The ministry identified programs supporting renewable power, including wind and solar, in California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio and California that violate World Trade Organization policies and trade treaties, according to a preliminary finding on the agency’s website today.

The finding comes a week after the U.S. Commerce Department announced tariffs as high as 250 percent on Chinese solar cells and is the latest salvo in a renewable-energy trade dispute, according to Theodore O’Neill, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities Inc. in New York.

“It’s a long, slow escalation of trade and currency wars as we race to the bottom,” O’Neill said today in an interview.
Chinese solar companies have criticized Commerce’s preliminary decision May 18 that they improperly benefit from government subsidies and sell solar cells below cost. At least four U.S. solar manufacturers filed for bankruptcy in the past year.

MarketWatch has more on the background of the dispute:

The U.S. Commerce Department last week announced a preliminary decision to impose 31% tariffs on several of China’s largest solar-panel companies that it had found guilty of dumping.

The Chinese government blasted the U.S. decision as “protectionist” and “unreasonable,” saying it provoked trade friction and would hurt both Chinese and U.S. companies as well as the clean energy sector.

The Ministry of Commerce didn’t say Thursday how it might respond to the U.S. trade violations it had uncovered.

Four Chinese solar companies plan to hold a news conference later Thursday to respond to the U.S. Commerce Department’s decision on tariffs, which followed U.S. antisubsidy tariffs of 3% to 5% on Chinese solar companies in March.

Read more about renewable energy in China, cooperation with the U.S. over environmental issues, and about U.S. trade with China, via CDT.

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Post tags: clean energy, renewable energy, U.S trade, U.S. environment
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An environmental researcher by trade, Ma spent years chronicling China’s ecological catastrophes. Some of what he witnessed was inexorable and slow, like the graying of the Beijing sky; last December, the World Health Organization ranked Beijing 1,035th, out of 1,100 international cities, in air quality. Other results of his country’s unfettered growth were horrific, like the massive flooding of the Yangtze in 1998, after years of deforestation and soil erosion. Eventually, he decided that merely telling the story was not enough. “As a media person, you look to expose the problem,” he says, “but you can’t stop there-—people are looking for answers.”

Ma founded the not-for-profit Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) in 2006. Since then, more than anyone else in China, Ma has channeled the power of the Internet and the optimism of China’s younger generation into a force for environmental change. Working with a devoted national network of young volunteers, Ma and his nine full-time staffers have compiled an open-source online database of water, air, and hazardous-waste pollution records—-in the country that generates the world’s highest emissions. Those records are damning: Over five years, IPE volunteers have helped hunt down some 97,000 records of factories operating in violation of China’s green laws. And those efforts lead to change.

“When I look at China’s environmental problems, the real barrier is not lack of technology or money,” he says. “It’s lack of motivation. The motivation should come from regulatory enforcement, but enforcement is weak and environmental litigation is near to impossible. So there’s an urgent need for extensive public participation to generate another kind of motivation.” Ma has become expert at using his database to create that motivation, especially when it comes to helping global companies police their suppliers.

Read more about Ma Jun and about environmental activism in China, via CDT. See also our special section on the Environment.

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Post tags: corporate responsibility, environmental activism, Ma Jun, pollution
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Nissan Motor Co Ltd said it aims to triple global sales of its premium Infiniti brand by 2016 and take 10 percent of China’s luxury vehicle market, challenging leaders like Audi AG and Mercedes Benz maker Daimler AG.

The target appears “challenging,” Yale Zhang, head of Shanghai-based consulting firm Automotive Foresight, said.

In order for Nissan to achieve it, the Yokohama-based automaker would have to “aggressively push localization over the coming two to three years and aggressively price locally produced cars,” Zhang said.

In China, Infiniti sold just 19,000 cars in the last fiscal year ended March, a fraction of the more than 300,000 sold in 2011 by Audi, Volkswagen AG’s premium brand.

While Nissan expands into emerging markets with the revival of their Datsun brand, they plan to enter China through Hong Kong with the luxury brand, Infiniti.ABC News adds:

Nissan’s upscale Infiniti brand unveiled its new global headquarters in Hong Kong on Tuesday, as the Japanese automaker uses the southern Chinese financial center to grab a bigger piece of the world’s top car market.

