China Readings for February 23rd

"Sinocism is the Presidential Daily Brief for China hands"- Evan Osnos, New Yorker Correspondent and National Book Award Winner

  • 央视或为林书豪 调整NBA转播 – 产经 – 21世纪网 – CCTV wants to adjust schedule to show Knicks/Lin. Media read 2 much in2 lack of broadcasts?
  • Chinese Ball Maker Trademarks Lin – China Real Time Report – WSJ – As attention focuses on the few who first saw potential in surprise basketball standout Jeremy Lin, a Chinese sportswear company has drawn local headlines for spotting his talent – and taking out a trademark on his Chinese name.

    A Chinese maker of soccer balls and basketballs named Wuxi Risheng Sports Utility Co. applied for a trademark for Lin Shuhao (林书豪) in 2010, according to government records. That year, Mr. Lin graduated from Harvard University but was ignored during the NBA draft, leaving little indication that he would become a high-scoring starter for the New York Knicks as well as a global media darling.

  • The Book of Jobs | The Great Debate – Jobs originally learned the “reality distortion field” from Bob Friedland, an enterprising hippie he met by chance one day when he returned early to his dorm room and found Friedland having sex with Jobs’ girlfriend. Bob was four years older than Steve, and had taken two years off to serve a prison sentence for LSD trafficking. Like Steve, Bob would eventually become a billionaire, just in the mining business. His followers would often invoke his old drug dealer nickname “Toxic Bob.”
  • NYPD spying program aimed at Muslims – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com – That’s the essential expression of the American Surveillance State: we can and will know everything about what you do, and you will know virtually nothing about what we do. In a healthy society, that formula would be reversed: the citizenry (with rare exceptions) would know most everything about what their government does, while the government would know nothing about what citizens do in the absence of well-grounded suspicion that they have done something wrong. Yet here we have the NYPD wandering outside of its jurisdiction in order to spy on the innocuous activities of a community of a religious minority (not even the Newark Mayor was informed about this), and the most disturbing part of it all is how common it now is.
  • 高朋网回应裁员撤站:将对部分站点优化合并_原创_DoNews-IT门户-移动互联网新闻-电子商务新闻-游戏新闻-风险投资新闻-IT社交网络社区 – groupon's china jv gaopeng laying of staff (again), shutting offices?
  • Amazon.com: The End of Cheap China: Economic and Cultural Trends that will Disrupt the World eBook: Shaun Rein: Kindle Store – Product Description
    An exposé on how the rise of China will affect the American way of life
    The End of Cheap China is a fun, riveting, must-read book not only for people doing business in China but for anyone interested in understanding the forces that are changing the world.

    Many Americans know China for manufacturing cheap products, thanks largely to the country's vast supply of low-cost workers. But China is changing, and the glut of cheap labor that has made everyday low prices possible is drying up as the Chinese people seek not to make iPhones, but to buy them. Shaun Rein, Founder of the China Market Research Group, puts China's continuing transformation from producer to large-scale consumer – a process that is farther along than most economists think – under the microscope, examining eight megatrends that are catalyzing change in China and posing threats to Americans' consumption-driven way of life.

    Rein takes an engaging and informative approach to examining the extraordinary changes taking place across all levels of Chinese society, talking to everyone from Chinese billionaires and senior government officials to poor migrant workers and even prostitutes. He draws on personal stories and experiences from living in China since the 1990s as well as hard economic data. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of China's transformation, from fast-improving Chinese companies to confident, optimistic Chinese women to the role of China's government, and at the end breaks down key lessons for readers to take away.

  • Eight Questions: Rebecca MacKinnon, ‘Consent of the Networked’ – China Real Time Report – WSJ – As Beijing bureau chief for CNN in the late 1990′s, Rebecca MacKinnon witnessed first-hand the arrival of the Internet in China and the Chinese government’s struggle to control a technology some predicted would help bring about the end of Communist Party rule.

