China Digital Times

Date archive for November 2008

• The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn’t Care to Listen To

  

  The New York Times reports on the mummies found and exhibited in Urumqi, Xinjiang, and explores what they can tell historians about the history of the region and its people:

  The Loulan Beauty is one of more than 200 remarkably well-preserved mummies discovered in the western deserts here over the last few decades. The ancient bodies have become protagonists in a very contemporary political dispute over who should control the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

  The Chinese authorities here face an intermittent separatist movement of nationalist Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who number nine million in Xinjiang.

  At the heart of the matter lie these questions: Who first settled this inhospitable part of western China? And for how long has the oil-rich region been part of the Chinese empire?

  Uighur nationalists have gleaned evidence from the mummies, whose corpses span thousands of years, to support historical claims to the region.

  » Read more
  • November 18, 2008 11:12 PM

• Photo: Locals eat breakfast at a popular noodle shop in Linxia, Gansu, by pmorgan

  

  

  Locals eat breakfast at a popular noodle shop in Linxia, Gansu, by pmorgan

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  • November 18, 2008 10:33 PM

• China Leader Set To Sign Peru Trade Deal

  

  The Financial Times reports that China is signing a new trade deal with Peru. President Hu Jintao arrives in Lima today for the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum; he will be greeted by around twelve ministers and almost 600 business leaders. The chair of APEC’s advisory council, Juan Raffo says that China will soon overcome the US as its largest trading partner.

  Peruvian finance minister, Luis Valdivieso, explained to the Financial Times the important of diversifying its markets. “We are very concerned about the recession that is going on in the US [and] Europe and the slowdown in Japan. So for us, China becomes an important partner,” he said. “The US will remain an important partner because we are also starting to implement a free-trade agreement with them. I think what is important is that we diversify.”

  China now has 300 billion people that are comparable to citizens in the US and that figure is expected to grow. As Juan F. Raffo, the chair of the APEC business advisory board said, “Their 1.3bn citizens, minus the elderly, are sooner or later going to jump the fence and consume at developed-world levels.”

  China’s other investments in Peru include a $2.2 billion investment in the Toromocho copper mine.

  » Read more
  • November 18, 2008 9:22 PM

• APEC Economist: India and China Key

  

  The Associated Press is reiterating China and India’s role in the global economic downturn, citing a top Pacific Rim trade economist and the International Monetary Fund in the positive impact of China and India’s growth. The IMF claims that developing nations, including China and India, will account for “the world’s entire projected 2.2 percent overall growth next year.”

  The IMF estimates that the economy from rich nations will grow by a mere 0.1 percent while the developing world is expected to grow almost five percent. China and India have grown at near double digit rates respectively, and the two countries hold 40 percent of the world’s population. Although the growth rates in both countries are expected to slow, “the production drop [will] be far softer than [in] rich countries” because China and India have the world’s largest cash reserves.

  China and India are members of APEC, and at last week’s G-20 summit in Washington DC both expressed a demand for “greater say in world economic and political forums.” The summit saw G-20 presidents agree to “take whatever action necessary to stabilize the financial system.”

  » Read more
  • November 18, 2008 8:50 PM

• China, Costa Rica to Launch Trade Talks

  

  From the Associated Press:

  During President Hu Jintao’s first visit to a Central American country, it was announced that trade talks between China and Costa Rica will commence in January, with a deal hoped for in 2010.  In addition, the two nations signed 11 cooperation agreements, including an agreement for a joint venture between China’s National Petroleum Corporation and Costa Rica’s state-owned oil refinery.

  China’s trade with Latin America has jumped from $10 billion in 2000 to $102.6 billion last year and it is now Costa Rica’s second most important trade partner.

  Hu’s trip to Costa Rica is part of a larger mission that includes a trip to Cuba, as noted in this CDT article.

  » Read more
  • November 18, 2008 4:27 PM

• Chinese Nationalism and Its Impact on Brands

  

  A recent study by Ogilvy Group China & Millward Brown ACSR China looks at Chinese nationalism from the angle of consumer culture. The research based its data on events leading up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the role of the internet in cultivating nationalistic sentiment. Media reports:

  The research, which canvassed a total of 900 Chinese citizens aged 16 to 45, found that the web had been the most significant source of awareness of the recent hostility towards foreign companies such as Carrefour and CNN. The findings showed that the gap between awareness of and participation in an event was narrowed online, with almost two-thirds of respondents stating they had taken part in the nationalistic ‘I heart China’ campaign on MSN at the time of the furore.

  In times of nationalistic fervour, Chinese brands were likely to see an increase in purchase intent among consumers, the survey suggested. A section of the participants, when reminded of the recent nationalistic activities and asked which brands they were likely to purchase in the near future, showed less interest in Carrefour and Louis Vuitton (respectively 7 and 8 per cent less than their counterparts not caught up in the situation). Meanwhile, Chinese skincare brands such as T-Joy and Dabao became more appealing by 7 and 8 per cent, respectively.

