Ged Carroll

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  • Internet experience in China

    If you are like me you probably have some favourite platforms that you find useful for your online life. This is a list of what I found worked and didn’t work from my internet experience in China. I thought that it would be handy to know, so that if you were visiting you could put surrogate services in place to continue your online life.

    Works well

    • Flickr – both Uploadr and the site work just as well as they work at home
    • Delicious – again just works as well as you would expect it to at home
    • Google – seemed to work fine, though this may change because they haven’t been the best corporate citizen in China recently. Interestingly, typing Google.com took me directly through to the US site rather than their usual trick of geo-targeting and loading up their local country portal instead – which is a source of mild irritation when I am travelling
    • Google Analytics – dashboard worked as promised
    • Feedburner – worked as good as usual. The 120-odd drop in subscribers on the day I arrived in China I put down to my content being uninteresting as it picked right up again the following day
    • Pretty much all the major IM platforms worked well: I use Skype, Yahoo! messaging, AOL Instant Messenger, GTalk
    • LinkedIn – worked fine
    • Last.fm – worked just as well as it does back home. I scrobbled and listened to music from Shenzhen
    • Web radio – I logged on to RTE to keep up with the latest news and current affairs closer to home with no problem at all

    Patchy performance

    • Foursquare – whilst I could select Hong Kong as a city, it found it often difficult to register with a place as it struggled to match location with ‘geo-coding’. A bit disappointing to be honest with you. I did use it successfully in Shenzhen where I found free wi-fi. Your mileage may vary

    Didn’t work

    • Twitter – I found myself using instant messenger much more, to compensate for the way that I use Twitter as a communications tool. I use a multi-platform instant messaging client called Adium and had no problem with Yahoo! Instant Messenger, GTalk, Skype, .mac | MobileMe messaging, AOL Instant messenger out here so workarounds for communication are really easy
    • Friendfeed – to be honest I only looked at this because I thought I may be able to catch up on a few Twitter feeds
    • Facebook doesn’t work, but my account is a zombie account anyway with content being fed in from other places like Twitter
    • Bloglines – I would recommend downloading an RSS newsreader client and importing your OPML file to temporarily replace using Bloglines. I missed my RSS reader far more than the more banal communications of Twitter

    Internet experience in China: performance

    Generally sites can be a little slow and occasionally you need to use the refresh button. Traffic gets very slow indeed on Sunday evenings.

    The Chinese are enthusiastic adopters of the ‘net and families often log-on to watch a film or TV programming on a Sunday evening – during this time, website load times noticeably increased and I found video Skype calls worse than useless. So let’s hope that BBC iPlayer doesn’t get too popular in the UK, otherwise reality TV shows may cause the ‘net to grind to a halt. More China related content here.

  • Impressions of China, from Shenzhen

    My first impressions of China are tied to a single number. China has a current economic growth rate of 8 per cent.

    8 per cent growth

    Even if the UK economy were overheating in a boom, it would be barely running at 3  percent growth. 8 per cent growth creates a huge amount of activity.

    It is something that would be more familiar to our industrial age forebears who would have experienced similar growth in the likes of Birmingham, Detroit, Manchester or Yokohama. I saw building sites working around the clock and infrastructure being thrown in at a speed that would inconceivable in the UK.

    The comparison to Victorian Britain also bears up in terms of the emergence of a middle-class and a large working-class population for whom getting a good job is extremely competitive.

    In many respects the middle-class Chinese has more in common with their American counterparts than Europeans. Home-grown mini-vans beloved of ‘soccer moms’ are popular on the roads and I saw more Buick and Cadillac saloons here than I have seen anywhere else outside the US.

    This viewpoint has probably been reinforced by the fact that Shenzhen, like Los Angeles, is such a car city. The city authorities are addressing that at the moment. However, these surface impressions of China belie the fact that Chinese middle class still earn less than their US counterparts and have to save half their money to deal with future health costs.

    The city of Shenzhen are putting in four mass transit lines at once: for a comparison London took over three decades to get the Jubilee Line in place.

    I got to try the mass transit system which has already been put in. It is of a similar standard to rail systems in Singapore and Hong Kong. The ticket system is completely paperless with single tickets looking like an old-time milk bottle token that dairies used to issue to customers as a payment system. There is nothing old school about these tokens as they seem to be RFID tags.

    Impressions of China Dream, from the perspective of the middle class

    A quick scan of English-language books for sale revealed an interest in finance, stock-picking, management – particularly Peter Drucker and quality improvement / process improvement – the Juran Institute works and The Toyota Way seemed to be pretty popular. All of these books give impressions of a China dream that is based on the kind of hard work and getting ahead that would have been familiar to Americans in the immediate aftermath of world war 2.

    I have been staying in a condo which would not look out of place in Mountain View or San Mateo.

    Again surface impressions of China may lead to false assumptions about consumption. The growth of Shenzhen is also very Chinese, you may shop at a 7-Eleven and sip a latte at Starbucks, but there are very few recognisable names in neon at the top of the skyscrapers – the only ones I saw were Hyundai and Samsung. Traffic is much more chaotic in terms of the way people drive than we are used to in the UK. Electric scooters are popular and are lethal, hard to spot like a bicycle and silent.

    Alongside the growth is coming reinvention. In a set of TV factory buildings; an area called OCT-LOFT is being developed as a mix of galleries and workplaces for the creative industries. A few hours people watching in the spacious Starbucks down there saw a plethora of Mac laptops open and busily working away on the free wi-fi: kind of equivalent to the Truman Brewery in London.

