, a Yale spokesman acknowledged some of
the followers could be fake, but says that's not Yale's doing. He says the university isn't buying followers, which
can be purchased for a few cents each online.
"We don't do it, we don't promote it, we don't encourage it, we don't like it," university spokesman Michael Morand
said, adding: "Not to be cheeky about it, but it's sort of like 'Newsflash: Spam is inherent on the Internet."
Zinch, the marketing company that works with hundreds of overseas institutions in China and runs Yale's Sina
Weibo feed, also denies purchasing followers. It too says it's mystified by Yale's growth.
Sina, the company that operates Sina Weibo, has promoted Yale on its campus page and recommended it to new
users, spokesman Mao Taotao said. But that wouldn't explain why Yale has so many inactive followers. And he
denied Sina adds followers to any account.
"To provide netizens with a clean online environment, Sina Weibo eliminates rubbish users in a timely manner,"
he said in a written statement.
Another possibility: Companies that specialize in selling zombie followers may be signing their zombies up to
follow Yale and other accounts to make them appear more real, said Cao Di, an analyst for the Shanghai-based
Internet consulting firm iResearch.
In short, the bottom of the zombie Yalie mystery may be unreachable. And the whole matter could fairly be called
a harmless curiosity.
Still, it offers a glimpse of just how swampy the new landscape of Chinese social media can be, and highlights
some risks for overseas universities and companies. Accusations of inflated Twitter accounts have embarrassed
politicians and corporations. In academia, concerns have been raised on many campuses — including Yale —
about the dangers as universities expand their reach into foreign cultures.
Yale could lose face in China if it's believed to be artificially inflating its numbers there, said Jason Lane, a
University of Albany expert on internationalization efforts by U.S. universities. But more broadly, he said, the
issue highlights how U.S. universities risk losing control of their brands and reputations in unfamiliar
environments. Those risks are compounded by outsourcing the communications work to companies like Zinch or
other local experts due to language barriers.
"Given the criticality of the Chinese market to the international dimensions of these institutions, I think it's even
more alarming that you're releasing control of this aspect of your brand," Lane said. "Part of oversight is knowing
what they're saying but it's also a cultural issue of not really knowing how it's playing."
"This is part of the learning curve," he added. "There are bound to be some hiccups along the way."
There are nearly 200,000 Chinese students on U.S. campuses — up 25 percent just since last year, and the most
of any foreign country, according to the Institute of International Education. But Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and
other sites are banned in China. So U.S. institutions are gravitating to Sina Weibo to communicate with
prospective students, alumni and even donors. An estimated 80 percent of Chinese university and high school
students have accounts.
"We're talking about a large audience of prospective students and alumni who aren't necessarily able to interact
with us the same way their counterparts in other countries are," said Laura Brinn, Duke's director of global
communications.
Overall, U.S. universities are moving more cautiously into China than in the past, following setbacks. A planned
campus by Duke encountered some faculty skepticism and construction delays, while Yale's partnership with the
National University of Singapore has been a major point of contention on campus.
That caution is reflected in social media experiments. Survey data from the University of Durham in the United
Kingdom suggest schools in that country are further along than those in the United States. Some well-known U.S.
names, like Harvard and Stanford, are still on the sidelines. Those in the game say they're just experimenting,
trying to figure out what works.
Duke, for instance, has discovered popular topics include its basketball team and research by faculty, particularly
with a Chinese connection. Michigan creates its own specialized content in-house for Sina Weibo rather than just
translating material from other feeds like Facebook. Many of its followers turned out to be Chinese students on its
own campus, so Michigan's using its feed to reach them. But it's had some surprising "hits" in China, too, like the
obituary of a Michigan faculty member who was an expert in medical drawings.
Yale reports that photos of its famous architecture — like a recent one of its arresting Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library that Sina retweeted — are popular and deserve credit for at least some of the Yale account's
rapid growth.
"People are just going to put a lot of different stuff up and see what sticks," said Nick Pearce, a University of
Durham sociologist who has been studying how universities use Chinese social media.
Duke has around 3,000 followers; Michigan recently passed 6,000. The University of California-Berkeley had
about 11,000 but it hasn't posted anything since last March 21, and a handful of U.K. institutions have passed
25,000.
Then there are two outliers: Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, with more than 170,000 followers, and Yale
with about 140,000.
