Reading China

Moving to... ...

2007-04-29T18:20:00.000+08:00

I have moved to : http://china.chonghead.net

Please visit my new blog.

A Hotel in Peking University for "Teaching and Research"?

2007-04-28T00:10:00.000+08:00

The Peking University is building a five-star hotel. But the teachers and students accuse this project of occupying the university's land for research and teaching and violating the land-use designation in the campus planning.

This hotel, named after "Weiming Lake", the famous spot in the Peking University and located at the northern side of Baiyi Road and by the wall of campus, is still under construction. This is a project of the Peking University Science Park Limited (PUSP). It is scheduled to open in October.

The spokesperson of PUSP defended that hotel is also "a facility of education and research". This hotel will be the first "five-star campus and business hotel" in China. There are blocks of office, hotel rooms and apartment.

In the BBS of the Peking University, there have been a lot of comments on it since April 10. Most users oppose the construction of this hotel. Some argue that this project would make the problem of shortage in land for research and teaching development in the Peking University even worse. Some criticize the name of "Wuming Hotel" as tarnishing the reputation and spirit of the university.

But some support this project. A student from the Faculty of Life Science agrees with the idea of buidling a hotel in university. There is no landmark-like hotel in the Peking University. There is a shortage in space for guest scholars. But he also said that the location is questionable because that piece of land is so valuable.

This piece of land, area of 200 acres, was a part of Chengfu village in Haidian district. In 2003, t was transferred to the use of teaching and education for the Peking University. At that time, it was labelled as "land for teaching and research".

A member of the Beijing Planning Committee said that building hotel in the land for teaching and education is definitely not allowed. But more substantial conclusion will be reached after site visit. Zhang Wei, spokesperson of the Beijing Bureau of National Land and Resource, said that it is a common sense that building hotel on the land for education and research is not illegal without changes in planning.

Source in Chinese

Photo: -shu-

Taiwan opposes Olympic torch

2007-04-27T23:25:00.000+08:00

Taiwan government refuses to let the torch of the Beijing's Olympic Games to come to Taiwan. This is the first case of a "National Olympic Committee" (NOC) rejecting Olympic torch in the history.

Yesterday, the International Olympic Committee and Beijing Olympic Committee announced the route of the torch. It is scheduled to go to Taipei from Ho Chi Minh City and then to Hong Kong and Macau. But after the announcement, in a press conference, Taiwan's Sport Committte argued that this route would damage and "dwarf" Taiwan's status as a national sovereignty .

Yang Zhonghe, Chairperson of Sport Committee of Republic of China (ROC), said that this route, from Taiwan, Hong Kong and then to China, gives an impression that Taiwan is one of the stops of the "national route". According to him, the design of this route seems to see Taiwan as the same as Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China. But Yang did not respond if Taiwan will or will not join the Olympic Games next year.

But Cai Zhenwei, Chairperson of the Olympic Committee, ROC, said that the route from Ho Chi Minh City to Taiwan and Hong Kong follows the principle of equality between NOC and NOC. He repeated that this was a problem of "political reading". Cai remarked that the Olympic Committee as a civic organization is helpless that it could only follow government's policy.

Zhang Xiaoyu, vice-chairperson of the Beijing Olympic Committee, said that Taipei, Hong Kong and Macau are part of the route outside China but not "international" line. In February, the Olympic Committee, ROC, reached a consensus with Beijing that the torch could be passed from a third party to Taiwan and then to Hong Kong and Macau. But Taiwan government suddenly overturned it in April and refused to accept the route.

Source: Sergio Maistrello

Newspapers in China and India

2007-04-26T18:34:00.000+08:00

While most newspapers circulation is declining around the world, it is booming in India and China. In India, the daily circulation increased by 33% from 2001 to 2005. China achieved an increase of 28% from 2000 to 2004.

Last year, among the top ten companies with the best stock price performance, there are three and two in India and China respectively. The price of Deccan Chronicle Holdings, the second biggest newspaper in India, skyrocketed by 81%. The stock prices of HT Media, the biggest newspaper corporate group and Jagran Prakashan, the biggest local newspaper, increase by 66% and 56% respectively.

In Chengdu, China, B-Raymedia's profit increased by 20% last year and its stock price doubled. CCID Media, a conglomerate owning six newspapers and ten magazines, tripled its stock price.

Source: Hong Kong Economic Journal (信報), 2007.4.25

Analysis of "Prison Break" from the perspective of Marxist-Leninism

2007-04-20T11:28:00.000+08:00

Notes: The following piece of article is written by an anonymous online writer in China. He/she probably wrote it just for fun despite not without any serious intention. He/she borrowed the official rhetorics from the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda and official version of its history.

This TV drama talks about an American young petty bourgeois helping his elder brother framed to jail to escape and (possibly) acquit the charge. It sharply criticizes the evil rule of the capitalist class and attacks the darkness and hypocrisy of the capitalist legal system. It deeply reveals the inevitable historical trend of the capitalist system towards extinction.

The team of escapees is definitely a revolutionary army of fighting against the capitalist system and legal authority. But the team members vary in their purposes and their backgrounds are extremely complicated.

Lincoln is a righteous and good-hearted unemployed proletariat. In order to support his brother’s study, he borrowed from loan shark. It resulted in being exploited by the accomplice of the capitalist class. He was forced to back murder charge and was put to the row of death penalty. He had given up on all resistances against his injustice fate. But with the encouragement by his younger brother, he picked up the pieces and steadily walked on the revolutionary road.

Michael is a highly educated petty bourgeois intellectual. His job was highly paid and very decent. He enjoyed the life of abundance but emptiness until he realized the truth that his brother was set up. He knows clearly the true nature of the dictatorship of the capitalist class. He determined to abandon his petty bourgeois life of luxury and help his brother to get rid of the charge. In the process of escape, he turned into an outstanding revolutionary leader of proletarian revolution and a strong force in the process of revolutionary escape. But due to the complication and difficulty of revolutionary struggles, Michael cleverly adopted the strategy of united front to recruit people from different class backgrounds in solidarity and effectively expanded the revolutionary base.

At the same time, Michael had been threatened by the internal conflict and split within the revolutionary army all the time. He kept alert to the dangers of revisionism and capitulationism. Michael’s political line was fundamentally correct until the first episode of the second season. He united the majority and decisively cleared the traitor (the petty thief) out of the revolutionary army. He appropriately settled down the struggles between different political lines within the party (t-bag vs. Abruzzi). But thereafter, how to guarantee the correct way of revolution is a long-term mission for Michael and a great challenge to his political wisdom.

... ...

Veronica is a petty bourgeois lawyer. For sense of justice and friendship, she worked very hard in searching for evidence to help her former lover Lincoln. She relied on the capitalist legal system to clear Lincolin of charges. But the cruel reality relentlessly smashed her innocent idea into pieces. When an FBI agent pointed a gun towards her, it demonstrated the complete bankruptcy of the wishful thinking of the petty bourgeois who hoped to actualize social justice through political reform. In order to achieve justice and fairness, one has to join the violent revolution. Reformism is not going to work in America.

... ...

Source (Chinese)

Little improvement but big problems

2007-04-20T10:46:00.000+08:00

According to Li Changping who was a former official and now an agricultural expert, the financial burden of Chinese peasant has been reduced by 120 billion RMB over the past three years. And they receive subsidy of 100 RMB per capita each year, including education, medical services, etc. This is caused by the expenditure by the central government on agriculture, village, peasant and the local government, as high as 100 billion RMB each year. However, the problems with peasant, village and agriculture are still very serious.

First, Chinese peasant's revenue from agriculture is declining. Small peasant suffer serious bankruptcy. They coluld not be able to compete with capitalist farming in the sectors of processing, sales and supply of production materials. They stay in the low-profit sector of production. The foreign owned enterprises of agriculture took over a big share of the markets of several agricultural product. The privatization of finance in rural village further pushes peasant to poverty.

Second, many rural villages are undergoing the process of mafiaization. The local governments collude with corporate groups to further exploit the peasants by monopolizing the local market and expropriating farm land. They peasants could not support a strong force of police and legal officers to crack down upon the local mafia because it would only increase their financial burden.

Third, the small peasant families increasingly rely on pesant workers wages. This has a serious implication. The bankruptcy of rural peasants might results in oversupply of workers and unemployment problem in cities.

Fourth, the peasants and local cadres have neither a channel to voice out their grievances nor an ability to solve their own problems. They have to depend on their connections with people above, the higher-ranking cadres or foreign capital. As Li argues, their dependency is caused by the central government's over-centralized authority in agricultural policy. The local cadres do not dare to experiment on collective economy because they are afraid of being labelled as against "economic reform" or "going back to the old way". Therefore they keep on household responsibility system and prefer to wait for assistance from the central government rather than exploring new ways.

Li suggests to allow the local cadres and peasants to have more autonomy and freedom. It is necessary to decentralize power of decision making and management to the grassroots. What the central government should do is to provide general principles.

Li Changping is widely known by his letter to the former Prime Minister Zhu Rongji about the crisis in agriculture and village in 2000 when he was still a county-level party secretrary. Later he resigned from his position and work in NGOs and academic institutions.

Chinese source

Photo: Dave_Davies

Low-paid worker in Hong Kong

2007-04-18T14:31:00.000+08:00

Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKFTU), quoting the figures of the Department of Statistics, said that the number of low-wage and long-working-time workers has increased dramatically. The number of employees with a monthly wage below $3,000 has increased from 59,000 in 1997 to 141,000, by 138%. Most workers suffer long working time. The employees who work for 55 hours each week. The number increases by 66.3% and reached 833,000 last year.

HKCTU points out that employees with less than a monthly wage of $5,000 increase in number from 307,000 in 1997 to 528,000 last year, by 71.8%. The Chief Secretrary of HKCTU Lee Cheuk Yan said that the proportion of workers with a monthly wage of $3,000 to the entire workforce increases from 1.9% to 4.1%. Apparently, low wage earners experience "downward mobility". The size of long-time workers expands dramatically from 501,000 in 1997 to 833,000 last year. Most of them are women workers, increasing from 201,000 to 383,000 in number, by 90.5%.

Lee Sai Kwan, aged 50, is one of the people undergoing downward mobility. He earned HK$18,000 monthly as a technical officer of the PCCW (the biggest phone and internet service provider). He was sacked in 2002. He had worked as contract worker or security officer with a monthly wage of HK$9,000. Now he is unemployed.

As Lee Cheuk Yan said, more women go out to work. And more new immigrants to Hong Kong create an oversupply of low-skilled workers. Their wage level is persistently repressed. He urged Hong Kong government to set minimum wage and standard labor time as soon as possible. And it should evaluate the current labor laws in order to strengthen the protection for employees.

