I’m not a Middle East expert, nor do I have any insight on back-room dealings at the U.N. I was therefore going to pass on the topic of Syria, and Russia and China’s veto of a UN resolution condemning the current crackdown. However, the post-vote spinning and reaction made me change my mind.

To me, the news here (aside from what’s actually going on in Syria) is the breakdown of civility over this issue. The veto itself by Russia and China was no great surprise, given both nations’ commercial interests in Syria and China’s longstanding foreign policy principle of non-interference. China was also worried that the UN resolution would be the first step on a slippery slope to intervention a la Libya. I think this description in Foreign Policy got it right for the most part:

For Russia, Syria’s dictatorship is its last client left standing in the Middle East, both political and economic since Syria provides a warm seaport and buys Russian weaponry. To watch it fall means ceding the field largely to the U.S. and the EU, and losing revenue. The stakes are indeed high for Russia. For China, the best explanation is inertia; China defines its national interest — apart from its freedom to engage in commerce wherever it can — according to the principle of non-intervention. Its reaction to the Syria situation is like its reaction to every other such situation: everyone should mind his own business, we like things as they are. (h/t Andrew Sullivan)

Let’s face it, having everyone mind its own business is a big deal here in Beijing, both for historical and current reasons, such as what’s going on this week out West.

You may have heard a lot of blather coming from both Western sources and the Chinese diplomatic corp about this vote. I’ll get to the former in a moment, but most of it can be glossed over. The reality of all this is simple: Beijing believes that China’s best interests are served by supporting the Assad government, at least in the short term.

There’s a term for this kind of diplomatic strategy. It’s called realism. The United States practices it, for example, when it supports Saudi Arabia, which maintains domestic policies that most Americans find abhorrent. But hey, oil is important. And let’s not even get into the frequent practice of U.N. members vetoing resolutions on behalf of their allies; how many times has the U.S. blocked U.N. resolutions against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians? (For the record, I’m glad the U.S. did so on a number of those occasions.)

The point is, China had its reasons, even if many other nations do not accept that calculus. Does that mean that the supporters of the U.N. resolution should be uncritical of China’s veto? Certainly not. Proponents of the resolution had a compelling argument on a tough issue and are no doubt frustrated. But this sort of thing happens at the United Nations, and if these countries want the international system to work, they have to understand that after this Syria matter is over and done with, they will still have to work with China, and Russia, on other issues.

Diplomacy, in other words, calls for mutual respect, even on tough battles like this. A vociferous disagreement with China’s vote is fine as long as there is an acknowledgment that it was a matter of perceived national interest. That doesn’t sound idealistic to me, but feel free to call me naive if you wish.

The reason I bring this all up is that I was quite disappointed by some of the comments made by world leaders, particularly their diplomatic corps, in the wake of the U.N. vote. Here’s a sample:

Russia and China “sided with the Syrian regime” by blocking a United Nations resolution against Bashar al-Assad’s regime, [UK Foreign Secretary] William Hague has said.

The foreign secretary responded angrily after a security council resolution proposed by Morocco calling for an immediate end to all violence in Syria was vetoed.

“There was nothing in the draft to warrant opposition,” Mr Hague said.

“How many more need to die before Russia and China allow the UN security council to act?

“Those opposing UN security council action will have to account to the Syrian people for their actions which do nothing to help bring an end to the violence that is ravaging the country.”

That actually wasn’t too bad, although expressing anger isn’t kosher for a diplomat. Also, that bit about answering to the Syrian people sounded quite childish. As to the language of the resolution, I wonder whether the U.S. and UK thought that Russia and China would abstain on this one. After all, some of the offending language of earlier drafts had been removed. Perhaps the vetoes were somewhat unexpected and therefore the underlying cause of these vituperative outbursts.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the veto a “travesty” while traveling through Europe this weekend, saying China and Russia “bear full responsibility for protecting the brutal regime in Damascus.”

“The fact that Russia and China chose to align themselves up with a dictator that is on his last legs, rather than the people of Syria, rather than the people of the Middle East, rather than the principled views of the rest of the international community, was indeed disgusting and shameful,” [U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan] Rice said in an interview on MSNBC.

This is just inexcusable for a career diplomat, and I’m amazed that a pro like Rice would use a word like “disgusting” to characterize a vote like this. The reason why they hold votes in the U.N. is that nations have different interests, and that has to be respected, even if the underlying issue is emotional and involves bloodshed.

Beijing has a long memory. Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for the U.S. to call China’s foreign policy “disgusting.”

I’m going to have to side with this reaction:

“Some of the voices heard in the West with evaluations of the results of the vote in the U.N. Security Council on the Syria resolution sound, I would say, improper, somewhere on the verge of hysteria,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to wire reports from Moscow.

If the voices in question are diplomats, they need to learn how to control themselves and rein in those excited utterances. Let other members of the government, as well as commentators, bloggers, and academics, rail against these votes and what this will mean to the people of Syria.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: realism, Syria, United Nations

The Chinese government has sent a working group to Sudan to aid in the rescue of several Chinese nationals who have been abducted in the country, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.

Spokesman Liu Weimin said the working group, which is being led by the ministry and includes officials from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, or China’s cabinet, departed for Sudan on Monday evening. (Global Times)

Allow me to be deliberately provocative with a quick thought experiment. Instead of sending in a team of diplomatic negotiators to deal with the situation, what if China went with Plan B and sent in a crack group of killers to take out the bad guys? This is what President Obama decided to do with a hostage situation in Somalia last week.

Question: what would be the political fallout and media treatment of a similar Chinese operation? I suspect there would be some outrage, concern trolling, and (last but not least) maybe even some cheer leading by some neocons.

Note that in the case of the Somali operation, the legal basis for the U.S. action is confusing. There are compelling arguments on both sides.

Here’s another one. What if these particular Sudanese bad guys, as part of a negotiated release of the hostages, were allowed to walk? And then what if China waited six months and then smoked their asses like the Mossad did with the Munich Olympics terrorists in the 70s or, assuming for a moment that they had the technological capability, rained destruction down on their heads with aerial drones? (The U.S. has been doing the latter in both Somalia and Afghanistan for some time now. Once again the legal basis for such actions is unclear.)

My point here is that I would expect a great deal of criticism if China did in fact decide to emulate the U.S. I would not be at all surprised if those kinds of actions were condemned on various grounds, including state sovereignty and human rights. Heck, I could even see some sort of condemnation introduced via the United Nations.

And yet, in the case of the U.S., not only are aerial drone attacks and special forces strikes reported on as a matter of course, these actions are lauded and rarely questioned. The chest thumping in the U.S. is expected, but I’ve always found the tacit approval of the foreign press a bit odd. My cursory reading of the British press (here’s a sample) and international wire service reports of the Somali raid has uncovered no discussion of territorial sovereignty, the extent of discussions between the U.S. and Somali government, or international (or U.S. national) law implications.

So if it’s OK for SEAL Team Six to take out Somali “criminals,” (not sneer quotes — that is what they were called by the U.S. government), then I assume everything is fine with China doing the same thing when it develops such capabilities and decides to use them?

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: double standard, hostages, SEAL Team Six, Somalia, Sudan, terrorism

I was pleased to discover yesterday that The Economist was launching a regular China section in its weekly publication:

In this issue we launch a weekly section devoted to China. It is the first time since we began our detailed coverage of the United States in 1942 that we have singled out a country in this way. The principal reason is that China is now an economic superpower and is fast becoming a military force capable of unsettling America.

