Although Wang Lixiong’s banned publications are not available at bookstores and online in China, many Chinese readers are avid readers of these banned books. Their pirated versions were widely circulated. Many Chinese readers got to understand issues about Tibet and Xinjiang and their history, current situation and importance through his work. I actually got to meet him from reading Sky Burial.

It is encouraging to see banned books on the internet–a contribution of internet technology to mankind. The reason internet is so great is that it broke various kinds of boundaries, like a soaring bird, or a blooming flower. Intellectual thinking should not comply to authoritarianism. Symbols of technological advancement such as Apple should not yield to the Chinese Communist Party.

Unfortunately, through incidents like Wang Lixiong’s books being banned, we realized Apple had surrendered itself, like the old Chinese saying, ‘If you have money, you can make the devil push the millstone for you.’ I heard there is an English expression similar to that–Money makes the world go around.

See more on Woeser via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, apple store, censorship, Internet censorship, Wang Lixiong, Woeser
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Since it opened its first restaurant in China in 1990, the American chain KFC has blanketed the country with thousands of outlets that offer Western-style fried chicken, hamburgers, and fries. While in the U.S. KFC symbolizes speedy, inexpensive food, in China it’s a symbol of quality. “Being able to dine in KFC once a month was a pride of my childhood,” said Wanqing He, a New York University student from Xinjiang. “It is still some kind of high-end restaurant in my hometown to average income families.”

But the aura of quality has faded fast in recent months, ever since China Economic Net, a government-owned online publication, published a November story revealing that a Chinese KFC supplier used banned antibiotics and hormones to raise its chickens.

The report set off a huge wave of criticism of KFC on weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. Then, in December, state-run China Central Television (CCTV) joined the critics, and the story accelerated.

In the CCTV story, reporter Yun Zhang reprimanded Yum Brands, KFC’s corporate owner. “Yum reaches a large group of consumers who trust in its food quality,” said Zhang, who challenged the company to “offer clear information about the number and consumption of these chickens. It has to give the public a satisfactory answer.”

The story was an unusual one – a relatively rare example of investigative journalism by CCTV, and even more attention-getting because the target was a foreign company. In fact, the KFC report may have signaled a shift in media rules in China: Foreign companies are now fair game for criticism and investigation. Apple learned that when it was compelled to apologize this month over criticism of its customer service policies.

The CCTV report on KFC, 15 minutes long, offered strong visuals. Tight video shots showed listless chickens, who spend 45 days from birth to slaughter, growing in overcrowded coops filled with waste. The CCTV reporter asked one farm worker if he would ever eat the meat he helped produce. No, came the answer. “Even the flies won’t come to this place, because it’s toxic.”

After that report, KFC, which earned 44 percent of its global revenues in China last year, saw sales in the country plummet by 24 percent in January and February. Bad feelings persist. One recent post on Weibo said, “I hope companies like KFC that sells these garbage foods will go bankrupt soon.”

But while foreign companies take a lashing, domestic enterprises are still far less likely to get investigative scrutiny in social or mainstream media.

According to an analysis by the Chinese news website 163.com, domestic food companies were not featured in any of the special Consumer Rights Day programs for the past three years in China, while McDonald’s and Carrefour were both criticized for food safety lapses. Another online site, China Food, reported that Chinese media exposed food scandals at 30 companies last year – nearly a third of them foreign firms, including KFC, McDonalds, Starbucks, Heinz, Nestle and Coca Cola. An editor at China Food, who declined to be identified, said Chinese media clearly feel freer to criticize foreign companies. “They have less concern when they deal with foreign companies because the companies are less connected with the government,” said the editor.

How CCTV reacted to another food safety scandal, this one involving domestic wine producer, Maotai, illustrates the different standard that appears to apply when media report on Chinese enterprises.

In December, a Weibo user posted a quality report, done by an independent company in Hong Kong, stating that toxic ingredients had been found in Maotai, a high-end wine often served at banquets for top officials. Mainstream domestic media largely ignored the independent assessment, but instead aired the accusations of a Maotai executive, who charged that the reports were a smear campaign instigated by competitors. The account of the Weibo user who posted the Hong Kong report was later suspended.

Jason Lee, a reporter from China Daily in Beijing, said that the mainstream media’s softer treatment for domestic firms was probably due to self-censorship, rather than any specific government order. But he said that the increasingly popular Weibo platform creates pressure on China’s state-owned media, particularly when it comes to reporting on foreign companies.

“People on social media would blame the problems of domestic companies on the lack of government regulations,” said Lee. “But they don’t make that kind of excuses for foreign companies.”

Wenxiong Zhang studied international affairs and English literature at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. He is currently a graduate student at Columbia Journalism School in New York, where he reports about China and Chinese immigrants in New York City. He contributed this article to CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, CCTV, food safety, foreign companies, kfc
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In October, when David Barboza published his Wen Jiabao investigation, Chinese officials lashed out, accusing him of having “ulterior motives” and trying to “smear” China. The New York Times website was blocked in China, and it was later revealed that the newspaper’s headquarters were subjected to a sustained hacking effort, which appeared to be aimed at acquiring Barboza’s personal communications. Bloomberg, which published an investigative report on the networks of power and wealth surrounding current President Xi Jinping, was also blocked in China and hacked following the report.

Following the Pulitzer announcement, Chinese authorities repeated the accusations against the New York Times. From AFP (via Economic Times):

The story, which was published in October last year, alleged close relatives of Wen have made billions of dollars in business dealings.

It provoked anger from authorities in China, who said it was part of a “smear” by “voices” opposed to the country’s development. The Times’ Chinese and English websites were subsequently blocked in China and remain inaccessible.

