哈囉 – here you’ll find posts related to Hong Kong. That includes the territory, the culture, business, creativity and history. I lived and travelled to Hong Kong a number of times, so sometimes the content can be quite random.
In addition, I have long loved Cantonese culture and cuisine, so these might make more appearances on this category. I am saddened by the decline in the film and music production sectors.
I tend to avoid discussing local politics, and the external influence of China’s interference in said politics beyond how it relates to business and consumer behaviour in its broadest context.
Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Apple Daily launched a new ad format that I thought was particularly notable that might appear in branding as well as Hong Kong.
If there are subjects that you think would fit with this category of the blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.
Carl Schmitt was a German jurist, legal theorist and political theorist. The common narrative around him is that he came up with the legal principles that justified most of Nazi Germany’s greatest excesses. His work has also been used to justify the Xi-era legal system in China with legal thinking leaning heavily on the work that Carl Schmitt did. But there is more to the Schmitt story than that.
Conservative state theory
While the current Communist Party of China thinkers see Schmitt as a like mind, the German legal system and Schmitt’s legal system would have appealed to China from the founding of modern China with the monarchy being deposed, through warlord era though to the leadership of the Kuomintang. Germany had consolidated into a modern nation and built an empire in a relatively short space of time thanks to its legal system and a conservative state theory.
Cautionary tale of the Weimar Republic
Post World War One, the Weimar Republic put checks and balances on the government through the courts, which was seen as a negative given the relative performance of the country. Into this political change came Carl Schmitt. Ryan Mitchell does a good job at bringing Carl Schmitt’s story to life and talk through his relevance to China through the years.
Moving forward to Xi-era China, the Weimar Republic that Carl Schmitt lived in looks like a living nightmare in the the same way that German Empire looked like an exemplar. Secondly, socialism didn’t provide an appropriate legal system for Communist China, so they adapted the German system that the Kuomintang had used previously with Chinese socialist characteristics that Hitler would have approved of.
Carl Schmitt comes across as a more complex figure than he has been recently portrayed.
Consumer behaviour
How to make friends as an adult | The Face – really interesting that The Face felt that they had to write this article. I made some of my long term friends in London during my late 20s and early 30s. Many of the readers will also have friends from college or university as well. It implies that they aren’t socialising at house parties, going to concerts, club nights or bars. Work also seems to be a spartan supply of friendships.
HSBC strains reach breaking point | Financial Times – Last week, a row between HSBC and its largest shareholder, Chinese insurance group Ping An, spilled into the public arena after Michael Huang, chair of the insurer’s asset management unit, told the Financial Times the bank should break itself up and be “far more aggressive” in its cost-cutting. The extraordinary dust-up, brewing in private for several years, according to people close to the bank, first came to light in the spring when it emerged that Ping An had told HSBC management they should pursue a break-up. HSBC has largely sat on its hands in the interim, fuelling growing frustration at Ping An. “The global finance model that once dominated and shaped the global financial industry in the last century is no longer competitive,” Huang told the Financial Times. “Just divesting a few small markets or businesses” would not be enough to address the challenges. He urged the bank to “adopt an open attitude by studying the relevant suggestions carefully and prudently [ . . .] rather than attempting to simply bypass and reject them”. Ouch
Ireland
‘There’s not many left now’: census shines spotlight on Britain’s dwindling Irish community | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian – The Irish came in waves that started in the 19th century and continued through the Great Depression, the post-war boom, the swinging 60s, the Thatcher era and into the 21st century, one of the great migrations. Many were unskilled labourers, or navvies; others were plumbers, teachers, nurses, dentists, writers and entertainers. Some became famous – Oscar Wilde, Fiona Shaw, Graham Norton – or had children who became famous – Shane MacGowan, Morrissey, Piers Morgan. However, last week brought confirmation that the Irish community, for so long Britain’s biggest source of immigration, is withering. Census figures showed the number of Irish-born people living in England and Wales last year numbered 324,670, a fall of 80,000, or 20%, from a decade ago, when they numbered 407,357. The UK’s Office for National Statistics says this is a long-term trend that started in 1961, when the Irish-born population peaked at 683,000, more than double the current number. Once the biggest group of those born outside the UK, the Irish are now fifth behind India, Poland, Pakistan and Romania
The relationship between word count and engagement | Chartbeat Blog – Our analysis shows that up to almost 4,000 words, the longer article, the more engaging it will be. If your articles are falling short of the benchmarks we’ve shared, a real-time optimization tool like our Heads Up Display can show you how far readers are scrolling and give you an opportunity to make changes at the point of exit. Beyond 4,000 words, variability in engaged time grows, but that doesn’t mean there’s a ceiling. As we see with our year-end list of the most engaging stories, unique topics can require more depth than daily reporting. This doesn’t mean you should shy away from covering them. It just means you’ll need to devote more attention to optimizing these pages for engaged time.
