The beauty sector describes the industry that manufactures and distributes cosmetic products.
These include colour cosmetics, like foundation and mascara, skincare such as moisturisers and cleansers, haircare such as shampoos, conditioners and hair colours, and toiletries such as bubble bath and soap.
The manufacturing industry is dominated by a small number of multinational corporations that originated in the early 20th century, but the distribution and sale of cosmetics is spread among a wide range of different businesses. The largest cosmetic companies are Johnson & Johnson, L’Oreal Paris, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, LVMH, Beiersdorf, Estée Lauder, Shiseido and Chanel.
Some things are starting to change. The beauty industry as we know it was built on western beauty standards. Now it has to cater to black and other ethnic minority standards as well due to changing market and political realities.
Western country populations are aging. This means that the product mix needs to change for these companies and aesthetic standards need to evolve.
South East and East Asia has gone from being the poorest parts of the world to hosting the fastest growing economies. The ranks of the middle class have exploded in Asia as they declined in the western world due to globalisation.
This also means a very different aesthetic and expectation of what it means and looks like. These are also the the markets were the next generation of industry manufacturing giants will hail from. Shiseido from Japan has an early mover advantage, although others like Innisfree from Korea are expanding across Asia and beyond.
China’s ‘Lipstick Brother’ Livestream Has Record $2 Billion Day – BNN Bloomberg – Beauty livestreamer Li Jiaqi aka Lipstick Brother sold $1.9 billion worth of products in one twelve hour show on Taobao. That’s slightly less than the total sales from all four Selfridges stores during 2019. Lipstick Brother is one of a number of live-streaming sales stars like Mr Bags aka Tao Liang. There are clear parallels between Lipstick Brother and informercial stars on US shopping TV. The reason why live-streaming commerce happened was because of the historic iron grip that the Chinese government has held on TV station. This drove audiences online because the content was that bad and there wasn’t a QVC analogue for the likes of Lipstick Brother to appear on. The key difference is in the breadth of products that Lipstick Brother and his peers sell, Lipstick Brother and Mr Bags work with topline luxury brands in their respective categories rather than mid-market brands. It is interesting that Lipstick Brother has managed to survive the communist party’s purge from public life of sissy men across off-line and online media.
China cuts finance pledge to Africa amid growing debt concerns | Financial Times – Chidi Odinkalu, senior manager for Africa at the Open Society Foundations, said the reduced financial pledge showed that Beijing no longer had to try so hard in Africa. “China’s strategic objective was to get a foot in the door. Now that it’s in the door, it can choose to dictate the terms,” he said. He criticised some African governments for relying too heavily on loans from Beijing. “The volume of credit that some of them have binged on makes them dependent beyond any sensible notion of sovereignty,” he said.
South Korean presidential hopeful plays down reunification with north | Financial Times – South Korean ruling party’s candidate for president has downplayed the prospect of the future reunification of the Korean peninsula, as the country’s voters tire of decades of fruitless diplomacy with the North. Lee Jae-myung of the progressive Democratic party, whose manifesto includes a commitment to “seek unification through peaceful measures”, told reporters on Thursday that competition between the two Koreas in terms of ideology and efforts to prove the superiority of each system “has no meaning” and did not offer the prospect of “real gains any more” – potentially a big move from the Moon regime position, also probably linked to a more hawkish position on China
Macau casinos gamble on relations with Beijing | Financial Times – casinos increase the shareholdings held by Macau permanent residents. A speedy public consultation has ended and business is waiting for the final law to be put to the legislature, a process that is also expected to determine how many of the casinos have their licences renewed, and for how long. The situation is particularly troubling for the three Macau casino groups that are largely US-owned: Las Vegas Sands, founded by the late Sheldon Adelson, MGM and Wynn operate nine resorts in Macau, and their local subsidiaries are listed in Hong Kong. Local operators Galaxy Entertainment, the late Stanley Ho’s SJM Holdings and Melco, which is dual-listed in the US and Hong Kong, also hold concessions – guessing that this adds pressure on gaming operators to try and put pressure on the US government rather like Wall Street does for China