Publicly available software that analyzes Sina Weibo accounts indicates about 95 percent of those following Yale
have fewer than 100 followers themselves, and more than 93 percent have made 10 posts or fewer. More than
one-third have never posted anything. By comparison, the figures for Zhejiang University, a well-known Chinese
institution with a comparable number of followers to Yale, were much lower: only 26 percent have posted 10 times
or fewer, and 6 percent have never posted. A recent analysis comparing Yale with Michigan found fewer than 2
percent of Yale's followers post at least once a day on average; at Michigan the figure is nearly one-third.
Experts caution such software may be unreliable, and indeed results varied somewhat. But it also reveals some
geographical oddities — though those too are hard to interpret. For instance, it shows roughly 20 percent of Yale's
registered from Hunan, a rural province known for its rice farming and chili pepper cooking style, and Yale gets
high numbers in other rural areas. But only about 2 percent and 4 percent, respectively, of Yale's followers appear
to come from Beijing and Shanghai.
That looks very different from other universities, who typically have heavy concentrations of followers in cities,
and a relative handful in places like Hunan (Michigan, for instance, gets more than a quarter of its Sina Weibo
traffic from those two cities alone).
"If it is coming from one small (place) that is not likely to have high demand for higher education, something
suspicious is going on there," Lane said .
The AP attempted to reach 20 users from a random page of Yale followers. Sixteen of them were not set up to
accept private messages, which is unusual on Sina Weibo. Of the remaining four, one had never posted, and two
others have not updated since early 2011. The fourth did respond to the AP's attempt to verify the follower's
authenticity.
Still, the software suggests some other non-university accounts also have surprisingly large numbers of followers
from places like Hunan. Sina's promotion of Yale likely has helped attract real followers. And an analysis
performed for the AP by the Beijing-based new media information provider 36Kr.com found Yale had a
respectable level of apparently real engagement, with many of its posts attracting comments and reposted by
genuine followers.
Morand, the Yale spokesman, and Sid Krommenhoek, who leads Zinch's global business development team, said
Yale's reputation at least partly explains the numbers. But both also insisted big numbers aren't the goal.
"It's the big name. It runs deep," Krommenhoek said of Yale. "You kind of expect some schools to grow. It's like,
why Yale receives so many applications. But that's not the important thing. The important thing is to find a good
fit, to be engaging, and to have a real conversation."
Still, Krommenhoek admits he's flummoxed.
"No one sees this type of growth," he said. "There are a lot of factors. We are very interested."
U.S. universities say Sina Weibo is just a small part of a much larger, long-term strategy to connect with a huge
and important country. But one lesson is clear: success can't be judged by sheer numbers.
"In the whole industry, people don't believe in that number anymore," said King-wa Fu, assistant professor of
journalism and media studies center at University of Hong Kong.
Pearce, the University of Durham expert, agreed that what matters is quality engagements, not quantity.
"If I was told 'we need 100,000 followers and you'll get a bonus,' I could probably get them 100,000 followers but
that wouldn't be real engagement," he said.
Still, Lane, the Albany expert on internationalization by U.S., universities, said the Yale Sina Weibo mystery
underscores the risk of the unknown.
"You don't know what you're getting into when you get into other countries," he said. "But when you cross into
weibo, it's a world unto itself."
Print
HK curbs on milk formula spark debate on social media (South China Morning
Post)
Sunday, 03 March, 2013
Staff Reporter
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1173141/curbs-hong-kong-milk-formula-spark-debate-chinese
-social-media
New measures to limit the amount of milk formula transported from Hong Kong into the mainland have sparked
fervent but divided opinion across social media.
The new regulation, which went into effect on Friday, bars travellers from taking more than 1.8kg, or two cans,
of milk powder out of Hong Kong.
Many mainland netizens criticised the Hong Kong government for being protectionist and even for “biting the hand
that feeds them”.
“Hong Kong is always championing its free market laurels. Do they think about all the fresh water, vegetables and
grain [the mainland] supplies to them?” one wrote on microblogging site Sina Weibo.
“They repeatedly talk about human rights…but this is how they treat their compatriots?”
“I think the Hong Kong government went too far on this milk powder issue. They only care about the children of
Hong Kong and none of the children from the mainland,” said one user on Sina Weibo.
Outspoken Taiwanese-American IT mogul and former Google executive Kai-Fu Lee – banned from Weibo recently
– tweeted on Friday: “HK should be ashamed” about the new law. He joked that mainland authorities did not limit
the number of mistresses Hong Kong men kept in China.
Not all mainland netizens opposed the ban. Many pointed to the fundamental problem of poor food safety
standards on the mainland and blamed the central government for the whole debacle.