Airbnb Says Its Focus on Brand Marketing Instead of Search Is Working – WSJ – Airbnb Inc. said its strategy of slashing advertising spending, investing in brand marketing and lessening its reliance on search-engine marketing is continuing to pay off. Its marketing spending is now low enough that it doesn’t anticipate drastic reductions even if economic headwinds worsen next year, it said.– some really interesting feedback that implies Google has lost its position as the front door of the web despite dominance in both mobile and desktop browsers
Apple’s hope for record quarterly sales damped by Zhengzhou restrictions – Apple continues to see strong demand for iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models, and expects lower iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments than previously anticipated, adding that customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products. Apple said it is working closely with our supplier to return to normal production levels while ensuring the health and safety of every worker. According to Barclays’ research notes, the COVID outbreak in Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant, which accounts for 70% of worldwide iPhone production, is estimated to affect the output of 10-12 million iPhone Pro models for the fourth quarter of 2022. Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank Securities said in a research note that according to Apple’s 10-K document filed on October 28, the company had manufacturing purchase obligations of US$71.1 billion for the third quarter, up 65% annually and 30% quarterly – a sign leading Deutsche Bank Securities to believe that Apple forecasts better iPhone growth than last year. Manufacturing purchase obligations represent non-cancelable purchase orders of components ahead of unit sales and typically covers periods up to 150 days
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism have an interesting article on Indian hackers who work in the ‘hack-for-hire’ industry: Inside The Global Hack-For-Hire Industry. Indian hackers are typically used because their clients are unlikely to be prosecuted under their home country laws like the UK Computer Misuse Act. Indian hackers have gone after British journalists, businesses, NGOs and even politicians. Jay Solomon, a former journalist with the Wall Street Journal accused a US legal firm of using Indian hackers to steal emails between him and one of his sources. This was bundled up in a dossier used by the law firm to get Solomon fired from his job as a journalist.
Business technology origins of blackhat hacking services
India is known for its enterprise technology work. Most bank computing systems and telecoms billing systems in the UK are managed by Indian technologists out of India. The Indian hacker for hire business sprang out of a company called Appin that looked to sell clients services to help secure those services. Other companies engaged in cybersecurity for corporate clients also provide Indian hackers and tools for offensive computer work. Ethical hacking at the firm was the main business, but a lucrative sideline was blackout Indian hackers working for the highest bidder.
Favourable environment
Presumably the same factors that favour software programming and technology services in India also favour these blackhat Indian hackers:
Plentiful volume of talented software engineers
Relatively low cost compared to their counterparts elsewhere
Global connections via a diaspora for firms providing Indian hackers for hire
Lax or loosely enforced regulations
‘Clusters’ of talent similar to the US Silicon Valley, notably Gurugram
It’s interesting that much of the demand for Indian hackers has come from the Gulf states. Indian hackers have also worked on behalf of foreign governments including Cambodia, Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey – all of this government work was carried out with the approval and sometimes behest of the Indian government. Indian hackers working for Pakistan, with Indian government approval! For western corporate intelligence employees, who are clients of these firms, they’ve done foolish things like endorse the Indian hackers and their firms on LinkedIn.
China Gender Law: Country Tells Women to ‘Respect Family Values’ – Bloomberg – An amendment to the Women’s Rights and Interests Protection Law passed by the nation’s top legislative body on Sunday introduced a list of moral standards for women to observe. …“China is attempting to use laws to regulate and discipline women,” said Xiaowen Liang, a New York-based feminist and lawyer. “Why do you only need women to observe family values? What kind of family values are we talking about? These are very vague ideas.” – inching towards A Handmaiden’s Tale with Chinese socialist characteristics
Biden froze out China’s ambassador. He may regret that. – POLITICO – A Washington, D.C.-based diplomat familiar with Qin’s relations with the administration said Beijing’s apparent unresponsiveness to Qin fueled skepticism about his influence back home. “There were one or two issues where the U.S. wanted his help on some things, but he just wasn’t able to do it — he didn’t seem to be totally in the loop,” the diplomat said, declining to name the issues… “Somebody got this wrong in our system — either [Qin] was more influential than we appreciated and we should have known that or he somehow snuck onto the Central Committee without us understanding that was possible,” said the former administration official. “But either way, if we’d known what we know now, we probably would have operated a bit differently and put in a little bit more energy in trying to build some trust with him.” – To be fair to the Biden Administration, I think lots of people in the PRC system were also surprised with Qin’s selection for the Central Committee and likely promotion to be Foreign Minister. And even they thought it might happen, would being nicer to him change any of the fundamental policies? And how could they have managed the optics of giving Qin more access to US officials than Amb. Burns gets to PRC officials?
