Posts Tagged ‘blog’

Today we’re trying something a little different. This email came through yesterday from a reader I highly respect and there were several additions I wanted to make, so I post them here in-line for all to enjoy.

If you are white and you make any effort at all in Korean, you will be treated as a hero.  Whenever I say Bang-Gap-Samida (pleased to meet you), the Koreans go crazy.

I’ve noticed this as well in my various dealings with Chinese folk.

If you make any effort to speak Mandarin (or a local dialect of the Chinese where you’re located), the natives go, um…ape. The more sordid and unmentioned aspect of this reaction – perhaps more important to note, especially for those who haven’t traveled to the PRC before – is that what it’s really saying is how Chinese people perceive foreigners and their intellectual capacities. A general Chinese rule-of-thumb – the urban legend, as it were — is that Chinese believe a white Westerner (not to mention a black person) can’t ever match a Chinese citizen’s brainpower and therefore couldn’t learn to speak Putonghua (Mandarin) even if their lives depended on it. The further out one fans out from Tier One burgs (egs. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen), the more strongly would this sentiment be expressed.

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The cleanest purest race.

Yes, that is indeed how the North Koreans think about themselves, and a staggering number of South Koreans, as well, if the occasional foreigner-bashing newspaper article is anything to go by. You’ll have to read B.R. Myers latest book on the topic, The Cleanest Race, to know what I’m talking about though (but don’t fret, it’s a thin read and full of pictures to break up the action for the time-pressed).

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I’ve been dreading this post for a while now, but a recent exchange with a friend over Skype last night reminded me how I can’t avoid the subject any longer, hence this post.

Here was the departure point for our chat: you can only be good at one delivery mechanism in social media. That combining your social media efforts across multiple channels – text, audio, and video — needlessly dilutes your cumulative efforts in the space and withers away at your brand identity. It boils down to the following: if you’re a prolific blogger, like my friends Damjan DeNoble and James Flanagan of China Health Care Blog

Courtesy: Damjan DeNoble, Asia Health Care Blog

remain a blogger. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to articulate what overcame me for the better part of yesterday, but I just couldn’t put down LA Times Beijing bureau chief Barbara Demick’s latest North Korea (DPRK) tell-all, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.

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So what do you really know about the travesty of justice that took place in Rwanda back in April 1994?

There teenagers just sliding into adolescence right about now who likely have never even heard of Rwanda, so I pose the question to them: what do you know? Can you even locate the Central African statelet on the map? What do you know the genocide that occurred more than fifteen years ago? Read the rest of this entry »

For the world’s China watchers, like myself, there’s a new dynamic duo in town, the Swiss authors of Serge Michel & Michel Beuret who have recently signed their John Hancocks to their fresh-off-the-press China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing’s Expansion in Africa.

So I’ve got the book and I’ve been meticulously working my way through it.

Safari is another of those stark assessments of China’s involvement on the African continent, an investigative look into a region where only the world’s most intrepid journalists and truth-seekers dare set foot. Amidst this ailing continent of near-permanent depravity, rampant corruption, easily-treatable chronic disease, and on-again off-again brutal, bloody war, there tread the seeming bravest of the brave: China’s nouveau riche. Numbering in the thousands, these are the hopeful men and women who have cast out into the wide world in search of their fortunes across two massive continents to heed former Chinese supremo Jiang Zemin’s call to “go abroad and make money.”

Well, the jury is indeed out on China’s questionable activities in Africa. There are those who laud China’s efforts to raise the living standard of a people who find themselves repeatedly sidelined and babied by the planet’s developed economic powerhouses. Others resent the Chinese for being less than candid about their real African aims, with the PRC dangling juicy carrots in front of the salivating self-interested African dictators and pseudo-democracies who are only too pliant to trumpet the PRC’s apparent munificence while China uses the opportunity to further sink its tentacles deeper into the resource-rich African soil.

These competiting — yet equally valid — impressions of China’s African master plan is what makes their involvement there at once so marvellous and terrifying.

But, tody, for the uninitiated, I supply a brief overview of what these two competing narratives entail, both for the Chinese and for Africa:

The “Pro-China” Benevolent View:

We live in an open world where even the most Machiavellian Chinese businessman or bureaucrat wouldn’t deign to brazenly perpetrate the most crass of moneymaking schemes without at least fearing the censure of the globe’s Africa watchers. This is the wellspring from which The Benevolent View derives its strength.