“None of this would be happening if our government were able to ensure milk powder were safe for consumption.
This is the key,” another Weibo user said.
“Why is there is a consumer confidence crisis on the mainland? Testing organisations don’t do their jobs here. I
feel like the only organisation that seems to be filtering out stuff that needs filtering is Sarft [China’s media
censor],” another wrote.
Some mainland tourists said the ban had reduced the number of mainlanders flooding into Hong Kong
significantly and made it easier to travel.
“It took me less than two hours to come back as there were very few people going through Hong Kong
immigration. I could not believe my eyes. Easy shopping, great comfort,” said one blogger from Shenzhen.
At the weekend, 25 people were arrested at border checkpoints for breaching the new restrictions. Among the
arrests were 17 Hong Kong residents and eight mainlanders, according the Secretary for Security. More than 115
cans of formula have been seized.
Spill in China Underlines Environmental Concerns (The New York Times)
By EDWARD WONG
Published: March 2, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/world/asia/spill-in-china-lays-bare-environmental-concerns.html?pagew
anted=all
HANDAN, China — The first warning came in the form of dead fish floating in a river.
Then officials in this city got confirmation that a chemical spill had taken place at a fertilizer factory upstream.
They shut off the tap water, which sent residents into a scramble for bottled water. In the countryside, officials
also told farmers not to graze their livestock near the river.
The spill, which occurred on Dec. 31, affected at least 28 villages and a handful of cities of more than one million
people, including Handan. Officials here were irate that their counterparts in Changzhi, where the polluting factory
was located, had delayed reporting the spill for five days. For the past two months, Changzhi officials and
executives at the company running the factory, Tianji Coal Chemical Industry Group, have generally stayed silent,
exacerbating anxiety over water quality.
The conflict over the Changzhi spill has drawn attention to the growing problems with water use and pollution in
northern China. The region, which has suffered from a drought for decades, is grappling with how industrial
companies should operate along rivers. Local officials are shielding polluting companies and covering up
environmental degradation, say environmentalists.
“Problems with water weren’t so serious before, but they have become much worse with industrial consumption,”
said Yin Qingli, a lawyer in Handan who filed a lawsuit in January against Tianji, which uses water to convert coal
to fertilizer at the factory in Changzhi.
Environmental degradation has led many Chinese to question the Communist Party’s management of the
country’s economic growth. Addressing the problem is one the greatest challenges for the administration of Xi
Jinping, the new chief of the Communist Party. Environmental issues will most likely be on the agenda at the
annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, scheduled to begin on Tuesday.
The results of an official investigation into the Tianji spill were announced on Feb. 20 by Xinhua, the state news
agency, which reported that a faulty hose had resulted in the leakage of about 39 tons of aniline, a potential
carcinogen, from the fertilizer factory. Thirty tons were contained by a reservoir, but nearly nine tons leaked into
the Zhuozhang River, which feeds into the Zhang River that runs to Hebei Province, where Handan is, and Henan
Province. The Xinhua report said 39 people had been punished, including Zhang Bao, the mayor of Changzhi, who
was removed from his post. But the party chief, Tian Xirong, the city’s top authority, was recently promoted to
deputy director of the provincial Parliament.
Some critics say officials may be slow to divulge information because the acting governor of Shanxi Province,
where Changzhi is, is Li Xiaopeng, the “princeling” son of Li Peng, a powerful Communist Party elder. At a news
conference in January after news of the spill had emerged, the younger Mr. Li urged officials to make safety a top
priority.
Handan officials first got a tip about a potential spill on Jan. 4 from a water management agency upstream. But
when they tried contacting Changzhi officials, there was no response. “After more than 30 calls, we still weren’t
able to reach them,” a Handan environmental official told Xinhua. Only the next day did Changzhi officials agree
to meet with Handan officials.
At least two managers of Tianji have been fired, but the company, which is the foundation of Changzhi’s economy,
appears to have suffered no other significant consequences. It is one of many companies in China’s booming
coal-to-chemicals industry, in which a water-intensive gasification process is used to convert coal to chemicals
that are critical for a wide range of products. The process results in large amounts of wastewater that is supposed
to be treated and then contained.
After sending a team to Handan in January, Greenpeace East Asia issued a report on the spill. It said that there
were about 100 coal-to-chemical factories on the upper reaches of the Zhuozhang River. “There is a history of
clashes between heavily water-consuming coal-to-chemical factories and citizens downstream who are trying to
compete for water to drink,” the report said. Larger factories like those of Tianji use 2,000 to 3,000 tons of water
per hour, equivalent to the amount of water that more than 300,000 people use in a year.