Infiniti is the first car maker to base itself in Hong Kong, a semiautonomous region of China better known for its banking prowess and stock market.

Ghosn said the company chose to move the high-end division to Hong Kong so staff could better observe the city’s luxury goods market. Many foreign brands have flocked to the city in recent years in pursuit of wealthy Chinese shoppers.

“During the next five years, Hong Kong and mainland China will together be our most important growth market,” Ghosn said.

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Post tags: auto industry, auto market, luxury cars, Nissan
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Though some critics argue the Chinese government has been too slow to act, research, public concern and some hefty bills ($35 billion in Shanghai alone in the last 40 years), has sparked some momentum. Recently, the state council approved China’s Land Subsidence Prevention Project, a countrywide initiative to prevent land subsidence. Likewise, Beijing, which has descended more than a foot in the past decade, has also made an effort to reduce underground water extraction, with plans to close 800 water extraction wells in 2012, according to the Beijing Water Authority. By 2014, the city hopes to halt underground water extraction in urban areas altogether as part of the North-South Water Diversion Project. The project expects to bring 3 billion cubic feet of water supply to Beijing from the Yangtze River. This would not only satisfy one-third of the city’s total water demand, but would also cut the extraction of underground water in half.

But Li, who worked at the Chinese Academy of Science for 15 years, says such programs will not be enough. “It’s hard to quantify how much this might help, but the question is, is that a problem solved? The answer is no. The problem lies in the early issue with urbanization,” he says. Scientists expect the regulations to help curb the consumption of underground water supplies, but there a few things the government has less control over, such as global warming. As the land degradation and excessive guzzling of ground water continues, environmentalists predict waters surrounding Shanghai to rise 9 to 27 inches by 2050 as a result of melting ice caps.

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Post tags: Beijing, construction, Shanghai, south-to-north water diversion project, urban development, water conservancy, water crisis, water shortage, Yangtze River
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Authorities in China have approved Google Inc.’s bid to buy phone maker Motorola Mobility, clearing the way for the $12.5 billion deal to close early next week.

The approval brings the Internet search giant closer to sealing its biggest acquisition ever. Buying Motorola allows Google to expand into manufacturing phones, tablet computers and other consumer devices for the first time. The deal also gives Google access to more than 17,000 Motorola patents.

The Chinese government approved the deal on Saturday, Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick said. “We look forward to closing the deal,” she said.

Although China has given Google the OK, they have also stipulated that Android, Google’s mobile operating system, remains free and open for the next five years. CNET adds:

The stipulation would seem to be designed to keep Google from denying Motorola’s handset competitors access to the mobile operating system, or from giving Motorola an advantage of some sort — such as integration between its handsets and Android that’s tighter than connections between rival phones and the OS.

From the beginning, Google has taken an open approach with Android, making it free and available to any hardware manufacturer — a strategy that’s helped to quickly make Android the No. 1 mobile OS globally.

“Many hardware partners have contributed to Android’s success and we look forward to continuing our work with all of them on an equal basis to deliver outstanding user experiences,” Google CEO Larry Page said during a conference call last August, at the time the intended acquisition was announced. “We built Android as an open-source platform and it will stay that way.”

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Post tags: Google, Internet security, mobile technology
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Beyond the snark and the state media, a more earnest discussion has gathered force. Despite years of investment and official injunctions to advance Chinese technology, China has yet to produce a brand or original tech product with a fraction of the global influence of Facebook or Apple. Chen Yongdong, a Shanghai-based technology writer, adapted the title of a famous Chinese poem for an essay he called “Raising My Head to Look Up to Facebook; Lowering My Head to Think About Its Chinese Counterparts.” He wrote: “If you don’t have innovation, are you not going to be laughed at by the industry, and by the world?”

In all likelihood, China is approaching the end of its run as the world’s low-skilled workshop. There are fewer workers, and they are pursuing more income and skills; Vietnam and other neighbors are cheaper. The larger problem is existential: The nation that so often reminds the world that it invented printing, paper, gunpowder, and the compass is exceedingly uncomfortable about how far back it has to reach to name its world-beating inventions. China has excelled in several pockets of innovation (genomics and nanotechnology, for example) but those are the exception; Chinese technology is now best known for “process innovation”—reducing the cost of producing, say, low-end mobile phones for Huawei—and for the distinctly Chinese term, “re-innovation,” which involves making something simpler or cheaper than the original.

