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Blogs » Society » Chinese leftists appeal for clemency for Bo Xilai |
- Chinese leftists appeal for clemency for Bo Xilai
- 7,136 graduates apply to be trash collectors
- Beijing father refuses to donate bone-marrow to 5-year-old son, boy dies
- Shenzhen Neighborhood Needed A Place To Dump Garbage, So The Residents Dumped It In The Street
- City Weekend Hosts a Family-friendly Halloween Celebration this Saturday
- Sign up for the Shanghaiist Hairy Crab & Sex Museum Tour!
- Develop your students and your career in the fastest growing cities in China. Teach with EF English First. [Ad]
- Dislike Congested Subways? Try On This Backpack Of Spikes For Size
- Jeremy Lin’s KFC China Commercial Is Bright, Happy, And Smiley
- 57th Tibetan self-immolation occurs at Labrang monastery
- 4 tonnes of smuggled ivory seized in Hong Kong
- Presented By:
- How To Handle Chinese Negotiating Tactics. Part Three.
- Here’s A Fun, Humorous, Semi-Satirical, Kind Of Dark, Twisted, And Actually Bloody Video Featuring Kung Fu
- Dalai Lama ends speech by saying 'f**k it' (according to the subtitles)
- Top-of-the-Week Links: On Xi Jinping and his wife, woman survives gruesome self-stabbing to the skull, and Shanghai in stunning panorama
- A rise in abortions shows Chinese students need more sexual freedom, not less
- China to be largest coffee market outside of US by 2014
- China becoming more attractive destination for expats
- Carbon export taxes could prevent "trade wars" between China, EU and US
| Chinese leftists appeal for clemency for Bo Xilai Posted: 22 Oct 2012 09:00 PM PDT  A letter from a group of Chinese leftists, addressed to the Politburo Standing Committee and published on the far-left website Red China, has condemned the expulsion of Bo Xilai from the Communist Party and the revocation of his immunity from prosecution. [ more › ]     |
| 7,136 graduates apply to be trash collectors Posted: 22 Oct 2012 08:00 PM PDT  A total of 7,136 recent graduates have applied for a series of sanitation positions, including maintenance and street cleaning roles, advertised by local authorities in Harbin. [ more › ] |
| Beijing father refuses to donate bone-marrow to 5-year-old son, boy dies Posted: 22 Oct 2012 07:00 PM PDT |
| Shenzhen Neighborhood Needed A Place To Dump Garbage, So The Residents Dumped It In The Street Posted: 22 Oct 2012 08:08 PM PDT
Via China Daily: "Garbage fills the street at the Baishixia community in Bao'an district, Shenzhen, Guangdong province, on Wednesday. Because a landfill was blocked by nearby residents out of environmental concerns, a lot of trash cannot be sent to the landfill and has accumulated on the street since Monday. The district is trying to clean up the garbage. Photo by Chen Yu / for China Daily." I feel pretty terrible for the owners of the corner store there. Then again, I wonder how much refuse they contributed. Blech. |
| City Weekend Hosts a Family-friendly Halloween Celebration this Saturday Posted: 22 Oct 2012 07:18 PM PDT |
| Sign up for the Shanghaiist Hairy Crab & Sex Museum Tour! Posted: 22 Oct 2012 05:42 PM PDT  Hairy crab season is rapidly approaching its zenith! And because Shanghaiist knows not all hairy crabs are created equal, we've decided to take it upon ourselves to take you to that one place in China that ensures you get the REAL DEAL -- Yangcheng Lake. Join Shanghaiist editors Kenneth Tan and Benjamin Cost on an oralgasmic getaway with Shanghai's most famous staple right at the source, happening on the weekend of Nov 3-4. FIND OUT MORE & SIGN UP HERE. [ more › ] |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2012 05:20 PM PDT |
| Dislike Congested Subways? Try On This Backpack Of Spikes For Size Posted: 22 Oct 2012 04:00 PM PDT
Who doesn't hate congested subways, right? But who would be shameless enough to wear a backpack full of red spikes that poke anyone who dares get close? On Sunday on Beijing Subway Line 5, according to Beijing Morning Post, a man was spotted wearing the above. The journalist says judging by the picture, even though there was a big crowd, people were conscious of this particular man with the spikes and tried to keep away. (Not sure if I see that, but we'll roll with it.) After a bit of research, the journalist learned this bag apparently has a name: "hedgehog backpack." An online vendor based in Hangzhou said that his primary customers are young people in their 20s and early 30s, and that the bag only began selling this year. "Every month we can sell at least a dozen or so bags," he said. Several similar products exist, whose spikes' intended purpose is to keep others away. You've heard of personal space bubbles, the theoretical area around a person that one shouldn't enter without permission? This takes that to the next level. It makes me wonder, however: whatever happened to the old ways of keeping people at a distance, i.e. never showering and blogging 14 hours a day? Beijing Subway authorities said these items aren't yet on their list of banned substances. But while we've acknowledged that spiky backpacks aren't on the same level as handguns and explosives, you're not less of a nit to tote such a thing. China is crowded. If it's personal space you desire, you can get a car and see how that works for you. |
