Ged Carroll

Category: online | 線上 | 온라인으로 | オンライン

The online field has been one of the mainstays since I started writing online in 2003. My act of writing online was partly to understand online as a medium.

Online has changed in nature. It was first a destination and plane of travel. Early netizens saw it as virgin frontier territory, rather like the early American pioneers viewed the open vistas of the western United States. Or later travellers moving west into the newly developing cities and towns from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

America might now be fenced in and the land claimed, but there was a new boundless electronic frontier out there. As the frontier grew more people dialled up to log into it. Then there was the metaphor of web surfing. Surfing the internet as a phrase was popularised by computer programmer Mark McCahill. He saw it as a clear analogue to ‘channel surfing’ changing from station to station on a television set because nothing grabs your attention.

Web surfing tapped into the line of travel and 1990s cool. Surfing like all extreme sport at the time was cool. And the internet grabbed your attention.

Broadband access, wi-fi and mobile data changed the nature of things. It altered what was consumed and where it was consumed. The sitting room TV was connected to the internet to receive content from download and streaming services. Online radio, podcasts and playlists supplanted the transistor radio in the kitchen.

Multi-screening became a thing, tweeting along real time opinions to reality TV and live current affairs programmes. Online became a wrapper that at its worst envelopes us in a media miasma of shrill voices, vacuous content and disinformation.

  • TSMC analysis + more news

    TSMC analysis by DigiTimes

    Taiwanese technology industry publication DigiTimes has some some great ‘state of the industry’ analysis pieces. They have placed Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. aka TSMC at the centre of this.

    TSMC dossier (4): Technology contention among world-class leaders | DigiTimes – size of process is only part of the story. Interesting data on how TSMC, Samsung and Intel compare in terms of node transistor density by wafer foundry

    TSMC dossier (6): Possible ways to defeat the world’s top foundry house – TSMC’s concern is not getting surpassed in process technology or losing key customers but being overtaken by someone figuring out how to combine quantum technology and IC design. In-memory computing becoming a reality might be another scenario where TSMC could lose its competitive edge. However, according to Yu-Chung Lin, a DIGITIMES consultant devoted to the study of quantum technology application trends for years, large-scale commercialization of quantum technology is unlikely to happen before 2025. In-memory computing comes with high costs. If Samsung with leading-edge memory technologies really makes a breakthrough, TSMC will have to brace for challenges

    China

    The EU’s unsustainable China strategy | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank – really good read from Chatham House

    DiDi’s Troubles, Tweets of the Week (Corruption, Waluigi+Mao, Fish Hugging, Which Chinese Ministry Works the Hardest?) – by Jordan Schneider – ChinaTalk – interesting commentary on China’s regulatory environment, not so great news for western investors

    Consumer behaviour

    Mediatel: Mediatel News: Attention Revolution: a new column by Professor Karen Nelson-Field

    Recommitting to Trust | Edelman 

    Economics

    The Economic Fundamentals of Chinese Communism’s Successes and Failures by Nancy Qian – Project Syndicate 

    Germany

    China-Konzern will deutsche Gaming-Firma kaufen: Wegen Kriegs-Simulationssoftware? – Politik Ausland – Bild.de – Tencent is planning to take over the German game developer Crytek – but Bild reports they hope to use the “CryEngine” developed by Crytek to produce war simulation programs for the Chinese army

    Hong Kong

    Fall of Hong Kong’s opposition camp: mass arrests in era of protests and national security law – really nice visualisation showing the 173 activists including 108 district councillors have been arrested since 2019

    Leung Kin-fai and the question of condemning violence – by Kevin Carrico – so much in this essay to unpack

    Hong Kong’s national security trial debates Malcolm X’s legacy — Quartz – Leung argued that forceful and peaceful resistance can play complementary roles in a social movement, invoking Martin Luther King and Malcolm X as representing the two different styles of resistance in the US civil rights movement. In that 2016 interview, Leung also advocated for protesters to use a level of force that’s equal to that of the police. It’s an idea that evokes another line in Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech: “I’m non-violent with those who are non-violent with me.” – so the Hong Kong government is not only oppressing its own people but suggesting that African Americans should have been jailed as national security risks?