Coronavirus: Hong Kong allows restaurants and bars to stay open all night, but step ‘too little, too late’, industry leaders warn | South China Morning Post – Residents have grown used to eating dinner earlier and cooking at home during the pandemic, industry leaders say. If this habit sticks it has negative implications for food services and entertainment, but positive opportunities for FMCG, food delivery and media sectors. When I lived in Hong Kong, one thing that I noticed was the ‘insomniac’ nature of the city with late night restaurants and take-outs together with late night mall shopping all of which added to the city’s ‘Blade Runner’ vibe
China stops publishing data metrics of vast domestic apps market amid declining internet service revenue, faltering economy | South China Morning Post – The Chinese government has stopped reporting data metrics of domestic apps for the last three months without explanation, which makes it difficult for outside analysts to assess the health of this industry in the world’s largest internet and smartphone market. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), one of the government agencies responsible for regulating apps, started omitting this market segment’s data metrics from its monthly reports from July, according to the latest information on its website
Everything you need to know about Spam — Quartz Weekly Obsession — Quartz – “Spam became iconic in Asia because it was a taste of America without being in America. It’s like drinking Coke. While you can’t afford to travel to America, you can eat and drink America or enjoy a little piece of America in your life.” — Ayalla Ruvio, consumer behavior researcher and professor in the department of marketing at Michigan State University
Germany
Business As Usual: German Companies Ignore Major Risks in China – DER SPIEGEL – The doctrine of “transformation through trade,” to which Germany adhered for decades, was exposed as an illusion by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a truth that even Germany’s president accepts. “We must become less vulnerable and reduce one-sided dependencies,” Frank-Walter Steinmeier told public broadcaster ARD, “and that applies to China in particular.”Germany has seen trade with the People’s Republic quadruple since 2005, but during that same period, China has developed into a full-blown dictatorship. The West’s hopes for further market-economy reforms have been dashed. President Xi Jinping, who had his power cemented last week at the 20th Party Congress, is fully committed to a state-controlled economy. “Henceforth: Marx gets precedence over the markets,” says Jörg Wuttke, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China – worthwhile reading in conjunction with: We don’t want to decouple from China, but can’t be overreliant – POLITICO – this op-ed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz is embarrassing
State capitalism has been created in various forms in China since opening up. Some of the new forms have aspects that impacts the relative attractiveness of doing business in or with Chinese companies.
Opening up
Historically since opening up China has been a mixed market model. There were small private businesses including many farmers. There was the state owned enterprises, a direct descendent of Mao’s work units and businesses that the government wanted to keep a strategic hold on.
Taken at an exhibition that was part of the Shenzhen Biennial, when I was there back in 2010
Grey zone and hybrid companies
Grey zone companies
A classic example of a grey zone company would be Huawei. In their 2019 paper Who Owns Huawei, Balding & Clarke make a convincing argument that Huawei is a state controlled company, if not state owned in the conventional sense. This view is supported by:
The state hacking of Nortel which Huawei disproportionately benefited from in their subsequent telecoms carrier contracts and 5G technology
State bank vendor financing on behalf of Huawei at negative interest rates that telecoms providers like BT and Vodafone were given
Zichen Wang translated a Chinese academic paper that pointed out an alternative view. Yes the ownership structure was a shit show, was pretty much the one point of agreement between the two papers.
But that much of this was down to domestic practice influenced by classic state capitalism and modern business law that China brought in and still doesn’t square up with what was happening on the ground in terms of business laws.
You can make up your own mind if this is an element of state capitalism.
Hybrid companies
An example of this would be the Stellantis | Guangzhou Auto Company joint venture that made Jeep branded SUVs for China. These joint ventures were basically the way the Chinese government coerced technology transfer from western firms to local firms. The Stellantis JV has gone into bankruptcy and GAC seems to have its own range of capable SUVs based on Stellantis expertise gained over the years.
Huawei’s joint venture with 3Com allowed the telecoms giant to build a large enterprise networking business to compete with the likes of Cisco Systems. At the time that China first rolled out its Golden Shieldinternet censorship platform, it relied on Cisco technology, and China would want to remedy this under its state capitalism system. Huawei now supports internet censorship around the world. This form of state capitalism has been common in a number of developing countries over the years, but China was particularly successful in using it in a coercive manner to enhance state capitalism rather than just driving economic growth.
Rise of the hybrid firm – Gavekal Research – Today, 48% of onshore listed companies, representing 67% of market capitalization, have a mixed bag of major shareholders from the private and state sectors. While many of those companies are still clearly controlled by either state or private shareholders, a large and significant group of firms occupies an intermediate position that is harder to characterize. – on China’s state capitalism system
How China’s communist officials became venture capitalists – Times of India – The US and other Western governments have long been wary of the economic power of China’s “state capitalism,” fueled by giant state-owned companies and an industrial policy driven by subsidies and government mandates. But policymakers need to pay more attention to what’s really propelling China’s growth: private firms with minority government-linked investments. “The distinction between state-owned and private has been important for policymakers outside China and for analyzing the Chinese economy,” says Meg Rithmire, a professor at Harvard Business School who specializes in comparative political development in Asia and China. “That boundary is eroding.” – see also Chinese banks vendor financing deals which is the real reason behind Huawei’s growth (alongside stealing IP and other proprietary elements: Nortel cough, cough)
Influenced firms
Influenced firms are a particularly pernicious part of the Chinese state capitalism system. The Chinese economy has always relied on relationships and even patronage of government power brokers similar to Malaysia, Thailand and Korea. But the state has looked to move personal bonds to state bonds. Much of this comes from National Intelligence Law 2017; that puts demands on Chinese citizens, Chinese companies and anyone connected to China.
Like the more widely reported Cybersecurity Law (which went into effect on June 1) and a raft of other recent statutes, the Intelligence Law places ill-defined and open-ended new security obligations and risks not only on U.S. and other foreign citizens doing business or studying in China, but in particular on their Chinese partners and co-workers.