The Social Welfare Department launched a six-months program of "Yanhiu Program" last year. The single welfare recipient with children aged between 12 and 14 is required to get a paid job not less than 32 hours per month. Over 7,300 people have joined this program until January this year. About 1,6000 people got full-time or part-time jobs.

According to a research report published by the "Alliance concerning social welfare policy evaluation", most participants think that the program is not only unable to assist them to integrate into the society, but also it deprives them of time for taking care of children. What they could do is low-paid job and it makes the problem of employed poverty even worse.

Source in Chinese

Photo: Quasimime

Some notes on OURMedia

2007-04-11T11:11:00.000+08:00

We Chinese always complain about our own culture being too paternalistic and ritualistic. But to my surprise, it seems that Australia, a former white people's colony and a postcolonial multi-cultural society, is no exception.

The first two days of OURMedia 6th International Conference really disappoint me very much. I hope the coming three days would be better. Yesterday (April 9), in the long series of screening, we saw how the organizers of this conference allow senior colleagues to occupy so much time in the early part which make the whole program run behind the schedule seriously. The young media activists were left with not enough time.

Seniority does guarantee quality. I don't feel comfortable with Lucia Salinas' Rise up Maubere People! FRETILIN today which is only a mouthpiece of Fretilin in Timor Lesta. As a short film for Fretilin's election campaign, it only boasts of Fretilin's achievement in its programs of agriculture and their determination to lead the country to a brighter future. Salinas said that it attempted to counterbalance the Australian mainstream media which unreasonably accused its President of corruption.

I don't have any problem with Fretilin because I know so less about this left-wing political party. As a leftist in general sense, I strongly identify with Fretilin's political values. But westerners' whole-hearted support to the propaganda of a radical party in the Third World is not something new. Salnia's work reminds me of Edger Snow, an American journalist who helped the Chinese Communist Party to create a very positive image in and outside China. I am not sure if Snow justified himself as defending communism against the anti-communist propaganda. Today few people believe that the tatic of "propaganda against propaganda" did any good to the Chinese people. I'm not certain if this Fretilin's "official film" could do any good to the people in Timor Lesta.

****

The first few planetary sessions of the conference are boring. Most are for organization representatives to talk to themselves by repeating their NGO languages again and again. To be honest, I didn't find any controversial issue addressed. I understand this kind of PR stuff is inevitable. But why couldn't the organizers reduce it to minimum? No need to occupy the whole morning.

In one of the afternoon parallel penals, less than ten people attended. I don't understand why they couldn't reduce the number of penals and make the topic more focused.

Gabi's presentation on her concern with media policy and "citizen media" makes me feel curious about the politics involved in it. It seems that the Japanese politicians are not interested in it. And social movements are so weak in Japan. But Osaka city government is still funding projects like remo.or.jp. So it seems that there is a divergence between policy and funding. It happens all the time. Getting money for cultural project is not that difficult though it might not be an easy money. But policy changes are more difficult. How the government perceive media and culture and its relations with the civil society deserve further studies.

Xiaowu / Media is not reliable: Comment on “the strongest nail house”(Part II)

2007-04-08T01:17:00.000+08:00

Written by Xiaowu

Part I... ...

There is another point noteworthy. The Xinhua Net (a media mouthpiece of the central government) followed the local media to massively cover this story. This not normal. ...

This demonstrates a common sense that the the local governments did not respond to this incident in the same way as the central government. The money from land auction went to the pocket of the local government. The central government didn't have much and plays the role of onlooker who is happy to see how the local government turned this incident into a scandal. When the local government became ugly under the spotlight of media, the central government would come out to say a few words in high profile and solve the problem. Then the local government and the victim would be like a defendant and the central government would become an arbiter. The arbiter's power would shift from the local government to the central government in a cleverly way. However, the local government is not stupid and has the machine of dictatorship and the excuse of “public interest”. If it has determination, it could solve it immediately.

After the Xinhua Net followed up this story for three days, the local government could not tolerate any more. The local government publicly stated that it would not satisfy the unreasonable demand. And some “legal authorities” further talked about the priority of public interest to private interest. The response of the local government was immediate. Media realized that their influence was not as effective as they imagined... ...

The media who committed in civil rights previously changed their tone and no longer published the photo of the woman owner shouting and holding the Constitution for civil rights. They covered the views of the “legal authorities” and government officials. Everything has changed. Just a few days, the problem was solved and the bulldozer came in. The human right heroine, who insisted on owning this house, obstinately clinging to the house, holding the Constitution, still cares about her own life. The couple left the house in a hurry. “Problem has been solved satisfactorily”. The farce ended.

Water pollution in Dongting Lake

2007-04-07T00:10:00.000+08:00

The Tale of the White Serpent, a household story in China, is set in Dongting Lake. The beautiful romance of the lovers of Bai Shuzhen and Louyi is gone with this seriously polluted lake.

Hunan provincial government ordered all paper mills in the area of Dongting Lake, the second largest fresh-water lake to close until they could reduce water pollution to meet the standard.

Dongting Lake has been reduced to half its original area of 5,000 square kilometres by reclamation, mostly for growing weed as raw material for paper mill. Last year, the paper mills discharged over 100 million tons of waste water into the lake. Standing by the lakeside, you could see bubble and black or brown pollutant. The people living in the area have relied on this like as source of drinking water for a long time. But now the quality of the water is below the safety standard and fishing is almost impossible.

But the order of plant closure results in county governments' financial difficulties. For example, there are seven paper mills in Nan county. The county government would lose HK$20 million in tax if all paper mills were shut down for one year. And a large number of workers would also be sacked.

If one looks at the problems closely, one will find out the short-sighted calculations of the local governments and enterprises are the root cause. One set of environmental protection equipment only costs about 1 million yuan and it would only increase the production cost by less than 1%. Why didn't the paper mill install the equipment earlier? Why didn't the local governments enforce the regulations earlier?

Sources:
All paper mills close on Dongting Lake
洞庭湖污染十分嚴重

Photo: Steve Webel

Xiaowu / Media is not reliable: Comment on “the strongest nail house”(Part I)

2007-04-06T12:46:00.000+08:00

Written by Xiaowu

... ... The incident of “the strongest nail house” was not a recent event. The couple have hung on for three years. The photo is circulated for a long time. Why did it suddenly attract so many people's attention and become an incident? The reason is not hard to imagine. After the introduction of the Property Law, those petty “intellectuals” and liberals working in media thought that it's time to test the government's sincerity on implementing this law. People with normal intelligence could predict the result that nobody could gain anything in these “typical” cases. But the media did not care about it. They did not care about the death of any victim or any bad result. The only thing they cared about is the increasing revenue from advertising. They did not care about the death or life of the victims. You're the victim crying and seeking our help, aren't you? We are helping you! You have to take full responsibility for any consequence. No matter whether it's good or bad, you could not blame it on media's conscious. No matter what result, in order to have the justice done, one needs this kind of courage. Otherwise he/she would not be qualified as liberals.

... ...

Without other supporting forces, how could a person have hung on for three years? The government has many ways of solving this problem. If the government really wanted to do it forcefully, there would be no reason for not doing it. Even though there was a person inside the house, why was the government afraid of driving bulldozer to break into it? So I have argued that what really happened is not the same as the audience watched or read from the media. It is not about a tough resident fighting against government's violence and power. It is not an incident of human rights or protecting civil rights. It is definitely not an evidence to show that “wind may come in, rain may come in, but the king may not... ...” is true in China. There is a logic widely known operating. The local government did not take away this house immediately because some stronger forces working behind. From the TV news report, the woman of the office of demolition was not as arrogant and aggressive as the victim. There are some reasons for it. Imagining the victim as a heroine of human rights is only a wishful thinking of ordinary people. ... ...

To be continued

Photo from Zuola

A Final Settlement?

2007-04-03T08:59:00.000+08:00

The nail house was finally demolished after the couple of Yang Wu and Wu Ping settled down with developer by accepting the offer of resettlement to a house in inner city. As Zhou Shuguang said, it is a happy ending. Wow! What a "Harmonious Society" promoted by Hu Jingtao and Wen Jiabao. But is it a happy ending for other urban residents suffering dramatic urban renewal aand forced eviction?

The demand of Yang and Wu is so natural and reasonable. Why did it take so much time, so much effort and nationwide media attention to get their reasonable rights?

Photo from Zola

Stock market and economic overheating

2007-04-02T13:57:00.000+08:00

Among the around 1,500 listed companies in Shenzhen and Shanghai, 20% have doubled their market value over the past three months. The P/E ratio (price/earning) of more than 30% of them reaches as high as 100 in the first season of this year. Last week, the daily turnout was 200 billioin yuan. The total turnover of this season is 7.6 trillion yuan, 85% of the total volume in 2006. Yet many blue chips did not go up and some even went down. But for some reasons, many small companies attracted investors at lot. It is believed that this is the sign of a coming dramatic adjustment.

The economic overheating seems to continue. According to the State Information Centre, GDP of the first season is 11%, higher than expected.

China Bloggers: Let's go to Chongqing!

2007-03-30T18:21:00.000+08:00

I really want to write something about Zhou Shuguang, a blogger from Hunan.

From QianTu's WeBlog, I learnt about Zhou's blog. Zhou seems to be an ordinary blogger who works very hard in his blog. He has a strong motivation. As he said, he stopped writing blog for a few days and travelled from Loudi city to Chongqing quietly. He wanted to cover the story of Wu Ping and Yang Wu, "The Strongest Nail Household in China". He also took a lot of pictures.

His reports give us a strong feeling about that place. He wrote down most what he saw. He met a lot of evictees all over the country, from Shanghai, Zhuhai, Guangzhou, Xian, etc. The wanted media to cover their stories. In the Jiulongbo district, there are also a lot of media workers and foreigners. All people suffering demoliton and relocation came to this place, like a "Festival of Eviction".

Zhou's writing is not very professional. But he emphasizes the process. He compares different versions from different people. He is very reflexive. He argues that Wu Ping and Yang Wu should not be called "nail house". This is stigmatization by government. He suggests "Household of Fighting for Civil Rights" (Weiquan Hu)

It is so exciting and lively. Zhou's each entry could attract hundreds of comments. There are also many people around the "nail house". Yet I am afraid that this scene (or movement?) on internet or in reality would be repressed by government. But Li Datong (former editor of "Bingdian" of China Youth Daily) is right. The more the government controlled the news, the more difficulties in controlling it has. I hope this media and social spectacle could last longer.