  But while Chinese consumers appear to favour Chinese products in principle (84 per cent vowed to increase their consumption of domestic brands), the survey showed quality and price to be the most important factors in a purchase decision, above national origin. Particularly for higher-priced goods, foreign brands were shown to be preferred. Knowledge of the origins of certain brands also appeared to be shaky: 26 per cent believed Olay to be Chinese.

  CDT had an earlier post on how brands have tried to use nationalism in their favor.

  Conversely, that can also backfire. In Adidas’s case of using the national flag on their products, resulted in a recall of products after a protest in March of this year. From Forbes:

  Chinese reporters and consumers rose to the defense of its national flag shortly after a news report last week in Hong Kong’s Mingpao daily newspaper, saying that Adidas might have violated Chinese law, which forbids the commercial use of its national flag. The news prompted a search by reporters in China, from Shanghai to Shenzhen to western Chengdu city to see if they could find the offending merchandise on sale in China as well, only to confirm it was not, yet. But one reporter managed to confirm with Adidas’s outlet in Chengdu that the apparel and accessories had been planned for sale there in April.

  

  Adidas appropriates the Chinese flag and comes under fire (photo courtesy of All Roads Lead to China)

  Read more on the Olympic publicity on CDT.

  The entire research report can be viewed on WPP.

  See also perspectives on Design News and a summary on Golden Brands China.

  » Read more
  • November 18, 2008 2:15 PM

• Chinese Automakers May Buy GM and Chrysler?

  

  With the U.S. auto industry in the midst of a crisis, Chinese media reports are saying that Chinese companies may buy up two giants, Chrysler and GM. From TheTruthAboutCars.com:

  Chinese carmakers SAIC and Dongfeng have plans to acquire GM and Chrysler, China’s 21st Century Business Herald reports today… The paper cites a senior official of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology– the state regulator of China’s auto industry– who dropped the hint that “the auto manufacturing giants in China, such as Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) and Dongfeng Motor Corporation, have the capability and intention to buy some assets of the two crisis-plagued American automakers.” These hints are very often followed with quick action in the Middle Kingdom. The hints were dropped just a few days after the same Chinese government gave its auto makers the go-ahead to invest abroad. And why would they do that?

  It is worth noting that this plan has not been mentioned widely (or at all) in the U.S. media reporting of the automakers’ current troubles. This article, from AP, talks about decreased sales in China as being one more nail in U.S. car makers’ coffins:

  The big automakers’ ability to weather the crisis hinges on drawing jittery customers like Yang back into dealerships, especially in China.

  The urgency is particularly acute for America’s big automakers — GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC — which have been battered by the U.S. economic meltdown and are lobbying the federal government for a $25 billion bailout that looks increasingly murky. GM has said it could run out of cash by year’s end without government aid.

  » Read more
  • November 18, 2008 2:01 PM

• US Says Will Work with China on Product Safety

  

  In response to a spate of food safety controversies in recent years, the U.S. FDA will set up its first overseas office in China. From AP:

  U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, speaking on the eve of opening of an FDA office in Beijing, said a new strategy was needed because the United States imported $2 trillion worth of goods a year, equal to four times the size of the Brazilian economy.

  “When one sees the enormity of that, it becomes clear you cannot inspect everything … we have to change our strategy from one of simple inspections at the border. We have to build quality into every product in every step of the process,” he told a news conference.

  The FDA office will be the first outside the United States and will be followed by two more in China this month and another one in India next month.

  Read also Xinhua’s report on this news, which says that China is also planning on setting up its own counterpart office in the U.S., though no date or location has been set yet.

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  • November 18, 2008 1:52 PM

• Cracks in a Great Wall of Silence

  

  An article in Asia Times looks at the lawsuit filed by journalist Cui Fan when local authorities in Inner Mongolia ordered her newspaper, the China Business Post, suspended:

  The CCP’s Bureau of Publication and Press in Inner Mongolia in September ordered the China Business Post, a business weekly with circulation of around 400,000, to suspend publication for three months after it ran a report exposing suspicious cash transfers at a public bank in Changde City, Hunan province.

  The bank was a branch of the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), one of the country’s “Big Four” state commercial lenders and the only one that has not yet sold its shares to the public.

  Unconvinced by the charges, Cui Fan, the journalist who wrote the report, filed a lawsuit with a court in the Inner Mongolian capital of Hohhot against the CCP press body, demanding a reversal of its decision and for it to make a symbolic compensation payment for damaging her reputation.

  » Read more
  • November 18, 2008 10:58 AM

• Will Global Financial Crisis Spark More Unrest in China? (Updated with Video)

  

  In Gansu, a violent riot broke out after the city of Longnan announced plans to demolish and relocate the city center. From the Los Angeles Times:

  The violence, one of the most marked instances of social unrest to grip China in recent months, was sparked by government plans to relocate the city of Longnan’s administrative center after May’s devastating earthquake, according to the Xinhua news agency.