| Jeremy Lin’s KFC China Commercial Is Bright, Happy, And Smiley Posted: 22 Oct 2012 12:00 PM PDT Jeremy Lin, you've truly made it. Following in the footsteps of Shaquille O'Neal, Tracy McGrady, et al., Lin is the latest NBA player to film a Chinese commercial. How'd he do in his one-minute spot for KFC, featuring a lot of smiles, more than one spin move, and several dunks? Judge for yourself. I'm pretty upset they didn't fully recreate his game-winning three-pointer vs. the Raptors (he actually shot from the top of the arc!). Also: I've definitely seen him speak better Chinese, that's for sure.
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| 57th Tibetan self-immolation occurs at Labrang monastery Posted: 22 Oct 2012 09:45 AM PDT  Another Tibetan has burned himself to death, the sixth protester to do so in less than a month, bringing the number of self-immolations since February 2009 to 57. [ more › ] |
| 4 tonnes of smuggled ivory seized in Hong Kong Posted: 22 Oct 2012 09:00 AM PDT |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2012 09:00 AM PDT |
| How To Handle Chinese Negotiating Tactics. Part Three. Posted: 22 Oct 2012 07:47 AM PDT By: Steve Dickinson This is the final of our three part series on how to handle Chinese negotiating tactics. Part One can be found here. Part Two can be found here. Following on my previous two posts on Chinese negotiating techniques, in this post I will discuss two additional and common techniques used by Chinese companies to drive foreigners mad during the contract negotiation process. 4. Never never land. The Chinese often will justify its outrageous demands with the vacuous statement that "China is different." It is shocking how many foreign negotiators fall for this statement and accept such terms. The problem, of course, is that China IS different from many countries. This is a trivial statement, since every country is different from every other country. The fact is, however, that in terms of laws and regulations, China is not all that different from other countries. Chinese laws are not original. They are based for the most part on foreign models. In addition, as far as foreign investors are concerned, the content of Chinese laws is further constrained by China's participation in the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and other international standards setting bodies and conventions. China has worked very hard and successfully over the past decade to bring its foreign investment and business laws in line with international standards. In most cases, China's laws hew closer to international standards than the often eccentric laws of the United States and England. Chinese laws are based on the civil law standard. What often seems to a U.S. investor as an unusual legal provision is often nothing more than the difference between the common law approach and the civil law approach to certain issues. Whenever the Chinese side of a negotiation argues that "China is different," I request that it provide me with a copy of the Chinese statute or regulation that imposes this difference. In over 25 years of negotiation in China, I have never once received a substantive response to this request. On occasion the Chinese side will send over a host of Chinese language documents. To date, it has always turned out that these rules and regulations have nothing to do with the issue at hand and do not impose the rule that the Chinese claim requires that their unreasonable request be accepted. We just wrapped up a negotiation where when the Chinese side did provide us with the law, it said exactly what we had been saying it said all along, just as we knew that it would. What is "different" about China is that Chinese negotiators do not feel constrained by the rules of good faith negotiation. Thus, when a Chinese company argues that "China is different," what they really mean is that the fair and impartial laws of China do not reflect the reality of China. The reality is that the Chinese side must take advantage of the foreign side. This means that the foreign side must accede to the unreasonable request of the Chinese side. If the foreign side does not concede to patently unreasonable terms, then no deal can be made. It is very true in this sense that China is different. However, this is a difference that should not be tolerated by the foreign party to any contract. The response from the foreign side should be first to demand to see the law that requires the unreasonable condition. After the Chinese side fails to provide that law it will usually say something