Zhou is an honest guy. He told readers that he did it not only for social justice. He wants to be famous. I like his honesty. He is not like some Hong Kong so-called "professional journalists". They become TV stars but still hide their lust for fame and money by pretending to be professional. Our citizen reporter Zhou Shuguang honestly loves fame and justice as well.

I've just came across one more blogger who covers the story in Chongqing. His/her name is hidecloud. He clarifies some misconception of the nail household. For example, this couple is not greedy at all. What they need is their legal right.

Photo from Zhou Shuguang

Cheap Labor and Fast Food

2007-03-29T23:39:00.000+08:00

Over the past few years, there are many controversies over the foreign owned fast food restaurants such as KFC and McDonald's in China. Recently, some part-time workers accuse them of unfair treatment including offering low wage, requiring long work hours, unequal agreement, and refusing to give workers labour contract.

New Express (Xin Kuaibao), a Guangzhou based newspaper, yesterday covered a two-month labor survey on the foreign owned fast food companies such as KFC and McDonald's in its four full pages. According to the research, the labor conditions of them violate some Chinese law. There are a lot of problems remaining to be solved.

The part-time workers' salary of KFC is 4.7 yuan (US$0.6) per hour. Pizza Hut is 5.8 yuan (US$0.72). The wage level of McDonald's is the lowest, only 4 yuan (US$0.5) per hour. With this hourly salary, the worker could not even afford to buy a medium-sized cup of coke.

However, according to Guangzhou's first standard for part-time worker, the minimum hourly wage is 7.5 yuan (US$0.93). In other words, the wage of all these foreign owned restaurants is lower than it.

Apart from low wage, overtime is another general problem. According to regulations, a part-time worker could work for an employer longer than 5 hours on average each day. If the working hour exceeds this standard, the employer has to hire him/her as full-time worker and take related responsibilities for him/her.

The survey found that there are a lot of overtime part-time workers in these foreign owned restaurants. Some even work longer than 10 hours each day. They work like full-time workers and the shop owners also allow and encourage them to do so.

It also noted that after most part-time workers, who are university students, sign agreement contract with the employers, they could not obtain it on time. Some even could not get a copy of it. The managers of some restaurants revise the contract without notifying the workers.

Source: Hong Kong Economic Journal 2007.3.29

Photo: Xie Xian he Luobote

What will Beijing look like in 2008?

2007-03-28T23:39:00.001+08:00

Notes: The following is Wang Xiaofeng's sarcastic comments on the Olympic Games hosted by Beijing.

... ... What will Beijing look like in 2008? She will definitely be very beautiful.

1. Half of non-Beijing Chinese will leave this city and then we invite the same number of foreigners to Beijing. In a short period of time, it will become a cosmopolitan.

2. The streets of Beijing become totally spotless. The real and fake flowers make an interesting scene. Decorations are everywhere. The city is full of happiness.

3.There will be no traffic jam. All roads are cleared. The traffic station will fail to get any information about traffic congestion.

4.All people behave orderly in public space. They are considerate and polite.

5. Bus passengers give seat to each other so frequently that bus could not start on time.

6. No more loud voice is heard in restaurants and pubs. People speak gently and greet to each other.

7. The sky of Beijing is peculiarly blue.

8. All stadiums are full houses. Even the qualifying match of women ping pong between Senegal and Burundi has audience supporting them.

9. The rule-violation and crime rates go down to zero.

10. All newspapers are full of news about the Olympic Games. No social news.

Photo: richard76uk

Tsang's strategy after election

2007-03-28T07:50:00.000+08:00

After the “fake” election, how different people read it might be a more interesting topic than the election itself.

Let's see the editorial of Hong Kong Economic Journal, a representative of rightists who supports free economy. The author of the editorial had criticized Leung Ka Kit a lot. But he/she is also dissatisfied with Donald Tsang. He/she argues that Tsang is not simply elected by the eight hundred people, but also has the support of public opinion. In the past two years' “probation”, Tsang attempted to win people's support but has enabled populism. Tsang supports minimum wage law and fair competition. It would damage the business environment and free economy. He demonstrates his true color of politician by promising tax reduction.

I can imagine that the rightists and some businessmen would try their best to repress Tsang's so-called “populism” (I personally don't agree with the usage of “populism” here).

Besides, Cheung Bing Leung's comment is noteworthy. This former democrat and current member of Executive Committee criticized Leung's overemphasis on universal suffrage. Leung shows his position as a political opponent but confuses “rule and govern” with “monitor”. It results in failing to convince people of democrats' ability to be in power.

Cheung advises the democrats to think more thoroughly: To be an opposition or to be a “government-in-waiting” who is ready to be in power.

The biggest function of Cheung Bing Leung is to offer favor to democrats or further divide and conquer them. Yet, Tsang is too stingy. Now the only news I heard about it is that one or two democrats would be recruited into the Executive Committee. In consideration of the case of Cheung, I don't believe that this would do anything about “power”. If Tsang really wanted to urge democrats to get ready for power, he should at least offer one or two places of bureau director! Pacifying needs some cost.

Let's see how Tsang will do his job of pacifying the oppositions. Yet I am quite sure that there are more challenges facing the democratic movement groups. They might get less and less friends and come across with enemies everywhere.

Jilin University is crying for help from whom?

2007-03-26T02:43:00.000+08:00

Zhao Mu

Jilin university is in financial crisis. It cried for help a few days ago.

A few days ago, the finance office of the Jilin University put up a notice on campus internet: “Notice: A consultative conference on the solution to the financial difficulties of the Jilin University ”

Although this notice is on campus website and “collecting proposals of financial solution” targeting all teachers and students, all people know that the Jilin University's revelation of its embarrassing problems will certainly become a nationwide topic when the notions about higher education institutions' bankruptcy has been circulated widely and hotly debated. And all know who could save these universities who are so indebted that they could not afford to pay interest.

How much money has the Jilin University borrowed crazily from bank? What did they spend the money on?

Let's take a look at the information provided by this notice: “Since 2005, the Jilin University has paid loan interest as high as 150 million to 170 million each year. The university increasingly suffers from expenditure over revenue. The debt is mainly used in two areas. The first one is infrastructure. Another one is salary. We have increased salary to the high level.”

From the annual interest payment as high as 150 million to 170 million yuan, one can estimate the huge amount of loan (it is estimated 3 billion yuan). The crazy loan is for infrastructure and raising salary.

This year, in the National People’s Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Zhou Ji, Minister of Education, responded to the notion of “Bankruptcy of Higher Education Institution” by saying “far away from reality”. He asserted that Chinese universities would not become the “next state-owned enterprise”.

I can understand why Zhou Ji felt so confident in China universities although he failed to provide any convincing reason to argue against the notion of the bankruptcy of China universities. About half year ago when this notion firstly came out, I thought so. But Zhou said that China higher education institutions are not “next state-owned enterprise”. I don't think it is so accurate. From my perspective, the status of China higher education institutions is much higher than general state-owned enterprises. They are “special state-owned enterprises” that should be carefully protected.

Recently, as more and more experts said, according to a strict financial standard, a lot of China universities are bankrupt. The Jilin University revealed its own scandal. It seems to support this viewpoint. Yet, if you think carefully, even though the Jilin University, the most famous university in Jilin province, could not afford the annual interest of 100 million yuan, what could you do to it? Are the banks, who went so crazy that they lent such a huge amount of money to the Jilin University, really brave enough to force the university to apply for bankruptcy through legal procedure? Would the court close down this university and liquidate its asset? Would the banks sell the campus by auction to get back their huge amount of money?

Ah... ah. I can prove to Minister of Education Zhou Ji and the supporters of “bankruptcy” theory that this possibility does not exist at all. And I strongly believe that our great state-owned bank will write off most debts of colleges. Despite without complete statistics, this huge debt already reaches as high as 400 billion yuan.

Now the Jilin University cries for help. Our great state-owned banks have certainly heard that. The leaders of our great state-owned banks have certainly heard that too. If there is no way to force the Jilin University to repay its debt, what should be done? Just cry for help.
In fact, allowing our state-owned banks to write off the debts is not totally unreasonable.

We have known it as early as the year of 2000. The World Health Organization ranked its members according to their ability to mobilize and distribute resources for public health. China was ranked as the 188 th. Among the 191 members, China was ranked as four to the last. China's expenditure in education is even lower than Uganda.

If the state-owned banks write off the debts of these colleges, the excessive loan to so many universities is a correction to the extremely constrained budget. At least, the government enormously increases the per capita investment in “higher education”. This is barely a contribution.

I certainly believe that even though “all Jilin University students and teachers” racked their brain, they could not come up with any solution to this “nearly bankrupt” Jilin University. But I also believe that there is no need for this university to be anxious about its financial crisis.

Be relaxed. Somebody will come to this baby. No matter whether our Chinese taxpayers care about it, they need to pay the debt for this university. The Jilin University is not the only one.

Interestingly, according to the news article about the Jilin University's disclosure of its scandals, a young teacher (Jilin?) said that the Jilin University's confession on its embarrassment is such a “brave” act.

Such a “brave” act.

Source

Mao on Demolition and Relocation (November 15, 1956)

2007-03-25T08:27:00.000+08:00

Note: I read it from Qian Tu's WeBlog. Mao is always quoted for critique of Chinese government.

A few years ago, there was an airport to be built in a place of Henan province. No resettlement was granted to the peasants and the government did not negotiate with and explained clearly to them. But it attempted to evict the people forcefully. As the peasants of that village said, if you used a stick to topple down the bird nest to the earth, the birds would voice out. You Deng Xiaoping also has a “nest” (home). If I destroyed your “nest”, would you voice out? The people of that place set up three defense lines. The first one was children. The second one was women. The third one was male and young people. Those sent to there to survey was forced away. The peasants won the battle. Later on, the government explained to the peasants clearly and made arrangements for them. They moved their homes and the airport was built finally.

There are many incidents like this. Now there are some cadres who seem to rule the country and are no longer scared of anything. They believe that they could bully everyone and everywhere they want. The people oppose them by throwing stones to them and beating them with hoe. The cadres deserve it. I welcome it. Sometimes, only fighting could solve the problem. The Communist Party should learn its lesson.

