Ni hao – this category features any blog posts that relate to the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese communist party, Chinese citizens, consumer behaviour, business, and Chinese business abroad.
It is likely the post will also in other categories too. For example a post about Tong Ren Tang might end up in the business section as well. Inevitably everything is inherently political in nature. At the moment, I don’t take suggestions for subject areas or comments on content for this category, it just isn’t worth the hassle.
Why have posts on China? I have been involved in projects there and had Chinese clients. China has some interesting things happening in art, advertising, architecture, design and manufacturing. I have managed to experience some great and not so great aspects of the country and its businesses.
Opinions have been managed by the omnipresent party and this has affected consumer behaviour. Lotte was boycotted and harassed out of the country. Toyota and Honda cars occasionally go through damage by consumer action during particularly high tensions with Japan.
I put stuff here to allow readers to make up their own minds about the PRC. The size of the place makes things complicated and the only constants are change, death, taxes and the party. Things get even more complicated on the global stage.
The unique nature of the Chinese internet and sheltered business sectors means that interesting Galapagos syndrome type things happen.
I have separate sections for Taiwan and Hong Kong, for posts that are specific to them.
IEDM: DTCO & More than Moore – by Doug O’Laughlin – The future is about Design Technology Co-optimization (DTCO), and Backside Power Deliever Networks (BSPDN) is a huge part of the roadmaps forward post-gate-all-around. A good place to start on what exactly Backside Power Delivery Networks (BSPDN) is is my post I wrote a few months ago about the bold bets Intel is making there. The big takeaway is that BSPDN is clearly going to be inserted in the design processes, and there is a small roadmap of improvements afforded by BSPDN. But after that, BSPDN will change the design process to allow adding more features, like moving functions on to the backside of the chip. By splitting the signal and power layers, there’s a whole new set of ideas of how to design chips with the space afforded from the power layers. This is Design Technology Co-optimization (DTCO) and System Technology Co-optimization (STCO) at it’s best. BSPDN looks like it has several years of obvious scaling potential, so it will be a huge part of the incremental semiconductor process from here until 2030. It will not only improve the energy delivered to the chip, but actually shrink the cell size. Think about it like a new way to organize the room, and now we can fit more in less even though its the same room filled with the same objects. Next, the roadmap in the long term after we have fully achieved backside power contact networks means we could open up the wafer on the other side of the chip. If we are opening up the other side to be a functional signal layer, there’s a potential we can start adding backside devices to the chip! This blew my mind, and the options for stacking layer, memory, and other devices (like energy capacitors) is endless! This is huge! – BSPDN is a key part of Intel’s technology roadmap. BSPDN is a mix of process lithography and logic technology to decouple the power grid from the design.
The proposed technique delivers power from the backside of a thinned device wafer, which allows for greater wafer sizes in terms of the amount of logic in a chip
Business
Jeep-Maker Stellantis Is Laying Off 1,350 Workers, Blaming EVs | Business Insider – interesting and complex picture being painted. In general, electric cars have less parts for assembly than their internal combustion engine powered equivalent cars. The costs must be coming in component costs and or research and development
China
Fashion factory: Mango brings production closer to home in rethink on China | Financial Times – “In this debate about whether 30 years of globalisation will continue or go backwards, the most important thing for us to follow in detail is the China issue,” he said. Asked if Mango would reduce the proportion it buys from the country, Ruiz replied: “I would say yes, but we’ll be very alert to how things evolve.” Mango gains some freedom from the fact it has only six stores in mainland China and consumers there contribute little to total sales, which it predicts will this year surpass its 2019 record of €2.4bn. Other brands have already moved more decisively. The US jeans maker Levi’s and UK bootmaker Dr Martens have been reducing their sourcing from China since before the pandemic.
Ian Hislop is well known in the UK as being the editor of Private Eye and managing to bring the snark of the paper into real life. In this interview with the politics channel of Joe, he seems flummoxed by the state of politics in the UK over the past year or so.
In this video, Ian Hislop talks about the year with clear sense of exasperation. The laughs are for relief rather than humour. The commentary by Ian Hislop on collective short term memory is very interesting.