“Our position towards this issue is very clear. We believe the relevant report by the New York Times reporter is with ulterior motives,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular press briefing Tuesday.

Foreign reporters based in China know they face consequences from authorities if their reporting delves into areas the government does not want exposed. ChinaFile hosted a roundtable discussion titled, “Why Does China Mess with the Foreign Press?”, in which Columbia University’s Andrew Nathan discusses the widespread perception among China’s leaders that such investigative reports are sourced by players with their own political agenda:

A senior Chinese whose job it is to gather intelligence asked me both of these questions –why did the Times attack the premier and who gave them the information — and was incredulous when I answered that the wealth of Wen’s wife had been widely known for years, and this was a story just waiting to be written by a reporter with the skills to get the facts. He must have thought I was either naive or a liar. Such is the paranoia of the Chinese political class.

David Barboza has explained that all his reporting was based on scrupulous reading of public documents. Isabel Hilton points out that Chinese reporters often face harsher consequences for their investigative reports, and cites the case of Jiang Weiping, who was imprisoned for his reporting on Bo Xilai and other local officials in the 1990s.

Update: In a further crackdown on foreign media, the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television issued a directive this week forbidding journalists from “using news or informational products from foreign media or foreign websites” without prior permission.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, david barboza, foreign correspondents, foreign media, Foxconn, jiang weiping, new york times, press freedom, Wen Jiabao
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To be clear, the extraordinary growth of the Android OS in China is coming at Apple’s expense. Tech in Asia claims that many research groups believe that 86 percent of new mobile devices being sold in China run on an Android OS compared to just 12 percent that run on Apple’s iOS system.

All of this is very troubling for Apple, which has said that it expects China to become its largest and most important market in the years ahead. It’s hardly surprising then that the company feels the need to make a low-end iPhone to appeal to consumers in emerging markets like China.

The real key to improving Apple’s position in China, however, will be reaching a deal with China’s largest mobile service provider, China Mobile, in which the latter starts offering its customers— who at over 700 million people are roughly twice as large as the entire U.S. population— iPhones and related Apple products.

There has been some movement on this front as of late but all of it would have been at severe risk if the rift between Apple and the Chinese government had been allowed to fester.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, consumer electronics, mobile technology
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Mr. Cook said in the letter that the company deeply reflected on recent “feedback” on its warranty policies and apologized for misunderstandings created by poor communication with consumers.

“We are aware that a lack of communications…led to the perception that Apple is arrogant and doesn’t care or attach enough importance to consumer feedback,” Mr. Cook said, according to the letter. “We express our sincere apologies for any concerns or misunderstandings this gave consumers.”

…

In the letter, Mr. Cook said the company would amend its warranty policies for the iPhone 4 and 4S, streamline its customer feedback, give further training to Apple authorized resellers on warranty policy, and more clearly post its warranty policy on its website. He added that about 90% of consumers had been satisfied with its earlier repair policy.

Cook’s apology comes nearly three weeks after an annual CCTV program about consumer safety and rights criticized Apple for charging Chinese customers a fee to replace the back cover of iPhones, a service offered free of charge in other countries. Apple did not respond at the time, and other state media organizations stepped up their coverage of the issue. A number of celebrities chimed in on social media as well, though netizens suspected that some had done so at the request of CCTV. Then, last week, China’s quality inspection regulator said it would tighten its oversight on the company.

Reuters noted that Cook’s letter “highlights the importance of the market for Apple,” given that revenue from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong grew 60 percent in the first quarter this year. Apple may have played it smart by apologizing, according to observers who spoke with The New York Times:

Bill Bishop, a Beijing technology analyst and publisher of the online newsletter Sinocism China, said it was difficult to know what prompted the investigation by the state media, but he noted that Apple’s explosive growth in China might have outpaced the company’s ability to fully train and prepare its work force and management team to deal with the challenges of the Chinese market.

“Whatever the merits of the case, Apple’s not going to win here,” Mr. Bishop said in an interview Monday. “Apple can’t fight this.”

Anna Han, an associate professor of law at Santa Clara University, said Mr. Cook’s letter of apology was a smart tactic and a “very Chinese thing to do.” She compared it with public apologies that plaintiffs will sometimes ask for from defendants in Chinese courts. That action, combined with the change in its warranty policy, “sort of takes the wind out of the government’s sails,” said Ms. Han, who advises American companies doing business in China.

“It says, ‘We’re accused of something and we’re doing something about it.’ ”

In his weekly China Insider column for The New York Times, which was published before Cook’s letter was issued, Sinocism’s Bill Bishop reiterated his stance that “Apple cannot win this fight”:

Apple looks to have a serious government and public relations problem that will require a much more proactive and forthright response than what the company has done so far. Dribbling out a petulant apology akin to its response to the problems with the 2010 iPhone 4 antenna will not work in China.

The standard response by a foreign company in China facing this kind of onslaught is to make public and private apologies, emphasize its commitment and contributions to China and dispatch senior executives from headquarters to make the rounds of the relevant Chinese government entities. Apple may also have to begin a new service for China, one it may also be able to sell to other foreign enterprises. It’s name? The iKowtow.

Investors have reason to be concerned. Between this brouhaha, the increased competition from Samsung and other high-end Android phones and the crackdown on corruption that is denting the gifting culture, Apple’s results in China for its current quarter may be disappointing, even though this is the first full quarter in which the iPhone 5 has been on sale in China.