Luxury Stores Across the US Hit By Mass Heists in the Same Week – Robb Report – this sounds like a classic example of steaming. Steaming is a British phrase describing the phenomenon of shoplifting, when a large group of (usually youths) enter a store en masse and engage in shoplifting. Steaming puts a strain on shop security, it often causes panic in the store and creates so many suspects for the police to chase down. For the shoplifters steaming reduces the individual risk of getting caught. In large department stores, steaming becomes easier because of the number of exits. There are usually enough people involved to push past hastily set up security checkpoints during steaming. Young people are particularly attracted to steaming for a couple of reasons:
Low risk, high reward
Low impact of criminal penalties for many depending on their age
Peer pressure from other older members organising the steaming group
When I was in secondary school, we had a trip to Paris. A good number of peers one day engaged in steaming. They managed to make off to a large amount of Lacoste and Sergio Tachini sports clothing which was popular in Merseyside at the time. Steaming was also a central part of football casual culture. Much of the sportswear back in the 1980s were fenced goods. Criminal gangs followed European football games and practiced steaming in the lead up to a match at major department stores across France, Spain and Italy. The items were then sold on to groups of football fans back home through informal networks. What surprised me about this group doing the steaming was the nature of their crime. They were steaming boutiques, which have less entrances and exits than department stores. Boutiques often have queues of people to get in and security on the doors that would be bad for practicing steaming.
So what went wrong with store security to prevent steaming? Has steaming been facilitated by a cut back in security for cost cutting purposes? If so, will insurance companies honour losses incurred through these steaming attacks?
Beauty
Prestige beauty: Inside Unilever’s growth engine | Vogue Business – Dana Kreutzer, project lead for beauty and personal care at US research firm Kline, says the acquisition “demonstrates the company’s focus on expanding its portfolio to include more digitally-led brands and clinical-grade skin care, which is a fast-moving segment in the skincare space”.
Opinion | We Spent a Year Investigating What the Chinese Army Is Buying. Here’s What We Learned. – POLITICO – the Chinese military is “intelligentizing” warfare by purchasing AI systems for all manner of applications, including autonomous vehicles, intelligence analysis, decision support, electronic warfare and cyber operations. At the same time, we found reason to be skeptical of the most ominous predictions about China’s efforts to fully automate warfare through “doomsday”-like weapons. Perhaps most importantly for U.S. policymakers, our investigation into the PLA’s buying habits shows how Chinese progress in military AI is being driven, in part, by access to American technology and capital. Our report highlights the critical role U.S. companies play in supplying China with data, software and funding. This points to serious shortcomings in the U.S. export control system, which wasn’t built to screen the high volume of technology transfer and capital flows into China, and which struggles to distinguish between military and civilian purchasers. Even as the United States attempts to decouple supply chains from China when it comes to American goods, it also needs to consider new strategies to prevent American know-how from inadvertently powering China’s technological advancements
In the Russian Arctic, China treads on thinning ice | China Dialogues – In order to reach its goal of becoming a ‘polar great power’ China will need to lessen its dependence on Russian support and expand its economic and political ties with other Arctic states. This may present Arctic states with an opportunity to set limits on China’s regional influence, but the benefits of any such limitation must be measured against the importance of giving China a stake in the fight against climate change. In the traditionally calm waters of the Arctic, China’s ‘Arctic Policy White Paper’ made much of a splash when it was first released in 2018. The paper showed, as was argued at the time by politicians and pundits, that Beijing would seek to establish itself as a new Arctic power, and in the process deprive the eight Arctic states of their control over the region’s abundant natural resources
Solomon Islands PM Manasseh Sogavare faces calls to resign over China diplomatic ties | South China Morning Post – The protest began peacefully, but schools and businesses were shut by the afternoon as crowds tried to enter parliament demanding PM Manasseh Sogavare step down. Protesters were angry about lack of promised development and the Solomons government’s 2019 decision to cut ties with Taiwan and establish a formal relationship with China – the big question is what will China do to keep Sogavare or his party in power and maintain the status quo?