The factory in Changzhi dumps more than six million tons of wastewater per year, about 30 percent of the water
taken from the river, according to Greenpeace. The wastewater is supposed to drain into a receptacle.
Greenpeace said Tianji is “notorious for its pollution.” In 2010 and 2011, Tianji had been judged by Shanxi’s
environmental protection bureau to be polluting above normal levels in four quarters and was fined each time.
Tianji’s pollution was abnormally high throughout most of 2011, so provincial officials asked the Changzhi
environmental protection bureau to monitor the factory, Greenpeace reported.
On Jan. 9, the Handan Winter Swimming Association announced that it had filed a lawsuit in a Handan court
against Tianji, seeking more than $3 million in compensation. But like the lawsuit of Mr. Yin’s, it has gone nowhere.
Mr. Yin said he had been asked by local officials to withdraw his lawsuit. The Handan officials had entered into
secret negotiations with their Changzhi counterparts for compensation.
Calls to the Changzhi propaganda department and Tianji seeking comment went unanswered. Mr. Zhang said on
Jan. 7 that an initial assessment of the spill had inaccurately put the aniline leak at 1.5 tons, not important enough
to require notification of officials, according to Chinese news reports. Wang Junyan, Tianji’s general manager,
apologized for the “inaccurate survey and imprecise calculation.”
Recently, official Chinese news organizations have run articles or editorials on water pollution, in part spurred by
the recent spill. People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, published a commentary on Feb. 21 by
Yan Houfu, who specializes in environmental law, saying that fines against polluting companies have little impact
because the amounts typically range from $8,000 to $80,000. And “the Ministry of Environmental Protection,
intentionally or otherwise, has not been strict in enforcing the law,” he wrote.
In 2011, inspections in 200 cities across China found that water in 55 percent of the tests was rated “fairly poor
to extremely poor,” Mr. Yan said. Zhang Lei, an associate professor of environmental studies at Renmin University
in Beijing, said that her research showed that there had been about 3,600 spillage accidents related to the
chemical industry from 1970 to 2010, of which about 900 were on a large scale.
Amy Qin and Patrick Zuo contributed research from Handan and Beijing.
Online
Finding a Cure for Asia’s Ales (THE WSJ CHINA REAL TIME REPORT BLOG)
March 1, 2013
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/03/01/finding-a-cure-for-asias-ales/?mod=WSJBlog
It was the moment of truth. After weeks fermenting in a 24-liter barrel, Adam Goldberg’s new beer was ready to
taste. He poured a sample from the keg’s spout, inspecting its murky brown appearance through a glass.
“Not bad,” he said, taking a sip of the robust-bodied brew, which had a delicate, fruity sweetness followed by a
spicy coriander-seed kick.
Mr. Goldberg, based in Hong Kong, has brewed dozens of beers, from English-style bitters to experimental
concoctions made with star anise, Sichuan peppercorns and osmanthus blossoms. But he isn’t a professional. By
day, he is a lawyer. By night, he homebrews, filling up the spare bedroom of his high-rise apartment with barrels
of beer that churn with hard-working yeast.
“The process itself is pretty remarkable,” he said as he prepared a sterilizing solution for his bottles. “You put all
these things together and it looks frothy and disgusting, and then a couple of weeks later it’s beer.”
Thirsty lager lovers and ale enthusiasts will get a chance to savor Mr. Goldberg’s latest brew Saturday, when Hong
Kong plays host to its first homebrewing competition. The competition is open to anyone who has brewed beer in
Hong Kong since November; Mr. Goldberg expects about a dozen contestants. Samples of each brew will be on
hand for the public to judge.
Until recently, homebrewing didn’t exist in the city, but a nascent interest in craft beer among Western expats has
brought more exposure to brews from the U.S., U.K. and beyond. Now more adventurous drinkers are converting
their spare bedrooms into miniature breweries.
A similar story is playing out across Asia. China seems especially fertile ground for homebrewing. Last year saw
the launch of the Beijing Homebrewing Society and the city’s first homebrewing festival. Gao Yan, owner of
Nanjing’s Oktoberfest brewing company, sells homebrewing equipment on Taobao and wrote the first
Chinese-language book on homebrewing, “Get Your Own Brew.” He estimates the number of homebrewers in
China has grown to 1,200 from 200 over the past year.