    A decade later, as Ms. MacKinnon documents in her recently released book “Consent of the Networked,” the party is still alive and still fighting to manage the flow of information online, though with far more success than many had previously assumed possible…

    As the daughter of a professor of Chinese history, I think we should be careful about making assumptions about where things are going, particularly when those assumptions are based in no small part on what we hope will happen.

  • China Developers Rise on Report of Curb Easing: Shanghai Mover – Bloomberg – Chinese developers traded on mainland and Hong Kong exchanges rose after Shanghai Securities News said that the nation’s financial center eased restrictions to allow a broader pool of buyers to purchase second homes.
    Shanghai loosened its definition of locals to let residence permit holders who have lived in the city for at least three years buy a second home, the official newspaper affiliated with the state-run Xinhua news agency reported today,
  • Shanghai dialect fights to survive in modern China – Yahoo! News – When professor Qian Nairong published his dictionary of the Shanghai dialect in 2007, he was in some ways documenting a dying language.
    The number of people speaking the rapid-fire language — a badge of identity for residents of China's commercial capital of more than 20 million people — is shrinking.
  • As China clamps down, Tibet struggle grows radical – Yahoo! News – Smothering security has become a fact of life in China's Tibetan areas, from police stationed around monasteries to document checks at roadblocks. The heavy policing is driving some to radical acts to protest Chinese rule.
  • Factory workers claim Foxconn hid underage employees before FLA inspection – Workers at Apple partner Foxconn have alleged that their employer transferred underage employees to other departments or did not schedule them to work overtime in order to avoid discovery during recent inspections by the Fair Labor Association, according to one non-governmental organization.

    Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) project officer Debby Sze Wan Chan relayed the claims in a recent interview with AppleInsider. SACOM is a Hong Kong-based NGO that was formed in 2005 and has been researching labor rights violations in the electronics industry since 2007.

  • Plan B for China’s Wealthy: Moving to the U.S., Europe – WSJ.com – This time last year, Shi Kang considered himself a happy man.

    Writing 15 novels had made him a millionaire. He owned a luxury apartment and a new silver Mercedes. He was so content with his carefree life in Beijing that he never even traveled overseas.

    Today, a year later, Mr. Shi is considering emigrating to the U.S.—one of a growing number of rich Chinese either contemplating leaving their homeland or already arranging to do it.

  • 再一次学英语_石康_新浪博客
  • Meet One Chinese Millionaire Who Wants Out of China (Video) – China Real Time Report – WSJ – Best-selling Chinese writer Shi Kang is one of a growing number of Chinese millionaires looking to leave China, in search of a better life and a healthier environment for their families. WSJ’s Angela Yeoh reports from Beijing.
  • Sotheby’s to explore Chinese interior | beyondbrics | News and views on emerging markets from the Financial Times – FT.com
  • Towards an environmental performance index: first independent review of provincial-level environmental data in China highlights challenges to transparency | chinadialogue – The first independent review of provincial-level environmental data highlights a plethora of challenges to transparency in China, writes Angel Hsu, introducing the second of two new studies.
  • A resurrection of sorts for disgraced Zhao | SCMP.com – People can now read a profile of Zhao Ziyang , the Communist Party general secretary purged after the June 4 crackdown, on Baidu Baike, a web-based encyclopaedia similar to Wikipedia run by Baidu, the mainland's largest search engine.

    Zhao's entry had long been blocked by internet censors but internet users discovered late on Monday that was no longer the case.

  • Chinese support persists for ‘naked officials’ – Caixin Online – MarketWatch – 50% of high-level officials above the prefecture level said their children should have the right to immigrate abroad.

    The Blue Book, an annual collection of articles by scholars and judges discussing the major policy and legislation debates from the past year, identified “naked officials” as a weak point in China’s ongoing efforts to combat corruption.

