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Blogs » Society » China’s Growing Impatience With North Korea |
- China’s Growing Impatience With North Korea
- To Serve People: Confucius Say, Shut The F*ck Up, Chinese Media
- Speeding Drunk Driver In Shenzhen Kills Three People In Fiery Accident [UPDATE]
- A Hoarder's Tale: How One Shanghai Animal Hoarder is Surviving His Disorder
- Distracted Chinese Leaders Finally Waking Up To The Economy?
- Truck Driver Assaults Toll Booth Operator
- The Situation Is Excellent: The Week That Was At Beijing Cream
- Providing Service To Chinese Companies. Get Paid Upfront Or Don’t Bother.
| China’s Growing Impatience With North Korea Posted: 27 May 2012 08:30 PM PDT The script was meant to go like this: Beijing would back dynastic succession in Pyongyang in return for North Korea under Kim Jong Il's son, Kim Jong Un, adopting gradual economic reforms along the Chinese model. That way, China's erratic and impoverished neighbor would become a more stable political and economic ally, and the threat [...] |
| To Serve People: Confucius Say, Shut The F*ck Up, Chinese Media Posted: 27 May 2012 08:30 PM PDT
By TAR Nation So… Confucius, huh? What a douche.
Just kidding. We're cool, dog. *imaginary 4th Century BC fist bump* But the Confucius Institute has been at the center of a Chinese editorial free-for-all for a good part of the week. So who is the party-line hate focused at this week? Dalai Lama? Rabiya Kadeer? Democracy? Ai Weiwei? Free Press? Foreigners? Hollywood? The Internet? Ah, here it is: the good ol' US of A. Here's what happened. A memorandum was released on May 17 regarding Confucius Institutes in what looks like a helpful reminder and directive to get all foreign nationals under the proper visa requirements:
Blah, blah, legal stuff, blah. Then the Chronicle of Higher Education (pro-Confucius Institute for some reason, particularly one Karin Fischer) published on May 21, four days later, how this might be a problem for Confucius Institutes and how it may even lead to some teachers not being able to get the proper visas. Karin say, "University-affiliated Confucius Institute teachers who were offering instruction to students below the college level through public outreach programs are not under the proper visa to do so." Right. Basically, teachers in this arena are not allowed to teach K-12, something that frequently happens in Confucius Institutes. Those doing it are technically in violation of their visa and would need to go back to China to get the correct visa. Whoopdee goddamn doo. Also, some visas were cancelled in China for teachers ready to come to the US because they didn't have the correct visa anymore. Not the end of the world, really, but it led to rumors. Despite countless attempts to explain that this directive was not an attempt to disrupt Confucius Institutes or their visa holders but was rather a clarification on previous standards, the Chronicle of Higher Education still had a rhododendron-headed editor who decided, as early as May 22, to run this follow-up: "State Department Denies Targeting Confucius Institutes but Holds to Decision on Visas." So in summary: what started this mess was an organization, the Chronicle of Higher Education, overreaching their brief and reporting that the US was targeting Confucius Institutes for a visa holocaust, then fanning those flames by reporting their error (without mentioning said error) vis-a-vis the State Department. Another problem was accreditation of the Confucius Institutes themselves, which is really an aside considering that the 80-plus universities in the US with these institutes maintain them for no other purpose than a quick pay check. In short, they're in no danger. The schools will get them their accreditation the same way they got theirs. Cash. None of this is important anymore. The directive, while I was writing this, mind you, has been amended to make everyone happy, and these institutes do NOT need separate accreditation. But, ah, the Chinese editorial monster had been roused. This happened: on May 24, Hong Kong's Sing Tao Daily seems to have gotten the ball rolling on the snowman from hell, resulting in a media blitz on the USA. I've never seen one so well orchestrated or poorly informed. Earlier that very day, Victoria Nuland from the State Department clarified that, "This is also not about the Confucius Institutes themselves. It is simply about whether the right visa status was applied in these cases." She also assuaged fears by saying, "And there was some muddling and messing up, so – in these cases – so we're going to sort these out. Nobody's going to have to leave the country. It's all going to get cleared up. But there was some confusion on the front end, so we're going to fix it." The statement was calm and reasonable, but it was too late. Of course, it wasn't late at all — it was just heard by state media polemicists who had no use for it anymore. Let's take a look at the propaganda machine's attack: China Daily: US action self defeating: "Some in the US have a lingering Cold War mentality and allege the Confucius Institutes will corrupt American minds." Global Times: Why is Washington so scared of Confucius: "The issue shows that the US' cultural confidence is not as strong as we thought." And: "Only culturally weak countries have such sensitivity." Really? Really, God-king of all inferiority complexes that is China, that's what you think? Global Times: US directive confuses Confucius Institutes: So confusing that I stopped understanding it after a while. Global Times: Confucius ban harms ties: I find this one particularly funny because China has been the only country in the history of earth to "ban" Confucius. People's Daily: New visa policy sets barriers for Confucius Institutes in US: "Political forces make constant attempts to tarnish the image of the Confucius Institutes…. Certain U.S. political forces have long been groundlessly criticizing Confucius Institutes, and made constant attempts to tarnish the image of Confucius Institutes…. U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher accused China of spreading its propaganda by exploiting private media and public education." Let's consider that last part of Rohrabacher's quote, shall we? The big man himself, Li Changchun, China's propaganda chief, has been quoted in USA Today referring to Confucius Institutes as "an important part of China's overseas propaganda setup." In consideration of this, we need to begin — as always — with accusations of censorship. Good ol' Peng Meng wrote in Taipei Times, "Colleges and universities where a Confucius Institute is established all have to sign a contract in which they declare their support for Beijing's 'One-China' policy. As a result, both Taiwan and Tibet have become taboos at these institutes." The issue regarding the One-China Policy was further confirmed by a University of Oregon professor but has yet to be independently confirmed. Peng went on to mention other China taboos including human rights, Tiananmen Square and even pollution in China. Well, when Peng went to give a lecture at the University of Oregon in 2010, guess what? The university was pressured by the CHINESE CONSUL GENERAL to not let him speak (thankfully, they failed). In 2011, according to Bloomberg, a hiring notice at CI stated that teachers must be "aged between 22 to 60, physical and mental healthy, no record of participation in Falun Gong and other illegal organizations, and no criminal record." From the same source, the University of Chicago had over 170 faculty members protesting against the Confucius Institute at their university. Stanford's dean of humanities said their $4 million investment came with a caveat that professors could not discuss sensitive issues like Tibet (Stanford refused the deal, humiliating the institute, which backed down and wound up funding the school anyway). In 2009, North Carolina University cancelled a trip to see the Dalai Lama due to possible conflicts with the CI. (It should be noted that Miami University in Ohio and Stanford both accepted the Dalai Lama despite the "trouble"). There have also been claims that having a CI in your university may lead to problems with liberals getting visas, such as what happened to Andrew J. Nathan and his Modern Tibetan Studies Program. And anyone who has ever worked for the Chinese media will tell you that actual censorship is not the biggest problem. It's self-censorship, or as China calls it, soft power. But hey, if they want to try to teach the average American that free press is a bad thing and that the Dalai Lama eats babies, be my guest. Hell, you can't even convince a great many Americans about evolution — they're dumb as bricks. But not dumb enough for this bull honkey. Out of concerns like these, Confucius Institutes have been driven out of universities in Pennsylvania, Melbourne, Stockholm (for espionage concerns which were largely groundless), and Tel Aviv. So, not your typical language school, is it? Seeing as how the only benefit for universities to hosting Confucius Institutes is money, I'd be a little wary of them, too. "By peddling a product we want, namely Chinese language study, the Confucius Institutes bring the Chinese government into the American academy in powerful ways," Chinese history professor Jonathan Lipman told Bloomberg. "The general pattern is very clear. They can say, 'We'll give you this money, you'll have a Chinese program, and nobody will talk about Tibet.' In this economy, turning them down has real costs." And what is the point of these CIs? In GT's "Why is Washington so scared of Confucius" op-ed, the editors write, "When a country's economy develops, it will care about respect from other countries. The Chinese are clear that the establishment of a country's soft power is difficult." Basically, the Chinese government says it just wants to put in the tip. But we all know it's going to end up in shafting, followed by next-morning embarrassment. Honestly, the institutes themselves are pretty tame. They've been accused of a great deal, but they know upon which side their bread is buttered. Here's the thing though: this week, in pulling out their trump card, they showed to the world that the full might of the Chinese propaganda machine is behind them. This seems like an important consideration for universities. Sure, the Confucius Institutes may be harmless, but can anyone be completely clean when they have a blood-stained guard panda begging for an excuse to kick down your door? The Chinese government is very good at bullying. I'm willing to bet that, at this very moment, a dozen editorials slamming the American government for its Human Rights Report that was released on Friday is sitting on copyeditors' desks, blissfully ignorant to the fact that people's inability to comment on the report in the press is, in fact, a minor but important violation of human rights. They'll call Americans biased, self-obsessed and ignorant. How do I know this? Because they do it every year, along with their own laughable Human Rights Report on America. The editorial writers are told what to write about, make no mistake. I've seen it. I've seen it this week. I've seen it with my eyeballs and heard it with my ear balls. This Confucius Institute scandal is no different. It does seem that the CPC's view of Confucius has changed over the years. During the Cultural Revolution, the Confucius masterpiece The Analects was banned, and Confucian scholars were tortured and shamed. Red Guards took over Confucian temples, defaced statues, and chanted, "Down