18 minutes estimated reading time
8964 museum
六四記憶‧人權博物館 8964 Museum – 8964 Museum is a site ran from outside Hong Kong that acts a memorial for events running up to the June 4th 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The 8964 museum site was originally built predominantly for a local Chinese audience in Hong Kong. The reason why its 8964 is because Chinese language is quite logical about structure. You go big to small, hence June 4th, 1989 is 4/6/89 in the UK and 8964 in Chinese. The 8964 Museum is a really nice piece of web design. The 8964 Museum goes back and shows the history of China from the founding of the People’ Republic through the 1989 student and worker’s protests and beyond. The 8964 museum is now blocked in Hong Kong.
Beauty
Unilever invites startups to partner through Positive Beauty Growth Platform | Unilever global company website – interesting Unilever Foundry concept aligned around ‘positive beauty’
Business
China’s Supreme People’s Court has Ruled against Apple, allowing a lawsuit to Proceed on Antitrust Grounds – Patently Apple – the decision by China’s top court to allow the lawsuit to be considered by the Shanghai court could signal more trouble ahead for Apple in China, which now accounts for a fifth of its iPhone sales. Wang Qiongfei, Jin’s attorney, told the South China Morning Post in a telephone interview that a hearing is expected to take place in Shanghai next January. You Yunting, a senior partner at Shanghai Debund Law Firm, said that the top court’s ruling could have a far-reaching impact. “I think this case has established a new principle namely that antitrust cases are also rights infringement cases and thus can be adjudicated by local courts.”
China Wields New Legal Weapon to Fight Claims of Intellectual Property Theft – WSJ – Chinese courts granted so-called anti-suit injunctions blocking foreign companies from taking legal action anywhere in the world to protect their trade secrets…At Xiaomi’s request, a Chinese court in Wuhan issued an injunction barring InterDigital from pursuing its case against Xiaomi—in China or anywhere else. If InterDigital persisted, the Chinese court said, it would face fines equivalent to roughly $1 million a week.To trade lawyers and others who have tangled with Chinese companies over intellectual property, the InterDigital case is the latest sign of how China disregards the patents, copyrights and trade secrets of foreign companies
Revealed: Bribery in advertising pitches is pervasive in APAC | Campaign Asia – I wonder if this is skewed to certain markets?
China to block ‘core’ industrial, telecoms data from leaving the country | South China Morning Post – interesting, this could decouple everything from supply chains to billing systems and also make stocks even more opaque
Global supply chains at risk of collapse, warn business leaders | Financial Times – the disparity between UK and US trucking problems is striking
China
Why China Is Alienating the World | Foreign Affairs – even more striking than the backlash against China has been the country’s inability to recalibrate. Beijing’s response to the rapid deterioration in ties with Canberra was to confront Australia with a list of demands that it said were prerequisites for improving relations. China’s leaders have also repeatedly stressed that any improvement in relations with the United States must begin with concessions from Washington and issued Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman a similar list of demands when she visited Tianjin in July. Officials in Washington have begun to see Beijing’s inability to shift course as an advantage in the emerging competition between the two countries – less an inability than no desire, this is more about culture. I was reminded of Huawei’s ‘shut up‘ incident a number of years ago
Goldman Sachs was poised to triumph in China. What happened? | Financial Times
Consumer behaviour
Conscientious Korean consumers demand the full package | Campaign Asia – “Now more than ever, consumers are evaluating brands across multiple dimensions of functionality, personal relevance and collective contribution,” Mali Wuestenhagen, senior media director at Essence Korea, told Campaign Asia-Pacific. “The term ‘meaningful brands’ is gaining increasing importance. Consumers are looking for unique brand experiences, and not just product and service excellence. To connect with consumers on a deeper emotional level, brands’ values need to resonate strongly with consumers. Brand authenticity and brand responsibility are equally important factors in driving positive consumer sentiment.” – COVID affected brand relevance
Project MUSE – Perceptual Divided Leviathan and the Modes of Political Participation in China – citizens’ varying degrees of participation across a range of political activities. It considers the perceived Chinese divided leviathan as a crucial cognitive shortcut for ordinary citizens to assess the uncertain activism environment, estimate the relative costs and benefits of different political activities, and strategize their participation portfolios. Using nationally representative survey data, the article exploits latent class analysis to uncover four distinct mass participatory modes—outsiders, conventionals, agitators, and activists—and examines the impact of perceptual government trustworthiness and integrity on modal transition. The empirical results reveal that citizens’ perceptions of a division between the central and local government affect their choice of participatory activities but not their overall participation levels: people who perceive a greater integrity division tend to engage the state in an agitative and contentious mode, and are less likely to do so in an institutionalized, conventional mode
