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.
Japan teams up with Finland on 6G development – Nikkei Asia the consortium on 6G development features a number of familiar names. On the Japanese side the following organisations are involved: includes NTT, NTT DOCOMO, KDDI, SoftBank, Rakuten Mobile and the University of Tokyo. I was a bit surprised not to see NEC here as they are Japan’s domestic telecoms equipment manufacturer. From Finland you have the following 6G development partners: University of Oulu and Nokia. (Paywall)
The underground zines that kept self-expression alive in Mao’s China – The Boston Globe – Despite Beijing’s tight control of the printed word and its dissemination, a new and diffuse network of underground printers — low-tech, affordable, remarkably flexible, and incredibly hard to police — springs up. Equipped with nothing more than Chinese typewriters, mimeograph machines, and stencil duplicators, underground publishers mass-produce an untold quantity of materials for a vast and diverse readership.
Security
How to Turn Off Amazon Sidewalk | WIRED – For the Echo family of speakers, open the Alexa mobile app and go to More, Settings, Account Settings, Amazon Sidewalk and choose Disable. In the Ring app, go to the Control Center, Amazon Sidewalk, Disable, Confirm.
Myanmar first came on my radar as a child. I was peripherally aware of it through the bits of Rudyard Kipling that I had read in the school library. Though I was reading Kipling more for his use of words and compact style with which he wrote.
I had also read a book that made grim reading on jungle warfare from the perspective of Wingate’s Chindits. The Chindits that went into Myanmar were named after the Chindwin river that they crossed. They were made up of underfed troops often weakened by diseases such as malaria and dysentery and suffered an extremely high casualty-rate. It is one of them weird bits of history that the British celebrate, but in reality sound like one long slow train wreck. The closest comparison that I think think of is the Irish lionisation of 1798 rebellion exemplified by Thomas Flanagan’s The Year Of The French. My impression of Myanmar, was a country that is hot and hard to live in. Myanmar was also well known for rubies and sapphires.
I moved to Hong Kong in 2012, the year before a civilian government had come to power in Myanmar after decades of military rule. Things rapidly started to open up. I worked alongside Red Fuse the dedicated agency that WPP had put together for Colgate-Palmolive.
In reality, Red Fuse was pretty much the whole of the Young & Rubicam office in Hong Kong at the time. Colgate launched its oral health month campaign in Myanmar with the marketing material printed on the insides of the brown cardboard boxes that there products where distributed to retailers in.
My more adventurous colleagues took short breaks in Yangoon. Some bought locally mined jade to take back to Hong Kong. A colleague whose partner worked for an airline even moved to Yangoon as airlines set up new routes and hotels opened up catering for business and tourism. I worked on Telenor’s recruitment of of local resellers in Myanmar for its soon to start mobile network. We provided strategy for a local agency to implement.
Soon after I came back in 2014, I put together a presentation on the potential of Myanmar. But why Myanmar? Well from my perspective other markets were either already on their way or on their way to decline.
China waning
I had already seen that China was slowing down from a growth perspective. China was aging, the demographic dividend would last for only another decade or so. (Population growth stalled in China during 2020 according to government official figures. The FT reported that China’s population had gone into decline. I am inclined to believe the FT more.) The Chinese government are sufficiently rattled that they have introduced a three child policy.
Chinese markets for products were saturated, particularly in FMCG. Whole sections of the economy are still walled off from foreign participation. There is continued capital flight out of the country by local business people and government officials.
The most important factor that I didn’t put in my slide deck was the gradual Han nationalism tone that was rising in China at the time.
Vietnam well on its way
Vietnam was already on the rise and well known by this point. We were getting some of our online creative built in Ho Chi Minh city by staff who were better than Indian or Chinese development houses.
Myanmar looked like Vietnam in the early 1990s. It has proven oil deposits that are largely tapped out. The Burmah Oil Company and Standard Oil extracted oil from Myanmar from the late 19th century onwards. In 1991, Shell discovered natural gas deposits. By the time I went to Hong Kong, western companies were joining the Indians, Chinese and Malaysians in developing natural gas fields.
Like Vietnam, there was a large young population, the majority of whom still lived on the family farm. 70 percent of people worked on the land and just 7 percent of people worked in industry. Meaning that workforce could be turned to manufacturing. The population at the time was almost 51.5 million and would grow to 54 million in a couple of years.