The state-run Global Times claimed in a Tuesday editorial that the apology “benefits all sides:”

As the world’s leading high-tech enterprise, Apple can adjust its attitude in a timely manner, showing its professionalism and flexibility. Its reaction is worth respect compared with other American companies. CCTV also deserves our respect and encouragement for daring to criticize a business giant like Apple.

China’s market economy has experienced soaring development, while its rules are not mature enough and laws not so sound. Some international companies have not behaved well in China, and even treated Chinese customers differently to customers in other countries.

The blame should not only lie in foreign companies, but also China’s business environment. Having said that, the supervision by Chinese media is absolutely justified. Making sure the Chinese market is more regulated and Chinese law binding to both Chinese and foreign companies will benefit global investors, including companies such as Apple, which relies more and more on the Chinese market.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, CCTV, consumer electronics, Global Times, social media, state media, Tim Cook
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The public mood seemed to be favourable for CCTV until around 8:26pm, when Taiwanese actor Peter Ho, posted the following message on his Weibo: “Apple plays so many tricks with their customer service? I feel hurt as an Apple fan. Have you done right by [Steve] Jobs? Have you done right by boys who sell their kidneys [to buy iphones], he asked, adding: “this is an example of big-name shops bullying customers.”

Ho’s message ended with a short line which soon became notorious: “To publish around 8.20pm.”

But it was nothing to be missed by sharp-eyed netizens and eager fans.

Minutes later, criticism, speculation and theories were posted on Weibo about Ho’s 8.20pm statement.

Within two hours, Ho claimed in a new post that somebody had commandeered his Weibo account and posted the controversial message. But the post had gone viral before authorities censored it, according to the Atlantic’s Liz Carter, and the incident was picked up by every major Chinese news organization. Netizens ridiculed both Ho and CCTV, and one well-known author who had denied on his Weibo that he had accepted money to post supportive comments. Kaifu Lee, the Google executive and well-known blogger who had not joined the fray, admitted that CCTV had invited him to post comments.

The chatter continued into Monday, according to David Bandurski at the China Media Project, who posted a screenshot of Peter Ho’s Weibo account. Bandurski also partially translated a blog post from Chinese writer Li Chengpeng which chided CCTV for its behavior:

It’s not that you can’t do some things on and off the air to go along with the fight against fakes. But you cannot use public power to make targeted strikes against those who aren’t your major advertisers. Of course you can criticise Apple, but you cannot let all of these domestically manufactured fraudulent goods off the hook when you could so easily investigate them, then turn a harsh and uncompromising eye on a mobile brand that leads the world in overall quality — even making it out to be something of great concern to the people, a form of national discrimination . . . The thing is, you’ve always done things this way. You act all the time like you don’t give a damn about your own face, and then you place the condom of state power over the instrument of your own private profit.

Those enterprises are bad, but what you’re doing is disgusting. A massive network like yours, with massive channel resources in your grasp and high-level contacts, but your creativity is such that you can only be compared to [propaganda] megaphone shouting over the countryside . . . .

You turn your eyes from knife attacks on our own children, but focus your attention on tragedies at schools overseas; you don’t criticize the way our own congresses have gathered like so many artificial limbs for 60-odd years, but always mock the way shoes have been thrown again in a parliament in some other country. You’ve never questioned why officials in our country don’t open up about their assets (great, so on this issue we must thank foreign reporters for asking this question at press conferences), but you take great joy in reporting about some government official overseas who got caught using public funds to buy a bottle of wine. Yes, there are certainly many untoward things happening outside China — poisonous foods, corrupt officials, poverty. But no matter how many of these dirty stories there are overseas, what the hell do these have to do with me? I don’t have family there. I criticize ugly things in China because these do harm to my own family (Oh, I see, so perhaps you criticize things overseas so much because you own relatives have already . . . ?). You are China’s national television network, so you should be criticizing more things happening right beside you. That’s how you contribute to your own country. Is it so hard for you to understand this simple concept?

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, CCTV, chinternet, Kaifu Lee, microblogs, netizens, online public opinion, Peter Ho, propaganda, sina weibo
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The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing has an intriguing new take on China’s place in the debate over Apple, iPhones, and the people who make them. While Americans hash out the moral ups and downs of having our electronics produced by Chinese factory hands, a young performance artist named Li Liao decided to jump into the middle of it. He got an assembly-line job making iPads, and forty-five days later he used his wages to buy one. As an exhibit, he put the iPad on a pedestal, tacked up his uniform and badges, and framed his contract. The effect, on a white gallery wall, is a strangely addictive ready-made tableau about the intersection of money, aspiration, and technology. I watched two young men separately linger over it for very different reasons: one was a hip Chinese gallerygoer in chunky glasses and a camel-hair coat, taking it all in; the other was a gallery security guard in a borrowed suit and white gloves. He was studying the details of the contract.

Did the experience change your perceptions of Apple one way or the other?

I worked at Foxconn for forty-five days. Before that, I was already an Apple consumer. I don’t think this experience changed my perception of the products; it only made one thing clearer: many of the products in this world actually have nothing to do with the workers who made them. To most of the workers there, Apple was just a name, a logo.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, art exhibition, artists, Beijing, Evan Osnos, factories, factory workers, Foxconn, IPad, labor conditions, manufacturing, Shenzhen
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When Ms. Pu was hired at this Foxconn plant a year earlier, she received a short, green plastic stool that left her unsupported back so sore that she could barely sleep at night. Eventually, she was promoted to a wooden chair, but the backrest was much too small to lean against. The managers of this 164,000-employee factory, she surmised, believed that comfort encouraged sloth.

