May 12, 2008

After quake, mobile networks burdened

A disaster strikes, and everyone reaches for the phone to call loved ones.

In a calamity like the Sichuan earthquake, the stresses on the mobile network are doubly great: Just as usage surges, blackouts and physical damage crimp network capacity.

That leaves many family members dialing relatives but unable to get through, leaving them increasingly agitated.

In Sichuan, 2,300 base stations stopped working due to blackouts or severe congestion.

At the worst moments, half of all mobile calls could not go through. According to this People’s Daily story, citing a China Mobile official, mobile calls surged tenfold after the quake.

China Unicom, the other major mobile operator, said its service in Wenchuan and four nearby counties were cut off.

Like in many countries, China’s reliance on mobile phones keeps going up. The nation has 574 million mobile phone users, 26 million of them in Sichuan province. That is far more than the 17.6 million fixed phone lines in Sichuan.

May 11, 2008

The doctor fighting for China's kids

Just as anywhere in the world, one finds the occasional heart-lifting story in China. Mine popped up last week in Fuyang, a small city in Anhui province.

The city’s children have been hit hard by a sometimes-fatal variant of hand, foot and mouth disease. Luckily, there is a doctor at Fuyang People’s Hospital named Liu Xiaolin.

I wrote a story about her on Friday. It was published over the weekend in the Detroit Free Press with the headline: Doc helps save China’s kids – again.

The article describes how Dr. Liu has been at the center of two health crises involving children, and both times acted in ways that may have saved dozens of lives by bucking pressures to stay silent.

One aspect I didn’t get into in the story was the silence of the local media. Throughout late March and all through April, children were dying left and right in Fuyang. But the local newspaper said nothing. Click here to find out how it tried to cover up the neglect of certain officials.

Looking at China through numbers

Here's an interesting compendium of factoids on China that was published in Britain's Independent newspaper. Click here for the story that accompanied this list and scroll down to the bottom.

I can't vouch for accuracy but certainly some of the numbers seem familiar from past reporting I've done.

China: In Numbers
By Simon Usborne

30,000: The expected number of Chinese MBA graduates in 2008. The number in 1998: 0

5.7 million: Students graduated from Chinese universities in 2007 (compared with 270,000 in 1977)

30: Number of nuclear power plants being built in China

500: The number of coal-fired power plants China plans to build in the next decade

10 million: The estimated number of Chinese people who have no electricity

97: New airports to be built in the next 12 years, bringing the total number to 244 by 2020

540 million: Number of mobile phone users in China, with an increase of 44 million in the past six months

180: The number of foreign press correspondents arrested or harassed in 2007

67: The percentage of journalists who replied "no" when asked in a survey by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China if they believed Beijing had kept its promise to give foreign media "complete freedom of reporting" in the run-up to the Olympics. Only 8.6 per cent said "yes"

33: The number of Chinese journalists thought to be held in prisons in 2008

95: The estimated percentage of DVDs sold in China that are fake. Uncensored foreign films are widely available from 50p

20: The approximate number of foreign films passed by Chinese censors each year for screening in cinemas. Banned films have included 'Ben Hur' (for its depiction of religion), 'Brokeback Mountain' (for its homosexuality) and the 'Borat' film (for its depiction of, among other things, incest).

Passed films are often subject to further editing. Examples include the deletion of scenes showing hanging laundry in Shanghai in 'Mission: Impossible III' and the removal of footage containing Chow Yun-Fat that 'vilifies and humiliates the Chinese' in 'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End'

160: Cities in China with populations that exceed a million. In the USA there are nine; in the UK just two

80: Percentage of the world's zips produced in factories in the Zhejiang Province city of Qiaotou (amounting to 124,000 miles of zip each year, or enough to stretch half way to the moon). Qiaotou also produces 60 per cent of the world's buttons (15 billion a year), while nearby Datang makes a third of the world's socks. As many as 80 per cent of the world's toys are made in China, which boasts more than 10,000 toy factories

21 million: The number of Chinese-made toys recalled last year by the US toy company Mattel

