Posts tagged china
“The Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau has relaunched its daily air quality monitoring service with a cute new mascot who’s expression shows just how many pollutants residents of Shanghai are breathing in on any given day.”
Wow:
(Via Shanghaiist)
On Bad Incentives
Bad incentives accelerate the problem you’re trying to solve, whether it’s piranhas or global warming.
A few days ago, a story emerged from southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang region involving piranhas. One local man was bitten on the palm by a piranha while catching the fish from a local river. The man brought the fish home, “whereupon one of his curious friends got too close to the fish and was also bitten.”
The local Liuzhou government attempted to quell fears by issuing a bounty for the fish, a reward for 1,000 yuan ($160). So internet retailers started selling the offending fish online at cut rate prices:
The reward nonetheless became a death sentence on other aquatic life in the river as thousands of locals swarmed to the riverside and hauled over 90 kilograms of various unoffending fish from the water.
Ads offering to sell piranhas proliferated meanwhile on Taobao, China’s leading online trading platform, with one vendor offering express delivery of piranhas for US$1.80 per fish from Ningbo in the coastal province of Zhejiang — some 1,600 kilometers from Liuzhou, according to state broadcaster China National Radio.
The government canceled the program when it became apparent that more piranha’s might be left in the river, “as people may buy them cheaply and release them deliberately.”
The story cleanly follows the “amateur capitalism” trope of China news. It functions as a pat on our back, that the ‘backwater’, ‘disorganized’ Chinese government and fishermen mutate market incentives into farce.
But bad incentives are equal opportunity hazards. Today there’s a fantastic example in the NYT regarding carbon offsets:
But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity.
They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas. That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year.
That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high — a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer.
So since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments have profited handsomely from an unlikely business: churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct. The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low, discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases.
Wonder if the UN will have as much sense as the Liuzhou government.
Wearing full face masks at Chinese beaches is currently in vogue:
For legions of middle-class Chinese women — and for those who aspire to their ranks — solar protection is practically a fetish, complete with its own gear. This booming industry caters to a culture that prizes a pallid complexion as a traditional sign of feminine beauty unscathed by the indignities of manual labor. There is even an idiom, which women young and old know by heart: “Fair skin conceals a thousand flaws.”
With the pursuit of that age-old aesthetic ideal at odds with the fast-growing interest in beachgoing and other outdoor activities, Chinese women have come up with a variety of ways to reconcile the two. Face masks like Ms. Yao’s have taken this popular beach town by storm.
And:
“A woman should always have fair skin,” she said proudly. “Otherwise people will think you’re a peasant.”
(Via NYT)
“ Localizing does not simply mean making specific allusions to a culture. Nor does globalizing mean having a faceless homogenizing front for a corporation. Obvious cultural taboos aside, overthinking about “the right balance” may not always be helpful. Even terms such as “glocalization” may still be implying a false dichotomy. The emotional appeal comes from your advertising being honest and authentic, not containing overt cultural references. That is what makes a brand human, and humans are not always so different.”
Jonathan Mak Long , interviewed in Evan Osnos’ New Yorker blog.
Jonathan is a 20 year old Hong Konger designer, whose first ad is this:
Ferrari "Convoy" Caught Hitting 132 MPH, Fined $31.40
Meanwhile, in China:
A group of maniac drivers in multimillion-yuan Ferraris had their driver’s license suspended or were fined 200 yuan ($31.40) after being caught speeding on Hangzhou-Xin’anjiang-Jingdezhen Expressway Saturday, according to police in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.
Highway traffic police in Hangzhou said traffic monitors detected one of the drivers traveling at 213 kilometers per hour along the 100 kilometer per hour highway.
Altogether, drivers of eight Ferraris were stopped at a toll booth and charged with speeding. Five drivers were caught driving over 150 kilometers per hour. They had their driver’s license confiscated. One of the drivers who could not produce his driver’s license had his car impounded.
(Via Global Times)
Sina Weibo updates its "Community Conventions"
Of special note is article 13:
Article 13: Users have the right to publish information, but may not publish any information that:
Opposes the basic principles established by the constitution
Harms the unity, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of the nation
Reveals national secrets, endangers national security, or threatens the the honor or interests of the nation
Incites ethnic hatred or ethnic discrimination, undermines ethnic unity, or harms ethnic traditions and customs
Promotes evil teachings and superstitions
Spreads rumors, disrupts social order, and destroys societal stability
Promotes illicit activity, gambling, violence, or calls for the committing of crimes
Calls for disruption of social order through illegal gatherings, formation of organizations, protests, demonstrations, mass gatherings and assemblies
Has other content which is forbidden by laws, administrative regulations and national regulations.