Tiananmen Square killings
CNN put together an interesting collection of footage around the Tianamen Square protests and put some context around what was happening in China when the protests happened. CNN seemed to have done a better job than most western media at the time in its coverage of the protests. If anything the footage seems even more harrowing now than the bit I remember from the time.
CNN
Darlie Malaysia travel promotion
Back when I worked on Colgate brands in Asia, Darlie was the ‘entry level’ brand. As such its one of the best selling toothpaste brands in Asia and you can see it in any pharmacy or supermarket you walk into in China, Hong Kong and across Southeast Asia. It’s actually an old brand founded in the 1930s in Shanghai that latched on to the popularity of Al Johnson to promote the teeth whitening effect of their toothpaste.
The brand seems to have changed to Darlie around about 1990.
Colgate Palmolive
Moving forward three decades Darlie is still wrestling with its heritage in the eyes of western stakeholders important to Colgate Palmolive. Darlie is a best selling brand.
In Malaysia it seems to have got involved in a package promotion with local travel brand Klook to provide travel vouchers and hotel discounts as Malaysia kick started its domestic tourism and hospitality industries. Much of the promotion revolves around the use of influencers (to appeal to the three main ethnic groups in Malaysia – Chinese, South Asians and Malays).
I am not a huge fan of their books generally, but if the Darlie adverts spark your interest, then the Lonely Planet travel guide is your best option for the two main areas to see: Kuala Lumpur (KL) and Georgetown on Penang island.
The Reflex
I have been listening to this mix a few times this week.
Zone Energy
Zone Energy drinks targeted students sitting exams with adverts on the Tokyo subway that only. they could see using the red plastic sheet lens that is used to decode answers in their work books.
While everyone from from organised criminals to Chinese government hackers were robbing governments blind during the COVID crisis, in the UK the scandal surrounding PPE Medpro seems particularly egregious. The tale of PPE Medpro goes back to the VIP programme that the UK government used to secure PPE through politically connected companies. PPE Medpro was one of the companies who benefited from £10 billion squandered on these PPE purchases.
Michelle Mone with former Spice Girls singer Mel B
PPE Medpro got contracts through the VIP programme after a Michelle Mone, a member of the House of Lords lobbied on their behalf. Mone had previously set up a successful clothing brand with her first husband, then moved into diet pills, fake tanning products and even an aborted cryptocurrency launch.
In return PPE Medpro is alleged to have paid Mone £29 million, the subsequent investigation led HSBC to freeze her bank accounts.
China
China risks 1mn Covid deaths in ‘winter wave’, modelling shows | Financial Times – China is easing restrictions after the Chinese COVID protests. 1 million is on the low end of numbers I have heard quoted. However, it is also politically evocative. The Chinese people have been constantly reminded that 1 million people lost their lives to COVID in the United States and the communist party ensured that just 5,000 people have died in their country.
Germany confronts a broken business model | Financial Times – Chief executive Martin Brudermüller announced that BASF would downsize in Europe “as quickly as possible, and also permanently”. Most of the cuts are expected to be made at the Ludwigshafen site. BASF is not alone. Since the summer, companies across Germany have been scrambling to adjust to the near disappearance of Russian gas. They have dimmed the lights, switched to oil — and, as a last resort cut production. Some are even thinking about moving operations to countries where energy is cheaper. That is triggering deep concern about the future of German industry and the sustainability of the country’s business model, which has long been predicated on the cheap energy guaranteed by a plentiful supply of Russian gas. Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution, has said Germany is a case study of a western state that made a “strategic bet” on globalisation and interdependence – based on this experience why would you want to ‘bet’ on China or any other authoritarian country? Once the basic industries like BASF go, the higher end industries will follow
Auction sales slide in Hong Kong | Financial Times – Six-monthly auction sales in Hong Kong have had their worst results since 2018, with this season marking the third consecutive drop, according to ArtTactic. Its analysis finds that the October-to-December evening sales made a total of HK$1.7bn ($220mn, before fees), a fall of 34 per cent since the equivalent sales last year and more than 50 per cent down from their peak in spring 2021 – this is interesting given how much has been invested in the past couple of years by the major auction houses into Hong Kong
How Do Korea’s 1% Get Rich? – The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition) – The wealthy prefer deposit and savings accounts as the best short-term investments over the next year now that interest rates are high. But they pointed to real estate, both to let and for use as their own homes, as the best investment over the longer term. Their hopes for gold and jewelry or bonds also increased.