Even successful Chinese Internet companies, such as Tencent and Alibaba, are respected for their business achievements, not for their original insights. The obstacles are not a mystery: The government has failed to protect intellectual property or promote small- and medium-sized businesses with good ideas, to name a couple of factors.

Imagine, for a moment, the Chinese version of the Facebook story: A no-name undergrad in the Tsinghua University computer-science department gains notoriety for a high-profile prank that makes the university concerned about its digital security; instead of getting expelled, he starts a company, drops out, attracts prominent investors despite ignoring powerful players in the field, is invited to meet the President of the country, continues expanding, goes public, and makes billions. Impossible—for all kinds of reasons (a Chinese student who toys with a university network might not be enrolled by the end of the day), but the most vexing question may be, as an editorial in Nature once put it, “whether a truly vibrant scientific culture is possible without a more widespread societal commitment to free expression.”

The Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report, however, claims that China can still teach Facebook a thing or two:

With traffic quickly migrating from personal computers to mobile devices, all of the big Chinese Internet companies are pushing hard into mobile, but some with more success than others. Though Mark Zuckerberg is well aware of the mobile challenge, he might think about following in Tencent’s footsteps, and instead of working on a more streamlined Facebook app or some grander mobile operating system, make a new mobile product from scratch.

China’s largest internet conglomerate, Tencent, launched a new mobile chat service last year called Weixin.

On top of its mobile chat function, Weixin has integrated audio and photo sharing and other quirky features, one of which allows users to shake their phone and start up a conversation with strangers shaking their phone in the area. According to the Chinese media it’s also testing a new circles feature, that has the uncanny power to automatically categorize friends and contacts based on how a person knows them, and even throws in a few similar strangers for good measure.

…

As Kaifu Lee, former head of China for Google points out, what has set Weixin apart is it has left completely behind the “baggage” of being a PC product.

“Facebook’s client was not inventive from the get go for the mobile experience, [it was] just aiming for functional compatibility with desktop version. That may on the positive side it will be more friendly to the desktop client, but the downside is it’s not optimized for mobile,” he said.

See also speculation in Forbes on what impact Facebook’s IPO will have on China’s top social network, Renren.

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Post tags: Facebook, innovation, IPO, renren, social media, social networking
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Last year 438 rhinos, nearly all of them of the white (meaning wide-lipped) species, were known to have been illegally killed in South Africa, their horns often hacked off while they were still alive. That compares with an annual average of just 15 before 2008. This year more than 200 have already been poached, an average of 50 a month, with the year’s final tally expected to top 600. If that trend continues, more rhinos will be being poached than born by 2016, sending the world’s population into a decline that could be irreversible. Around 20,000 of the surviving white rhinos on earth live in South Africa ….

Long prized in South-East Asia for its supposed medicinal and aphrodisiac vim, rhino horn is now being peddled as a cure for cancer too. With growing wealth in China and Vietnam unaccompanied by growing wisdom, demand seems insatiable. The horn, which is merely agglutinated hair, the same stuff as finger nails, has no pharmacological value. Yet its street price has soared to over $60,000 a kilo, more than for the same weight of cocaine or gold—a proven aphrodisiac.

Other animals are also vulnerable: the Associated Press reported on Wednesday that Thai police had seized two tiger carcasses thought to be bound for China. But with interception rates low—around 10% for internationally trafficked ivory, according to Interpol—measures to cut off supply must be accompanied by efforts to reduce demand. In the case of elephants, this can involve challenging the widespread myth that tusks drop out naturally and harmlessly. At Rectified.name, Karlis Rokpelnis, an ethnoecology PhD candidate at Beijing’s Minzu University, suggests hard research, however unprofitable, into the supposed medicinal properties of rhino horn and other exotic ingredients. Rokpelnis also draws on recent stories of human baby flesh pills reportedly seized by South Korean customs, and the theme of cannibalism in historical ethnic smears and Lu Xun’s ‘Diary of a Madman’.