Basically, this view contends that since the late ’90s, the Chinese people have heeded their leaders’ calls to resume the nation’s former leading role in the colonially-ravaged continent by spoiling their former “brethren” with financial incentives and infrastructure gifts as a means of uplifting the African people. This is the Chinese version of “big brother.”

It’s clear that the Chinese have an interest in perpetuating this porous myth, since it benefits them greatly. The staggering number of exclusivity contracts and resource concessions which African governments have offered up to the PRC on a silver platter as the latter have bequeathed their “no strings attached” cosmetic improvements and financial incentives to them have made Chinese mega-tycoons out of former paupers. In defending the actions of the Chinese, this is what Africa’s leaders are wont to refer to as the China-Africa “win-win,” or China’s “sympathetic capitalism,” which is 180-degree opposed to the way the Great Powers used to press their colonial influence in a former era.

What’s generally hidden in all the cash-lending hoopla are the gory details. Few realize that agreements inked between Chinese and Africans stipulate that 70% or more of such infrastructure contracts — including, among others, the improvement or wholly-new construction of bridges, roads, and rail lines — must be helmed by Chinese construction firms, a non-negotiable condition before any aid or interest-free loan money can be deposited into African treasuries or before the first spade breaks dirt.

The second — less pernicious, though equally exclusionary — aspect of Chinese business in Africa deals with the workers themselves, imported, like the construction materials themselves, straight from China. Laborers are customarily holed up in secluded quarters, under 24-hour lockdown, with their passports stowed away under lock and key and away from the prying eyes of locals and investigative journalists alike (there is even photographic evidence of this in China Safari).

The “Anti-China” Villanous View:

China has made it patently clear that it aims to become the world’s second superpower, and conducts itself apprpriately.

Africa plays a key role in their universal strategy, given China’s resource scarcity for certain key resources — namely crude oil and uranium (yellow cake) — and watch as the Chinese ladle out aid and advantages in copious sums as a means of quite literally bribing their way into Africa’s good graces. With the Americans, French, and Italians already having scooped up the key Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf territories, China aims to “hit ‘em where they ain’t” (sorry for the Babe-esque baseball analogy) in going after Africa’s goodies. As the Chinese have come bearing (Trojan?) gifts, the Africans have been only too happy to award them with keys to the castle.

But all is not golden.

In Algeria, the Chinese are referred to as “Ali Baba” (you decide whether this is for their generous nature or for their thieving ways). In Senegal, Niger, Cameroon, and across other regions of the former Francafrique, frequent protests erupt and there are on-again, off-again boycotts of Chinese-owned shops and Chinese-dominated shopping districts, in addition to spates of kidnappings as the have-nots have been simmering on the sidelines as the Chinese have had their way with things.

In meetings with Africa’s cabinet-level ministers and presidents, the Chinese have torn a page out of Sun Tzu’s ancient playbook: keep thine “enemies” closer than thine comrades. Here’s one example how the Chinese will typically attempt to endear themselves to their interlocutors during negotiation sessions: a Chinese delegation member will usually be assigned to study the preferences of their African opposite numbers. In one storied case, a Gabonese minister who was a fan of architecture and Greco-Roman history was shocked to receive a phone call from his Chinese opposite number shortly after the conclusion of a successful meeting discussing these very topics, with a exclusive invite to a European architecture exhibit the next time the minister was in Europe.

The “anti-Chinese” viewpoint explains that this is all a calculated attempt on the part of the Chinese to approach their ultimate aim, which is to overtake Japan as the world’s second largest economy.

So which weltanschauung wins? Well, it’s paradox. For even if the Chinese are as mendacious as some experts claim, the majority of Africa’s population is gaining tremendously as it becomes — yet again — an unwitting pawn in a global game of realpolitik. The Chinese want this badly, and they’re willing to do anything they can to secure their position in the world and they’re in it for the very long haul. Free loans, scholarships, planes, trains, and automobiles. Whatever it takes to get to the top.

It’s just that with the world being as open as it is today, it’s becoming harder and harder to hide the harm and damage their “peaceful rise” is leaving in its wake.