See more on this story at Scene Asia
Chen Kaige: Beijing Air Pollution Strangling Creativity (THE WSJ CHINA REAL
TIME REPORT BLOG)
March 3, 2013
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/03/03/chen-kaige-beijing-air-pollution-strangling-creativity/?mod=W
SJBlog
Is Beijing’s air pollution responsible for underwhelming recent work of one of China’s best-known movie directors?
Though he didn’t say so directly, Chen Kaige told reporters at the opening of this year’s big political conclave in
Beijing the poor quality of the capital’s air had been making it hard for him to concentrate on his work.
“Cornered by the terrible weather, I have nowhere to go,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted Mr. Chen as
saying on Sunday. “I am unable to focus on my artistic creation.”
The director described air pollution as “appalling” and “unbelievable,” according to Xinhua.
With the high toxicity of China’s air, land and water making headlines and stirring up the country’s vocal social
media users in recent months, activists have predicted environmental protection would dominate the agenda as
Chinese officials, academics, celebrities and entrepreneurs pour into Beijing for political meetings this month.
Mr. Chen’s comments, delivered on the opening day of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress,
suggest they may have been right.
The CPPCC is an advisory body that holds its national meeting in Beijing concurrently with the annual plenary
session of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress. Once the NPC kicks off on Tuesday, the yearly
political event known colloquially as the “Two Meetings” will be officially underway.
A newly elected CPPCC delegate, Mr. Chen is best known for directing “Farewell My Concubine,” a lushly shot love
letter to Peking Opera that won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993. His more recent films have
failed to garner the same critical acclaim, though his latest, “Caught in the Web,” was a commercial success inside
China.
Many in China have grown concerned with the degraded state of the country’s environment after decades of
turbo-charged economic growth. A stretch of terrible air in Beijing in January, controversy last month over the
government’s reluctance to release soil pollution data and various flare-ups over polluted water have galvanized
the public and even inspired the country’s state media to question why more isn’t being done to protect the
environment.
Mr. Chen is a Beijing native and has long been critical of the havoc economic development has wreaked on the city.
Yet it’s not clear how much credibility he has as a spokesman for the environment. In 2005, the director and his
crew found themselves at the center of what at the time was one of the country’s biggest environmental scandals:
the trashing of a once pristine lake in southwestern China’s Yunnan province during the filming of “The Promise,”
The film’s producers, including Mr. Chen’s wife, were later fined $11,250. When Mr. Chen was nominated for a
“Green Chinese” award the next year, many cried foul.
“Sometimes a negative example can serve as a warning,” Wang Panpu, deputy director of the award committee,
told Xinhua in explaining the nomination.
Then again, with air pollution in Chinese cities regularly reaching hazardous levels, green-minded residents are
probably happy for all the celebrity firepower they can get.
“I was born and bred in Beijing. I know what the weather was like in the old days,” Mr. Chen told Xinhua on Sunday,
citing the death two years ago of one of his prized jujube trees. “If a tree dies like this, how can humans fare any
better?”
– Josh Chin. Follow him on Twitter @joshchin.
Your 2013 CBA Playoffs Preview: Can The Beijing Ducks Repeat As Champs?
(beijingcream.com)
By Jon Pastuszek March 2, 2013
http://beijingcream.com/2013/03/your-2013-cba-playoffs-preview-can-the-beijing-ducks-repeat-as-champs/
The Chinese Basketball Association playoffs got underway Wednesday, and to discuss the teams and break down
the matchups, we’ve invited the foremost English-speaking CBA expert, Jon Pastuszek, who runs the excellent
NiuBBall. Our questions to him are in bold.
(1) Guangdong vs. (8) Zhejiang
Are the Guangdong Southern Tigers the Miami Heat of the CBA this year, and is it really healthy for the league that
they’re going to win it all again?
In Beijing, absolutely. Elsewhere, I think the whole “sweep the leg” episode from last year caused a lot of people
to turn on them. I don’t know if they’re the Miami Heat, but they’re certainly a team that is not liked.
Is it a bad thing if they win again? I’m not so sure. I’m of the opinion that the Tigers’ window is closing. Their
longtime core of Wang Shipeng and Zhu Fangyu are advancing in age and they currently lack the young players
who could step into their shoes. That next generation of players, Zhou Peng, Su Wei and Li Xiaoyu, crapped the
bed last year against Beijing and don’t look like a group who can carry the torch with confidence.