Secret Chinese Port Project in Persian Gulf Rattles U.S. Relations With U.A.E. – WSJ – U.S. intelligence agencies learned this spring that China was secretly building what they suspected was a military facility at a port in the United Arab Emirates, one of the U.S.’s closest Mideast allies, according to people familiar with the matter
Is the China-Europe Express becoming a political weapon in the hands of China? | RailFreight.com – China launched the Belt and Road initiative with the purpose to enhance Eurasian transport links. It includes Chinese cities, transit countries through Asia and European destinations. Understandably, such a vast investment from the Chinese side, including involvement in other countries’ economies, could constitute a political and economic hazard. Maja Bakran Marcich, the Deputy Director-General for Mobility and Transport at the European Commission, had warned some months ago that good synergies between Europe and China should be characterised by mutual respect and control over the power relations.
It seems that when Marcich was saying that, she had a similar situation in mind. The New Silk Road is a crucial and fast-developing part of the global supply chain, putting rail freight at the forefront of transportation. However, it looks like it has the possibility of becoming a dangerous card on the table of diplomatic and political games. Should China have the liberty of just cancelling Eurasian train services in the name of political disputes? And shouldn’t the New Silk Road focus only on transportation purposes?
Chinese doctors query Beijing’s Covid contact tracing policy | Financial Times – the way that the Chinese government is going about it fits in with the concept of struggle in Stalinist thought. That the struggle is not only done but seen to be done. The doctors challenge therefore represents a much more profound dissonant voice against the CPC than the content in the article suggests. For this reason alone, they’ll likely spend some time down at the local public security office sitting in a tiger chair and agreeing to sign a document apologising. They will also have earned a huge black mark on their credit score at the very least.
Kevin Rudd: “China views the UK as weaker after Brexit” – New Statesman – three core ideological undercurrents that form Beijing’s economic and foreign policy. First, China’s domineering relationship with its neighbours is shaped by its perception that it sits atop a regional hierarchy rooted in its imperial past. Second, the Chinese Communist Party’s Marxist-Leninism results in the dual conclusions that China’s time has come and the struggle between reactionary and progressive forces places China in opposition to the United States. The third undercurrent is national reunification with Taiwan – what Rudd describes as the central organising principle of China’s plans for East Asia first and then globally. Hence China’s work in the Antarctic and inserting itself as an Artic power without any semblance of claims.
China Is Jihadis’ New Target – In early October, an Islamic State-Khorasan bomber killed nearly 50 people at a mosque in Kunduz, Afghanistan. That the militant group claimed responsibility for the attack wasn’t surprising, but, in a worrying new twist for Beijing, it also decided to link the massacre to China: The group said that the bomber was Uyghur and that the attack was aimed at punishing the Taliban for their close cooperation with China despite its actions against Uyghurs in Xinjiang. China was long seen as a secondary target by international terrorist organizations. Groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State were so focused on targeting the United States, the West more generally, or their local adversaries that they rarely raised their weapons toward China, even though they may have wanted to due to, for example, China’s mistreatment of Uyghur Muslims. But in Kunduz, this narrative was brought brutally to a close. China can now consider itself a clear target. – probably more worrying for China is the risk that this kind of action will pose to them in other geographies like the Middle East and Africa and along the parts of the belt and road that go through restive muslim majority regions of the former Soviet Union
Why Is Gen Z Acting Like Boomers Right Now? – Gen Z’s frantic, chain email-flavored TikToks prove naivety and gullibility is ageless. Not surprising given the younger cohorts in the resistor segment of COVID regulation compliance that research by Kings College London found last year.
