rolling china thread 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/world/asia/anger-and-suspicion-as-survivors-await-chinese-crash-report.html?pagewanted=all

had no idea about the bureaucratic structure of the railway ministry - they have their own court system? 2 million employees? crazy!

in some lighter news, yao ming makes an unexpected appearance at the world basketball championship (or somtehing like that )

http://sports.creaders.net/newsViewer.php?nid=485986&id=1091943

my bad, I'm pretty sure it's the asian basketball championship

Zambia had its elections today, the incumbent (Banda) running partly on the strength of his initiative to bring in the Chinese. It seems to have all gone a bit bloodbath.

― Autumn Almanac, Wednesday, 21 September 2011 19:58 (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Sata won this. He's less favourable toward China making inroads so this will be interesting. Bloodbath was overrated btw.

more bummerz

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/world/asia/rape-case-is-a-rarity-in-chinese-justice-system.html?pagewanted=all

"Anhui province is today announcing the cancellation of Chaohu city."

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/21/140633602/the-curious-case-of-the-vanishing-chinese-city?sc=tw&cc=share

sounds like a borges story

when I started reading it I thought "bet this is going to be economically motivated" and hey it was

"It's a good thing," says one old man who gives him name as Mr. Guo, as others nod in agreement. "There's too much corruption. The officials take all our money."

hmm

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/world/asia/two-tibetan-monks-set-themselves-on-fire-in-protest.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-innovations/what-we-really-need-to-fear-about-china/2011/09/14/gIQAPrMy0K_story.html

During my most recent trip this past week, I also I taught classes at Tsinghua University, for an entrepreneurship program run by UC-Berkeley’s Center for Entrepreneurship. The students there were very much like those I teach at Duke and Berkeley. They were hungry for knowledge, connections, and ideas. The only difference I noted was in the answer to one question: Why do you want to become an entrepreneur? American students usually talk about building wealth or changing the world. The Chinese said they saw entrepreneurship as a way to rise above “the system,” to be their own bosses and to create their own paths to success. They clearly did not cherish the idea of working for a stodgy state enterprise, an autocratic government, or what they deemed to be an opportunistic foreign multinational.

they wanna be their own bawse

that may be an interesting distinction on a theoretical level but I bet it just means they want to make a lot of money and be a baller

Take Robert Hsiung, who graduated from Stanford in 2008. He received several job offers in Silicon Valley, Singapore, and Hong Kong. But he chose to become an entrepreneur and to move to Beijing, because the economy was booming and the number of Chinese Internet users was increasing rapidly. Robert’s first start-up, a social-media company called OneCircle.cc, was a moderate success. His next company, FoxFly, failed because larger players moved into his market space. In August, he launched his third start-up, which is building a professional-networking application. Robert told me that he had absolutely no problems recruiting top engineering students. And even though he had failed, Chinese investors readily invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in his latest start-up.

this? this is the best anecdote you got for us?? a guy who failed 3 times?

article doesn't have any real substance to it

tho it is true that americans are not particularly entrepreneurial these days, it's silly to frame it as a competition w/ the chinese and it's better to talk about reasons why (access to $, health insurance, etc.)

otoh
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204010604576595002230403020.html

it's about a broader change in culture that's begun to accept failure as a part of the entrepreneurial cycle. sure, it's a trend piece and ultimately trend pieces are always a touch puffy, but plenty of what i'm reading suggests there's a native entrepreneurial streak taking root. is that what you're contesting?

I'm contesting 'Our policy makers are right to worry, but they are worried about the wrong things.'

china's entrepreneurial streak is the worst thing that's ever happened to it

it has to be pointed out that the 'failure is a good thing in the world of entrepreneurs' is actually a pretty foundational bedrock tenet

basically there are good reasons to have beef w/ china (cue dayo jpg) but 'they will suddenly become the world entrepreneurial leaders + this will be bad for america', I mean...

it has to be pointed out that the 'failure is a good thing in the world of entrepreneurs' is actually a pretty foundational bedrock tenet

― dayo, Tuesday, September 27, 2011 7:59 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

of what

entrepreneurs!

it's their mantra - so that when they do inevitably fail they will pick themselves up by their own bootstraps because they are self-motivated and self-driven and that's why they are destined to succeed, do you see

china's entrepreneurial streak is the worst thing that's ever happened to it

― dayo, Tuesday, 27 September 2011 19:58 (11 minutes ago)

it's their mantra - so that when they do inevitably fail they will pick themselves up by their own bootstraps because they are self-motivated and self-driven and that's why they are destined to succeed, do you see

― dayo, Tuesday, September 27, 2011 8:10 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

sure, there's a sense of false hope embedded in the thing, but i'm not really seeing what you're getting at?