What happens if they don’t win? Yi probably won’t be back next season. Their mid-season coaching hire, Jonas
Kazlauskas, also probably won’t be back next season. Their vets will be a year older. They’ll still be towards the top
of the league, but they’re no longer the juggernaut they once were. A lot of that has to do with the overall quality
of the league improving every year, but the roster isn’t what it used to be. We’ll see if they have anything up their
sleeves this off-season, but Guangdong’s dynasty, like they all eventually do at some point, might be coming to
a close.
Assess Yi Jianlian. How is this dude not in the NBA?
For Team China and in the CBA, dude is a beast because in both of those settings it’s rare for a seven-footer to be
as skilled and as athletic as Yi. But in the NBA, what exactly is he? It’s a question that no team has been able to
answer yet. He doesn’t really have an NBA skill. He doesn’t rebound. He’s a non-passer, although he’s improved
a bit in that respect with all of the double teams he’s seen while playing for China the last two summers.
Defensively, he’s a wreck. He has never shown the desire to want to play inside, which means he’s floating around
free-throw line and out. But he’s not a good enough shooter from the three-point line to be an effective stretch big
man.
He gets a lot of criticism for not being tough enough, and that’s something I believed as well for a few years. But
after seeing him up close with the national team these past three summers, I’m not buying that at all anymore.
And if you talk to coaches who have coached him with the national team setup, they’ll tell you the same thing. Not
only has he stepped up and taken the challenge of being The Guy for the post-Yao Chinese, he’s excelled in that
role. Some of his best games have come against top competition (Spain in the Olympics, Jordan in the Asia
Championship finals), and he has been among the top big men both at the 2010 World Championship and last
summer at the Olympics before he got hurt. So I just think people need to think a little bit more on Yi instead of
just throwing out the “soft” label and painting the whole thing over.
All that being said though, he’s just not good enough for the NBA. if he decides to play in Europe next season for
a Real Madrid or Barcelona, or any other top club team, he’d be fantastic. But it just goes to show you how good
the players are in the NBA.
How does a team with Quincy Douby, he of the 75-point performance, not be better than 8th place?
A team who hired a head coach who wants to play up-and-down for some reason signed Eddy Curry. Your guess
is as good as mine as to why.
(4) Xinjiang vs. (5) Liaoning
This figures to be the most — only? — competitive series of the first round. Break it down for us.
They’re two similarly constructed teams. Both have very good Chinese players (Liaoning’s are second only to
Guangdong), both team’s foreigners don’t totally dominate the ball and they’re both based in cold-as-hell cities
with bad air (Urumqi and Benxi). The fact that Xinjiang was able to grab a 4th seed is noteworthy because they
went through a prolonged stretch early in the season where both of their foreigners were on the shelf with injuries.
They’ve been killing teams recently, with former NBA’er Von Wafer playing especially well. James Singleton, who
missed a big chunk of the season with a knee injury, is finally back and looked like somewhat like his old self in
their last regular season game.
But whereas Xinjiang is just finally getting healthy, Liaoning is limping into the postseason with two key injuries
to Chinese players. But they’re still capable of giving us a good series: Guo Ailun, who was on the National Team
last summer, has been very effective at the point guard, while Josh Akognon can get blazing hot very quickly.
Solomon Jones isn’t much of an offensive threat, but his length and athleticism makes him one of the few rim
protectors in the league and gives them a very versatile defensive option inside.
Liaoning has to win one of the next two games at Xinjiang… otherwise, it potentially sets up a do-or-die Game 5
in Urumqi. And with no foreign referees until the semifinals, let’s put it this way: Liaoning is guaranteed to lose
that one.
(3) Beijing vs. (6) Guangsha
Didn’t these teams play in last year’s playoffs?
Yep. And it’ll end exactly like last year’s: Quickly.
Beijing started the year hot, beating Guangdong and Xinjiang on the road, but went on a serious funk, got swept
by Tianjin (the second worst team in the league), lost at Qingdao (the worst team in the league), lost at Bayi
(always a bummer)… what is up with this Jekyll and Hyde of a team?
I think it’s a team that’s been pacing itself. After all, their best player is a 36-year-old point guard, Stephon
Marbury, who coincidentally happens to be the best and most unstoppable player in the league. Ensuring health
and fresh legs are more important than anything else. They know that when it counts in the playoffs, they’re
capable of turning it on. And in big regular season games (Guangdong, Xinjiang, Shandong) they’ve come away
with results. So it’s nothing to be overly concerned with in my opinion.