Good deal, and certainly warranted given China’s status in the world today. However, I would personally limit justification of that decision to China’s rising economic and geopolitical power as opposed to military capabilities. There are certainly other nations out there whose armed forces are of more concern in the world today than is China’s.

All well and good, although launching this new section during the New Year holiday was rather odd. But that’s a minor quibble. Much more troubling was the rest of the article that made the announcement. The second sentence got us into strange territory:

But our interest in China lies also in its politics: it is governed by a system that is out of step with global norms. In ways that were never true of post-war Japan and may never be true of India, China will both fascinate and agitate the rest of the world for a long time to come.

Hmm. What the heck is this supposed to mean? China certainly is a unique country with a political and economic structure that differs from many nations, particularly Western countries. But is that difference sufficient reason for folks to be both fascinated and agitated?

Apparently so. You see, one of the standard themes of Western thought over the past few hundred years is the idea of progress (traditional Chinese thinking, such as Confucianism, would beg to differ). Some argue that such progress is inevitable, albeit through fits and starts. You know, “fits” like Nazi Germany and “starts” like the United Nations.

The problem with all this is that when you adopt such linear thinking, certain kinds of change become not only expected, but inevitable. In other words, if the world has progressed from Point A to Point B, then the characteristics of Point B are suddenly viewed as obvious and necessary for a “modern” society. Just think about how opinion in the West has shifted with respect to gender equality, gay rights or data privacy. It’s an interesting way of ordering a world view, and certainly makes analysis easy.

But what are we to do with nations like China that don’t fit the model? (Not a new problem. Wallerstein couldn’t do it for the early-modern period either.) How do you approach countries that, at least in some ways, are holding on to those Point A characteristics, refusing to join up with the rest of us over at Point B? Well, if you support this general way of thinking, you call that nation backward or, as The Economist prefers, “out of step” with “global norms.”

It doesn’t end there, however. If a nation is indeed out of step, and yet progress is inevitable, then it follows that the “backward” nation will eventually fall into line and shuffle along to Point B where the rest of us are waiting. Makes sense, yes?

This is essentially the argument put forward by The Economist in discussing China’s need for political reform, the key to which is having the Communist Party chill out a bit in terms of control, even in the face of rising social and economic tension:

The party’s instinct, born out of all those years of success, is to tighten its grip.

[ . . . ]

Yet that reflex will make the party’s job harder. It needs instead to master the art of letting go.

[ . . . ]

[F]or China’s rise to continue, the model cannot remain the same. That’s because China, and the world, are changing.

So far, I’m intrigued. But it’s now up to the author to convince us why “letting go” will lead to a preferable outcome. I can’t wait.

The overall goal here, says the author, is an economic one. China will not be able to sustain economic growth at adequate levels unless it moves away from investment to higher levels of domestic consumption. This is a restatement of the current conventional wisdom on China’s needed economic reform. But here, the argument is that such a move towards domestic consumption is only possible through political reform, which would help in the following ways:

Migrant workers would like to keep their limited rights to education, health and pensions as they move around the country. And freedom to organise can help, not hinder, the country’s economic rise. Labour unions help industrial peace by discouraging wildcat strikes. Pressure groups can keep a check on corruption. Temples, monasteries, churches and mosques can give prosperous Chinese a motive to help provide welfare. Religious and cultural organisations can offer people meaning to life beyond the insatiable hunger for rapid economic growth.

That’s quite a list. Let’s take a closer look at those. First, the social safety net. The assumption here is that without political reform, China will not spend money on education, health care, pensions and so on. This ignores the fact that the government is already doing all these things. One can argue with the amount of money being spent or the pace of reforms, but there certainly have been big changes in the past few years in these areas.

Second, labor unions. I personally tend to think that with labor unions, workers tend to get a better deal. But in the absence of unions, will working conditions never improve? Hardly. Again, we have progress in the form of the Labor Contract Law (2008) and significant hikes in the minimum wage as evidence that progress is underway. Again, such progress may be criticized for being too slow or not comprehensive, but it can’t be wholly ignored.

Third, corruption. Can outside groups help fight against corruption? Of course. But let’s not ignore all the anti-corruption efforts that have been made in recent years. Are those efforts sufficient to solve the problem? Time will tell, but in any event,  the claim that government efforts will inevitably fail in the absence of political reform is at least arguable.

Fourth, religion. Not surprisingly, I find this one laughable. China needs religion to help the poor and to offer people a meaning to their lives beyond economic growth? From reading The Economist over many years, I thought economic growth was an end in and of itself!

But seriously, the government is certainly capable of dealing with poverty on its own; indeed, modern China can boast of having lifted more people out of poverty than any other nation in the history of the world. Thanks, but no thanks, religion. As to the meaning of life, this was a throwaway line in the article not elaborated upon, so I think I’ll ignore it.

At this point, we have a list of things that the people of China might need. The suggestion is that political reform might assist in delivering those things, and that without such liberalization, those goals will not be met. It sounds like a good start to an argument, but unfortunately, this is pretty much where The Economist leaves us. In fact, in the interest of balance, there is even this list of arguments from the “other side” (note that in the article, these were presented first):

Party officials cite growing unrest as evidence of the dangers of liberalisation. Migration, they argue, may be a source of growth, but it is also a cause of instability. Workers’ protests disrupt production and threaten prosperity.

So having laid out the arguments on both sides with respect to political reform, why does The Economist leave us with this declaratory statement: “[F]or China to succeed it must move away from the formula that has served it so well”? (My emphasis.) Perhaps the article is simply meant to whet our appetite for future editorial content. This is a possibility. But I think it’s more likely that in the mind of the author, the argument for the inevitability of political reform has been adequately presented and nothing further is required.

In the minds of proponents of the “Western progress” theory, it’s obvious that democracy is better. It’s well known that religious faith is a good thing. It’s readily apparent that governments will not end corruption from within. If you already firmly believe in all of that, then further arguments are unnecessary.

For me, I find The Economist article to be excellent and thought provoking but sadly incomplete — the final 1/3 seems to be missing. I just wish some evidence could have been presented as to why China might not be successful in reordering its economy without fundamental political reform. The Economist falls into the same trap as many other Western analysts who have deep-rooted beliefs as to the “rightness” of democracy, religion and other aspects of modern Western nations. As I’ve said many times in the past, just because we happen to firmly believe in the wisdom of a particular ideology or structure, that doesn’t make it universally applicable or inevitable.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Best wishes from China Hearsay for good health and prosperity in 2012, the year of the dragon.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese New Year, Spring Festival

Words matter, and hyperbolic rhetoric is annoying no matter who uses it. I was therefore predisposed to support Isaac Stone Fish’s FP Passport post on the use of China comparisons by folks fighting against SOPA/PIPA, a proposed U.S. scheme to fight Internet piracy. His basic point? Whatever one may think of these draft laws, the rules would not create an American version of the Great Firewall.

Of course. The fight against SOPA/PIPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act/Protect IP Act) is a big, dramatic brawl, pitting the entertainment industry, and their very powerful stooges lobbyists, against a coalition of Internet companies that would be effected by the law as well as free speech/Net activists. There has been irresponsible rhetoric, including misleading and ignorant statements, on both sides. So I wouldn’t have been surprised if the new law had been characterized as the work of Satan himself. That’s how lobbyists and activists do things.