While the current media and online furor could — and probably should — be dismissed as one of the many rumors and otherworldly accusations floating around the Internet, it does point to a striking failure of science as it relates to traditional Chinese medicine. How to separate the quackery from the possible, particularly in regards to practices which so abominable as to be nearly unbelievable, but also debunking medical myths involving the use of ingredients — such as bear bile, rhino horn, and tiger portions — which do great harm to biodiversity and the protection of endangered species ….

While the moral impact of a middle-aged man spending prolifically on concoctions to enhance his amorous life seems benign (as long as he stays away from the damn rhinos!), what to make of the 2007 half a year prison term to Guangdong parents who stole another couple’s deceased child to make a healing soup for their sickly child …?

If sound qualitative data of the clinical results of using rare animal species as medicine would be available, this could be used as a way of addressing demand for them directly. After all, who would buy tiger bone liquor if its benefits for sexual potency were shown to be non-existent?

At least one reason might remain. From the BBC’s legendary 2006 report on a Beijing penis restaurant, on a $5,700 tiger penis dish:

“So what does it taste like?” I ask.

“Oh, the same as all the others,” she says blithely.

And does it have any particular potency? “No. People just like to order tiger to show off how much money they have.”

(As Lijia Zhang noted last year in a Guardian opinion piece on the “racist” Western fascination with strange Chinese eating habits, the restaurant’s menu “is not something that runs deep in Chinese culture – there are only two penis restaurants in China, and both belong to the same owner.”)

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: animal protection, elephant poaching, elephants, ivory trade, tigers, traditional medicine
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Weibo Secretary: Dear netizens, in order to maintain order in the Weibo community, we are establishing open and transparent mechanisms to deal with violators of our regulations. Today we are issuing the “Sina Weibo Community Convention (Trial)”, along with the “Community Management Regulations (Trial)” and the “Community Committee System (Trial).” The above regulations will take effect on May 28th, 2012, at which time corresponding features will go live. Order is something that we all must work together to maintain. Read the new policies in their entirety at http://t.cn/zO8hGBj

Since this tweet went up on May 8th at 3pm Beijing time, there have been over 30,000 comments. The Wall Street Journal’s Josh Chin surveys public reaction to the announcement:

Among the thousands of users who responded to the draft document, many said they approved, with some arguing that the proposed set of rules would help manage what they said was an increasing proliferation of rumors and obscene content on the website. “Preserving the good atmosphere on Sina Weibo requires everyone to work hard together,” wrote angel investor Cai Wensheng, who boasts more than 3.5 million followers.

Sina Weibo celebrity and former head of Google’s China operations Kai-Fu Lee also put himself in the approval camp, responding with a simple: “Agree, support!”

Others weren’t so sure. Among those who appeared to hedge was real estate mogul Pan Shiyi, who said it was good to have rules to refer to but added a question: “Does this mean there won’t be any more arbitrary take-downs?”

Still others actively attacked Sina’s new regulations for aping the deliberately vague officialese found in government legal documents, arguing that the definitions of disallowed content are broad enough to legitimize almost any act of censorship. “All this does is provide an excuse for arbitrary take-downs,” real estate executive Sun Xuguang wrote in response to Mr. Pan.

[...]Another user, meanwhile, had a suggestion for a much simpler solution: “Isn’t there a list of sensitive words you can give to everyone so they can consult it before posting?”

After Sina’s failed attempt to fully implement the state regulated “real-name registration“ policy, these conventions are the latest step to codify and control sensitive online content in an effort to thwart a government crackdown on the site. Caijing English has translated and published the entire mandate for self-censorship, paying special attention to Article 13, the section hazily defining sensitive content:

In Article 13, the contract lists nearly ten kinds of information users are not allowed to publish on Weibo, including that “harms the unity, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of the nation” and that “spreads rumors, disrupts social order, and destroys societal stability.”