Of special concern are signs that the Intelligence Law’s drafters are trying to shift the balance of these legal obligations from intelligence “defense” to “offense”—that is, by creating affirmative legal responsibilities for Chinese and, in some cases, foreign citizens, companies, or organizations operating in China to provide access, cooperation, or support for Beijing’s intelligence-gathering activities.
The new law is the latest in an interrelated package of national security, cyberspace, and law enforcement legislation drafted under Xi Jinping. These laws and regulations are aimed at strengthening the legal basis for China’s security activities and requiring Chinese and foreign citizens, enterprises, and organizations to cooperate with them. They include the laws on Counterespionage (2014), National Security (2015), Counterterrorism (2015), Cybersecurity (2016), and Foreign NGO Management (2016), as well as the Ninth Amendment to the PRC Criminal Law (2015), the Management Methods for Lawyers and Law Firms (both 2016), and the pending draft Encryption Law and draft Standardization Law.
For Young Chinese, Even State Sector Jobs Are No Longer a Safe Bet – the public sector hasn’t lived up to its reputation of being a safe haven. Nearly three years into the pandemic, many of China’s local governments are facing eye-watering fiscal deficits and implementing austerity measures. And those cuts are hitting civil servants hard. Wang had originally expected to earn at least 250,000 yuan ($34,600) per year at his new job. In reality, he estimates he’s being paid just 160,000 yuan. His basic salary has been cut by 30%; his social insurance payments haven’t risen as promised; part of his annual bonus has never been paid. Instead, Wang finds himself forced to work regular unpaid overtime shifts, helping to implement the town’s virus-control policies, and trying to cut back spending at home. His plans to trade in his boring SUV have been put on hold indefinitely.
Chinese ‘police stations’ in Canada under investigation | Hong Kong Free Press – there is a definite turning point around the illegal Chinese police operations against its diaspora. I expect United Front activities to be the next point of focus and you could see triad organisations treated less like organised crime and more like the paramiilitary or terrorist arm of the United Front
How the U.K. Became One of the Poorest Countries in Western Europe – The Atlantic – “Between 2003 and 2018, the number of automatic-roller car washes (that is, robots washing your car) declined by 50 percent, while the number of hand car washes (that is, men with buckets) increased by 50 percent,” the economist commentator Duncan Weldon told me in an interview for my podcast, Plain English. “It’s more like the people are taking the robots’ jobs.” That might sound like a quirky example, because the British economy is obviously more complex than blokes rubbing cars with soap. But it’s an illustrative case. According to the International Federation of Robotics, the U.K. manufacturing industry has less technological automation than just about any other similarly rich country. With barely 100 installed robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers in 2020, its average robot density was below that of Slovenia and Slovakia. One analysis of the U.K.’s infamous “productivity puzzle” concluded that outside of London and finance, almost every British sector has lower productivity than its Western European peers. Read alongside – What British politics looks like to the rest of the world – The Face TL;DR a joke that makes their country look good by comparison.
Japan cannot survive without Russian oil, warns trading house chief | Financial Times – Some analysts have expressed concern about Itochu’s heavy exposure to China through its 10 per cent stake in Citic, but Okafuji stressed that its risks were lower since its investment was in a government-owned company. “Currently, what they are doing in China is to move private assets from private companies to government-owned companies to reduce the gap between the rich and poor,” he said. “Our objective is to contribute to providing a prosperous lifestyle to the Chinese people, so I think the Chinese government welcomes that.” – I expect that the Chinese government and CITIC will tear the face off Itochu
Concerns mount over German Chancellor Scholz’s upcoming trip to China | Axios – it looks like there is a battle royale brewing between the German public and their large corporates. Add to this: Ports in a storm: Chinese investments in Europe spark fear of malign influence | South China Morning Post and Watching China in Europe with Noah Barkin – 55 percent of Germans believe he (Scholz) is out of his depth), deepens divisions in his government, and undermines its quest for a common European policy toward Beijing, a goal that was spelled out in black and white in the three-party coalition agreement. More worryingly, it shows that Scholz and his advisers still have a steep learning curve on China. Germany’s sway with Beijing depends on a united front in Berlin, in Europe, and across the G7. Scholz has managed to torpedo them all in the span of a few weeks. To be clear, the problem is not that Scholz is meeting with Xi. The party congress showed that Xi may be the only member of China’s leadership who is worth talking to these days. And it is normal for Scholz, who has been chancellor for nearly a year but unable to meet with Xi in person because of China’s restrictive COVID-19 rules, to want to sit down for a face-to-face with the country’s newly anointed leader for life. But the when, where, and how of this first meeting are important. And Scholz has whiffed on all three. The situation is reminiscent of his predecessor Angela Merkel’s decision, two years ago, to hurry through the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) weeks before Joe Biden entered the White House. Like Merkel, Scholz is gifting Xi a geopolitical victory without much in return. And he is voluntarily sacrificing whatever leverage his government might have had with China. He may not realize that but members of his own government—some of whom have been working diligently for months on a new, tougher China strategy—are furious. “As long as the German chancellor doesn’t buy into his own government’s China strategy, then it is worthless,” one German official fumed. “The Chinese can see the divide in Berlin and Europe, and believe me, they will find a way to exploit it. It is absolutely fatal. And what is so stunning is that Scholz has done all of this of his own free will.”
Hong Kong
America’s Biggest Financial Firms Are Still Collaborating with the Sanctioned Hong Kong Government – After an increasing number of critics began to pile on, including the co-chairs of the Congressional Executive Commission on China Representative Jim McGovern and Senator Jeff Merkeley, a coalition of 20 U.S.-based Hong Kong activist groups, and the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Citibank’s Jane Fraser claimed that she had tested positive for Covid-19 and will pull out of the summit. The rest of these executives have only a couple of days to come down with similar illnesses or unexpected family commitments, but I’m not holding my breath and Hong Kong Summit Surrounded by Drama Before It Even Begins – Bloomberg – Top executives pull out after getting Covid; storm approaches. Event aimed at showing city is back in business after pandemic
9 in 10 marketers spend time in making global marketing locally relevant: report | Advertising | Campaign Asia – Marketers say local requirements are kept in mind by headquarters when making decisions, however, the majority (82%) feel they spend too much time educating HQ on Singaporean nuances and needs. 47% of marketing decision-makers in Singapore say that senior leadership in regional or global offices are misaligned with local marketing teams, there is a lack of local understanding of effective channels, and in some cases, there’s an assumption that a global approach will work across countries. Over a third (36%) of marketers believe in localising content for maximum ROI, however, the local tone, diversity and humour in campaigns is often not well understood by global offices teams.
– The departures mean Apple is losing at least three vice presidents — the highest manager level below Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook’s executive team — in recent weeks. Evans Hankey, Apple’s vice president in charge of industrial design, is also leaving the company, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month. Chief Privacy Officer Jane Horvath has departed Apple in recent weeks as well, taking a position at a law firm
Trio conduct 6G reconfigurable intelligent surfaces trials … – Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces can be programmed to modulate the phase of electromagnetic waves and reflect signals into blind spots, enhancing coverage and improving user experience. The low cost, low energy consumption and easy deployment, of RIS have attracted broad interest in 6G research and made it a popular candidate technology. The technical trial mainly evaluated the deployment effects and performance of sub6 GHz RIS and mmWave RIS in different indoor and outdoor scenarios. The tests modelled deployment conditions with and without RIS, different incidence and reflection angles, different deployment distances, etc. Recorded performance index parameters included RSRP, throughput and others. The trial participants worked together to carry out several RIS test projects yielding hard data that makes a strong argument in favor of continued RIS technology development.
The amount of stories about the Chinese illegal foreign police stations that have broke over the past couple of days is really interesting. The clampdown on illegal foreign police stations seems as if it was either coordinated, or there was an inciting incident that persuaded other governments that they had to act. Secondly, what becomes apparent from the coverage is that governments were aware about them for a while, but chose to do nothing. The mainstream media lack of coverage made China critics look like paranoid cranks when they discussed Chinese illegal foreign police stations in their countries. There is a contrast between the British military Operation Motorman to stop what they perceived as the illegal provisional IRA policing of ‘Free Derry’ and the current handling of illegal foreign police stations set up by the Chinese.
I think that one of the reasons why illegal foreign police stations hasn’t been covered well by mainstream media is that they didn’t want to give credence to coverage by media that are right of centre like Fox News.
China
US think tank CSIS shares expert thought on the 20th Party Congress.
China’s limitless presidency means limited diplomacy | Financial Times – … Chinese diplomats find it disconcertingly easy to revert to behaviour that could be seen as bullying. This confirms the suspicion that European governments have of the Communist party: that it is becoming more brazen. A certain school of Chinese nationalism says that the west is set on containing China’s rise at all costs — and that, as a result, Beijing may as well conduct external relations for internal consumption. Yet European alliances are still in China’s grasp, and many of its own objectives, from technological upgrading to climate action, can only be achieved with a wide range of allies and Video before Hu Jintao’s exit from congress puts files in focus – Nikkei Asia
German exporters rethink €100bn ‘love affair’ with China | Financial Times – Competition — fair and otherwise — remains a problem. “Our members know that every technology they bring into China, in a relatively short time, will be part of the Chinese market,” said Ulrich Ackermann, head of foreign trade at the VDMA. “We say, be aware you can be kicked out in a short time.” Ackermann spoke of a German manufacturer of construction machinery, whose state-owned Chinese rival sent machines to customers, free for use for the first year. “How can we compete with that?” – This has been the standard playbook for decades. Huawei won telecoms because of state bank vendor financing at negative interest rates, not superior technology and certainly not superior reliability. What took the Germans so long to catch on? I suspect it was the outsized political impact that a few large companies have on German policies versus the middle sized companies that actually drive exports, German employment and prosperity.
Hong Kong Policy Address: How much of John Lee’s maiden speech was old wine in new bottles? – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – Hong Kong has experienced a mass outflow of residents since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and the implementation of the national security law. The previous administration disputed the scale of the exodus, with Lam attributing it to the suspension of quarantine-free travel with mainland China, saying that the number of One-Way Permit holders coming into Hong Kong had significantly decreased. Lee, who has been pressured to stop the exodus of talent from the city, acknowledged the trend for the first time on Wednesday, admitting that the local workforce had shrunk by 140,000 people over the last two years. Lee had previously rejected the use of the term “emigration wave” to describe the city’s recent and dramatic population decline. While Lam said that she did not want the government to be asking citizens to stay, Lee presented a series of proposals on Wednesday, ranging from new visa schemes to stamp duty cuts, designed explicitly to attract talent. – even the talent attraction proposals won’t make much difference, looking for people only from the world’s top 100 universities and earning at least $318,000 per year. That isn’t going to plug education, healthcare and social care staff gaps. It won’t fill much of the many financial services opportunities either, nor multinational regional hubs
Ideas
Adam Curtis on the collapse of the Soviet Union and modern Russia. His commentary on Brexit is spot on.