But yeah, it’s a good idea to point out when rhetoric goes too far, like when Wikipedia suggests that SOPA/PIPA would end “free knowledge” — that’s just nonsense. On the other side, the content owners, the ones who are responsible for pushing the latest IP power grab, certainly aren’t covering themselves in glory. I for one question the entertainment industry on a regular basis, including the fabricated piracy statistics that they periodically issue, usually through a proxy research firm, and then spoon feed to their “friends” in Congress. It’s good to know that these games are now well understood by folks writing about online IP issues, and not just lawyer geeks like me and my friend Danny Friedmann at IP Dragon. I was pleased to see this in Wired‘s rundown of SOPA/PIPA:

They [SOPA/PIPA] are in response to Big Content’s (.pdf) arguments that hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost every year due to pirate websites. These numbers are largely unsubstantiated and rest on the assumption that if a person had not gotten a copy of a movie online, they would have paid full price for a DVD or CD.

Preaching to the choir.

Big Content (I like the label) has been waging this war for decades now, fighting against audio cassettes, VCRs, and other new tech, always claiming that the latest gizmo will run everyone out of business. With online piracy, they were faced with a much more formidable set of opponents, and there have been many other legislative proposals, some of which have gone down in flames, while others like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act were enacted into law (and promptly abused, as some would say).

SOPA/PIPA is merely the latest battle, and Big Content always says that if it doesn’t get its way, trillions of jobs will be lost and entire industries will go under. Blah blah blah. As if they hadn’t already successfully cleaned up the U.S. piracy scene and are now simply going after the offshore remainder.

Don’t be fooled by the sob stories. Big Content, or at least sub-sectors of the entertainment and software industries, have actually made a lot of headway in stopping piracy. Yes, it’s still relatively easy to download an MP3, movie or TV show. But the big domestic bad guys have been defeated. Napster, YouTube, IsoHunt — gone or forced to clean up their act. Moreover, with some of the civil litigation that has been used against individuals in the U.S. and cooperation with institutions like universities, a lot of people just don’t bother anymore. Let’s face it, your average Grandma isn’t going to get on IRC or a BBS and troll for an invitation to Demonoid.

Who are the remaining bad guys? Foreign sites in “friendly” jurisdictions, like Pirate Bay or KickAss, or companies that offer cloud-based storage systems, which can be very tough to police as they are not as transparent as search-based platforms. This is the final frontier, and SOA/PIPA is today’s weapon of choice.

Why all the complaints? Here’s a list of the offending portions of SOPA/PIPA:

The bills give the Justice Department the power to seek court orders requiring search engines like Google not to render search results for infringing websites. (The proposals are vague and broad when it comes to defining an infringing site.)

The bills also allow the Justice Department to order internet service providers like Comcast and AT&T to block their users from visiting blacklisted sites.

The SOPA proposal bars the distribution of tools and services designed to get around such blacklists. The ban could arguably cover tools such as VPNs and Tor used by human rights groups, government officials and businesses to protect their communications and evade online spying and filtering.

The proposals grant rights holders the ability to demand that judges order ad networks and financial institutions to refrain from doing business with sites right holders say are infringing.

The measures also give out legal immunity to ad networks and financial institutions that choose, without a court order, to stop placing ads or processing transactions for websites they deem are dedicated to infringing activity.

Copyright holders would face little penalty for filing takedown claims without doing due diligence or considering “fair use,” encouraging even more abuse of copyright takedown lawsuits.

The DNS provisions, arguably the worst of the proposed legislation, have reportedly been dropped, but we’re still left with a lot of troubling language that might even violate U.S. constitutional protections of free speech and due process.

So what is everyone upset about? Depends on who you are. Keep in mind that many of the Internet companies involved in yesterday’s blackout are not just doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. For them, this is serious business. If SOPA/PIPA were enacted, it would mean a significant extension of liability. In other words, these companies would have to spend a lot of money complying with the new rules, and would still need to worry about civil suits.

These companies are wisely avoiding talk of their private financial/legal concerns and instead emphasizing feel-good language relating to freedom. It’s good PR. All those young Net activists out there energized over this issue probably wouldn’t be so excited if they knew that their hero Net companies are significantly motivated by the bottom line.

To be fair, though, a lot of other organizations and individuals (including me) are worried about free speech, due process and the effect of the law on the Internet itself. I also don’t think Google should be saddled with expensive mandates just to satisfy Big Content, but that’s of secondary concern to me.

It comes down to this: the law would essentially put into place a system whereby a site can be blocked by the U.S. government, acting on a private complaint, based on content. And this is where the China comparisons come in. But are they fair?

No, of course not, at least once you get beyond superficial aspects. The Great Firewall in China is a vast, complex system operated by the government that includes, among other things, site and page blocking based on content, and keyword filtering. Yes, SOPA/PIPA would institute a content-based site blocking regime, but that’s a very generalized description.

Some free speech advocates have warned that SOPA/PIPA would be used to stifle political speech, and this is undoubtedly one of the charges that has led to China comparisons. Consider this language from Ivan Sigel and Rebecca MacKinnon, which seems slightly inflammatory:

The problem is that the bills’ legal and technical solutions are very similar to mechanisms that authoritarian regimes use to censor and spy on their citizens.

Now, I’m not saying that the above is inaccurate. Ivan and Rebecca know a lot more about this topic than I do, and I think we’re on the same side of this issue. However, whether the legislative solution proposed has some similarities to tools used by repressive regimes seems like a strange way to evaluate the merits. In this case, there are many excellent arguments against SOPA/PIPA that have nothing to do with foreign government practices. (I would make an exception for the provisions relating to VPN usage, though. That’s a special issue that does involve foreign government practices.)

Would SOPA/PIPA be used with respect to political speech? It’s a possibility, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over that. This is an industry-based initiative designed to block access to sites like The Pirate Bay because of copyright infringement. Stopping political speech, using a copyright infringement argument, would be difficult at best, and without an entire government apparatus designed to support such activities, such incidence would be exceedingly rare. Would I want the government to get its hands on this sort of apparatus? Of course not. But even then, I wouldn’t compare that to the situation here in China.

What about non-political speech? The Great Firewall also goes after pornography and other offending content. Doesn’t SOPA/PIPA do the same?

Yes, this is the heart of the free speech concerns, that fair use of content would be sacrificed at the altar of intellectual property protection. Big problem, and reason enough to be against the new law. However, even here, we’re still dealing with industry going after sites/users on an ad hoc basis because of specific content, not an entire category of information banned by the government (like pornography) and supported by an entire administrative apparatus. Again, the comparisons with China fall way short.

There is plenty to dislike about SOPA/PIPA, and its industry overlords, without throwing out wild charges. Those of us who are against the draft law should not resort to the rhetorical tactics of Big Content, using the spectre of China’s Great Firewall to win support for our side.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: copyright infringement, PIPA, SOPA

Social unrest in China is no joke. There are tens of thousands of protests/demonstrations/riots every year in response to major problems such as environmental degradation, local corruption, and land swindles. Since I’m a responsible long-term resident of the Middle Kingdom, I would never make light of the legitimate concerns of the masses.

Indeed, there are some mass incidents (that’s the official term, by the way) that, due to the petty grievance that inspired the action, sully the image of all the others.

Case in point, a whole lot of nutjobs waited overnight at the Beijing Apple store in hopes of getting their hands on a new iPhone 4S (which stands for “for shame”?).

Disclaimer: I own an Android smartphone running a Victorian-era operating system, so my judgment in these matters is suspect.

