Today I am starting my review section with one of the books on Chinese economy that has impressed me most in the last year, “Capitalism with Chinese characteristics”, by MIT professor Huang Yasheng. It is a book that clearly stands out from the recent China books, and it might be destined to become one of the big references in the field.

There is no shortage of good China books in the last years. Many are written from a business perspective, by people with first hand experience who will tell you exactly how things are done here. Others look at the available economic data and build interesting theories to explain them. Few go deeper than this, to look into the heart of the matter: the politics behind the Chinese economy.

The problem is:  it is so difficult to obtain reliable information on Chinese policy that most efforts in this field turn into circular arguments over the same limited data. Professor Huang breaks the circle by going back to the sources and questioning directly all the mainstream assumptions, leaving many of them upside down. The situation in China requires this approach, as he says in the preface:

In studies of American economy, scholars may debate about the effects of, say, “Reagan tax cuts”. In studies of the Chinese economy, the more relevant question would be, “Did the government cut taxes in the first place?

By going back to the archives of what, in his own words is “some of the world’s most medieval record keeping”, Huang Yasheng is able to come up with a whole new picture of Chinese economic policy in the last three decades. This book is the result of painstaking archival research into rarely examined files, such as a “22 volumes compilation of internal bank documents” or the archives of the Ministry of Agriculture.

A qualitative leap from the classic tea leave reading, and one that deserves some careful consideration, even if the conclusions drawn will not be to the taste of every reader. Click to continue »

Last Sunday I did a post on internet censorship in China where I mixed in various different ideas and I’m afraid the final result regarding Search Engine Censorship didn’t come out as clear as I would have liked. I think it is an important subject, so here are the complete results:

We will be looking at Google.cn, Google.com and Baidu.com, and we will try in each of them 3 different kind of search terms.

A- Chrter 08: In all its combinations, which are 08宪章 and 零八宪章
B- Political Terms: Tiananmen incidents (天安门六四事件), FLG.
C- Vulgar words: Sex. I will employ the “blog job” and the “chicken bar”.

It is understood that in all cases the search terms are in Simplified Chinese. The browser is Firefox 3.0.5. and the connection is a normal home DSL by China Telecom. The possible results are:

• Free Search – Results look consistent and realistic, like the ones obtained in the West.
• Reset Connection (RC) – This can only be seen in Mainland China. The result is an image like the one below and the search engine cannot open anymore for a while (I estimate 30 seconds). RC is not directly done by the Search Engine. Wikipedia internal search also gives RCs for B Terms.
• Forbidden Message (FM)  – This is the forbidden Message that, with slight variations, is the same as shown below. It says something in the lines of: “Some results are not displayed according to the local laws, regulations and policies”.
• Manipulated Results (MR)- This is the case where the results are obviously manipulated, for example in the search of 天安门六四事件 (Tiananmen incident) on Baidu, where all the results are official newspapers such as People’s Daily, etc. Sometimes it can also carry on top of the page a FM.

Google.com
A -Free Search.   (But click some individual results gives RC).
B- Reset Connection
C- Manipulated Results.

Google.cn
A- Forbidden Message and (sometimes *) Manipulated Results
B- Reset Connection.
C- Forbidden Message. When used “” gives Manipulated Results.

Baidu.com
A- Manipulated Results. When used “” gives Forbidden Message.
B- FM and Manipulated results.
C-FM and Manipulated Results.

Conclusions

1- The results are somewhat erratic and it is difficult to see a pattern: it all looks like a series of patches on top of each other rather than a systematic implementation. Also, things change in time, as in *, where the Manipulated Result I saw Sunday cannot be seen anymore.

2- Baidu has a different system from Google: it has no Reset Connections. This is very advantageous for Baidu and I understand it is unfair competition, as a RC is one of the worst experiences while surfing.

3- This might be due to Google’s own preference server location: the involvement of the Search Engines in the RC is unclear no direct involvement (even Wikipedia has RCs!) whereas Manipulated Results obviously requires their action, and can more easily attract attention from Advocacy Groups. Of course, in the case of sexual terms (C), this is not a problem as the Manipulated Results can just be called “Safe Search”.