like: "well, the law does not provide for this but our government will not approve the deal unless we include this provision. The response to that statement should be that "if your government will not approve the deal, then we will not do the deal." This should be made very clear. If the Chinese side does not back down, you should terminate the negotiation. Let me give an example. It is common in negotiating China Joint Ventures for the Chinese side to insist that the intellectual property contributed to the JV by the foreign partner must ultimately be transferred to the Chinese JV partner. The same is true in many technology license agreements where the Chinese side will say: "sorry, but you cannot protect your IP. You must transfer everything to us at the end of the license." This situation is obviously the opposite of what the foreign side wants from the transaction. When the foreign side resists, the Chinese side will then play the "never never land" card and state that Chinese law requires such a transfer. In fact, however, Chinese law does not make any such requirement. This is simply what the Chinese side wants out of the deal. Of course, the Chinese government supports the Chinese side, since the free transfer of technology arguably benefits China, so everyone in China is on the same side. Thus government authorities involved will usually do nothing to clarify the situation. The foreign side will all too often accept the "China is different" justification and go forward with the deal. Later, the Chinese side will drive out the foreign JV partner or terminate the license and appropriate the technology. When that happens, the foreign side will complain about the Chinese law that mandates such a result. However, there was never such a law. It is virtually always a case where the foreign side agreed to a contractual provision that guaranteed its own eventual doom. Chinese law is not at fault. Gullibility in falling for the China is different argument is where the fault lies. 5. Revenge is a dish best served cold. In the discussion above, I advise that the foreign side strongly resist agreeing to unreasonable Chinese demands and negotiation techniques. I advise that if the Chinese will not back down, then the foreign side should terminate the transaction and return home. My point is the obvious one that the foreign side should not enter into a bad deal or a deal that it does not understand simply because it has been manipulated by standard Chinese bad faith negotiation techniques. In these tough negotiations, it is usually required that the foreign side just has to say "take it or leave it." In a surprisingly large number of cases, the Chinese side will "leave it," even in cases where this decision seems to make little economic sense. Thus, when the foreign side gives the final ultimatum, the foreign side has to be prepared for the Chinese side simply walking away from the deal. In some cases, however, the Chinese side will back down and will accept restrictive provisions against which it has been vehemently fighting during negotiations. It will accept the challenge and it will "take it," rather than walk away from the deal. In that case, the foreign side will congratulate itself on their negotiation skills and the fact that it "won" the negotiation. The problem with this though is that the Chinese side oftentimes does not fully accept its concession and it will treat it as a personal challenge. It will then work to unwind the concession in some way during the life of the transaction. It will focus on taking revenge for its defeat on the contract issue. It will focus on this revenge with little regard for whether it obtains economic benefit from its actions. Even when it will actually suffer economic damage from its conduct, it may still focus on obtaining revenge for its defeat. The passage of time makes little difference. Their only concern is on obtaining revenge. Why is this? Social researcher Ian McKay has this to say in general about people who seek revenge:
This description nicely describes the average Chinese business negotiator. They treat contract concessions as a loss of face, and they will focus on getting back their "face" to the exclusion of everything else. The economics of the deal does not matter. What really matters is the balance of power and their face. This attitude is quite foreign to most foreign business people who treat contract negotiations as a purely economic issue and not as a personal matter. It is therefore very hard for foreign business negotiators to understand how this issue can impact their future business relations with a Chinese party. The issue goes beyond face. If you discuss these matters with Chinese business people you will learn that the Chinese side views the Western approach to contract negotiation as fundamentally unfair. They see the Western insistence on certainty and clarity as fundamentally a bad faith phenomenon. For