Eventually things got ugly:

We’re now reading reports of fights breaking out between competing gangs of scalpers in the country, each hoping to get their hands on large quantities of Cupertino’s latest smartphone. The conflicts have been significant enough to attract the attention of Chinese police, and we now hear that the Apple Store in Beijing is keeping its doors locked in attempt to make the crowds leave.

And then even uglier:

Enraged Chinese shoppers pelted Apple Inc’s flagship Beijing store with eggs and shoving matches with police broke out when customers were told the store would not begin sales of the popular iPhone 4S as scheduled.

OK, first of all, I should point out that these “enraged shoppers” were a mixed bunch. Some of them were your run-of-the-mill Mac geeks, but others were pros, as in professional scalpers there to get a jump on the competition.

I have little sympathy for either the mindless Mac drones or the working stiffs who were paid to wait in line. And I do mean “stiffs” — it was something like minus ten degrees last night. I can certainly understand their frustration at waiting in sub-zero temperatures for many hours, only to be told that their sacrifice was in vain, but at the same time, what the hell were they doing out there in the first place?

Some Reuters reporters were brave enough to actually talk to these poor schmucks and got these quotes:

“We’re suffering from cold and hunger,” a man in his 20s shouted to Reuters Television. “They said they’re not going to sell to us. Why? Why?”

“I got in line around 11 p.m., and beyond the line the plaza was chock full with people,” said Huang Xiantong, 26, outside the store. “Around 5 a.m. the crowds in the plaza broke through and the line disappeared entirely. Everyone was fighting, several people were hurt,” said Huang, who wanted to buy a new iPhone for his girlfriend. “The police just started hitting people. They were just brawling.”

Cold and hunger? Next time, pack a goddamn sandwich and wear a hat, Einstein. Wanted to buy an iPhone for his girlfriend? Christ. If I was stupid enough to stand outside in freezing cold just for the chance to buy a phone for my wife, she’d divorce my ass on grounds of mental incapacity (or alternatively, put me in a facility for the occasionally coherent). I’ve never been accused of being a romantic.

So who’s at fault for this fiasco? There is plenty of blame to go around:

1. Apple – they screwed up the product launch. Someone at the genius bar needs to do some self-criticism.

2. Scalpers – I know you need to make some cash before the holidays, but can you go do it somewhere else please? You’ve already fucked up train travel in this country, now your’re messing with retail?

3. Mac Geeks – just go away and get a life. Unless you’re waiting in a queue outside a hospital, there’s no good reason to be standing outside in the cold overnight.

4. Cops – should never have allowed this thing to escalate. Let’s hope that the idiots throwing eggs are now having a nice cup of tea with their friendly neighborhood PSB official.

I’m not sure if this whole thing is good or bad publicity for Apple. Perhaps some of both.

“Hey, our customers are fighting for the chance to buy our shit” — sounds good.

“Hey, our customers are stupid enough to fight for the chance to buy our shit” — sounds even better.

“Because we screwed up and our stupid customers started fighting, attracting the attention of the (always nervous) government, we are now on the State-level shit list, slotted in between Google and Richard Gere” — sounds pretty bad.

Might I suggest a new procedure for the next product launch? First, a Real-ID system, maybe a DNA check. Second, institute a mandatory holding period. Anyone who purchases a new iPhone must wait a minimum of three months before the phone can be resold to a third party. Third, metal detectors and a cavity search at the entrance to the store. Anyone found with eggs on his person will be forced to hard boil and eat them in the grand tradition of Cool Hand Luke. Fourth, anyone moronic enough to queue up overnight in sub-zero temps will immediately be sent to a mental health facility for a minimum of 48 hours or until a competency hearing can be convened.

I bet all those environmental and anti-corruption activists out there who have literally risked their lives protesting societies’ injustices are not amused at all.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 19 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: apple, iphone

Don't worry about it. Only meant to be understood by gamers.

A recent China Law Blog post on foreign investment in the film sector got me thinking about similar problems in other sectors. As usual, lessons learned in the FDI racket are often generally applicable to a wide variety of situations.

The CLB post was about how to structure revenue sharing on a film deal, the basic option being whether to take a piece of box office receipts or instead get as much as possible upfront. As the dialog shows, neither one of these options comes without risks (FYI: “Alderson” is the attorney giving advice to “Buckham” the client in the following dialog):

Buckham: Quick question.  In one of your blog posts, you say that “Insufficient attention is given to the issue of garnering a share of the box office.” We naturally assume we will be “ripped off” for any box office receipts in China . . . .

Alderson: That is a sound assumption.

Buckham: … and therefore would normally structure the deals so that we would get any dollars we actually expect from China (ever) to be cash up front from the Chinese participants.

Alderson: That is the best way to structure your deals. I must add, however, that I see a disturbing trend even among those who structure deals this way. What frequently happens is that the Chinese party promises to pay cash on account of production costs but what they really do is arrange locations, props, equipment or services at substantial mark-ups, through deals with related parties or through deals which are not done at arms length. In such cases the Chinese side is not actually putting in hard cash and it is obtaining a disproportionate share of the production. This is not a good way to structure a deal.

In passing, I might add that this is also why some of the more successful folks in the biz have good people on the ground who keep a close eye on production. Without that kind of experience, you’re asking for trouble.

Two different kinds of situations immediately came to mind after reading that post, one that is quite comparable to the film situation, and another which is very different. Both involve foreign enterprises with a dearth of good options.

The first memory that popped into my mind was a similar conversation I had with a client a number of years ago. The deal was a copyright license, and the parties were a foreign (U.S.) and Chinese publisher.

Client: I’m thinking of X% as a royalty. Is that normal?

Me: I’m not sure “normal” is an operative term. (This was quite a few years ago.) The problem is that you can’t really verify print runs and sales, so your royalty structure invites the publisher here to screw you over. (I’m paraphrasing.)

Client: Oh, right. Well, what about an upfront fee?

Me: Probably the best way to go. That being said, since academic publishing is kind of a monopoly, you won’t have a great deal of leverage to talk up that payment amount.

The second thing that the CLB post reminds me of is a typical (inward) technology transfer deal and the threat of intellectual property infringement. The conversations I have with clients usually go like this:

Client: So I’m wondering about a royalty structure.

Me: Uh huh.

Client: I would like to structure this as a long-term deal, but with a significant upfront payment since I’ve never worked with these guys before. The problem is that they are a relative newcomer and are just expanding the market.

Me: And don’t have a lot of cash.

Client: Correct. So if I go that route, I’m probably not going to get very much. Another option would be a higher percentage on the royalty over the course of the whole deal.

Me: A lot can happen in a few years.

Client: I’m worried about our trade secrets leaking out.

Me: You should be.

Client: So what do you think?

Me: Take what you can get based on what you can reasonably forecast. Once you bring that tech onshore, the clock starts ticking. Either you get enough upfront that you can live with an IP problem later on or, assuming that any IP infringement won’t happen immediately, jack up the royalty towards the front end of the contract period.

Many other examples exist. The problem is that when you’re dealing with restricted industries, or having to deal with a distributor, and you have limited leverage or resources on the ground and no way to verify information, your options are very often limited to “bad” or “worse.”

Have a nice day.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

I realize that this attack ad targeting Jon Huntsman is going to get some attention over here in China this weekend, particularly among the expat community who are following the U.S. elections with interest. And yeah, as far as political ads go, this is a nasty one:

Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman and members of his family expressed outrage on Friday at an advertisement targeted at his adopted daughters by a group supporting rival Ron Paul.