4- The Chrter 08 has different treatment than other political terms, but it might just be because it was banned urgently and suddenly, so it is only a quick fix added to existing structure. It does not provoke RC in any case. It looks like they have decided to leave it alone on Google.com to avoid attention from Western advocacy groups, but in exchange Google has had to give up Google.cn and apply the infamous “porn block” to it which is active censorship by SE. Why the FM and not RC? Who knows, I am guessing perhaps RC is more complicated to implement.

5- In any case, and however negative, I understand it is always better to show FM than Manipulated Results, because the former is openly admitting censorship, whereas the latter is a lie and a distortion of reality. Forbidden Message does increase transparency, yet does not justify involvement in political censorship. From this perspective, Google is closer to the truth than Baidu. Baidu seems indeed a more active participant in the government’s information control schemes, and Chinese users of Baidu are clearly the most exposed to Search Engine brainwash.

UPDATE: Following corrections by international expert Nart Villeneuve below: I have introduced a few changes of my own (in blue). In any case, this post is just a very basic review of the SE Censorship system from the perspective of a normal user. If you really want to understand how the GFW works, you should read proper research papers like this one, or this one.

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IMAGES:

1- FORBIDDEN MESSAGE (FM)

2- RESET CONNECTION (RC)

NOTE: If someone is interested in this or has some more information to share please put it in comments. Unfortunately my time is very limited so I only ran 2 or 3 terms for each of the classes A, B and C above. There might be things I overlooked and I would be grateful if you can point them out.

Last 10th December, a group of Chinese human right activists published a document called Chrter 08,  requiring political reform in the PRC. This document has had surprisingly little impact in the Western media/blogging scene.

There is no telling right now how influential this document is going to be looking into potentially conflictive 2009. In any case, it is a must read for anyone interested in the political evolution of this country. I have spent the little free time that I had last week reading the Charter in its original Chinese form. I am preparing a more detailed post about it, but for the moment, I want to share these  notes:

• There is a translation by professor Perry Link, published on the New York Review of Books, that has been almost the single source for non-chinese speaking readers worldwide. It is the translation used by Wikipedia (unless they accept my change), and also by the mainstream media, including WSJ and Time. I was shocked to see that the translation is not accurate, including in the preamble some references to the Tiananmen incidents that are not on the Chinese original. Has the original been modified, or did Perry Link publish a creative translation, adding juicy  details about his favourite subject? I leave this question open until I find an answer. But needless to say, I think if the translator has consciously altered the content of the document it is a lack of respect for the brave Chinese who risked their freedom to sign it. (my apologies to professor Link if this is not the case)

• I am surprised by the little echo that this significant event has had on the Western media/blogging scene. All those noisy journalists that are self proclaimed defensors of Human Rights in China, but only raise thir voices when there is some spectacular violence to sell newspapers, and not for a “boring” document without pictures that lazy Westerners will never read anyway. Fair enough, it is very possible that the Charter will not fly, but there is no telling what 09 will bring us in China, and the effort and sacrifice of all these Chinese intellectuals in itself deserves more attention.

• The Chinese government has done a good job of controlling the net. At the time of writing  it seems impossible to access from the mainland any site carrying the Charter in Chinese. It is sad to see that they have succeeded in silencing also the Western blogs (although as far as I know there has not been a single one blocked for speaking of the Charter). I guess most are simply not interested or else too scared of seeing their blog blocked in PRC. I know that I am risking many hours of efforts if I get my own blog blocked because of this post, but I think it is the least I could do for those 300 odd authors that are risking much more than this.

Because of point 2 some readers might still not be aware of these events. You can get a summary in the Wikipedia article for Chrter 08 or on this article on Global Voices.

I have also found a more accurate translation of the Charter here.

UPDATE1: The article on Wikipedia has been changed. See the article’s dicussion page for more details.

UPDATE2: Thanks to comment below and to some further research on the internet, I have the theory now that Chinese authors introduced last minute modifications to eliminate some non-essential points and avoid trouble for those already arrested, like Liu Xiaobo. This would make sense, as Liu Xiaobo had been sentenced before for participation in Tiananmen89 activities. Even if this is the case, it is difficult to understand why professor Link didn’t change his translation accordingly, perhaps reflecting some disagreement among the original authors.