Chinese parents find new ways to give their children an edge | Financial Times – parents have been seeking new ways to give their children an edge in the cut-throat university entrance examinations. Instead of signing up for foreign language classes, barred by the regulations, parents instead opt for non-core curriculum subjects like art, which are taught in English, says Ekaterina Kologrivaya, co-founder of Edtech Expand, a Beijing-based consulting start-up. Many of the large tutoring companies have closed their physical classrooms, transferring online to save costs. But Beijing barred local firms from hiring tutors located overseas, driving up demand for the depleted number of foreign teachers in China, unable to get into the country due to strict border controls. This has pushed up the prices of classes taught by foreigners, including debate classes, another crafty way for students to master prized English skills while abiding by the new rules
Is China’s catch-up growth over? – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion – But all things come to an end. Every other spurt of rapid development has eventually slowed to the stately pace of a mature economy. There are basically two reasons this happens. First, as you build more physical capital — more buildings, roads, railways, machine tools, vehicles — the added output of each new piece of capital goes down, while the upkeep costs just keep rising. This is the basis of the famous Solow growth model, and we’ve seen this happen again and again to fast-developing countries. The second reason rapid growth peters out is that it’s easier to copy existing technologies from other countries than to invent new ones yourself. The real question is when this slowdown happens. Japan’s history provides an interesting example here. Here’s a graph of Japan’s income per capita (at purchasing power parity) as a fraction of America’s: You can see that Japan’s catch-up (at least, post-WW2) really happened in two phases. There was rapid catch-up until the early 1970s, then a few years where catch-up paused, then a resumption of catch-up at a slower pace for about 15 more years. After the bursting of the country’s famous land bubble, its economy actually lost ground to the U.S. (rapid population aging was also a big part of this), and settled in at around 75% of U.S. levels (fairly standard for a medium-sized developed country). Economists have found that this pattern is very typical. In a pair of famous papers in 2012 and 2013, Barry Eichengreen, Donghyun Park and Kwanho Shin found that fast-growing countries tend to slow down when they reach a certain income level – peak China
Finance
The ‘Tesla-financial complex’: how carmaker gained influence over the markets | Financial Times – the real importance and wider footprint of what might be called the “Tesla-financial complex” far outstrips the company’s market capitalisation. This is thanks to a vast, tangled web of dependent investment vehicles, corporate emulators and an enormous associated derivatives market of unparalleled breadth, depth and hyperactivity. Combined, these factors mean Tesla’s influence over the ebb and flow of the stock market is far greater than even its size would imply. It may even be historically unrivalled in its wider impact, some analysts say – is there a market squeeze opportunity? The parallels with Porsche in this regard are striking
Close Reading of the QAnon Shaman’s Conspiracy Manifesto ‹ Literary Hub – the legitimate skepticism inspired by historical events like the assassination of JFK (and the Warren report’s open-and-shut verdict on it) has mutated into a toxic skepticism that is not only hostile to government institutions but has turned on gatekeepers like the press, scientists, and medical authorities, provoking an epistemological duel to the death over facts and alt-facts, truth and truthiness. The effect of these attacks and counterattacks is “mutually assured disqualification,” Bratich argued, in a 2017 lecture, punning on the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. And the effect of that is what could be called epistemological vertigo—the pervasive sense of not knowing how to sort fact from falsehood; of being unmoored from the truth. It’s what makes so many grab onto the reassuringly black-and-white theology of conspiracism. And it is a theology, Manichean in its cosmic struggle between good and evil, apocalyptic in its conviction that we’re living in the end times. “There is a war on humanity, there is a war on religion, there is a war on human assembly,” said Naomi Wolf, on Fox News Primetime. “Big Tech wants to drive everyone indoors and dissolve the bonds between people.” – interesting, though the writer shows their own belief in conspiracy theories
Carbon Counter/EVs: cleaner electricity makes a big difference to emissions | Financial Times – In the UK, US and Germany such vehicles offer large emission reductions of 76 per cent, 60 per cent and 49 per cent respectively when run on the typical mix of power sources in mains electricity. Germany’s poor performance reflects its exposure to dirty lignite and coal as fuels. Hydroelectric-dependent countries such as Norway do strikingly better. However, a much smaller reduction in emissions occurs in China, at less than a fifth. China has the biggest market for plug-in cars. Fully electric vehicles accounted for 9 per cent of its entire market in the first half of this year, more than double the figure for 2019. Every year it adds more solar power capacity than any other nation. But as of November 2020, two-thirds of China’s electricity came from coal-fired generation, says the IEA. China’s huge appetite for coal means it plans to add almost a fifth to its coal-powered generation capacity of more than 1,000GW.
Disney CEO: We’re Ready for a Metaverse Future – The Hollywood Reporter – “Our efforts to date are merely a prologue to a time when we’ll be able to connect the physical and digital worlds even more closely, allowing for storytelling without boundaries in our own Disney metaverse, and we look forward to creating unparalleled opportunities for consumers to experience everything Disney has to offer across our products and platforms, wherever the consumer may be.”