    Ireland

    Irish language introduces new term for people of color | IrishCentral

    Legal

    Translation: Cybersecurity Review Measures (Revised, Draft for Comment) – July 2021 | DigiChina

    Luxury

    Defying conventions, Chinese millennials turn to watches | Vogue Business – “There are lots of common points among women who are enthusiastic about watches, including financial and intellectual independence, and having a refined attitude towards shopping luxury goods,”

    Luxury is culture now. Here’s how | Vogue Business – Vetements has teased a rebrand as a platform for young talent. Gucci spotlighted 15 emerging brands including Collina Strada and Bianca Saunders at November’s GucciFest film festival. Saint Laurent recently teamed up with Bang & Olufsen, Baccarat and JL Coquet on a lifestyle product series. Luxury brands no longer sell just their brand. In a new era of consumer expectation for shared values, brands are curating platforms to function as tastemakers to extend their own brand halo into the wider cultural world

    Marketing

    Dunkin’ drives audio ad results by matching background music to listeners’ tastes | Marketing Dive – this did make me wonder about brand. In particular the role of audio branding and about the role of jingles in culture.

    Splash and Dash; Ford Fragrance Shows Petrol Fans They Won’t Miss out with Mustang Mach-E GT | Ford of Europe | Ford Media Center – as a non-driver I miss the ritual of going to the petrol station and filling the tank. As a kid I loved accompanying my Dad to do it.

    Till Jagla adidas Collab King Exclusive Interview: Why He Left – “Now Energy is a new hype creation unit that really puts storytelling at the heart of everything we do,” says Jagla. “It was literally starting a brand within a brand. It was all the bad and ugly of the startup brands.”

    Media

    Cannes Film Festival, Risking China’s Ire, to Screen Hong Kong Protest Documentary – WSJ – Hollywood has been trying to court China. This feels like they’ve given up the ghost on this.

    GB News in crisis as exec quits and presenter is pulled for ‘taking the knee’ | The Guardian – GB News – set up on the basis that free and open debate is no longer possible in the mainstream media due to an all-pervasive “cancel culture”, was overwhelmed with complaints that after only a few weeks on air it had gone “woke” and its content was not sufficiently rightwing.

    Online

    How Vietnam’s ‘influencer’ army wages information warfare on Facebook | Reuters

    Financial services advertisers in the UK must meet Google verification requirements by August 2021 – how on earth will YouTube survive? Unless Google sets the bar really low, or those ‘forex training courses’ count as education. But then, that’s how OneCoin managed to get around their problems as well. This might not be the panacea that Google would want it to be seen as.

    Pluralistic: 15 Jul 2021 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – interesting thread on how Facebook has disbursed its Crowdtangle analytics team. The reality is that social monitoring tools have been going dark for years. Most of them disproportionately rely on Twitter. Twitter has an outsized importance for its audience size due to it being favoured by journalists. Doctorow’s post however looks specifically at these Facebook moves

    Security

    We Got the Phone the FBI Secretly Sold to Criminals | Vice 

    Philippines calls claim China influenced 2016 election to favour Duterte ‘nonsense’ | South China Morning Post – Former foreign secretary Albert del Rosario made the claim at a forum on Monday, citing a ‘most reliable international entity’. He said senior Chinese officials were ‘bragging that they had been able to influence the 2016 Philippine elections so that Duterte would be president’ – I wouldn’t be surprised if China did try to influence the election result. However I am surprised that Chinese officials would be so indiscreet. The risks of that getting back to Beijing are too great, unless they wanted to be found out

    Threat to UK from hostile states could be as bad as terrorism, says MI5 chief | The Guardian – while the threat from Russia, as demonstrated by the poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury, is familiar to the British public – the spy chief will argue that threats that typically come from China are not. McCallum will say that universities and researchers risk “having their discoveries stolen or copied” if they are not vigilant and that businesses could be “hollowed out by the loss of advantage they’ve worked painstakingly to build”.

    Technology

    Russia to Build 8-Core RISC-V CPUs for Laptops, Government Systems – ExtremeTech

  • WeChatlization

    WeChatlization is a term that I heard from Xinhua News journalist Wang Zichen. He shared the term on a stream of tweets that I have compiled into a quote below.

