What can one say?

Fascism.

Amazing!

Somalian pirates are running rings around the navies of the great powers, but an ingenious Chinese crew managed to fight of a band of machine-gun toting seadogs with beer bottles. Now why didn't anyone else think of that?



"I'll have a dozen bottles of your finest pirate-repellent please!"

Fenqing, defined.

Anyone who's been following the recent feeling-hurting spat between China and France in the Sino-blogosphere will have seen the article "Sorry, I will not boycott French goods" by blogger Liao Baoping (click here for the full ESWN translation, and here for the discussion thread on Fool's Mountain). Liao Baoping (who I haven't been able to find out that much about - any help?) received much in the way of approbrium for his article, here's what he had to say about it (translation by ESWN):

The classical patriots are rarely nationalistic angry young people [i.e., Fenqing]. Among the angry young people, nationalism is inside the core while patriotism is the outside packaging. When the inner core explodes, the outside packaging expands as well. The two frequently evolve together in a highly visible manner. Sometimes, it is fascinating to watch the process.

The extreme narcissism of nationalism can become a kind of mental disease. In the 1980's, Erich Fromm wrote in The Fear of Freedom:

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. "Patriotism" is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by „patriotism“ I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one‘s own nation, which is the concern with the nation‘s spiritual as much as with its material welfare-never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one‘s country which is not part of one‘s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.

In this heated debate over whether to boycott French goods or not, the various flaws of the angry young people manifested themselves in accordance with this quotation. If the angry young people tried to love their country in this way, the result is hurt and not love.

Some people both love and hate the angry young people. Therefore, they elevate them and then denigrate them afterwards; or they denigrate them and then elevate them afterwards. They keep alternating their attitudes (fortunately for them, the angry young people are usually forgetful). While nationalism does have the passionate force of idolatry, it tries to override humanity, truth and justice, and it can therefore become a force of destruction. Nationalism is a twin-bladed sword, and therefore it must be handled with extreme care. Otherwise, the angry young people can hurt the country tremendously.

Greatest. Danwei. Post. Ever!

Danwei tracks how many countries have 'hurt the feelings of the Chinese people' in the last few decades according to Chinese officialdom. Amazing!

Life imitates FOARP . . .

The first phase of Axl Rose's plan to take over China is complete: he has made the Chinese irate . . .

Chris Devonshire-Ellis is NOT a lawyer . . . .

This needs to be said over and over and over, and over. The man does not even have a law degree, despite what he has claimed in the past. Yes, he continues to make claims to be a legal professional - like in this comment at Silicon Hutong[link now broken, see updates for details]:

"I've been practicing on matters of China law and tax for over 16 years for goodness sakes - and just like any other expatriate lawyer - have not passed Chinese qualifications to do so."

For the record, Chris Devonshire Ellis is not registered as a legal professional anywhere, has not completed any formal schooling in law, or accountancy, or tax, or any area of study associated with them. He is not a registered trademark agent or patent agent. He has no professional qualifications of any kind. For a long time he claimed to have received "Church of England theology education", which, translated into English, apparently means that he went to a Church of England primary school, but this seems to be the limit of his education.

I'd like to go further, but first a little house-keeping. No, I have never met Chris Devonshire-Ellis, I am not associated with Lehman-Brown, the firm with which he had a long running dispute over meta-tagging (something which may or may not be trademark infringement), I am not a disgruntled former employee of his (although there seem to be more than a few of these). No, I'm just annoyed at seeing a man with such obviously dodgy credentials treated as an expert by people who ought to know better. His laughable pieces in the Beijing press on legal matters are a prime example of this. Here's him on IP protection in China in the Beijing Review:

"There is, however, a hole in the registration procedure for patents, which require they be registered and placed on public file for assessment prior to the patent being recognized as your own intellectual property. This means some entrepreneurial types scan such registrations specifically to steal designs and then immediately get into production even while your patent pending process is still ongoing."

The whole purpose of the patenting process is that we, the public, get to learn how to use an invention in exchange for granting the inventor the right to exercise a monopoly over the commercial exploitation of the invention. This system cannot work unless patents and patent applications are made available to the public, so that they can know in good time to avoid infringing the patent.

His knowledge of trademark law also seems a little off, for the record, the next time anyone says that they can get you a mainland China trademark by "going to the patent and trademark office in Wan Chai [i.e., in HK]", they likely don't know what they're talking about. I'm not qualified to say anything about taxes or accountancy, except to say that a company registered as a book-keeping company is not where I would go for advice on my company's future.