An online ad authored by “NHLiberty4Paul” shows footage of Huntsman with daughters Gracie, who was adopted from China, and Asha, adopted from India, when they were infants.

“American values. Or Chinese,” the ad asks to a soundtrack of Chinese music. It calls Huntsman “the Manchurian Candidate” and ends with an image of Huntsman dressed as China’s former communist leader Mao Zedong, and the words “Vote Ron Paul.”

Paul, a Texas congressman, disavowed the ad during an interview on Friday on CNN, but said he could not control the actions of all his supporters.

After taking a look at this thing, I see merely an amateurish attempt by some Ron Paul supporters to make fun of someone who (gasp!) can actually speak a foreign language and cares (for shame!) about non-white people. To some Ron Paul cheerleaders, apparently these things are worthy of derision.

The ad itself has production values that are so low that . . . well, even using the term “production values” is almost inapplicable. Cheesy music, horrible graphics, blurry video and fonts. Shit, I could do better with Excel. Not exactly something that a real campaign would be proud of.

Therefore, unless someone uncovers evidence showing a connection between this group and the Ron Paul campaign, I think we need to chalk this one up to independent whackos and not blame this on Paul. If I were him, I’d be mighty embarrassed that folks who support him are obvious xenophobes and racists, but Paul sort of encourages that, what with his calls for eliminating foreign aid, etc.

The ad itself is disgusting, but there’s plenty of ugliness out there in the world, and a disproportionate share of it hovering around the Republican presidential candidates. But unless there’s a connection to Paul, whom I suspect could care less about attacking Huntsman, whose feckless campaign is no threat to anyone at this point, I think this story goes away within hours.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Jon Huntsman, ron paul

This is always a fun topic as it involves language, politics and double standards. Yum.

As many of us learned in the 1980s, one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. Thank you, Ronald Reagan, and your Newspeak treatment of the conflict in Nicaragua. The term terrorist, of course, is politically neutral on its face. As long as terrorizing people is the means by which a particular ideological goal is pursued, then we’re dealing with terrorists. Could be an Islamic fundamentalist, a pissed off tree hugger, a rabid Luddite, or a fervent supporter of Ayn Rand hopped up on smack.

Funny thing, though. Through the use of the word terrorist, we make value judgments on the underlying ideological goal all the time. This has been particularly true since 9/11, now that the word terrorist has so much emotional cache. To label a person or organization as a terrorist is a big deal these days, in some ways comparable to calling someone a racist (in the U.S. at least) or a Nazi. For the most part, casual use of terrorist or Nazi is a symbolic rhetorical tool, distinguishable from the charge of racism, which is usually meant as a straightforward accusation.

But wait, it gets even better. In addition to the use of the terms terrorism and terrorist, there is also the use of “terrorist” (i.e. the term in single or double quotation marks). Here’s a useful explanation of the punctuation usage:

Double quotation marks can also be used sometimes to indicate that a word is special in some way. I bet you’ve all seen quotation marks used as something called scare quotes, which are quotation marks put around a word to show that the writer doesn’t buy into the meaning.

[ . . . ]

More often though, scare quotes (which are also sometimes called sneer quotes) are used to impart a sense of irony or disdain. They’re especially common in nasty political commentary[.]

By the way, single quotes, which I often use improperly (actually, I use both improperly), don’t really belong in this discussion. For some reason, though, certain news agencies use them in headlines in place of double quotation marks. Go figure.

You probably guessed where this is all going. Yes, the word terrorist is often used with sneer quotes to suggest that although someone has conferred terrorist status upon a person or group, that charge should be questioned. What’s interesting here, of course, is when sneer quotes are used and when they aren’t.

It goes without saying that Muslim fundamentalists, particularly those from Middle Eastern nations, are labeled as terrorists on a regular basis by news agencies. Indeed, these guys definitely meet the definition of terrorist. No complaints from me, assuming of course that all of these people are actually members of these fundamentalist groups (that’s another topic entirely, I suppose).

But what about these examples from recent incidents in Syria?

UPI: ‘Terrorists’ attack Syrian gas pipeline

The Telegraph: Syria: state says ‘terrorists’ blew up gas pipeline

Reuters: “Terrorist” explosion targets Damascus district-TV

What’s going on here? One reason for the sneer quotes is that no one really knows who the perpetrators are, since no one claimed responsibility for the explosions. The Assad government labeled them terrorists, but since that cannot be collaborated, uncertainty remains.

But that isn’t really the whole truth. Consider the Telegraph headline. If they had just gone with “Syria: state says terrorists blew up gas pipeline,” that would have adequately explained that it was the government using the label terrorist and not the Telegraph. No, they went with the sneer quotes because Assad is a reviled leader under siege and no one believes what his government says.

Keep in mind, Reuters could have gone with “Explosion targets Damascus district.” Perfectly adequate headline. The extra word was thrown in for a reason, to sensationalize the article and catch the reader’s attention with a hot button word. The sneer quotes were a form of editorialization. Whether doing so was appropriate given that this was a news article is something I’ll leave to the professionals.

And now we come to a couple of headlines about China:

Associated Press: Police shoot 7 ‘terrorists’ in China’s Muslim west

The Telegraph: Seven ‘terrorists’ shot dead in China

The underlying facts, which are in dispute, are not important. There has been a long-standing struggle in Xinjiang between an ethnic minority and the government/Han majority. If we go with the neutral definition of terrorism and identify ethnic minority groups that use violence to further ideological goals, then calling them terrorists is defensible.

But no one is using the term in a neutral fashion, of course. The government here, whose goal is to stabilize the region, understands the negative connotation of terrorist in this post-9/11 age. Indeed, it didn’t take long after 9/11 for China, through rhetorical use of terrorist, to align its interests in the West with that of the U.S., which at the time was all too happy to support any action that purported to thwart the goals of Muslim groups.

However, these days many in the U.S. and Europe are quite sympathetic to these groups in Western China. If the government here refers to them as terrorists, then I suspect that many Western media folks think of them as freedom fighters.

The use of the sneer quotes, therefore, is again an editorial comment, in effect arguing that the government’s label is suspect. If that seems perfectly justifiable to you, ask yourself whether your support is predicated on your stance on the situation in Xinjiang.

One final point that is worth mentioning. In most of these articles, the sneer quotes are limited to the headlines. The reporting is, by and large, excellent. Unfortunately, an editor with nothing else to do made a decision at some point to inject his/her opinion into an otherwise straightforward news piece. While there is a time and a place for that sort of thing, I think it should be a very rare occurrence.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: media, terrorism

A recent article in Qiushi, the Communist Party of China Central Committee’s policy magazine (English site) argued that moral behavior in China is improving (also in English, see this People’s Daily news report on the subject). Whether things are perceived to be getting better or worse, however, is irrelevant; it’s the discussion itself that is illuminating.

It’s fascinating to watch societies in transition or under stress. There’s always so much hang-wringing and naval gazing as individuals try to figure out where things are headed, and whether perceived trends are negative or positive. Very often, this includes a discussion of morality.

I remember back in the late 70s/early 80s, when these questions were rampant in the U.S. It was common back then to read articles about whether America had “lost its way.” This self-imposed funk was mostly a product of post-oil shock economic problems, but it also included a host of other changes, from gender roles to urbanization.

That isn’t to say that these periods of questioning are rare, coinciding only with significant change. There are always folks out there who question, or downright bemoan, the current state of morality and wistfully gaze back at the past to a, usually mythological, “better time.” In the U.S., many conservatives have been ramping up this sort of dialogue since 2008, when Barack Obama was elected president, crying out in desperation that the nation must be “taken back.”