    If nobody has said this before, I am gonna coin the term WeChatlization: a growing number of Chinese public discourse is increasingly going – firstly if not exclusively – to the WeChat part of the Internet, at the cost of the traditional Google/Baidu searchable World Wide Web.

    The numerous and increasing amount of 微信公众号, called by WeChat itself as WeChat “Official Accounts” but in fact WeChat blogs, are gradually eroding the territory of traditional dotcom Internet sites.

    WeChat blogs are effectively not searchable via traditional search engines like Google or Baidu. So for the purpose of getting information, one gotta adapt to the change.

    Example No.1: the World Peace Forum starting today at Tsinghua University in Beijing doesn’t appear to have an updated dotcom, dotedu, or whatever site, but you will find the list of speakers at their WeChat blog

    Wang Zichen via Twitter.

    WeChatlization poses a number of challenges to the rest of the world and the open web. It makes information harder to find than the open web. It cripples opportunities for other Chinese information startups. Its not healthy, but then neither is Meta. Which brings us to our next point WeChatlization isn’t a new phenomenon. Prior to the open web taking hold there were closed communities on CompuServe, Prodigy and even AOL. For the duration of Yahoo! Messenger, there was a vibrant community underpinning the brokerage of oil to fuel ships.

    Outside of China you see media and communities that only exist, or publish first on Facebook. This is particularly true for lifestyle as well as current affairs based communities. Both of which are just as opaque to search engines as WeChat. Like WeChat, Facebook’s internal search mechanism leaves a lot to be desired.

    Prior to that there was a similar phenomenon with MySpace and Friendster. For many years after its peak in popularity, MySpace still hosted a vibrant community of HR professionals attached to the CIPD.

    You seem a similar phenomenon in AltspaceVR, a Microsoft owned VR social network that has hosted in-platform only business conferences. You have had similar kinds of happenings in games like Fortnite and both American electioneering and Hong Kong political protests happened virtually in Animal Crossing.

    All of this puts the communities under the arbitrary rules of the platform owner, be it the constraints that support an authoritarian government or a rapacious online advertising model. The ethics challenge the perception of open communications that these platforms allege to promise each other. More related content here.

  • Machine learning powered services + more

    Machine learning powered services

    Intelligent Relations – Matt Muir nails this in his take down of their machine learning powered media relations platform – Vapid, largely-pointless busywork which despite its almost universal lack of import is nonetheless treated by its practitioners as somehow REALLY VITAL and with a reverence normally reserved for stuff that matters rather than with the disregard appropriate for an industry staffed largely by double-figure-IQ morons. Anyway, that’s all by way of preamble to the introduction of Intelligent Relations, a new company which is set to make PR even worse if you can imagine it. Intelligent Relations (it sounds…it sounds like an escort agency for the sort of people who bother applying to Mensa, is what it sounds like) is PR, but with AI! That’s right, AI! The MAGICAL SECRET SAUCE that makes EVERYTHING BETTER and definitely isn’t a sign that someone is attempting to sell you some magic beans! Just listen to this – “GPT-Powered Outreach, 24/7 analysis of all relevant public event data to identify opportunities and pitch your company’s stories faster than the competition…Relentless customized global outreach based on AI-ranked relevancy to your brand. Generate responses that start, nurture, and build personal relationships with media influencers. Put your execs and your company in the heart of the conversation. No agency. You own your relationships – not your PR firm…Precisely worded campaigns, aggressively scaled with technology. Faster than humans, more personal than email blasts.” So, er, you are outsourcing the writing of pitch emails, and followups, to a machine? Have, er, you read any non-tweaked GPT-3 generated copy recently? – All of this stuff about machine learning powered media relations reminded me of the start of my agency career.

    I was working with an agency that was part of the Interpublic Group. We were riding the technology boom of the mid-to-late 1990s. This was a series of booms that were inter-related.

    • Telecoms boom, came from deregulation, the rise of data services, globalisation and the internet
    • Enterprise software boom driven by Moore’s Law, the ability to interconnect systems and exchange data at rates previously unseen. There was a strong incentive to replace old systems due to concerns about the millennium bug
    • Mobile boom as GSM networks and their CDMA equivalent democratised the mobile phone and allowed for nascent data services
    • The dot.com boom as companies built service layers over the top of data networks. Much of the ambition was way ahead of where technology was
    • Hardware boom. Businesses and consumers needed to get online

    Our CEO at the time Larry Weber came over to the office in Covent Garden, met clients and held court. He turns around to the junior staff and tells them how soon they won’t have to worry about manually contacting journalists or compiling status reports. Instead, the contact work will be outsourced to the Philippines (thanks to the telecoms boom). And data that was entered once in the company intranet WeberWorks would through the power of Lotus Notes be diced into the reports that the clients needed.