Smiles in Profiles: Improving Fairness and Efficiency Using Estimates of User Preferences in Online Marketplaces
Forbidden Questions – Marginal REVOLUTION – asks some interesting questions around science, innovation and politics. On the Flipside you have communism’s examples of bad science as an exemplar of what can go wrong when politics frames scientific exploration and ideas
I was fired from NYU after students complained that the class was too hard. Who’s next? – The Boston Globe – What is overwhelmingly important is the chilling effect of such intervention by administrators on teaching overall and especially on untenured professors. Can a young assistant professor, almost all of whom are not protected by tenure, teach demanding material? Dare they give real grades? Their entire careers are at the peril of complaining students and deans who seem willing to turn students into nothing more than tuition-paying clients.
China’s wealthy activate escape plans as Xi Jinping extends rule | Financial Times and as an interesting counterpoint: Asian art and luxury buying boom | Financial Times – At one level, it is a worldwide trend. From fine art to fine wine, luxury-sector companies have bounced back from the depths of the pandemic as their super-rich customers have, so far, been largely immune to global inflation and economic turmoil. After its worst decline on record in 2020, the global personal luxury goods market grew last year to reach €288bn in value, up 7 per cent on 2019, according to consultancy Bain. It says 2022 began with a further healthy rise. In Hong Kong, though, the picture has been quite distinctive, with some of the super-rich spending locally while others have moved abroad, joining an exodus of more than 153,000 residents since the beginning of 2021. The territory has recorded a 14 per cent drop in the number of millionaires in 2022 compared with last year (that is, people with at least $1mn in liquid assets, according to residency advisory firm Henley & Partners). With about 125,100 millionaires out of a population of 7.3mn, the city fell by four places to 12th globally for the number of high-net-worth individuals – building imperial palaces while China becomes redder…
Second-hand Rolexes: watch out for stupid prices and superfakes | Financial Times – the FT blames millennials who started collecting watches when they couldn’t go on holiday during COVID. I think that the causes are multi-variant. Luxury brands have looked at and learned from streetwear ‘drop’ business models exemplified by the likes of Supreme and Nike’s SNKR app. Secondly, the market might moderate a bit when Rolex realises that there isn’t so much of a demand in China post the 20th party congress. I haven’t paid crazy money like what you’ve described for a pre-owned Rolex, but everyone of my watches original warrant cards have a (mainland) Chinese family name on them. Buying via the verified service on eBay at least reduces the risk of buying an overpriced real, rather than super fake Rolex. I think we should be thankful for small mercies that it didn’t go into meme stocks or OneCoin analogues.
Chinese censors alter ending of Minions: The Rise of Gru film | China | The Guardian – DuSir, a film review publisher with 14.4 million followers on Weibo, noted that the Chinese version ran one minute longer than the international one, and questioned why the extra time was needed. “It’s only us who need special guidance and care for fear that a cartoon will ‘corrupt’ us,” DuSir wrote. Huaxia Film Distribution and China Film Co, the film’s distributors in China, did not respond to a request for comment
Hit film Return to Dust has vanished from China’s cinemas. Why? | Financial Times – “In the beginning,” she says, “Return to Dust attracted almost no attention. An art-house film about poverty among rural peasants? Honestly, neither the government nor mainstream Chinese audiences would normally care.” But then came several fateful quirks of timing. Over the summer, an online short, Second Uncle, became a Chinese viral hit, telling the story of a kindly rural carpenter. On social media, the little-known Return to Dust was mooted as a companion piece. From such small acorns sprang word-of-mouth success. Week by week, the movie built an audience – it might be the government, it could also be forces in the domestic media scene as big budget Chinese films don’t need competition stealing their ability to pay back investments
From East Berlin to Beijing, surveillance goes in circles | Financial Times – Last month, the Stasi HQ hosted a Berlin Biennale seminar on the “Digital Divide”, where panellists discussed the ways in which old, disproved theories are recycled in modern surveillance. Shazeda Ahmed, a post-doctorate at Princeton University, described the rise of emotion recognition technology in China. Parents have pressured schools there to give up emotion recognition in classrooms, but some police forces are investing in the technology, hoping that a person’s movements and gestures can signal their propensity to commit a crime. Such methods fall under the umbrella of “predictive policing”, but they are dangerously unproven. Academics doubt whether gestures can be analysed as discrete events that carry the same meaning from person to person. Speaking at the Biennale, digital rights lawyer Ramak Molavi gave a historical perspective, comparing emotion-recognition trends today to phrenology and physiognomy, the ideas that a person’s skull shape and facial features indicate their character. Molavi described how the ideas had been discredited, but enjoyed a renaissance during the Nazi regime – this isn’t the first time that science and ideology have led each other up the garden path
Taipei urbanism – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion – I had a disorienting sense of being back in Japan — so much so that I kept expecting people to drive on the left side of the street. So much of the infrastructure in Taiwan looks and feels Japanese — the pavement, the building materials, the signs at the airport. People cite this as a residue of the colonial period, but given that the colonial period ended 77 years ago, it’s probably more due to Taiwanese architects, urban planners, and engineers continuing to look to Japan for inspiration. After a few minutes, however, the sense of Japan-ness faded, crowded out by two key features of the Taipei landscape: lush greenery and shabby building facades
Mobileye is an Israeli based business acquired by Intel. It specialises in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving. Its EyeQ series chips are used by pretty much every volume car manufacturer. I don’t know if the US sanctions on China for semiconductors will impact Mobileye negatively. The Mobileye EyeQ debuted in 2008 in the BMW 7 series alongside the model’s first hybrid power plant, the first turbocharged petrol engine for the model series and the first time that it had used four-wheel drive. Modern semi-autonomous functions may require several Mobileye EyeQ processors in the one car.