Gender and Sexuality – CHINESE RELIGIOUS LIFE – really interesting article for anyone looking at China consumer behaviour in terms of foundations
Did Communism Smash the Patriarchy? – In China, the government has maintained a monopoly of violence, rule of law and public trust. Men needn’t present as thuggish. But progress towards gender equality is still held back through the suppression of civil society. Taiwan and South Korea demonstrate what women can achieve when economic development is combined with democratisation and feminist activism. As Taiwanese women amassed wealth, status, and networks, they organised politically. Feminist lobbying secured gender quotas. Twice-elected Tsai Ing-wen now presides over a legislature that is 42% female. With strong female representation, the Government of Taiwan has strongly entrenched protections for women’s rights, criminalising sexual harassment. In South Korea independent civil society and religious groups were never fully suppressed under the military dictatorship. Anti-government coalitions of workers, students, priests, intellectuals, and farmers gained strength over the 1970s and 80s. South Koreans have now consolidated democratisation, on par with the UK!! South Korea’s strong civil society laid the foundations for today’s feminist activism. 340 women’s organisations, labour unions and NGOs launched ‘Citizens’ Action with MeToo & campaigned ‘With You’. Recognising their collective strength and successes, women increasingly agitate for accountability. In 2018, 20,000 women marched against spy-cams (up-skirt and hidden cameras in loos) and revenge porn (which is then circulated online). This led to more government attention, a ministerial committee, and more police investigations. China lags behind, with the weakest protections against gender based violence. – things will get worse when the government has to come up with inventive ways to make the 3 child policy work
Design
BA06 – G-Class Governmental Business – I could totally see this screwing with the Ineos Grenadier
Open Architecture: The husband-and-wife design duo redefining China’s cultural landscape – CNN Style – Beijing-based practice Open Architecture, are responsible for some of the last decade’s most thought-provoking Chinese arts destinations. Best known for transforming a series of aviation fuel tanks into a popular riverside gallery in Shanghai, the pair’s understated theaters and performance spaces offer a welcome dose of subtlety in a country with skylines all too often blighted by bold statements. “It’s about making a dialogue between us, as humanity, and nature,” Li said in a video interview.
Economics
Harper’s Magazine – Unmade in America — Open Markets Institute – America’s manufacturers spent those same happy years shifting many basic operations right off their factory floors. And by this I don’t mean simply offshore but right out of the company, along with the responsibility to make sure their world-spanning assembly lines always run right. Like Enron, our manufacturers did so largely to pump up the value of their stocks. And, like Enron, they will probably get to watch one day as their empty edifices collapse. Unlike Enron, however, this crash may bring down a lot more with it than one or a few companies. The global assembly lines that manufacturers such as Dell, Ford, Motorola, and Intel have so expertly engineered these last few years—in which, say, a single semiconductor might be cut from a wafer in Taiwan, assembled in the Philippines, tested in China, fit into a subcomponent in Malaysia, plugged into a component in Brazil, and loaded with a program designed in India—are just as audaciously complicated as any of Enron’s financial schemes. Yet because manufactured goods are so much less fungible than money, these systems are vastly more vulnerable to the mysterious mutterings of God or the deliberate hand of man and state – this was written back in 2002
Hidden Performance: Salary History Bans and Gender Pay Gap by Jesse Davis, Paige Ouimet, Xinxin Wang :: SSRN – As of 2019, salary history bans have been enacted by 17 states and Puerto Rico with the stated purpose of reducing the gender pay gap. We argue that salary history bans may negatively affect wages as employers lose an informative signal of worker productivity. We empirically evaluate these laws using a large panel dataset of disaggregated wages covering all public sector employees in 36 states and find, on average, salary history bans lead to a 3% decrease in new hire wages. We find no decrease in the gender pay gap in the full sample and a modest 1.5% increase in the relative wages of women, as compared to men, among new hires most likely to have experienced gender discrimination historically.