    WeberWorks in its first iteration was a proof of concept, not a viable product. Though I believe that the successor agency Weber Shandwick stuck with developing the platform.

    22 years later and agency life faces much the same problems, except an algorithm is touted to replace Filipino call centre workers in this scenario. What does machine learning powered media relations have that a Filipino call centre doesn’t? How will the PR profession grow when the on-ramp for people to learn how it works is now taken over by a machine learning powered media relations service instead?

    A lot of PR technology is based on the expectation that (machine learning powered) content will be fed into a media sausage factory and coverage will come out. But relationships are important, as journalists get hundreds of pitches and press releases per day.

    Consumer behaviour

    Phoenix eyes’ on catwalk of mainland academy’s fashion gala draw fire for insulting China ｜Appledaily – Some netizens accused the university of humiliating China after a video of the event on YouTube showed that most of the models either had an eye shape known as phoenix eyes, or were using eyeliner to present the same appearance. The eye shape, which is identified by a slight upward lift at the outer corner of the eye, is considered a desirable facial feature. However, some people regard it as a harmful stereotype reinforced by Western culture and the fashion industry. One influential blogger on Weibo, China’s dominant social media platform, said that because this look conforms with the stereotypes of ethnic Asians it carries a meaning of serious humiliation – this might be what passes for woke in China. The story was originally published in the English version of the Apple Daily Hong Kong on June 21, 2021 three days before the paper closed down. I have linked to to a Wayback Machine archive of the article.

    Political trolling twice as popular as positivity, study suggests – BBC News – unsurprising as taps into system 1 thinking

    Economics

    Competition and concentration | Financial Times – The 1980s financialisation of the US economy created a mindset that manufacturing did not matter — and that it should therefore be shifted to lower-cost labour markets. The high value-added stuff, including R&D, would remain onshore. It didn’t turn out like that. Like any other activity in life, manufacturers learn by doing, which means that the most effective innovation usually takes place alongside production. That’s why so many of America’s most impressive companies, including Intel, shifted a lot of their R&D to China – great take on globalisation here. It also gives a sense of where the FT’s view is on the process

    Private equity ‘raid’ on UK companies sparks furious row in City | Financial Times – best quote in the comments ‘The British should be relieved to have their assets stripped by relatively familiar, relatively transparent organizations. It may be the Chinese next.’

    The Evolution of Corruption in China | Foreign Affairs – corruption comes in distinct flavors, each exerting different social and economic harms. The public is familiar with three main types. The first is petty theft: police officers shaking down people on the street, for example. The second is grand theft: national elites siphoning off massive sums from public treasuries into private accounts overseas. The third is speed money: petty bribes paid to regular officials to bypass red tape and delays and grease the wheels of bureaucracy. All three types are illegal, vociferously condemned, and rampant in poor countries. But corruption comes in another, more elusive variety: access money. In this kind of transaction, capitalists offer high-stakes rewards to powerful officials in exchange not just for speed but also for access to exclusive, lucrative privileges, including cheap credit, land grants, monopoly rights, procurement contracts, tax breaks, and the like. Access money can manifest in illegal forms, such as massive bribes and kickbacks, but it also exists in perfectly legal forms – I was thinking of the favoured firms during the British empire and the chaebols during the Park presidency in South Korea. The chumocracy of UK politics is closer to speed money

    Ideas

    Digital Addiction Hunt Allcott, Matthew Gentzkow, and Lena Song (NBER.org working paper) – Many have argued that digital technologies such as smartphones and social media are addictive. We develop an economic model of digital addiction and estimate it using a randomized experiment. Temporary incentives to reduce social media use have persistent effects, suggesting social media are habit forming. Allowing people to set limits on their future screen time substantially reduces use, suggesting self-control problems. Additional evidence suggests people are inattentive to habit formation and partially unaware of self-control problems. Looking at these facts through the lens of our model suggests that self-control problems cause 31 percent of social media use. – or in other words social media is like big food, the illegal drugs industry, alcohol, tobacco and gambling (PDF)

    Innovation

    Losing sight of the Future – Noahpinion – interesting article but the author forgets about energy density as an issue in their own predictions whilst mentioning it as a flaw in prior ones

    Marketing

    The fashion marketing shake-up: As Instagram, Facebook costs surge, where next? | Vogue Business – marketing inflation is hitting the fashion industry as platform and influencer costs surge, but sales don’t. More online related content here.

