傻冒儿 Stupid Hat aka ShaMao'er

Knowledge

Another little something for my multitude of Chinese readers.  It is from the New York Times, and is in Chinese.  It's not that you don't know that China is polluted, obviously you see it everyday.  But I do question the awareness of the relative scale.

Download 20070826_china_translation.mp3 中文

I hope this works, the first time I've tried to post an audio link. 

Unpleasant memories

That elusive market

This is really an excellent short article in China Brief. 

It exposes the myth of the capitalist revolution in China and should really focus Western companies attention on just how much market share the current government is likely to give up in any sector; certainly not in any of their "strategic sectors".

Hu's Economic Policies: Liberalizing the Economy or Promoting Special Interests

I really recommend the China Brief in general.  It comes out bimonthly and is filled with concise, fact filled articles that typically have little bias. 

Wisdom from the Blitz

I was searching my home computer today for an old file I needed and I came across The Lion & Unicorn, an essay written in 1940 by George Orwell, that I had downloaded maybe a couple years ago.  Although his overall point, that capitalism could not compete against either communism or fascism, has clearly proved wrong, there are some wonderful points inside and the phrasing is just great.  A few exerpts:

First, the first couple sentences of the essay:

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are ‘only doing their duty’, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil.

You just don't see great writing like that these days.  Unless I'm reading the wrong things.

This next one is just as true for America today as it was for England in 1940.  And it is something for all of the apologists to remember.

In England, such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are very powerful illusions. The belief in them influences conduct, national life is different because of them. In proof of which, look about you. Where are the rubber truncheons, where is the castor oil? The sword is still in the scabbard, and while it stays there corruption cannot go beyond a certain point. The English electoral system, for instance, is an all but open fraud. In a dozen obvious ways it is gerrymandered in the interest of the moneyed class. But until some deep change has occurred in the public mind, it cannot become completely corrupt. You do not arrive at the polling booth to find men with revolvers telling you which way to vote, nor are the votes miscounted, nor is there any direct bribery.

Here's one the old CCP would be wise to remember.  I have often thought along these lines myself.

At this moment, after a year of war, newspapers and pamphlets abusing the Government, praising the enemy and clamouring for surrender are being sold on the streets, almost without interference. And this is less from a respect for freedom of speech than from a simple perception that these things don’t matter. It is safe to let a paper like Peace News be sold, because it is certain that ninety-five per cent of the population will never want to read it 

Another one for the apologists:

One knows in advance more or less what they will say. They will start by refusing to admit that British capitalism is evolving into something different, or that the defeat of Hitler can mean any more than a victory for the British and American millionaires. And from that they will proceed to argue that, after all, democracy is ‘just the same as’ or ‘just as bad as’ totalitarianism. There is not much freedom of speech in England therefore there is no more than exists in Germany. To be on the dole is a horrible experience; therefore it is no worse to be in the torture-chambers of the Gestapo. In general, two blacks make a white, half a loaf is the same as no bread.

Actually, I think that all this really goes to show is that human nature just doesn't really change.  Probably I could find some ancient Roman writers saying basically the same things two thousand years ago.

Get in the ring Part I

An Chinese acquaintance of mine is a writer; lets call him Mr. Hao.   Back about a year ago he finished writing a book.  It would be the first full book he has ever written though in the distant past he has been published many times in books, magazines, and newspapers.  Mr. Hao currently lives in the US.  Back about 20 years ago, he had a close friendship with one of China's top writers of the time whose name I frankly can't recall but who is still influential.  Mr. Hao has kept up his relationship with this writer on and off over the years. 

So, he finished his book and was back in China for a brief period so he called up this famous writer and asked if he would be willing to read it and if he liked it maybe write a review/recommendation.  The writer was excited he had written a book and agreed.  However, the writer was not in town that week so suggested that he give the manuscript (guess it was a Word file on a disc) to a mutual acquaintance of the two.  Now this mutual acquaintance, lets call her Ms. Wang, had some 20 years before stolen my acquaintance's work, published it as her own, and then tried to publicly discredit Mr. Hao.  Despite this, Mr. Hao figured maybe Ms. Wang has grown up now and so it would be ok to give it to her. 