The economic challenges and social changes experienced by Americans in the past few decades pale in comparison to the situation in China. This entire country has almost been reinvented since 1978, and the consequent social changes have been intense. No wonder that questions are raised here on a regular basis about moral behavior.

But why was this question raised in Qiushi? A famous U.S. politician once said that “You can’t legislate morality.” He was arguing that the government had no place when it came to moral choices.

He was of course absolutely wrong. Governments constantly make moral choices. The simple matter of funding a bridge instead of a hospital is a moral decision, feeding the poor or producing weapons is a moral stance. Therefore it’s not at all odd to see this issue being addressed in a Party publication.

Moreover, the perceived state of moral behavior in a society is a reflection, fair or not, of government, which tends to get blamed when societies seem to be headed in the “wrong” direction. At the same time, governments use this question about moral behavior for their own self-validation purposes.

Government can either:

1. Say that society’s moral standards have declined, and then use this idea to push for specific policies to solve the problem;

2. Argue that moral behavior is improving, in part because of the implementation of relevant government policies; or

3. Avoid the issue completely.

For whatever reason, in most countries governments are seemingly incapable of choosing the third option!

In nations with multiple political parties, this dynamic gets a bit more complicated and messy, as one party can “blame” the other’s governance for declining moral behavior. In China, where the Party has been in power since 1949, the government is limited to blaming declining standards on: a) past mistakes of the Party that have since been rectified; b) mistakes made by local government; or c) outside (foreign) influences. President Hu’s recent pronouncements on culture, a hot topic this week, is an example of Option C.

The Qiushi article states that things are getting better on the morality front, essentially defending overall domestic policy from charges that, for example, economic development has led to income inequality and corruption. The rhetorical tightrope that has to be walked here is that although a wealthier society undergoing significant change might afford some bad actors the opportunity to make poor moral decisions, this is a temporary situation and things are getting better.

Let’s acknowledge first that there is no way to prove any of this. Sure, it’s theoretically possible that one could somehow satisfactorily define “moral behavior” and then identify certain indicia of that behavior (perhaps charitable giving, levels of violence, incidents of corruption) that could then be used to determine whether a country’s moral landscape has undergone significant change during a given period of time.

Sounds like a tall order to me. In the absence of scientific data, society is left with anecdotal news reports, with the Internet/social media acting as an amplifier. The effect of such reporting on the perception of morality is controversial:

Zhang Yiwu, professor and deputy director of the Cultural Resources Research Center of Peking University, told the Global Times that he could give many examples of “poor morality” in the past, such as in the 1980s, citing hospitals’ indifference to patients as well as passers-by ignoring people who were injured on the road.

Zhang said that things were broadcast on a smaller scale in the past and the growth of the Internet makes it easy for people to know what happens in every corner of the world, thus deepening the public’s impression of immoral conduct.

Consider the problem of corruption. We see stories about corrupt officials in the news every day. Does this mean that corruption is getting worse or that reporting on the problem has improved? The answer is usually “We don’t know” or “Maybe both.”

This is a tough call. On the one hand, we want the media to report on corruption in its role of societal watchdog. On the other hand, we don’t want muckraking to skew public perception of moral behavior. The balance between the two is difficult, and China’s continuously updated Internet content rules suggests that this is all a work in progress.

Additionally, is media discussion of morality itself a positive sign?

The media has a two-sided effect on the morality situation, Cai Xia, professor with the Party School of the CPC’s Central Committee, told the Global Times.

“The heated discussion of a morality crisis and the condemnation of immorality just reflect the public’s great desire for a better moral situation,” said Cai, adding that as the main part of society, the people’s thought represents that of society, therefore it is reasonable to say the moral situation in the country has been improving.

Interesting suggestion, that the dialog itself is evidence that society wants things to improve. On the other hand, I wouldn’t necessarily say that supports a “things are improving” argument, as the dialog might just be a reflection of discontent at a perceived worsening situation.

I think an answer to this question will continue to elude us, and not just in China of course. There will always be a segment of society that is dissatisfied with current standards of behavior, and in times of great change or stress, that segment will grow.

The much more interesting dynamic here is between the media, which is motivated to report on, and often sensationalize, specific incidents of immoral behavior, the effect this has on society’s perceptions of declining moral standards, and the government’s need to then respond to national anxiety by validating its own actions.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: economic development, Internet, morality

I’m not quite ready for an informative blog post just yet, and since my brain is numb from grading exams, this is what you get today instead of real commentary.

Happy New Year everyone. Well, perhaps not “happy,” but it definitely is a new year. According to a lot of folks, this year is fraught with danger. Aside from the whole Mayan Calendar story, which I do admit is entertaining, the China doomsayer contingent is coming out of the woodwork, armed with scary statistics about everything from manufacturing orders to electricity consumption and stories about mass protests in the hinterlands. As we would say back in Southern California, it’s The Big One, and it’s coming soon!

I’ve had a few people ask me why I’ve been silent over the past few days instead of jumping on either the “Year in Review” or “2012 Preview” bandwagons, missing the opportunity to explain why/why not Chinese civilization as we know it will cease to exist over the next 12 months.

Yeah, it was tempting [he said drolly]. As a rule, though, I try to stay out of the prognostication business. Aside from not being able to predict the future (my midi-chlorian count is shockingly low), there are three good reasons to totally ignore this kind of commentary. Consider the following not a substantive or useful discussion of 2012, but rather a skeptic’s guide to reading about 2012:

Numbers Never Lie, But They Can Mislead

Be careful when reading all these statistics about China’s economy, particularly those arguments that spend 99% of the time explaining how bad things are going to get and then sort of slip in the assumption that because, for example, the unemployment rate will probably tick up, there will be mass panic that will foment political change. The one fact does not necessary lead to that specific result.

To put it in much broader terms: don’t let folks use numbers to mislead you. It happens all the time. For example, here in China we just finished up our New Years holiday, which you might have heard was a “three-day holiday.” This is true, but the statement is misleading. A “three-day holiday” suggests that we all enjoyed three well-earned days off work.

This is not the case at all. In fact, the official schedule had everyone working up to and including last Saturday (December 31), and then taking off Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Yes, there were three days in a row designated as a holiday, but if you take into account the two weekend days (one of which was shifted around), there was really only one additional day off. In my book, that’s a “one-day holiday.”

Wait, what was my original point again? Something about statistics or something?

The Embarrassment of Getting Ahead of Oneself

The basic problem with prognostication of course is the assumption that we know enough today to guess what will happen tomorrow. Sometimes we’re correct, but very often we’re wrong. That’s because there are simply too many unknowns out there (both known unknowns as well as unknown unknowns, as the philosopher once said).

To put it another way, be wary of anyone with too much confidence. Case in point: my recent struggle with my Android phone. After finding out that Motorola had decided to force me and my fellow Me501/Quench users to remain in a state of perpetual low-techitude (i.e. no updates to the hopelessly creaky 1.5/”Cupcake” OS), I took matters into my own hands.

The next day, I triumphantly announced on Twitter that I had successfully, as I blithely stated, “rooted the bastard.” This was true, but I was getting ahead of myself and tempting the gods with my arrogance. Mere hours later, I had, also successfully, soft bricked the phone after flashing to a recovery file that somehow gave my hardware severe indigestion. It hung both on normal bootup and in recovery mode. I panicked, immediately gave up and, with the utmost confidence, told my wife that the phone was a lost cause and that she should buy me a new one on her upcoming trip to Hong Kong.