    North Face Owner Pulled Xinjiang Criticism, Then Reinstated It – WSJ – VF Brands struggling to navigate divergent Chinese and western markets. Its not been a good week for VF Brands as the Futurelight logo court case with Futura is bring a lot of unwelcome attention to the North Face brand and may blow on to its Supreme brand.

    McDonald’s, Wendy’s Cut Back Value Meals, Focus on Pricier Food – this is partly inflation. But I think that they are working an angle to squeeze premium burger brands: Five Guys, Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK), Byron Burger and similar

    Retailing

    S.Korea retailer E-Mart buys eBay’s S.Korean business for $3 bln | Reuters – purchased by Shinsegae – part of Samsung chaebol

    Technology

    Panasonic defends $7bn Blue Yonder deal after questions over price | Financial Times – interesting that Panasonic bought Blue Yonder. Blue Yonder is a supply chain software provider

    Wireless

    EE to reintroduce Europe roaming charges in January – BBC News – EE, which is part of BT Group, previously said it had no plans to reintroduce roaming charges in Europe. – No plans meant that they didn’t have their act together at that time, typical BT in other words

  • Apple Daily & other things this week

    Apple Daily

    Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily closed down. It closed under government pressure. If we’re honest about it, it had been under government pressure for years. Advertisers were reluctant to be in the paper for years, partly due to government sentiment. Despite being Hong Kong’s most popular paper, it was running on loans that Jimmy Lai gave it.

    Apple Daily
    Final print edition of the Apple Daily published in Hong Kong

    It’s end came with a series of cuts. Jimmy Lai has had his assets frozen as part of the national security law related investigation. The Hong Kong government extended these charges to further senior employees of the Apple Daily. Then the Hong Kong government froze the bank accounts of Apple Daily and the related companies.

    The business had 67 million US dollars; so could have kept going for another 18 months until that freeze kicked in. As it was, the last paper would have come out on Saturday. On Wednesday the lead writer was arrested and the board decided to publish its last paper on Thursday. They printed 1,000,000 copies of the final edition which sold out. On previous days they had printed 500,000 to mark the asset freeze as Hong Kongers came out to support them. Back in the late 90s the paper was around 300,000 copies a day. The typical print run was 150,000 copies a day. The paper had about 500,000 paid subscribers. I was one of them. Yes their English copy was almost sub-Guardian standard (but with less typos of course). But their English language news has stories about Hong Kong business and China that other English language outlets didn’t cover.

    The security secretary John Lee warned people not to associate with Apple Daily employees, creating a white terror style scenario.

    A lot of the commentary from people who should know better has been about the Apple Daily‘s tabloid nature. Apple Daily was Hong Kong’s most popular paper for a number of reasons

    But they conveniently ignore Apple Daily‘s pioneering work in internet video journalism. Its investigative journalism and an editorial stance that called government to account. Stories last year included expat police officers breaking planning and property laws. But the Communist Party of China doesn’t want to be examined, let alone held to account.

    Hong Kong writer Sum Lok kei summed it up really well with this post that he put on Twitter

    Yes, ppl are aware of Apple Daily’s failings, their paparazzi arm and all. What is being mourned isn’t exactly the paper, but the possibility of its existence in this city that had prided itself for its witty discretions – now replaced by a monotonic, absolute drone.

    Via @sumlokkei on Twitter

    The Hong Kong government has been very opaque about the kind of journalism that is allowed. It is arbitrary and designed to promote severe self censorship.

