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.

Gordon Chang: The pundit who cried wolf

I first read of Gordon G. Chang back in my Taiwan days when various editorialists in the Taipei Times used to trumpet his claim that the government of the People's Republic of China was facing inevitable collapse due to an imminent financial crisis which would be caused by non-performing loans lent out by state-owned banks. After arriving in Nanjing in 2003, I very quickly decided that Chang and others were exaggerating the degree of opposition to the government in mainland China, and that the financial crisis predicted by Chang was unlikely due not least to the financial strength of the government.

However, Chang is now back with fresh predictions of impending doom within the next year:

"Since late September, economic indicators -- electricity consumption, industrial orders, export growth, car sales, property prices, you name it -- are pointing toward either a flatlining or contracting economy. Money started to leave the country in October, and Beijing's foreign reserves have been shrinking since September.

As a result, we will witness either a crash or, more probably, a Japanese-style multi-decade decline."

I agree that all the indicators look bad at the moment, but the fundamentals that have kept the Chinese economy chugging forward - most notably a cheap, well-educated workforce - are still there. Even the relatively pessimistic forecasts show an average per capita GDP growth rate of 5% year-on-year by 2016 - something that is far from a disaster.

More to the point though, Chang's prediction of collapse of the Chinese government within the next year has several conceptual problems that need examining:

• Firstly, if China is due for a "a Japanese-style multi-decade decline", then this does not at all mean that a massive crash of the kind that would shake the government will occur next year.
• Secondly, countries with communist political systems such as mainland China's have weathered very harsh economic crises without the government falling. Cuba and North Korea in the wake of the collapse of the USSR are stark examples of this, but we also see examples in Central Europe - Poland during the 1970's being one.
• Thirdly, even if serious unrest does occur, the Chinese state has overcome such movements in the past and would stand every chance of doing so again. In 1989 there was essentially no limit to the willingness of the Chinese leadership to use force to suppress opposition, even if great bloodshed resulted, and there is every reason to believe that the leaders due to take power next year are of the same temperament.

Put simply, whilst I do think pessimists like Chang may have a point and that at some point their predictions may come true (hence the title) I don't think it will be any time soon, at least not in the next year.

Anyway, now for a G&T and a mince pie to ring in the new year!

[Picture: A photo of only the second public statue of Mao Ze Dong I have seen in seven years on-and-off of travelling in China. Taken during my trip to Chengdu in June, about which more later]

Shaun Rein: "Shame on CNN . . I have no idea if Chen’s being wronged or not"

This latest piece by ultra-apologist Shaun Rein on Christian Bale getting roughed up on-camera really does take the cake:

"CNN’s China team, in a complete failure of journalistic integrity, decided last week to become the news rather than just report it. The actor Christian Bale called CNN to follow him as he drove for eight hours to confront police to try to see Chen Guangcheng, a blind legal activist being held in his home in the eastern Chinese village of Linyi. Bale was in China to promote his movie about the Rape of Nanking by Japanese troops in 1937.

CNN did Bale one better. It became complicit in Bale’s activism by actually planning the trip and driving him to Linyi. CNN reporter Steven Jiang then translated for Bale as he argued with Chinese police officers and refused to comply with their directives to leave.

. . . .

Bale and CNN’s publicity stunt indicts an entire political system without delving deeper into the reality of Chen’s detention and the interplay between the central and local governments. I have no idea about Chen’s detention, and if he is being wronged or not, but if there are issues with his case, I am not convinced that calling the entire political class “disgusting,” as Bale does, can help."

Let's leave aside Rein's plugging elsewhere in the article of his yet-to-be-published book which (at least judging by the title) has nothing to do with the issues discussed in the piece. Let's also leave aside the fact that the "police men" in the video never identified themselves as such, and delivered their "directives to leave" with their fists.

Instead, let's simply focus on what Rein's saying here. Basically, Rein feels quite qualified to pass judgement on what exactly the journalistic standards are that CNN should obey. He also feels perfectly qualified to say whether a camera team that follows an activist is "complicit in [their] activism". However, on the question of whether it is correct to keep an innocent man and his family under house arrest without charge or acknowledgement of arrest, and to beat up those attempting to see him, he suddenly does not feel qualified to pass judgement.