But in March, unbeknown to Ms. Pu, a critical meeting had occurred between Foxconn’s top executives and a high-ranking Apple official. The companies had committed themselves to a series of wide-ranging reforms. Foxconn, China’s largest private employer, pledged to sharply curtail workers’ hours and significantly increase wages — reforms that, if fully carried out next year as planned, could create a ripple effect that benefits tens of millions of workers across the electronics industry, employment experts say.

Other reforms were more personal. Protective foam sprouted on low stairwell ceilings inside factories. Automatic shut-off devices appeared on whirring machines. Ms. Pu got her chair. This autumn, she even heard that some workers had received cushioned seats.

The changes also extend to California, where Apple is based. Apple, the electronics industry’s behemoth, in the last year has tripled its corporate social responsibility staff, has re-evaluated how it works with manufacturers, has asked competitors to help curb excessive overtime in China and has reached out to advocacy groups it once rebuffed.

Foxconn, which manufactures electronics for the likes of Apple, Dell, Samsung and others, pledged earlier this year to improve conditions in its factories after the Fair Labor Association published a report finding violations of both Chinese law and industry codes of conduct. Apple also issued a statement to The New York Times in response to its questions for the article:

“Apple takes working conditions very seriously and we have for a long time. Our efforts range from protecting to empowering to improving the lives of everyone involved in assembling an Apple product. No one in our industry is doing as much as we are, in as many places, touching as many people as we do. Through years of hard work and steadfast commitment, we have set workplace, dormitory and safety standards, sought help from the world’s leading experts, and established groundbreaking educational programs for workers. Since 2008, more than 200,000 factory workers have taken free classes including college-level courses provided by Apple, and over one million employees have been educated on their rights through our worker empowerment training program.

“We believe workers everywhere have the right to a safe and fair work environment where they can earn competitive wages and express their concerns freely. Our suppliers have to live up to that if they want to do business with Apple.

…

“Apple is in a unique position to lead and we have embraced this role since the earliest days of our supplier responsibility program. We do all these things out of respect for our customers and, most of all, the people who make our products.”

See also the New York Times’ previous in-depth reporting on Foxconn as part of their iEconomy series: Part 1: How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work and Part 2: In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad . Read more about Foxconn, Apple and labor conditions in China via CDT, including, “This American Life’s Foxconn Retraction: Reactions,” which looks at recent coverage of Foxconn.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, corporate responsibility, Foxconn, labor conditions, labor rights, manufacturing
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The Great Firewall – the country’s huge system of internet limits and censorship – now appears to be stepping up targeting of virtual private networks, or VPNs, commonly used to circumvent controls on websites the government considers threatening.

While VPNs let users gain access to sites blocked by the Firewall due to their content or sensitivity – which in China include Facebook and Twitter – they are also vital to firms, enabling secure and encrypted communications.

In the globalised economy companies have flocked to China to try to participate in decades of stunning growth.

But web users are complaining of VPNs being inaccessible or quickly going down once accessed, while speeds have slowed to a crawl.

Authorities have also indicated recently that the use for foreign VPNs is illegal. The New York Times blog reports:

At least three foreign companies — Astrill, WiTopia and StrongVPN — have apologized to customers whose virtual private networks, or VPNs, have been slowed or disabled. VPNs are used to circumvent the Communist government’s firewall. The companies, meanwhile, were suggesting some work-arounds.

The daily newspaper Global Times, affiliated with the Communist Party, acknowledged the firewall had been “upgraded,” but it also warned that foreign providers of VPN services were operating illegally.

China blocks online searches of politically sensitive terms, smothers embarrassing news events, blocks online messages from dissidents and simply deletes any microblog posts that it dislikes.

The firewall also blocks countless Web sites that are openly available to users elsewhere around the world — from pornography sites and commercial come-ons to news reporting, political activism and religious proselytizing. Users on the mainland thus have to use VPNs to reach the banned sites.

The lack of access to VPNs not only affects regular Internet users, but businesses who rely on the technology to communicate with overseas associates and customers and to protect their own information. Apple has recently evaded this issue by installing HTTPS protocol for its App Store. From CNET:

The company seems to have recently turned on the more secure protocol for its App Store. Before that switch, censors in China could block Chinese users from searching for certain types of apps, such as VPN software, according to Greatfire.org, which monitors Chinese Internet censorship.

Searching for such apps would cause the actual connection to reset, meaning users in China couldn’t download them even if they were available in the Chinese App Store.

But now with the more secure HTTPS in place, the Great Firewall of China can no longer interrupt the connection to specific apps. Testing conducted by Greatfire.org and by blog site The Next Web confirmed that apps blocked in China under the standard HTTP protocol are now available when HTTPS is used to access the App Store.

As Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei has written, all of these recent developments seem to indicate that China’s new leadership has no plans to ease up on Internet controls. Indeed, China Media Project translated an editorial from People’s Daily calling on Internet users to be “law-abiding” online:

An open China requires a civilized and healthy online world governed by rule of law. Everyone, whether supervising government bodies or the masses of internet users, must treasure this platform. Demanding that people all use the correct means to say the correct things is not practical, but they must have a consciousness of the law and take responsibility for their words — this is a must. Because regardless of whether online or offline, this is the foundation on which public order and good habits are built.

Chinese netizens expressed outrage when they discovered that Xinhua, the official news agency, was able to get around the Great Firewall to post on Twitter when it was outlawed for everyone else.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-censorship tools, Apple, Internet censorship, VPN
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At 8 am on Friday, when the store opened to hurrahs from employees, only two consumers stood inside a cordon set up by Apple, though they were joined by a desultory snow man someone had made on a bench near the entrance. It’s not clear how much of the low turnout was attributable to the weather, how much to slack initial excitement for the device, and how much to the steps Apple has taken to smooth out the process of releasing products in China.