"a bunch of failing business are bad for china"?

I was just responding to iatee's point that a entrepreneur w/ 3 failed businesses is somehow to be lauded - it's not, but it's not necessarily a bad thing either from the view of someone encouraging entrepreneurship

if those businesses have been depending on an economy w/ too much easy money floating around, then yeah

ok right, i guess i misunderstood u xp

chinese have very different cultural conceptions toward credit than americans do ime. I don't think it's that easy to get credit, nor do most chinese want credit. think all bets are off though if you're a state-owned company

a lot of chinese people still operate on a straight cash, homie tip. banks in chinatowns are built with an extra-ordinary number of safeboxes because families like to keep their assets in hard cash in the safebox rather than in a bank account.

but china's new middle class is getting more and more into credit cards now, from what I can tell. so there's a cultural change happening too, credit cards probably act as a signal of wealth. but I'd be surprised if it was reported tomorrow that a lot of individuals were suddenly overextending themselves on credit in china.

o snap

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/world/asia/shanghai-subway-accident-injures-hundreds.html?_r=1

i am going to move to dalian.

forreals?

http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/pictures/infamous-beijing-nightclub-heaven-internal-training-photos-leaked-online.html

lmao never take photos

experienced firsthand the pervasiveness of prostitution in china is impressive

http://maryannodonnell.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/historic-ironies-the-fanshen-metro-station-shenzhen/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/03/china-rural-poor-left-stranded
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/02/china-becomes-an-urban-nation

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/guida.jpg

my alma mater btw

bubble starting to burst?

Bankruptcy crisis in Wenzhou impacts nearly 90 percent of families
http://news.qq.com/a/20111008/000146.htm
(2011-10-08) ― On October 4, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao paid an official visit to the southern city of Wenzhou, long known for its entrepreneurial streak, to address a crisis of surging bankruptcies in which small and medium-sized businesses have defaulted in startling numbers on high-interest loans provided by private lenders in recent years, as larger banks have refused loans to smaller enterprises. The Beijing News reports today that the crisis has “dragged in” close to 90 percent of families in Wenzhou, where private lending has become a common form of investment. Since April this year there have reportedly been regular suicide attempts by company bosses in Wenzhou, and since last month alone there have been 25 documented cases of bosses jumping from buildings or throwing themselves in front of traffic.

http://news.qq.com/a/20111008/000146.htm

a good post on what it means for your family when you go against the g'ment in china:

http://chinageeks.org/2011/10/the-utterly-indefensible/

Fuckin' hell, I did not really know about the Hukou system. (xpost to dylannn's Guardian link)

oh yeah, hukou system is key. my girlf is in rural guizhou right now so those caught my eye. it's the poorest province in the country and yeah like those two guardian pieces.............

i've been trying to follow that wenzhou thing, since all the mandarin lang media here are running with it as a bubble bursting story but................

why am i so burnt out on shit like that chinageeks "essay"????????????????????????

because it's indefensible and reprehensible and sucks

evan osnos does it more elegantly

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos

i hate to say that, actually, but my reaction is like... yeah, okay, six year old kid detained... who gives a fuck? who gives a shit about liu xiaobo????? i am open to being convinced that guys like this matter but i feel like they're so irrelevant to the realities of "life on the ground" (1) because teh government marginalizes them obv 2) because their interests are........) and we'd be better off if we kept our eyes on stuff like wenzhou's private lending meltdown or the hukou system or WHATEVER, shit that is actually fucking up millions of lives. it's just a reality that china produces cranks and lunatics and not credible figures of opposition. i take liu xiaobo a bit more seriously than i take li hongzhi.

sometimes i feel like..... it's like if someone tried to understand china by reading a lot about noam chomsky

er, america, i mean