Busy week. Yesterday I had to cancel my Chinese lesson in the last minute due to an unexpected request from one of my hardcore Chinese clients. It made me feel miserable, partly because I always feel like a 9-to-5 bitch when I have to break my word for a client. But most importantly, because I know how well my teacher prepares her lesson and how she cares.

To try to make up for it (and to prove that I do study my lessons sometimes) here comes a long overdue post for the Learning Chinese section, dedicated to the most patient of Chinese teachers, FuTing.

Today’s lesson is called: The Riches of the Language.

There are many ways to measure “richness”, and whether one language is richer than other is usually a dumb discussion that I don’t like to enter. However, I can’t help being fascinated by the way some languages seem to have infinite variations and nuances for what in my own tongue is just one word. At the risk of exciting some patriotic readers from all sides: This is the lesson where I discover the amazing richness of the Chinese language.

During our last vocabulary review, I was struck by the number of characters that express different options for taking/carrying things. I asked Fu to help me put them all together, and after a short brainstorming session we came up with the list below.

Here are my 18 20 different ways to carry things in Chinese (and I’m only intermediate level):

1. 带 – dai4   – to carry in general
2. 拿 – na2    - to carry in your hand
3. 抓 – zhua1 – to carry in your hand holding strongly
4. 夹 – jia1    - to carry between two long things (like chopsticks)
5. 捏 – nie1   – to carry with finger and thumb (like you carry a bogey)
6. 挟 – xie2    - to carry under your arm
7. 牵 – qian1 – to carry sb (holding hands)
8. 挽 – wan3  - to carry sb around your arm (holding arms)
9. 攥 – zuan4 – to carry in your hand  tight (like a fly you just caught)
10. 捧 – peng3 – to carry with both hands facing up (like an idol)
11. 端 – duan1 – to carry holding it from the sites (like a big plate)
12. 抱 – bao4  -  to carry something hugging it (like a baby)
13. 拎 – lin1    -  to carry something that hangs (like a handbag)
14. 挎 – kua4  -  to carry a bag with a band across your shoulder
15. 背 – bei1   -  to carry on your back (like a sack of potatoes)
16. 提 – ti2     -  to carry in your hand with the arm down
17. 举 – ju3    -  to carry in your hand with the arm up
18. 抬 – tai2   -  to carry something heavy, usually 2 or more people
19. 驮 – tuo2   – to carry on a donkey/horse/red-nosed reindeer’s back
20. 扛- kang2 –  to carry on the shoulder, like the 7 dwarfs carry shovels
21. 荷 – he4    - to carry on the shoulder or back
22. 挑 – tiao1 –  to carry using a stick with two baskets hanging from it

This is only single characters, excluding combinations of them and excluding words that don’t bring a difference in meaning, like (握 and 抓). I am sure there are still more ways of carrying, and I would like to add them to my carrying list. I would be grateful for any contribution or correction in the comments.

Non-students of Chinese: now you understand what is taking us so long to learn this language!

NOTE: if you are reading this and you are struggling with the characters like myself, you should absolutely try Skritter, a new software that has been developed to help memorize the characters by having you write them yourself, instead of just looking at them on a flash card. I have been trying it this week, and although it is in beta, it works really well. It is stunning the things some people can do with a computer.

UPDATE!: Come on, we got up to 20 already, thanks to XiaoLu, who has earned thereafter the status of VIP commentator. I am sure there are still lots of “carry” characters left, any suggestions?

I was writing just yesterday my latest Crisis article when I realized that in Shanghai we have our own economic weak link, with quite a lot of companies that are suffering as much as the Pearl River Delta workshops. I am speaking of foreign startups in Shanghai.

One of the things that makes Shanghai such an interesting place to live is her magnetic properties that attract all sorts of enrepreneurial metal from around the world. One can read a lot about succesful startups in well informed China blogs dealing with business, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Unless you live here, you can not even start to imagine the thousands of starting business ventures swarming the city. Even in the most modest of social events you will meet a good handful of CEOs in their 20s, always rich with ideas, and typically trying to figure out how to monetize them.