Odds that the Ducks repeat as champ?
I think they’re pretty good. It’s going to be a slugfest when they play against Shandong and their three imports
in the semifinals. But up until this point (save for Tianjin, unbelievably), nobody has figured out how to to keep
Marbury out of the paint. It’s not like you can really gameplan for Beijing — they run very simple sets and their
go-to play is Marbury spread pick-and-roll. So until somebody proves to me that they can stop that, I have to stick
with the Ducks. Plus, they’re playing the entirety of the playoffs at the 18,000 seat NBA-quality Wukesong Arena.
Last season during the Finals against Guangdong, every game was sold out and electric. It’s an advantage no
other team will even come close to enjoying and I think it’s something that will prove to be a difference-maker as
they advance into later rounds.
(2) Shandong vs. (7) Dongguan
I have absolutely nothing to say about this series. Perhaps you do?
All the pieces have come together in Shandong this season. Of course, it’s easier for that to happen when you’re
playing with three imports as opposed to just two, like most other teams. But this is a heck of a team; their
foreigners (Pooh Jeter, Zaid Abbas and Jackson Vroman) don’t dominate the ball and are all extremely unselfish,
they have multiple Chinese players capable of making meaningful contributions and they consistently defend.
DongGuan meanwhile, has been picking up the pieces all season long. Lester Hudson, who was second in the
league in scoring last year, went down mid-season with a broken hand. They’ve dealt with other injuries to their
Chinese. And they’ve been dealing with the reality of having to balance the playing time of a very promising yet
very raw potential NBA player, Li Muhao, while still winning games. Hudson is back with the team for the playoffs
now, but in yet another stroke of horrible luck, their other American, CBA All-Star Marcus Haislip, sprained his
ankle last weekend and is playing with a limp. These guys are impeccably coached by Brian Goorjian, and it’s a
tribute to him and his staff that they even made it here, but it’s going to be a short series.
Finally — your first round, semifinals, and finals predictions. Go!
First round: Guangdong, Shandong, Beijing and Xinjiang.
Semi-Finals: Guangdong and Beijing
Finals: Beijing
Jon Pastuszek writes about all things Chinese hoops at NiuBBall.com. His work includes a New York Times piece
about Quincy Douby and the Xinjiang Flying Tigers’ 2011 playoff run, and he’s previously written about Stephen
Marbury for this site.
German TV Crew Attacked
(beijingcream.com)
In
Hebei
Province
Just
Outside
Of
Beijing
By Anthony Tao March 1, 2013
http://beijingcream.com/2013/03/german-tv-crew-attacked-in-hebei-province-just-outside-of-beijing/
The Foreign Correspondents Club of China recently got wind of an assault on a German TV crew yesterday in Hebei
province and published this statement:
The crew, belonging to ARD television, narrowly avoided serious injury when two men attacked their vehicle with
baseball bats, shattering the windscreen, after a high speed chase down a major highway near the city of Sanhe,
50 km east of Beijing.
Whoa, high-speed chase.
ARD correspondent Christine Adelhardt, accompanied by two German colleagues and two Chinese staff, had been
filming in the village of Da Yan Ge Zhuang for a report on urbanisation, one of the incoming Chinese government’s
major challenges and a process that has often provoked disputes over land ownership.
“We were filming the village square, where you could see old style farmers’ houses next to a newly-built mansion
behind a wall and high-rise buildings in the background,” said Adelhardt, when a car drew up next to them. The
car’s driver began filming the TV crew.
When the crew left, two cars, later joined by at least two others, gave chase, trying to force the Germans’ minivan
off the road and to deliberately cause a collision.
“Deliberately cause a collision.”
They forced the ARD driver to stop at one point, whereupon five or six men surrounded the car, attempted to get
in, and hammered on the windows with their fists.
You get the idea. Eventually the police get involved, but…
The crew then came across two motorcycle policemen and asked them for help. Their pursuers caught up with
them, and again began smashing and punching holes in the car’s windscreen, despite the police officers’ attempts
to control them.
Eventually, reinforcements:
Eventually, police reinforcements arrived, and escorted the ARD crew to a local police station, where Adelhardt
and her colleagues were questioned. Adelhardt saw a number of the men who had attacked her car at the police
station, but was not sure whether they were detained.
Meanwhile, the crew has gotten mixed messages about how authorities are handling the incident.
When she asked to file a charge of attempted homicide, she was assured by a local official that such charges had
already been laid against the men.