Apple recently added new stores in Beijing and the southern city of Shenzhen, with another one set to open soon in the southwestern city of Chengdu. The company has also changed how it releases its most popular products in China, requiring customers to apply online a day before to buy new devices and those selected are given a time window in which they can come out to get the phone. Those selected are given a time window in which they can come out to pick up their purchase.

Tian Jisheng, one of the two waiting in the cold when the store opened, said the lottery was competitive. He said he used four identities to apply for phones, but was only given an appointment for one. “I thought I didn’t get it, but then after 8 pm I received a notice I had gotten one,” he said.

Mr. Tian wasn’t visibly excited, but he said he was happy when he emerged from the store with his new, black iPhone 5. He said he was surprised there wasn’t a larger crowd.

One Beijing newspaper reported that an eager shopper broke into an Apple resale store before it opened this morning, according to CNET, but left empty handed after the store’s security system was activated. While the opening may have fallen flat, Reuters’ Melanie Lee writes that the release of the iPhone 5 may help Apple stabilize its shrinking market share in China, at least in the short-term:

Cupertino, California-based Apple has been in talks about a tie-up with China Mobile for four years. A deal with China’s biggest carrier is seen as crucial to improve Apple’s distribution in a market of 290 million users – which is forecast to double this year.

China is Apple’s second-largest and fastest-growing market – it brings in around 15 percent of total revenue – but the company’s failure to strike a deal with China Mobile means it is missing out on a large number of phone users. As the China pie grows, Apple’s sales increase, but without China Mobile, it’s losing ground at a faster rate compared to other brands.

“In absolute terms, this (iPhone 5) launch will certainly result in strong sales for Apple in China. However, in relative terms, I don’t believe it will move the needle enough in market share,” said Shiv Putcha, a Mumbai-based analyst at Ovum, a global technology consultant.

China Mobile and Apple initially said they were separated only by a technical issue – as the Chinese carrier runs a different 3G network from most of the world – but that has evolved into a broader and more complex issue of revenue-sharing.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, Beijing, China Mobile, iPhone, smartphone
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During its traditional disassembly of one of Apple’s latest desktops, however, repair guide site iFixit noted that “Interestingly, this iMac claims to have been assembled in the USA.” While custom-configured, American-assembled Macs are not unheard of, other reports have also surfaced of new, standard-configuration iMacs bearing the “Assembled in USA” marking. At 9to5 Mac, Seth Weibtraub tried to unravel the mystery:

The “Assembled in USA” label doesn’t just mean that foreign parts screwed together in the U.S. either. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission assumes that a ”substantial transformation” must happen in the U.S. for the label to be used.

Specifically, the FTC states that the label “Assembled in the USA” should be the following:

A product that includes foreign components may be called “Assembled in USA” without qualification when its principal assembly takes place in the U.S. and the assembly is substantial. For the “assembly” claim to be valid, the product’s last “substantial transformation” also should have occurred in the U.S. That’s why a “screwdriver” assembly in the U.S. of foreign components into a final product at the end of the manufacturing process doesn’t usually qualify for the “Assembled in USA” claim.

[…] Perhaps Apple is still outsourcing the manufacture to Foxconn and others, but it is actually assembling the products in a U.S. plant? To the surprise of some, Foxconn has a few locations in the U.S., but it isn’t known if they are actually making anything here.

Weintraub also pointed out another case of an iMac “Assembled in Ireland”.

The discovery coincides with a feature at The Atlantic by Charles Fishman, on America’s “Insourcing Boom”. Fishman explains how rising oil prices and wages in China, booming natural gas production and greatly increased productivity in the U.S., and unanticipated benefits from designing and building appliances in the same location have, in many cases, reversed the logic for manufacturing in China. He focuses on General Electric’s huge Appliance Park facility in Louisville, Kentucky, whose workforce hit a low of 1,863 last year after a 1973 peak of 23,000.

[… T]his year, something curious and hopeful has begun to happen, something that cannot be explained merely by the ebbing of the Great Recession, and with it the cyclical return of recently laid-off workers. On February 10, Appliance Park opened an all-new assembly line in Building 2—largely dormant for 14 years—to make cutting-edge, low-energy water heaters. It was the first new assembly line at Appliance Park in 55 years—and the water heaters it began making had previously been made for GE in a Chinese contract factory.

[…] In the midst of this revival, [GE CEO Jeffrey] Immelt made a startling assertion. Writing in Harvard Business Review in March, he declared that outsourcing is “quickly becoming mostly outdated as a business model for GE Appliances.” Just four years after he tried to sell Appliance Park, believing it to be a relic of an era GE had transcended, he’s spending some $800 million to bring the place back to life. “I don’t do that because I run a charity,” he said at a public event in September. “I do that because I think we can do it here and make more money.”

Immelt hasn’t just changed course; he’s pirouetted.

[…] What’s happening in factories across the U.S. is not simply a reversal of decades of outsourcing. If there was once a rush to push factories of nearly every kind offshore, their return is more careful; many things are never coming back. Levi Strauss used to have more than 60 domestic blue-jeans plants; today it contracts out work to 16 and owns none, and it’s hard to imagine mass-market clothing factories ever coming back in significant numbers—the work is too basic.

[…] And of course, manufacturing employment will never again be as central to the U.S. economy as it was in the 1960s and ’70s—improvements in worker productivity alone ensure that. Back in the ’60s, Appliance Park was turning out 250,000 appliances a month. The assembly lines there today are turning out almost as many—with at most one-third of the workers.