Most of these adventuruos foreigners struggle for a long time before eventually giving up and moving to new horizons. Others manage to run a sustainable business. Very few ever become rich.

But an unusually large number of them are actually going bust right now as a consequence of the Crisis. In the last few months since the summer, already three acquaintances have said farewell to me and to Shanghai, with their dreams broken and their companies bankrupt.

Now, it is probable that for Chinese economy, these bankrupcies won’t have the same impact as the ones on the Pearl River, but they do provide some colourful and very typically Shanghainese tales:

For example. I think of my friend who went to work one Monday to find out that there was no computer, and no chair and table, and no company at all, because the struggling Dutch owner and founder of the startup had been busy over the weekend trying to get the best value off the remaining assets before he disappeared out of the country. Fortunately, this girl was only doing an internship in Shanghai and, as last survivor of the company, she had the difficult task of assessing her own performance and grading herself before taking 2 extra free months to travel in China.

Some recent developments of this new trend can be seen also in this article by CER, which warns us against company-sponsored trips and team builidng events. Does your boss sound suddenly generous in the midst of financial turmoil?  Does it seem a bit odd that you have been invited to this expensive Team Building week up on the pastures of Heilongjiang? Don’t go. Chances are when you are back to Shanghai there is no accounting department left to submit your expenses claims. Or to pay your 2 months due of salary for that matter.

And all this makes me wonder: are we coming back to the good old times of the concessions? The times when only in Shanghai there were dozens of different national jurisdictions where crooks and adventurers of all sorts found the folds where they could flourish; when thousands of foreigners flowed into Shanghai with the most diverse schemes to get rich, usually involving, as Carl Crow would put it: “mixing other peoples money with their own”. Perhaps we never really left that period.

And this leads me straight to the Big Question, which foreigners in Shanghai have been asking themselves for the last hundred years, and which is still a recurrent subject of conversation here: Is it possible to get rich in China?

This is definitely a subject I will be blogging about soon. In the meantime, I strongly recommend that you read this book: “Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom”, by Carl Crow. Among many other things, you will see how little has changed, and how expats in Old Sahnghai answered to exactly the same questions as we ask ourselves today.

One last quote from the book that might help shed some light on the Question above:

Every foreigner went to China with a consciousness of his own [...] mental superiority and a smug satisfaction in the belief that there were many things he could teach the chinese.

To be fair, there are more and more foreigners, especially of the younger generations, coming in today with a serious disposition to learn what the chinese have to teach before they add their own grain of sand. But there are still too many left with the Old China Hand attitude who feel the need to enlighen the locals with their wisdom.

So, here is the first big clue to answer the Big Question: in 2008, just like in 1908, the (few) foreigners who get rich have taken the time first to learn from the country. See the Standard Oil back in the time, or Tudou’s Marc van Der Chijs today.

PS. If you are even slightly interested in China – and if you are reading this blog you probably are – do yourself a favour and get this book immediately from the Shanghai Foreign Language Library or from here.

PPS. If you are my personal friend or relative – and if you are reading this blog you probably are – then just give me a call and come over to my place, I will lend you the book.

If you’ve been around in Shanghai today you might have noticed there was a Beijing nip in the air. One could almost smell the 烤鸭 as the temperature got rapidly freezing by midday. In the same time, the air felt clean like it does in the clean Northern winters, and it’s been a great day for a walk if this weather suits your clothes.

This is how it looked down the line of Nanjing Lu seen from the French concession:

A little search on the internet confirms that it is indeed the North Winds that are sweeping the pollution out of Shanghai and bringing us the blue skies. I found this cool weather site that is  more technical than the usual mainstream ones, and more enjoyable with lots of buttons and levers for all the geeks to play with.