0: Miles of motorway in 1988

30,000: Miles of motorway today

6.3 million: The number of passenger cars registered in 2007 (compared with 2.3 million in 2004). More than 1,000 new private cars hit the roads every day in Beijing alone

68: The number of crimes thought to be punishable by death in China, including non-violent offences such as tax fraud, embezzlement and the taking of bribes

350 million: The number of Chinese people who smoke (a third of the world’s smokers). Around a million people a year are thought to die from smoking-related diseases

240bn yuan: (£17.3bn)* The estimated amount earned by the Chinese government in tobacco taxes in 2005

1.3 billion: China’s population. The country accounts for one in five people in the world.

400 million: The estimated number of births prevented by China’s one-child policy, introduced in 1979

22: The number of suicides per 100,000 people, about 50 per cent higher than the global average. Suicide is the fifth most common cause of death in China, and the first among people aged between 20 and 35

700,000: The number of people living with HIV or Aids in China. The UN has warned China it could have 10 million cases by 2010 unless action is taken

45 billion: Estimated number of chopsticks China produces every year, the majority of them disposable. In 2006, Beijing introduced a five per cent tax on disposable wooden chopsticks in an attempt to help save the country’s forests

30: The number of different animal penises on the menu at Guolizhuang, Beijing’s ‘penis emporium’. A yak’s costs about £15, while a tiger’s (which must be pre-ordered) will set you back £3,000

* A British pound is worth about $2 U.S.

May 09, 2008

Taking the slow road in China

A couple of “only-in-China” moments happened to me in the past week. Both involved very minor amounts of money.

The first instance was in Changchun in Jilin province in northeast China. Upon arrival at the airport, we headed out to the taxi stand, where half a dozen taxis stood waiting.

Because I’ve learned from past experience that some taxi drivers don’t want to give receipts, which the bean counters at McClatchy need to process expense reports, we surveyed taxi drivers for one that would use the installed taxi meter that can issue a receipt at the end of a fare. Most taxis in China have these meters.

To my astonishment, no taxi driver accepted. They said the fares mandated by local authorities were too low. They didn’t want to raise the flag on the meter. I complained to a security guard nearby. There’s no taxi that can offer a receipt! He shrugged.

We negotiated with one driver. He agreed to offer us extra receipts from the tolls on the expressway. That way we could sum it up to the proper total that he demanded.

He grumbled the whole way about how little his fare was going to be.

At first, I found this a little irksome. But on reflection, I sort of admired the taxi drivers. The local authorities apparently had imposed an impractical limit on fares, and the cabbies rebelled in the only way they could. The security guard understood and sympathized.

The second incident was bizarre – at least to my eyes – but also understandable.

Upon arriving in Hefei, capital of Anhui province, yesterday, we discovered that the flight to Fuyang had been cancelled. In a hospitable fashion, China Eastern airlines had arranged a bus for passengers for the four-hour trip to Fuyang. The trip would be free.

Once on the bus, a few passengers grew annoyed. Upon inquiring, I learned that the driver opted for a pot-holed toll-free road rather than the super highway, which required paying a toll. Clearly, China Eastern had given him toll money. But he decided to pocket the cash and take the slow route, inconveniencing passengers with a longer, bumpier journey. When someone protested, he claimed he didn’t know how to get on the highway on-ramp. When we passed another highway ramp, a passenger pointed it out to him. He drove on, pretending not to hear.

It was the equivalent of taking surface roads in Los Angeles, rather than I-405.

If that bus had been full of Westerners, they probably would have wrung the driver’s neck. But the Chinese didn’t rebel. The driver chiseled, probably making an extra $25. No one wanted to lose face making a scene with him. Everyone understood what was going on.

It was a minor inconvenience. I thought back to times in South America, where bus drivers would be in cahoots with armed bandits, pulling buses over at remote spots where everyone would be robbed.

Better to lose half an hour on a slow road than my possessions at gunpoint.

May 08, 2008

Did 'Ship of Shame' complete mission?

Maybe those Chinese weapons got to Zimbabwe after all.