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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….
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
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
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?
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
I couldn’t avoid doing a post on Afghanistan given what had been going on this week. The Afghanistan conflict posed a number of interesting questions about:
What privacy and security means for the people left behind in Afghanistan in the digital age
Why strategy is seldom a teacher and several countries have made the same mistake in Afghanistan – (Britain did so twice!)
The failure of intelligence in Afghanistan reminded me of the failure of intelligence agencies to realise that the fall of the Berlin Wall would happen. There was also a failure to underhand who the players were and their motivations in Afghanistan
What will Afghanistan mean for Pakistan moving forwards? Once out, the west has the perfect opportunity to shun Pakistan; which will leave the country vulnerable to Chinese predatory practices
The US Is Removing Records of Its War in Afghanistan From the Internet – Lives are on the line here, but helping them may mean destroying—even if temporarily—the memory of the war and all that happened. It’s a horrible problem to face. One potential solution would be for the U.S. and its allies to take as many Afghan refugees as want to flee the country. – it assumes that the Taliban and supporters like the Pakistani ISI intelligence agency haven’t been caching this material themselves over the years. Things got rolled up so fast, they probably have hold of records from Afghanistan government payroll ledgers to intelligence reports
Germany Flew 65,000 Beer Cans Out of Afghanistan, but Just 7 People on an Evacuation Flight – “There was transport capacity for alcohol, but not for the local staff in Afghanistan,” read a piece in Germany’s Bild newspaper, referring to the fact that the German military had earlier flown home 65,000 cans of beer and 340 bottles of wine before it withdrew from its bases in Mazar-e Sharif and Kabul at the end of June. – surely they could have blown up the alcohol and put people on the flights? – this is the kind of thing that fuels future grudges that morph into terrorist attacks. But it also shows the colossal failure in intelligence in a microcosm
SIGAR | Lessons Learned. The Ides of August – a couple of good post-mortem reads on Afghanistan. A few things struck me. Mission creep had been baked in, although much of that was down to the allies partnering with the Northern Alliance and liberal values. The dual nature of Pakistan, which I suspect Pakistan will get punished for in the longer term. The lack of intelligence on the main players involved such as former president of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai
Beauty
Skincare Preferences by Generation | NPD Group – Despite the generational differences in skincare preferences, there are also commonalities. At the end of the day, it seems we’re not so different, after all. Whether they are more like my mother or my cousin, we see from consumers across-the-board that they are open to trying new things, are looking for clean ingredients, and simply want skincare that produces results from a brand they can trust. Regardless of the trends driving the category, the demand for efficacy and transparency is here to stay
Business
Wolfsburg, we have a problem: How Volkswagen stalled in China | Reuters – Last month, though, he said Volkswagen had fixed the problems revealed by the test, that the ructions of the episode had subsided and the carmaker’s Chinese business was recovering. “We have once again clearly one of the safest cars on the market in this segment,” Woellenstein told reporters in July. “We will once again take up the old leadership of the Passat.”But there is quite some ground to regain in the large family car segment. A total of 47,480 Passats were sold in the first six months of this year in China, some way behind the 91,110 Toyota Camrys (7203.T) and 89,157 Honda Accords (7267.T), according to LMC. The figures from the same period of 2019, before the pandemic struck, show how steeply the Volkswagen model has fallen away of late: 91,400 Passats were sold versus 111,968 Accords and 85,396 Camrys. – I am surprised by this, given Volkswagen’s obsession with common platforms
Tata’s rise mirrors the sweep of India’s history | Financial Times – Tata is no longer at India’s entrepreneurial vanguard. The likes of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries and Gautam Adani’s eponymous group, with their investments in telecoms and renewable energy, hold stronger claim to be the “nation builders” of today. These tycoons represent a different way of doing business, one that has prompted much consternation. They lack Tata’s ambivalence about the state, aligning themselves unabashedly with Narendra Modi, and share few of the conservative Tatas’ qualms about “wealth creation for its own sake”.