Myanmar by numbers
In 2012 and 2013, internet penetration was in single percentage figures. That’s why Young & Rubicam were printing marketing materials on the insides of brown cardboard boxes.
The economy was growing from a low base partly caused by the financial crisis and international sanctions against the military rulers at the time. The economic growth had been stifled by 59 years of military rule.
Year on year growth looked like the go-go years of China. The average income of a Burmese person was just $10 a day. Although most of the senior business and military elites were very well off indeed with bolt holes for them and their family in Dubai.
Myanmar had:
119.8 million tons of copper available to mine
283 billion cubic metres of proven natural gas reserves
Only 49 percent of the population had access to electricity
At least four international tobacco companies had entered Myanmar and up to half of Burmese smoked. Of those who smoked less than 5 percent were smoking filtered cigarettes
Myanmar challenges
Distribution partners. Tobacco companies and Telenor were encouraging people to become retail entrepreneurs
Infrastructure development had been prioritised for military rather than commercial needs. Those roads that are available are often of poor quality
While half the population had access to electricity, the supply isn’t reliable
Corruption is a major issue that I didn’t include in the presentation. The military and historic business elites didn’t get their Dubai penthouses through hard work and enterprise of their own.
2021
Of course the military overthrow of the elected government through all that into chaos.
2008 was the best and worst of times for Chinese brands. The Beijing olympics was supposed to spur national pride. Included in this national pride was pride for Chinese brands – guo chao. Chinese athletics brand Li Ning took centre stage in the opening ceremony, screwing over Olympic official partner Adidas. For other olympics ambush marketing is severely restricted, but this was a national champion in China. Chinese pride usually means someone else’s humiliation, in this case Adidas.
Right after the Olympics in September that year, a major food adulteration scandal became public. Over 300,000 babies were harmed when melamine was added by baby formula. The reason why this was done was to boost its ‘protein content’ in tests. The main brand in focus was Sanlu – a local milk powder brand. Subsequent tests found that adulterated powder had been sold around the world, by multiple Chinese brands.
Chinese consumers hoovered up milk powder all over the world. Several countries and Hong Kong had to limit milk powder purchases, due to Chinese tourists and intermediaries cashing in on the demand for safe milk powder. During 2013, I was working behind the scenes at an agency for FrieslandCampina to try and combat the shortages in Hong Kong. The ban has been put in place indefinitely.
Move forward a decade and guo chao is mainstream
Everything is political, this is even more so in China. With the rise of Xi Jingping he sought to stop Chinese ‘irrational worship of the West‘. There are well loved domestic legacy brands in China, a prime example would be White Rabbit candy.
Guo chao brand ‘White Rabbit’ candy
Along with this inflated Han nationalism has gone a pride in domestic brands. Huawei handsets are as expensive, if not more so than Samsung and Apple – which equated to a perception of similar quality. The fact that Chinese live most of their online lives inside WeChat dulls the difference in software. The operating system is no longer important. This is similar to the vision that Jim Clark had for the Netscape browser. If apps were on the web and ran through the browser, that would negate the stranglehold Microsoft Windows had on corporate and personal computing.
Young adults in China now favour products with Chinese cultural designs and products made in China – guo chao. In one survey 75% of Chinese consumers surveyed state they like products that incorporate Guochao design elements. Design and colour choice is particularly important: doesn’t just mean “made in China” but embracing traditional Chinese elements and inciting national pride. Foreign brands have struggled to maintain market share. Guochao brands have built a good consumer reputation and market share by relying on the advantages of lower price, practical and competitive levels of quality. They have also suffered from the perception of being a copy or imitation of more expensive brands. Domestic brands have managed to use e-tailing to get over established foreign brand advantages in market penetration. More consumer behaviour related content here.
Claas acquires share in Dutch robot manufacturer | Irish Farmers Journal – Claas has acquired a minority shareholding in Dutch start-up AgXeed B.V, with the aim of co-operating on the development and commercialisation of autonomous agricultural machines. AgXeed makes robot tracked tractors that look suspiciously like vehicles from the first Terminator movie. Automation like AgXeed is going to become more important in agriculture at labour moves to the cities and farming consolidates. You can see how unskilled factory work is also having to look at automation in the below piece from the South China Morning Post. AgXeed is the flip side of the coin to industrial robotics.