Student and workers took to the streets. Our comrades should see anything like this as good thing. There are more than one hundred students going to Beijing for petition. The train with students on board was stopped at the station of Guangyuan, Sichuan province. Another group of students on the train was also stopped in Loyang. My opinion is that rally and protest are allowed according to constitution. I suggest we revise our constitution by adding freedom of strike. Workers' strike should be allowed. This is good for the government and managers to solve their conflicts with the people. Conflict or contradiction is not a big deal. The world is full of contradictions. Democratic revolution has solved the contradictions with imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic red tap. Now, in terms of ownership, our contradictions with national capitalism and petty production are basically solved. But some other contradictions come out. New contradictions happen. There are a few hundred thousand cadres above the level of county and the destiny of this country is in their hands. If you do something wrong and do not work hard, workers, peasant and students have the right to disagree with them.

We should be alert to it. Do not allow bureaucratic red tape to breed. Do not become an aristocratic stratum alienated from the people. The people have reasons to get rid of whoever commits the mistake of bureaucratic red tape, whoever refuses to solve people's problems, whoever scolds and represses the people and whoever refuses to correct their own mistakes. It is good to get rid of this kind of cadres. They should be got rid of.

(Selected Works of Mao Zhedong, Vol 5. People's Publishing, 1st edition, April, 1977, pp. 313-329)

Photo: nataliebehring.com

Demolition and Relocation

2007-03-23T13:59:00.000+08:00

The photo of a Chongqing's "nail household" (釘子戶, a person or a family who refuses to move out during urban demolition and relocation) has circulated on internet for a while. I'm sure many people are stunned by this urban spectacle unique to contemporary China.

I feels neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the Property Law (Wuquan fa, 物權法). While some old leftists are worried about the public ownership as the foundation of socialist system challenged by this law, I suggest them show more care about the ordinary people's private property destroyed by the collusion of government and big capital. Many district governments of Chinese cities continue to demolish people's home in the name of "public interest". With or without this law, this brutal process will continue. All in all this is not simply a legal issue.

Now this "Chongqing nail household" turnes into a standstill. Hu Guo guessed that the high-ranking officials would settle down this issue in private. Now the developer is not able to remove him violently because he is under the spotlight of media. But the government would not support him publicly because this nail household might set an example for residents in the future.

Today Wang Xiaofeng made the association of urban demolition and relocation with sina blog. Some famous bloggers, such as Shu kewen, are "relocated" to sina without their consent. Sina wants to use these celebrities to promote its internet services. Wang asked: Could we sue Sina with the newly enacted Property Law?

Photo: Down in the Blue

Zhao Xiao: China imbalance

2007-03-22T14:51:00.001+08:00

... ... The most crucial task for government to do is to explore the ultimate reasons for various phenomena and then fix the fundamental problems rather than treating symptom but not the disease. Government report spent a lot of space to talk about “Problems of Peasant, Village and Agriculture” . It also talked much about how government should help the disadvantaged groups. But the origin of these problems is the excessive power of government and insufficient civil rights. The disadvantaged people's power is the least. So the most important job is to strengthen civil rights and change the power structure rather than to improve people's livelihood. As Amartya Sen said, granting more freedom to people implies better development. It is not necessary to implement “secondary distribution” for actualizing so-called "equality of distribution".

From this perspective, I appreciate very much the report's evaluations such as “There are some weakness and insufficiency of government works” and “There are problems of government's building”. They are so rare and honest compared to the previous government reports. I particularly admire that the report mentioned that “develop democracy and strengthen legal system. This is the demands coming out of socialist system. To build a harmonious society, the most important is to strengthen democracy and legal system, and promote social justice.” This notion accurately captures the core problem of all facing contemporary China. China's problem lies on the fact that political reform lags behind economic institutional reform. This dis-equilibrium is the original problem leading to a lot of imbalances.

For example, why are there disequilibriums of consumption, investment and foreign trade in China? On the surface, it seems to be a macro-economic problem. However, there are political factors. The Government Work Report (2006) mentioned that during “The Tenth Five-year Plan”, GDP increased by 57.3%, city resident's average income increased by 58.3%, rural villager's net income increased by 29.2% and government revenue skyrocketed by 1.36 times. Obviously, government revenue growth is much higher than GDP growth and resident's growth. The increase in people's income also lags far behind GDP growth and government's financial income growth (This year's report further admitted this over-growth of financial revenue). Obviously, because of excessive growth of government's power and “coercive revenue”, distribution of national wealth is unequal. The insufficiency of residents' consumption leads to weak domestic demand. That is why Chinese enterprises resort to foreign trade to look for a better market.

The ordinary people could not afford medical fees, school fees, and high price of apartment. People put the blame on market failure. The reality is that government's supply of housing, education and medical services (market oriented and public) is not enough. What lies behind is the insufficiency of public pressure on government power. The underdevelopment of civil rights leads to insufficient supply of public good and services.

Among the disadvantaged group, peasant is the poorest because they are far away from power centre. If peasant has the same power as urban resident, would the “Problems of Peasant, Village and Agriculture” be so serious? Therefore, if you say peasant is too poor, I would say that peasant is lacking power. If you suggest reduction of tax for peasant, I suggest grant more power of self-government to peasant.

Unequal distribution of power leads to the “zero-sum game” in which the gain of some people results in some people's loss. This causes social disharmony. Recently, the Special Topic Team of Public Policy Research Centre, Chinese Association of Economic Institutional Reform, calculated the price difference between the two systems (market and non-market). The results show that there is no difference between the present and the past. In 2004, considering the effect of public power, the price difference is as high as 4.7 billion yuan, about 1.5 times the annual revenue. The land price difference is 528.5 billion yuan. The monopoly rent sought by monopoly industry is 212.5 billion yuan. The loss of national asset is 71.549 billion yuan. The rent caused by corruption is 20 billion yuan. According to this estimation, the total of rent caused by government monopoly and corruption reaches 832.549 billion yuan, about 5.2% of GDP and 55.1% of the annual revenue of the central government.

Without the disgusting new system of two prices, China’s gini coefficient is 0.3797 in 2004. Because of corruption and restriction, China’s gini coefficient is going up to 0.465, the warning line of wealth gap according to international standard. Although China’s marketization seems to be speeding up, the space for rent seeking caused by government power is becoming bigger and bigger. All these show that the fundamental of all disequilibrium is power inequality. Without political reform, reform itself is skewed. The steps of economic and political reforms are incoherent. The combination of marketization and traditional political institution fail to enable China to march forward in a health way.

... ...

Excerpt from source: 趙曉＜失衡的中國＞

Photo: sheilaz413

A story about Hong Kong police and March 18 rally

2007-03-20T17:12:00.000+08:00

Notes: This is a small story told by a participant of the rally on March 18. I keep him/her anonymous. On March 18, a group of people called "Local Action" launched a campaign for preserving our homes from government's and developers' bulldozers. They also advocated "People's Planning". This group has been formed since after the government demolished the Star Ferry Pier by the end of last year.

Local Action joined the mass rally on March 18. It inserted the issue of community into the mainstream opposition. Please forgive my laziness. I didn't participate in the preparation. The
number of the emails circulated among activists is so huge that I could not be able to read all of
them. I just marked this event on my planner and roughly knew that we would leave the "licensed" (police's non-rejection notice) rally of Civil Front of Human Rights. Local action attempts to make a difference in local issue.

Holding the colorful and eye-catching banner designed by Kith and students, we set off from the
Victoria Park. I believe it is the most well designed and prepared banner in Hong Kong's history of rally. Feeling happy, I walked in the front of the rally. Local Action is a loose alliance emerging
out of the struggle of "Star Ferry Pier". It is hardly called organization. Membership is not stable but we are all kind and active people despite difference in action style. But more or less we agree that "local" is the way out. Although I'm not a devoted activist, I am a concerned participant. I brought water and food for friends, held microphone, and played different roles if necessary. I also bought and used needle and threat to repair the "Hundred Families' Blanket" torn by over-stretching.

We told the public about our decision to leave the mainstream rally before. Shadowed by the evil laws, we walked into the Wanchai Market and tried to draw public attention to the stalls about to be cleared by The Zenith which will be occupied by owners soon and the Blue House which will be discussed by the Planning Board on Friday. Of course, we also went to the emptied Lei Tung Street. We were escorted by uniform police officers and stalked by a lot of plainclothesmen. We are ordinary citizens holding a "Hundred Families' Blanket". Some of us were walking with their children and some were elderly. I had the habit of carrying cutter in my pencase. In order to show my innocence, I kept it at home when I left. I don't understand what I, as a citizen, was afraid of?

Surrounded by police, we had walked for three hours and arrived at the Queen's Pier. There was a concert with singing and dancing. It was similiar to the activities of foreign domestic helpers on Sunday, except having a loudspeaker. I felt tired. I leaned towards W's shoulder and sat down. Feeling the sea wind, I listened to Chan Mit's recitation and He Li's singing. I wanted to go home to have dinner. I left the people and walked towards the bus stop. There were two men coming to me.

"Miss, I'm police. I have reasonable doubt that you had just joined an illegal assembly. I want to write down your ID information for record," said one of the police officers.

"Ha! Holding banner and dancing are subject to penalty? Why didn't you ask for my ID in the crowd? Now there are so few people. You come to ask for it? Why are you so stingy?" said I.

"Why don't you write down all people's ID?" said W.

"We already have their records," said a police.

I don't know if I am able to get access to my file in police station according to the Privacy Bill. Perhaps, I would find out the photos me and W in the pier taken by "Ah Sir" (police officer)! Now I realize that the so-called "evil law" is just stingy. Walking back to the crowd who were about to leave, two officers from Police Laison Office came out to negotiate. Two plainclothes still insisted on checking my ID at the very beginning. Later on, more people came together and we left in chaos. The two laison officers told us that those two plainclothesmen came from the "Central Crime Unit". My friend MD laughed, "He is not even taller than my chest! What qualifies him to ask for my ID?" To honest, this is the first time for me to be threatened by police. My intuition is not to show my ID. I thought that if they really had to arrest us, what I could do is to refuse to cooperate. YW was attentive. She wrote down our names in order to inform each other of the situation. In less than one minute conversation, you know that you are already identified by the police. I already felt terrified and furious for a whole night. For cracking down minority movement, this kind of psychological pressure is already very successful.

This reminds me of what I learnt from the Buddhist lesson this morning: "No Fear and terror". What a realm one could reach! It also reminds me of those people who are willing to act as human shield not for self interest. They are really Buddha in the human world!

Photo: psychosteria

Guangzhou University City

2007-03-20T10:50:00.000+08:00

Another Megaproject in China! Guangzhou University City! Last Saturday and Sunday, I visited there with my colleague and students.