Biden is sandbagging on immigration – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion – the new American support for throwing open the country’s gates is more broad than it is deep. There’s a real desire to cleanse the stain of Trump’s human rights abuses and flirtation with white-nationalism — to at least be able to say that America is still the Nation of Immigrants, that we still have compassion for the people of the poor countries of the world. But beyond that idealistic impulse, I’m not so sure that most liberals have a strong, enduring commitment to welcoming in as many refugees, asylum-seekers, and economic migrants as possible.
One reason is that the Democratic party is increasingly the party of the educated, and to most educated Americans, people like refugees and asylum seekers live in a different world. There’s little natural class solidarity or empathy there. And when it comes to skilled immigrants — the people waiting desperately for that backlog of 100,000 green cards to be processed — well, to most educated Americans, that’s the competition. Both for themselves and for their kids in schools.
Beijing’s American Hustle | Foreign Affairs – U.S. institutions, especially in finance and technology, cling to self-destructive habits acquired through decades of “engagement,” an approach to China that led Washington to prioritize economic cooperation and trade above all else.
If U.S. policymakers and legislators find the will, however, there is a way to pull Wall Street and Silicon Valley back onside, convert the United States’ vulnerabilities into strengths, and mitigate the harmful effects of Beijing’s political warfare. That must begin with bolder steps to stem the flow of U.S. capital into China’s so-called military-civil fusion enterprises and to frustrate Beijing’s aspiration for leadership in, and even monopoly control of, high-tech industries—starting with semiconductor manufacturing
How Chinese pressure on covid origins probe shocked WHO — and led Tedros to push back – The Washington Post – When a WHO scientist on a coronavirus origins probe announced in February that the idea that the virus leaked from a lab was “extremely unlikely” and unworthy of further investigation, senior WHO staff in Geneva were shocked. “We fell off our chairs,” one member told the authors. The team in Wuhan appeared to have given in to Chinese pressure to dismiss the idea without a real investigation. Later, when the WHO-China team released a report that again dismissed that scenario, Tedros pushed back, saying that the research was not “extensive enough” and that there had not been “timely and comprehensive data-sharing.” Since then, relations between the WHO and China have nosedived. Chinese officials said in July that they would not accept any further investigation into the origin of the coronavirus in China and accused the United States of pressuring scientists. The WHO last week released a statement that resisted the idea that “the origins study has been politicized, or that WHO has acted due to political pressure.”
China, the WHO and the power grab that fuelled a pandemic | News | The Sunday Times – In 2017 Chan crowned her final year in office by welcoming Xi to Geneva. While he was there, she signed an agreement that committed the WHO to working alongside China on health as part of the country’s Belt and Road initiative. It was the first time any UN agency had signed up to the initiative, which seeks to extend Chinese influence and trade in more than 70 developing countries by financing infrastructure projects. The initiative is highly controversial because its critics argue that China uses it to shackle countries, particularly in Africa, to “unsustainable debt” as a way of gaining access to the continent’s raw materials and buying political favours. “I think health is too special to get into the really seedy politics that Belt and Road is part of, and I wouldn’t want the WHO to be associated with it,” Gostin argues. “The cost in terms of human rights and debt, and other adverse events for Africa, was a bridge too far.”
Hong Kong’s Leader Killed Her City – The Atlantic – Regina Ip, a pro-Beijing lawmaker and member of Lam’s cabinet, told me that simply having the laws on the books would provide a “deterrent effect” to protesters, and that the fears of journalists and activists over the curtailing of freedoms were not “completely misguided.”