    Apple Daily the night after it closed down
    images of the now closed Apple Daily fence with tributes from Hong Kongers via Guardians of Hong Kong Telegram channel
    Apple Daily the night after it closed down
    Apple Daily the night after it closed down

    It all hinges around the national security law:

    • Seccession includes acts ‘whether or not by force or threat of force’
    • Subversion or colluding with foreign countries are vague. So Apple Daily were accused with colluding with foreign countries without being in touch with them
    • The law isn’t supposed to be retroactive, yet Apple Daily content from before the July cut-off date is included in its alleged violations
    • China’s definitions of state interests are expansive
    • It is extra-territorial in nature. So this post that I have written could fall foul of inciting hatred of the Hong Kong and Chinese government. Despite the fact that this post is written and hosted outside Hong Kong. If I get shanghai-ed whilst transferring through an Asian airport you know what has likely happened

    But its just the media isn’t it? No.

    • if you’re a strategist in an advertising agency writing about consumer attitudes and touch on areas like what Hong Kong localism means for brands. This would affect how brands position themselves, I wrote similar positions for brands on Brexit supporters versus remain supporters. (Brexit supporters preferred local brands with nostalgia compared to remainers.) Or changes in attitudes to home ownership and buying homewares due to immigration. The kind of things that the government won’t like then you could be doing eight years to life in jail
    • If you write critical piece of analysis on bonds, Chinese or Hong Kong ‘well connected companies’ or forward-looking views on government policies. You could be doing eight years to life in jail
    • If you create a legal opinion on any of the above for a client. You could do eight years to life in jail
    • If you did a frank audit of a well connected company as part of the audit team of an accountancy firm. You could do eight years to life in jail
    • You do legitimate academic research in an area that the Chinese or Hong Kong governments and their hangers on don’t like. You could do eight years to life in jail

    All of this sounds like a bit of an exaggeration?

    While the world was looking on at trials of Apple Daily, major retailer Watsons withdrew special edition water bottles. The water bottles were designed with the slogan #Hong Kong is very beautiful. Presumably, they had originally been created to tap into Hong Kongers love of limited edition things celebrating their city and their love of hiking in oppressively hot weather.

    They were withdrawn due to perceived seccessionist overtones. Hong Kong is actually achingly beautiful with its futuristic skylines and natural environment. By comparison lot of the Chinese mainland is butt ugly like Hubei province or Beijing in winter.

    Bao Choy, a freelance producer who worked at RTHK was fined for ‘improper car plate searches’ carried out investigating Pro-Beijing forces inspired Triad violence at Yuen Long.

    A reporter at pro-Beijing paper Ta Kung Pao who accessed the same database, but was bound over instead.

    The Department of Justice said it agreed with the order, as Wong had a clean record and was working for the pro-Beijing newspaper when he made the licence plate searches.

    Ta Kung Pao reporter off the hook over car searches – RTHK.hk English news (June 17, 2021)

    Hong Kong brought in new film censorship rules banning documentaries on the protests and anything the government doesn’t like.

    The Hong Kong government is expanding its reach into accountancy diminishing the role of Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

    This would give Hong Kong increased insights into NGOs and political parties. Professional bodies in accountancy and law have been seen as a roadblock by the Chinese and Hong Kong governments. The movement against accountancy bodies is mirrored by moves against the legal profession. The latest move to make solicitors senior counsel turns the legal profession upside down.

    You are now restricted in accessing company registry data, making ownership structures opaque. This will provide boundless opportunity for corruption and fraud and Hong Kong becomes as opaque as mainland China.

    And in a news report from Hong Kong’s public service broadcaster RTHK:

    “If it’s a police state, why not? I don’t think there’s any problem with a police state. When we say a police state, I will view the other side, that is the emphasis on security,” 

    Pro-Beijing politician Alice Mak who is a affiliated with the Federation of Trade Unions quoted in Nothing wrong with HK being a police state: lawmaker – RTHK English news service.

    GPS for your feet

    Honda has been putting in thinking into pedestrian navigation that provides haptic direction instructions through your feet.

    More information from SoraNews24.

    Pride inspiration

    June is pride month and one of the best adverts that I have seen is by Pinterest. It has members of the LGBTQI community from around the world talking about sexuality and how they learned about themselves.