Being a creator and relying on YouTube ad revenue sounds like rather like being a musician and relying on Spotify. For reference £1 is worth about ₩1611 at the time of writing, which means they make less than £50/month. This anecdotal evidence fits right in with an analysis piece in the FT – The Lex Newsletter: the cratering creator economy | Financial Times
The heat from radioactive processes within the planet’s interior causes the plates to move, sometimes toward and sometimes away from each other. This movement is called plate motion, or tectonic shift
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declaration of a zeitenwende or epochal tectonic shift following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Part of this tectonic shift is Germany’s desire to become a security guarantor in Europe. A lot of coverage has focused on how far away Germany is from this aspiration in terms of military preparedness and over-reliance on the very countries likely to threaten European security.
In an opinion piece Chancellor Scholz asked a rhetorical question
How can we, as Europeans and as the European Union, remain independent actors in an increasingly multipolar world?
Scholz implies that the tectonic shift also adversely affects the United States efforts to jumpstart green industries and contain a globally more aggressive China. One could argue that Scholz’s approach is business as usual. For decades, large German enterprises have encouraged the government to work with authoritarian regimes, creating a Germany highly dependent on bad actors.
Indonesia set to penalise sex outside marriage in overhaul of criminal code | Reuters – the new code could be passed by as early as next week. The code, if passed, would apply to Indonesian citizens and foreigners alike, with business groups expressing concern about what damage the rules might have on Indonesia’s image as a holiday and investment destination. – the question is if this is going to take Indonesia on a similar path of economic stagnation as Malaysia has taken?
Twitter’s decline continues. I noticed this morning that Twitter allowed me to post the exact same Twitter post twice. That isn’t something that was possible previously and I could see how it could be used for nefarious reasons.
My twitter account this afternoon when I checked it
Shein Confusion: The Fast-Fashion Giant’s New Resale Site Doesn’t Make Buying Easy — The Information – Annie tries out Shein Exchange, the e-commerce brand’s foray into the bustling resale market. On its face, the platform seems like a good idea, given the ongoing controversies over Shein’s cheap, disposable, landfill-clogging apparel. But there is something distinctly off about the brand’s effort to sell used clothes
Amazon’s new AI tool may take over work from employees facing layoffs and buyouts – Vox – the tech giant has been working for at least the last year to hand over some of its recruiters’ tasks to an AI technology that aims to predict which job applicants across certain corporate and warehouse jobs will be successful in a given role and fast-track them to an interview — without a human recruiter’s involvement. The technology works in part by finding similarities between the resumes of current, well-performing Amazon employees and those of job applicants applying for similar jobs
Chinese COVID protests have been held in major cities including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing and Chengdu. Why did the Chinese COVID protests happened and what does it mean?
One panel of a SARS triptych that I photographed back in 2010 at a Chinese Communist Party exhibition at the Guan Shanyue Art Museum in Shenzhen, China.
TL;DR (too long, didn’t read)
The Chinese COVID protests aren’t comparable to events like the 1989 protests or Hong Kong in 2019.
The Third Hong Kong’s anti-extradition law protest 第三次反送中遊行
Secondly, there are clear parallels for behaviours in other markets. However, when viewed through the lens of Chinese communist party, the restlessness of their population will further feel their paranoia. Part of this paranoia will be down them knowing that they the current administration has let down the population in a long-standing promise on epidemics, initially made by Mao Zedong.
This betrayal of the people may be emblematic of deep-rooted flaws in the senior party leadership team. To paraphrase Sir James Porter; a party rots from the head down.
Why did it happen?