(Via Caijing English, via China Digital Times)
James Fallows explains the significance of this seemingly mundane picture, which was taken by a Chinese engineer visiting Florida on a business trip:
To the Chinese engineer, what was fascinating and significant about the picture was its orderliness. The yellow school bus stopped, turned on its “do not pass” flashers, and extended its Stop signs. And — the amazing part — all surrounding traffic actually obeyed. Even those who are fans of the excitement and passion of Chinese life will agree that such a scene is hard to imagine in a Chinese city. You’d have motorbikes cutting past on the sidewalk, cars veering into the opposite-direction lane to get around the obstacle, a cacophony of horns complaining about any vehicle that did slow down, and in general the creative-chaos that extends from many other parts of Chinese life to its roadways. (Where it can seem festive, but also dangerous: China’s traffic-death rate per active motorist and per mile driven is several times higher than in North America or Europe.)
To local authorities in Florida, what was notable about the situation was:
- a foreigner
- stopping to take pictures
- of a bus
- containing children.
If you see something, say something. So they detained the man for questioning.
Our world powers in a nutshell. (Via The Atlantic)
Chen Guangcheng’s Journey
Evan Osnos is not only the best single source for understanding news out of China, he also has a superhuman knack for the 2nd paragraph recap:
Sometime in the last few days, Chen slipped out of the stone farmhouse on the rural plains of Shandong province where he has been held under house arrest, with his family, off and on since 2005. If Chen’s captors had been readers of history, they might have predicted that he would not acclimate to limitations. Born blind, to a peasant family, he once ventured four hundred miles to Beijing, when he was in his early twenties, to file a tax complaint. Later, he was steered into the study of massage and acupuncture—one of the few professions available to the blind in China—but he leveraged that opportunity into taking law courses, and became a pioneering attorney on behalf of women subjected to forced abortions and sterilizations under the one-child policy. Lastly, his captors might have done well to remember that the last time he escaped, in the summer of 2005, he slipped out of his house after nine o’clock, because the darkness gave him an advantage. This time he escaped at night once again, and made his way to Beijing with the help of accomplices. He is now believed to be under the protection of U.S. diplomats. (They have not confirmed.)
(Via The New Yorker)
Chinese Censors Crack Down on Influential Microbloggers
The Chinese Government is tries to put their thumb over the faucet, deleting the accounts of several influential microbloggers:
On March 24, Chinese journalist Yang Haipeng drew a connection on his Sina Weibo account between a British national and the Bo family, including Mr. Bo’s son, Guagua. “Deceased: Guagua’s nanny. Nationality: British. Place: Chongqing. Handled by: Wang Lijun. Cause of death: Wang was not allowed to investigate. The body was not preserved and instead directly cremated,” said the post, which was forwarded widely before it was deleted.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Yang’s Sina Weibo account was deleted, though the company didn’t issue a notice. In an interview, Mr. Yang confirmed the deletion and said he had more than 247,000 followers before the account was closed. This week’s crackdown shows it is “more and more dangerous” to write about the incident, he said.
“The most important effect of weibo is decentralization,” said Qiao Mu, director of the Center for International Communication Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, using the Chinese term for microblog. “Before, what the story is, who gets famous, everything was decided by the government. It was a centralized process. Now anyone can become famous. They don’t need the government’s permission. And anyone can put out news.”
Or, as the Party put it in their official statement: “Recently, criminal elements have used Sina Weibo to create and spread malicious political rumors online for no reason, producing a terrible effect on society.” It’s unusual for them to acknowledge such deletions at all. (Via WSJ)
Taking Down Bo Xilai Threatens Exposing to Rich Oligarchs
Bloomberg issued a fantastic report two days ago detailing the financial connections of Bo Xilai’s family. The piece nicely succinctly articulated why the Chinese government is so spooked:
“The danger for them, the Chinese, is that the whole of the Politburo and their Central Committee colleagues will be exposed as a new property-owning class,” said Roderick MacFarquhar, a Harvard University professor who focuses on Chinese politics. “It’s already got out of hand. The problem for the regime is that it is now out in the public sphere.”
How big is the wealth differential? Very big:
Chinese legislators have amassed outsized assets, with the wealth of the richest 70 members of the National People’s Congress amounting to $90 billion last year, 12 times the combined wealth of the 660 top officials in the U.S. government.
Interesting that the party would take the risk of ousting Bo then. Such a move suggests that Bo’s affairs were especially broad and out of control and that the government thought they could handle the PR fallout from these events more tightly than they have.