with Confucius, down with his wife!" (Which seems a bit harsh. What's the wife got to do with anything?) Then, Confucius was branded a "class enemy" in a "Criticize Confucius" campaign. That's right; they had a campaign against an Iron Age dead guy. The graves of the Kong family were trashed and looted. Corpses were dug up from their graves at the Kong family cemetery and hung from trees. Red Guards also dug up Confucius' grave to show that it was empty. (Psssst… hey, Chinese people… hey… these guys run your country now.) And now they worship the man, and they get to write about how they convinced the US to do so as well. Xinhua, 5/26, 11:21:37: U.S. amends directive on Confucius Institutes to fix mess-up Xinhua, 5/26, 19:08:56: US Reverses directive on Confucius Institutes ("Immigration attorney Liang Ping says pressure from Beijing and concerned Universities seems to have worked.") China Daily, 5/26, 07:52: US tries to clear up confusion over institutes The USA and China have their differences, but they don't encourage people to run headlong into conflict and extinction. I… I'm sure that everyone…
…will just get on with it and try to make the… world… a better…
…place and keep a… level head about…
…you know…
Dude?! Is that General MacArthur stabbing a baby? Seriously? Everyone got all pissy this week after the 100 Day Campaign in Beijing to wipe out filthy foreigners and Yang Rui's comments that make you want to stab a kitten with a fork, but, really, what do you expect? I mean, sure, America, the West, and everywhere in the world has had racist propaganda campaigns during wartime, and I'm sure that some of those prejudices linger in everyday life even today. But I can't imagine how I would feel about foreigners if they were painted as complete devils my entire lifetime, up to and including today, by everyone in authority. Imagine if you grew up in a world where the only acceptable opinion was the Global Times opinion, where having a different one and expressing it in public meant big trouble. I'd be burning effigies of Chen Guangcheng faster than you can say "serve the people." The US and every other country that has been at the business end of a propaganda rag seeing-to is supposed to forget about these insults without so much as an apology, and when the smoke clears they have to pretend there's a Sino-anyone friendship. I knew bullies like this at school. They're not friends. They're just people waiting for an excuse to bottle that smug git. The upside of all this is that the more the Chinese government talks to the world, the more respect they lose, so, I say, bring on the Confucius Institutes, regardless of the endless strings and propaganda guard panda. If they're able to convince a significant number of people in the world with access to a proper Internet of the CPC view on international politics, I'll put a leech on my dong. We'll end with an actual quote from Confucius that touches upon the CPC's development ego:
I'm starting to see why he was banned. |
| Speeding Drunk Driver In Shenzhen Kills Three People In Fiery Accident [UPDATE] Posted: 27 May 2012 07:15 PM PDT Only two weeks ago, a reckless Chinese driver in Singapore plowed into a side of a taxi, killing both cab passengers and himself (GIF credit: Alicia). We now have more of the same. (And in case you needed a reminder — there's a lot of the same.) On Shenzhen's Binghai Road on Saturday around midnight, a speeding red coupe crashed into two taxis, causing one of them, an electric BYD, to erupt into flames (all three passengers in that car perished). A passing cabbie caught video of the fireball. The driver and passenger of the other taxi, which was flipped upside-down, both crawled out. The coupe's driver — who was apparently going in excess of 150 kilometers, according to the guy who shot the video, and apparently had been drinking, according to Shenzhen authorities — was a young man who had three young ladies in the car with him. He fled the scene with two of them (the other was pinned inside the car), but later turned himself in. Sina video for those in China after the jump, plus update. UPDATE, 10:21 am: Here's a picture of the two passengers in the electric taxi that exploded, according to a Sina Weibo post that's gotten more than 2,800 forwards and 1,100 comments in less than two hours (it was posted at 8:25 am):
(H/T Alicia) |
| A Hoarder's Tale: How One Shanghai Animal Hoarder is Surviving His Disorder Posted: 27 May 2012 05:35 PM PDT Date: May 28th 2012 8:09a.m. Contributed by: thewooster Up in Baoshan district is an old renovated factory space. No industrial workers mill about here though. The 200 sq. meters of concrete are instead home and playground for its more than 100 tenants. On our visit, they readily ambled out into the open-air back room, where the warm sunshine had enticed them to stretch their bodies and seek out new playmates among their human guests. Healthy, happy, these cats are the survivors. Six years ago, Second Chance Animal Aid got a call from a Shanghainese woman who was moving to the United States. She had been supporting a man named Huang Yunhao (pictured above) who housed more than 200 cats in his home two hours outside of Shanghai and had no other line of financial support. Could SCAA help? Assistance came on the terms that Huang would add no new animals, that SCAA would humanely euthanize any animals that were beyond help and that the non-profit organization would create a better environment for the animals. Huang accepted the conditions and moved closer to central Shanghai so SCAA could better assist him. In 2009, the cats were moved to the factory space they occupy today, with their owner residing nearby. A dozen had been adopted out, the rest euthanized. They number half of their original count now.