Yes, I had yet again gotten ahead of myself. After further research, I found out that I still had bootloader access, allowing me via RSD Lite to flash new firmware. It took me quite a few tries, but eventually I found some original Chinese firmware lurking on the Intertubes, and I found myself (two days later) back at the status quo hacke.

If you’re still awake at this point, the lesson here is obvious (and you’re a geek). Well, two lessons I suppose. The first is that I should stop screwing around with my electronic devices. The second, however, is more important: confident pronouncements might sound reasonable at the time, but reality can bite you on the ass and make you look like an idiot very soon thereafter.

“Their Stuff is Shit, and Your Shit is Stuff”

Or to put it another way (although Carlin did say it best), everyone is hopelessly biased, and many folks have an agenda. As I’ve written before about the China gloom and doom crowd, you’ve got your short sellers, who literally make money off this racket, the “buy my crazy book” group, who thrive on the attention of outrageous pronouncements, and the Cold Warriors, the sad guys who are still fighting against the Red Chinese Communists and see every economic blip as presaging the inevitable downfall of an illicit regime.

Bias is a bitch, and it makes me question everyone. Even myself.

I was sitting home yesterday evening when I heard one of my neighbors get off the elevator and walk towards her apartment. As is her usual habit, she grunted very loudly in a throat-clearing sort of way. I noted to my wife that between The Grunter (this woman) and The Whistler (another guy on the hall who whistles shrilly every time he comes home), it was like living in a zoo and that perhaps I should start lurking in the hallway and flinging my feces at unsuspecting visitors.

As the voice of reason, she pointed out to me that The Grunter and The Whistler were merely setting off the noise-activated lights in the hallway. Upon reflection, I realized that they probably thought of my wife and I as The Stampers, as we stamp our feet outside when we require illumination.

Our biases and point of view color our judgments in many ways, and often we are not even aware it is happening. Describing what is going on around us is difficult enough, given this psychological distortion field, but when we extrapolate into the future? Forget about it.

Now, I’m not saying that every proponent of Sinopocalyse 2012 is so biased that their opinion should be completely ignored. Maybe only 98% of them – for any of my readers who has written one of these 2011/12 Year in Review/Preview pieces and feels moved to write me a nasty email, rest assured that you are one of the two percent!

Let’s consider one of the most famous doomsayers of them all, Gordon Chang, who made a name for himself as a nattering nabob of negativity with the 2001 book “The Coming Collapse of China.” At the time, China was experiencing some significant problems with its financial sector, and many of its big trust and investment companies had to be bailed out due to non-performing loans. The book probably seemed like a good idea in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis when Chang wrote the book. Since that time, however, he has been the butt of numerous jokes as the years go by and the country/government endures.

Chang recently penned a column about the coming year, essentially doubling down on his doom and gloom predictions. His new thesis (same as the old thesis) was that yeah, my timing was a bit off, but really, 2012 it is. This invited the usual eye-rolling responses, such as:

Gordon Chang, Who Predicted Collapse by 2012, Wants Extension
Gordon Chang Repeatedly predicts the Fall of the Communist Party and the Chinese Economy

Why on earth would I want to go out on a limb with a China prediction and invite the kind of scorn and ridicule that has been heaped on Gordon Chang over the past decade? I might be a really bad phone hacker, but I’m no idiot.

Be careful what you read out there.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

And it came to pass that there was peace on earth, goodwill towards men. At least for a little while.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Check this out:

A top Chinese minister defended the legacy of the 2008 Beijing Olympics on Sunday, citing an improved environment just as authorities in the capital face pressure to act on heavy pollution.

Vice sports minister Yang Shu’an was speaking at a briefing also attended by London Olympics chairman Sebastian Coe, in Beijing for an international meeting with the Paralympic movement to promote awareness of the disabled.

“The legacies of the Games for the Chinese people and those living in Beijing are multifaceted. But the first two are an improved transport infrastructure and environment,” he told reporters. (AFP)

When I mentioned this to my wife, she guffawed. Most likely, she has no idea what “guffaw” means, but she did it nonetheless.

Why is the above statement so funny on the surface? First, because the skies have been utterly shitty this month, with mysterious “fog” wreaking havoc with our lungs. Second, the traffic in Beijing is abominable, and if anything, it is getting worse over time.

Difficult to argue with any of that, right? On the other hand, and perhaps I’m just being too nice, but there is another side to all this. That’s the “it could be worse” argument.

If you follow U.S. politics, you know that President Obama has been raked over the coals for his government’s “stimulus” program in 2009, which was supposed to pump cash into the economy and prime the pump. Unfortunately, the plan was woefully underfunded to make a difference, and so the U.S. economy has continued to flounder.

Obama’s critics point to high unemployment and anemic GDP growth. His only retort? Hey, it could be worse. Without the lame stimulus that was injected into the economy, unemployment would be even higher, and GDP would be even slower.

Probably true, although politically, it’s a sucky argument at best, one that will make next year’s election interesting to watch.

And what of the Olympics? Well, it’s undoubtedly true that national prioritization on Beijing’s infrastructure and air quality pushed along some initiatives. Many polluting factories were forced outside the city limits in an effort to clean up the air, and a heck of a lot of new subway lines and roads were built to handle transportation overloads.

Without the Olympics, these things might have happened, but probably over a longer period of time. Meanwhile, Beijing would have continued its feverish growth notwithstanding international sporting events. It’s the damn capital city, after all, and this country is growing rapidly.

So, where does that leave us with the Olympics apologists, in the face of massive traffic jams and peasoup atmosphere?

I {gulp} actually agree with them. Yeah, seriously. It could be even worse here. I realize that sounds a bit daft, and I assume that all my Beijing-based readers’ heads are exploding right now. But really, without the sped-up subway lines from the Olympics run-up, traffic could be worse. And would anyone really want all those factories back inside the city, spewing forth even more crap into the sky?

Now, I readily admit that the Olympics also brought increased development, more people, more automobiles, and greater congestion. However, I suspect a lot of that was temporary, and that permanent residents (as well as many migrant laborers) would have come here anyway.

Any takers on this? I await your slings and arrows.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, Beijing Olympics, environment, traffic

Thanks for the question, Timmy. As you know, Beijing’s weather over the past few days has sparked off a great deal of discussion, not to mention hacking coughs, upper respiratory infections, and airport closings. At the heart of the controversy are seemingly contradictory claims by observers.

On one side, many are reporting on the severe hazards of the air, such as this article in Xinhua:

Experts are worried that particulate matter in the air, which is in higher concentrations in North China because of the heavy fog since the weekend, may lead to various respiratory diseases including lung infections and cancer.

Shi Yuankai, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Cancer Hospital, said longtime exposure to particulate matter especially the particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5) which can go directly to the alveoli of the lungs, is a major health hazard.

On the other side include Beijing municipal officials who insist that the recent weather is normal for this time of year:

Zhang Mingying, a meteorological engineer at the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, told the Global Times on Monday that the recent fog is normal in terms of frequency during this time of year according to their monitoring.

“Heavy fog has occurred 6 times a year on average over the past 30 years and December’s fog was the seventh occurrence this year. Therefore, it is a normal climate condition in Beijing,” said Zhang. (CDT)

As usual, the media focus on the argument, the “He said/she said” tenor of the discussion, is all wrong. As usual, it’s up to science to give us the answers.