What’s driving the Chinese boom in cosmetics for children? | Vogue Business – In China, it’s more socially acceptable these days to show individual identity in looks. Parents born in the 1980s or 1990s are less likely to curb their daughters’ interest in beauty products and may even encourage it. The current boom is certainly one to watch: according to data from Kaola, in May 2020, sales in China of children’s cosmetics were up by more than 1,200 per cent year-on-year. Disney’s sales alone were up by 100 per cent over the same period.
In China, children’s cosmetics are defined as those for children aged 12 and under. On e-commerce platforms, a quick search for children’s cosmetics brings up dozens of brands and thousands of products, with prices ranging widely. Products are typically sold in sets, including colourful eye shadows, blush, lip gloss, nail polish, compact powder and makeup brushes
China’s Communist Party chips away at Hong Kong business houses | The Economist – Expropriations may violate local law. But laws can be changed, as the imposition of new security and electoral rules show. Such an outcome looks “all too believable”, says Mr Blennerhassett. The tycoons thought “they didn’t have to do anything as long as they didn’t question Beijing”, says Joseph Fan of Chinese University of Hong Kong. Now the Communist Party will not even settle for overt expressions of fealty. It appears intent on extracting value, too. – not terribly surprising. The hubris of Hong Kong business people is surprising, even to someone like me
Can Gucci Sell High-End Watches To China? | Jing Daily – “Gucci’s high-priced watches are lacking legitimacy. Real watch collectors will not buy,” Müller concludes. In fact, the expansion into high-end watches may not help Gucci attract new clientele but will undoubtedly enhance the Italian maison’s prestige. As the luxury entry barrier lowers, the brand is required to expand in the high-end sphere to retain its exclusivity and appeal to local high net worth buyers
China’s Hottest Livestream Trend: Fraud – The episode was a disaster for Li. Her company had paid 200,000 yuan ($31,000) upfront just to secure a spot on the influencer’s show. It had also stocked over 4,000 boxes of shakes, anticipating a sales bonanza. But in the end, they hadn’t earned a single yuan. “Apart from the financial losses, we felt humiliated,” says Li. “All the other employees at the company were whispering that our team was totally fooled.” – ad fraud is universal but this one seems to be particularly shocking
Technology
iFixit tells the sad story of how Samsung “ruined” its upcycling program | Ars Technica – “Samsung, like every manufacturer, should set their old phones free. Open up their bootloaders. Let people use their cameras, sensors, antennas, and screens for all kinds of purposes, using whatever software people can dream up. The world needs fun, exciting, and money-saving ways to reuse older phones, not a second-rate tie-in to yet another branded internet-of-things ecosystem.“
Web of no web
Europe looks to the end of the mobile phone | EE News Europe – The aim is AR glasses that are wearable all day and weigh less than 60g with a 500mW power consumption. “We can achieve that this year with 1000nits for outdoor brightness, compared to 500nits that needs darkened lenses, and a 30 to 50 degree field of view (FoV) is enough,” he said.
“In the end there is a tradeoff in power consumption. The way you build the relay optics is where you lose the field of view. Increasing the field of view means the energy is relayed into the comb of the lenses so the limitation is on the capabilty of the waveguide to have a good colour uniformity across the field of view, and we are working with waveguide makers to get to 60 to 70deg. Today Hololens has 55 degree field of view for example but the military were asking for 85 degrees.” – more related content here.
Get Tough is a book on hand-to-hand fighting originally published in 1942. It is important for what it represents as much as it is with regards its content.
Fairbairn as an author
By the time Get Tough was written in 1942; Fairbairn was an experienced published author. In 1926, Fairbairn wrote the book Defendu. This was a step-by-step guide to Fairbairn’s fighting system that distilled his experience in street fights, alongside the jujuitsu he learned from early Japanese teachers that went abroad. In this respect Fairbairn, was similar to the Gracie family in Brazil, Imi Lichtenfeld’s Krav Maga and the Soviet founders of SAMBO. Globalisation drove hybrid fighting styles. Something we’d later see with mixed martial arts in general.
Defendu as a title didn’t catch on that well as a title so it was republished as Scientific Self-Defence in 1931.