So what has happened?  Of course Ms. Wang never gave the book to the famous writer.  Whenever Mr. Hao would call her over the past few months she would claim to be in bad health or no time.  The famous writer himself is very old, and frankly probably cant be bothered to pursue this favor.  So a week ago Mr. Hao's sister called him to tell him that Ms. Wang has published the book on the internet as her own work and it is apparently becoming quite popular.   Now the nature of this book was a series of very personal essays by Mr. Wang about his childhood, his family, his reflections on Chinese and American culture, etc.  So very personal stuff, which Ms. Wang has expropriated as her own. 

Mr. Hao is considering taking legal action in China.  He is concerned that any Chinese lawyer will just see him as a huge money pot coming from America; a legitimate concern.  However, I am really hoping he does pursue it.  It will be interesting to witness an IP battle first hand.  If a Chinese (albeit Chinese-American) cannot prevail in the Chinese legal system in such a clear case what hope do Western corporations possibly have?

I will update my loyal readers as it progresses.

Why didn't I go to law school?

Found this little gem inside a contract I was reviewing the other day.  Man, I just love lawyers.

Section 6.10. Number and Gender.  Whenever required by the context, the singular number shall include the plural, the plural number shall include the singular, and the gender of any pronoun shall include all genders.

Its almost a poem. A real work of art.

Just plain screwed

No, this is not going to be another China bashing post, I was thinking about something a little different.

Mattel Issues Third Major Recall

I was thinking that Mattel is just screwed here; and that it is quite likely that it will spread to other toy companies and perhaps other industries.  The thing is is that I bet there is a lawyer or two somewhere in the US who has bought up a bunch of Mattel toys and is having them tested for lead content.  If something is found, it won't be hard to find a few people who have bought that toy and suddenly a huge class action suit is in the offing.  Maybe, the lawyer has some contacts in China and so can target exactly which toys are more likely to be non-compliant.    So, if Mattel issues the recalls, they stand to lose a lot of money and brand trust.  If they know a toy is non-compliant and dont recall it and get caught in a suit, they are totally screwed.  If they don't test all their toys now for compliancy and one is found by the lawyer to be non-compliant, they are screwed. 

Now it is tempting to say that America is too litigious and that it adds huge cost to our economy.  That is true certainly in the short term but in the long term the results are a better safer society.  Even were Mattel to go under (unlikely) over this kind of issue; even if it were all caused by some lawyer somewhere and his basement chemisty lab; sure there would be some pain for Mattel employees and shareholders but the end result would be an America which did not import any toys that contained even trace amounts of lead.   

Anyone care to play Oligopoly?

Interesting.  The fact that  it is  in Xinhua and the tone of the article suggest that they think this is a good thing.  Looks like an incredibly inefficient and unstable situation to me.  I could not find any comparable US figures in a quick search but I would imagine it to be less than half that figure; probably alot less than half.

Top 500 Enterprises 2007 take up 84 pct of China's GDP

The combined business revenue of China's top 500 companies accounted for 83.5 percent of the gross domestic product in 2006, almost six percentage points higher than the previous year.

The China Top 500 Enterprises 2007 List released here on Saturday said that the top 500 gained 17.49 trillion yuan (2.3 trillion U.S. dollars) of business revenue last year, up 23.7 percent over 2005.

Sinopec maintained its No.1 position with a business revenue of 1.06 trillion yuan, up 29 percent year-on-year, according to the report issued by the China Enterprise Confederation (CEC) and China Enterprise Directors Association (CEDA) on Saturday.

Second to fifth rankings went respectively to China National Petroleum Corporation, State Grid, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Mobile.

A total of 349 enterprises, or nearly 70 percent of the total in the list, were state-owned or state-controlled. Their combined assets reached 14.9 trillion yuan at the end of 2006, accounting for 85 percent of the total.

The number of private-owned enterprises in the list rose to 89, with 1.4 trillion yuan of business revenue.

The CEC said the list included 22 enterprises in 11 different industries which made their way into the World Top 500 while there were 11 in 2002.