the Chinese, certainty in contract terms is justified only for a one off, single transaction, "horse trade" style sales contract. The sale of an office building or a single shipment of a commodity is an example of this type of contract. For any contract that requires a continuing performance over time, the Chinese believe that any attempt to pin them down and impose certainty on their behavior is fundamentally unfair and contrary to reality. For the Chinese, the future is essentially uncertain and the attempt to impose certainty on this uncertain future makes no sense. Any party who insists on this must have a bad intent. Where the Chinese side agrees to such certainty, they do it under protest and they strongly feel that unequal bargaining power on the side of the foreign party has forced them into an inherently unfair transaction. Thus, they do not have moral qualms in taking their revenge by undoing the terms of this inherently unfair agreement at a later date. Their belief that they have the moral high ground fuels their need for revenge and explains why they will seek revenge even in cases where there is no economic benefit. This feeling runs very deep in China and is difficult to deal with rationally pursuant to the typical Western company business calculation. For foreign parties, it leads to very complex assessments of negotiation strategy. Total victory is seldom useful in China. This then leaves open the question of what sort of compromise short of total victory will result in a contract that is still acceptable to the foreign party. In my own experience, there are two viable options in dealing with the final battle over key terms. The first is to walk away from the deal. No deal is better than a bad deal, and what looks like bad deal in China will certainly turn out to be just that. Where abandoning the deal is not acceptable, then the foreign side should plan to concede on some issues that are important to the Chinese side so as to provide the Chinese side with some feeling of victory in the conclusion of the negotiation. This concession should always be balanced against an overall assessment of the benefits of the deal to the foreign side. No deal should be concluded in China that does not provide for substantial benefit to the foreign side. Close deals never work out in China. The foreign side needs a lot of room on the benefit side to overcome the constant Chinese pressure to chip away at the foreign benefits at every stage in the process of performance. What do you think?
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| Posted: 22 Oct 2012 07:30 AM PDT I'm pretty sure I've never seen anything quite like this produced in China. The video, a "Kung Fu FAQ" created by the digital marketing agency Flow Creative Studios – just in time for the Zhengzhou International Shaolin Wushu Festival – follows a Walter Mitty-type martial artist who fields questions such as "Can you break bricks?" and "Can you fly?" while repulsing unruly diners, a scornful girlfriend, and a band of thieving strongmen in the hutongs of Beijing. The eight-minute production (not counting the credits) starts slow, but stick with it as it builds toward a shocking and borderline horrifying climax. You'll learn some things along the way, too, maybe. For the record, the way to win a boss fight against an opponent who has a knife is to grab the nearest hand towel, wrap it around the wrist of the attacker, whip him around, kick him in the back of the knee, and then deliver a knock-out blow to the diaphragm… or die trying. Written and produced by Alfred Hsing, directed and shot by Van Yang, featuring Wang Zhenwei, the star bully in Karate Kid (2010), wushu champions Alfred Hsing and Mei Han, and others. Filmed at 4 Corners in Beijing. Youku video for those in China after the jump. (H/T Joanna Wong) |
| Dalai Lama ends speech by saying 'f**k it' (according to the subtitles) Posted: 22 Oct 2012 08:00 AM PDT  An inattentive stenographer caused some embarrassment for the Dalai Lama when he transcribed the Tibetan holy man's closing words in a speech to Brown University students as "fuck it" instead of "forget". [ more › ] |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2012 06:25 AM PDT