Ethics
Apple’s fortress of secrecy is crumbling from the inside – The Verge – on Apple’s culture – executives make decisions about how the company will function, and employees either fall in line or leave. What choice do they have? Apple is currently worth $2 trillion, making it the most valuable company in the world, as well as one of the most powerful. Over the past few months, however, that culture has started to erode. As workers across the tech industry advocate for more power, Apple’s top-down management seems more out of touch than ever before. Now, a growing number of employees are organizing internally for change and speaking out about working conditions on Twitter. “There’s a shift in the balance of power going on here,” says Jason Snell, the former editor of Macworld, who’s been covering Apple since the 1990s. “Not everyone is afraid that their boss at Apple is going to fire them. They’re saying, ‘I’m going to say some bad things about Apple, and if you move against me, it’s going to look bad for you.’”
Murky waters: What next for the AUKUS nations and their allies? — 9DASHLINE – The development of global financial architecture in recent decades has transformed the transnational arena such that the old rules don’t necessarily apply. As the AUKUS announcement was being made, Russia’s political opposition was being undermined by groups including Google and Apple, who removed tactical voting apps for the country’s election. As attention in the US turns to the implications of growing Chinese power, the Chinese Embassy there can depend on Squire Patton Boggs, a lobbying firm in its pay. Included on the firm’s roster is the retired speaker of the House and one of the best-connected politicians in the US, John Boehner. Chinese leaders themselves are supported by a cast of western enablers who help secure their substantial fortunes offshore, most frequently in the British Virgin Islands
Hong Kong
Hong Kong faces worst quarter for stock listings since pandemic | Financial Times – interesting that financial institutions bet that HK would be the new favoured market for IPOs hasn’t paid off
How to
Kibbles & Bytes #1171:The Plug Is Mightier Than the Puck: Wireless Charging Is Wildly Inefficient, Need to Share Files Securely? Try Password-Protected ZIP Archives – great points on wireless charging versus plug-in charging
Ideas
Regime Change #2: A plea to Silicon Valley – start a project NOW to write the plan for the next GOP candidate – by Dominic Cummings – this looks like Domnic Cummings is writing himself a job description and hopes that someone will employ him to do it.
Innovation
Dry Ice Detailing Cleans Car Back to Factory Condition Without Water | Business Insider – this was a very specialist thing used on classic and supercars, interesting to see it be mainstreamed
Luxury
LinkedIn Global Head of Luxury: “Audiences Are Looking For More Storytelling From Brands.” – ‘In the five years since Tatiana Dupond joined LinkedIn, the social media platform has become a key destination for luxury brands to communicate their messaging to its highly engaged audience. She speaks to Luxury Society about how brands can further the experience for their followers through richer storytelling and more meaningful content.’
The Deep-Dive: The Luxury Market Is Rebounding. Will It Last? | Luxury Society – Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Cartier and Hermès, to name but a few, have all seen a rise in brand desirability, according to data compiled by DLG, which found that Google searches for the brands have grown by 15 percent, 11 percent, 39 percent and 21 percent respectively, from January 2021 to June 2021, compared to a year earlier.
TELFAR.TV – rather than write my take here’s Matt Muir’s: – this is an interesting bit of marketing from them, which is in part MEDIA EMPIRE stuff and in part a smart way of stopping bots from snapping up new stock for the resale market. Telfar TV is an online stream of…stuff, the gimmick being that it’s like public access cable insofar as anyone can submit video to be featured on the platform. Among the UGC stuff (I have only seen a couple of things and they are…I mean, look, let’s just say there was a STRONG AESTHETIC and if I were more inclined to look at video art then maybe I would have appreciated it more) will be scattered occasional QR codes which act as gateways to buy limited merch drops, in smart, bot-proof style. This is a super-interesting idea, which will almost certainly die a death based on a lack of people submitting content – I would add that they could also raid the internet archive for filler video content….
