Xzibit's take on Chen Guangcheng

. . . . and then they removed it.

[Picture made using the Xzibit Yo Dawg Meme generator, meme explained here]

The Expat

" . . .The majority were men who, like himself, thrown there by some accident, had remained as officers of country ships. They had now a horror of the home service, with its harder conditions, severer view of duty, and the hazard of stormy oceans. They were attuned to the eternal peace of Eastern sky and sea. They loved short passages, good deck-chairs, large native crews, and the distinction of being white. They shuddered at the thought of hard work, and led precariously easy lives, always on the verge of dismissal, always on the verge of engagement . . . They talked everlastingly of turns of luck: how So-and-so got charge of a boat on the coast of China — a soft thing; how this one had an easy billet in Japan somewhere, and that one was doing well in the Siamese navy; and in all they said — in their actions, in their looks, in their persons — could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence. To Jim that gossiping crowd, viewed as seamen, seemed at first more unsubstantial than so many shadows. But at length he found a fascination in the sight of those men, in their appearance of doing so well on such a small allowance of danger and toil. In time, beside the original disdain there grew up slowly another sentiment . . . " - Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

I had read Heart Of Darkness whilst still in university and found it to be terribly over-hyped and somewhat unreadable, but when I read Lord Jim in 2004 whilst in Nanjing I felt immediately that here was a book written by someone who, whilst he was a creature of his time, understood what it was both to be a young man and to be an expat. Lord Jim is still one of my favourite books, even if I have not yet warmed to Conrad's other works.

America: From the mountains to Manhattan

One of the great things about the field I work in - patents - is its international nature, which means I regularly have the opportunity to travel to other countries as part of my work. Earlier this month I went to a conference on patent information in Denver - something that was fascinating for me but I doubt too many of you will be all that interested in. It was, however, my first time in the US, and whilst I believe initial impressions of any country, especially one so large as the US, can be misleading, I thought I would share a few of them here.

I didn't get to see that much of Denver since I spent most of my time there in the conference centre. My one spare evening there I met up with a friend who used to work for Foxconn who now works on renewable energy for GE (technology wghich was much in evidence in and around Denver) and he took me on a drive up into the Rockies. Amazingly, it only takes a 30-40 minutes drive from the centre of Denver for you to find yourself in the Rockies just below the tree-line at 10,000 feet above sea-level, standing next to a lake among a hear of buffalo or elk, a lake which feeds the Clearwater river, which flows down to the Coors brewery. Say what you like about American beer, Coors at least has the best of origins.

Since I was (sort-of) in the neighbourhood, I decided to spend an extended weekend catching up with some friends in New York. My flight from Denver International to La Guardia took two hours, but the sky was clear and during which time I never lost sight of built up areas. It is only from the air that you get a real sense of just how immense America is - an experience I have only ever had twice before, once flying over the emptiness of Siberia, and once flying over the seemingly endless narrow valleys and villages between Beijing and Chengdu.

There was another hint of China when I landed in La Guardia - the signs which endlessly alternately flashed "Welcome to La Guardia"/"God Bless Our Troops" or "Baggage Claim Ahead"/"Welcome Our Military Heroes" certainly felt very familiar from my time in the People's Republic even if communist propaganda avoids mention of any deity. The people lugging their baggage through the concourse and wolfing down their Jumbo Pretzel Dogs paid the signs about as much attention of the signs as the average Laobaixing does the red-and-gold banners that one finds on the average Chinese street.

What then ensued was some of the hardest partying I've indulged in in quite some time. At one point I was taken on a tour of roof-top parties - we got to three before heading to a late-night jazz club in the West Village to listen to some of the best jazz and blues I've heard in a long time. The next day I met up with some friends for drinks at the roof-top garden of a gentlemen's club (of the British variety). Appropriately enough,  we enjoyed a round of Manhattans as we watched the sun set over Central Park, just a few blocks from where Alistair Cooke used to write his weekly Letter From America . I had another great night in the city that never sleeps, and then it was time for my flight home.

And what of the people? Firstly it would be uncharitable in the extreme not to concede that Americans are, as a whole, some of the friendliest people you can meet, and not at all behind the British in politeness. This was so even in New York - although I guess I should say I did not meet a single person in New York who was born there, in fact struggling would-be actresses were somewhat over-represented amongst the people I spoke to in there, although I will cop to a bit of selection bias here.

Political opinion in the United States was something of a surprise - coming from a country which until 30 years ago described itself as a 'mixed economy' it was slightly bizarre to hear the fears expressed by some that the United States was becoming a socialist country. This was especially so given the apparent evidence everywhere that America was as close to being socialist as North Korea is to being a free-market state.

