If there’s one thing that Chinese do badly, it’s sports. It’s not the Olympics, were children are put through tortuous Soviet style training in order to ensure China is at the top of the medal leader board, we’re talking about that most revered and lucrative of games, football.
Basketball does really well in China, it’s cool, it’s American, and it’s pretty easy to set up a basketball court almost anywhere, especially in the overcrowded cities were urban space is at a premium. Football, however, is another story. You need a pitch, you need grass, and mostly it’s played outside, and given China’s appalling air quality, you don’t want to be spending a huge amount of time outside, and then there’s all that running about and the risk of getting injured. All of which go some way to explaining why there’s little love lost between the national football team, and the Chinese fans. And when we use the word “fans”, we of course mean Chinese people who are fans of football, not Chinese people who are fans of the Chinese team - kind of like the way that pop music fans hate Justin Beiber.
When the men’s football team played Thailand in June, there were no fans waiting at the hotel for autographs, and when they lost, enraged fans blocked the team coach from leaving and started a riot that injured 100 people. The team’s official Weibo account is replete with apologies and excuses for their poor performances, but they find little sympathy online. The English language coverage of the match didn’t do them any favours either, saying that “Poor possession, poor team work and most of all no fighting spirit resulted in the most humiliating defeat for years for China’s national soccer team.” They managed to make it to the World Cup once, have been knocked out by Iraq for the 2014 competition.
Desperate to prove themselves better than the Koreans and the Japanese - football is one sport among many that the Chinese must prove themselves to be the best at so everyone will love them...or something - China has spent a lot of money on upping their game, but nothing seems to work.
Expensive foreign coaches have been lured to Beijing, corrupt elements in the sport have been tracked down and punished and players have been imported from overseas - still the Chinese seethe with anger when their team inevitably suffers another humiliating defeat. The problem is that the people who actually play in the national side have little in the way of actual sporting talent, and, as always, are more interested in making as much money as possible while their knees are in proper working order.
With the problems plaguing the football squad, it might not be the best time for the Chinese government to think about launching a national cricket squad. Which they have. In Shenyang, which is, apparently, the new home of cricket in China, and, in contrast to the talentless poster boys in the football team, they’re pretty good. Well, the women are at least.
Interest might be growing the game domestically, but they still have only one grass wicket, which was proudly used in the 2010 Asian Games. With little in the way of cricketing tradition, and the apparent disinterest in partaking in team games, lack of equipment is the least of their worries. China isn’t exactly known for it’s vast expanses of greenery, that the game demands - concrete cricket pitches just aren’t the done thing. If the Chinese urban sprawl can push the the panda, China’s national animal, to the brink of extinction, there’s little hope for the enthusiastic, but cash strapped amateur cricket teams.
The problem for competitive sports in China is that while children have PE lessons in primary school, as soon as students hit the age at which they should start studying for the dreaded gaokao, the cramming sessions leave little room for sports. But we shouldn’t count the Chinese out of making waves on the international cricket scene just yet.
After years of being banned in the People’s Republic, insanely young Chinese golfing prodigies dazzled in last years US Open. Parents desperate to turn their children into the next Tiger Woods, spare no expense in providing the best trainers, equipment and opportunities to transform them into sporting superstars, and their parents into multi-millionaires. If the likes of Sachin Tendulkar could inspire Chinese parents that there’s money in them thar cricket cricket whites, then there’d be no stopping them. In the same way the Indian super-rich aspire to London properties, the Chinese super-super-rich could learn to aspire to appreciating the intricacies of a medium paced leg spinner.
The Chinese have set their sights on the 2014 World T20 to be played in Bangladesh, but government officials have confided that their real goal would be the 2019 Cricket World Cup. Money has poured into help support China’s most promising players, with a select few being sent overseas to play in English and Australian clubs, where their enthusiasm for the sport has impressed many professional players.
Famously, failure is not an option for those representing China on the international sporting stage. In search of the next Olympic gold medal machines, children as young as five years old are put through training courses that would make western social workers weep - all of the glory of being the best. If cricket became an Olympic sport, there would be no shortage of Chinese cricketers willing to represent their country - given China’s population, if only 1 in 10,000 made the grade, that would mean that there would be 100,000 potential players. Let’s just hope that they don’t get the same kind of attention from their domestic fans as the football team does.
Monday, August 5, 2013
A Risky Business: Whistleblowing in China
In a bid to bolster it's image in China and abroad, Xi Jin Ping is leading a crackdown on corruption, but the consequences that some whistleblowers face might take the wind out of the CCP's anti-graft sails.
The English voice of Chinese party propaganda, The China Daily, could hardly contain itself when Ed Snowden went public with details of the NSA’s PRISM project. “This is not the first time that U.S. government agencies’ wrongdoings have aroused widespread public concern,” it bellowed. Certain that political Armageddon would follow, “experts” painted a picture of “strained” US-Chinese ties, with the reassurance that hardworking Chinese diplomats would once again ensure world peace.
