media - Killing weeks

One of the tricks you use in journalism is focusing on one incident, one person, one killing accident. One dramatic story does get more attention than figures of abstract deaths without a face. The state newswire Xinhua did this week an effort to reverse that story by focusing on the magnitude of figures.
In a dispatch it quoted director Wang Xianzheng of the State Administration of Work Safety (never knew such a commission existed) who had counted in the first six weeks of this year 27 'catastrophic' accidents causing the death of 382 people. With one exception all accidents took place in public places. Wang said he saw a rising trend.
On the bright side, Wang noted that the number of accidents in mines had decreased.

Update: In about the same period, 390 people got killed in traffic incidents, reports AP, quoting the official newswire Xinhua. That would be the official figure, so the absolute minumum.

politics - Shanghai saves the bicycle

The Shanghai police department shocked the world last year by announcing a ban on bicycles in the extended downtown area. Now in a dramatic reverse of this highly contested policy decision the Shanghai Urban Planning Bureau has reversed the announced crackdown on China's most popular mode of transportation.
The Shanghai police wanted to clear the roads for the growing number of cars in the city, but forgot to ask the Shanghai citizens for their opinion. Still, more Shanghainese use a bicycle and because of the traffic jams a bicycle is anyway faster than a car.
Deputy-director Wu Jiang announced on Friday that Shanghai would accommodate the cyclists even more than the past by building special roads, the Shanghai Daily reports. He also encourage foreign visitors to visit the World Expo in 2010 on a bicycle. Shanghai has now officially nine million bicycles and the number is growing. Solid figures are not present as many Shanghainese avoid the registration fee of less than one Renminbi.

internet - Weekly chat on Wednesday (BT)

Every week I will (try to) host a chatroom so this whole venture can become a bit more interactive in the long run. I have planned to do this every Wednesday at 9:30 AM Beijing time. Please click here or on the logo to get connected. It provides your access to the IRC-channel of the China Herald and is for free, although you might need to register if you have never used the system. You do not have to pay for the usage.
Please write to me if you encounter any problems.

Session will be at 8:30 PM EST/5:30 PM PST on Tuesday in the US if my timing is correct and on a rather inconvenient hour for Europe. Depending on the interest we might decide to shift timing.

Try to join me if you can.

international relations - Outsourcing saves jobs

The vilified US economist George Mankiw, one of George W. Bush's economic advisors, claimed earlier this month that outsourcing saves jobs. Everybody disagreed with him, apart from the British weekly The Economist.
"Mr Mankiw's proposition, in essence, is the law of comparative advantage, first postulated by David Ricardo two centuries ago and demonstrated to astonishing effect since," writes The Economist. The argument might be correct, but it will be hard for presidential candidates and trade union leaders to explain this to their constituencies.

media - Serious Kristof-bashing among US bloggers, and the alternatives

New York Times columnist and China-expert Nick Kristof has come under servere attack of US based webloggers. "Still Pistof, still fact free", is the latest of a serie of attacks that challenge this NY times star reporter. Webloggers have been following their more traditional colleagues more closely, during the ongoing presidential elections in the US, but also in the way the big media cover the rest of the world.
In this case Kristof got scolded for taking on feminists organizations for not taking care of their sisters in the third world, but the attacks do relate to a broader discontent on how media cover the world. Under bloggers it has been pretty common to call the New York Times the New Prawda.
Also in China local media are becoming better in reporting, like this story by Southern Weekend, summerized for weblog-portal "Living in China". This story summerizes a tragic mining accident at 5 February that has cost 28 lives. What is typical is that often reporters do go out to report on these far-away place, in stead of being able to report on their own provinces.

economy - Minsheng bank hit by fraud


The China Minsheng Bank has admitted to have commited fraud ahead of its domestic listing in 2000, reports the Financial Times.
The disclosure comes as a shock for the banking world. The China Minsheng Bank is the only private bank in China and belongs to the group of second tier banks that are considered to be relative clean compared to the four larger commercial banks. Minsheng plans a US$ 1 billion listing later this year in Hong Kong. It is perceived to have less non-performing loans than other banks.
A former Minsheng director Qiu Yingxin said his signature under a document was false, since he was in police custody during that time.
The document relates to a shareholders' meeting that in fact never took place.