  • Footnotes | February 2012 Issue | International Perspectives: Chinese Social Science, Stability and the State – China’s vice president, Xi Jinping, spoke in November about the urgency of going into the field to conduct research on “the masses.” In his speech to the Central Party School, where Communist Party leaders are trained, Xi made an impassioned plea for Party cadres to find out the deepest “hopes, worries, anxieties and resentments” of the Chinese people (see politics.people.com.cn/GB/1024/
    16332666.html).  Xi, set to become China’s next president, criticized cadres who curry favor and flatter superiors: “They are unwilling to look squarely at reality, they do not dare to speak the truth.” Then, he made a striking parallel between Chinese society today and the beginning of the 1960s.

    Xi did not name the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s disastrous revolutionary campaign, which resulted in mass starvation and death. Rather, Xi referred to the time when Communist Party officials toured the country, recognized the widespread falsification of statistics, and abandoned Mao’s Great Leap policy: “At the beginning of the 1960s…all Communist Party comrades undertook survey research…to solve a series of major economic and social problems with the correct policy, thereby quickly turning around a difficult situation.”

  • 9.1万亿平台贷再分类 “支持类”可获新增贷款 – 金融 – 21世纪网
  • 上海持有居住证满3年家庭可购二套房 – 房产·汽车 – 21世纪网 – shanghai relaxes housing purchase restrictions slightly. will beijing slap down?
  • 安信浮与沉:一部“类蒙牛”的企业史 – 产经 – 21世纪网
  • 打破铁饭碗:多省市拟试点公务员聘任制 – 宏观 – 21世纪网 – 核心提示:目前江苏省正在研究制定试点办法,让一聘定终身的公务员制度,变成“合同工”。
  • 人民日报评日本人武汉丢车事件:普通市民难享VIP待遇_资讯频道_凤凰网
  • Alibaba Offers $2.5B to Take Listed Unit Private – Bloomberg – Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (ALIBABZ), in talks to buy back a stake owned by Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), offered as much as HK$19.6 billion ($2.5 billion) to privatize a listed unit and gain full control of China’s biggest corporate e-commerce site.
    The company bid HK$13.50 a share for the 27 percent of Alibaba.com Ltd. (1688) it doesn’t already own, according to a Hong Kong Stock Exchange statement yesterday. The shares surged as much as 43 percent to HK$13.26, the most in more than four years.
  • Lamborghini Revives Rambo to Compete in China – Bloomberg – Volkswagen AG (VOW3)’s Lamborghini is upending tradition with a new sport-utility vehicle, joining Bentley and Maserati in super-sizing their supercars to make more of a mark in China.
    “An SUV comes in handy when you need to ferry more passengers and things about, like when you go shopping,” said Bill Liu, 26, who runs a real estate company in Shanghai and owns a Range Rover Evoque and five sports cars, including a $1 million gray Lamborghini Aventador.
  • China’s Tencent Enters U.S. With Twitter Rival, Facebook Games | ClickZ – This is the first in a two-part series. Read part two.
    Chinese social media powerhouse Tencent is rapidly moving into the U.S. market, quietly rolling out an English-language version of its Wiebo microblogging platform and assembling a team to launch online social games on Facebook. The company recently opened offices in Palo Alto, CA. in the shadow of Facebook's headquarters, to take advantage of Silicon Valley's pool of gaming talent and tech-savvy Mandarin-speaking applicants.
  • Forget Twitter Fans, China’s Tencent Wants U.S. Brands to Sign Up | ClickZ – China's Tencent, a multi-pronged Internet company, is trying to stay ahead of its rivals by moving into the U.S. market and offering new opportunities to overseas marketers. The Beijing-based company is rolling out an English-language version of its two-year-old Twitter-like Weibo service and is hiring a team in Silicon Valley to launch new games on Facebook.