How the daigou can help new brands | Vogue Business – The classic image of the daigou is of an entrepreneurial and well-connected individual who buys global luxury brands on behalf of Chinese clients abroad, where prices are lower and hard-to-find products are more accessible. But the new model daigou is also working closer to home, and mixing emerging Chinese designers with foreign brands. The motivation for the evolution of the daigou’s role comes from a wave of young Gen Z Chinese consumers who are seeking more interesting and affordable fashion and don’t care as much about the name on the label. This is good news for new brands in China – and elsewhere. In a fiercely competitive market, any well-designed brand has the potential to catch consumers’ eyes. What’s needed in the early days of a new brand’s development is an effective sales channel. – Building a similar relationship with daigou, that brands currently have with fashion stylists
[Report] Bad News, By Joseph Bernstein | Harper’s Magazine – In the beginning, there were ABC, NBC, and CBS, and they were good. Midcentury American man could come home after eight hours of work and turn on his television and know where he stood in relation to his wife, and his children, and his neighbors, and his town, and his country, and his world. And that was good. Or he could open the local paper in the morning in the ritual fashion, taking his civic communion with his coffee, and know that identical scenes were unfolding in households across the country. Over frequencies our American never tuned in to, red-baiting, ultra-right-wing radio preachers hyperventilated to millions. In magazines and books he didn’t read, elites fretted at great length about the dislocating effects of television. And for people who didn’t look like him, the media had hardly anything to say at all – give this a read
COVID slows Apple and Google production shift away from China – Nikkei Asia – AirPods — both entry-level and high-end models — were among the earliest products that Apple began making in significant amounts in Vietnam, having moved production there around two years ago during the height of U.S.-China trade tensions. Apple’s plan to bring some MacBook and iPad production to Vietnam has also been put on hold due to a lack of engineering resources, an incomplete notebook computer supply chain and the dynamic COVID situation, one of the people said. Production of smart doorbells, security cameras and smart speakers for Amazon, which recently moved to Vietnam, has also faced delays since May as assembly lines in the northern part of the country coped with a surge in local cases and tougher COVID prevention measures
Opinion | We built a system like Apple’s to flag child sexual abuse material — and concluded the tech was dangerous – The Washington Post – Our research project began two years ago, as an experimental system to identify CSAM in end-to-end-encrypted online services. As security researchers, we know the value of end-to-end encryption, which protects data from third-party access. But we’re also horrified that CSAM is proliferating on encrypted platforms. And we worry online services are reluctant to use encryption without additional tools to combat CSAM. We sought to explore a possible middle ground, where online services could identify harmful content while otherwise preserving end-to-end encryption. The concept was straightforward: If someone shared material that matched a database of known harmful content, the service would be alerted. If a person shared innocent content, the service would learn nothing. People couldn’t read the database or learn whether content matched, since that information could reveal law enforcement methods and help criminals evade detection. Knowledgeable observers argued a system like ours was far from feasible. After many false starts, we built a working prototype. But we encountered a glaring problem.
Our system could be easily repurposed for surveillance and censorship. The design wasn’t restricted to a specific category of content; a service could simply swap in any content-matching database, and the person using that service would be none the wiser. A foreign government could, for example, compel a service to out people sharing disfavored political speech. That’s no hypothetical: WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging app, already uses content matching to identify dissident material. India enacted rules this year that could require pre-screening content critical of government policy. Russia recently fined Google, Facebook and Twitter for not removing pro-democracy protest materials. We spotted other shortcomings. The content-matching process could have false positives, and malicious users could game the system to subject innocent users to scrutiny. – Emphasis in bold is mine
Technology
Laptops Shortage Is Easing as Pandemic Demand Wanes – Bloomberg – The waning demand for PCs will likely last for at least several more quarters. Memory prices are dropping precipitously on fears the chip cycle is over. But it’s good news for anyone looking to buy a laptop, printer, webcam or router. Expect them to be much easier to find in stores this fall. – I am hoping that the price of SSDs will fall again
Intel with an old take on big.little for Alder Lake | EE News Europe – Intel’s next-generation desktop chip, code-named Alder Lake, is the company’s first hybrid architecture to integrate two core types – the Performance-core and Efficient-core. This is similar to ARM’s big.little approach which used a small core optimised for low power consumption with lower performance alongside a larger, higher performance core. Both cores could run the same code depending on the context, avoiding the problems of having a scheduler to allocate tasks to multiple cores. This has traditionally been a limiting factor for the system-level performance of multicore chip designs
Epic’s Fortnite lawsuit has become a nightmare for Google – Protocol – Google ‘estimated in 2019 that it risked losing as much as $6 billion per year if app makers and app store operators banded together with Epic and began creating alternative distribution channels. So instead of offering a superior product, the company muscled its way to a market position now being viewed by U.S. regulators as potentially anticompetitive’ – this might feed into a wider FTC case later on given the focus on revenue. More related content here.
