China
Sophie Richardson: Olympics Coverage Guide for Journalists
Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, interviewed by Hugo Restall, Editor of The Far Eastern Economic Review about the Chinese government’s attitude towards media.
Richardson recently published a new report, “China’s Forbidden Zones: Shutting the Media Out of Tibet and Other ‘Sensitive’ Stories.”
Can Taiwan change China?
A recent article by Jonathan Adams in the International Herald Tribune described a certain cult unpopular with Beijing that was recruiting mainlanders visiting Taiwan thanks to the cross-straits detente.
The Taiwan government is powerless to stop the activities due to strong laws protecting assembly of private citizens.
The broad question this raise to me is whether Taiwan will change China due to the opening of cross straits.
Hong Kong (and Macau) are unlikely to change China because they are:
- Small (Fewer than 8 million people)
- Lacking lively political debate
- Cantonese-speaking
The rule of law and free expression in Hong Kong are interesting characteristics, but my sense is that Hong Kong is still considered a culture apart.
Taiwan, on the other hand, is:
- Fairly large (22 million people, I think)
- Quite prominent on the mainland (Taiwan has long been considered a renegade province, so always part of China)
- Mandarin-speaking
- Politically lively
Taiwan is a great counter-argument to those who think that Chinese culture rejects democracy/self-rule (a view expressed on this blog recently)
Will Taiwan change China? (How could China change Taiwan?)
IPTV service for Taiwan and China?
When I pitched this business idea about a week ago in a blog post, I received numerous emails of encouragement and some with helpful suggestions. This is a refined version of the business plan presented on video and set to drumbeat.
Would you want this service?
Leo Horn: China developed by luck, not planning
Economist and Beijing-based national coordinator for the UK-China Sustainable Development Dialogue, Leo Horn-Phathanothai, attacks the notion that China offers a new model for economic development.
China developed by luck, not good planning, Horn says.
Development experts and ideologues of all shades are touting the ‘China Development Model’ as incontrovertible evidence in support of their disparate theories of development. And developing country leaders are turning to China in search of solutions to their own developmental quagmires.
But China’s reality is ad hoc experimentation and old fashioned good luck.
Pragmatism, adaptive management and clever exploitation of luck define China’s road to success rather than strict adherence to an ideologically-correct ‘model’ of development. The openness of China’s reformers to experimentation and to new ideas is what makes it uniquely exciting and rewarding to be working here!
His views (personal, not those of the UK government) were expressed in a recent opinion article.
Full text below the fold.
Vivek Wadhwa
Vivek Wadhwa is a Wertheim Fellow at the Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke University who specializes in studying innovation in business. He was formerly a tech entrepreneur who founded two tech companies.
His studies, published at Globalization Research, have included looking at the level of innovation in China, the relative gap in engineers graduated when comparing India/China and the US (His studies controversially assert that the US does not have such a huge deficit of engineers) and a study showing that the number of Indians and other immigrants in Silicon Valley is not as great as many presume.
Mr. Wadhwa writes a column for Businessweek and enjoys aiming to debunk popular notions and perceived wisdom.
Vivek Wadhwa: China is NOT the new Silicon Valley
While William Bao Bean said in a recent interview that we should Expect More Digital Garages in China, Vivek Wadhwa disagrees, asserting that China is not innovating and has still has not moved beyond copycat status.
“China is simply unable to innovate,” said Wadhwa, a Harvard fellow and Duke University professor. A former technology entrepreneur, Wadhwa now specializes in studying business creativity and innovation.
China’s tech economy is built on copycats that totally lack any sort of innovation, particularly given the amount of money spent on research and development by companies and the government in China, Wadhwa said.
As to Bao Bean’s assertion that creativity and digital garages will be inspired in part by the high level of investment brought in by foreign venture capitalists, Wadhwa said: “There is a lot of money being wasted by a lot of VCs in China.”
China’s younger generation is extremely creative, but those running China’s research and development are not bringing anything new, Wadhwa said.
Asked for numbers to back this assertion, Wadhwa said that the numbers tell the exact opposite story. China files a large number of patents and produces a large number of research-related papers, but there are few actual innovations coming out.
Nonetheless, those good number hide a total lack of creativity, based on Wadhwa’s qualitative analysis.