See also ‘Made in US, But Sold in China‘ at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, exports, Foxconn, GE, imports, labor costs, manufacturing, natural gas, oil prices, United States
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Chen shocked the world in April when he made a daring, next-to-impossible escape, climbing over the wall surrounding his house (breaking his foot in the process) and catching a ride some 350 miles to Beijing, where he took refuge in the U.S. Embassy. After a tense, days-long diplomatic standoff closely involving Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (No. 3), a deal was struck under which Chen would be allowed to travel to the United States to study. Now at New York University, Chen has embraced his new role as an evangelist for human rights, making the case that incremental change — one village or even one person at a time — can eventually transform a superpower. Against all odds, he remains optimistic, believing that China, taking a cue from Japan and South Korea, must “learn Eastern democracy.” He even thinks it’s inevitable: “Nobody can stop the progress of history,” he says.

An interview with Chen Guangcheng by Isaac Stone Fish accompanies the list. In it, Chen discusses how the central government allows abuses by local authorities—see Guizhou journalist Li Yuanlong’s detention last week for a recent example—and the chances of change or even revolution in China’s near future.

The central government definitely knew I was illegally detained at home. As for how the local authorities invented lies to frame me to put me in prison, as for how they persecuted my entire family, [the central government] didn’t necessarily know about the details. Yet now, six months later, I still haven’t seen the central government follow the country’s laws and keep its promise and investigate and deal with those officials who recklessly and illegally committed crimes.

Throughout Chinese history, has any emperor said they want to hand over power? Every emperor wants his power to last generation after generation. But can they? The Communist Party cannot monopolize all of the power in the country forever. This is a reality they must accept.

The possibility of China facing a revolution in 2013 is pretty big. This is something that the powers that be in China understand more than anyone else. It’s a pity that international society still does not understand this and has still not prepared. America should immediately start moving from dealing with China’s powers that be to dealing with the Chinese people. It definitely won’t be like 1989.

Chen does not appear to view the possibility of revolution with any great relish: when asked what the worst idea of the year is, he answered “violence”.

Controversial artist Ai Weiwei, still unable to leave China over a year after his 81-day detention in 2011, is ranked 26th:

[…] Ai has found ways to occupy his time. When one of his Twitter followers asked in May whether he was working on any new artwork, Ai tweeted back, “I am the artwork.” In April, he set up cameras throughout his house, providing a live feed on his website and to his 170,000 followers. (“Twitter is my city, my favorite city,” he told FP this year.) The authorities soon pressured him into removing the cameras, evidently preferring that they be the only ones to watch the rotund 55-year-old work on his computer and play with his cats.

But make no mistake — this performance art is deeply political. Throughout his career Ai has insisted that artists have a duty to humanity that outweighs the obligations of nationalism. Even declaring one’s opposition to “trafficking children, selling HIV-infected blood, [and] operating slave labor coal pits” is enough to get branded as “anti-China” in today’s political climate, Ai once noted on his blog, asking, “If we aren’t anti-China, are we still human?”

Foreign Policy also published a slideshow from Ai’s first North American retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., noting that “the artist was not in attendance.”

British singer Elton John added a concert dedication to Ai’s list of recent accolades on Sunday. While dismissing this “disrespectful” gesture, Global Times took the opportunity to critique Chen and Ai’s inclusion in the Foreign Policy list:

Western society is seriously biased against China. When US magazine Foreign Policy compiled a list of 100 global thinkers from around the world, the first Chinese on that list was blind activist Chen Guangcheng, and the second was Ai Weiwei. Even to Chinese people who have sympathy for these two people, this list may seem ridiculous.

In a diverse era, we don’t hold that the existence of people like Chen and Ai is unexpected in China. Also, we don’t believe that the impact they have brought should be denied completely.

The selection of Chen and Ai makes people wonder whether the word “thinker” in Chinese and English have different meanings. We can just say that some Westerners are increasingly unable to contain themselves over China’s rise. They cannot control China through normal means and they are more likely to rush their fences.

A more nuanced piece of Aiconoclasm came last week from Paul Gladston at Randian:

There are […] significant dangers in the upholding of Ai as our sole representative/mediator of artistic resistance to authority within China. While Ai’s bluntly confrontational and often bombastic stance can be readily digested within Western liberal-democratic contexts where romantic notions of heroic dissent in the face of overwhelming power still persist, it is by no means representative of the critical positioning of most other Chinese artists. Ai may have situated himself admirably behind enlightened westernized ideals of freedom and openness, but the sheer bluntness and reductive simplicity of his critical approach to authority have effectively foreclosed a more searching discussion of contemporary art within China as well as the complex, web of localized cultural, social, political and economic forces that surround its production and reception.

[…] Ai Weiwei is right in drawing our repeated attention to the debilitating injustices of totalitarian power within China. He is also right to upbraid western viewers for their inability to see past what are for them the pleasurable ambiguities of contemporary Chinese art. Less convincing, however, is Ai’s wholly reductive view of the critical possibilities of contemporary art in China. By insisting on his own stridently oppositional approach towards power as the only legitimate game in town, and because we are already highly familiar with that approach, [he] has misrepresented the contemporary Chinese artworld. One might add that Ai is also romanticizing the conditions of criticality in the West.

At 54 in the Foreign Policy list is Yu Jianrong, for his concise but detailed roadmap for reform.