All-in-all I was impressed by the US in a way I had not expected to be. I look forward to my next visit there, and who knows?

The Sun Also Rises

"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see. You hang around cafés."

- Ernest Hemingway

The Definition Of Guts

A blind man, freshly escaped from illegal imprisonment, sending a message from hiding to the leadership of the world's newest Suprepower. Watch it now.

The Numbers Game

Imagine if a mysterious radio station broadcast an automated voice reading a seemingly meaningless strings of numbers interspersed with a few bars of an English folk song to the world at large for more than three decades.

Imagine that this radio station was then tracked to an RAF base in Cyprus.

Now imagine that this radio station stopped broadcasting as suddenly as it started.

Actually, you don't need to imagine any of this. The British radio station, which was known as "the Lincolnshire Poacher" after the tune played between code groups, was part of the obscure and mysterious phenomenon known to the world of short-wave radio geeks* as a "numbers station".

These stations, which are almost certainly used to transmit secret messages to spies which are then de-coded using a one-time pad, are also something of a dying breed. "The Lincolnshire Poacher" went off-line in 2008, with its sister transmitter broadcasting from Australia to the Asian continent similarly closing down in 2009. It would seem likely that these transmitters are being replaced by internet drop-boxes and other means of covert communication, in which case they are undergoing the same sad decline that their non-clandestine cousins in the world of short-wave international broadcasting are.

Many of them, however, remain on-air. Cuba's "¡Atención!" which was used to transmit to the "Wasp" spy network is still broadcasting it's messages of international socialist solidarity, the US's "Yosemite Sam" is still transmitting snippets of code and Looney Tunes from somewhere near Albuquerque, New Mexico, and various Russian, Korean, and Chinese stations identified only by a three-letter classification code continue to transmit their mysterious messages into the ether from points around the globe.

In some ways it's kind of comforting to think that our hum-drum world still contains such things, that somewhere there is a secret agent bent over their short-wave receiver transcribing these numbers into something meaningful, which I guess is the main attraction of number stations to their enthusiasts. For me they have something of a nostalgic air to them. If you grew up in the UK in the 80's you would have watched any number of dramas and comedies about the resistance in occupied Europe during the second world war - most famous of which was probably "'Allo 'Allo". These cryptic messages are a more up to date version of London calling "Nighthawk" about the "fallen Madonna wiz ze big boobies", even if in reality they make for rather dry listening.
*Sorry, JR

[Video: A recording of Chinese-language numbers station V13 AKA "Xin Xing", message beginning at 1.02, recorded by Youtube user "First Token" on the 6th of July, 2010. A translation is provided in the comments but I won't vouch for it - it does sound more like danwei ("单位") than san wei ("三位"), and as for the message being a "fishing report" ("鱼政电报"), it sounds more like something to do with a "forecast" ("预报") to me, although I can't tell what the word in the middle is. Can anyone do a better job?]

A Quick Thought

Why is it that when Chinese dissident sources or government sources separately states that something is true, we treat their statements with suspicion and may even automatically dismiss them based on the source alone, but when they agree that something is true, we are apt to treat their statements almost as confirmed fact?

A Death In Chongqing

From my seat in a delightfully pretentious health-food restaurant (think Shanghai's Element Fresh, but Polish) thousands of miles from Chongqing I do not have much to add to analysis of the various goings on in the PRC Politburo, but I would like to draw attention to a few articles which, to me, strike the right cord, as well as adding a little barely-informed speculation of my own.

I think Sinostand's points - that the only remarkable things about the Bo case are that they involve the death of a laowai and that they have been acknowledged by the government - are very much correct. Had Bo Xilai been less obviously ambitious and more easily believable as a politburo bit-player, then it is impossible to believe that these accusations of corruption would have been directed against him.

The involvement of a foreigner in this case comes a long way second in this. It is very hard to believe that the investigation into Neil Heywood's death would have been "reinvestigated" (was it investigated the first time?) if Bo was not in disfavour. The fact that the investigation only followed what we must now call the "Chengdu incident" (Wang Lijun's apparent attempted defection), which itself came at a convenient time to ensure that Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang's main rival for the top spot was out of the way ahead of their coronation at the "Two Meetings", strongly suggests that it is part of an attempt to make Bo's name mud.

Incidentally, it also leaves a strong suspicion (in my mind at least) that Neil Heywood may not have been murdered. Indeed, I would not at all be surprised if, like the investigation into Ai Weiwei for tax evasion, the investigation was wound up without actually resulting in criminal charges. Since the China has the death penalty for murder (and many other crimes - including corruption), it would not at all be surprising if China's ruling class wished to avoid a trial ending in the execution of a former politburo member or his wife. It is also hard to believe that the British government will wish to press an issue which, for them, there is no up-side to.