That's right, a man who feels free to comment on everything from the levels of 'real' poverty in China, to who should win the Nobel Peace Prize (answer: Deng Xiaoping, no, really), to whether or not Chelsea Clinton's wedding affected her mothers diplomatic activities, suddenly finds himself unable to say whether an innocent blind man should be imprisoned without charge.

Is this informed commentary? Is this even the attitude of a responsible adult? Or is it instead transparent, self-interested, and cynical shilling for the PRC government - the government that Rein has elsewhere boasted of his connections with, and which is keeping a blind man and his family under house arrest without justification?

I'm not saying that Rein should necessarily have to write about Chen Guangcheng. I'm also not saying that CNN's tactics did not have a certain element of theatre in them - although in my opinion this was justified given the circumstances, since the best way of showing that everyone who tries to see Chen Guangcheng is attacked is to do it yourself.

What I am criticising here is the thinly disguised attempt by Rein to use his Forbes column as a platform to attack Bale and CNN whilst claiming total ignorance of the circumstances surrounding their actions - circumstances which even casual observers of China are already quite aware of. Both the piece itself and Rein's apparent motives for writing it are utterly discreditable, and he should disown them.

Beijing

Since I'm now on holiday back in (not very) sunny old Blighty, I thought I'd take the time to describe some of my travels from earlier this year. First off is the visit I made to Beijing as part of a business trip in June.

I'd last visited the city when my parents came to visit China in 2005 when, to say the least, my impressions of the city had been somewhat mixed. Whilst I had enjoyed my visit to the museums and the Forbidden City - which was then still in a slight state of disrepair but also a wonderful oasis of quiet in the city - I had found the pollution and politicised atmosphere of the city a bit oppressive compared to, say, Shanghai.

Fast-forwarding six years to the post-Olympics age the city had changed in some ways but not in others. The politicised atmosphere of the capital is still there, the pollution is seemingly worse (at least to my totally untrained eyes), but the new construction in the city has led to obvious benefits in terms of improved transportation, if not always in terms of aesthetics.

However, once business was concluded, my experience of the city this time was rather more laid back. Without the rush to take in all the sights, I was first able to spend an enjoyable lunch with a fellow former Nanjingtonian, and then an evening enjoying the peaceful vibe down at edge of lake Houhai - very touristy for sure, but as a tourist I could hardly complain.

After that, as well as after several misadventures with taxi drivers who did not seem to know the first thing about their city's layout, I met up with some friends at Nearby The Tree, a Beijing expat bar, and whiled away the hours until quite late shooting pool and drinking Belgian beers with the owner. I got on to my flight back to Poland over a stunningly beautiful Siberia the next day hung-over but contented.

So has my experience sold me on Beijing? I'm afraid I'm still something of a sceptic - the pollution is still a bit of a problem for me, but I can see myself being converted.

[Picture: The Beijing skyline as seen from my hotel window]

Vaclav Havel on the tears in Pyongyang

Right on the money:

“The manager of a fruit and vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment’s thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?

……

That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper ‘decoration’ in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life ‘in harmony with society’, as they say.

……

Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan, ‘I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient’, he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth.”

Watching the pictures of North Koreans crying over the death of Kim Il-Sung on the BBC here in the UK where I'm back for my Christmas holiday, I, and everyone in the room with me, could not prevent ourselves from laughing at the obvious fakeness of it all. It is impossible to believe that any of those crying are doing so genuinely, instead the tears communicate a distinct message: ‘I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient’.

[Picture: Vaclav Havel (5th October 1936 - 18th December 2011), photo by Henryk Prykiel, via Wikicommons]

Interview

See here.

The 21st of November, 2001.

[This is one of those personal posts, so if that's not your bag, just watch the video below, it's got balloons and stuff in it]



Ten years ago today I took the first long-distance flight of my life. Having never left the UK except on brief holidays, I was setting out to spend a year (or more, but not much more) in Taiwan. My goal was to learn Chinese, I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with it, but I thought that knowing another language, and spending time in a totally different place, would make me a wholly more rounded person and be great fun to boot.