[...]Article 13) Users have the right to publish information, but may not publish any information that:

1.Opposes the basic principles established by the constitution
2.Harms the unity, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of the nation
3.Reveals national secrets, endangers national security, or threatens the the honor or interests of the nation
4.Incites ethnic hatred or ethnic discrimination, undermines ethnic unity, or harms ethnic traditions and customs
5.Promotes evil teachings and superstitions
6.Spreads rumors, disrupts social order, and destroys societal stability
7.Promotes illicit activity, gambling, violence, or calls for the committing of crimes
8.Calls for disruption of social order through illegal gatherings, formation of organizations, protests, demonstrations, mass gatherings and assemblies
9.Has other content which is forbidden by laws, administrative regulations and national regulations.

This is not the first time that Sina has altered its operating policy to satisfy the state. When recent rumors of a coup in Beijing began spreading after the sacking of former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, Sina temporarily disabled their comment feature upon state orders. While cyberspace may always be seen as a breeding ground for rumors and sensitive content, government paranoia is mounting in an atmosphere of political instability and as the (possibly postponed) once-in-a-decade leadership transition approaches.

Also see prior CDT coverage of censorship, self-censorship, and Sina Weibo. For more on sensitive content, see CDT’s “Sensitive Words” series.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Internet regulation, microblogging, self-censorship, sina weibo
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Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and China’s Defense Minister Liang Guanglie on Monday struck a positive note at a joint press conference at the Pentagon, announcing a joint counter-piracy naval exercise in the Gulf of Aden later this year and tentative plans to cooperate in the sensitive realm of cyber security.

Liang’s trip marked the first visit by a Chinese defense minister to Washington in nine years and US defense officals were anxious to avoid any mention of blind rights campaigner Chen Guangcheng.

Chen “didn’t come up” in the talks and officials had said beforehand that his fate was a subject for US diplomats at the State Department, not the Pentagon.

The dissident dramatically escaped house arrest and took refuge at the US embassy in Beijing on April 26, creating a dilemma for both governments just days before the arrival of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Although the two countries have agreed to work together, some officials are worried because the most often cited source of cyber attacks is from China. According the the Voice of America, Liang has denied these claims:

Liang, a general in the People’s Liberation Army, said that there is no evidence directly linking cyber attacks in the United States to China. He said that in his talks with U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the secretary agreed that all of the attacks could not be attributed to China.

Liang said that during their talks Monday, he and Panetta discussed ways to strengthen cyber security, but added that they would leave the details of that effort for experts to work out.

President Barack Obama has cited cyber security as one of the most serious economic and national security challenges facing the United States. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says Sino-American cooperation is crucial.

“Because the United States and China have developed technological capabilities in this arena, it’s extremely important that we work together to develop ways to avoid any miscalculation or misperception that could lead to crisis in this area,” said Panetta.

Liang’s visit has been the first visit by a Chinese defense minister since 2003.

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Post tags: cyber police, Internet, Internet safety, Internet security, Internet technology, U.S military
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South Korea has intensified a crackdown on the smuggling of capsules from China containing the powdered flesh of dead babies, taken by some as a cure for disease or a way to boost sexual performance, a customs official said Tuesday.

The gruesome practice came to light Sunday when Korea Customs said it had uncovered 35 attempts to import a total of 17,451 such capsules since last August.

The customs service said that apart from ethical questions the capsules were contaminated with “super bacteria” and other disease-causing organisms.

Most pills were sent from the northeastern Chinese cities of Yanji and Jilin as well as cities including Qingdao and Tianjin at the request of customers in South Korea, it said.

Despite South Korea’s claims about the origins of the pills, China has announced that they have not found any capsules containing baby flesh. CNN adds:

Medications made of human tissue have not been found in China, the country’s Health Ministry said Tuesday after reports a day earlier that pills made from the flesh of dead babies were smuggled from China into South Korea.

Chinese authorities will conduct an investigation into reports that the capsules, allegedly made from aborted fetuses, were made in China, Deng Haihua, a spokesman for China’s Health Ministry, said in a report from the state-run Xinhua news agency. Similar allegations were investigated in August, and nothing was found to substantiate them, he said.

Deng said China has strict regulations to ensure that such a thing could not occur.

According to a report in the Korea Times, 29 smugglers of “human-flesh capsules” have been arrested after trying to bring 11,000 pills into the country while disguised as tourists.

See also Bear Bile Controversy and more about food safety issues via CDT.

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Post tags: Chinese medicine, food safety, health, south korea, traditional medicine
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