Over the weekend I finished off Jeremy Gutsche’s latest book, Exploiting Chaos, the contents of which I’ve been using like rocket fuel to propel me through this week.

The basic premise of Gutsche’s sensational read is that the absolute best time to act is precisely during times of uncertainty, when the whole edifice seems to be crumbling, like during our present credit crunch which is spanking certain parts of the world more aggressively than others. Moreover, adds Gutsche, the time to make a bold move is never better than right now.

Gutsche’s claim to fame, however, isn’t as a sower of chaos — nor as a writer of lean prose (his book clocks in at almost 270pp, compromised in the majority of attractive graphics and king-kong sized fonts that resemble more a Brezhnev-era Red Square propaganda pitch instead of a needed rah-rah rallying cry) — but rather as a man who is so darn good at hunting down trends. Having said that, Exploiting Chaos is anything but propaganda, and Jeremy Gutsche is the further thing from a Communist-era majordomo. Have a look at Trend Hunter to get an eyeful of what consumes Mr. Gutsche’s working day.

Trends surround us, Gutsche believes, and all it takes is to train your perceptions to identify them when the clutter of everyday humdrum life might otherwise blind you to the obvious daily acts of simple innovation that are plainly staring you in the face. Examples like edible coffee mugs from cookie dough, maxi pads for menstruating female canines, stylish baby toupees, multiple SIM-card holding cellphones for developing Africa, or single-breast covering feminine chic evening wear are some of the hottest new trends on the market, the sorts of social phenomena which form the very spark of the world’s next fabulous ideavirus that can land their creators a motherlode of loot.

Following a few tweets and traded Facebook status messages with Jeremy, I’ve been on the prowl for trends wherever I look. Given my hectic travel schedule this winter season I find myself commending my humble hunt here in Prague. Lately, I’ve been looking through my sweet little locals (generating more than a few perplexed stares, I’ll note) rather than right at them, trying to observe slick things that have trendy written all over ‘em. The sort of hipster habits with just the right amount of punch which might catapult them from the realm of blah-inducing faddishness into the rarefied air of societal irreverence, a key ingredient in all things deliciously rebelliously cool.

I also realized, as I finished Gutsche’s book, that I’ve been doing this sort of thing all along, on the lookout, that is, for all things novel and gnarly. For some silly reason, I’ve just never devised a name for this bizarre behaviour of mine though now I’ve got one (and no, it’s not “sowing chaos”).

From here on in, I commit to codifying these various ideas at my blog, tagging all such future posts as “TREND:” so you can simply identify when I’m waxing poetically about some trend or other, not offering up another plain jane entry.

So without further ado, here are 3 kickass trends I thought of since Monday:

Pizza Bras:

You know those “bras” they have for takout coffee, a kind of narrow corrugated carboard wraparound insulation so you don’t burn your nubs carrying it from the counter to the milk and sugar station or from the drive through window to your SUV’s beverage rings? Well, I think they should make “pizza bras” too!

I considered this over the past couple of days while diving mouthfirst into my latest pizza jonesing, sampling the full gamut of slices on offer in the Golden City while simultaneously marvelling at how much packaging waste would accompany this funny little craving. At nearly every slice joint I bought at, the server would inquire”zbalit?,” or, “Should I pack it?,” which, should one respond affirmatively, would result in a rapid flurry of square-sized pizza trays (first to get chucked into the bin — I mean, who holds onto the paper tray when eating the slice? = total useful life, 10 seconds, max) dividing wax paper while all this would then be enveloped by an appropriately-sized paper bag, slapdashed with some tossed-in napkins, and then topped off by a plastic bag to tote the whole shebag around. I’d stand at one of the available tables and watch as customers would request the full packaging treatment only to throw away the plastic and paper stuff within the first twenty seconds following payment. Why give it if it serves no useful purpose? (I realize the answer to this question in this part of the world is generally: “Because that’s the way it’s done around here.”

Horsepuckey!

After observing this more times than I can count, I propose the advent of a kind of patented “triangular bra” would caress the slice accordingly and gradually nudge the edible end of the slice (the tip, in the majority of cases) out towards the eater’s mouth by a simple folding of the bra at the crust end. In this way, the eater doesn’t get his/her hands dirty, nor would they burn their hands if the slice is fresh out of the oven. The most important benefit is the elimination of all that colossal paper and plastic waste.