Final thought - always do due diligence on consultants, especially in a market with a still developing regulatory structure like China, because shysters abound.

Update: Wow, thank you to my anonymous commenter (email me whoever you are) I checked out Chris Devonshire-Ellis's Linkedin page. Yes, this is going a bit deeper into things than I would normally be comfortable with, but it really is amazing that someone could claim to have an LLB and then make this comment:

if you had researched further into that you would have found that the reason I took it down WAS precisely because it was wrong. The circumstances behind my not completing my exams at the time - more than three-quarters through my papers - however you are not aware of and it is not something I either wish to or have to justify to you, or anyone else. Suffice to say it had a lot to do with family tragedy and little to do with "fake".

So, the Dezhira website was wrong when they listed CDE as having graduated separately in law and marketing from two different universities, but CDE then goes and lists himself as having a law degree on his own Linkedin page.

Update part 2:

Silicon Hutong have taken that page down, but we all saw it folks, CDE clearly contradicted himself, and his previous statements regarding his qualifications.

Pure Crazy-Sauce

This from American commentator Dick Morris over at Real Clear Politics:

The results of the G-20 economic summit amount to nothing less than the seamless integration of the United States into the European economy. In one month of legislation and one diplomatic meeting, the United States has unilaterally abdicated all the gains for the concept of free markets won by the Reagan administration and surrendered, in toto, to the Western European model of socialism, stagnation and excessive government regulation. Sovereignty is out the window. Without a vote, we are suddenly members of the European Union. Given the dismal record of those nations at creating jobs and sustaining growth, merger with the Europeans is like a partnership with death.

Yeah, that's right, the G20 meeting was actually a surrender to a 'socialist' and 'dying' Europe. Never mind the fact that the meeting actually acheived little, or that the proposed regulations would largely return the US to where it was in the nineties, or that Western Europe is far from 'dying' (From 1963 to 2003 per capita GDP in the 29 Western European states rose by an average 156% in real terms, compared to 137% for the US).

Karma . .

Got into a big long argument with a lawyer from TSB a couple of days back about the cause of our current financial crisis. For me, the most incredible thing was the way in which the people doing the actual trading quite obviously had no idea what it was they were buying and selling, that they were essentially extremely well-paid salesmen and buyers for whom it did not matter what exactly is was they were buying and selling. The same kind of phenomenon where politicians win office merely by mouthing catch-phrases and holding forth on button-pushing issues which have little to do with the actual job they will be doing was replicated over and over in the stock market. That's not to say that there aren't plenty of very smart people working in finance, just that they were working within a system which did not (and does not) actually punish them for making long-term bad decisions for short-term gain. Their forecasting had as much to do with the actual value of their stocks as the average job advert is an accurate reflection of what the duties and chances of promotion are in the job advertised (the job market is another field in which style is rewarded over substance, but that's another story). Anyway, I saw this quote on the Andrew Sullivan website which pretty much backed up everything I had been saying:

Sooner rather than later, someone was going to identify me, along with a lot of people more or less like me, as a fraud. Sooner rather than later, there would come a Great Reckoning when Wall Street would wake up and hundreds if not thousands of young people like me, who had no business making huge bets with other people’s money, would be expelled from finance.

Michael Lewis is far from the only person to feel this way, a friend of mine who used to work over at Merill Lynch described Wall Street in pretty similar terms. It would be too easy to simply say that the solution for this (and for politics, and for recruitment) is less tolerance for BS, but is sure would help.

Dateline: 23rd of November, Guns 'n Roses releases new album "Chinese Democracy", CCP surrenders . . . . .

"We're surrendering" said Chinese Communist Party supremo Hu Jintao. "For a long time we thought people in the west were secretly on our side, but now that even Axl has turned against us, we now realise that resistance is useless . . . you guys win . . . I'm going to go and drown my sorrows in Johnny Walker's mixed with shitty-tasting green tea".

There were shocking scenes at Tiananmen square today, where Axl Rose had appeared to give his first speech as President of China, Axl Rose set out his plans for the country. "My first act is going to be launching a nuclear strike against the former band members . . sorry for anyone within ten miles of those lame-ass wannabes, but they had it comin'". At this point a 1 Yuan coin was thrown from the crowd, Axl gave a signal for the mic to be cut and walked off stage muttering "Send in the tanks, you know what to do!".

With martial law in full effect, Axl and his minions set about their plan to create "The rocking-est country on the whole damned planet". First to go was the national anthem, which has been replaced by the ridiculously long guitar solo from November Rain. The national flag has also been consigned to the dustbin of history, to be replaced by the original album cover from Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet.