Media
New Bond Can’t Take On Beijing’s Supervillains | Foreign Policy
Adam Curtis: Social media is a scam | Idler – I’ve always thought John Le Carré did spies a great service because he made it seem as if there were endless depths of mystery and darkness when in fact, if you’ve ever researched the spies, they are (a) boring and (b) useless. I mean really, really useless. I researched MI5 once and they hardly ever manage to capture any traitors… it’s usually someone else who points them in the right direction. And in a way I think that’s true of this. The tech companies are powerful in the sense that they’ve got hold of the internet, which people like me think could be a really powerful thing for changing the world and disseminating new ideas, and they’ve got it in this rigid headlock. To do that, they’ve conned everyone into thinking that their advertising is worth it. And in the process, they’re destroying journalism – I would disagree with some of Curtis’ assertions but this feels right in terms of how they’re seen in terms of policy wonks now
Facebook Views Preteens as ‘Untapped’ Wealth, Documents Show | Gizmodo – actually says valuable audience. Interesting that they were focusing on playdates as a possible media moment
Retailing
Shein exemplifies a new style of Chinese multinational | The Economist – Xu Yangtian had none of their tailoring experience when he founded Shein (pronounced she-in) in 2008. Instead, the creator of the fashion world’s latest sensation was a specialist in search-engine optimisation. This expertise helped Mr Xu gain an understanding of how to draw shoppers’ attention in the digital world. And he has understood this very well indeed, bringing to an audience of rapt Western fashionistas a Chinese style of “social commerce”, which combines social media with online shopping. Add in a revolutionary approach to manufacturing and the results have been spectacular. In 2019 Shein’s gross merchandise volume (GMV), e-commerce groups’ preferred measure of total sales on their platforms, was $2.3bn, estimates to Zheshang Securities, a Chinese broker. This year it is forecast to surpass $20bn. By 2022 analysts expect Shein’s GMV to overtake Zara’s revenues. In May Shein was the most downloaded shopping app in America, overtaking Amazon
Security
C.I.A. Admits to Losing Informants – The New York Times – blames over optimism about their own abilities, under-estimating opponent intelligence services and over-optimism. What’s in the back of my mind is how much their electronic networks are compromised and how many are now double agents
US has already lost AI fight to China, says ex-Pentagon software chief | Financial Times – blamed the reluctance of Google to work with the US defence department on AI, and extensive debates over AI ethics for slowing the US down. By contrast, he said Chinese companies are obliged to work with Beijing, and were making “massive investment” into AI without regard to ethics. Chaillan said he plans to testify to Congress about the Chinese cyber threat to US supremacy, including in classified briefings, over the coming weeks. He acknowledged the US still outspends China by three times on defence, but said the extra cash was immaterial because US procurement costs were so high and spent in the wrong areas, while bureaucracy and overregulation stood in the way of much-needed change at the Pentagon
The entirety of Twitch has reportedly been leaked | VGC
GCHQ chief: Facebook is a worry but China is the real internet danger
The west sees China as a ‘threat’, not as a real place, with real people | The Guardian – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were both real places with real people
Technology
Study: Despite uptick in telehealth use, patient satisfaction sags – News – MM+M – Medical Marketing and Media – Learning more about unsatisfied patients can help healthcare marketers tailor efforts to reach them more effectively. To that end, the survey found that the industry provided uneven care to patients, with those deemed higher-risk – ones who self-reported their health as fair or poor – having lower satisfaction with telehealth offerings than people who self-reported their health as excellent.In addition, patients in better health were more likely to better understand information conveyed during telehealth visits and characterize these visits as more personalized.“The onus is on the telehealth industry to understand the analytics behind who these members are, and what sort of level of services they need that can be tailored to their healthcare conditions,” Beem said. – I wonder how this compares to in-person visits?
Wireless
iPhone 13 Customers Sold On Longer Battery Life | Investor’s Business Daily – “Desire for a better battery life is the most popular reason for upgrading,” Daryanani said. “5G was not a popular reason for upgrading this year likely because 5G excitement in the U.S. remains well below the levels in China.” and working from home with your handset on wifi won’t help that sentiment