This is what I got for Shanghai winds today:

I always love to google up “Shanghai Air Pollution Index”. It doesn’t give you a clue about the real state of pollution, but at least it shows some typical difference in perception.  These are the 3rd and 4th results:

Shanghai’s Air Quality Improves .China Daily

Shanghaiist: Shanghai air quality now sucks even harder .Shanghaiist

Whatever. The intention of this post is to start monitoring the air quality in Shanghai. During these past years leading to the Olympics, foreign residents in Beijing have been insistingly complaining about the pollution and have finally managed to have the government take some serious action.

Having lived in both places, I’ve always held that pollution in Shanghai is as bad as in Beijing. We have the World Exhibition coming, so now’s the time to start building the pressure to get the authorities do something about Shangai too. In case you are thinking that the EXPO 2010 is not as important as the Olymics, you might want to check out this article from the October issue of CER. The EXPO will have more than 10 times the visitors of the Olympic games, that is, 180 million lungs breathing in the Shanghai air in 2010. There’s clearly a critical mass to try some lung lobbying.

I also found that the blog “Mad about Shanghai” started some time ago a particular pollution scale, and for some reason gave up after a year. I will not apply the same scale, but I have a simplified one that I developed the first week i got to Shanghai: the Plaza 66 scale. It is simple, visibility index = the number of floors you can see when you look up at this building on Nanjing XiLu. Today we had a Full 66 (albeit with some browinsh hue in the horizon).

Now, I know if we really want to get technical you might say that visibility doesn’t equal pollution, and that Shanghai being in a more humid area, worse visibility is to be expected. There are also the famous API measurements done by the chinese authorities, and shown in this interesting  website for any day in the last 7 years. It shows that Shanghai has no problem with pollution.

But I have been an engineer for long enough to know that numbers are the most powerful tool of deception. I’m not buying the “blue sky day” statistics of the Shanghai Environment Monitoring Centre (SEMC). I have compared it with My Nose Monitoring Centre (MNMC), which says that, everytime you get back to Shanghai from a trip in the country, you can actually smell the air the minute you step out of the train in any one of those yellow “blue days”

I will be posting once in a while to see if there is any improvement from now to the EXPO. For more information on how China measures the pollution, you can read this very interesting post by an environment engineer explaining all you don’t want to know about API.

If you are not scared of the hard numbers, you can also check out the Shangzilla measuring scale, although judging by the number of reads, you probably have seen it before. As for me, I will stick to my Zhongnanhais while they are in stock. At least the air I breath in goes through a filter first.

One of the things I like to keep an eye on is the situation of China’s economy.

Not that I think anything is  wrong  with it. On the contrary, the country is resisting well the international crisis, and China has one of the best governments in the World when it comes to managing the economy. The results of the last 30 years speak for themselves. The Chinese have a strong confidence in their leaders, and this confidence seems to be spreading to the rest of the world, where some are already starting to believe that the Wall of the Han is going to save us all.

That is exactly why I am a bit worried.

Wall at Gansu

The Great Wall of China has always functioned better as a national myth than as a defense system. This picture of the Wall bordering the Gobi desert can give an idea of what remains of the great myths once the barbarians have passed. The basis of my spectacular and sensationalistic theory of  the Great Wall of China are all explained here.  More entries on the topic in the category Crisis Watch, and in my blog in Spanish.

Following that entry, I have received quite a few comments saying that it is idle to issue predictions at this point (which is true), and that anyway the Wall is down and the crisis has already arrived to China (which, at the time of writing, is definitely false). Of course, we are seeing some impact on the exports and the GDP growth statistics have already been reviewed for 2008. Most probably growth will go further down in 09, perhaps around the area of GDP 7.5% per year, which is what Prime Mr. Wen considers sustainable anyway.

But that is not what I mean by the Collapse of the Wall.

Unstable equilibrium

What I have noted from my observations in China is that there are inefficiencies, structural, social, political problems, and too many people living off the fat of the system. Many of these problems come from the prolonged single-party authoritarian regime, and others simply from the fact that the engine has been running for the last 30 years without a stop for repairs. Downcycles also have their function in economy, after all.

All these problems that I am seeing, which I will try to post here once in a while, make me suspect that China is still not the stong, cohesive economy that many want to see in it. And that much of that stability that is attributed to China is but mere illusion, just like the one of the Red Ball on this illustration.