After a bit of research this afternoon, I was able to uncover an old meteorological study conducted by the Horse & Buggy Foundation, based on a grant from the Automobile Lobby Research Council, on the connection between air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions. The study dates back to 1984, but apparently the director, an H&B Foundation fellow named Dr. Bob Loblaw, has been doing some consulting with the Beijing government. His 1980s U.S. findings are therefore quite relevant.

Dr. Loblaw’s basic discovery was something he referred to as the “air pollution sensor variable Doppler effect,” or NAMBLA effect for short. In order to understand the NAMBLA effect, one has to not only understand the relativistic Doppler Effect with respect to light, but also something about human nature.

Let’s take a look at the Doppler Effect first. You may have studied this in school with respect to sound waves. First, imagine a light source and an observer. Just for fun, let’s call the former a star and the latter Edwin Hubble. Imagine light as a series of waves.

Now imagine that the star is traveling towards Edwin Hubble very quickly. What happens to those light waves that he sees? Well, they are squeezed together. If the star is moving away very quickly, then the waves are stretched out. From the perspective of Edwin Hubble, when objects are moving away from him, he sees those stretched out light waves at a lower frequency, shifted to the red end of the spectrum. This is called a “red shift.”

Loblaw’s genius was to take the research of Hubble and others and apply it to meteorological phenomenon. This was radical thinking at the time, and he was lucky to have the generous support of General Motors, the Ford Motor Company and other philanthropic enterprises.

Loblaw’s breakthrough was as follows. Imagine the above scenario, but we’ll change the facts around slightly. Let’s assume that the light source is now a fog bank, and the observer is a meteorologist sent out to obtain data on air pollution.

Understanding human nature (he minored in psychology at Oral Roberts University), Loblaw understood that most researchers, when faced with very spooky fog, would have a tendency to be afraid. You can imagine a lone scientist stepping out onto the roof of a building surrounded by a thick fog bank. Very creepy.

Loblaw theorized that the normal tendency of the meteorologist in that situation would be to run away very rapidly. Furthermore, these scientists would not want to go out there again, but would rely on the incomplete data obtained during their panicked flight.

You can probably see where this is going. Loblaw calculated that depending on the speed of the scientist and the distance to the fog bank, the data would include a significant red shift error. Loblaw assumed that the average scientist would, when confronted by a creepy fog bank, run away at a speed of .8c, or 239,833,966 m/s. Some of his peers suggested that the average meteorologist might not be in that kind of shape, but this issue was never fully resolved.

Loblaw also assumed that the most important data with respect to air pollution included simple photographic evidence, such as the color of cloud formations. Over the course of his career, Loblaw has been highly critical of so-called particulate matter data, which he believes are irrelevant to the study of air pollution. When confronted on this issue at an academic conference in 1993, Loblaw reportedly stated “Who are you going to believe, your own eyes or some invisible widgets that some government bureaucrat says can destroy your lungs? I mean, really!” Good enough for me.

So what happens when a grayish color is shifted to the red end of the spectrum? A relative shift of that kind would . . . wait for it . . . tend to make the object appear darker, or what Loblaw described as “dirtier.” This was Loblaw’s basic conclusion, that relative observer motion in these tests introduced an error that caused fog to appear grayer than it really was, in other words to make the sky appear more polluted. (In future papers, Loblaw extended his theory to explain observer error for fixed-position objects, like stationary eyeballs and monitoring equipment.)

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad I took the time to educate myself about this controversy. It turns out that we can rely on municipal data after all (based on suggestions made by Loblaw, they only hire brave scientists who do not run away when confronted by creepy fog). Based on this knowledge, I went out for a long run earlier today. Apparently I was in worse shape than I thought. Not only is my speed much less than that of the average scientist, but I also couldn’t seem to catch my breath — not that that’s relevant to this discussion.

So be careful who you believe, and try to stay apolitical when it comes to weather reports. Note on the spectrum image included above that red shifts lean to the right.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2011. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, air quality, smog

The Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, Stephen Roach, recently said on Bloomberg TV that well-known China short seller Jim Chanos “is a lot more negative on China than I am, and I hope one of these days he can actually go to China and see it himself.”

Roach isn’t the first to use the fact that Chanos has never been to China to shoot down the latter’s doom and gloom prognostications. It’s a cute line that sounds eminently reasonable, unless you actually think about it for a minute or two. It’s actually a cheap shot that seeks to attack Chanos personally as opposed to be arguing against him on the substance of his analysis.

This kind of thing drives me crazy. It reminds me of similar “conventional wisdom” that is used to criticize China analysts, consultants, bloggers, and journalists:

1. Don’t listen to him, he doesn’t live in China.

2. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he can’t speak Chinese.

3. That guy is hopeless, he’s a foreigner.

You’ve probably heard these before. I’ve been tagged with #3 on occasion. Ironically, the criticism is often leveled by overseas Chinese who don’t live here and whose experience with China over the past decade or so is limited to coming home once a year for the holidays.

A phrase commonly used in the law biz is “totality of the circumstances.” This usually refers to some sort of legal test (e.g. on personal jurisdiction), for which there is no “bright line test.” It means that the trier of fact (a judge or jury, depending on the issue) will examine all the relevant evidence in order to make a determination.

In the case of analysts, bloggers and journalists, no matter what it is they opine about, the only fair way to judge them is on the totality of the circumstances. First and foremost, you have to look at what it is they say over time.

A good analyst tells you things that are accurate and useful. Full stop. If critics of a particular analyst cannot find something inaccurate to point to, they probably need to find another target.

But wait, you say, if all else is equal, wouldn’t you be more likely to trust or listen to someone who is living in China/knows the language/is Chinese?

If all else is equal, perhaps those factors would be determinative. But it rarely works that way. The problem is that there are other factors that are much more important when it comes to judging an analyst. For me, I’m always more interested in whether the analyst is: 1) intelligent; 2) not biased; 3) thoughtful/open-minded; 4) has studied the issues; and 5) is experienced.

Chanos, by the way, fails my test because of #2, long before I think about whether his lack of China travel has had a negative effect on his opinions.

I think we should all stop pretending that living someplace makes you an expert about anything. I’ve known many functional retards (sorry, that is not the current acceptable nomenclature for a mentally challenged individual) who have lived in China for decades who don’t know dick about business here. I’ve also known folks who live in other countries who are so inundated with China information (from online and personal sources) that they are bona fide experts on this country.

Most of the things I know I’ve learned from work, academia, reading things online, and talking to people. To be honest, none of these things really requires me to be physically present in Beijing. The Internet and the telephone are amazing inventions. One doesn’t need to be living in Beijing, for example, to know that today’s atmospheric conditions (“fog”) are just short of lethal. Scientific data, commentary and photographs are all available free online no matter where you are.

Before I sign off, let me point out that of course, most of the best China analysts and bloggers actually do live in China. Of course that adds to their breadth of knowledge, and that is valuable. It’s just not the only determinative factor on whether they know what the hell they are talking about.

And yes, there are a lot (a whole hell of a lot) more folks who don’t live here who say stupid, ignorant things about China. That goes without saying; these are people who decided that even know they don’t live here and have never actually researched the topic, they will talk about it anyway. Although it’s just anecdotal evidence, I will admit that every time a clueless foreigner spends a week here and writes an insipid and uninformed Op/Ed like this recent laughable one in the New York Times, it serves to weaken my above argument.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: