It’s hard to explain to someone who didn’t live through it how transformation technology has been. When I was a child a computer was something mysterious. My Dad has managed to work his way up from the shop floor of the shipyard where he worked and into the planning office.
One evening he broad home some computer paper. I was fascinated by the the way the paper hinged on perforations and had tear off side edges that allowed it to be pulled through the printer with plastic sprockets connecting through holes in the paper.
My Dad used to compile and print off work orders using an ICL mainframe computer that was timeshared by all the shipyards that were part of British Shipbuilders.
I used the paper for years for notes and my childhood drawings. It didn’t make me a computer whiz. I never had a computer when I was at school. My school didn’t have a computer lab. I got to use Windows machines a few times in a regional computer labs. I still use what I learned in Excel spreadsheets now.
My experience with computers started with work and eventually bought my own secondhand Mac. Cut and paste completely changed the way I wrote. I got to use internal email working for Corning and internet connectivity when I went to university. One of my friends had a CompuServe account and I was there when he first met his Mexican wife on an online chatroom, years before Tinder.
Leaving college I set up a Yahoo! email address. I only needed to check my email address once a week, which was fortunate as internet access was expensive. I used to go to Liverpool’s cyber cafe with a friend every Saturday and showed him how to use the internet. I would bring any messages that I needed to send pre-written on a floppy disk that also held my CV.
That is a world away from the technology we enjoy now, where we are enveloped by smartphones and constant connectivity. In some ways the rate of change feels as if it has slowed down compared to the last few decades.
YouTuber aini does good videos that analyse sociological and cultural subjects, so a video on East Asian beauty standards was inevitable. East Asian beauty standards are even more important now due to the cultural impact that they have:
Korean and Japanese beauty products that have become popular from BB cream to SK-II
Filter / camera effects mobile apps – you can see their influence looking at how Cardi B does her make-up
Soft power assets: Hallyu and anime popularity – it affects the aesthetics of this content
China
Huawei building automotive ecosystem without making its own cars – Huawei will not build cars on its own, but will continue to strengthen its automotive ecosystem alliance and platform, integrating R&D efforts of related carmakers to provide diverse resources of smart systems, software, chips and other aspects – interesting profile by Taiwanese technology news outlet DigiTimes
Interesting that proposes that cyberpunk owes as much to Japanese psyche during late bubble Japanese miracle culture as opposed to the writings of American authors Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. It reflects angst, consumerism and accelerated technology.
Cybersecurity Label for U.S. Coming as Early as April – EE Times – 600-plus companies that have joined the ioXt Alliance to help it build confidence in Internet of Things products will be among the first to experience the national cybersecurity label NIST is developing for consumer Internet of Things (IoT) products and consumer software products—as soon as April
Why The Chinese Balloon Was a Necessary Wake-Up Call – Recent events have shown that terrorism is not the only threat to the U.S. homeland. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine shattered not only the 75-year peace in Europe but also Americans’ sense of security, particularly when the Kremlin has threatened nuclear escalation. Relations with Beijing have also deteriorated to a 40-year low, punctuated by the threat of Chinese aggression against Taiwan and other regional allies and covert activities within the United States
I don’t care that much about the comings and goings of the Royal Family, let alone minor players like Harry and Meghan. I am a citizen of a republic not a subject of the Windsors. I can remember watching the first wedding of Princess Anne on our black and while television. But beyond the sound of the wedding march; I really didn’t have much of a clue of what was going on. My Mam went around the kitchen doing what she needed to be done. This was on in the background, but didn’t feel important.
By comparison, watching the state funeral Eamon de Valera; had much more of an impact. I could feel the seriousness of my grandparents and my Uncle who lived on the family farm watching the procession of the flag-draped coffin through Dublin to Glasnevin cemetery.
I have been vaguely aware of controversy surrounding Harry and Meghan, but not the detail. I know, that if I asked, my Mum would be able to give me a blow-by-blow account while my Dad would roll his eyes. If you’d have asked me three months ago if I would have been writing part of a post focusing on Harry and Meghan, I would have expressed a strong doubt.
South Park
That all changed when they saw South Park’s episode about Harry and Meghan’s ‘worldwide privacy tour’. It seemed to be a lightning rod for their collective doubts about the couple. I then had to give them a crash course on the cultural relevance of South Park. Hong Kong friends didn’t ask about Harry and Meghan, but instead asked why South Park used Harry and Meghan to pick on Canada?
Patriotic Alternative wasn’t a name familiar to me when I first heard about them instigating a riot in Liverpool on Saturday night. It doesn’t take that much to create a ruckus in some of the poorer areas of Liverpool.
I wasn’t particularly surprised by the burnt out police van; it sounds like a Merseyside Saturday night that went a bit out of control. That’s as Liverpudlian as a fried breakfast served in a ‘bin lid’ – a large white bun or bap large enough to contain bacon, sausage, a fried egg or two and brown sauce.
But there were aspects that did surprise me and all signs point to Patriotic Alternative. It’s a multi-cultural city, everyone has relatives abroad whether its extended Irish family, West Indians or deep connections within the Chinese diaspora. Which is why I was surprised that Patriotic Alternative managed to stir up so much trouble against an asylum hotel in the Knowsley area of Liverpool.
The city does have a certain degree of prejudice; primarily sectarianism. Its one of the few areas in England that has a marching season rather like Northern Ireland with an Orange Order parade held annual in Southport back when I lived up there. But Knowsley was something else. Patriotic Alternative managed to do something that I never thought was possible in cities like Liverpool or Bristol.
So reading about the event and the role of Patriotic Alternative in Dazed was an eye opener. It portrayed a city that I no longer recognised. Patriotic Alternative apparently organised the protest on a Telegram channel. What Dazed claim happened is that mainstream political statements and mainstream media coverage created an environment ripe for trouble makers like Patriotic Alternative.
According to Hope Not Hate, Patriotic Alternative shared members with prescribed far right organisation National Action. For an organisation that has a couple of hundred core members Patriotic Alternative has an outsized footprint. This footprint seems to be driven by the Patriotic Alternative Telegram channel with some 5,000 followers
Consumers in the 1970s on the changing nature of growing old, unfortunately attitudes and biases haven’t improved in the last 50 years.
Economics
US chip packaging firm Amkor closes its Shanghai plant for a week amid global market downturn | South China Morning Post – this is signalling a recession, as was AP shipments to Chinese smartphone brands stay in decline in 1Q23, says DIGITIMES Research – Fourth-quarter 2022 smartphone application processor (AP) shipments to China-based smartphone vendors amounted to 137 million units, plunging 24% from the prior quarter and 20.3% from the prior year, and will continue to experience a double-digit decline in the first quarter of 2023, according to figures from DIGITIMES Research’s latest report covering smartphone AP shipments. Because of shrinking demand and high smartphone inventory at the channel in both China and emerging markets, AP shipments to China-based smartphone vendors had already experienced on-year declines for five consecutive quarters
How China Fell In Love With Cheap Wine | Sixth Tone – reminds me of my time working on the Bordeaux wine marketing board as an account at the agency I worked for in Hong Kong. The work was focused on mainland China and promoted Bordeaux as a lifestyle brand for wine consumption rather than just gift giving
Massachusetts Democratic organ donation proposal sounds like prisoner organ harvesting. | Slate – Democratic state representatives Carlos González and Judith García introduced legislation that would allow incarcerated people to go home early—if they “donated” their organs. Specifically, the bill would “allow eligible incarcerated individuals to gain not less than 60 and not more than 365-day reduction in the length of their committed sentence” if they “donated bone marrow or organ(s).” Gonzalez argued that the bill was a step towards advancing racial equity in health care and making it easier for people of color to obtain transplants.
Hong Kong
The Hong Kong government must break its habit of relying on property developers | South China Morning Post – the article itself isn’t that interesting, but the author is. Regina Ip would be what the conservative party in the UK would call a big beast. She is a former minister level politician in the pro-China camp. Add to this the fact that despite mainland Chinese companies now outnumber local and foreign firms in Hong Kong and the economy is in decline. I expect Ip’s op-ed to be the tip of an iceberg of a shift in economic drivers that will occur sometime after John Lee leaves office. The clock is ticking on the big five families to diversify their wealth out of Hong Kong and China, following Jardines example to go into Indonesia might be a prudent start
Hong Kong reopens with post-Covid charm offensive | Financial Times – Johannes Hack, president of Hong Kong’s German Chamber of Commerce, who sits on a new task force to promote the city, said a “long-haul” effort to change business perceptions would have to go beyond plane ticket giveaways. “If you have relocated corporate functions to another place, half a year later you are probably not going to reverse the whole thing,” he said. “People who have moved to Singapore with their teen kids, there is no way they are going to do that again . . . They are not going to come back.” – feeds into the ‘its just another city in China now’ narrative
UK universities starting to lose allure for Chinese | News | The Times – well that’s screwed the Ponzi scheme that universities have engaged in via over-priced student accommodation real estate investments for reasons that aren’t exactly clear given their ownership structure and charters
Japanese fashion magazine Popteen ends physical version, switches to web installments instead – move to online only and moving away from monthly updates. Popteen ended its physical publishing as of February 1, 2023, with the February 2023 edition (released on December 28, 2022) being its last. web-based articles will be released on the first and the 15th of every month, known as “Popteen media”, and full editions of the fashion magazine will be updated a few times annually. The main reason for switching to the web edition was to make the magazine more accessible to middle and high-school students, who may not receive an allowance or be able to work part-time to afford physical copies of Popteen
Great video on microchip counterfeiting and recycling. The Japanese are doing some of the best work authenticating chips. Also if its bad for US defence contractors, just imagine how bad it will be for the sanctioned Russian defence sector.
Seeing for the Sightless – Luo, 26, suffers from congenital cataracts and is pursuing a degree in acupuncture and massage therapy at a college in Beijing. He needs help on the scales as there is no voice assistant function at the training center. On a mobile app called Be My Eyes (BME), he sends out a video call. Pointing his phone camera at the scales, he asks, “Hello, can you read the number for me, please?” A volunteer on the other end tells him, “91 kg.” Luo says thanks and hangs up. Usually, these exchanges only last a few seconds. Being tech savvy, Luo wrote a program back in high school to help the visually impaired memorize English vocabulary, something he himself struggled with. The app would randomly pick a word from a list he composed and he would spell it out after hearing the word. BME, developed by Hans Jørgen Wiberg, a visually impaired man from Denmark, drew Luo’s attention as soon as the Android version was available in China in 2017. Currently, there are 445,000 visually impaired users from all over the world and more than six million volunteers on BME.
Style
Adidas Tumbles as Losses From Its Kanye West Venture Pile Up – The New York Times – interesting how badly Ivy Park is doing and this on their business in China: Adidas in China: a brand seeking its redemption – In the second half of 2022, Adidas CEO Kasper Rorsted estimated losses of revenue of more than 35% in the Chinese market. He declared that such a violent drop was caused by some mistakes. For instance, the struggle of keeping up with the local brands, the failed recovery after the zero-covid policy, and the scandal of Xinjiang cotton.After the winter Olympics, the trend of Guochao, or the “national trend”, started to develop. More young Chinese consumers prefer buying local brands rather than western sportswear brands. In August 2022, the local firm, Anta, overtook Nike and became the biggest sportswear brand in China with a revenue of more than USD3.79 billion. Li-Ning, another Chinese firm, also registered revenue of USD1.76 billion against Adidas’ USD1.72 billion, pushing the German brand out of the podium. The zero-Covid policy has been a big problem for Adidas. In 2022, the company had to deal with closed shops and rising costs. In particular, the general lockdown which paralyzed China for the last few years resulted in the desegregation of the complex system of supply chains built up by the German brand. The disrupted supply chains cost Adidas a loss of USD427 million in the first quarter of 2022.
SMIC expects 10-12% revenue drop in 1Q23 | DigiTimes – China-based pure-play foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) expects to post a revenue decline of 10-12% sequentially in the first quarter of 2023, with gross margin falling further to 19-21%.
MotherDuck: Big Data is Dead – Jordan Tigani spent ten years working on Google BigQuery, during which time he was surprised to learn that the median data storage size for regular customers was much less than 100GB. In this piece he argues that genuine Big Data solutions are relevant to a tiny fraction of companies, and there’s way more value in solving problems for everyone else. I’ve been talking about Datasette as a tool for solving “small data” problems for a while
The Patagonia vest recession was a phrase that I first heard touted by Scott Galloway to encapsulate the economy in 2022. In most recessions, the first sectors to go under are construction, retailing and manufacturing – blue and pink collar working class people suffer the blunt of lay-offs and site closures due to recession.
The kind of vest thought of when one talks about a Patagonia vest recession. It is called a Better Sweater vest and was popular with media firms, technology companies and investment banks as employee schwag.
recession, in economics, a downward trend in the business cycle characterized by a decline in production and employment, which in turn causes the incomes and spending of households to decline.
A recession generally isn’t felt uniformly across the economy. It doesn’t affect all households. In the past, the middle class might be affected but not as severely affected as working class people. My Dad had managed to move off the shop floor and into an office job in the shipyard as a planner. He was made redundant because he worked in heavy industry and he was in a minority compared to the thousands of other blue collar workers let go.
Not all businesses experience actual declines in income, for instance accountancy firms, business consultancies and change management firms may find a high demand for their services. However, there is a general expectation about the future being less certain during a recession. This causes businesses to delay making large purchases or investments and possibly look to reduce costs to conserve cash.
In recessions, the output decline can be traced to a reduction in purchases of durable household goods such as computers and washing machines by consumers. This drives a corresponding decline in corporate purchases of machinery and other equipment.
If the companies aren’t already running ‘just-in-time’ there reduction in additions of goods to stocks or inventories. Where ‘just-in-time’ is in place, the client reduces their forecast demand to their supply chain driving a similar effect. The greatest effect is likely on inventory; businesses stop adding to their existing inventories and become more willing to draw on them to fill production orders. Inventory declines thus have a double impact on production volume as it filters through the supply chain like a Mexican wave.
So what happened?
But the Patagonia vest recession was different. A number of things happened:
Technology stocks and start-ups had been swept up in a decade of irrational exuberance in terms of business values
Funding suddenly declined for startups. This was partly due to interest rates and a realisation that crypto-currencies weren’t worth what many investors had assumed. This led to a raft of redundancies
Crypto companies started falling one after the other. Prominent exchange FTX and related investment fund Alameda Research go under with allegations of fraud. Their rival Binance is ensnared in legal issues too
Cloud software firms suddenly find that their pay-as-you-go model can result in sharp cash flow declines which affect their profits
Big technology companies had staffed up to meet the COVID-19 related demand, found themselves with an employee overhang. This particularly affected e-tailing and cloud services business. They cut back on staff as they release poor financial results. BUT, the amount of people cut as a percentage was still below the proportion of head count Microsoft would have let go back when it practiced stack ranking. The mainstream media focus on the big numbers rather than the small overall proportion of lay-offs. Secondly those getting made redundant are finding it a reasonable market to get work outside the technology sector
Activist investors object to what they consider to be more indulgent projects like Meta’s deep investment in the future metaverse, which is a very long term bet
Meanwhile, services and manufacturing industry kept ramping up to meet supply-chain related challenges and meet latent demand. But had problems getting staff. You have restaurants that open up limited hours due to their problems hiring. Manufacturing businesses have been hoarding staff, because they know how hard it is for them to recruit
Inflation in the US is starting to come under control as supply chains started to balance out
Of course, all of this doesn’t mean that the Patagonia vest recession won’t bleed on to Main Street, but at the start it looked very different.
The Patagonia vest boom prior to the Patagonia vest recession
To the general public, awareness of the Patagonia vest as an emblematic garment of class came from the press photos taken at the Sun Valley conference hosted by private investment firm Allen & Co. which built up a bit of a reputation in terms of ‘speed dating’ for mergers and acquisitions deals. Media titans like the Murdoch family met Silicon Valley CEOs and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. Telecommunications was represented primarily through the cable TV company executives who attended.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos decided to buy the Washington Post when he was at Sun Valley. It was also where the Time Warner | AOL merger was cooked up.
Cameras aren’t allowed inside the conference which operates in a Chatham House-style arrangement. So press photographers could only take pictures when people were arriving or leaving the conference centre. Sun Valley sat at the nexus of a media and technology sector boom over almost two decades. The bulk of the media photos showed people walking cropped at the knees or their grotch, which focused readers attention on the tops that they were wearing. And a uniform emerged to the general public. The uniform was the Patagonia vest to deal with the cool early morning and early evenings of Sun Valley. These vests were given out some years by Allen & Co.; but the Patagonia vest has extended itself far beyond Sun Valley.
It became such a cultural touchstone that the Sun Valley conference complete with vests was lampooned in a story arch of Succession.
From working with dot com clients to when I worked at Yahoo!, Silicon Valley fashion was bifurcated in nature. The reality of Silicon Valley couture is that many people wore a t-shirt jeans and layers like hoodies. Footwear would vary somewhere between sneakers and trekking sandals.
But the ‘MBA class’ of professional managers tended to wear collared shirts, ‘smart’ jeans or chinos. They may have worn a sleeveless pullover or fleece vest. Their venture capital counterparts who where probably their MBA class colleagues wore a similar uniform, with a bit more of lean towards Ralph Lauren country club friendly shirts or polo shirts.
Corporate branded wear started with bags. I had my share of corporate branded Timbuk 2 bags. Different engineering projects would have celebratory t-shirts for things like hack days. Eventually we started to see branded corporate wear, from the cringeworthy chambray or scratchy polo shirts issued to booth staff at an exhibition to hoodies and fleeces. I knew engineers who bragged about being dressed almost head to toe (sweatshirt material top, t-shirt, boxers and socks) in schwag that they had picked up for free as an anti-fashion statement.
You can see these dual styles in the TV show Silicon Valley. Coming from a creative agency background, I felt more at home in the hoodie wearing crowd.
Secondly, there was a cargo cult amongst try-hards in the early to mid-2000s there was a move towards turtle necks with Silicon Valley types looking suspiciously like architects as they tried to ape Steve Jobs. There has been a similar buzz has surrounded Allbirds sports shoes
The finance sector had its own transformation. Early dot com era west coast-based tech focused investment bank financiers such as Frank Quattrone mirrored the east coast convention of the tailored business suit, usually in grey with a conservative tie and pocket square. This would be paired with a set of brown shoes, usually loafers. You could buy the look at Armani, Barneys or Brooks Brothers depending on your budget.
The 2008 Great Recession hit the finance centre like a shockwave. There was a need to dress down. A few things drove this:
An Armani suit is an obvious target when you have Occupy Wall Street camped outside your place of work
Wall Street had to modernise and attract new types of talent and competed against tech firms
The need to mirror the look of the hedge funds and technology companies that investment bankers wanted to do business with. They already stood out with their east coast vibe, the outfits communicated that ‘actually we’re just like you’ with varying degrees of success
The look has morphed into a relaxed yet sophisticated uniform that drew on preppyness, or the Ivy League look and the country club vibe evoked by Silicon Valley VCs. This resulted in a grey or navy fleece vest paired with a button-down, chino pants, and maybe even leather sneakers. It fitted in with weekend wear in more high class neighbourhoods and didn’t scream privilege in the same way that traditional Wall Street did.
However this became a power validation all of its own, dubbed the “Midtown Uniform” by many for its popularity throughout Midtown Manhattan as the business casual look rolled across the cultural wallpaper of Wall Street.
Expired?
Patagonia haven’t enjoyed their vests being the punchline of a joke. They are a mission led company that looks to be sustainable and environmentally friendly. They’ve been described as the conscience of the outdoor industry. Patagonia doesn’t want its products sold on Amazon, not because it’s luxurious and exclusive. But because Patagonia believes that Amazon encourages thoughtless consumption and is bad for the environment. Being seen as the uniform of the privileged didn’t go down well. So in April 2019, Patagonia announced that it wouldn’t provided corporate branded clothing to financial institutions or fintech companies, preferring to focus on mission-led environmental businesses instead. Given its iconic status within these sectors, the news was given the kind of coverage that would usually be reserved for an uncharacteristically large drop in the S&P 500 index.
The case against fintech businesses is down to their rapidly expanding energy footprint, which I have covered in depth elsewhere.
While a clear successor to the Patagonia vest hasn’t become apparent yet, there are brands looking to take their crown such as
Cotopaxi – who are environmentally friendly, but also corporate friendly
North Face – have been doing some interesting work in more environmentally friendly materials and already well known in the corporate branding space
SCOTTeVest – famous for being traveller-friendly. It comes with routing for your headphone cables, a plethora of pockets and charging wires. Their CEO called the Patagonia stance PR BS
Grandfathered in
Secondly, Patagonia decided that it wouldn’t leave long term customers in the lurch, which probably means that your favourite investment bank or big tech firm is safe from the customer purge.
According to Corley Kenna, senior director of global communications at Patagonia, customers and the press had inquired as to “whether we’re leaving ‘bros out in the cold.’” Kenna confirmed again that long-term customers would be grandfathered in.
And those left in the economic cold can still enjoy a Patagonia vest recession. I am thankful that it wasn’t called the Carhartt or Chore coat recession signalling a creative class layoff-led recession.
Is nepotism really that bad? | LinkedIn – Jed Hallam wrote an essay on nepotism and the effects that he perceives it as having on inequality. Jed tries to steer a line on nepotism somewhere between recognising that the people may have an interest and talent, whilst pointing out inequality related issues derived from nepotism. Nepotism itself is widespread, whether its impact is small or large.
Jed is concerned that nepotism can actively remove opportunities for less conventional candidates that may do better if assessed solely in merit.
Social, cultural and economic barriers
Even if nepotism disappeared, our unconscious desire to hire people more like us, can mean that candidates face challenges in social, cultural and economic realms. I don’t drink, don’t have an interest in rugby union or football. I knew no one down here and sold my car to pay my first month’s rent when I moved to London. The analogy of a viking burning his boat behind him would be apt. I didn’t, and couldn’t if I wanted to, move to London earlier than my late 20s. I had to put myself through university and build up a modest amount of money to back myself as my parents didn’t have any.
One aspect of Jed’s essay on nepotism particularly surprised me:
“the proportion of people from working-class backgrounds operating in the creative industries has more than halved since the 1970s–falling from 16.4 percent to just 7.9 percent”
The problem with nepotism is that its hard to define and work out the difference between good and bad nepotism. For instance:
I line managed some one who had gone to Harrow and had found it harder to get into a creative agency because he was considered to be too posh by interviewees. He since went on to work successfully for other agencies, inhouse at a well loved brand and now runs his own shop
Would someone following on into the family profession be a case of nepotism? A classic example from the creative industry would be Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk, whose father is disco producer ‘Daniel Vangarde’ aka Daniel Bangalter. One could imagine how being exposed to music and a studio environment from an early age made Thomas the kind of producer he was.
Or the Arnault children taking roles in LVMH? European business often rely on intergenerational family ownership and management
Nepotism is more obvious when you have events like the recent US college scandal. The problem with debate about any hot subject like nepotism is the lack of room for nuance and good judgement. A second aspect to it is making people feel like victims of nepotism and inequality, rather than encouraging striving. Admittedly that is even made harder to do when inequality that underpins nepotism has become much more extreme.
People look for easy solves and clear lines for issues like nepotism, when what we really need are better decision making and good judgement.
Nepotism unresolved
There will always be people who feel hard done by, it wasn’t them it was X external factor. Sometimes it isn’t your time, or you didn’t make clear how good you were. Equal opportunity doesn’t equate to equal outcomes, the case in point that nepotism can learn from is currently going through the US Supreme Court. In an age of algorithmically filtered CVs I can see nepotism become attenuated rather than resolved.
V Shanshan, “Why are you Forcing me to Embrace Solidarity?” – Reading the China Dream – Weibo post from someone whose uncle had died from complications from covid the previous day, writing to express his anger and bitterness at the hectoring calls in China’s official media to “come together” and “look to the future” as China decides to live—and die—with covid. That such calls ring hollow for many Chinese makes perfect sense, since China’s mighty messaging machine seems to have turned on a dime, suddenly arguing that Omicron is no big deal and that “everyone is responsible for their own health” after insisting for years that the virus is deadly and that collective behavior was the only way to control it
A Place for Fire – The Paris Review – the primal draw of fire in the home. This reminded me of the central role of the turf and wood fuelled range in the Irish farmhouse where I spent a good deal of my childhood
Project MUSE – The Surge of Nationalist Sentiment among Chinese Youth during the COVID-19 Pandemic – Since 2012, Beijing has been promoting a strain of populist nationalism which underscores both the institutional superiority of the ruling party and the cultural superiority of being Chinese. At the international level, however, the image of both the regime and the Chinese has been marred due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in Wuhan (December 2019–January 2020). This study examines the extent and the form that the surge in nationalist sentiment of Chinese young people has taken during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a questionnaire survey of 1,200 students from a sample of 20 colleges/universities in China (June–July 2020), this study shows that the respondents express high satisfaction with the state’s performance in tackling the pandemic, and that there is a substantial surge of nationalist sentiment with a high level of hostility towards other nations (e.g. the United States). Such nationalist sentiment, however, is found to express a bifurcated pattern in that young Chinese also tend to embrace the opportunity to work and study in the Western societies they ostensibly dislike – yeah, is it smart to let them in though, given Chinese laws obligating them to cooperate with the MSS if requested?
Project MUSE – Living with the State-Led Order: Practical Acceptance and Unawareness of the Chinese Middle Class – China’s expanding middle class is often found to support the regime and lack democratic aspirations. We find that one section of the middle class depends upon the state for jobs and other material benefits, and the other works for the private and foreign sectors of the country’s economy. Once separated as such, we found that the non-state middle class clearly shows lower support for the regime. Furthermore, unlike the state middle class, which registers lower democratic support, the non-state middle class shows a similar level of democratic support as other social classes. In general, however, while only pragmatically accepting the current order, both middle class groups nonetheless appear lacking practical knowledge and understanding of liberal democratic institutions such as free media and multiparty elections. The unforthcoming attitudes toward democracy might also derive from a general sense of fearing the loss of order and the other related uncertainties
Economics
The true priorities of the global elite – by Judd Legum – The New York Times’ Peter Goodman, author of “Davos Man” — a blistering criticism of the WEF and its neoliberal ideology — recently offered this brief description: The World Economic Forum is not a secret government or organized conspiracy. It is a giant business meeting, a chance for the heads of multinational oil giants to sit opposite Persian Gulf potentates — fronted by the performance art of earnest panel discussions aimed at solving the problems of the day. More than anything, Davos is a prophylactic against change, an elaborate reinforcement of the status quo served up as the pursuit of human progress. Tuesday’s WEF program included a panel with Senators Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV). The pair shared an on-stage high-five in celebration of the filibuster, which has been used to block increases in the minimum wage, protections for voting rights, and efforts to maintain access to reproductive health care.
German tank manufacturer’s warning puts pressure on Ukraine’s allies | Ukraine | The Guardian – Battle tanks from German industrial reserves wanted by Ukraine will not be ready to be delivered until 2024, the arms manufacturer Rheinmetall has warned, increasing pressure on Nato allies to support Ukraine with armoured vehicles in active service instead, ahead of a key meeting this week.“Even if the decision to send our Leopard tanks to Kyiv came tomorrow, the delivery would take until the start of next year,” Rheinmetall’s chief executive, Armin Papperger, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. Rheinmetall, which manufactures the battle vehicle’s gun, has 22 Leopard 2 and 88 older Leopard 1 tanks in its stocks. Getting the Leopard tanks ready for battle, however, would take several months and cost hundreds of millions of euros the company could not put up until the order was confirmed
Macau gaming: Chau’s jail term warns punters and investors alike | Financial Times – It is worthwhile considering this in part of the wider picture of how China is trying deal with capital flight. It also chimes with efforts to move Hong Kong from being about ‘wealth management’ i.e. schemes to allow capital flight out of the mainland to the west to trying to pull in western money to invest in Chinese businesses. Macau was part of that process too.
Expect a clampdown on insurance policy sales people. At the moment a lot of them sell these things via WeChat with a view to providing financial services to mainlanders in a similar way to what daigou do with luxury goods from abroad. I know work at home mums that do this for Prudential as a side hustle
Auction houses have expanded like crazy in Hong Kong during the pandemic and I would expect the authorities to look at how they can shut this off or use to only import items into China rather than having them leave again. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are strongly encouraged to shutdown in Hong Kong and up up in Sanya on Hainan island instead so they stay inside the yuan firewall
Expect pressure on foreign banks on wealth management / capital flight vehicles. There maybe some latitude through mainland banks where the government can monitor the flow through back-end access into their systems
Ultimately, Singapore will be the new Hong Kong – which is happening already due to ‘run culture’ and a plethora of wealth management and family office services being provided.
Hong Kong’s financial hub is at a crossroads | Financial Times – Look for a senior job in Hong Kong these days on LinkedIn and you’re unlikely to find any openings unless you’re a speaker of Cantonese or Mandarin, or both. “That’s a big change,” confides a longtime British expat in the territory. “It’s understandable. But it’s a big change.” The evolving jobs market is just one of the visible signs of the tilt to mainland China that promises to redefine Hong Kong’s role as a global financial centre. Beijing’s growing influence on the former British colony — evident in four years of security crackdowns and tough Covid lockdowns — has raised existential questions about the sustainability of the territory’s role as Asia’s unparalleled bridgehead to global finance – yeah soon even the finance bros will go
Japan was the future but it’s stuck in the past – BBC News – Japan had emerged from the destruction of World War Two and conquered global manufacturing. The money poured back into the country, driving a property boom where people bought anything they could get their hands on, even chunks of forest. By the mid-1980s, the joke was that the grounds of the imperial palace in Tokyo were worth the same as all of California. The Japanese call it the “Baburu Jidai” or the bubble era. Then in 1991 the bubble burst. The Tokyo stock market collapsed. Property prices fell off a cliff. They are yet to recover. A friend was recently negotiating to buy several hectares of forest. The owner wanted $20 per square metre. “I told him forest land is only worth $2 a square metre,” my friend said. “But he insisted he needed $20 a square metre, because that’s what he’d paid for it in the 1970s.” Think of Japan’s sleek bullet trains, or Toyota’s “just-in-time” marvel of assembly-line manufacturing – and you could be forgiven for thinking Japan is a poster child for efficiency. It is not. Rather the bureaucracy can be terrifying, while huge amounts of public money are spent on activities of dubious utility – this says more about the persons values than about Japan. Also coming from Britain’s public broadcast service, it is ironic that Japan is at the centre of many critical global supply chains and Britain is being stripped out of them. A bit of introspection is required
Luxury Brands Beware: Angered Chinese Tourists Are Avoiding Japan And South Korea | Jing Daily – South Korea issued yellow tags for China’s inbound travelers to wear at its airports, and Japan followed suit, giving red tags to passengers coming from the country. The initiative has elicited outrage online. On Weibo, the hashtag “Japan issues red tags to mark Chinese travelers” has gathered 200 million views, becoming the fourth most trending topic at one point. Many Chinese travelers complained that they not only had to pay for COVID tests and potential quarantines in subpar conditions upon entering South Korea but also had to wear a yellow tag on their necks to identify themselves as coming from China for special inspection at airports. The tags, along with South Korean reporters snapping photos at them, made them feel like they were criminals being transferred
Good to see that we’re finally beyond the 3D printing hype bubble and its true benefits can be appreciated. This article is a good run down of the pros and cons of 3D printing in an industrial setting. In some ways it reminds me of the ‘manufacturing cells’ concept were a computer controlled machine tool with switchable tool faces would do multiple jobs and process multiple types of products in small batches.
Not all manufacturing is true Fordian production lines. Just in the same way that digital printing has been good for small run books and catalogues or printing on demand; yet ‘traditional printing’ is still used for bigger print runs – additive manufacturing will be alongside traditional manufacturing processes.
Chinese Celebrities’ Political Signalling on Sina Weibo | The China Quarterly | Cambridge Core – Recent studies have revealed how the state disciplines and co-opts celebrities to promote patriotism, foster traditional values and spread political propaganda. However, how do celebrities adapt to the changing political environment? Focusing on political signalling on the social media platform Sina Weibo, we analyse a novel dataset and find that the vast majority of top celebrities repost from official accounts of government agencies and state media outlets, though there are variations. Younger celebrities with more followers tend to repost from official accounts more often. Celebrities from Taiwan tend to repost less than those from the mainland and Hong Kong, despite being subject to the same rules. However, the frequent political signalling by the most influential celebrities among younger generations suggests that the state has co-opted celebrity influence on social media to broadly promote its political objectives
Macs In the Enterprise: A Cisco Case Study – Creative Strategies – Despite extremely high desire from employees to use Macs (66% according to a study we did last year), most IT organizations keep the Mac users in their organization at arm’s length. Offering true platform of choice matters when it comes to employee experience and employee satisfaction with their workplace, tools, and IT departments. This is exactly what Cisco found when they studied internal employees. A Cisco report on IT satisfaction of employees found satisfaction to be significantly lower when employees were not offered their platform of choice in a laptop – this bullshit has been going on my entire career, HR departments are a major issue as well