The second article I would like to draw attention to is Jeremiah Jenne's latest post on Rectified.name. Jeremiah is definitely correct to say that the impact of this case will be that, in future, people will be far more willing to believe rumours about the various goings on of those in power now that so many of the initial rumours surrounding the "Chengdu Incident" have been confirmed by the PRC state media. A lot of people, myself included, had been inclined to pooh-pooh the Weibo rumour machine - particularly after the fiasco surrounding last year's supposed death of Jiang Zemin, which I was also initially taken in by. Reporting on rumours in China, so long as they are clearly marked as such, seems A-OK to me.

There's also a couple of lessons in this for China expats and China watchers:

• Stay away from the CCP and its affairs. I always get a sinking feeling when I hear of an expat going to work for the Chinese government, be it in a state media organ like China Radio International, or in some other capacity. A foreign passport is no protection against CCP shenanigans and you cannot expect your own government to press too hard when there are no immediate national interests in doing so. The line I was told in Nanjjing in 2003 about it being much worse to be falsely accused of spying than to be accurately accused of spying, since no government will be willing to arrange an exchange for a non-spy, remains very true.
• The essential political system of the People's Republic of China is still Leninist - that is to say, power is still reserved to a 'revolutionary vanguard party' exercising 'democratic centralism', or in plain language, a one-party dictatorship. Since 1989 it has been common for governing teams to serve a ten-year term, but this is in no way set in stone. If at any point it suits the top leadership of the CCP to give someone the shove this will be done regardless of public opinion or position - popular or not, seemly or not, and any weapon that can be used against them will be used.

Finally, Boxun (a Chinese emigre rumour-mill) is now carrying rumours (there's that word again) that Zhou Yongkang, the PRC Politburo's main enforcer, is next in line for attitude-correction, and that, as I had suspected since I first knew that the post-2012 politburo would include Bo in a non-top-two position, Bo may have been thinking of a coup:

"Insiders say Zhou had met Bo several times in Beijing, Chongqing and Chengdu, planning to prepare him for promotion to secretary of the Political and Legislative Affairs Committee later this year. If the plan succeeded, they would potentially be able to take power from Xi Jinping, who is expected to take over as the party's general secretary, within two years. Zhou reportedly told Bo and Wang that Xi was too timid and thus not suitable to lead the country. He suggested Bo take advantage of his media power and public support to seize power by 2014."

If this report is true (something which is obviously unknowable at the moment), it appears that Bo and Zhou may well have gravely misjudged the Xi/Li team - or the people who picked them for power, the Hu/Wen partnership.

[Picture: Bo Xilai, disgraced former politburo member, Via Wiki]

Cry "Havoc!", and let slip the comments of war . . .

I'm going to take the leash off for a while and see what happens. Some ground rules:

1) I know it says 'blogspot' in the URL, but this blog is mine and I reserve the right to delete any comment I like without prior warning. That said, with the exception of two individuals (see below) I have almost never deleted a comment on this blog without it being spam advertising.

2) Chris Devonshire-Ellis remains banned. Anyone else who sends me unsolicited and groundless emails filled with threats of physical violence will get the same treatment.

3) Wayne Lo/Mark Lau/'Mongol Warrior'/'Yihetuan' is banned. His rage-filled racist comments may be allowed by Hidden Harmonies, but they are not welcome here.

Any complaints - hit me up via email.

[See here for Marlon Brando's awesomely over-the-top performance of Scene 1, Act III of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar]

Foxconn: Cut the BS

Let me tell you about a company I'm familiar with:

- In this company it's typical for an employee to have to work 12-15 hours a day, 6 or 7 days in a row without being paid overtime.

- In this company managers have been known to physically abuse employees with slaps about the face as a form of punishment. This is in addition to regular dressings-down of staff in front of their peers using insulting language.

- In this company employees must attend daily 'meetings' which actually take the form of being harangued by management with meaningless slogans.

- In this company even smiling in the work-place is discouraged as it may lead others to think you are 'unserious' about your work.

- In this company employees are regularly fired for little or no warning on a whim. One moment they're at their workplace, the next their out on their ears with no compensation due to the laxity of local laws.

- This company's customers include several household-name brands.

Foxconn, right? Wrong - actually it's a law firm outside of China (and no, I'm not saying which one). Despite the impression that some people now seem to have, working for Foxconn is not nearly so bad as working in a firm like the one described above.