After a shaky start, that mirrored the early Chinese government response to SARS[i]. China managed its first wave COVID-19 experience successfully using lockdowns to control the spread of the virus. It pursued what was called a Zero COVID policy. They managed to keep the virus largely contained in Wuhan and the local province of Hubei. By the summer the government held it largely under control.[ii]
There was Chinese government censorship internally[iii] and misinformation[iv] externally[v]. By the summer of 2020, COVID was largely under control within China. By August 2020, Wuhan was able to host a giant pool party of unmasked attendees dancing along to a DJ playing EDM, like it was Ibiza on the Yangtze.
China managed to hold COVID down through strict lockdowns through 2021. But by the spring of 2022, there was an infection peak again and further lockdowns have ensued.
Over time, China has attempted to be more granular in its approach to lockdowns over time and called this ‘dynamic zero COVID’. However, lockdowns themselves have implicit risks[vi], for instance research found that a rise in depression and anxiety could see a rise of premature death of 134%[vii]. Research has shown that these factors are particularly acute in medical staff involved in treating COVID-19[viii]. Chinese companies and the government tried to address mental health through digital channels, these responses outstripped existing regulations[ix].
The pressure of COVID lockdowns together with mistakes seems to have produced an environment for the protests to grow.
The BBC coverage paraphrased some of the protestors that they interviewed talking about feeling angry, sad, helpless – in a state of purgatory[x]. One can understand the sense of frustration portrayed and the likelihood of how this can lead to protest in those desperate enough.
Vaccinations with Chinese socialist characteristics
As of July 2022, China had apparently given out over 3 billion vaccines, or enough to have vaccinated the population at least twice and then some[xi]. But the vaccination rate amongst the elderly was significantly lower than other comparable countries by 2022[xii]. This has meant that China is worried about a massive amount of COVID fatalities occurring, if it altered course.
The lower vaccination rates were attributed to a number of factors including misinformation on social media influencing elderly Chinese to self-quarantine instead. Secondly, immune-compromised people in China were sometimes advised by doctors to not take the vaccine. And the Chinese government chose to vaccinate younger working age people first, as they were more likely to come in contact with the virus[xiii].
What happened to drive the Chinese COVID protests?
A series of insights into the world outside China from Xi Jinping at the G20[xiv] to the World Cup Finals in Qatar showed life going on without face masks[xv]. So Chinese COVID protestors would have a good idea that COVID outside China is much less restrictive in nature. This is the reverse of the reaction that happened during the Wuhan pool party, which fuelled debate and more than a bit of envy in some westerners.
Inciting incidents
Then a succession of horrific mistakes by the Chinese government and big business fuelled consumer frustration and anger in the months leading up to the protest:
A bus transporting people to a quarantine facility in Guizhou province killed 27 people and injured another 20[xvi].
Foxconn delayed bonus payments[xvii] to workers locked down on their factory and provided insufficient food for the quarantined workers[xviii]
An apartment block fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang caught fire[xix]. The fire was covered on state television. The ten deaths that occurred were blamed by protestors on COVID lockdown conditions. I want to add that this doesn’t mean that Han Chinese have put aside long-standing prejudice and suddenly feel brotherly solidarity with Uighur citizen[xx]; but they could see the same thing happening to themselves if they got caught in a lockdown. This distinction is important as Han-Uighur solidarity would represent many bigger problems for the Chinese government
The common thread amongst all the inciting events is that Chinese protestors could easily see themselves in the place of victims of these disasters. You can combine this with frustration and a perfect storm for the Chinese COVID protests in major cities. Western coverage has given some weight to those voices who shouted for Xi Jinping to resign[xxi], this doesn’t signify a colour revolution in motion. Instead, these are likely more a measure of frustration with COVID restrictions. But they could be personally and politically embarrassing for Xi Jinping and reinforce existing internal Chinese communist party fears.
Government response to Chinese COVID protests
The communist party looked to censor online channels of the protests[xxii], but netizens kept reposting the content. Since China has a real ID policy for mobile phone numbers and digital accounts these posters knew the risk of being traced by the security apparatus.
Government influenced media and online personalities promoted a narrative that the protests had been instigated by external influence. This immediate leap to speculate on foreign influence is in keeping with Xi Jinping’s vision of constant vigilance and paranoia on internal national security.