The news came after a testing time for the Chinese. A PLA backed hacker group had been identified and publicly exposed by US cybersecurity analysts, Google accused the Chinese of hacking into it’s servers, and Hilary Clinton had singled out China especially her Internet freedoms tour. Thankfully, news of the NSA spying on it’s own citizens, using services that had long been demonized in the Chinese press, broke in the nick of time. Fueling the fire further, the whistleblower had sought refuge in Hong Kong, prompting a slew of amusing tweets, one noting that a freedom of speech hacktivist seeking asylum in China would be akin to a religious rights activist seeking refuge in Tibet. State media wasted no time in using the story to reiterate China’s commitment to cybersecurity, while neatly sidestepping any suggestion that it’s government actively censors Internet content and selectively blocks sites based outside of China.
Blocking social media sites in China has a number of benefits for the country’s ruling Communist Party. First, there’s little chance of a copycat Jasmine Revolution, Facebook being blamed for everything from Tibetan self-immolations to riots in Xinjiang. Secondly, and possibly more importantly, the Chinese start-ups that would ordinarily face competition from the likes of Twitter, Youtube and Facebook are free to flourish with millions of users being served millions of ads. The systems operate within Chinese cyberspace, and are therefore subject to the filtering, deletion and blocking that is part and parcel of Internet life these days in China.
Chinese spokespeople repeatedly cower behind a variety of excuses to justify it’s blocking of “harmful content”. The Internet in China isn’t censored, it’s carefully managed “in accordance with relevant laws and regulations” - dissenting voices are quietly shut down, and unfavorable news coverage from overseas is blocked by what has become known as The Great Firewall of China. When an investigation by the New York Times revealed former Premier Wen Jia Bao had a personal fortune of $120million, the entire NYT website was blacklisted and blocked lest his incredible wealth become common knowledge amongst the Chinese.
Tackling corruption, especially with Bo Xi Lai’s trial looming, is top of the CCP’s agenda. It’s not the first time that the government has tried to get a grip on backhanders in the People’s Republic. In 2009, the government set up a website that allowed citizens to report anyone suspected of graft, traffic was so high that hours after it was officially launched, it crashed, unable to cope with the huge volume of traffic.
Events took a more sinister turn earlier in the July of this year, when a well known anti-corruption crusader, Li Jian Xin was attacked, kidnapped and doused in acid. After being hacked at with knives, he was left in a pool of his own blood to be discovered by a local woman in a park several hours later. Using the pseudonym “Uncle Ou of Huiyang”, Li had posted several reports on a website that embarrassed local officials. Li was left blind in one eye and had to have two skin grafts in Huizhou Municipal Hospital following the attack.
Despite publicly calling for more whistleblowers like Li to report cases of corruption, and the technical provision of whistleblower protection established, the law doesn’t provide adequate protection when it comes to revenge crimes. The maximum sentence that can be handed down in such a case is seven years. As is common in China, the law exist, but they’re just not enforced by anyone. Those who make legal challenges are often hounded and victimized. Earlier last month, after signing an open letter that demanded certain officials disclose their assets, eight people were placed under house arrest in Beijing. Their lawyer, Xu Zhi Yong had his computers and mobile phone confiscated.
Journalists who try to expose the misdeeds of the Party elite. Lei Zhengfu, a cadre in Bo Xi Lai’s former stomping ground of Chongqing was filmed having sex with his 18-year-old mistress and was subsequently arrested, imprisoned and kicked out of the Communist Party. The blogger and amateur muckraker Zhu Rui Feng who came into possession of the Lei’s sex tape.
Not counting a couple of death threats that were probably made by disgruntled associates of Lei, Zhu was didn’t attract the attention that had traditionally accompanied such high profile exposes. In an interview with the Washington Post, he reflected, “In the past, I’ve encountered a lot of threats, censorship and even kidnapping, but this time, my Web site wasn’t shut down. There was no blocking or attack. I think maybe the sky really is changing.” Two months later, the police, claiming to be from the Beijing Security Bureau were knocking on his door. Worried that he might be “disappeared” by the authorities in Chongqing, Zhu has sent copies of other, unreleased sex tapes to friends overseas, with instructions that should he go missing, the tapes should be released.
The extramarital exploits create another, more unlikely, breed of whistleblower - the jilted lover. Fan Yue, a deputy director at The State Administration of Archives, was due to marry a 26-year-old, Jin Yang Nan. When she discovered that he had married long before they even met, Jin took to the Internet to get her revenge, posting photos and a detailed shopping list of the luxury goods that Fan had showered her with - luxury items that he shouldn’t have been technically able to buy on his “modest” government salary.
The first time “they went shopping, Ji said, the couple went to Prada and paid $10,000 for a skirt, a purse and a scarf. A month after they met, Fan rented an apartment for them that cost $1,500 a month and spent more than $16,000 on bedsheets, home appliances, an Apple desktop and a laptop, according to Ji. Then he bought her a silver Audi A5, priced in the United States at about $40,000, she said. ... 'He put cash into my purse every day,' said Ji in a letter to the Communist Party complaining about Fan's behavior," the story was originally that carried on The Washington Post revealed.
The photos, which spread across the Internet faster than Chinese censors could delete them show the kind of life that one can lead in the upper echelons of government. After they had been engaged for a year, Ji repeatedly asked why they hadn’t started planning their wedding, and details of his existing marriage soon emerged. Determined to get even, Ji published the photos on the Internet, and started handing out videos on DVD at the gates of Zhong Nan Hai - the secretive government compound in Beijing.