Wadhwa said the exact opposite seems to be true in India, where relatively little is invested in research and development. India has fewer patents and papers than China, but the country is building itself into a innovation powerhouse.
The fundamental difference, Wadhwa said, is that Indian engineers are encouraged to think beyond their narrow role and build more innovation into their activities.
More Searches from China, but Koreans Search more often
South Korea’s Internet searchers conducted an average of 104 searches in April, nearly twice as many as Malaysians, who clocked in at 54 searches per searcher in April, according to Comscore’s latest findings.
Perhaps the Malaysians should help the South Koreans find what they are looking for?
Asia’s largest number of searches, not surprisingly, came from the 82 million Chinese Internet users doing 6.2 billion searches in April.
That is an average of 75 searches per Chinese searcher.
Search intensity get even more interesting with China vs Japan:
Japan’s 60 million Internet searchers conducted nearly the same number of searches (6.1 billion) as the 82 million Chinese searchers, a result of the heavier search volume per person in Japan (102.6 searches per searcher). Korea (104 searches per searcher) and Singapore (101 searches per searcher) also exhibited notably heavy search volume per person.
Another aspect of Asia’s Internet shown by the Comscore report is how local search sites challenge Google and Yahoo.
Across Asia, Google sites have a 39.1 percent share and Yahoo sites have a 24 percent share, but five of the region’s top ten search properties are local, including China’s Baidu.com (16.7 percent) and Korea’s NHN Corporation (5.3 percent), which owns search engine Naver.com.
The report adds:
Chinese properties Alibaba.com Corporation, Tencent Inc., and Sohu.com Inc., which host Internet-search functionality although they are not strictly search engines, rounded out the list of key local players.
Journalism jobs in Shanghai
Maria Trombly, whose company covers a range of topics from Asian securities to payments and technology for trade magazines, is constantly on the lookout for freelance copy editors and reporters.
Now, she is also looking for a full-time entertainment industry reporter.
The jobs pay local scale — not US rates. But she says those working for her get accreditation, bylines, decent salaries (by local standards), full benefits, paid vacations, etc.
She typically hires people with industry backgrounds (tech, finance, pharma) and teaches them how to do journalism from scratch.
Interested in launching a journalism career?
Contact:
Maria Trombly
TROMBLY LTD
+86-21-6345-9216
+86-21-6387-7243
Mobile +86-137-6131-8333
maria (at) tromblyltd dot com
Ken Carroll: How to learn Chinese using Web 2.0
The Internet - and Web 2.0 tools in particular - are extremely well suited to language teaching, explains Ken Carroll, co-founder of Chinesepod.com in this video.
Carroll’s Shanghai-based company (which I use to learn Mandarin) employs Web 2.0 methods to teach Chinese and a growing range of other languages.
To see why Carroll thinks Web 2.0 works so well, you need to see the process of a typical student: me!
I usually begin a new topic listening to a radio show-style hosted podcast in which two presenters introduce a dialogue. I then listen to another podcast that reviews vocabulary before I get to a third podcast in which I can listen to the dialogue alone several times. (I do all this while at the gym or going to the office)
After listening to the podcast, you can go on the Chinesepod website and play a variety of games with the vocabulary from that lesson.
In terms of which lesson you choose, there is no order. I usually just start with the most recent lesson. Some lessons make reference to recent events, while other lessons are less time sensitive.
To Carroll, that is the key insight of using the Internet for language teaching: Students have a framework in which to explore topics that are of interest to them.
“You have a personalized studying framework, but the student is free to explore any topic or information that interests them,” Carroll said. “Language takes on an exploratory approach.”
To Carroll, this fits with the way children learn language - based on the child’s experience and interests.
Crazy Chinese Pilots Test Home-Brew Aircraft
Videos posted recently of crazy Chinese pilots testing their homemade flying machines. The helicopter’s tail almost hits the ground on takeoff, while the ultralight - which is held together by bailing twine - shakes so much that the pilot can barely take his hands off the controls. On the positive side, the aircraft are cheap to build. The pilot of one said it cost him less than RMB20,000 (less than 2,000 euros) Look out Boeing and Airbus: Heeeere comes China! (h/t Shanghaiist)
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