Acquisition by Intel for EyeQ tech
Mobileye went public in 2014 and was acquired by Intel in 2017. The same year Mobileye published a mathematical model for safe self-driving cars. In January, Intel announced plans to retake Mobileye public with a sale of a minority stake of the business.
There’s a number of good arguments for the Intel move:
It allows engineers to be rewarded based on their work rather than on the overall group performance through Mobileye stock grants or stock options.
It allows the company to spread the risk of autonomous driving as a future area that might not take off. While ADAS services are here and valued, there are technological, legal, regulatory and consumer hurdles for autonomous driving to overcome:
Mobileye public offering represents trouble at Intel
However, the Mobileye public offering makes a lot less sense given the decline of the stock market since the start of 2022. It implies that Intel is desperate for a capital infusion, presumably to fund the rebuild of Intel’s technological prowess under Pat Gelsinger.
More content related to issues like self driving cars can be found here.
Islamic State Rhetoric Targets China | Foreign Policy – The linking of Chinese imperialism to historical Western colonialism in Central and South Asia to some extent echoes contemporary Indian discourse on the contentious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Rising Chinese economic expansion via the BRI is especially perceived as a threat to the West’s global dominance, which has also been challenged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the potential U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan. Amid the chaos in a transition from a unipolar to a bipolar world order, the Islamic State-Khorasan sees an opportunity to establish the Islamic State’s global caliphate. – I can’t see China getting cooperation from western countries or even India on this. Pakistan has proven itself to be an inconsistent unreliable partner over the decades and Russia has its focus elsewhere. Consider in concert with: China Blocks Polish Delegation’s Flight to Korea – The Chosun Ilbo – There was no explanation from Beijing for the tantrum, but Poland is among the most vociferous Eastern European countries and NATO members seeking to increase armaments due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and China seems to be siding with Putin. – interesting that the paper thinks this is aimed at Poland. This looks like a nail in the coffin for BRI and European market access for China
Shang-Yi Chiang says he will never return to work in China | DigiTimes – Mr Chiang is a star in semiconductor development and formerly worked at TSMC and had been a vice chairman of Chinese manufacturer SMIC. He was a key signifier for Taiwanese engineers that the Chinese businesses were good to work for. His leaving SMIC and this assertion about China will hurt China’s efforts to catch up and surpass, you can’t overstate the impact of Mr Chiang’s coming out and saying this
The Financial Times is the only UK newspaper that could have this honest discussion on Brexit. Interesting that political parties still can’t engage with the issue from an economic point-of-view. The anger and unrest that could break out if parties did engage with it could be devastating.
Yahoo Finance Tech newsletter with Daniel Howley | The pandemic rubber band is hitting the tech industry. – The recent bad news in the tech industry could be a delayed blow from the pandemic. Interest rate hikes, inflation hovering at 40-year highs, and sinking demand are hitting tech companies that have benefited from two years of pandemic-driven growth that saw valuations for some companies eclipse the $2 trillion mark. “As we entered the pandemic, everybody was afraid that there were going to be these disastrous layoffs and it was going to be horrible. And there were, very briefly, in a few places…but that immediately turned around,” TECHnalysis president and chief analyst Bob O’Donnell told Yahoo Finance. “In a weird way, it almost feels like now we’re getting some of the impact of the pandemic after the fact,” he added. “I think people are recognizing they maybe overextended their hiring when they expected some of the growth that happened during the pandemic to continue in the tech industry.