Here comes another five-day workweek, unless you're in Hong Kong, in which case, enjoy your day off tomorrow. Irregardless, start your week off right with links. Everything I've read about Xi Jinping is making me optimistic about China's future, including this article about his wife. "As China counts down to its carefully scripted 18th Communist Party congress next month, everyone here knows the country will soon get a new president, and who it will be. (Spoiler alert: His name is Xi Jinping.) // But there is suspense over one element of the transition: Will the nation get a full-fledged first lady as well in the form of Peng Liyuan? // …Yet crafting a public role for Peng will require Communist Party image makers to delicately navigate millenniums-old suspicion of women near the center of power in China, the party's own squeamishness about making officials' private lives public, and a gossipy media culture increasingly critical of elites' lifestyles and behavior." [LA Times] That rescue in Japanese waters of Chinese sailors? Netizens saying "Wait a minute": "Where did this cargo ship set out from and where was it going? Why did it sail through the waters off Okinawa, so close to the Diaoyu Islands [aka Senkaku Islands]? Why did it happen to catch on fire at that precise area? Why did the Japanese rescue team arrive so swiftly? Why was there also another report in today's news: Chinese 1,500 People Tour Group Arrives in Japan to Warm Welcome? Could all of this be a coincidence? Or is it to suppress the ordinary common people's anger over losing the Diaoyu Islands? If the islands are lost, then they're lost, the people are not stupid." [@腾讯网友 kevin, chinaSMACK] Hell of a story. "What had happened? Images rushed to my mind: A yellow dinghy bucking forward and back in white-lipped waves; the oars flapping once and twice and then ripped from their sockets; the water cold, salty, alien, surging up as if to drag her under; the gray sky dipping down to meet it; Yan alone, terrified, hugging the boat until the waves grabbed that too. Had she tried to fight it, the encroaching sea? The strength would have drained from her arms like water from an upturned cup. She had the body of a child: Maybe five feet, maybe an inch or two shorter, ninety-five pounds tops. And the image of that childlike body, briny and pallid, washed up on the shore. // Did she scream? Did she try to turn back? Or did she surrender to the storm? Or there had been no storm. Or she had planned for the storm all along." [Eli Bildner, Tea Leaf Nation] Um… kinda graphic, because there's a picture of a knife sticking out of a woman's head. "A Chinese woman has amazingly survived without serious injury after stabbing herself in the head with a knife. // These gruesome images show the knife protruding out of Zhang Lan's skull after she launched the five inch blade in to her own head." [Daily Mail] Indeed, some types of hearsay are OK. "For a couple of years now, I've been writing about the power of China's online voices (aka netizens, aka weibots) in their struggle for truth, justice and all kinds of other good stuff. Frankly, it worries me. And now they've gone and started a riot in Sichuan for no reason, and people might have been hurt." [China Hearsay] Deep breath. "The world's second-largest economy grew 7.4 percent in the three months ending in September, data showed Thursday. That was down from the previous quarter's 7.6 percent and the lowest since the first quarter of 2009." [AP] Evan Osnos's interview with Ai Weiwei interlude, via The New Yorker: Finally… "The Creation Myth of Xi Jinping." [John Garnaut, Foreign Policy] Evan Osnos talks with Charlie Rose. [Charlie Rose] Pictures of China's Internet cafes. [Kotaku] China becoming more popular for expats, says survey. [Expat Explorer, HSBC] Finally, finally… Neat pictures of Shanghai, via China Underground:
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| A rise in abortions shows Chinese students need more sexual freedom, not less Posted: 22 Oct 2012 07:00 AM PDT  More than half of the 13 million abortions that take place in China every year are performed on women under 25, according to a new report by China's National Population and Family Planning Commission. More abortions take place in China than anywhere else in the world. [ more › ] |
| China to be largest coffee market outside of US by 2014 Posted: 22 Oct 2012 06:00 AM PDT  Despite early naysayers predicting that coffee would never take hold in tea-drinking China, Starbucks, who have made large gains in the Chinese market, are predicting that China will become the largest non-American market for coffee in just two years. [ more › ] |
| China becoming more attractive destination for expats Posted: 22 Oct 2012 05:00 AM PDT  Economic factors and quality of life are two big draws for professionals and executives who come to China to work, according to the 2012 edition of HSBC's annual survey of expatriates. [ more › ] |
| Carbon export taxes could prevent "trade wars" between China, EU and US Posted: 22 Oct 2012 02:52 AM PDT Carbon export taxes, imposed by individual countries like China, could help prevent trade disputes and quicken the introduction of a wider carbon price, says Michael Jakob. Recent studies have highlighted that sizable amounts of carbon emissions are transferred between world regions in the form of traded goods and services. That is, considerably more emissions are generated for the production of imports to e.g. the EU and US than those associated with their exports. |
Parenting fail. A five-year-old boy in Beijing 
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