  • Chanel + more news

    Chanel

    Chanel invested $1.1 billion during a pandemic. Here’s where and why | Vogue Business – new client-facing tools like concierge shopping services and an app linking existing clients with fashion advisors, store upgrades, including the purchase of its New Bond Street store in London, a new fashion, watches and fine jewellery store in Beverly Hills planned for next year, a new Paris manufacturing hub for artisans called 19M, creative collections and an ongoing commitment to sustainability – Chanel has been making some smart moves, when most other brands; even luxury ones were hunkered down. Chanel is looking to come out of the blocks strong. The new manufacturing hub is going to drive innovation and creativity at Chanel for years. The new Chanel French manufacturing facility is a world away from Burberry and Balenciaga manufacturing in China. I think that the Chanel investment in real world retail indicates the continued importance of experience in luxury retailing. It is also interesting that Chanel wasn’t making moves into casual luxury a la Kenzo, Dior or Louis Vuitton. This Chanel development will be worth keeping an eye on.

    Consumer behaviour

    George Packer: The Four Americas – The Atlantic – the sunny narrative of Free America shone on, its policies eroded the way of life of many of its adherents. The disappearance of secure employment and small businesses destroyed communities. The civic associations that Tocqueville identified as the antidote to individualism died with the jobs. When towns lost their Main Street drugstores and restaurants to Walgreens and Wendy’s in the mall out on the highway, they also lost their Rotary Club and newspaper—the local institutions of self-government. This hollowing-out exposed them to an epidemic of aloneness, physical and psychological. Isolation bred distrust in the old sources of authority—school, church, union, bank, media. – this is a really great read

    Government, which did so little for ordinary Americans, was still the enemy, along with “governing elites.” But for the sinking working class, freedom lost whatever economic meaning it had once had. It was a matter of personal dignity, identity. Members of this class began to see trespassers everywhere and embraced the slogan of a defiant and armed loneliness: Get the fuck off my property. Take this mask and shove it. It was the threatening image of a coiled rattlesnake: “Don’t tread on me.”

    Social class in America – Noahpinion – worthwhile reading alongside George Packer’s essay

    Why “lying flat,” a niche Chinese millennial meme, alarms Beijing — Quartz – Chinese youngsters, or in general the working population, have experienced huge societal and political changes in the past nine years, [leading them to realize] that there is neither the possibility for initiating a revolution nor the freedom of expression. Under such a condition, lying down has become the only option,” Wu told Quartz.

    Why I Have 75 DVDs and Blu-Rays on Top of My 5 Streaming Subs – As a Reddit user named Ben, who goes by Cinema Adherent and says he’s collected 5,000 discs, told me recently, “With services like Netflix you are always at the whim of whatever they could license for the cheapest this month. Good luck finding what you want to watch when you want to watch it.” – its the same with streaming services. I have a mix of discs and streaming subs too

    I think that this is the interesting start of something: How Secondhand Clothes Sellers Are Driving Conversations Around China’s Recycling Economy

    Culture

    [Letter from Los Angeles] The Anxiety of Influencers, By Barrett Swanson | Harper’s Magazine – this reads more like something in a Cory Doctorow short story than real life. But its real life

    Japanese comic riles China’s nationalists for giving revered Mao a zombie look｜Appledaily – The offending images were created in the third episode of Arakawa’s “Raiden-18” series. Mao, a former leader of the Communist Party, came across as a corpse that had a spell stuck to his forehead saying “where are the toilets,” comic illustrations circulating on the web showed. It appeared that Arakawa, who had visited China before, had created a satire to bemoan the lack of public toilets in the country. – this is brilliant

    Ideas

    How Xi’s China came to resemble Tsarist Russia | Financial Times – the last ruling Communist party of a major country has morphed into a conservative reactionary party bent on preserving the power of state capitalist elites and advancing a distinctly 19th century form of ethno-nationalist imperialism – true, but this would sting in China

    Intellectual property

    Kiwi wars: the golden fruit fuelling a feud between New Zealand and China | New Zealand | The Guardian – “It’s very naive,” says Gao. “You are relying on local authorities to protect your interests. And if they don’t, what do you do?” It is clear that the cultivation of Sungold in China is happening with the tacit permission of local governments, he says: “Such large-scale growing … it’s not individual.” Beijing may feel a degree of pressure to protect its global image, but state and local government officials are far less likely to be driven by China’s international obligations or reputation, he says. “Local government officials do not care,” he says. “. They don’t care about a free trade agreement between New Zealand and China. You have very little leverage to really get local authorities on your side, because they are not on your side. They are on the side of local growers.” – New Zealand’s China policy failure in a microcosm

    Media

    Behind the scenes at China TV: soft power and state propaganda | Financial Times 

    Mediatel: Mediatel News: The week in media: only one winner from the GBNews ad boycott – the aggressive and bullying manner in which campaigners have urged brands to boycott GBNews is worrying. Such fanatical behaviour has become an unhealthy feature of social media – ever quicker to blame and punish, but ever slower to be considerate and patient. 