Fake reviews on products including Amazon Prime items (image via quote catalog
Shenzhen to support Amazon merchants | Trivium China – 50,000 merchants were banned from Amazon for astroturfing false reviews. The ban was worth up to 100 billion yuan in sales to these merchants. Half of the merchants affected are based in Shenzhen. Now the Chinese government is looking at what it can do to help the merchants practicing false reviews. Yet it wouldn’t tolerate false reviews if it was exposed in in the domestic market. One of the options being looked at is a platform to rival Amazon Marketplace, that would allow fake reviews
Study: Companies Aren’t Living Up To Chinese Consumers’ Expectations – Three in four (75%) informed Chinese consumers (defined as consumers interested or involved in one of 20 industries studied in the research) said CEOs should speak up on issues that “may not have a significant impact on the business but have a significant impact on society,” with particular focus on diversity and diverse representation within a workforce and its leadership. Yet just 35% of respondents in China feel companies in China can do more to make the workplace better. Similarly, 80% agree that CEOs should have a voice on the environmental policy debate, and three quarters (75%) say business leaders should have a role shaping health policy, the research found. Respondents ranked value and innovation as the top two drivers of brand perceptions in China. Only 35% of companies, however, are meeting expectations in those areas – the key term is ‘informed consumers’, I am sure that the Chinese government might not view things in quite the same way
The Hong Kong National Security Law: The Shifted Grundnorm of Hong Kong’s Legal Order and Its Implications by Han Zhu :: SSRN – the application of mainland laws in Hong Kong, the interpretation of the NSL, cross-border criminal jurisdiction, national security institutional infrastructure, and the legal language. To some extent, the enactment of the NSL is like a silent constitutional reform that has reshaped, and will continue to reshape, a wide range of aspects of Hong Kong law as well as the Basic Law. Due to the dualistic nature of the NSL as a national law which applies to both the mainland and Hong Kong, it has also expanded and deepened the interaction and conflict between legal systems in the two regions, highlighting the inherent tension of maintaining the unity of a heterogeneous legal order under one country, two systems
Influencers want to be paid more than ever. Blame the pandemic | Marketing | Campaign Asia – no one is asking the question in this article, are influencers overpriced, or even worth it compared to other “Industry can also factor in, with some influencer niches starting at a higher price point than others,” says Heather Rottner, director of social media at Coyne PR. For instance, she says the firm generally sees higher rates in high-end fashion and beauty, food and DIY. While there is no shortage of influencers looking for brand partnerships in these categories, “many influencers pride themselves on being selective and authentic which means they don’t jump on every partnership offer they receive or use just any product.”
Media
‘Spreading like a virus’: inside the EU’s struggle to debunk Covid lies | World news | The Guardian – Until the pandemic, there was no monitoring of fake stories originating from within EU countries or linked to countries other than Russia. While China Global Television Network (CGTN), an English-language cable news channel controlled by the Chinese Communist party, is considering a Brussels expansion StratCom until recently had just two people working on Chinese disinformation. Several former EU analysts said multiple state-backed disinformation campaigns, not just Russian, had taken advantage of Covid and Richter believed the EU’s limited focus on Russia “affected the legitimacy of the project.”
Security
The threat of a “cyber Pearl Harbor” is a red herring — Quartz – the damage of cyberattacks comes from a series of piecemeal hacks that are often hidden from public view and don’t always lead to immediate, tangible harm. The actual threat looks less like a barrage of bombs and more like a spy slipping a gloved hand into a filing cabinet or a mobster strolling into a shop to collect a “protection” payment
Who is being monitored? Tutanota – interesting data points, I would imagine that other western countries would have a similar split in use of monitoring
Huawei Accused in Suit of Installing Data ‘Back Door’ in Pakistan Project – WSJ – Another day, another dodgy security story involving Huawei – BES, says in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in California district court that Huawei required it to set up a system in China that gives Huawei access to sensitive information about citizens and government officials from a safe-cities surveillance project in Pakistan’s second-largest city of Lahore. Muhammad Kamran Khan, chief operating officer of the Punjab Safe Cities Authority, which oversees the Lahore project, said the authority has begun looking into BES’s allegations.