The matter of Mike Daisey, a US journalist who essentially fabricated most of the details in a report he made about the Foxconn plant, has been dealt with well enough elsewhere - and I personally never listened to the report in the first place and therefore have little to add to the debate except to say that he should have been caught out earlier.

What I have seen is people commenting about the terrible conditions at Foxconn as though it were some modern-day GULAG. At least according to my experience of working at their plant in Longhua, Shenzhen from early 2006 to late 2007, this is groundless. In fact, whilst I there's certainly elements of the corporate culture there I would criticise (particularly the militaristic nature of the induction training) the basic working conditions I saw at Foxconn were not much worse than those on the average factory estate I worked on during my student days in the UK.

This is not to say that there is nothing to criticise about Foxconn. The incident in which they tried to silence a report by two journalists working for China Business News by having their assets frozen and suing them for more than 3 million US dollars in damages, only to then drop the case, was shameful. Particularly telling was Foxconn's omiting to sue the UK's Daily Mail, which came out with a similar report at the same time. The case of the employee who reportedly committed suicide after loosing a valuable prototype was, to say the least, suspicious. The explosion at their Chengdu facility, apparently due to powdered aluminium being loose in the air, is of course a cause of concern even if overall safety standards are good by local standards.

It's just that when I see people (usually internet commentators) complaining about workers voluntarily working a 10 or 12-hour days, I have to wonder whether they have ever stepped foot inside the average factory in their own country - or even the average law firm. If they had, they would have seen plenty of people in conditions almost as 'terrible'.

Calls for a boycott are particularly vacuous, as I said back in '09:

"You do not help 300,000 people by putting them out of work, you do not encourage better working conditions and practices by taking business away from what is probably among the most generous employers in Shenzhen and giving it to another China-based firm which may actually be worse. The people who work for Foxconn do so voluntarily, the workers are almost entirely fresh high-school and university graduates from provinces in the Chinese interior who send whatever money they can save to their families in an effort to improve their lot. They mainly look on the chance to work there as a great opportunity to gain experience - and many of them do gain valuable experience which they then take to other potentially better paying companies like Huawei."

Again - this isn't to say "don't criticise Foxconn", but just that when doing so, don't do so on grounds which are essentially BS.

[Picture: A visualisation of safety conditions and renumeration of workers at Foxconn's Longhua facility, adapted from this twitpic]

Reform Or Risk Another Cultural Revolution

Wen Jiabao's message couldn't be clearer:

"We must press ahead with both economic reform and political structural reform, especially reform in the leadership system of our party and country," Wen said at his annual press briefing at the end of the yearly session of China's largely rubber-stamp parliament.

"Reform has reached a critical stage. Without successful political structural reform, it is impossible for us to fully institute economic structural reform and the gains we have made in this area may be lost.

"The new problems that have cropped up in China's society will not be fundamentally resolved, and such historical tragedies as the Cultural Revolution may happen again."

I have in the past been critical of Wen. When all's said and done, he's still a chief functionary within a dictatorial apparatus. However, this appears to be a very clear call for political reform, and the most forceful pro-reform speech I can remember coming from any CCP official since Deng Xiaoping. Given Bo Xilai's love of Cultural Revolution-like events (although lacking the violence and anti-elite message of the original) it is also a clear dig at the direction in which Bo would like to take the country. This speech can only be welcomed.

"The Persian Paradox"

Currently in Helsinki on business, about which more anon, but in the meantime I cannot recommend enough this interview with Wang Fengbo, a former editor at Deutsche Welle, over at JR's Place. Money Quote:

Q - Let’s suppose the Welle takes this approach: advocating human rights, becoming very explicit about human rights violations in China at times, and maybe this, too, would offend many Chinese listeners. This would – if my guesswork is correct – still spell rather reduced traffic on the Welle’s Chinese website. But you can’t make traffic the only criterion, can you? Isn’t there a risk of losing your own way as a broadcaster, if you keep toning down your message until the audience is satisfied?

A - I really love this question! For this is the question we, the former online colleagues, have discussed a thousand times! We are usually already one step closer to an answer if we have raised the question. The problem of the Chinese department since the later months of 2008 has been that you risk your “political correctness” if you dare to ask which appoach serves the goal of DW better.

Furthermore I think we shall distinguish advocacy journalism from advocacy of human rights. To say that I am not a fan of advocacy journalism is not to say I am against advocating human rights. That is a big difference. This is rather a question of the path to goal, not the goal itself.