That Huang, 56, has followed SCAA's terms, with plenty of regular monitoring, has become a rare success story in dealing with cat hoarders. The Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium defines hoarding as a complex disorder characterized by an atypical number of companion animals, plus "an inability to provide minimal standards of care, with this neglect often resulting in starvation, illness and death" compounded by a denial of this inability. Huang, assesses SCAA director ... |
| Distracted Chinese Leaders Finally Waking Up To The Economy? Posted: 27 May 2012 04:34 PM PDT  Premier Wen wakes up and then puts on his thinking cap Many are asking if China's economy has hit a bump or is collapsing. I come down on the side of a bump, one that could have mostly avoided. And the reason it hit the bump is political and not economic. I think that China's leadership is distracted by the obvious struggles and for this reason failed to act promptly as real signs of weakness began to appear. For example, earlier this year, the National Development and Reform Commission began to accelerate approval of specified categories of infrastructure projects. It looked at a better targeted and funded mini- 'stimulus' was on its way. (Although any government comment put these in the 'fine-tuning' bin.) Because of this, I was surprised when the May numbers came showing both loans and fixed-asset investment went down. What happened to the approved infrastructure projects? What happened, indeed? The policy seemed in place, but the execution clearly lagged. As bad as coordination among government entities and lenders can be, this was not characteristic of such an important push. No causes have been cited, but the shadow of leadership division and distraction seems cast over these and other efforts to get the economy going. Then, finally, a couple of days ago, it seemed that the leadership finally woke up. Premier Wen and other leaders spoke of the need for more measures. Here's what Xinhuanet believes is going happen: More policies targeted at speeding up infrastructure investment and domestic consumption, the two key drivers of the economy, are expected, according to analysts. In addition to government spending, private investment will play a role in the recovery. Both the Ministry of Railways and the Ministry of Health recently issued guidelines to allow private capital to enter the railway and health sectors. Zhang Hanya, a researcher with the Academy of Macroeconomic Research of the National Development and Reform Commission, said more industries, including the telecommunications, energy and some manufacturing sectors, will soon publish similar guidelines. Moreover, the reform to replace turnover tax with value added tax, which aims to reduce duplicate taxation, is expected to be expanded in more provinces, according to the Ministry of Finance. Shanghai, the reform pilot, has applied to expand the reform to more industries. How realistic these and other actions are depends in some part to how much clout the reformers got from the Bo scandal. From another angle, the response to the slowdown will give us interesting political insight. In any case, 'It looks like Chinese policy makers are finally getting worried.' So says, Credit Agricole CIB economist Dariusz Kowalczyk, said in a report as reported by AP. And, not minute too soon. |
| Truck Driver Assaults Toll Booth Operator Posted: 27 May 2012 10:30 AM PDT Last Sunday at about 2 pm, according to the timestamp in the raw footage captured by CCTV cameras, a truck driver in Heng County, Guangxi province pushed his way into a toll booth and assaulted the operator for what he perceived to be slow service. It's a dastardly act, and not just because he's a meathead and she's an overmatched woman. He's interviewed in the video after the jump on an altogether different type of CCTV — China's centrally owned news show — and admits he had been drinking (we never would have guessed). Police arrested him soon after his attack and fined him 500 yuan. The other part of his punishment — for the drunk driving — will have to wait. (H/T Alicia) |
| The Situation Is Excellent: The Week That Was At Beijing Cream Posted: 27 May 2012 08:58 AM PDT
May 21 – May 27 We began the week by announcing the winners to our Bar and Club Awards, then proceeded to pillory the Beijinger's Bar and Club Awards party. The post has received 21 comments so far, including several from tbj GM Mike Wester. Personally, however, we enjoy the comments on this post, "Please Submit Your Story of Ambiguous Decency," much better. On Friday evening, Kris Pickett took a video of a protester in Xidan being pushed off a pedestrian bridge onto a bouncy tarp, then taken away by police. Another fight between American and Chinese basketball teams broke out that same night, while a white guy spat in the face of a Chinese man in Chengdu. Earlier in the week, a Shandong college cafeteria served its students whale meat without their knowledge. A 12-year-old from the same province has earned himself the nickname "China's Messi," and here's a 70-year-old badass in Yunnan who tosses petrol bombs at those who try to evict him. If you need lighter news, try this chicken-raping dog GIF. This "Mother of All Traffic Jams" post was linked on the Gawker Network's Jalopnik, while we found out that Henry Breimhurst was responsible for this driving-in-China diagram. Valentina Luo's debut post for BJC was about a rumored new political party in China called the Chinese Scientist Liberal Democratic Party. China Ultimate Frisbee has been getting quite the attention recently, on CCTV-5 and this online Hennessy ad. Hong Kong's NOW TV has won the sports-as-war metaphor with its Euro 2102 promo. Timed with Bo Guagua's graduation from Harvard, a guest columnist came by to talk about princelings at Harvard. City Weekend did something. Yang Rui says he called Melissa Chan a "shrew," not bitch, and Chen Guangcheng is in New York. Finally, we'd like to remind everyone that nature can be a bitch sometimes, always calling at the least convenient time. Here, again, are porn sites that are not blocked in China. Consider that our gift to you, China hands — for reading. |