You may remember the news reports last month that four African nations had blocked a Chinese freighter – dubbed the “Ship of Shame” -- from offloading a weapons shipment for Robert Mugabe’s army in Zimbabwe.

Washington and London crowed that they had twisted arms to prevent the arms from getting off the ship in South Africa, Mozambique, Angola and Namibia.

Now along comes a report on Radio Africa, a London station that broadcasts in short wave. Here is what it says:

Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga on Sunday claimed that the controversial shipment of arms from China, initially blocked by South Africa, Mozambique and Zambia, was now in Zimbabwe.

Responding to criticism of the shipment during a panel discussion on Iranian sponsored 'Press TV' Matonga is said to have derisively retorted, “in any case that shipment is already in Zimbabwe.”


Press TV's 'Four Corners' program hosted a debate between Matonga, Briggs Bomba from Africa Action, Zanu PF apologist George Shire and an unnamed journalist. Bomba spoke to Newsreel Tuesday and expressed his disappointment at how Angola, contrary to its official position, might have helped Mugabe's regime get their hands on the deadly cargo.

The Chinese ship 'An Yue Jiang' was carrying 3 million rounds of ammunition for AK-47's, 1500 rocket propelled grenades and 3000 mortar rounds and tubes. Pressure from trade unions and civil society groups in the SADC region ensured the ship spent weeks failing to get permission to offload. Emerson Mnangagwa, the man in charge of Zimbabwe's terror campaign through the Joint Operations Command, is said to have traveled to Angola and met President Eduardo dos Santos last week, in an effort to have the shipment allowed through.

Angola officially declined to authorize the offloading of the Zimbabwean arms shipment, but no one knows if they kept their word. The picture continues to get to murkier with other reports suggesting the Angolan President's jet, a Falcon 900, was sighted in Zimbabwe Tuesday evening. No further details were available. Malawi's Nyasa Times newspaper added to the speculation by claiming intelligence agents from Malawi had traveled to Angola to help clear the shipment on behalf of the Zimbabwean regime.

May 07, 2008

Taking 'doping' out of the Olympics

Barely a decade ago, allegations that China juiced its top athletes flourished. After all, dozens tested positive in the 1990s, and when new anti-doping procedures arrived before the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, China suddenly decided to leave 40 athletes at home. The mood is different now. China pledges to host the cleanest Olympic Games ever this summer, and a state-of-the-art anti-doping lab is set up to enforce the pledge.

To read more, click here for a story I did earlier in the week.

Catching the dopers among Olympic athletes is not an easy feat. The cheaters always seem to be one step ahead of the doping testers. Click here for a sidebar to the story mentioned above on the battle between the anti-doping officials and the athletes.

My bet is if the anti-doping effort really gets some traction, we’ll see some events at the Summer Games where the results are far below the world record. That could actually be interpreted as good news, in my book. It would mean the athletes are not juiced up.

One of the most interesting perspectives I heard on the doping front was from Dr. Julian Chang, the chief medical officer for the Hong Kong Olympic team. Dr. Chang believes that doping is so widespread in sports that the use of performance-enhancing substances should either be fully legalized or criminalized.

Without taking either of those two actions, he argues, the better developed countries with access to pharmaceutical research and laboratories may always maintain the doping edge over poorer ones. He also notes that anti-doping campaigns are increasingly expensive, taking money away from some poor sporting federations that should be spent on training and other activities.

Other experts also suggested that not everyone is singing from the same song sheet on the use of performance-enhancing substances. Many fans really would like sports stars and teams to clean up. But sports are a big business, and leagues and sponsors thrive when stars keep breaking records. So some powerful forces may not want a harsh _ and embarrassing _ crackdown on dopers that might sour the fans.

May 06, 2008

Removal of a senior editor

Zhang Ping is, or was, the deputy editor at Southern Metropolis Weekly, a respected publication with a streak of independence.

Nonetheless, even Zhang’s blog writings appeared to cross some red lines, and he was sacked this week. Writing under the name Chang Ping, he recently raised a storm of criticism in the blogosphere with an essay titled How to Find the Truth about Lhasa, analyzing the censorship that hinders deep understanding of unrest in Tibet.

