the blog of the guy who wrote

that book about china

It is true that I originally wanted to title my book, “The China Game.” It was the name of my blog, and there was an important idea in there — that so much of what goes on in China is a head game. After working in China for a number of years, my worldview had changed, and I saw in everything from business to politics nothing but gamesmanship.

China Daily has recently picked up the “game” idea, but for propaganda meant to broaden how China interprets naval rights at borders. From an article titled, “Encounters at Sea Set for ‘Game Rules:’”

“New game rules must be written, and this is the key mission at the moment,” he said. Sino-US sea disputes intensified under the current rules because of differing interpretations on the “freedoms of navigation and overflight in an exclusive economic zone (EEZ)”, which was set by UN conventions.

This is not quite good-bye to The China Game, by the way, but it’s coming. While I broadcast at this site — PM.com — the RSS feed has been available at TCG.com for some time, as well. Not for much longer, though. I’ve kept TCG’s RSS feed going only for the sake of those who couldn’t be bothered with setting up the new feed. After a while, the original location will disappear. Sad to see such a robust domain name head to the dustbin? Not really. Like so much that comes out of China, it wasn’t really built to last.

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Hundreds turned out for China’s very first “Gay Pride Festival,” and the event has been touted as a sign of greater openness in China.

While it is certainly nice that the event was pulled off, I have my doubts about how much it means for freedom in China. First, the event was largely organized by the expatriate community, and foreigns were present in disproportionate numbers. And then there was some business about government officials making an effort to prevent it all from happening:

Organizers of China’s first gay pride week were struggling Thursday to find new venues for their events after police in Shanghai warned clubs and bars against joining the planned festival… Police and commercial bureau officials warned a local restaurant of “very severe” consequences if it screened films as part of the festival, says an organizer who asked not to be identified.

China has long been a place where gays and lesbians could feel comfortable, though this is not to say that they have enjoyed a true sense of community. In China, there is less stigma attached with alternative lifestyles, in part because Chinese subscribe to a philosophy of live and let live, and so there has never been as much of a reason to take the fight for awareness out into the streets. Government officials may have preferred that the festivities not be held, but this is not to say that average Chinese care one way or the other about celebrations of this kind.

Gay Pride festivities did not garner much media attention as the news that China is now seeking to limit Internet freedoms through a newly required software installation called Greed Dam Youth Escort. This software would be required on all computers produced in China, and it would facilitate censorship for Chinese citizens. The New York Times responded in an editorial, as though it were a critical, domestic issue:

China has accomplished remarkable things in the past 20 years, including building one of the world’s largest economies. Computers helped speed that development — and will be even more important in the future. So Beijing’s decision to require that all new personal computers sold in China contain software that bars access to certain Internet content seems particularly self-destructive and foolish.

Western newspapers have been going nuts over the Internet story, and I believe that it is in part an expression of frustrations — because they have been proven wrong about China. Journalists have been promising us that things are getting better in China, and yet here we have a sign that things are actually getting worse!

How bad is China, though, compared with other economies? The price that one pays for expressions of heterodox behaviors can actually be much higher outside of China. Here, I am thinking of controls placed on social norms in the Middle East. In the area of self expression, specifically, consider that from a hotel room in Beijing, a foreigner can suggest on some blog that the Chinese Communist Party can “suck it,” and nothing untoward is likely to happen to that person. Instead, try criticizing the King of Thailand while holed up in Bangkok and see how that works out. Or ask Salman Rushdie how he feels about this particular subject. I have written a book that was critical of happenings China, and yet no fatwa has been issued.

Update: Washington Post has also run an editorial on the issue of the new computer controls, and the link is here.

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Foreign Policy ran a piece in which U.S. International Trade Commission economists suggest that there is no such thing as “Made in China.”

Here’s the punch line…

Although China’s processing export model may be proving a keeper in times of economic crisis, what might need changing is the way we look at trade deficits. With truly global supply chains, perhaps it’s time for a more accurate stamp: “Made Everywhere.”