In April, he released a succinct, two-phase plan he called a “10-Year Outline of China’s Social and Political Development.” Despite its bland title, Yu’s blueprint offers a timetable for Chinese reform that for once is as credible as it is ambitious. The plan puts dates and specifics to the task, advocating, for example, a stronger law on private property, the revealing of “information pertaining to government affairs” and “officials’ property,” and the abolition of “speech crimes,” after which China should “open up” the media and political parties. Yu’s short manifesto immediately caused a splash when he released it to his nearly 1.5 million followers on the popular microblogging site Sina Weibo (though the government has maintained a deafening silence). “We’ve already decided to change,” Yu explained in an interview. “The question is: In which direction do we change, and from where do we start?” Sweeping reform in this authoritarian land of 1.3 billion won’t be easy, but Yu’s plan is as good a place to begin as any. The era, he said, of crossing the river “by feeling the stones” is over.

China Media Project’s David Bandurski translated Yu’s plan in March. Soon afterwards, Didi Kirsten Tatlow described it at The International Herald Tribune, together with some criticism from Tsinghua University political scientist Liu Yu:

Master plans like Mr. Kang [Youwei]’s, or Mr. Yu’s are “unrealistic,” she said.

“All Chinese intellectuals, especially the men, they tend to blur the line with being an official and then they’re thinking, ‘How should I design a system for the country?’ and ‘How to make progress?’

“In the West there are intellectuals who make proposals on specific things, but in general they don’t make plans for the whole country,” she said.

What is needed instead, she believes, is a broad debate, among ordinary people.

“A good plan should involve the whole society,” she said. “There should be a big debate on where the country should be going.”

Yu’s nomination for best idea of 2012 is Mo Yan’s controversial selection for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mo’s chief rival for the award, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, took 49th place on the Foreign Policy list as a consolation prize.

At 69 is environmentalist Ma Jun:

[…] A journalist turned environmentalist who founded the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, Ma applies scientific rigor to exposing such corporate violations (more than 90,000 to date), flagging everything from a small coal-tar factory improperly storing its dangerous waste to Apple suppliers poisoning workers with a toxic chemical used on touch screens — as well as local governments that flout environmental regulations across China. Dozens of major multinationals now consult Ma’s pollution readings when working with suppliers in China. And by documenting environmental violations that had long been obvious but were never compiled in a way the public could easily understand, Ma has given statistical ammunition to Chinese citizens trying to nudge the Communist Party into cleaning up its act.

Wang Jisi, “China’s most respected expert on the United States”, came in at 73:

[…] What does Wang want us to know? That the feel-good stories U.S. officials tell themselves about China’s global ascent are an elaborate form of denial. In an influential monograph co-authored by Brookings Institution senior fellow Kenneth Lieberthal, Wang this year described China’s actions on the world stage as rooted in the conclusion that “America will seek to constrain or even upset China’s rise.” Beijing’s view, he says, is that the United States is “heading for decline” and that China’s development model provides an “alternative to Western democracy and market economies.” The result? “[T]hese views make many Chinese political elites suspect that it is the United States,” Wang says, “that is ‘on the wrong side of history.’”

And at 83 is the Taiwanese-American former head of Google China, venture capitalist Kai-fu Lee:

In an article he published on his LinkedIn page in October, Lee named China’s narrowly focused school curriculum and the risk-averse nature of Chinese students, as well as the country’s chaotic Internet environment, among the reasons China hasn’t yet produced its own Mark Zuckerberg. That may be why he has also started a popular education website encouraging Chinese students to think more creatively. Although none of his companies has exploded yet, Lee’s ultimate contribution may be more fundamental: laying both the intellectual and financial groundwork for a revolution in the world’s largest online community.

Perhaps more significant to China for now than any of the above are Aung San Suu Kyi and Thein Sein, who top the list having begun to pilot the formerly reliable Chinese satellite of Myanmar (also known as Burma) into a more open and international orbit:

Aung San Suu Kyi, the soft-spoken, iconic political activist whom devotees call simply “the Lady,” may not seem like an obvious partner for Thein Sein, but she has become one by doing what few legends of her stature can: embracing the messy pragmatism of politics. Although Burma’s struggles are far from over — she has warned that international investment has been too rapid, and ethnic violence is escalating — the willingness of both the Lady and the general to embrace short-term compromise and foster long-term reconciliation in what was only recently one of the world’s most isolated countries is something to celebrate.

Fittingly, Aung San Suu Kyi finally was able to accept her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in June. She used the occasion to remind the world of those like her, who struggle in the most forlorn places: “To be forgotten too is to die a little. It is to lose some of the links that anchor us to the rest of humanity.” It is a sentiment still felt from Aleppo to Havana, Pyongyang to Tehran, but also, as Aung San Suu Kyi and Thein Sein have shown, one that doesn’t need to be permanent.

See more on Chen Guangcheng, Ai Weiwei, Yu Jianrong, Ma Jun, Wang Jisi, Kai-fu Lee and Myanmar/Burma at CDT.

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Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Apple, artistic freedom, artists, Burma, central government, Chen Guangcheng, contemporary art, contemporary artists, education, Global Times, Google, Haruki Murakami, Hillary Clinton, HIV, house arrest, IPE, Kaifu Lee, kenneth lieberthal, Li Yuanlong, local government, Ma Jun, mo yan, Myanmar, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize, pollution, private property, reform, reformers, revolution, slave labor, surveillance, trafficking, transparency, wang jisi, year end lists 2012, Yu Jianrong
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Less than three years since it was founded, Xiaomi, meaning “little rice,” has become a rising star in the Chinese smartphone market. The company predicts that by the end of 2012, sales will reach nearly seven million phones and revenue will be at 10 billion renminbi — impressive for a company that sold its first smartphone in August 2011.