Zhang Dejiang, the Secretrary of Guangdong Province Party Committee, decided to launch this project in 2001. He was not happy about the ratio of university students and university in Guangdong was below the national average despite its huge wealth. He felt compelled to turn Guangdong into a "Big Cultural Province"(文化大省). The construction of the Phase I began in 2003 and finished in 2004. A very typical way of building city in China. The provincial government invested 30 billion yuan. Now ten higher education institution have already came in and it accomodate about 150,000 students.

Yet this project, covering a total area of 17 square kilometre, is also a part of the new wave of "Enclosure" in China. The site was an isolated island in Panyu, the southern part of Guangzhou metropolitan area. The indigenous inhabitants were peasant and fishermen. The provincial government expropriated their land and demolished their homes. A big conflict over demolition and compensation was caused a few years ago. Now there are only four villages left. You still can see some traces of people struggle there, including the banners, posters and their ancestral halls.

The government boasted of its planning idea of "learning community" which integrates all universities together and enables them to share public facilities. But it turns out that it's more like an industrial district of higher education than a community. The city is separated by circular roads and universities occupied their own turf without much connections with others. The scale of this city is so big that walking between different institutions is not quite feasible and sometimes bicycle does not work very well. The transportation within the campus is also not enough.

I don’t like “315 Night Show”

2007-03-19T12:09:00.000+08:00

I don’t like CCTV’s “315 Night Show” (A night show promoting the message of cracking down on fake products). The reason is the same as I don’t like “Spring Festival Show”.

As I remember, in 1991, it is the first time CCTV launched “315 Night Show”. I was stunned… … I was stunned because I felt terrified. How could there be so many bad guys in such a “good socialist” society? I could not accept this reality. I was taught that socialism is good and capitalism is bad. But how could that kind of ugly phenomenon happened in our country?

Each year, I sit in front of TV set to watch this show. I open my eyes to look at those malicious businessmen. If I got a gun, I would kill them all. But after three years of watching in a row, I have lost interest in this program. CCTV gradually turns this program into a normal show misleading consumers to believe that they could be able to know about the fake and bad quality products on this day. Ironically, I can see that the more this program becomes influential, the more fake and bad quality products come out. In other words, this show fails to make any positive effect. Of course, a TV station, despite influential, could not have the same effect as legal system. In China, a country in which legal system could not take any effect, how could a TV station do that? Only on this day, CCTV feels determined to play the role of the upright official Justice Bao (包青天) to hold up its fodder chopper to decapitate “Chen Shimei” (a villain killed by Bao). In the rest of the 364 days, we don’t know where the Justice Bao is?

… …

The “315 Night Show” is so influential because it involves many products consumed by a lot of people. Their qualities are also about life and death. Another reason is that only on this day does Justice Bao come out. Ordinary people are excited to see. It caters to Chinese long lasting psychology of seeking “Justice Bao”. They usually neglect building up awareness of legal rights. When problems happen, they expect a Justice Bao standing out. After I see this show deteriorating to “Weekly Quality Report” in “Focus”, I find it more and more boring. If “Zhangmi Paiyou” (a body slimming product) is bad quality product, why CCTV didn’t release the news to the public until that day? We also see some bad quality products advertising on CCTV. On the one hand, it condemns the fake products; on the other hand, it helps promote them. It is Janus-faced.

I hate the “315 Night Show” because I am worried that it becomes a backdoor deal, like the “Weekly Quality Report” in “Focus”. I have observed it for a long time. Apart from the topics selected by the seniors, they usually select topics like “picking up a persimmon” – choosing the soft one. For example, there is an incident happening in a remote area, CCTV would send a crew at a high cost to cover the story and release it to the public. They target those local cities or medium/small-sized enterprises. The scandalous events of provincial cities are rarely seen. Why? Many small places and enterprises don’t follow the rules. It is not that difficult to target on them. And they don’t have strong connection with the central government. Without high-ranking officials’ backup and money, CCTV does not need to be afraid of them. “Focus” could gain the reputation of justice and “speaking the truth”. Damn it! Bullying kids is not justice at all. After this kind of program comes out, there is a new rule of game. If you want to expose something, some people are sent to settle it down. A new round of corruption might happen because there are some interest groups there and they have to settle it down in private. At the very beginning, the “Weekly Quality Report” is exciting. But it changes gradually. Now like “Focus”, it becomes a game of interest and connection. This is the typical “justice corruption”.
… …
I really hope that one day, the “315 Night Show” and “Weekly Quality Report” fail to continue. It would mean that the system of regulating and monitoring fake and bad quality products becomes mature and effective. That is the day when the legal system could work. As long as these programs have stories and are popular, I am still worried about buying.

Source: I don't like 315 Night Show

Too Many "Super Girls"?

2007-03-18T23:54:00.000+08:00

In recent years, idol-inspired shows have become very popular in China. After "Super Girl", a singing contest lasting for 5 months, attracted nationwide audience in 2005, more and more media capitalize on this TV genre to make huge profit from commercial and SMS services. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued new rules restricting the length of this kind of program to a maximum of two and half year.

CCTV and some officials had criticized "Super Girl" as bad taste and having bad effect on people. Leung Wendao, a famous critic, asks why government officials always believe that they are smarter than ordinary people. A modern government should not act as a "baby-sitter". He suggests that media regulation focus on the people who might get hurt by media (such as sexual or racial discrimination) rather than the media message itself.

It is heard that more restriction would be imposed on TV industry. For example, some officials have been unhappy about too many TV show hosts from Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Photo: S/L

University student and regional disparity

2007-03-15T15:35:00.000+08:00

According to an investigation of the working condition of 14,000 white collar workers in Beijing, 52% of respondents answer “always work overtime” and only 4% answer “rarely work overtime”. 73% are not paid for overtime by their employers who violate labor law stipulating it as 150% of the basic salary. Some argue that there is an oversupply of university degree holders.

In 1998, only 1.084 million people were admitted to university. There were 2.158 million university students. Since 1999, there has been a rapid expansion of university enrollment. From 2004-2006, the intake increases from 4 million to 5.3 million. In 2006, about 1.24 million university graduates failed to get a job. In 2006, of a total of 4.13 million university graduates, 66.10% earned 1000-2000 yuan monthly.

Yet the expansion of tertiary education sector is not the main cause for the gloomy labor market. In the national population, the number of university students and graduates is not that high, only about the sixtieth in the world.

According to a survey conducted by the National Statistics Bureau, half of the university graduates receive an income lower than their expected salary. Among them, 60% refuse to look for jobs in remote area and medium and small size cities. As Li Zhi Jie and Hu Feng argue, there is a three-tier structure in China: Formal sector of large cities, informal sector and rural village. The gap between them is huge and increasing.

Sun Li Ping, a sociologist at Tsinghua University, argues that since the 1990s, resource and opportunities have been highly concentrated in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Regional disparity becomes so serious that a university graduate might feel hopeless in the less developed region. That is why many people squeeze into the developed areas.

Photo: scribeoflight

"Academic Killer" in China?

2007-03-13T18:37:00.000+08:00

Even in peace period, there are occasional voices of slaughter. Bad-tempered people love killing. A member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), who works in the highest academic institute, suggested the National Committee of the Chinese People's Representatives enact "Law on Traitors' Speech". He argued that some scholars, in the name of academic research, distorted history, justified the invasion of China by the Eight Powers' Alliance Army, and particularly defended the Japanese invastion of China. So legal measures and heavy punishment are needed.

I have been working in the field of modern history for years. I have never crossed any "line". I have never heard that anyone in this field has done something like this. There are some Japanese scholars doing so. Yet, China's law could not punish them. The purpose of this CPPCC member is to target some scholars in China he hates. The crime they committed might be that their research did not follow the tone set by him.

Is there any need to set a tone for academic research? Under this tone, all people are supposed to conduct research in a very limited framework. Anybody out of it is classified as traitor subject to academic critique and legal punishment. Some people really want to take out these "traitors". I believe no scholar would agree with this measure. However, this CPPCC member, with the title of researcher and professor from the highest academic institute, rolled up his sleeves and spoke out his ideas loudly. Probably some scholars should be renamed as "academic punisher".

Historical research should be based on evidence. Traditional historians compared themselves to experienced official judge. In today's words, she/he acts like a judge who bases all of his remarks on evidence. If she/he does not agree with others' reasoning or argument, she/he needs to refute it with evidence even though she/he really wants to comment. Otherwise, this would become abuse, personal attack, and political labelling. Such kind of labelling, no matter how many people echo and how high is the volume, is doomed to be failure. In fact, this CPPCC member is no longer able to act like those in "Cultural Revolution". At that time he would have brought the scholars he hated to the people's meeting, and then put a tall hat on his/her head, stroke him/her down and stepped on his/her body. Now he needs to resort to law beside using abusive language. However, there is no law punishing academic research. That is why he came up with the suggestion of "Law on Traitor's Speech".

The history of imperialist invasion of China is an objective fact which had happened in the past. But one needs to study this fact seriously. With every piece of details, one tries to figure out the original picture of history. One has to explore the reasons and historical background objectively. We should not just criticize imperialism and condemn the crime without further investigation. Like the study of the massacre of Jews by Israelis, our study should go into every detail such as the profile of each victim. Setting a tone to criticize was not, is not and will not be qualified as a research. Academic research should at least allow people to speak out rather than labelling or even bringing people to the court. Research should not be conducted like this.

I wish this member not be an "academic killer" and his highest academic institute not be an "academic court". Otherwise, there is hope for China's academy.

The name of that member is Yu Quanyu (喻權域).

Source:
惩办"学术汉奸"？

政协委员：建议人大制定惩治汉奸言论法

Yongzhou riot

2007-03-13T13:50:00.001+08:00

This morning I heard from TV news that there was a riot in the ancient city of Yongzhou, Hunan province. This was casued by a bus fare increase of more than 30%. An extra fee was levied on people who carry bulky items. More than 20,000 people joined the riot and burned some police cars. It happened two days ago. But the official censorship worked so well that I got no information from any mainland websites or blogs. The only only source is from anti-communist media and a handful of foreign media.

A huge number of riot police has already been stationed there and no entry to the city is allowed. The local officials confirmed that some participants were arrested and detained but no death. Yet there is a rumour that a student was killed.

A few days ago, a mainland intellectual said that she missed the era of "big poster". Now even a "small poster" is not allowed. This remark might surprise a lot of people who see the rapid development of internet in China. Yet if you go to visit blogcn, you can understand what she meant. All entries about this incident were already deleted. Now not many politically controversial issues and discussions are seen on the most popular blog-hosting websites.