The University of California at Berkeley’s China Media Project translated one of Zhang’s recent blog posts. Titled My Cowardice and Impotence, here is an excerpt:

I am afraid of other people praising me as a brave newspaperman, because I know I am full of fear in my heart. I did write some commentaries on current affairs, and edited some articles that exposed the truth. I lost my job and was threatened for speaking the truth. However, to be honest, these were exceptional cases. They were my miscalculations. In my various media positions in the past decade, what I’ve practiced most is avoiding risk. Self-censorship has become part of my life. It makes me disgusted with myself.

Some of my peers are proud of their censorship skills, and like to show it off to employers. I have similar skills, and I am using them everyday. But I am deeply uncomfortable with it. I feel ashamed about it, just like an executioner knows that he is good at killing.

I could console myself by saying that I am not alone in avoiding risks. There are risks in all professions, and everybody has to know how to control it… However, the media industry is different. I participate in telling lies to the public whenever I cancel a good news story, whenever I delete a sentence of truth, if we regard the media as a public good.

I could also excuse my cowardice by saying that tens of thousands of jobs are at stake if I speak the truth. I should take responsibility for others who rely on the publication for a living… However, I have to admit that I wouldn’t have the courage to speak out, if there were not so many colleagues associated with me, or if I was required to make sacrifices to secure their jobs. How can I use others as my fig leaf and pretend to be noble?

…Compared to the importance of the media to the society, what I’ve done is very limited. I should be ashamed of taking such an important position in this industry and not doing more. I should be more ashamed when I get honors for my work.

Even if I don’t have the courage and capacity to do more than I can do now, I should at least live honestly and conscientiously, and be aware of my cowardice and impotence.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group for freedom of speech, issued this statement about Zhang’s firing:

06.05 - Deputy editor removed because of editorial about Tibet

The deputy editor of the daily Nanfang Dushi Bao, Chang Ping, announced today that he has been removed from his post because of his editorials about Tibet, especially two entitled "Universal Values" and "How to find the truth about Lhasa", that contrasts with the government’s propaganda, according to the web site Boxun. He has been the target of a smear campaign on the Internet and in other newspapers for daring to say that events in Tibet show that the government has not solved the problem of minorities.

"We deplore this unfair removal of a well-known member of the liberal press," Reporters Without Borders said. "Once again, only the voice of propaganda is permitted in China with the aim of getting the world to believe that all Chinese support repression in Tibet."

Chang is known for writing serious, independent editorials, in which he often denounces press freedom violations by officials. In 2006, for example, he criticised a government bill on crisis management that envisaged additional restrictions on the press.

He used to be deputy editor of the famous weekly Nanfang Zhoumo and deputy editor of Waitan Huabao. He was removed from the Nanfang Zhoumo deputy editor position in 2001 after publishing two investigative reports that had a lot of impact.

Allies don't always stay 'bought'

Allow me to follow up on yesterday’s post about the battle between China and Taiwan for allies, and pursue a different angle.

Yesterday’s post was about how Taiwan lost nearly $30 million earmarked for wooing Papua New Guinea into establishing diplomatic relations. The money vanished. But according to Roland Soong’s ESWN blog, Taiwanese media now say maybe the island’s leaders didn’t just stupidly lose the money. They may have been waiting for a juicy kickback from the deal -- $20 million for Papua New Guinea, $10 million for their own pockets.

Sad. The real losers are the poorer Taiwanese taxpayers.

Along the same vein, a new study caught my eye today, seeming to undercut the logic that nation’s with increasing trade dependence on China would naturally offer it greater political support. That might not be happening so sharply.

The Congressional Research Service, an investigative branch of the U.S. Congress, produced the report, titled China’s Foreign Policy and ‘Soft Power’ in South America, Asia and Africa. Here’s the link.

The report (on pages 19-20) says that a study of U.N. voting records found that nations with increased trade dependence on China do not appear more willing to vote with China’s interests.

Here’s the pertinent section:

A 2006 study by the Inter-American Dialogue examined the 1991-2003 U.N. voting records of several major Latin American countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Venezuela – and concluded that the increased Chinese trade with the region in recent years has had no discernable effect on the voting behavior of these nations. The study also looked at several countries having diplomatic relations with Taiwan – Costa Rica (before it switched diplomatic relations to the PRC), Panama, and Paraguay – and found little difference in voting coincidence with China between countries that recognize China and those that recognize Taiwan.  Cuba, for political reasons, stands out as the Latin American country with a high voting coincidence with China, although increases in economic linkages do not appear to have had an impact on Cuba’s voting behavior.

So maybe both Taiwan and China aren’t getting much bang for their buck on the diplomatic front.

Then again, China is not necessarily looking to boost trade with Latin America just to increase its diplomatic clout. It's boosting trade for the sake of greater trade.

China now has signed "strategic partnership agreements" with Brazil (1993), Venezuela (2001), Mexico (2003)  and Argentina (2004). Another interesting tidbit from the report:  China also has oil and gas exploration contracts with Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba.

May 04, 2008

Taiwan gets suckered for $30 million

Calling all scamsters! Any of you out there trolling for suckers should try calling on James Huang, foreign minister of Taiwan.

As you may have read, Taiwan has just lost $29.8 million it wired to two foreigners. One key person has vanished. And the taxpayer money is gone.

It’s the latest round of “dollar diplomacy.” According to news reports like this and this and this, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry dipped into its slush fund for “confidential” expenses to try to buy off diplomatic recognition from Papua New Guinea.

Taiwan now has 23 nations that recognize it, and it is constantly tussling with China to snatch new allies. Persuasive techniques involve satchels of cash and secret wire transfers.

The basic story is the following: Taiwan entrusted the $29.8 million to two men who said they could help induce Papua New Guinea to ditch China and establish diplomatic recognition of Taiwan. The two men had a joint bank account in Singapore.

One of the men is a U.S. passport holder, Ching Chi-ju, and the other is a Singaporean national, Wu Shih-tsai. Ching has disappeared. Once Foreign Ministry officials realized they’d been snookered, they pestered Ching’s wife in Los Angeles to get the money back. But she said she didn’t know where hubby was. Wu showed up at a news conference in Taiwan saying he’s innocent.

Foreign Minister Huang, shown here at his mea culpa press conference Friday in Taipei, said Taiwan initially tried to keep the fiasco quiet. But then when it was forced to go to court in Singapore to seek the freezing of the two men’s bank accounts, the news exploded in the Singaporean press.

The killer is this: Taiwan continues to maintain it doesn’t engage in dollar diplomacy. It says the money was for development projects in Papua New Guinea.

But since when does development money get wired into the personal accounts of two foreigners in Singapore? This money was meant to line someone’s pockets in Papua New Guinea. We’ve just had a weekend visitor from Central America who recounted from fairly direct information how one Central American president got $5 million in cash from Taipei. That kind of cash can buy loyalty – at least the temporary variety – from leaders of small countries.

The one saving grace: At least we can learn about it in Taiwan, where the press is free. When China does it, we’d probably never know. 

May 02, 2008

A new spate of smog in Beijing

It is 97 days and counting until the Beijing Summer Games get under way, and (cough, cough) the air is pretty bad.

Despite a May 1 holiday period that has cleared many vehicles off the road in Beijing, we are experiencing a terrible period of smog.

My wife washed the car on Wednesday. By Friday, it was filthy. I had to wash the windshield to see properly. When I went to pick up a friend at the new Terminal 3 in the airport last night, I noticed to my astonishment that you could actually see smog in the pedestrian sky bridge between the terminal and the parking garage.

I can only include the photos above from our 14th floor window.

This is the (Chinese language) link to Beijing’s environmental protection bureau website that lists the pollution index for 28 spots around the capital. All of them show what China describes as moderate levels of air pollution. It may be moderate to the local officials, but it is heavy enough that I don’t particularly want to go out riding a bike today.