The scene at a Xiaomi event in August of this year was reminiscent of Apple’s typical product introduction under Mr. Jobs, who died last October. Mr. Lei strode onto a stage in the trendy 798 art district in Beijing to show off the Mi-Two to a roomful of cheering fans. He was dressed in a black polo shirt, jeans and black converse shoes, not much different from Mr. Jobs’s trademark outfit.

Xiaomi’s marketing strategy has been to ride on the back of the “cult of Apple” and of its creator, said Wei Wuhui, a technology industry expert at Shanghai Jiaotong University.

[…] “Xiaomi is the real fake,” Oliver Jin, a university student in Shanghai who hopes to buy a Xiaomi, said approvingly.

See Tech in Asia’s coverage of the August event.

Lei—or ‘Leibusi’, a play on Jobs’ Chinese name ‘Qiaobusi’—has said that he was originally “very annoyed” by comparisons with the Apple founder but seems, to say the least, to have come to terms with them. In 2011, he lamented that no one else in the industry would be able to emerge from Jobs’ shadow while he was still alive. From Charles Custer’s translation at Tech in Asia:

I believe Jobs is one of the great men of this age. He’s a Hollywood blockbuster. […] But Jobs will die someday, so there are still opportunities for us. The meaning of our existence is just waiting for him to kick the bucket. Of course, on the one hand, we wish him a long life, but on the other hand, we don’t want the world to be blinded by his light; we’d rather live in a more colorful world.

See more on Lei Jun at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, cell phones, Lei Jun, mobile technology, steve jobs, Xiaomi
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The Taiwanese company, which also uses the trade name Foxconn Technology Group, 2038.HK +2.07%said that it had employed interns as young as 14 at its campus in Yantai, in the northeastern Chinese province of Shandong, for approximately three weeks. Hon Hai said it took “immediate steps” to return the interns to their educational institutions.

The company didn’t disclose specifics, including how many were hired, and it wasn’t clear what products are made at the plant. But it said in a statement that despite “a strict company policy of not commenting on our customers or their products,” that “our Yantai facility has no association with any work we carry out on behalf of Apple.”

Reuters has more on Foxconn’s statement to the public:

“This is not only a violation of China’s labour law, it is also a violation of Foxconn policy and immediate steps have been taken to return the interns in question to their educational institutions,” it said.

Foxconn made the announcement after investigating Chinese media reports of underage interns among its China workforce of 1.2 million. It said it had found no evidence of similar violations at any of its other plants in China.

Foxconn said it would work with local government to bar the schools involved in the Yantai case from the intern program unless shown to be compliant with labour law and company policy.

“However, we recognize that full responsibility for these violations rests with our company and we have apologized to each of the students for our role in this action,” the firm said.

The acknowledgement from Foxconn came in response to Chinese media reports and a statement from China Labor Watch. The U.S.-based NGO said that the interns were “mainly sent to Foxconn by schools” and that the schools involved should take responsibility, according to BBC News, though the group also admitted that Foxconn did not check their identification and should also accept blame. Duncan Innes-Ker of the Economist Intelligence Unit told BBC News that the problem stretches beyond fake IDs:

“The market for relatively unskilled labour in China has been tightening, and now there is even more incentive for companies to relax their standards, so they try and fill up their work spaces,” he said.

“Companies do have a responsibility to check with the people that they are hiring are above that age.

“The difficulty is the enforcement of regulation which in China has been a grey area for a number of years.”

Foxconn said that 2.7 percent of its 1.2m workforce are currently interns, according to The Financial Times.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, child labor, Foxconn, interns, Shandong, Yantai
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[…] In addition to demanding that workers work during the holiday, Foxconn raised overly strict demands on product quality without providing worker training for the corresponding skills. This led to workers turning out products that did not meet standards and ultimately put a tremendous amount of pressure on workers. Additionally, quality control inspectors fell into to conflicts with workers and were beat up multiple times by workers. […]

CLW’s release states that these conditions led to a strike involving as many as 4,000 workers at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant. This report was swiftly picked up by the tech and general media, but Adam Minter at Shanghai Scrap and Stan Abrams at China Hearsay both expressed reservations. At Bloomberg View on Wednesday, Minter dug deeper into the strike story’s origins and development, and found the single Weibo user who may have knocked $13 billion off Apple’s market cap.

As the story grew, journalists and bloggers who tried to confirm the event found themselves forced to rely on China Labor Watch’s word. Meanwhile, Foxconn, Apple’s primary contractor and the owner of the factory where the alleged strike occurred, denied that anything more than several isolated incidents between workers and quality control personnel had occurred and insisted that iPhone 5 production would not be delayed.

The lack of additional information is highly unusual: In contemporary China, it’s the rare brawl that isn’t recorded by somebody’s smartphone, while large-scale unrest is either accompanied or followed by a virtual data dump of accounts, photos and films. To be sure, Foxconn restricts the ability of its employees to carry phones into factories, but there’s no question that many Foxconn employees not only have smartphones (a brief perusal of Foxconn employees who tweet to Sina Weibo proves it), but also use them.

A search for the origins of China Labor Watch’s report reveals that at least one person recorded the Oct. 5 events. His real name is unknown, but on Sina Weibo, China’s leading microblogging service, he goes by the handle Ye Fudao — a name that can be roughly translated as “The Wild Husband’s Cleaver.” […]

Read on. For more on China’s workers, see portraits by Lucas Schifres and a TED talk by Leslie Chang, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, Foxconn, iPhone, labor conditions, labor disputes, strikes, Zhengzhou
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