    Experts say the English-language Tencent Weibo isn't interested in competing with Twitter for U.S. users. Rather it wants to sell U.S. brands new avenues to tap the growing Chinese consumer base. "There is a far greater opportunity for Tencent in providing Western brands with access to the Chinese market than them investing heavily in Western adoption of their solutions," says Rick Williams, AKQA creative development director, based in London. The Tencent microblog has already signed up a sizable number of international brands, says Leo Chu, managing director of Tribal DDB Shanghai. Among the companies that advertise on Tencent's network of messaging, gaming, social media and web portals are Nike, Coca-Cola, KFC and Ford.
  • Neil Barofsky on Taxpayer Subsidies to the Mortgage Settlement « naked capitalism – Neil Barofsky, former Special Inspector General of the TARP, weighs in on the mortgagesettlement at Bloomberg. One intriguing little aspect of this deal is the degree to which the Administration, particularly HUD, is frustrated that its PR efforts are landing with a thud. I’ve been told of HUD efforts to push back against my post, “The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement,” as well as an important article by Shahien Nasiripour at the Financial Times on how the administration’s mortgage modification program HAMP would wind up providing taxpayer subsidies to the settlement.
  • 限购频遭变通 多地楼市变相"松绑"暗流涌动_中国经济网――国家经济门户 – 近期,天津部分楼盘开始针对外地购房者主打“限外放松”牌,宣称可以帮助购房者补齐社保缴费证明。据了解,这种现象不仅发生在天津,三亚、佛山、长春等多个城市均存在变相放松“限外令”迹象。
  • This Is How Sex Doll Manufactured in China » M.I.C. Gadget – Some Chinese journalist has visited an inflatable sex doll factory in Ningbo, a seaport city in Zhejiang province northeast China. The factory began producing plastic blow up dolls and adult toy 3 years ago. Now it has 13 different type of models, with an average selling price of 100 yuan (US$15.80). Last year, the factory sold a total of over 50,000 inflatable dolls, with 15 percent of them being exported to Japan, Korea, and Turkey.
  • Tencent Pivoting From PC to IPhone for Ads – Bloomberg – Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700) is China’s biggest Internet company, with 430 million users. Even so, it is only No. 6 in attracting advertising because its customers are considered students and farmers without much discretionary income.
    Enter the smartphone.
    China’s online advertising market expanded more than 40 percent to $4.2 billion last year, according to Media Partners Asia. The industry may exceed $10 billion by 2015, it said. Tencent Chief Executive Officer Ma Huateng is wooing that money by shifting his focus from personal computers to mobile devices.
  • The Jamestown Foundation: Security Chief’s Efforts to Seal Up the Political-Legal Chairmanship – There is a quieter campaign, however, taking place to ensure a widely-expected result becomes a foregone conclusion. State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu is pushing to claim the top spot on the Central Political and Legal Committee, replacing Zhou Yongkang as overseer of China’s police, prisons, judiciary and civilian intelligence.

    The latest evidence of Meng’s efforts to lock in his future position is a new Ministry of Public Security (MPS) publicity campaign: “three inquiries, three assessments to deepen the big visits” (san fang san ping shenhua da zou fang) and “practical love-the-people activities” (aimin shijian huodong).

  • A Battle for Mongolia’s Copper Lode – WSJ.com – TORONTO—Billionaire entrepreneur Robert Friedland built his fortune learning how to gain advantage over some of the world's largest and most powerful mining companies.

    Today Mr. Friedland is finding that dealing with giants can be tricky sport.

    At issue is ownership of resources buried deep in the Mongolian desert that are among the world's largest unexploited gold and copper deposits—a development with estimated reserves of 81 billion pounds of copper and 46 million ounces of gold.

  • Santorum In 2008: Satan is Systematically Destroying America | MRCTV – the person or the substance?//
    In 2008, Sen. Rick Santorum spoke at Ave Maria University and said that Satan is destroying academia, politics, and the Protestant Church.
  • Memory Support Living at the Sylvestery – Vinson Hall Retirement Home
  • Vascular dementia – MayoClinic.com