Zhang Yimou: Aesthetics of Power

2007-02-17T10:39:00.000+08:00

Zhu Dake
Translated by chong

Notes: This is an interview of Zhu Dake, a cultural critic in Shanghai. His analysis of Zhang Yimou's film is not execellent but inspiring, particularly his comments on contemporary Chinese culture.

The scene (in Curse of the Golden Flower) I found most impressing is that of a long line of palace maids who showed off their tightly tied breasts. Many audience felt that they walked into a farm full of milk cows. According to ordinary people's opinion, there are three criteria for a popular film. The first one is erotica. The second one is violence. The final one is celebrity's privacy. With any one of them, you could make a big hit. With two, you could make a very big hit. With three, you could create a blockbuster. Curse of the Golden Flower has all of them. Without any doubt, many people are crazy about it. You see. First, it provides a lot of breasts to meet the requirement of "erotica". The second one is massive violence. The scenes of fight including murder and assassination are well shot. Zhang's skill is perfect. And then it has the affair of queen and prince. Isn't it the privacy of celebrity? Zhang put these three most eye-catching elements into one film. He plays with element combination and is very good at it.

In Zhang's film, the scene of boiling medicine is totally different from others. It is a very important element. This scene inspires me. In fact, Zhang is feeding the people a sort of medicine or a pill. A pill of violence. A pill of erotica. A pill of celebrity's privacy. Eating these pills, we grow up and get stronger.

Chinese society is very violent. Our movies keep competing on showing violence. If you make a big violent movie, I want to make one more violent than yours. In Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet, the scene of torturing mandarin is so horrible and cruel. Now the Bureau of Broadcasting and Film refuses to categorize films. In fact the categories are for violence. For adult, watching violent movies might be good to the society because it is releasing their desire of psychological violence. But for kids, the effect is contrary and it might affect their personality formation. This would result in serious consequences. Now we are not only destroying natural environment but also our humanist environment. Our loss in culture might exceed 250 million, 2.5 billion or more than 25 million. The value of human soul is higher than box office.

In 1986, Zhang's Red Sorghum is a classic film of rascal. In this film, there is a well known song with lyrics: "Girl, you march forward braverly!". March to where? He encouraged her to march to have her own life, to dismantle tradition and to liberate her body and desire. But now we have different problems. Zhang has already got rid of his humanist concern in the 1980s. He abandoned self criticism and self-reflexivity. He only pursues an aesthetics of power and an aesthetics of "empty and tall talk" (jiadakung). He is following a wrong way.

That's why he was always kicked out of Academy Award and Golden Globe Award. A selection committee member of Academy Award told me clearly that he did not like Zhang because there is no humanity in his films. The minds of all his characters are highly distorted. There is a rule in Hollywood movies. You've got to express a healthy and positive interest or ideal about human's future and belief. In Zhang's movies, you don't see these things.

Over the past twenty years, we have experienced a process from liberation to distortion of humanity. It is sick. This is not merely Zhang's problem. It is a problem of Chinese culture. We have a passion for sickness and aesthetics of power rather than ordinary people's aesthetics. In Sichuan province, a small township government even built a square like Tiananmen Square. People there are poor and starving but the local government spent so much money in it. Some local governments even built squares bigger than the Tiananmen Square. They only want to show off their power to occupy space or to build a high-rise building. The height and broad are the very important markers of aesthetics of power. From this point of view, the culture of the 1980s is much healthier than today's. Zhang is only an example or a part of the pathology of Chinese culture as a whole.

Of course, there are "positive" comments. But I put this word in brackets. As a film critic of Los Angels Times said, Curse of the Golden Flower is set against the background of the Late Tang's imperial palace life, a life incredibly luxurious. This film is a milestone. Even though we are a developing country, the luxury of our movies is unbelievable to American people.

Now we have this problem not only in movies but also many extravagant large-scale rituals and buildings. An evening concert costs tens of millions. A square costs hundreds of millions. A new town costs billions. They spent much more money than Zhang. Perhaps, this is an age in need of big scene to fulfill our dreams. Zhang was just born to this age and he is stronger than most. He is the "national director" of this era.

An excerpt from here

Photo from Kramchang

Chinese shame

2006-10-27T14:04:00.000+08:00

Traffic in most big Chinese cities is chaotic. Cars often occupy the bicycle lane for avoiding traffic jam and threatens the safety of bike users. Has anyone thought of acting as traffic police?

A few days ago in Beijing a foreign lady blocked cars from entering the bicycle lane and directed them to move back to car lane. One of the drivers cursed her and even threatened to hurt her. But she insisted and the drivers moved their cars back to the car lane. A blogger took some photos of this incident and posted a story on his/her blog. It was then covered by Nanfang Daily.

The media coverage shocked Chinese people's nationalist nerve. It aroused internet users' criticism of that driver and appreciation of the lady's civic quality and courage. Many felt ashamed of "the low quality of Chinese people's civic morality". They argued that incredibly high economic growth has not brought out any improvement in civic morality for Chinese people such as queuing, complying with traffic law, and giving seats to people in need on public transport. Instead, Chinese people, who earn more and more money, care less and less about civic morality. More and more encounters between China and foreign countries results in more exposure of misbehavior of Chinese people to the world.

Hope this small incident could help us improve our civic quality.

Photo: scribeoflight

China: a battleground for retailing giant

2006-10-24T10:56:00.000+08:00

After Wal-Mart withdraws from the markets of Korea and Europe, it expands its outlets in China by acquiring Trust-Mart, one of the biggest retailers recently. Wal-Mart plans to hire 150,000 more people within 5 years.

Trust-Mart, a Taiwanese owned retailer, has 99 outlets. After Wal-Mart spent US$1 billion to acquire it, this retailing giant almost triples its number of outlet from 60 to 159 in China. Wal-Mart, like its rivals such as Carrefour, is going to eat up more and more shares of this highly fragmented and competitive market. It is estimated that the top 100 retailers take over only 10.5% of the retailing market. Only 20% of the retailing industry is "organized". Many multinationals see China as a market with great potentials, particularly considering the increasing middle class and their purchasing power.

Yet many doubt if the competition between domestic retailers and foreign companies is fair enough. Since the year of 2002, Zhang Hongwei, vice President of National Association of Industry and Commerce, has complained about the "super-national treatment" enjoyed by foreign retailers. Although some may argue that Zhang has vested interest, his criticism is not unfounded.

Many local governments offer favorable terms to global players such as Wal-Mart because more big brandnames help boost the property market. They could usually get land or rent subsidies from local government one way or another. That is why more than half top international retailers are already running business in China.

Signature Campaign for Citizen Radio Bandwidth

2006-10-24T10:55:00.000+08:00

Hong Kong government's Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) and police officers had raided Citizen Radio again recently (October 13). As Hong Kong government refuses to grant radio broadcasting license to civic organizations, in order to participate in public broadcasting, the organizers of Citizen Radio have to go underground and take the risk of violating the unreasonable laws. The police has confisticated all their equipment and arrested the organizers. It is a repressive action against freedom of speech. We strongly urge Hong Kong government to open radio bandwidth to the public and return the right of broadcasting to the people.

With a population of seven millions, Hong Kong only has two privately owned radio stations. Compared to most cities all over the world, the number of Hong Kong radio broadcasters is incredibly low. The local society have been demanding more licenses of radio broadcast for years. But the government refuses to change its policy and practice. Citizen Radio submitted an application for license at the end of 2005 but has not gotten any reply from the authority.

Citizen media has been promoted and encouraged by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Global citizens have been in pursuit of more open media markets. Following the policy of cultural diversity, governments of many countries issued licenses to community groups and ethnic associatons to run independent radio stations. But Hong Kong government have been maintaining the laws and institutions inherited from the colonial authority. It seriously violates international principles and goes against social and historical progress. It is a shame on this international city.

We call for Hong Kong government to revise the outdated regulations of broadcasting as soon as possible, to open radio bandwidth to the public and to return freedom to the people.

Hong Kong In-media

You are welcome to sign this statement by visit here and send it to Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau (Hong Kong SAR Government).

For enquiry, please contact us at 852-2147-0788.

(P.S this statement is translated from the Chinese version at inmediahk.net, you can directly submit signatures at the comment section there as well.)
Previous report:Hong Kong Police Raid Citizen Radio
A report on the raid in August.

Taming the Civil Society

2006-09-25T01:04:00.000+08:00

While Taiwan and Thailand are undergoing political changes dramatically, everything seems to remain unchanged in Hong Kong. There is only one local news story attracts my attention: Some students of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) proposes to quit the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS). This does not look like a big deal. But the term "passive revolution" might be an appropriate idea to understand what's happening in Hong Kong.

HKFS has been the representative body for student unions at seven universities and colleges since the late 1950s. Over the past few decades, it had been very politicized. During 1980s-1990s, HKFS was active in democratic movement, particularly in the incidents of June Fourth and fighting for revision of the Basic Law. In recent years, it has become less active but is still seen as a part of the pan-democratic alliance.

But now something different has happened in some university student unions. Chan Chi-kin, the former president of HKU students' union, and some students have launched a signature campaign to push a referendum to decide whether its student union should continue to join HKFS. This challenges the leadership of HKFS in local university students.

Chan criticized HKFS as an organization without a system of checks and balances and he was not happy about a large part of funding being allocated to the Social Movement Resource Centre, a group concerning social activism. He accused Lo Wai Ming, HKFS's former secretariat, of taking control over the financial resources of the federation.

But some were skeptical of Chan's political stances. Last year, before the July 1 rally, HKU student union released a statement which aroused controversies. It said, "Universal suffrage is not the solution to everything. Pursuing it blindly will lead to negative consequences. Cultivating good citizen quality and social environment congenial to universal suffrage is more meaningful than chanting slogans and taking to the street." A group of HKU alumni condemned this statement as discouraging people from joining the mass rally.

Now the signature campaign coincides with another incident. In mid-August, Lau Fong, president of HKU student union, and some student representatives went to meet Chief Executive of Hong Kong SAR government Donald Tsang. But this meeting was boycotted by four student unions because they were told not to inform the media of it. Lau Fong's father, Lau Nai Keung, a pro-Beijing government politician and committee member of Political Consultation, was the "middleman" who helped organize this meeting.

Yet all of these might not be a well-organized plot or political repression. But it demonstrates the pro-Beijing government partisans have shifted their strategies from promoting "patriotism" to gaining support and consensus from the civic associations. The political struggles and conflicts occur in the most grassroot levels of the society.

Over the past few years, local activists have advocated the slogan of "civil society" which is a force fighting against the encroachment by the government. What Lau Nai Keung, the pro-Beijing ideologue, proposed is not a crackdown on the civil society by the state. Instead, as he said, the civil society is not necessarily anti-government and it could "co-exist" with government "peacefully". He is so smart in playing with words that he even suggested Hong Kong need more "political oppositions" which would cooperate with the government.