The allegations of foreign influence were used to mobilise patriots[xxiii] to try and intimidate foreign journalists during previous crisis, but failed to achieve the same goal this time.
This narrative was anticipated and ridiculed by the protagonists in the Chinese COVID protests[xxiv].
Which foreign forces do you talk about? Karl Marx or Friedrick Engels?
Attributed to a protestor in Beijing
A heavy police presence managed to restrict protestors gathering on subsequent evenings[xxv]. University students have been sent home early from the end of the semester, to prevent further student activism on campus[xxvi]. Chinese authorities immediately set out to track down those who participated in, or supported the protests.
But in Guangzhou, the heavier police presence resulted in a violent clash with protestors. The scene has a ridiculous aspect to it with riot police wearing Tyvek bunny suits to protect themselves against COVID infection[xxvii].
Quiet moves
Some cities in China like Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen have started to ease off from their COVID testing regime in the face of Chinese COVID protests; yet the infection numbers are reaching record rates in the country[xxviii].
China is justifying this, by claiming that Omicron infections were less likely to result in death. Scientific experts disagree[xxix] and point to Hong Kong’s COVID-19 wave during the spring[xxx] as an indicator of what we’re likely to expect in China.
What’s less apparent is how China will improve vaccination rates. China’s inability to force older citizens to vaccinate belies the countries authoritarian nature.
This inability to vaccinate is particularly curious, as it chips away at the Chinese communist party’s legitimacy. It is over 64 years since the founder of modern China Mao Zedong wrote ‘Farewell to the God of Plagues’[xxxi], yet the party under Xi Jinping is still struggling to vanquish COVID-19 after almost three years.
While western media speculates about the reasons why China won’t use more effective foreign vaccines[xxxii], I find the inability to vaccinate the elderly a bigger mystery.
China engaged in foreign interference, by attempting to spam foreign social media platforms to try and crowd out and conceal genuine posts covering the Chinese COVID protests[xxxiii].
What can we learn from other countries experiences with regards the Chinese COVID protests?
China managed to avoid the number of deaths that occurred in other countries so far as we know through lockdowns, quarantine and controlled access to public spaces based on regular testing.
But it isn’t the only country to experience a youth-based resistance to COVID lockdown style restrictions. Kings College London conducted research throughout the COVID pandemic.
As locked down was eased they found that about 24 percent of the population were likely to think that the restrictions should be lifted faster and saw the risks of COVID-19 as being lower than the rest of the population[xxxiv]. During lockdown King’s College London research identified a group called ‘the resisting’[xxxv].
The resisting were about 9 percent of the population. They skewed young and male with a mean age of 29. They were outliers in terms of belief in rumours and have a high usage on social media usage.
A hypothetical Chinese technocrat looking for comfort in these numbers would see a silent majority that is compliant or supportive of COVID prevention measures and that the Chinese COVID protests were done by a young minority. This would also mirror the experience during the 2002 – 2003 SARS outbreak, when people in Zhejiang province protested over the inability of the Chinese government to control the epidemic[xxxvi].
Toronto editions of Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily and Taiwan’s World Journal from June 5-7, 1989. Both Hong Kong and Taiwan enjoyed Western-style freedom including freedom of the press, which explains why such newspaper records exist. In China, the event of June 4 1989 is not mentioned anywhere.
The headlines read:
“Bodies pile up in Beijing Massacre. A Hudred Thousand Dead or Wounded” ***
“Fierce fighting continues in Beijing’s east side, troops leave Tiananmen Square”
“U.S., Soviet Union, other countries evacuate their citizens from Beijing”
*** Because of the news blockade and dangerous conditions in Beijing, the very first reports initially said as many as 100,000 were killed or wounded, this was later corrected to as many as 20,000. The most credible estimates suggest between 2,000 and 8,000 casualties.
They would be slightly more alarmed by the calls for Xi Jinping to stand down, and the fact that protestors weren’t just from the middle-class student body but also involved worker protests as well[xxxvii]. However, one could argue that this is a coincidence rather than the cross-class unity[xxxviii] that underpinned a succession of protests across China in 1989[xxxix] culminating in the June 4 massacre.