  State-run press has reported on numerous pickets and demonstrations that have broken out across China in recent weeks, including a two-day strike by disgruntled taxi drivers in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing.

  Earlier this month, a crowd of 400 in the southern boomtown of Zhenzhen threw stones and set fire to a police car after officers tried to stop a motorcyclist at a checkpoint. The cyclist fled and was killed when he hit a lamppost.

  Joshua Rosenzweig of the Duihua Foundation points out that instances of social unrest are likely to increase at the global financial crisis hits China. He tells the LA Times:

  “I don’t think we’re even close to seeing the real impact of the global financial crisis on Chinese society. I’d be surprised if the government wasn’t very concerned about the increasing level of social unrest all over China.”

  Chinese economists say that rising wages throughout China have led many laborers to expect better working conditions and residents to demand more accountable government. “The local government has become the front line of conflict,” said Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology.

  
  Following this line of thought, in a related article in the New Republic, Joshua Kurlantzick explored how the economic downturn may impact China’s political situation:

  This unrest is likely to spiral. As the Chinese economy sours for the first time in years, the government this week announced a $586 billion stimulus package. But in some ways, much more is at stake: While, in the U.S., a financial failure would simply mean another dent in George W. Bush’s reputation, in China it could mean the breakdown of the entire political order.

  See also a report about the Gansu riot from the New York Times.

  Update: John Pomfret also comments on these issues on his Washington Post blog:

  The main reason for China’s current troubles is that Western economies — caught in their own recessions — aren’t buying like they did before. Some 10,000 factories are shuttered in southern China. Factory bosses are jumping over walls and fleeing China and their debts. More than 1 million people have lost their jobs over the last few months in one province of the country alone.

  But there are other reasons, too. Many Chinese are fed up with country’s endemic corruption and the sense that “social contract” that their now dead leader Deng Xiaoping hashed out for them after he engineered the June 4th crackdown in 1989 — you all have a fair shot at getting rich as long as you don’t challenge the party’s authority — is breaking down.

  Protests, some of them violent, are erupting throughout the country. State-run media, which usually ignores these things, has taken to reporting a number of them. To me that signals not that state-run media has suddenly turned professional but that the problem is of such proportions that ignoring it would be more laughable than acknowledging it.

  Reuters has more details of the Gansu riot in a report titled, “China Seeks to Curb Unrest Amid Finance Crisis“:

  Local residents contacted by Reuters said calm had returned to the city on Wednesday and blamed heavy-handed police for inflaming the riots, which they said had involved more than 10,000 people.

  “Actually, there were only a few thousand petitioners, but police fired tear gas which made women and children sick. This made the others angry,” a local hotel worker, who declined to give his name, told Reuters by telephone.

  [...] Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu said police “should be fully aware of the challenge brought by the global financial crisis and try their best to maintain social stability,” the China Daily quoted him as saying.

  Read the China Daily dispatch, “Petitioners unrest ‘under control’ in Gansu.”

  See footage of the riot on YouTube:
  

  » Read more
  • November 18, 2008 10:30 AM

• Uyghur Woman Released, Without Forced Abortion (Updated)

  

  From Radio Free Asia:

  An ethnic Uyghur woman in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region who was scheduled to undergo a second-term abortion against her will—and whose case drew international attention—has been released to her family and allowed to continue her pregnancy, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.

  “I am all right and I am at home now,” Arzigul Tursun told RFA’s Uyghur service, shortly after she was released from the Women and Children’s Welfare Hospital in Ili prefecture.

  “I brought her home,” the local population-control committee chief, Rashide, said. “She wasn’t in good enough health to have an abortion.”

  Tursun’s case prompted calls to the Chinese authorities from two members of the U.S. Congress and from the U.S. ambassador in Beijing for a planned abortion of her pregnancy to be scrapped.

  Also from Radio Free Asia earlier reporting:

  An ethnic Uyghur woman in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region who fled a local hospital to avoid a forced abortion has been found by police and taken under guard to a larger hospital, according to her husband.

  “The police found my wife,” Nurmemet Tohtasin said in a telephone interview from the Women and Children’s Welfare Hospital in Ili prefecture. “My wife’s father was already at the hospital. They will probably do the abortion today.”

  Police tracked down Arzigul Tursun, six months pregnant with her third child, at a relative’s home Monday afternoon, he said. Late Sunday, Tursun had fled Gulja’s municipal Water Gate Hospital, where she was scheduled to undergo an abortion against her will.

  “Arzigul ran away while the village official who was guarding her went to get her dinner. She left with her slippers, a shirt, and a sleeveless jacket. She didn’t take her bag or her other clothing,” Tohtasin said earlier.

  Read also CDT’s previous post: Uighur Woman, Six Months Pregnant, Faces Forced Abortion.

  And on CECC’s website: Authorities Plan to Subject Uyghur Woman to Forced Abortion.

  » Read more
  • November 18, 2008 8:55 AM