Freedom of speech and assembly, which enjoyed a brief period of liberalisation following the fall of the Communist Party, restrictions on human rights are now fully back in effect. Whilst human rights groups like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have looked on with dismay, Chinese university students have enthusiastically joined the revolution that is sweeping the country. One student with dyed ginger hair sporting a headband who identified himself as Fandy Hu of Nanjing University of Knitwear and Needlework, said "Axl Rose's leadership is very to fitting the Chinese country, we all to welcome our new Chinese democracy, if you to criticise Axl then you hate China!"

Neighbouring countries are increasingly fearful that the revolution will spread beyond China's borders. Bakht Inbolok, Kyrgyz foreign minister, has already reported sightings of large formations of PLA soldiers in Flaming Lips-style hamster balls massing along the border. "Axl plans to turn our country into one big swimming pool, but will fight to the last man to stop him!".

Western governments are monitoring the situation.

Sign of the times . . . . .

Has anyone else started receiving spam email messages from people proporting to be representatives of Huatex or the Hang Seng bank but sent using Gmail addresses? Either the (mainly west African) spammers have gotten wise to everybody simply deleting anything with a Nigerian-sounding name in it, or folk in China are setting up on their own - which is it?

I'm going to assume the irony here is intentional . . .

. . . Allen from over at Fool's Mountain:

I agree with basically everything you said. I think the PRC is really going out of its way to bend backwards for the Taiwanese people by giving Taiwan such a long leash on political autonomy - by implicitly agreeing to attack Taiwan only if Taiwan formally declares independence. Some people just can’t see a good thing even when it is shoved right under their nose!

An amateur's take on the big China bust

Posted this as a comment over at CLB as a reply to gloomy predictions of a 20-30 year slump in the China market from China Vortex's Paul Denlinger, but I thought I'd put it up here as well just so I can look at it a few years down the line and see how much of it is true:

The best way of seeing the effect of a recession in the US/EU on Chinese growth is to look at the effect that previous Euro-American recessions have had on boom economies like Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. A review of the period 1971-1991 (that is, covering both the world energy crisis, the recession of the early eighties, and the crash of '87) shows two years in which real per capita GDP declined in western Europe (1974-75, 1980-81), with the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand also suffering two periods of decline (1973-75 and 1980-83). In the same period, the Taiwan suffered only one decline (1973-75), South Korean per capita GDP also only saw decline in 1980-81, Japan declined only in 1973-74. What does all this show us? Mainly that while export-led growth economies are sensitive to world economic crises like the oil shortage, they aren't very sensitive to financial crises in the west. In the period 1987-91 Western European per capita GDP grew by only 4.3%, and US GDP grew by only 4.7%, but in the same period Taiwanese per capita GDP grew by 16.2%, Japan by 19% and South Korea by a whopping 36%.

Paul Denlinger's analysis seems to presume that the Chinese economy is especially sensitive to a US slowdown, but I'm not exactly sure why he should think this. The US is actually a smaller market for Chinese exports than the EU, and tighter money is likely to increase sales of cheaply manufactured goods - at least relative to more expensive high-quality goods. China also has big pockets with which the government can make up for any economic slowdown through public spending on infrastructure etc. The only thing that could damage the Chinese economy is greater protectionism in the west (say, a re-play of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs), however the WTO and other trade agreements stand in the way of this.

Put simply, China's exports to the west would continue to increase even if western economies stood still for the next ten years, because these exports are driven mainly by western consumers switching from more expensive sources to cheaper Chinese ones.

Finally, if back in 1978 we had all sat around and tried to suss out how the world economy would be doing in the distant year of 2008, we would surely have gotten a lot of things dead wrong - 30 year predictions aren't worth much.

Xinhua predicts the future, part 2

Having already safely forseen the morning ceremonies on the opening day of the Olympics, Xinhua performs new feats in divining the exact words spoken by China's astronauts in orbit. Amazing!

New year's day . . . .

September has always been the month of change in my life, far more so that the year's end you'll see on a calendar, just as (uber blogger) Andrew Sullivan says, September is the real start of the year. This September has brought it's own changes - last week I started the Common Professional Exam course with an eye towards becoming a solicitor. Patenting was OK but I'm not sure I really wanted to spend the rest of my working life trying to spot differences between different types of hinges, and my lack of a PhD was also holding me back, I always preferred the legal aspects of IP anyway. Let's hope that change really is as good as a rest!