It’s a Jedi mind trick, a slick argument. It’s a line of thought that, if accepted, means we can no longer have to trouble ourselves with debate or discussion. How could anyone raise issue with China quality failures, for example, when there is no China?

The number of industrial problems out of China are numerous and include: milk, toothpaste, tires, toys, pet food, blood thinner, drywall. The list goes on. It is not accurate in any case to say that these products were made “everywhere,” or that their failures were without a geographic source.

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Metals from China are more likely to include recycled inputs, which means a higher opportunity for contamination. Just caught a news item that highlights the incidence of radioactive materials in everyday consumer products, and it’s definitely worth a look. 

A recent example emerged last summer, when a Flint, Mich., scrap plant discovered a beat-up kitchen cheese grater that was radioactive. The China-made grater bearing the well-known EKCO brand name was laced with the isotope Cobalt-60. Tests showed the gadget to be giving off the equivalent of a chest X-ray over 36 hours of use, according to NRC documents.

Irony, of course, would be a geiger counter that was made in China!

The Scripps News report was filed by Isaac Wolf and can be found at the link here. 

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A friend sent me the link. This image was recently taken from space by an astronauts, and I especially like the level of detail offered:

Astronaut photograph ISS019-E-7720 was acquired on April 15, 2009, with a Nikon 2DXs digital camera fitted with a 180 mm lens.

Some more information on the Three Gorges Dam project… 

A new reservoir is filling in central China. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River—the world’s largest dam—was completed in 2006, and the river is filling up its valley behind the dam to form a narrow reservoir extending more than 600 kilometers. This image from April 15, 2009, is one of the first images that astronauts on the International Space Station have been able to capture of the flooding behind the dam. The main objective for the dam is to supply water for the largest hydroelectric plant in the world and to help control the devastating floodsthat plague the lowlands downstream from the dam.

The epic scale of the dam project is matched by the level of controversy it continues to generate. Concerns about major environmental impacts, the relocation of 1.2 million people, and the flooding of 13 cities, more than 1300 villages, archeological locations, and hazardous waste dumps were raised throughout the planning and implementation. Environmental concerns include increased seismicity from the loading of the water, landslides, changed ecosystems, accumulated pollution, increased chances for waterborne diseases, and salinity changes in the Yangtze estuary.

It doesn’t look all that crowded down there. Does it?

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American politicians are currently debating a bill that would require radio stations to pay a “performer’s royalty” for music when it airs. Until now, the only royalties paid for on-air play were to songwriters who held copyright. 

The idea to pay performers sounds fair and due, but there are problems with the bill. One is that smaller stations may be get squeezed. Already not earning much, some stations will be forced into bankruptcy. The short-term workaround proposed by those pushing the bill has been to grant a three-year grace period to these stations, but this will serve only to postpone the inevitable.

It’s wonderful that performers might also be compensated for radio play, but anything that pushes us towards more consolidation in media can’t be good.

There’s another reason to oppose the bill: The new system might actually provide less incentive to create better songs!

I’m thinking for a moment of the first track on Bruce Springsteen’s first album, one that never went anywhere in a commercial way. “Blinded by the Light” was produced a few years later by Manfred Mann, and that version went all the way to the #1 slot on the Billboard 100. Evidence like that suggests that it’s more about the performer, but you can’t ignore the songwriting…  

Some brimstone baritone, anti-cyclone rolling stone, preacher from the east

He says: “Dethrone the dictaphone, hit it in its funny bone, that’s where they expect it least.”

The United States is one of the few countries that doesn’t pay performer royalties. An editorial in the Detroit Free Press noted that Iran, North Korea, China and Rwanda are all paying artists when their songs are played on the radio. Sounds logical that we would want to offer more rights in some area than these other countries do, but, then again, you don’t hear a lot of foreign songs played on American radio stations.

In China, on the other hand… 

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