The second world war resulted in Fairbairn’s most prolific period as an author. He wrote Shooting to Live with a colleague and firearms expert Eric Sykes. All-In Fighting was written by Fairbairn as a manual in close quarters combat. Though a section on using firearms in a close up situation was contributed by P.N. Walbridge.
Get Tough was an American and Australian edition of All-in Fighting, but without the section by P.N. Walbridge. Where All-in Fighting was aimed at the soldiers Fairbairn and his colleagues taught, Get Tough looked to appeal to a wider audience.
Fairbairn provided an edited version of his work called Self Defence For Women and Girls, which is about a quarter of the pages of Get Tough. There was also an American edition retitled Hands-Off!
Fairbairn managed to write the book whilst training British commandos. Fairbairn and Sykes had a falling out sometime in 1942 and were never reconciled. Fairbairn took his expertise to to the US and Canada. Sykes carried on teaching in the UK.
Get Tough and colonialism
Get Tough was a distillation of experience that Fairbairn had in Korea and then later in Shanghai. As a member of the Shanghai Municipal Police he had been involved in hundreds of fights with local and international residents of the port city.
The experience led to Fairbairn to play a role in developing:
Anti-riot techniques
Police sniping techniques with Eric Sykes
The Defendu fighting style
Two types of knives. The Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife. A slender but sharp double sided stiletto blade designed the weapon to strike at the vulnerable parts of an opponent’s body, especially the vital organs. The original version was known as the Shanghai knife and had a 6 inch blade. It was likely part of the cache of illegal weapons that Fairbairn and Sykes brought back to the UK from Shanghai during the war. The military versions were 1.5 inches longer, to get through winter clothing. The Smachet, a large broad knife almost like a machete or a Roman sword
Fairbairn’s work was based on the health and lives of colonial subjects. Fairbairn often enjoys exclusive credit for this work, but the reality was that it was a collaborative effort from several officers in the Shanghai Municipal Police including Eric Sykes and Dermot O’Neill. The Shanghai Municipal Police was what modern organisational theorists would have termed a ‘learning organisation’.
Part of this learning culture was forced upon them by events. The Shanghai Municipal Police killed four members of a protest in May 1925 because they didn’t have enough police on duty to manage a demonstration. This felt rather similar to the Amritsar shootings of 1919, which shattered support for British rule in India by both Indians and people in the UK.
This led to the Shanghai Municipal Police founding the first modern SWAT team called the reserve unit; this unit was also responsible for modern methods of policing riots.
The Get Tough legacy
Defendu had been taught to hundreds of policemen who rotated through Shanghai before the second world war. They then went on to work in other outposts of the British Empire in a policing or military capacity.
When Sykes and Fairbairn brought their particular set of skills back to the UK in 1940. They were put to work training commandos and and secret agents in their skills. These skills were taught to military age men and women, the women were predominantly going to be dropped by parachute into occupied Europe.
Again hundreds, if not thousands of people passed through the schools that they ran in Scotland and the south coast of England. Some of the people who went through those schools were from overseas. When they eventually went home, the ideas and training that they learned went with them and were put to use. At first trying to retain colonial rule. Then later, building up nascent special forces units including units from the US, Belgium, Holland, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
Over time these countries evolved their techniques to match modern war, but the principles where still there.
After the second world war, the colonial policemen of the Shanghai Municipal Police who survived scattered across the British empire. Fairbairn went to Cyprus to train police in his techniques. He then ran two sessions in Singapore for the newly formed riot squad unit.
The contents of Get Tough
Fairbairn wrote Get Tough for a wide range of readers, not just the military as Fairbairn himself said:
It is not the armed forces of the United Nations alone who can profit by learning about how to win in hand-to-hand fighting. Every civilian, man or woman, who ever walks a deserted road at mid-night, or goes in fear of his life in the dark places of a city, should acquaint himself with these methods.
Releases – how to get out of holds by an assailant
Holds
Throws
Miscellaneous advice – mostly covering improvised weapons from things at hands
Use of the knife – Fairbairn talks about using the Sykes-Fairbairn fighting knife
The Smatchet – use of a short machete type weapon designed by Fairbairn
Disarming an opponent of his pistol
If you’ve trained in a martial art, you’ll have done drills of some sort like katas in karate. Fairbairn’s work doesn’t have drills per se. The idea is that if you do the hold or the blow, you are unlikely to need follow up.