It’s apparent that the anti-corrupt campaign is nothing more than another PR stunt by the Chinese Communist Party. When it was announced that Xi Jin Ping would be cleaning up the Party’s reputation, a number of anonymous editorials suggested that wiping out corruption completely would be impossible and that it would be best to focus on reducing it to a level that would be acceptable to the general populous.
State media has pounced on the court cases, proclaiming them China’s watershed moment, where the rule of law actually does mean rule of law. Xinhua, the state run media organization reported on the trial of form Ministry of Railways chief, Liu Zhi Jun saying “The sentencing shows on one hand the judicial system and top leaders' resolve to target both high-ranking "tigers" and low-ranking "flies" in its anti-corruption efforts, and on the other hand the judicial spirit of everyone is equal before the law,” adding that the Party was “Ringing a renewed alarm to the 85 million Party members, especially officials, Liu's case reflects the CPC Central Committee's determination to investigate each graft case and punish any corrupt official.” An editorial by the China News Service said that the indictment of Bo Xi Lai "tells the whole party and the entire society that in a country ruled by law," it said. "No matter who you are, no matter how high your ranking is, you will be seriously investigated and severely punished if you violate party discipline and state law."
Even officials who are standing trial for bribery and corruption, the off-center wonderland of Chinese politics means that despite earning illicit millions, many still have the support of the public. Neatly turning something that highlights the very worst in a corrupt, one party state, the crackdown on graft turned the murder of Neil Heywood and the imprisonment of Gu Ku Lai for his poisoning became the flagship of the "no one is above the law" rhetoric that the Party is so desperate to impress on the Chinese people. However, given the actual good that Bo Xi Lai did in his home city of Chongqing, he still has his fans.
In a Marketplace China report last year, the housing plans and school reforms that we enacted under Bo’s leadership of the city meant that even after he was placed under house arrest, many Chongqing residents didn’t believe that he’d been arrested. Indeed, there are plans for some of his more fervent supporters to protest outside the courthouse in Jinan when the trial begins. Even in one of the most high profile (and damaging) anti-corruption cases, the whistleblower who blew the lid off the whole thing, Bo's former partner in crime, Wang Li Jun is serving a 15 year sentence for abuse of power.
The English voice of Chinese party propaganda, The China Daily, could hardly contain itself when Ed Snowden went public with details of the NSA’s PRISM project. “This is not the first time that U.S. government agencies’ wrongdoings have aroused widespread public concern,” it bellowed. Certain that political Armageddon would follow, “experts” painted a picture of “strained” US-Chinese ties, with the reassurance that hardworking Chinese diplomats would once again ensure world peace.
The news came after a testing time for the Chinese. A PLA backed hacker group had been identified and publicly exposed by US cybersecurity analysts, Google accused the Chinese of hacking into it’s servers, and Hilary Clinton had singled out China especially her Internet freedoms tour. Thankfully, news of the NSA spying on it’s own citizens, using services that had long been demonized in the Chinese press, broke in the nick of time. Fueling the fire further, the whistleblower had sought refuge in Hong Kong, prompting a slew of amusing tweets, one noting that a freedom of speech hacktivist seeking asylum in China would be akin to a religious rights activist seeking refuge in Tibet. State media wasted no time in using the story to reiterate China’s commitment to cybersecurity, while neatly sidestepping any suggestion that it’s government actively censors Internet content and selectively blocks sites based outside of China.
Blocking social media sites in China has a number of benefits for the country’s ruling Communist Party. First, there’s little chance of a copycat Jasmine Revolution, Facebook being blamed for everything from Tibetan self-immolations to riots in Xinjiang. Secondly, and possibly more importantly, the Chinese start-ups that would ordinarily face competition from the likes of Twitter, Youtube and Facebook are free to flourish with millions of users being served millions of ads. The systems operate within Chinese cyberspace, and are therefore subject to the filtering, deletion and blocking that is part and parcel of Internet life these days in China.
Chinese spokespeople repeatedly cower behind a variety of excuses to justify it’s blocking of “harmful content”. The Internet in China isn’t censored, it’s carefully managed “in accordance with relevant laws and regulations” - dissenting voices are quietly shut down, and unfavorable news coverage from overseas is blocked by what has become known as The Great Firewall of China. When an investigation by the New York Times revealed former Premier Wen Jia Bao had a personal fortune of $120million, the entire NYT website was blacklisted and blocked lest his incredible wealth become common knowledge amongst the Chinese.
Tackling corruption, especially with Bo Xi Lai’s trial looming, is top of the CCP’s agenda. It’s not the first time that the government has tried to get a grip on backhanders in the People’s Republic. In 2009, the government set up a website that allowed citizens to report anyone suspected of graft, traffic was so high that hours after it was officially launched, it crashed, unable to cope with the huge volume of traffic.
Events took a more sinister turn earlier in the July of this year, when a well known anti-corruption crusader, Li Jian Xin was attacked, kidnapped and doused in acid. After being hacked at with knives, he was left in a pool of his own blood to be discovered by a local woman in a park several hours later. Using the pseudonym “Uncle Ou of Huiyang”, Li had posted several reports on a website that embarrassed local officials. Li was left blind in one eye and had to have two skin grafts in Huizhou Municipal Hospital following the attack.