international relations - Taiwan elections at Shanghai FCC

The upcoming presidential elections in Taiwan will be the focus of meeting of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club on March 2 in Sasha's at 7:30 PM. Now the Taiwanese business community got involved in the election, opposing sitting pro-indepence DPP-president Chen Shuibian, the campaign does has an influence on Shanghai too.
"The upcoming presidential elections are a milestone for the democratic transformation of Taiwan," says the invitation. "But it is far more than this. Since it can not be excluded that cross-strait relations will deteriorate after the elections and the referendum, the outcome of both may also have larger international repercussions. The lecture by the Financial Times Taipei Correspondent, Kathrin Hille, will give a critical analysis of the present ¡V domestic, cross-straits, and international ¡V situation mainly from a Taiwan perspective."
Non-members 100 Rmb, RSVP before 26/2 to Kerstin Lohse.

internet - RSS feed


I knew I was missing something when I joined online the Thursday meeting of the Berkman Center at Harvard University this evening. I joined a meeting with Dave Winer, the guru of the RSS feed, and my weblog had no RSS feed! Fortunately, people helped me out and I was up to standards during the meeting.
Now, some of you outside the US might wonder what an RSS feed is. Do not panic! I can do it, so you can do it too. Write to me.

international relations - 'Free trade' issue enters US elections

Senator John Edwards (photo) has put today free trade as an issue on the political agenda during a speech at Columbia University in New York. Edwards is the number two in the ongoing Democratic struggle for the candidancy of the 2004 presidential elections after John Kerry, who has won most of the US states up to now.
"There is no question that our current trade policies are good for the profits of multinational corporations,'' he said. "They are good for some people in the financial sector here in New York City - not all, but some,'' Edwards said according to AP. That is a direct challenge for Kerry, who has supported and underwritten free trade and the free-trade agreements. Those agreements have cause white collar jobs to leave for China and other low-wage countries, the articles says.
Kerry won earlier on the support of the largest confederation of trade unions the AFL/CIO and Edwards seems under pressure to win some of those votes back. Only ten percent of the US workers belongs to a trade union.
US presidential candidates, including Clinton, tend to turn nasty on China to win votes back home, during election campaigns.

Update: Please note the discussion on outsourcing and free trade developing here.

economy - The magical NPL's, up or down?

The newly established banking regulator, The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) has announced that the average non-performing loands of China's banks has dropped over five percent points since the beginning of 2003 to 17.8 percent at the year end, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Very soon the National People's Congress will convene and different regulators have to deliver figures, even though it is very hard but to give an educated guess on what is happening in for example the banking industry.
Already the starting point was different. Officially the banks claimed a NPL-ratio of 25 percent, while the estimations of independent organizations hoovered between 40 and 50 percent, an assesment that was underwritten by the minister Xiang of financiance at the end of 2002.
Also the WSJ wonder whether the growth of the NPL's - potentially a larger issue than the current size of the bad loans - is under control or not. We do not know, the banks do not know. the regulators do not know. They can only pray and send our their investigators.

culture - Typically Chinese – the WTO column

(Tomorrow in Chinabiz)

Ann Arbor, MI – What do powder, Dutch tulips and freedom have in common? Well, they all have their roots in China.
For those who think that my short stay at US universities has caused all kind of nasty side-effects let me assure you that talking to academics is sometimes better than smoking grass. It really broadens your view on the world. We have been blaming both academics and journalists that while information on China is wide available, we have done a poor job in explaining China to the rest of the world.

Attributing good or bad habits to national characteristics is a great way to spend time during otherwise boring parties. You can talk about what is so typical about the Chinese, the Americans or the Spanish. Fortunately, during those gatherings you do not have to go very deep, otherwise you might discover that many of those ideas are just nice topics to discuss at those informal gatherings, but nothing more.
When the Chinese claimed that the famed Dutch tulip was not coming from Turkey as we always assumed, but from China, I knew that nothing was safe anymore: What in this world would now not be coming originally from China?
.
Last week I attended an interesting meeting of the Center of Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan and got my final shock. Professor Marty Powers explained there that the concepts of freedom, individualism, free speech and egalitarism were originally Chinese. Powers did not seem intoxicated by anything else than academic values.
Trained as a historian I always thought those to be typical Western values, developed during the Enlightenment and based on a very European worldview. Blood has been spilled to get those ideals realized.