The plane was almost empty, perhaps the effect of the events of two months before, or more likely because it was the overnight flight, but I didn't get much sleep on the way. Peering out of the window high over Sichuan, I caught my very first glimpse of the red soil of China through a gap in the clouds.

Catching my connection in Hong Kong the next day, I then saw the green terraced hills of Taiwan appear all of a sudden beneath the right (starboard?) wing of the plane, and before I knew it I was stepping off the plane into what was then still called Chiang Kai Shek International Airport.

Since it was mostly spent in places thousands of miles away, with friends and acquaintances it is hard to imagine ever being reunited again - some of whom are now unfortunately beyond all reach, in towns and cities which fast-paced development has rendered quite different, many of the events of the intervening ten years now seem like they happened to someone else.

It is now a little hard to believe that I really once went to an aboriginal wedding with my good friend The Writing Baron and others, got merrily sloshed, and then all bundled off for a swim in a mountain lake. The night we staggered back from Kenny's after celebrating new year's eve there just in time to hear Big Ben ring in the new year eight time zones away now seems equally improbable. The deserted Nanjing city-centre during the SARS crisis, and the sudden rush of striking workers onto the street in Longhua, Shenzhen, both seem like things I might have once seen in a film rather than with my own eyes. Did I really cram myself into subway cars in Tokyo and Osaka in which it was literally impossible to move every morning for months on end? Was that really me at that Sakura party in the park next to Osaka castle? Or at that beach party on the Inland Sea? And what exactly am I now doing in Poland?

Ten years ago today I became an expat, and even though I spent roughly three years of the intervening time in the UK, I never really stopped being one. Despite the occasional periodic cycle of funk, I've enjoyed my years on (and off) the road. At some point I know I'm going to have to stop, but for the moment, the decision I made ten years ago still looks like a good one.

Another mind-bendingly bad policy on immigration

I don't have much to say about this proposed policy that would prevent British citizens bringing foreign-born spouses or children into the UK on family visas unless they are making over the median wage. Just that, for anyone familiar with people who have become married whilst overseas, and who then move home to find work, you're basically telling them that they cannot live with their spouses and children permanently in their own home country until they earn more than 50% of the British population.

These policies are usually suggested on the Goldilocks principle - a horribly excessive policy is suggested in order to get people to accept a less strict policy. Therefore it seems likely that if any such policy is implemented, it will set the bar somewhat lower.

However, even such a "just right" version of this policy would be a failure because the British government can no longer restrict immigration from mainland Europe. Such a policy would, anyway, only prevent people entering the country legally, without having any effect on illegal immigration.

Hidden Harmonies' Raventhorn: Let's have a Cultural Revolution

Here's Raventhorn on why the Cultural Revolution really wasn't all that bad:

[T]otally agree that CR created a “can do” mentality. Chiefly, CR was a literal “reset” on the Chinese socio-economic paradigm, and any good “reset” requires almost a complete shut down of the system, to get everyone back to the starting line, to get rid of all the negative baggages [sic] (and some of the good), so that people can rediscover and decide what are good and bad.

Hard “resets” (from revolutions) I think are necessary.

. . . .

If you are [r]ich and you deserve to be because you are smart and you work hard, then you can start all over again and get to the same place. (But I don’t think the [r]ich today are willing to do that).

A CR every now and then, answers that type of questions [sic]. (If some of the CR’s excessive abuses can be avoided, I would recommend it every 50 years or 2 generations)."

Since China's last Cultural Revolution started roughly 45 years ago, I guess Raventhorn thinks it's just about due one today.

Really, people criticise me for giving publicity to what goes on at Hidden Harmonies, but I believe the true insanity of many US-based Chinese nationalists deserves to be exposed. The idea that some people have that there is some equality in an argument between people who criticise corruption and advocate democracy, and those who blithely talk about burning whole cities, is a totally false one.