Think about it. If anyone wants to take a crack at how this might look, I’d be happy to see a diagram.

Ink Paper:

Ink Paper is the reverse of a pen which writes on paper. In this instance, it’s the paper which writes on the pen.

Confused yet? Well here’s the basic concept: for those old enough to remember (I can’t believe I just said that), carbon paper was a labor-saving low-tech copying device used before the advent of the Xerox machine. A writer could thereby duplicate his/her manuscript without the need to annoyingly whip off a second copy by hand. The black or blue carbon on the reverse side of the slip would remain as a vestige on the blank sheet beneath it as pressure was applied to the paper above the carbon paper by a suitably sharp-tipped pen (or, in some cases, pencil) while the writer normally composed a text.

Ink Paper, rather, would be similar to carbon paper but a more enviro-safe chemically-treated recycled plastics-derived version which could be scribbled upon with a sort of stylus. In sum, it would appear to the naked eye as though the ink were emerging from the stylus, but rather, Ink Paper would contain the “ink” already while this high-friction stylus would be the instrument to reveal it within the Ink Paper.

Ink Paper could be the latest use for billions of tons of unrecycled plastics which have been accumulating since the invention this highly-adaptable compound in the atmosphere, polluting it forever. Plastic could be moulded into thin, highly-responsive sheets of almost film-like consistency that would reveal colours, or “ink,” when scratched by the tip of the stylus. The other great thing about Ink Paper, besides reducing (to eliminating) our dependency on clear-cutting Amazon rain forests, would be fewer spent high-grade plastic pen casings plus their metal ballpoint tips that would normally be chucked straight into the trash when done. Rather, the stylus would be a more expensive writing instrument constructed of stronger recycled plastic, that would be kept for longer periods of time, similar to stainless steel chopsticks that are now popular across East and Southeast Asia.

Ink Paper might take a decade to catch on, but once popular, I think it could trounce the market.

Flexible Computer Shells:

We all know what happens to our obsolete computers: they’re scooped up by salvagers and ferried off to the developing world where they receive their own version of a second life.

But what happens to these monitors, keyboards, hard drives, towers, mice, cables, printers, scanners, and other peripherals when they’re no longer cutting-edge enough for the developing world? They’re carted off to landfills or stripped bare and melted down into their component parts for use in other industrial or commercial processes, similar to what happens to old cellphones that are harvested for their constituent cassiterite, coltan, or gold. Still, there are residual enviro-poisoning toxins that are not, alas, fully recovered during such salvage effort, and it is this issue which could be alleviated by the creation of flexible computer shells.

The interchangeable internal “brain” parts of a computer, things like graphics/network cards, hard drives, or RAM chips, are encased in sturdy inflexible plastic. Just look in front and all around you and you’ll see what I mean as you read this post. Once you purchase, say, a laptop, you’re limited by the amount of parts you can shove under that hood, constrained by the physical dimensions of the shell you bought. Once you’re done with that machine, you generally scrap the old unit in its entirety and buy a brand new one.

But just imagine for a second if the shell of your desktop or laptop were like reusable durable clay, resilient enough to be toted around and pressed, though not susceptible to snapping if pressed too far or banging it on a desk? Imagine how by immersing this shell in water for a period of 24 hours or by boiling it and pouring it back into a mould at a service depot, it could be refashioned into a bigger exoskeleton whereby different internal brain-like parts could be modularly inserted into the chassis and rearranged?

So while a user might upgrade to better-performing components, they would also migrate from generation to generation of machine without dispensing of their initial plastic ingredients, thereby reducing overall plastic production by not requiring a brand new computer, lock, stock, and barrel.

By the way, if any of these already exist, let me know, and like I said, I’ll make a point of sharing my “ideation” more often.

My review of Paul Midler’s POORLY MADE IN CHINA

arrives well after the majority of critical and supportive reviews have already appeared at this site, and I admit in advance that much of what I’m about to say has been influenced by the discussions I’ve held at Facebook (/gtowna), Twitter, and of course from what I’ve read here. Without going too deeply into a review of the book’s blow-by-blow contents, the likes of which have already been capably done by my peers here, I’d like the focus of my review to be on the following: the book indeed supplies a ready-ground for further discussion on the topic of the Chinese manufacturing industry in a fulsome manner.