Wrong, wrong again: the Chinese were first, yet again, explained Powers, professor of Chinese Arts and Cultures. Centuries before the Enlightenment would literally enlighten us peasants in Europe, individualism and egalitarism were en vogue in China. Starting in the 12th century the Chinese elite developed those characteristics and shocked the Europeans when they discovered China in the 16th and 17th century. “Free speech and access to public offices were in China at the time very well regulated, while the European languages even did not make a distinction between the office and the officer,” said Powers. “Sacking an officer in Europe would be unthinkable.”
Europeans were disgusted by the free-wheeling Chinese, who enjoyed a solid legal system.

That is more or less the opposite what you hear nowadays when foreign investors get together and complain about China. Unfortunately, the wisdom of sinologists does not have much practical use today. But this shows that it is not ethnicity but rather social conditions which define how people behave.. Especially studies among American-Chinese and other overseas Chinese show that they are able to adopt different ways of behaving, depending on time, place and their own choice. This kind of flexibility still needs a wider following among the non-Chinese.

Fons Tuinstra

Photo - Caught in the act



Thanks, Tony
Send your contribution to the China Herald!

economy - Job-hopping is in the air

Traditional job-hopping after Chinese New Year has hit almost half of all the companies in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, reveals a survey, according to the Shanghai Daily. Before the festival most employees get a bonus, reason to back their bags afterwards when they are unhappy.
Almost half of 478 human resource managers had to deal with resignations as their people were expected to resume work. Especially resignations at management-level have created problems, the survey said. Employers fear they might lose valuable company secrets and sometimes even whole teams at the labor market becomes more competitive.

Economy - Shanghai's new artery to prosperity

The new Donghai bridgbe under construction that will connect Shanghai with its new deepsea container port - yesterday in de Shanghai Daily. The 31-kilometer long bridge will lead to the Yangshan Islands and is part of a 14.3 billion Renminbi (= US$ 1.7 billion) first phase of a project that has stirred up already many discussions.
Foreign companies, eager to participate, were excluded from the first phase, because there was no time to get them included, according to the official explanation. The whole project itself has sparked off discussions, as the neigboring Ningbo has a natural deepsea port and would not need that hefty investments. But Shanghai wanted to have all for itself.
As a compensation Ningbo now gets its own bridge, spanning Hangzhou Bay, connecting it with the port it could not get. At least there will interesting competiton between the two ports.

Economy - Shareholders China Merchant bank rebel against emission


In a rare move shareholders have forced the China Merchant Bank to scale back a 10bn Renminbi convertible bond issue, report the Financial Times and Bloomberg today. In China most listed companies still have a government entity owning a majority of non-tradeable share. Rights of minority shareholders are mostly ignored. Up to today at the China Merchant Bank.
The bond issue, the largest in China up to now, has been scaled back to 6.5 billion Renminbi as current shareholders feared their share would be too much diluted. The investors accused the bank of 'illegal action', says the FT.
The China Merchant bank belongs to a promising group of second tier banks, that do not suffer under the burden of the planned economy and many bad loans that have plagued the four larger commercial state-owned banks. In some areas the China Merchant Bank want to take on foreign banks head on, for example in the credit-card business, where the Citibank has high hopes. In Taiwan the Citibank lost that struggle from domestic banks and the China Merchant Bank hired some years ago 60 Taiwanese bankers to fight off the Citibank's efforts to enter the Chinese financial market for credit cards.

Economy - Export to China drives Japan's economy

Japan's economic growth of 7 percent in the forth quarter of 2003 is mainly based on a fast expansion of its export to China, media write. Economic ties make Japan more depend on its long-term enemy, although that might not yet mean that both economic powers see also a new new spring in their icy political relations.
China has replaced last year the sluggish US economy, that used to be the dominant factor in much of Japan's export. A recent visit by the Japanese PM Koizumi to a the Yasukini shrine where war victims and war criminals are commemorated, has set off a new flurry of verbal hostilities.
Not only trade has been flourising, also Japanese investments and jobs are flooding to China too.

Economy - Holland claims top trade position

It took me a minute before I discovered how to get the figures right myself. According to an article in the China Daily a visiting Dutch minister claimed that my country Holland was within the European Union the second largest trading partner of China after the UK. Hold on, you will think: what about these tiny countries called Germany and France, why are they doing to bad?
"The two-way trade volume is now US$15 billion. The Netherlands is the second largest trade partner of China in the European Union. This is also true with regard to foreign investment in China," said Sybilla Dekker, the acting minister of economic affairs.
I know how we do it with foreign investments. When Shell invests 100 euro in a 50/50 joint venture in Zhuhai, Holland claims an investment of 200 euro. Fair would be to count only 50 euro, since Shell is a Dutch-British joint venture, but then you do not get those nice figures. Guess that the same is happening with the trade figures. Rotterdam is the largest German port, so I guess in the statistics we also claim the German goodies that pass Rotterdam. Dealing with figures is an art, the Dutch call themselves the Chinese of Europe, for a good reason.
Unlike the USA "we don't think it (the Netherlands' huge trade deficit with China) is a problem," the minister stressed, "We think it is a challenge. We can handle it by introducing more companies to China and bring their products to Chinese markets."

Living in China - weblog review

Living in China is the first attempt to create an online community between a group of highly independent individuals that have very little in common, apart from a English weblog that has some relation with China. Because of that writers are mostly foreigners, even more often English teachers, with only very few exceptions at this stage.
That is sometimes interesting, enlightening, boring or annoying and always tells more about the writer than about China itself. Some people can describe their amazement about China in beautiful essays or pictures, others cut and past newspaper articles and add a few clichés, not hindered by any knowledge of China itself.
Continue here:

Living in China

internet - How to make money on weblogs

The question has come up more than once after this weblog went live almost a week ago. First, an amazing lots has been written about the issue already. Read for example Jeff Jarvis in his latest assesment of they payment issue and weblogs. Jarvis is one of the more proliferic writers on the internet, an enthusiastic promotor of weblogs and journalism. I disagree with many of his political views, on the war in Iraq and his his positive view op his supreme commander George W. Bush. But I still have to read him at least once a day. Different viewpoints make the blogosphere more interesting than the traditional media.
Making money you do first by not losing it: in my right column under the Google Ads at least one link will bring you to a free or almost free blogging service, that allows you to start a blog yourself within 30 minutes. The link to the Google ads service Adsense brings you to the same service I'm using. Do not expect miracles: I earned in four days just a cup of coffee in Starbucks, but then making money is not the main reason to do this weblog. Other services are beginning to emerge and seem more succesful than Google, but the future will learn this.
Enough open questions, enough to get depressed about: but change is taking place and you better be part of it.

internet - Wifi takes off in Shanghai

Wireless access or Wifi is - fortunately - become the next big thing in Shanghai, reports Wang Jianshuo, one of the city's most famous bloggers in an article that compares different public services. Free access is still not the norm in Shanghai, but Jianshuo gives some good tips on easy access to Wifi from some popular spots like Starbucks and KFC in Xujiahui.
I might have been spoiled by the free services many US universities can offer - with Harvard as a notable exeption, very hard to get online there without hacking their systems. In some of the university areas private wireless broadcasting systems fight for bandwidth. The good thing is that you can often just open your computer and lift along on the broadband connection of somebody else. No harm to this other person, since capacity is anyway mostly abundant. But when too many senders compete for bandwidth, they sometimes push each other out of the air, making the connection rather unstable.
In that kind of cases the government should step in and provide wireless access, I feel, just like water and gas.

economy - Is 100,000 job losses a lot?


An interesting exchange of thoughts with my colleagues on Chinabiz, who today produced an article on the 100,000 jobs the China Construction Bank is going to shed. Is that the most important news of today, the self-set target of Chinabiz? We talk here about a number of people that is similar to a small Chinese village.
The news was already almost a week old, was one of my objections. TBut more important was the question is whether it is really news. Announcing they are going to shed that many people, in preperation of an expected IPO, does not really mean they are going to do it. Are those people really going to be put on the street, or will they remain a burden on the bank's balance sheet. Those are a few details I would like to know, before I'm going to spill too many tears over loss of work, that is anyway a dead-end occupation. And then, is 100,000 really that much, even when it happens?
My first assumption was also that 100,000 is perhaps not that much on the total number of employees, but according to statistics at the end of 2003 the China Construction Bank employs about half a million people. Twenty percent would be in theory a decent number. Anyway: I do think there would be other and bigger news in the banking sector this week.

internet - Blogger Du Daobin arrested

Du Daobin, a civil servant from Hubei, has been formally arrested, according to the official newswire Xinhua. Du has been posting 'subversive' messages on the internet and "accepted funds from overseas organizations and individuals" with the aim to overthrow China's socialist system.
Du was already in detention since October and was accused by a spokesman of the Hubei provincial Public Security Bureau (the Chinese name for the police) of overstepping his legal rights to critizice the government.
Last week rumors in the blogging community suggested he would be released because of lack of evidence.

culture - Lincoln Lane under hammer

Houses under threat of demolition are actually being pulled down, reports Tess Johnston from Shanghai, based on another report in the Shanghai Daily, that is not online. Johnston is the author of many books on China's architectural heritage.
"I suspect it is unsavable," she writes, " as most of the buildings here are not on The List."
Shanghai has a list of preserved buildings, who cannot be demolished, but that is a fairly short list. (See also our picture on Sunday).

Censorship - Moviegoers prefer DVD over censored film



"Cold Mountain" by director Anthony Minghella is expected to get a cold shoulder from the audience when it will be on show in Shanghai in April, writes the Shanghai Daily. Yet again the censors has used their scissors to cut away any nude or sex from the movie, before it can be shown in the cinemas.
But the Shanghai audience has by then already seen the original movie on illegal DVD's that are widely available in the city. It is yet another systems that turn the censorship into a joke and hurt a legitimate industry in favor of a more illegal one. Difference is that the industry today complains about the outdated censorship system in state-owned dailies.
Also 'Mona Lisa' missed recently a sex scene with Julia Roberts, the theaterowners complain. They would rather see a rating-system in stead of the scissors.

Update How weird, it is even the official government newswire Xinhua publishing the same article making the censors look foolish. Where is this country going to? :-)

culture - Mian Mian joins SFCC for informal talk

The Shanghai-based writer Mian Mian will join the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club on 24 February. Due to the informal character only up to 20 people will be allowed at the meeting. Please ask Crystal Mo for details.
Mian Mian just returned from a book tour in the US where her book 'Candy' has been released. She will talk about the book, that focuses on her earlier life in China, and her experiences in publishing a book in the US. Read here more on Candy or listen to Mian Mian here.
Mian Mian was the first Chinese woman to write candidly about her own life in a rather autobiographic novel. Since then others have followed her, like the now more famous 'Shanghai Baby' by Wei Hui. Her translations for the US market comes long after she conquered markets elsewhere.

economy - Beijing Hyundai exports 19,000 cars

Cute, another word I cannot find for this Xinhua article on the success of the joint venture Beijing Hyundai to close the sale of 19,000 cars to Russia. "The Ministry of Commerce said the export deal equals all the sedan cars exported overseas since the founding of New China," said Xu Heyi, general manager of the company, according to the dispatch.
It is brought as a big success, and maybe we should see it like that. But the number of cars is neglictable, so tiny, it mainly works as an illustration for the poor export position of China in the automotive industry.

internet - New: the China weblog review

Weblogs are becoming a new source of information, viewpoints and debates. At the China Herald we will start this week a review of weblogs, one per week, that gives more than only a comprehensive list of weblogs like we already get from Sinoplice . My webroll will go along with the reviews and in the end evolve into a special page containing some of the reviews and your comments. That is going to be a crucial question for the future debate: what do you think of all this? We will focus on the English-language weblogs with a China focus.
First in line the portal-like 'Living in China', where most recently a fierce debate took place about the (lack of an) editorial line. That debate has not yet been concluded and China Herald will try to follow those developments. How serious are the weblogs and how serious do we take them.
Please follow the debate, also here.

international relations - Asia is not a second Europe,

The question came up more than once now Europe has been able to get its economic act more or less together: why is Asia not doing the same. There is a missing link, as the Business Times in Singapore describes it today. While Japan and China are independently looking for trade agreements in the region, there is no way at this stage the two countries would even think of including each other.
The difference between Europe and Asia is that Europe has more a common history than Asia. Despite the destructive wars in Europe, there is still a common basis that is lacking in Asia. The relation between Japan and China has always been a tense one, but also India seems not really comfortable in those talks on free trade agreements.
Asia was in the end an European concept, that might not have so much common ground in the continent itself.

economy - Insurances use fires for PR

More than 90 deaths and over 70 injured in two killing fires are being used by insurance company China Life for a PR-action, reports state newswire Xinhua.
I cannot say I'm very shocked, but I also did not find it a very prudent way for an insurance company to promote its services. Only four people did have an insurance, you might not even call this really smart promotion.
For a few years this big scale figures have not occured, at least not in the media. In China you might wonder, has the situation suddenly deteriorated, or is it basically another media policy?
Anyway: opening the emergency exits might be more useful than an insurance.

internet - Weekly chat on Wednesday (BT)

Every week I will (try to) host a chatroom so this whole venture can become a bit more interactive in the long run. I have planned to do this every Wednesday at 9:30 AM Beijing time. Please click here to get connected. It provides your access to the IRC-channel of the China Herald and is for free, although you might need to register if you have never used the system. You do not have to pay for the usage.
Please write to me if you encounter any problems.

Session will be at 8:30 PM EST/5:30 PM PST on Tuesday in the US if my timing is correct and on a rather inconvenient hour for Europe. Depending on the interest we might decide to shift timing.

Try to join me if you can.

media - Lu Guang won with this picture

Earlier this week I linked to the China Daily site to show this shocking picture that won a first prize at the World Press Photo competition. The China Daily did not mention the name of the photographer who won: it was Lu Guang from Zhejiang province who was mentioned at Sina.com.

Economy - Wuxi software company takes on Microsoft

Wuxi-based software company Evermore has appeared as a shining star at the US software sky. Its CEO Cao Zhong (see picture) is presenting his company succesfully as the alternative for Microsoft's Windows.
Zhong is for a presentation of his Linux-based replacement of Window's Office on Sunday in Phoenix and got a favorable reception by the opinion leaders in the IT-media, like columnist and weblogger Dan Gillmor.
Microsoft and other larger companies with monopolist tendencies are out of favor. "What he demonstrated struck me as more advanced in some ways than the Microsoft product. EIOffice 2004 puts a word processor, presentation package and spreadsheet into a single application, not a collection of programs. The integration is smooth and deep, and there's a natural feel to the way it all works together. Overall, the product looks slick and capable of handling serious chores," writes Gillmor. "Evermore's pricing, moreover, tries to reflect real-world reality."
Gillmor sees large problems on the way ahead, but remains positive: "As I said, you have to be optimistic to be an entrepreneur in this market. We need people like Tsao and his team. Maybe they're onto something big. Maybe they'll fail. But at least they're trying. In a marketplace where the deadening grip of a monopolist has stifled so much innovation, we should thank them for that."

media - Shanghai FCC booming


Just talked to Crystyl Mo of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club and discovered that the club is in 2004 more active than ever. I have been their president in 2002 and was a bit worried how things would go when I left China some months ago in 2003, but they have meetings twice a week, a high turnout and a very active 2004 board.
I will speak to them in March on the future of foreign correspondence, and - that is my secret agenda - get blogging going among my colleagues in Asia: it is long overdue.
You can join a mailing list on the future of foreign correspondence by sending an empty email to:
foreigndesk-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

real estate - Shanghai fights destruction



Inhabitants of these nice American houses in Shanghai are fighting their destruction. The 25 houses, built about 80 years ago in the Hongkou district should be replaced by a few more skycrapers, writes the state-owned Shanghai Daily, who also made the picture. The 36 families in the street, called after US president Abraham Lincoln, have signed a petition and got support from local media - a rather remarkable change with the past.
"We are willing to move out, but we expect the houses to remain," said Dai Lixiang in the article.

internet - IHT's Crampton mobblogged

Former China-correspondent of the International Herald Tribune (IHT) and president of the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club Thomas Crampton got mobblogged by Joi Ito during the World Economic Forum in Davos. Still hard to really get blogged in China, but this will change very soon.


For more contributions:

Caught in the act: send your pic or pointers

internet - Weekly chat on Wednesday (BT)

Every week I will (try to) host a chatroom so this whole venture can become a bit more interactive in the long run. I have planned to do this every Wednesday at 9:30 AM Beijing time. Please click here to get connected. It provides your access to the IRC-channel of the China Herald and is for free, although you might need to register if you have never used the system.
Please write to me if you encounter any problems.

Session will be at 8:30 PM EST/5:30 PM PST on Tuesday in the US if my timing is correct and on a rather inconvenient hour for Europe. Depending on the interest we might decide to shift timing.

Try to join me if you can.

real estate - Shanghai real estate still littered with disputes - Chinabiz

Large numbers of disputes are still having their impact on the Shanghai real estate, despite several high prolife scandals in last year, writes Shanghai-based real estate expert Sam Crispin in the Sunday Column of Chinabiz. "The number of real estate disputes might have been expected to fall after the scandals of last spring and the subsequent clean up and slow down. But here we are a year later and this kind of nonsense is still going on," writes Crispin.