But a policeman told her that the investigation had found that villagers had been “offended” by the TV crew’s
presence and that they should have asked permission to film.
The picture above was tweeted out by Andreas Cichowicz, a former ARD correspondent, with the accompanying
message (roughly translated from German), “This is how the German team’s car came out after the attack by
thugs!”
That windshield damage was obviously not just the work of “fists.” We can’t wait to see ARD’s footage, pre- and/or
post-chase. During chase? We can only hope.
In Online Poll, a Majority Support Gay Marriage in China (tealeafnation.com)
February 28, 2013 | by David Wertime
http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/02/in-online-poll-a-majority-support-gay-marriage-in-china/
A poll currently live on Chinese Internet portal Sina.com shows that a majority of over 62,000 respondents favor
amending China’s Marriage Law to allow for same sex marriage.
The poll allows respondents four choices: “I support it, love does not require a gender difference” has received
50.1% of the vote thus far. “I oppose it, gay marriage violates social mores” has received 25.9%, with the rest
saying they have no preference or cannot decide.
Although Sina can be fairly described as an ideologically neutral platform, Chinese Internet users as a whole tend
to be younger, more educated, and thus likely more liberal than the population at large. But their opinions are
likely predictive of social trends within China.
The impetus for the poll lies in yet another open letter written to China’s congress. On February 25, a group calling
itself Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays of China posted an unsigned blog entry addressed to the National
People’s Congress, which is scheduled to convene in Beijing in early March.
Written in informal, even chatty language, the letter is nonetheless a heartfelt and forceful plea for authorities to
change China’s marriage law. The parents explain they are called “comrade parents”–the old Maoist greeting of
“comrade” in China now used mostly as code for “gay.” The letter continues,
According to sociologists, homosexuals comprise between 3% and 5% of the total population. By this reckoning,
China has approximately 60 million homosexuals who are excluded from the marriage halls because the Marriage
Law currently in effect only allows for union between one man and one woman.
The letter also evinces a growing rights consciousness in China, stating:
What’s more, homosexuals are not violating any law currently in effect. They possess all of the rights of citizens
of the People’s Republic of China, and they cannot be deprived of their right to marry for long.
Much like Chinese civil society writ large, gay rights in China has made tremendous strides over the past few
decades, even if much terrain remains to be traveled. An article by state-run Xinhua news service in early
February recaps some major milestones, including the de-criminalization of homosexual sex in 1997 and a
de-classification of homosexuality as a “pathology” in 2000. Nevertheless, the article states, the legalization of
gay marriage is “rather far off.” It quotes Beijing University law school professor Ma Yinan, who studies marriage
law, as saying that the legislature is unlikely to consider changing the law until there has been further social
change.
The letter is available in Chinese here, and a full Tea Leaf Nation translation follows below.
Hello, National People’s Congress!
We come from all over, our children are homosexual, and we are called “comrade parents.” Because of our
children’s sexual orientation, they have been unable to legally start a family with the people they love…leading to
hassle in seeing a doctor and many other areas of life.
According to sociologists, homosexuals comprise between 3% and 5% of the total population. By this reckoning,
China has approximately 60 million homosexuals who are excluded from the marriage halls because the Marriage
Law currently in effect only allows for union between one man and one woman. Some of our children have lived
with their same-sex partners for almost 10 years. They take care of each other and love each other, but if one get
sick and needs surgery, the other cannot sign for them. As parents of homosexuals, we often feel anxious, as the
inability to legally marry will affect to some degree our children’s ability to raise the next generation, sign for
surgery, inherit their partner’s property, and even buy a home.
It’s incredible that, although our gay children do not love members of the opposite sex, they still have the legal
right to marry them. Everyone knows that when a homosexual and a heterosexual get married, it can lead
to…serious social problems, and even more people living unhappily. Is our law trying to encourage [this]?
What’s more, homosexuals are not violating any law currently in effect. They possess all of the rights of citizens
of the People’s Republic of China, and they cannot be deprived of their right to marry for long.
We earnestly request that the National People’s Congress and members of the Chinese People’s Political
Consultative Congress pay attention, listening closely to the heartfelt voices of 120 million “comrade parents,”
[and] show sympathy for the eagerness that 60 million homosexuals have for equality and respect. [We] call on
[our representatives] to amend the Marriage Law as soon as possible, giving the equal right to marriage to China’s
60 million gay citizens.
Thank you for your attention to this matter amidst your busy schedule, and wish you happy work and good health!
Salutations!