Despite publicly calling for more whistleblowers like Li to report cases of corruption, and the technical provision of whistleblower protection established, the law doesn’t provide adequate protection when it comes to revenge crimes. The maximum sentence that can be handed down in such a case is seven years. As is common in China, the law exist, but they’re just not enforced by anyone. Those who make legal challenges are often hounded and victimized. Earlier last month, after signing an open letter that demanded certain officials disclose their assets, eight people were placed under house arrest in Beijing. Their lawyer, Xu Zhi Yong had his computers and mobile phone confiscated.
Journalists who try to expose the misdeeds of the Party elite. Lei Zhengfu, a cadre in Bo Xi Lai’s former stomping ground of Chongqing was filmed having sex with his 18-year-old mistress and was subsequently arrested, imprisoned and kicked out of the Communist Party. The blogger and amateur muckraker Zhu Rui Feng who came into possession of the Lei’s sex tape.
Not counting a couple of death threats that were probably made by disgruntled associates of Lei, Zhu was didn’t attract the attention that had traditionally accompanied such high profile exposes. In an interview with the Washington Post, he reflected, “In the past, I’ve encountered a lot of threats, censorship and even kidnapping, but this time, my Web site wasn’t shut down. There was no blocking or attack. I think maybe the sky really is changing.” Two months later, the police, claiming to be from the Beijing Security Bureau were knocking on his door. Worried that he might be “disappeared” by the authorities in Chongqing, Zhu has sent copies of other, unreleased sex tapes to friends overseas, with instructions that should he go missing, the tapes should be released.
The extramarital exploits create another, more unlikely, breed of whistleblower - the jilted lover. Fan Yue, a deputy director at The State Administration of Archives, was due to marry a 26-year-old, Jin Yang Nan. When she discovered that he had married long before they even met, Jin took to the Internet to get her revenge, posting photos and a detailed shopping list of the luxury goods that Fan had showered her with - luxury items that he shouldn’t have been technically able to buy on his “modest” government salary.
The first time “they went shopping, Ji said, the couple went to Prada and paid $10,000 for a skirt, a purse and a scarf. A month after they met, Fan rented an apartment for them that cost $1,500 a month and spent more than $16,000 on bedsheets, home appliances, an Apple desktop and a laptop, according to Ji. Then he bought her a silver Audi A5, priced in the United States at about $40,000, she said. ... 'He put cash into my purse every day,' said Ji in a letter to the Communist Party complaining about Fan's behavior," the story was originally that carried on The Washington Post revealed.
The photos, which spread across the Internet faster than Chinese censors could delete them show the kind of life that one can lead in the upper echelons of government. After they had been engaged for a year, Ji repeatedly asked why they hadn’t started planning their wedding, and details of his existing marriage soon emerged. Determined to get even, Ji published the photos on the Internet, and started handing out videos on DVD at the gates of Zhong Nan Hai - the secretive government compound in Beijing.
It’s apparent that the anti-corrupt campaign is nothing more than another PR stunt by the Chinese Communist Party. When it was announced that Xi Jin Ping would be cleaning up the Party’s reputation, a number of anonymous editorials suggested that wiping out corruption completely would be impossible and that it would be best to focus on reducing it to a level that would be acceptable to the general populous.
State media has pounced on the court cases, proclaiming them China’s watershed moment, where the rule of law actually does mean rule of law. Xinhua, the state run media organization reported on the trial of form Ministry of Railways chief, Liu Zhi Jun saying “The sentencing shows on one hand the judicial system and top leaders' resolve to target both high-ranking "tigers" and low-ranking "flies" in its anti-corruption efforts, and on the other hand the judicial spirit of everyone is equal before the law,” adding that the Party was “Ringing a renewed alarm to the 85 million Party members, especially officials, Liu's case reflects the CPC Central Committee's determination to investigate each graft case and punish any corrupt official.” An editorial by the China News Service said that the indictment of Bo Xi Lai "tells the whole party and the entire society that in a country ruled by law," it said. "No matter who you are, no matter how high your ranking is, you will be seriously investigated and severely punished if you violate party discipline and state law."
Even officials who are standing trial for bribery and corruption, the off-center wonderland of Chinese politics means that despite earning illicit millions, many still have the support of the public. Neatly turning something that highlights the very worst in a corrupt, one party state, the crackdown on graft turned the murder of Neil Heywood and the imprisonment of Gu Ku Lai for his poisoning became the flagship of the "no one is above the law" rhetoric that the Party is so desperate to impress on the Chinese people. However, given the actual good that Bo Xi Lai did in his home city of Chongqing, he still has his fans.
In a Marketplace China report last year, the housing plans and school reforms that we enacted under Bo’s leadership of the city meant that even after he was placed under house arrest, many Chongqing residents didn’t believe that he’d been arrested. Indeed, there are plans for some of his more fervent supporters to protest outside the courthouse in Jinan when the trial begins. Even in one of the most high profile (and damaging) anti-corruption cases, the whistleblower who blew the lid off the whole thing, Bo's former partner in crime, Wang Li Jun is serving a 15 year sentence for abuse of power.
Related articles
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Satirizing Shenzhen Corruption
Despite his promises that he will tackle the growing problem of Chinese corruption, Radio Free Asia reports that "at least 14 activists associated with a nascent anti-graft movement have been formally arrested or criminally detained since March, on charges ranging from subversion to public order offenses."