    If the West deludes itself that China can make stuff, but can’t do the knowledge economy then it is in for a rude awakening. Although Shenzhen is the world’s workshop, there is a transition going on to higher-value products and services.

    I got a change to talk to a local web developer and could see the sophistication of this market catching up the UK digital sector sooner rather than later. Couple this with China Telecom offering business web hosting at 200 Renimbi per year and you get a sense that things could move on here very fast.

    A thirst for technology

    Looking around the markets here, there is a thirst for technology similar to what you see in Japan. Mobile technology was particularly popular, there were handsets on display that I previously thought were Japan or Korea-only models with large swivel TV screens on the handsets.

    I used a PAYG SIM by China Mobile which provided me with both a Chinese and Hong Kong number. Mobile devices have also become a luxury totem here with Vertu and Porsche Design devices displayed alongside the latest models from Nokia.

    Value proposition

    Chinese consumers are not all about price. Yes Chinsese consumers like free stuff, gifts and status recognition through VIP loyalty schemes and experiences. However impressions of China consumers are changing from price to a more complex value proposition. There are many foreign-made products as well as foreign brands on sale in the department stores. Ones that I immediately noticed were:

    • Zwilling – the German manufacturer of quality kitchen knives, personal tweezers and nail scissors
    • Carrera sunglasses and goggles
    • Victorinox Swiss Army Officers Knives
    • Ray-Ban sunglasses
    • Porsche Design

    Whilst China may embrace many aspects of the market economy, the government is very good at putting in infrastructure for the greater public good such as art galleries and public parks. It is amazing how green the place actually is. For every Shenzhen, there is a rust belt down in Hubei province with a dark dystopian vibe. Impressions of China from Shenzhen have to be tempered with a knowledge of the hinterland. Shenzhen is a special economic zone. It is part of the vanguard of where China wants to go. It is at the top of what China hopes it can direct into trickle down economics.  More posts on Shenzhen here.

  • The sale tag

    The sale tag is like manna from heaven for my Mum. She loves a bargain and looks forward to sales at her local stores.

    Like many people she suspects that some stores may put in special stock that they have shipped in to sell especially at this time amongst items that have just not sold.

    Allied Carpets was often the butt of jokes for its never-ending sales, but thought of as the exception rather than the norm.

    Sale basket in Shenzhen

    A friend here in Shenzhen got this basket from a market here. The markets are usually full of production overruns and samples. I managed to pick up a couple of genuine North Face Basecamp duffle bags for 30 percent less than UK retail.

    What I found interesting about this particular item was that it had a UK sale tag attached.It reads £29.99  £19.99 SALE.

    My initial reaction was how can it be reduced if it hasn’t even reached the shopfloor yet? It was an interesting proof-point of how retailers play customers as chumps. By all means enjoy bargain hunting but don’t believe the SALE tag hype. From what my friend told me about the production overrun market; the retailer in question (Woolworths) seemed to have vastly overestimated British consumer demand for rattan laundry baskets.

    My friend had the basket for a few years. I was writing this post almost a year to the day after Woolworths Group had gone into administration, closing its stores across the UK. More retailing related content here.

  • Countdown on the traffic lights

    Visiting a different country gives you a chance to notice the small everyday things that might be different to your own country. A case in point for me was the countdown on traffic lights in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

    When I reflected on the countdown on the traffic lights, I started to think about the concept of time and traffic congestion.

    Chinese driving culture

    Time in traffic congestion is not wasted time. Waiting at a traffic lights is a time for catching up on reading, making phone calls, sending text messages or returning emails. Its the sign of hustle for a non-stop operation. Shenzhen is the Chinese dream and the people here aren’t going to waste a minute if they can be hustling for an extra yuan or two.

    Hands-free kits are the exception rather than the norm. I was in a car where a driver fished out assorted Nokia handsets out of pockets in traffic congestion to answer calls and phone other people. Business was conducted on the go.

    I presume the countdown on the traffic lights was to try and prevent road accidents. Chinese drivers have adapted their practices that would drive your average British traffic police officer.  To better use this dead time that would be otherwise wasted. Drivers use the countdown on the traffic lights; as way of optimising their time reading, making phone calls, texting or eating. Once the lights are green, drivers are told how much time they have to get across the junction. More China related content here.

  • The electric scooter

    One of the first things that I noticed about the Shenzhen streets was the prevalence of the electric scooter. They are ridden by young people and old people. They’re used for delivery services, commuting to and from work and going to the buy the groceries.

    They aren’t slick looking Tron light bike type conveyances, or Something worthy of Shotaro Kaneda’s bike that would fit into the Neo Tokyo-like streets of central Shenzhen. Instead the electric scooter looks like an emaciated Honda Cub. It all comes across a bit half-arsed.

    Electric scooter, originally uploaded by renaissancechambara.

    They represent the cheapest form of powered transport in urban China.

    These are probably the scariest things that you are likely to encounter in China, short of being invited to drink tea with the authorities. They are fast enough to be dangerous, but slow enough to be annoying for other road users. They make no sound, not even the rushing of tires on road surface.

    The riders tend to have little skill and view fellow road users as potential targets. They are also not ridden only ridden on the road, but on the pavements and pedestrians have to be constantly in a high state of vigilance watching out for errant electric scooter riders. This being China, no fucks are given. If you wipe out on the pavement, they’ll just ride on. They’re absurdly dangerous.

    Finally, given that most of China’s electricity supply comes from coal fired power stations; and your scooter will last a few years at best – their green credentials are somewhat lacking. More design related content here.