Hong Kong | Politics

Hacker Attack on Baidu.com

2006-09-21T01:24:00.000+08:00

When the portal website of Baidu.com was broken down, what reasons came into the mind of Liu Jianguo, Baidu.com's Chief Technology Officer?

Baidu.com, the biggest search engine in China, was attacked by hackers on September 12. The breakdown lasted for almost 30 minutes. Baidu claimed that the attack was pre-meditated and highly organized. Some speculated that it is related to its recent cutbacks in personnel and its litigation with former clients.

As Liu Jianguo said, the hackers used the technique of syn flooding to create a huge number of IP addresses to overload the servers. He claimed that this kind of attack was so unusal that it would be an revenge taked by a company or a group rather than individual.

It is believed that the attack is related to two recent incidents. Some former Baidu.com's advertising customers sued Baidu.com for filtering out their information in all search results. This happened after they decided not to renew their contract with it. It was also alleged that Baidu competed with his rivals, such as Google, by not showing some key links of Google's customers. Despite moral condemnation and public concern, some lawyers pointed that there was no law regulating what information a search engine should show to its users.

Over the past few months, Baidu.com had dismissed some employees and shut down its software department in July without prior notice. Some workers submitted an arbitration applicaton to court. But Baidu.com did not want to arouse more controversies and said it affected less than 1% of its 2,000 staff.

Yet an experienced hacker alleged that this was only an attack launched by an individual hacker who felt furious with what Baidu.com had done to its staff and former advertising customers. Baidu refused to comment on it.

Baidu.com, the most popular internet search engine in China, was accused of providing links to websites of music pirates and helping the China government censor politically sensitive information. It got listed on Nasdaq in August last year and its stock price had skyrocketed from US$27 to US$122.54 on the first date of trading. Recently it is threatened by competition from Google who is expanding in China, the world's second largest internet market.

Photo: doubleaf

Disney fever is gone

2006-09-14T22:10:00.000+08:00

Last year a shop in Mongkok, the most populous shopping area of Hong Kong, was taken over by a new tenant, a Korean cosmetic company. It afforded a rental as high as HK$ 980,000, more than 50% higher than the previous one. Some believed that Hong Kong Disneyland would create an economic booming, particularly in retailing sector, by attracting a huge number of mainland Chinese tourists. However, less than one year later, it withdrew from Mongkok and terminated the leasehold.

The local people already suffered from the volatility of property market in retail sector before they saw any Disney's economic contribution. It becomes more and more difficult to run small business in Hong Kong. The tourist sector saw the arrival of Disney as a new opportunity for expanding their market and network. In anticipation of high growth rate, many chain shops competed for space in shopping areas and malls along the railway route to the theme park. Yet their expectation proves to be wishful thinking.

On September 12, the celebration of Hong Kong Disneyland's first anniversary did not attract people's attention. So is its contribution to Hong Kong economy. While few people remember Hong Kong Disneyland's birthday, a corporate watch organization, Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), staged a protest against the Walt Disney Company's sweatshops.

In its first year, about 5 million people visited Hong Kong Disney, a number less than the expected target of 5.6 million, despite many aggressive promotion such as offering free tickets for taxi drivers. The economic bubble caused by people's high expectation of "Disney effect" is also gone despite the park's managing director Bill Ernest's optimism.

Hong Kong Disneyland, the fifth Disneyland in the world, is a project initiated by Hong Kong government who wanted to boost the local economy hit by financial crisis in 1998. The officials wanted to attract a huge number of tourists from mainland China. It takes more than 5 years to finish the project.

I doubt if Mr Ernest really cares about the future prospect of Hong Kong Disneyland. Since the year of 1999, The Hong Kong government has spent HK$22.4 billion on it, including 13.6 billion on infrastructure, 3.2 billion on capital investment and 5.6 billion on loan. The Walt Disney Company who owned 43 per cent of the shares in the Hong Kong Disneyland, only invested about US$ 0.31 billion.

Some criticized Hong Kong Disneyland, the smallest one in the global family of Disneyland, for its size. It is even smaller than some mainland theme parks. The management mishandled the chaos that ensued from the Lunar New Year holidays when a large number of Chinese visitors came. Thousands of angry ticket-holders were locked out of the gate of the park. Hong Kong Disneyland might be only a low-priced launching pad for its further expansion in Shanghai, Seoul or Singapore.

Photo: the zen master

Land Expropriation Reform Makes "Land Enclosure" Worse

2006-09-13T13:22:00.000+08:00

Author/Qin Hui

The land problem has become intensified after local tax reform. The central government has paid a lot of effort in constraining land "enclosure". In the year of 2004, it initiated the reform in land expropriation, the so-called "new land policy", "land revolution" and "The deadline of August 31", and it has enormously constrained the collusion between government and business sector and protected the national interest. The reform has changed the interest distribution between developer and government. The system of negotiated leasehold is replaced by open auction. Now it is less possible for developers to offer bribe to local officials to get land at low price. This policy reduces the loss of land revenue to national financial income.

However, this policy not only fails to alleviate but also further worsens the problem of land enclosure.

The previous leasehold system definitely causes corruption in land expropriation. Bribery and the people in power lured the local officials to sell land at low price. It did harm to national interest and peasant. Only developers and the officials involved made a lot of money. But these illegal practices only increased personal wealth rather than govenment financial resources. So it not only led to anti-corruption campaign but also the internal constraint within governments, particularly the incentive to monitor by the officials who did not benefit from corruption. There was incentive for the businessmen and officials to pursue personal interest. But the "incentive for government fiscal revenue" is comparatively less.

"Reform in land expropriation" is different. Now after low prices in expropriation and leasehold was replaced by low price in expropriation and high price in "auction", the revenue from expropriation of peasant's land does not decrease. More land revenue goes to government rather than the pockets of officials and developers. Land revenue becomes more important to government financial income.

Although corrupted officials might have less personal incentive to push forward land enclosure, governments become much more active in it. It is difficult to condemn these practices as "corruption" because the land revenue goes to government rather than individuals. Because the financial interest is shared within local government, the monitoring and constraining by "disinterested colleagues" will be reduced. The land enclosure perpetuated by government's land revenue rather than officials' personal interest, by governments rather than individual official, and legal rather than illegal, will move faster. This is not unimaginable. One and half year after new land policy, the conflict between people and government caused by land expropriation has increased. The conflicts like the incident of Ding Zhou, which was rarely seen previously, happened persistently.

Since the fiscal and tax reform in the 1990s, with the exception of some coastal areas, most local governments, particularly those of county-level or below, are increasingly "thirsty and hungry" for finanical resources. The reform in tax and fee allievates peasants' economic burden but put more grassroot-level governments into financial difficulties. But the appropriate measures of grassroot-level government reform do not bring substantial change. Now the land expropriation reform further causes great seduction of "land reveneue" for government. With these factors together, where is the land enclosure heading to? The answer is expected.

2006-08-28 New Express

Qin Hui teaches in the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is an expert in agricultural problems of China and Russia.

The original article
Photo: *LJ*

FoxConn, First Financial Daily and CCP

2006-09-08T20:02:00.000+08:00

China studies scholars in western countries have been concerned with a question: What kind of society has been brought by open-door policy? The reconcilation between FoxConn and The First Financial Daily gives us some hints.

The world outside China has the impression that China's media is controlled by government. It is partially true. Strictly speaking, media in China is janus-faced. Sometimes they look like any media in western countries. Sometimes they seem go back to the old times. The incident of "Freezing Point" (Bingdian) is a recent example.

The professional practices and autonomy of some mainland journalists are much better than all Hong Kong reporters. The coverage of the labor condition in FoxConn is a good example. This is not the direct and necessary consequence of marketization (The highly "marketized" Hong Kong media could prove it). Many journalists ride the tide of marketization to create more space for press freedom. Over the past ten years, newspapers have been looking for money and higher sales. They certainly need to reduce official articles and investigative reports become a selling point.

The media with "Chinese characteristics" is run increasingly like any news corporate group in western countries. They compete for news stories and sales. They are working on cross-media merge and acquisition. They attempt to monopolize the market by strategic alliance. But in some critical moments, they are still subject to the supervision of different party-state organizations respectively. There is no privately owned newspaper in China. The First Financial Daily is a joint venture of Shanghai Media Group, Guangzhou Daily Group and Beijing Youth Daily. They are affiliated with the Communist Party Committees of Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing Communist Youth League respectively.

Behind the conflict between the newspapers and corporation, there is the operation of the Chinese Communist Party. FoxConn's Shenzhen branch is the first Taiwanese owned enterprise with party committee in 2001. There are 1791 party members and 68 branch offices. One third of the members are management. The interest of party committee and enterprise are united. As FoxConn's party committee secretrary said, "Party's task is to serve company's production and business." Last year, the company allocated RMB 8 million to its party committee.

It is hard to believe that this gigantic party, with a membership of over 70 million, would not intervene into this affair. The joint statement follows the party line: "Harmonious soceity".

As Jurgen Habermas said, corporatization of modern media led to the decline of pampheteering-style small media. The discussion in public sphere turned into the public relations work manipulated by political and economic groups. The joint statement is a PR document. But the Chinese characteristics of this public-relation dominated society are prominent. In the new social space, the party organizations proliferate and work like a pair of invisible hands. The weak voice of workers in media is further covered up by the symphony of "harmonious voices".

Photo: El Mambo Taxi

Insufficient domestic demand in China

2006-09-01T22:06:00.000+08:00

Despite incredibly high growth rate, China economy is always characterized by its insufficiency of domestic demand. In other words, the ordinary people do not want or are not able to consume as much as the producers expect. Where have the money gone? Some put money into their bank account. But most people's purchasing power is much weaker than economic development. The annual growth rate of income is only 6-7% but GDP increases at about 15% each year. It is estimated that the supply of consumer goods exceeds demand by 70%. Now the average Chinese people make only RMB 700 (less than US$100) each month. How could they afford the way of life of high consumption?

This is also an issue of economic inequality. The fast-growing sectors, particularly the companies related to raw material such as oil and electricity, and property developer, made a lot of money. So did the China government and banks. But the ordinary people did not gain much. That is why there is an oversupply of credit in China. In order to make more money, the banks lend most money to the fast-growing sectors and make a never-ending cycle of economic overheating. The privileged class further capitalizes on this chance to accumulate their wealth. That is why CPI(Consumer Price Index) increases mildly compared to GDP and other economic indicators.