Related articles
Friday, August 2, 2013
Global Times Promotes "Freedom of Speech"
News comes from Fei Chang Dao that the Global Times is working hard to promote freedom of speech on the Chinese mainland. Previously, the Chinese government has been relucantant to answer qustions about Internet and civil freedoms in China, but now seems to take a different tack, openly reporting that the Japanese version of the Chinese search engine Baidu was blocked because of pornographic content.
As Chine wrestles with it's position in the global economy, the whimsical nature of the Chinese censorship system throws up the occasional blip in reality for Chinese consumers. This month, while Despicable Me 2 has been receiving coverage in Chinese language entertainment magazines, and has been heavily promoted on the Beijing subway video feeds, the movie itself has been deemed illegal by SARFT and is unlikely to be screened to Chinese audiences.
As Chine wrestles with it's position in the global economy, the whimsical nature of the Chinese censorship system throws up the occasional blip in reality for Chinese consumers. This month, while Despicable Me 2 has been receiving coverage in Chinese language entertainment magazines, and has been heavily promoted on the Beijing subway video feeds, the movie itself has been deemed illegal by SARFT and is unlikely to be screened to Chinese audiences.
Related articles
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Chinese Brain Drain Not Likely to Improve
The Chinese brain drain, according to the China Daily, is one of the worlds worst. It’s not good news for a country that is desperate to establish itself as a world leader in science and technology.
The Chinese love modern drugs. Antibiotics are especially popular, with Chinese patients popping ten times the number of pills that Americans do - nearly 140g a year per capita. GlaxoSmithKline’s bribery scandal shows how much money can be made by pointlessly prescribing useless drugs. Accused of bribing doctors to prescribe more of GSK’s own products, the Chinese entity stands accused of spending nearly £320m to cater to the whims of doctors.
The ease of which doctors can dole out antibiotics also highlights the low penetration of even basic scientific understanding in China. While the cash-strapped doctors who are told to prescribe more expensive drugs for minor ailments certainly bear most of the blame, the patients that demand better care (that is, more drugs with impressively complicated names) aren’t entirely innocent either.
While it’s easy to paint the underpaid doctors as the bad guys and point out that patients are just following the directions of their physician, a study from the Ministry of Health, showed that patients who knew the basic ideas behind what works for a viral infection, or what won’t work for a bacterial infection were less likely to be incorrectly prescribed antibiotics. "A simple intervention in which patient's display of knowledge about appropriate antibiotic use can dramatically reduce the abuse of antibiotics," the report found, also noting that if patients asked if they really needed the medicine they were being prescribed, the relationship they had with their doctor rapidly “deteriorated”.
The Chinese government is desperate to promote scientific theory across the country. It’s no small challenge by any stretch of the imagination, especially considering that during the Cultural Revolution academics - including scientists - were attacked as being bourgeois and were sent to labour camps. For almost a decade, no new scientists were trained and all academic research ground to a halt. It’s this 10 year period that partly explains the desperate measures some Chinese parents go to when the gaokao rolls around every year - it’s the only chance to guarantee an education for the child that their parents never had the chance to get.
Forty years on, China has the money and the equipment, but still lacks when it comes to the actual talent. The outcome-oriented culture has given rise to a situation where highly qualified scientists are reduced to operating equipment making medicines that right now are selling like hotcakes, but, given the alarming rate of the spread of drug-resistant bacterias, might not be so red-hot in the next ten or fifteen years.
At the end of July, the Chinese scientific community could hardly contain itself when news came from Guangzhou that a team of researchers had manage to create teeth from stem cells collected from urine. Buried at the bottom of the press release, the team also pointed out that the teeth were about 1/3 the hardness of real teeth. Professor Chris Mason of University College London was underwhelmed by the development, telling the BBC "It is probably one of the worst sources [of stem cells], there are very few cells in the first place and the efficiency of turning them into stem cells is very low. You just wouldn't do it in this way.” A damning critique that shows Chinese researchers aren’t even doing it wrong.
It’s the closed system, boring work and relentless pursuit of profits that has made many scientists are researchers shy away from professional life in China. When asked, an alarming 87% of Chinese graduates said that they had no plans to return to China in the future.
By contrast, in Denmark, where 1 in 10 scientists at the Technical University of Denmark, the dean, Martin Bendsøe, is under no illusions as to what attracts top flight Chinese talent out of their homeland. Speaking in an interview with ScandAsia, he said ”They come here because we are often cited in international scientific articles. After some time many open their eyes to the advantages of the democratic Danish management structure and the work environment,” said Dean of the Technical University of Denmark, Martin Bendsøe. Chinese scientists make up the third largest demographic after Germans and Americans.
The story is the same the US. Speaking to the China Daily, Joseph Jen, former undersecretary for research, education and economics for the US Department of Agriculture, said “Chinese institutions have new research equipment, much of it better than at places in the US” but that many Chinese “choose to stay in the US is because of the scientific culture ... (in which) scientists have bigger freedoms to pursue research of their choice.”
When it first started allowing students to travel abroad to study, many high-ups in the Chinese government were afraid that the end result would be that once exposed to the high life in the US and other western countries, they would never want to come back home again. For once, their foresight is pretty much bang on the money - not many want to leave the dynamic world of American research. Showing their trademark two dimensional thinking, a plan to lure back scientists was unveiled in the 1994 that promised tax breaks for returning academics. In the 20 years since, a mere 1568 have taken advantage of that particular carrot, this project being only one of seven misfires that have woefully missed their targets.