| Providing Service To Chinese Companies. Get Paid Upfront Or Don’t Bother. Posted: 27 May 2012 04:48 AM PDT U.S. consulting companies are increasingly selling their services in China. This is part of the general trend towards sales into China that we have noted. In confirmation of this trend, we have recently worked with several U.S. based consultants in selling their services into China. The approach taken by U.S. consultants is consistently naïve and almost guarantees problems in China. The most important issue in selling services to Chinese clients is how to get paid. The payment issue with service providers is far more complicated than with those who sell goods. Service providers must therefore focus carefully on the payment issue. In drafting service contracts for service providers that will be providing services to Chinese companies, we typically put in provisions that mandate the following: 1. Payment must be received by the service provider before it begins work. It is not required that 100% of the fee be received in advance, but a substantial payment must be received in the U.S. company bank account before any work starts. In addition, it is essential that final work product not be transferred to the Chinese side until after final payment is received. 2. All payments to the U.S. side are net of Chinese taxes. That is, the Chinese side must pay a sum certain to the American service provider and that amount is payable regardless of the taxes the Chinese side is required to pay before making the payment to the foreign service provider. These provisions are essential for two reasons. The first is the general reluctance of Chinese companies to pay full price for services. Chinese companies in general suffer from what I call the "contempt for the intangible." Though they accept that they have to pay for hard goods like minerals or machinery, they resist being required to pay for intangibles such as consulting or design services. This contempt for the intangible means that Chinese companies will often work actively to substantially reduce the amounts they have agreed to pay for services. The standard technique is to convince the service provider to start work before payment. Usually this is the result of protracted contract negotiations. The contract is finally signed several months late and the Chinese side now expresses panic that work must start immediately. The foreign (American) service provider is then convinced to begin work before payment. Then, after considerable work has been done, the Chinese side will demand a reduction in the fee. The service provider is too deep in the project to refuse and is forced to accept a substantial discount. If the service provider has already provided the work product, the common result is that no payment of any kind is made. The only way to prevent this from happening is to insist that no work begins until a substantial initial payment has been made. This often will kill the deal and the Chinese side will walk away. This is a good result. As my old boss used to say: "There is only one thing worse than working. That is working and not getting paid." The second reason is that the Chinese government is fundamentally hostile to payments made by Chinese companies to foreign service providers. It thus often happens that Chinese companies in good faith try to make the required payments but are prevented from making payment due to the actions of the Chinese authorities. How does this happen? China still maintains strong controls over foreign exchange. When a Chinese company goes to make a payment to a foreign party it must convert RMB to the foreign currency. The local foreign exchange bank acts as the agent in determining whether the proposed exchange and transfer of funds meets with central government regulations and policy. The rules for service payments are unclear. As a result, the approach taken by one local bank may be completely different than the approach taken by a bank in another city. Some of the problems that arise are as follows:
It is also not uncommon for more than one of the above to be imposed on the same payment. As a result, the tax bill can be quite high. The imposition of these taxes causes a number of problems:
There really is only one way the foreign service provider party can be assured of protecting itself against non-payment: refuse to work until payment is received in the bank account of the foreign party. For more on the difficulties of doing service work for Chinese companies, check out Representing Chinese Companies. I See Some Light. |
A weekly column in which Chinese media is taken to the stocks.
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