Critics of Mr. Midler’s work have abounded — the majority of the them ranging from his unfair attribution of blame squarely and solely upon the shoulders of Guangdong’s small factories, while less of his bromide focusses on the foreign businessmen and women who engage said factories in the oftentimes dirty work of making stuff in China. If it wasn’t for the fact that our author is a recognized Old China Hand with the linguistic skills and impeccable professional credentials and track record to match, one might think that Midler has sort of axe to grind. Naturally, this falls by the wayside and easily dissolves when one realizes that the agency game is the very income which puts the proverbial bread on Mr. Midler’s dinner table.

The book has strengths and weaknesses, to be sure. Among the narrative’s strengths are (as cited by other reviewers here) the accessibility of the prose, given how it wasn’t loaded up with industry-specific jargon and — ugh! — statistics which aim to factually support the author’s contention. Another is the occasional asides Midler intersperses between the major sections, which not only brakes up the potential monotony of overall factory-speak, but which demonstrates, at least to this reviewer, that Mr. Midler is less agenda-less than might be initially imagined, given the title of this work. Its thinness was also a welcome item. Midler’s contention is driven home resoundingly well, with the major takeaway, at least for me, being that doing business in China — as in any foreign market — is a treacherous path hardly for the meek. Those without a penchant for the smell of napalm in the morning and gunpowder might wish to think twice about investing their capital in the Chinese market, given how potentially quixotic — given the experience of some of the author’s clients — the market can be. It’s more than just caveat emptor — buyer beware — in China’s Factory Towns. It’s that not being fully apprised of this reality well in advance is somthing expatriate businessmen will feel at their peril.

On the weakness side of things — which other reviewers have noted and which I fully subscribe to — is the fact that Midler doesn’t cast his net as widely as he perhaps should. He milks the Johnson Carter/King Chemical debacle to the hilt and supplies little in the way of comparative case study analysis other than the occasional peppering in of an anecdote or two from similar-scripted incidents with some of his other clients, or those of his professional colleagues, and this is likely the reason some have accused him of having something of an agenda. Also, Midler’s personal biases trickle into the story which other than revealing Midler’s position on certain things — likely the reason for editorial left them in the final galleys — are sometimes mildly offputting and wondering why his censure didn’t extend to other so-called “ethnic” groups who are readily present in the Chinese foreign business community which yet don’t receive similar extended treatment. I refer to the two cases of Jewish businessmen — both Johnson Carter’s idiosyncratic Bernie (at least as Midler paints him) and then the family of Belgian diamond merchants — as ready examples. Why should Bernie’s habit of covering his head to recite a thanksgiving blessing after a lavatory visit be any different than tossing “chance sticks” in a Buddhist temple? Where is the equivalence?

While others might find it entertaining and instructive, I did get “emotionally-involved” at certain stages of the story given how this happens to people with less ambitious China plans who are just looking to achieve a measure of increased profitability given the globalized context of how business works in this day and age. People have also criticized Mr. Midler for taking a political stance on the PRC, but I know this only too well from my expatriate existence that after living for a significant period of time in a foreign nation and having learned the nuances of its language and culture, a transferrence should ideally occur at a certain stage with the host country eventually accepting the erstwhile “guest” as one of their own. While Midler recounts the single case of his Chinese airline seat companion assuring him that despite Midler decade and a half of residence in China the latter can hardly be counted as a local, it makes one wonder whether this opinion is more widely held across a broader spectrum of the Chinese collective. Given that I don’t live in the PRC, I myself would be hardpressed to challenge this but I’d like to hear from others more qualified to do so.

All in all, however, I relished this read and like most of the reviewers have said themselves, I blew through it eagerly and nearly in one sitting and Midler’s message was tremendously well-articulated and his writing style can be best described as fun.

This was a business book which didn’t have that business book-y look and feel, for that — given how many of the latter I read — I was most grateful.

Five stars.

–Adam Daniel Mezei

ps Paul Midler’s website can be found here.