Once back in China, Chinese scientists face major roadblocks to developing their research into functioning businesses. An underdeveloped credit system and reliance on the “it’s not what you know, but who you know” guanxi system as well as hobbled and patchy small business framework simply doesn't give anyone the confidence to innovate or invest in Chinese startups that focus on risky new ideas rather than copying the ones that are already successful - exactly what the Chinese government wanted to avoid by sending students abroad in the first place. As Nixon’s War on Cancer showed, nothing much comes of top-down directed research, but since the Chinese government is averse to anything resembling real market competition, it will be a long time before we see anything of great interest emerge from Chinese research labs.
The Chinese love modern drugs. Antibiotics are especially popular, with Chinese patients popping ten times the number of pills that Americans do - nearly 140g a year per capita. GlaxoSmithKline’s bribery scandal shows how much money can be made by pointlessly prescribing useless drugs. Accused of bribing doctors to prescribe more of GSK’s own products, the Chinese entity stands accused of spending nearly £320m to cater to the whims of doctors.
The ease of which doctors can dole out antibiotics also highlights the low penetration of even basic scientific understanding in China. While the cash-strapped doctors who are told to prescribe more expensive drugs for minor ailments certainly bear most of the blame, the patients that demand better care (that is, more drugs with impressively complicated names) aren’t entirely innocent either.
While it’s easy to paint the underpaid doctors as the bad guys and point out that patients are just following the directions of their physician, a study from the Ministry of Health, showed that patients who knew the basic ideas behind what works for a viral infection, or what won’t work for a bacterial infection were less likely to be incorrectly prescribed antibiotics. "A simple intervention in which patient's display of knowledge about appropriate antibiotic use can dramatically reduce the abuse of antibiotics," the report found, also noting that if patients asked if they really needed the medicine they were being prescribed, the relationship they had with their doctor rapidly “deteriorated”.
The Chinese government is desperate to promote scientific theory across the country. It’s no small challenge by any stretch of the imagination, especially considering that during the Cultural Revolution academics - including scientists - were attacked as being bourgeois and were sent to labour camps. For almost a decade, no new scientists were trained and all academic research ground to a halt. It’s this 10 year period that partly explains the desperate measures some Chinese parents go to when the gaokao rolls around every year - it’s the only chance to guarantee an education for the child that their parents never had the chance to get.
Forty years on, China has the money and the equipment, but still lacks when it comes to the actual talent. The outcome-oriented culture has given rise to a situation where highly qualified scientists are reduced to operating equipment making medicines that right now are selling like hotcakes, but, given the alarming rate of the spread of drug-resistant bacterias, might not be so red-hot in the next ten or fifteen years.
At the end of July, the Chinese scientific community could hardly contain itself when news came from Guangzhou that a team of researchers had manage to create teeth from stem cells collected from urine. Buried at the bottom of the press release, the team also pointed out that the teeth were about 1/3 the hardness of real teeth. Professor Chris Mason of University College London was underwhelmed by the development, telling the BBC "It is probably one of the worst sources [of stem cells], there are very few cells in the first place and the efficiency of turning them into stem cells is very low. You just wouldn't do it in this way.” A damning critique that shows Chinese researchers aren’t even doing it wrong.
It’s the closed system, boring work and relentless pursuit of profits that has made many scientists are researchers shy away from professional life in China. When asked, an alarming 87% of Chinese graduates said that they had no plans to return to China in the future.
By contrast, in Denmark, where 1 in 10 scientists at the Technical University of Denmark, the dean, Martin Bendsøe, is under no illusions as to what attracts top flight Chinese talent out of their homeland. Speaking in an interview with ScandAsia, he said ”They come here because we are often cited in international scientific articles. After some time many open their eyes to the advantages of the democratic Danish management structure and the work environment,” said Dean of the Technical University of Denmark, Martin Bendsøe. Chinese scientists make up the third largest demographic after Germans and Americans.
The story is the same the US. Speaking to the China Daily, Joseph Jen, former undersecretary for research, education and economics for the US Department of Agriculture, said “Chinese institutions have new research equipment, much of it better than at places in the US” but that many Chinese “choose to stay in the US is because of the scientific culture ... (in which) scientists have bigger freedoms to pursue research of their choice.”
When it first started allowing students to travel abroad to study, many high-ups in the Chinese government were afraid that the end result would be that once exposed to the high life in the US and other western countries, they would never want to come back home again. For once, their foresight is pretty much bang on the money - not many want to leave the dynamic world of American research. Showing their trademark two dimensional thinking, a plan to lure back scientists was unveiled in the 1994 that promised tax breaks for returning academics. In the 20 years since, a mere 1568 have taken advantage of that particular carrot, this project being only one of seven misfires that have woefully missed their targets.
Once back in China, Chinese scientists face major roadblocks to developing their research into functioning businesses. An underdeveloped credit system and reliance on the “it’s not what you know, but who you know” guanxi system as well as hobbled and patchy small business framework simply doesn't give anyone the confidence to innovate or invest in Chinese startups that focus on risky new ideas rather than copying the ones that are already successful - exactly what the Chinese government wanted to avoid by sending students abroad in the first place. As Nixon’s War on Cancer showed, nothing much comes of top-down directed research, but since the Chinese government is averse to anything resembling real market competition, it will be a long time before we see anything of great interest emerge from Chinese research labs.