I don’t doubt that DW has a mission to advocate human rights, comparable to the so-called value-oriented foreign policy of the federal government of Germany. But does it necessarily mean that you must do this by not caring about your website traffic anymore? If you have zero traffic, how could you then promote your great values?

. . . . .

This is something I call the “Persian-paradox”, in some joking way. I was told by a colleague about how the Persian language department of DW has responded to such kinds of questions. [...] During the protest wave around 2009 in Iran, they firstly achieved a relatively high record of visits, but this should have made them feel uneasy. And days later the Persian website of DW was blocked in Iran and they should have felt a great release by telling around in House of DW the good news: “we are also blocked!”

I cannot tell if the story is true. But I do believe, be it just a fiction, it can best illustrate the dilemma or paradox of DW. I guess the logic behind this should be: If you are not blocked yet, you are not sufficiently politically correct. The compulsory logical conclusion out of this state of mind is a clear one: The DW [outlets] can [only be proved] morally good enough by zero traffic from their target-countries. Isn’t this a new form of cold-war mindset? Shall DW be satisfied with the role as a monologue-talker?"

(emphasis added)


Of course when even people like Shaun Rein find that their works are refused distribution in China you can ask if it is all that easy to judge what will get you blocked or not, but it is worth asking what the point of broadcasting things that will be blocked is when you are trying to reach the Chinese public.

Tomorrow's Taiwan Weather Forecast: Rainy with chance of attempted assasination

Who's going to win tomorrow's Taiwanese election? I genuinely don't know - the latest polls had Ma either a few percentage points ahead or one behind depending on who you ask.

Who should win it? I'm definitely not anti-Ma, in fact, in as much as a non-citizen, non-resident should have an opinion on this, I supported Ma Yingjiu against Hsieh in the last election - whatever his failings, he remains a smart guy, and a moderate leader. All the same, Tsai Yingwen also has some very good qualities - she's also a moderate, and also smart.

Who would I pick, then? For me it would be Tsai - it would mark a return to the mainstream for the DPP that would prevent a lurch towards extremism (or being unrealistically idealistic, if you want to put it that way). Also very important is that should she win, she would be the first woman in the Chinese-speaking world to become a legitimate, de jure leader of her country since Wu Zetian.

The one thing we don't want to see is another repeat of the failed assassination shenanigans that marred the 2004 and 2008 elections - but even if they don't recur, it seems almost inevitable that the losers will accuse the winners of rigging the results.

[Picture: Wu Zetian, the last de jure female leader in the Chinese-speaking world. Via Wiki.]

What the Taiwanderful poll tells you about the state of the Taiwanese blogosphere

In short: bad. The top two blogs (Free Taiwan and Letters from Taiwan) represent the polarised extreme of either side of Taiwan's political debate.

On the pro-pan blue side, Free Taiwan seems to specialise in accusing the DPP's Tsai Yingwen of being a traitor. Here's a sample:

"Tsai Ing-wen has proven many times that she is a traitor to the Republic of China – turns out she also betrays those of her supporters, who one day want to establish a so called “republic of taiwan” . What Tsai Ing-wen and her extremist clique of supporters have in mind is selling Taiwan to the United States of America."

And what was the catalyst for this rant? It was the appearance of a US flag amongst the crowd at a DPP rally.

On the pro-pan-green side we have the marginally more sane Letters From Taiwan, who carries on the time-honoured tradition of interpreting boiler-plate statements by KMT officials as signalling a program of surrender to the mainland authorities:

"Ma is sending a coded message that 100 years from now, ROC citizens will thank ‘you’ (read: ‘mainlanders’ and ROC loyalists) for having the wisdom and courage to push for a unified China once again under ROC, read KMT, patronage. Taiwan and Taiwanese will thank their lucky stars that they chose a President who had the courage to push for the only solution to facing an aggressive authoritarian neighbour - surrender."

What exactly was it that Ma said? Here's the offending paragraph:

“We are confident that when the next generation speaks of the marvel of Asia’s and mainland China’s rise, it will certainly also feel pride in the rise of Taiwan and the rise of the ROC. A century from now when ROC citizens think back on us, it will be wonderful if they can say: ‘How lucky that Taiwan had you.”

I guess the high degree of polarisation in the Taiwanese blogosphere can be excused by the highly polarised nature of Taiwanese politics itself, however, one does expect foreign observers to have a degree of detachment from local politics which is not actually apparent in Taiwan at the moment. Perhaps this explodes the myth that expat observers are likely to be more neutral or objective than their local counterparts. Whatever the cause, I think I can be forgiven for longing for more adult behaviour than what passes for political debate in the Taiwanese blogosphere at the moment.