The Omnipotence of China’s Xi Jinping: “Chairman of Everything” – DER SPIEGEL – his influence extends all the way to Germany. For companies like Volkswagen or Mercedes, China is the key sales market. In early November, Olaf Scholz will be traveling to Beijing for the first time as German chancellor, and despite the ongoing debate about the German economy’s unsustainable dependence on China, he will likely bring along a significant delegation of German executives – what’s interesting is the vulnerability and fragility that Der Spiegel notes in their own country’s political and business elites. Add to this idea, the current debate over Hamburg: EU warned Germany against approving Chinese investment in port – Handelsblatt | Reuters – The European Commission warned the German government last spring not to approve an investment by China’s Cosco into Hamburg’s port, German daily Handelsblatt reported on Friday, citing sources. Shipping giant Cosco last year made a bid to take a 35% stake in one of three terminals in Germany’s largest port in the northern city of Hamburg. Germany’s ruling coalition is divided over whether to approve the investment, government sources say, even as Beijing urges Berlin not to politicize the bid and the port authority warns this could hurt the economy
Screening of Batman film scrapped after Hong Kong censors say it is ‘not appropriate’ for outdoor showing – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – The Dark Knight banned under Hong Kong’s Film Censorship Ordinance, organisers of movies screenings are required to submit works to the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration (OFNAA) for film classification and clearance. Films must meet criteria relating to depictions of violence, cruelty and offensive language or behaviour. Since the passing of the national security law, censorship has been tightened to require authorities to evaluate whether the exhibition of a film would be “contrary to the interests of national security.” – presumably interests of national security includes a plot where Batman comes to Hong Kong to pursue an enemy, a corrupt Chinese businessman who laundered money for a mafia group. Just waiting for commercial disputes to be ruled ‘contrary to the interests of national security’ and the banking sector get screwed over
Hong Kong court allows media tycoon Jimmy Lai to hire UK lawyer for national security trial – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – The judge ruled on Wednesday that issues which would arise during the trial, such as how the national security law and the sedition law should be understood in relation to freedom of expression, were “of great general public importance.” – what’s of more interest is the reasons why the Hong Kong government opposed his appointment. A lack of alternative counsel wasn’t seen as a reason to bring in the British lawyer. They described the case as lacking complexity as an additional reason – however it will be interesting to see if they view it as being sufficiently complex to move to the mainland when Owen becomes involved… and National security: Hong Kong court allows police to search journalistic materials stored on Jimmy Lai’s phones – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – “Although always subject to the protection and procedural safeguards based on public interest and vigilant judicial scrutiny, journalistic material is not immune from search and seizure in the investigation of any criminal offence,” the judgement read. “As a matter of principle, the same must be true for offences endangering national security.” Excluding journalistic materials from the definition of “specified evidence” would also reduce the effectiveness of police investigation and prevent the national security law from serving its legislative purpose, which was to “effectively” stop, prevent, and punish offences endangering national security, the judges wrote.
Great video from Asianometry on the history of field programmable gate array.
Japan
Toyota Starts Plant in Junta-Led Myanmar Over a Year After Coup – WSJ – Toyota began assembling one or two Hilux pickup trucks a day at its plant in Yangon last month, a spokeswoman for the Japanese auto maker said Wednesday. She said Toyota wanted to contribute to the industrial development of Myanmar and the livelihood of local employees and their families. The car maker’s decision to begin production in Myanmar highlights a divide among foreign companies over whether to withdraw from the country, whose elected government was ousted in February 2021. As of the beginning of this year, close to two dozen major foreign companies had decided to suspend business operations in Myanmar, including energy giants Chevron Corp. and TotalEnergies SE and Japanese beer maker Kirin Holdings Co., according to the World Bank. Toyota had previously been included on that list. Companies suspending operations have cited shareholder pressure and a worsening human-rights situation among other reasons. Some activists have pushed companies to pull out of Myanmar to isolate or bankrupt the military junta – sounds more like assembly of knock down kits, likely coming in from Thailand
Korea
Kakao co-CEO Whon Namkoong quits over South Korea app outage chaos | SCMP – while its being described as a fire, it might not be an accident. The Koreans are still investigating. What’s more shocking is that there was one chokepoint of failure in a single data centre which took out both Naver and KakaoDaum services
Marketing
Tough times and low confidence call for bold action | WPP – When economic indicators are tough and consumer confidence is low, remember that brands with strong value propositions are 100% more recommended and 91% more loved than the rest, says WPP’s Lindsay Pattison We are in uncharted waters – consumers and businesses alike. Inflation has spiked, interest rates are on the up, the impacts of war are unknowable, and the OECD’s Consumer Confidence Index
The Return of Industrial Warfare | Royal United Services Institute read in conjunction with: Chokepoints – Center for Security and Emerging Technology – China’s most acute “chokepoints” are technologies—particularly high-end electronic components and specialized steel alloys—dominated by one or a handful of companies based in the United States or other like-minded democracies. Rather than playing for the “national team,” Chinese companies—both private and state-owned—often prioritize their brands and bottom lines over marching in lockstep with Beijing’s industrial policies. Many PRC firms choose to buy vital high-end components from trusted foreign suppliers because they harbor doubts about the quality of goods provided by domestic vendors. Technological breakthroughs made by Chinese universities and research institutes frequently fail to find commercial applications, leaving the PRC market dominated by foreign products.
Australia investigates claims China tried to hire former military pilots | South China Morning Post – Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles said he had asked the defence department to investigate claims that former Australian military pilots had also been recruited to join a South African flight school that operated in China. “I would be deeply shocked and disturbed to hear that there were personnel who were being lured by a pay check from a foreign state above serving their own country,” Marles said in a statement. “I have asked the department to investigate these claims and come back to my office with clear advice on this matter.” and Britain and Australia plan steps to stop China hiring their pilots — Radio Free Asia