The Good Samaritan: Legislating Civility
When video footage came to light last year of 2 year old Yue Yue, who lay dying the street after being run over twice, Chinese netizen erupted in outrage over the moral vacancy in modern Chinese society. When the two different vehicles struck her, neither stopped, and CCTV cameras caught 18 people walking past her, apparently unconcerned about what had befallen the toddler. Eventually a scrap metal collector picked her up and took her to hospital, where she later died.
Stories concerning the apparent lack of any moral fibre among the Chinese have become increasingly common in the last few years, not least because they spread like wildlife on the country’s microblogging platforms, where they garner endless comments and retweets. Tania Branigan wrote in The Guardian about a number of tragic cases of child abuse, and, most recently, ex-pat sex offenders have be caught in foreign-run schools and English training centers who administrators obviously are more focused on the profits they turn than the characters of the people they employ.
As has been remarked before, it’s not so much the frequency of these kinds of stories of abuse and mistreatment, but the amplitude. To foreign observers, it seems incredulous that a child sex offender on the run from Scotland Yard could ever be employed in a French school, and the idea of a father so tired of his daughter’s voice could sew up the child’s mouth sounds like something cut out of a low budget schlock horror.
The fear of litigation forms the basis of the logic behind the reluctance of members of the public to help others in need. People who have helped, or in the recent case of a couple of boys who failed to act to save two girls from drowning and were fined 50,000rmb each, people who don’t help get sued equally. The lack of moral decency extends to those who help themselves, especially if it involves an easy way of making a lot of money.
While true that people’s distrust of others and institutions was eroded during the harshest years of Mao’s rule, scandals involving charitable organizations have done little to bolster confidence that money donated in good faith will actually end up with the people who need it, creating a downward spiral of mocking cynicism. The last sixty-odd years may have created unprecedented wealth for people in China, but it hasn’t done anything to inspire it’s citizens to stick their necks out.
Nearly a year on after Yue Yue’s death, and China’s first Good Samaritan law, snappily entitled the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Good Samaritans' Right Protection Regulation, comes into effect in the south of China. Initially effective only in the south of China, there are plans to roll the law out across the country in a desperate bid to make people that little bit more civilized. Only in China, do good manners have to be legislated. Typical of these new breed of laws aimed at leveling the playing field for the rich and poor alike, the law makes a big thing about compensation. In order to encourage people to help strangers, the law explicitly says that there will be no repercussions if the efforts to help are unsuccessful, and if someone is accused of causing the accident, there’s the opportunity to sue and claim compensation.
The good news is that, especially among the richer, younger classes, philanthropy and charitable works are actually on the increase. It’s not so much following in the footsteps of Lei Fang, but it does represent the level of financial comfort that the younger generation now find themselves. It’s the very gap between the rich and the poor that has created an “us and them” situation, the anonymous migrant workers don’t rub shoulders in Starbucks with the recent Harvard graduates returning to the Motherland. The graduates are a sign of a changing attitude towards money - as the pursuit of economic growth becomes a secondary concern, so might the reluctance of Chinese to offer a helping hand - especially when there’s no security cameras watching them.
Stories concerning the apparent lack of any moral fibre among the Chinese have become increasingly common in the last few years, not least because they spread like wildlife on the country’s microblogging platforms, where they garner endless comments and retweets. Tania Branigan wrote in The Guardian about a number of tragic cases of child abuse, and, most recently, ex-pat sex offenders have be caught in foreign-run schools and English training centers who administrators obviously are more focused on the profits they turn than the characters of the people they employ.
As has been remarked before, it’s not so much the frequency of these kinds of stories of abuse and mistreatment, but the amplitude. To foreign observers, it seems incredulous that a child sex offender on the run from Scotland Yard could ever be employed in a French school, and the idea of a father so tired of his daughter’s voice could sew up the child’s mouth sounds like something cut out of a low budget schlock horror.
The fear of litigation forms the basis of the logic behind the reluctance of members of the public to help others in need. People who have helped, or in the recent case of a couple of boys who failed to act to save two girls from drowning and were fined 50,000rmb each, people who don’t help get sued equally. The lack of moral decency extends to those who help themselves, especially if it involves an easy way of making a lot of money.
While true that people’s distrust of others and institutions was eroded during the harshest years of Mao’s rule, scandals involving charitable organizations have done little to bolster confidence that money donated in good faith will actually end up with the people who need it, creating a downward spiral of mocking cynicism. The last sixty-odd years may have created unprecedented wealth for people in China, but it hasn’t done anything to inspire it’s citizens to stick their necks out.
Nearly a year on after Yue Yue’s death, and China’s first Good Samaritan law, snappily entitled the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Good Samaritans' Right Protection Regulation, comes into effect in the south of China. Initially effective only in the south of China, there are plans to roll the law out across the country in a desperate bid to make people that little bit more civilized. Only in China, do good manners have to be legislated. Typical of these new breed of laws aimed at leveling the playing field for the rich and poor alike, the law makes a big thing about compensation. In order to encourage people to help strangers, the law explicitly says that there will be no repercussions if the efforts to help are unsuccessful, and if someone is accused of causing the accident, there’s the opportunity to sue and claim compensation.