    While many brands quickly pulled their ads off GBNews in response to the boycott, one advertiser had the bravery and integrity to say no to these demands and explain why. 

    The Co-op – hardly a bastion of “hate” given its longstanding associations with community organisations, education and the Labour Party – already had a policy in place after consulting its members about its advertising approach. 

    It made a statement reminding us of its approach and its three principles: 

    • We will not seek to affect the editorial independence of publications or channels; 
    • We will not undermine the commercial value of our society for our members; and 
    • We will ensure our values and principles are clear and undiminished regardless of surrounding content. 

    How refreshing that a brand was able to show a) it has already been thinking about this issue for a while; b) it took full responsibility for placing the ad on GBNews; and c) it has a clear regard for the importance of news media and a diversity of opinions

    Zhihu’s refreshing perspective on Gaokao & behind China’s cravings for vegan meat – Zhihu is a Q&A platform, not a million miles away from Quora in terms of depth and breadth of content. I am not sure how this Zhihu content will be seen by the party

    Security

    China links pose a threat to academic freedom in Britain | Financial Times – UK universities don’t seem to feel any societal obligation to the UK beyond existing and carrying on growing. They have expanded campuses into China. They benefit form ‘brand UK’ but feel no obligation to it. Rather like multinational companies before them. Universities have no shareholders to be beholden to, unlike Apple or similar.

    UK universities freed of societal ties have become rational creatures. Overseas students pay more money than British equivalents. There is an active incentive to not have British youth. Add in the fact that universities have a lot of real estate investments to support and you can understand why foreign students are much more desirable for these institutions from a financial point of view.

    There is a wider question over why universities seem to have a luxury pricing model, with the cost of education climbing much faster than inflation – yet if you look at universities the whole non-tenured academics mess you have to ask where did the money go. This happening in both the US and UK. Finally, what’s going to happen when the UK has as poor a bench of university graduates and post graduates as it has had for the past few decades in vocational education?

    More than a billion data items stolen in Alibaba leak｜Appledaily – more security related content here.

    He Warned Apple About the Risks in China. Then They Became Reality. – The New York Times – At one point, the Chinese government asked for the computer code underpinning the security of iPhones, according to a former Apple executive familiar with the request. To comply, Apple would have had to create a so-called back door for the Chinese authorities to bypass an iPhone’s security, similar to what the Federal Bureau of Investigation had asked for in 2016 — and Apple rebuffed the request. In China, Apple also pushed back and persuaded the government that it didn’t need the data, according to the executive. – instead, all Apple China customer data in iCloud is on Chinese government company servers

    Taiwan

    CTL fined over faulty beneficiary disclosure: FSC – Taipei Times – what’s interesting about this story is the connection to Xiao Jianhua. Xiao was snatched and smuggled out of his apartment in the Four Seasons in Hong Kong back in 2017. Xiao hasn’t been seen since, but has been rumoured to be ‘helping‘ authorities unwind his business Tomorrow Holdings. Using one of his companies to do secret Chinese state work isn’t beyond the realm of possibility

    Techno-optimism

    Theses on Techno-Optimism | LibrarianShipwreck 

    THE CCP’S NEXT CENTURY Expanding economic control, digital governance and national security | MERICS – (PDF). What is apparent is that China’s communist party is betting on techno-optimism. Technology and innovation becomes distinctly political, which explains everything from Huawei to politicians deciding which mathematics lecturers get tenure in Chinese universities.

    Technology

    It will be interesting to see how Khan’s appointment will lead to lasting change amongst ‘big tech’ companies – the FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google), Apple and Microsoft – Tech antitrust pioneer Lina Khan will lead FTC, reports say – The Verge