According to the ILO's report, most Asian people experienced rapid economic grwoth but suffered from economic hardship including low wage and unemployment. 1 billion people earn less than US$2 each day in Asia. More jobs also need to be created for satisfying the expanding labor force. Chinese Workers' productivity increased by 170% from 1990 to 1999 but their real wage only increased by 80%. India is even worse. The salary of workers in India decreased by 22% while labor productivity increased by 84%.

Now China economy is primarily driven by persistent investment in fixed capital and export. The Beijing government fails to stimulate domestic demand. What it can do is to keep tightening credit supply and cooling down the property market. But many people begin worrying about the shrinking US economy which is supporting China's economic growth.

Hong Kong Police Raid Independent Radio

2006-08-31T22:27:00.000+08:00

Despite without a license, a group of activists have run the Citizen's Radio for one year. Last night police and government officers suddenly raided this independent radio stations. They arrested a man and confiscated most equipment.

There are only three legal radio stations in Hong Kong, a city populated by 7 million people. There are even more radio stations in Beijing than in Hong Kong, no mention of other cities. The Hong Kong government refuses to issue more licenses to any applicant. The activists of Citizen's Radio submitted their application last year and have not received any response. Hong Kong government blocks its ears to any demand for more radio channels. Hong Kong government always boasts of its free economy but it never applies to the area of media.

A few years, some popular hosts of radio phone-in program, who criticized government severely, were suddenly fired and Hong Kong people were worried about the freedom of speech and media autonomy. Since then, some people launched underground radio and other independent media (e.g. Hong Kong People's Radio).

Hong Kong's radio broadcasting is managed by the Broadcasting Authority whose memebers are appointed by the Chief Executive Donald Tsang who is also not elected by Hong Kong people. The policy-making body is the Commerce, Industry & Technology Bureau and the Secretrary is appointed by the Beijing government. There is no democratic institution and process for Hong Kong people to discuss and change the broadcasting policies.

Hong Kong government said that illegal radio broadcasters are harmful to other legitimate users. Yet no evidence has never been provided by officials. But the police raid is already doing serious harm to the civil society. The maximum penalty for a conviction of violating the telecommunication law is a HK$100,000 fine and five years' imprisonment. Further, we lost the Citizen's Radio, the only underground radio station in Hong Kong.

Radio broadcasting is one of the most popular media in Hong Kong. Now, except the government radio station, all commercial radio licenses are owned by the commercial sector. One of them belongs to the tycoon Li Ka Shing who has good connections with Hong Kong and Beijing governments.

Photo: Leo Prieto

The open secret of Walmart in China

2006-08-24T23:34:00.000+08:00

In China, there are 60 Walmart outlets, mostly located in the urban centers of coastal cities. But over the past ten years, its total investment in China is only about US$57 million. How could it be possible?

The secret lies at its partner, Shenzhen International Trust & Investment Co. Ltd (SITI) and the "enclosure".

Walmart and SITI ride on the tide of the enclosure movement in Chinese cities. But Walmart did not need to buy any land or build its superstores in China. SITI did. Usually the local governments offered very favourable terms for SITI because of its partnership with Walmart. Last year, in a land auction for Hangzhou city center, the local government even required all bidders to be top 500 world corporates. It turned out that only SITI was eligible. SITI even acquired the land at a price 25% lower than market price. The local governments believe that the arrival of Walmart usually could boost the value of its surrounding land and real-estate. The annual purchase of RMB 20 billion worth of merchandise by Walmart is also extremely attractive to most governments.

SITI usually builds a commercial-residential complex in the new site and rents several stories to Walmart at a very low price. Due to the huge amount of profit from real-estate development, SITI is willing to provide most infrastructure (including air-conditioning, elevator and escalator) for Walmart. That is why the initial fund for each new outlet is only about US$3 million, less than Carrefour's outlet (US$5-6 million).

While many suppliers want to sell their products in Walmart's superstore, it keeps the first order payment as deposit. It is estimated that the amount is about RMB 30 million, which is high enough for opening another new outlet. Walmart could take advantage of its brand name to expand its retailing network persistently.

The market structres and government policies in China becomes more and more favourable to the big corporations. In the retailing markets, the small operators will find more and more difficult to survive. The local governments only pay lip service to job creation by promoting small business.

Information source

photo: Travel Geographer

tags:China, Chinese economy, Walmart

The rural migrants know better than us

2006-08-24T23:33:00.000+08:00

In response to oiwan's letter, I would like to make some remarks on the situation of Chinese rural migrant workers. The China government recently collaborated with international NGO, including ILO, to produce a TV drama series about the success story of rural migrant labor in Sichuan province. During my field study of the Chinese rural migrants, I met a lot of small business owners. Many see it as the only way out of the difficult situations as a cheap labor in the "World Factory". I haven't watched that TV drama series but I doubt if it is necessary for the government and NGOs to encourage the migrants to run small business.

In China, most rural migrant workers start their own business in the retailing market. I guess this is the case in most developing countries. It is much easier for a worker to open a grocery than a factory. And the retailing market in China is highly competitive but "unorganized". It means low-profit and the economic scale of most operators is small. It requires small amount of initial fund and low skill for people to start up small business. The large-scale chain shops are not able to monopolize most of the market. I think of an interesting example.

Recently GOME, the biggest home electronic appliances retailer in China, has acquired its rival China Paradise, the third largest one. But after this deal, GOME only gets 10% market share. That is why GOME's stock price dropped quite a lot. To many people's surprise, China Paradise recently announced that its annual profit rate is as low as 0.2% of the total revenue.

I don't have more statistics about China's retailing market at hand. But I have read something interesting about India. Her economic growth rate is so high that many people are expecting a bright future of India's economy, particularly her retailing sector. India's individual consumption accounts for 64% of GNP, much higher than that of China (42%). Yet few people notice that the retailing market is also highly decentralized in India. There are more than 15 million retailing units, among which only 4% are shops bigger than 500 square feet. Most of them are small shops. In the United States, there are only 0.9 million retailing units, mostly owned by big corporations such as Walmart.

Desipte the influential corporate agenda of neoliberalism promoted by WTO and many developed countries, many parts of people's economy, particularly in the developing countries, are still characterized by a large number of small operators and their lively markets. The highly competitive market is both good and bad for Chinese rural migrants. It is not that difficult for them to wave farewell to their identity of "Dagong" (worker) and expect upward mobility in the future. Some of them make money. That is one of the reasons for the weak class solidarity among rural migrant workers. Furthermore, the profit rate is so low for small business that many shopowners could hardly survive.

Even though you buy the idea of ILO that small business is a good way for the poor people in the developing countries and job creation, your first priority should not be to encourage them to run small business. I also doubt if training could really help. They might know about it better than us. Instead, the government should try to identify and solve the key problems the small shopowners come across. For example, the big companies keep making use of their money and their connections to governments to get rid of the small operators and change the market structure.

That is what happened and is happening in Hong Kong. Now there is less and less room for small business to survive. People should be worried about the implications of the corporate moves for the retailing market, such as the acquisiton of China Paradise by GOME. As far as I know, many global retailing companies, such as ESPRIT and GIORDANO, are about to expand their outlets in India.

In other words, the future is not a dream but it is not so bright.

Photo: Wuerzi

Light Out Hong Kong and One Million People's Candle Night

2006-08-24T23:30:00.000+08:00

The term "NGO" becomes popular in Hong Kong. While more attention is paid to it, more different voices about it are heard. Recently, Greenpeace China was criticized by mainland media as exaggerating the problems of "polluted vegetable" and "genetically modified food". The corporates and governments released research findings and information to refute Greenpeace's accusation. A member of Greenpeace said it was defeated in the media battle. A critic, Tang Hao, said in his article published in Southern City Daily, "Greenpeace is following a radical tradition, showing the style of extravagance and calculating cost and effect. I find them questionable." Fang Zhouzhi criticized Greenpeace China as "anti-scientific" repeatedly. Some Greenpeace supporters argued that this wave of criticism is the collaborative strategy of governments and corporate groups. Indeed, an engaged NGO is usually controversial. It is inevitable. But I really expect responses to these criticism from Greenpeace.

While some people found Greenpeace China too radical, some criticized it as not radical enough.

The "Light Out Hong Kong" campaign on August 8 co-organized by Greenpeace with other environmental groups, targeted power plants. The columnist of Hong Kong Economic Journal, Chan Yim, disagreed with its stance. He argued that the biggest source of pollution is the factory owners and governments in the Pearl River Delta. Although Greenpeace was viewed as "radical", it didn't dare to set them as campaign targets. He saw Greenpeace's campaign as a political show without real commitment.

According to Lee Yuk Shing, some Japanese launched the campaign of "One Million People's Candle Night" to encourage people to save energy and reduce exhaust emission. And it also inspires people to reoganize their life, memorializing their deceased friends and families, and rethinking the meaning of life.

They not only won support from people all over the country, but Japan's environmental protection department. They receive positive responses from Korea and other countries. This year, people in Taipei, Keynes (Australia), Pittsberg (US) and Seoul joined their campaign. It becomes more and more influential. Compared to it, "Light Out Hong Kong" is far from successful and fails to gain support from government and the society at large.

Photo: t-mix

Transaction fee is fair?

2006-08-24T23:27:00.000+08:00

Yahoo! auction site is a very popular portal in Taiwan. With 3.7 million items and the annual transaction value of NT$22 billion (2005), it owns most of the local market. It recently announced that all users will be charged 3% of transaction fees on most of the items. It aroused users' severe complaints and they accused Yahoo! of violating the Fair Trade Act.

The Fair Trade Commission began to investigate this case. According to Taiwan's antitrust law, a company, with annual revenue over 1 billion New Taiwan dollars and one third of a specific market, will qualify as a monopoly.

A user said that he/she already paid about NT$15,000 for listing his items on the site and other functions each month. Now he would be charged NT$15,000 more for transaction. This amount is enough for renting a small apartment in Taiwan! He/she decided to take away his items from Yahoo! auction site immediately. He criticized this new policy as a nasty tactic to capitalize on Yahoo!'s monopolized market.

Yet Roach Chen argued that Yahoo!'s new price policy might offer an opportunity for competitors to enter the market. An auction site could survive without transaction fees because this service is cross-subsidized by the profit from other services such as advertising. Most competitors could not replicate Yahoo!'s model. That is why other competitors lost the battle with Yahoo! in Taiwan. He added that internet business usually requires low skill and low initial fund. So "monopoly" is less serious than "cross-subsidy" in the market on internet. This is also the issue in the case of Microsoft Windows and IE.