The good news is that, especially among the richer, younger classes, philanthropy and charitable works are actually on the increase. It’s not so much following in the footsteps of Lei Fang, but it does represent the level of financial comfort that the younger generation now find themselves. It’s the very gap between the rich and the poor that has created an “us and them” situation, the anonymous migrant workers don’t rub shoulders in Starbucks with the recent Harvard graduates returning to the Motherland. The graduates are a sign of a changing attitude towards money - as the pursuit of economic growth becomes a secondary concern, so might the reluctance of Chinese to offer a helping hand - especially when there’s no security cameras watching them.
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Wednesday, July 31, 2013
China Owes Hollywood Millions
This site reported last month of the concerns that many have with Hollywood kow-towing to Chinese censors. In order to get the world’s largest cinema ticket buying audience in front of their latest efforts, movie makers were adding scenes, removing scenes with “director’s approval” and generally ingratiating themselves as much as possible with the Chinese government. It’s probably safe to say that they hadn’t reckoned with the latest wheeze that Beijing’s bean counters have come up with - not paying Hollywood it’ dues once it’s got it’s hands on the cash.
Under the WTO deal that was brokered, studios were expecting a 25% cut of all the profits, but the sate-run company that distributes the films in China has said that it intends to pay 2% VAT on the receipts. The upshot is that Hollywood studios are owed a lot of money - in fact they say they haven’t been paid since late 2012 because of the dispute. The Hollywood Reporter says that Warner Bros is owed $31million for Man of Steel, the first installment of The Hobbit, and Jack the Giant Slayer. For Iron Man 3 alone, the film that had specifically had extra scenes filmed to appease the censors and increase it’s audience friendly quotient, Disney is owed nearly $30million. Fox and Universal are owed for Oblivion and Life of Pi, and Paramount is owed another $30million for three of it’s releases.
Fearful of making too much of a scene that would upset the already highly strung mandarins at SARFT (the Chinese TV, radio and film administration), they won’t be anxious to take the case as far as the office of the US trade representative to the World Trade Organisation, but negotiations are in progress with Chris Dodd, chairman of the US film group the Motion Picture Association of America. Speaking to Variety, former U.S. Trade Representative Ronald Kirk said “Unfortunately it does not surprise me that China has come up with another creative way to cut into that revenue payment,It fits the pattern of their creative accounting at times…there are a number of ways that China has frustrated American interests.”
Delayed payment strains the already difficult relationship between American movie makers and Chinese censors. Frustrated with an organization not used to giving reasons as to why a film makes the blacklist, as happened with Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2, there’s no real way of making sure that a release is guaranteed, no matter how much soft power ass-kissing is involved. Adding to that are the problems of rampant and unregulated piracy in China, where pirate copies of the latest releases are available to buy for as little as a dollar a disc - often the illicit sellers set up shop outside the very cinema that the US battled so hard to get the film released into in the first place.
While the dispute doesn’t affect movie goers in any real sense, it does highlight the problems of the west trying it’s damnedest to get around a government that simply isn’t used to playing by the rules. Censorship laws and blacklists are more often used as an excuse to give inferior Chinese productions, unless there’s going to be a sequel to Crouching Tiger any time soon, Robert Downey, Jnr may want to to improve on his Tropic Thunder level of Mandarin just in case.
Under the WTO deal that was brokered, studios were expecting a 25% cut of all the profits, but the sate-run company that distributes the films in China has said that it intends to pay 2% VAT on the receipts. The upshot is that Hollywood studios are owed a lot of money - in fact they say they haven’t been paid since late 2012 because of the dispute. The Hollywood Reporter says that Warner Bros is owed $31million for Man of Steel, the first installment of The Hobbit, and Jack the Giant Slayer. For Iron Man 3 alone, the film that had specifically had extra scenes filmed to appease the censors and increase it’s audience friendly quotient, Disney is owed nearly $30million. Fox and Universal are owed for Oblivion and Life of Pi, and Paramount is owed another $30million for three of it’s releases.
Fearful of making too much of a scene that would upset the already highly strung mandarins at SARFT (the Chinese TV, radio and film administration), they won’t be anxious to take the case as far as the office of the US trade representative to the World Trade Organisation, but negotiations are in progress with Chris Dodd, chairman of the US film group the Motion Picture Association of America. Speaking to Variety, former U.S. Trade Representative Ronald Kirk said “Unfortunately it does not surprise me that China has come up with another creative way to cut into that revenue payment,It fits the pattern of their creative accounting at times…there are a number of ways that China has frustrated American interests.”
Delayed payment strains the already difficult relationship between American movie makers and Chinese censors. Frustrated with an organization not used to giving reasons as to why a film makes the blacklist, as happened with Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2, there’s no real way of making sure that a release is guaranteed, no matter how much soft power ass-kissing is involved. Adding to that are the problems of rampant and unregulated piracy in China, where pirate copies of the latest releases are available to buy for as little as a dollar a disc - often the illicit sellers set up shop outside the very cinema that the US battled so hard to get the film released into in the first place.
While the dispute doesn’t affect movie goers in any real sense, it does highlight the problems of the west trying it’s damnedest to get around a government that simply isn’t used to playing by the rules. Censorship laws and blacklists are more often used as an excuse to give inferior Chinese productions, unless there’s going to be a sequel to Crouching Tiger any time soon, Robert Downey, Jnr may want to to improve on his Tropic Thunder level of Mandarin just in case.
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