Yōkoso – welcome to the Japan category of this blog. This blog was inspired by my love of Japanese culture and their consumer trends. I was introduced to chambara films thanks to being a fan of Sergio Leone’s dollars trilogy. A Fistful of Dollars was heavily influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.
Getting to watch Akira and Ghost In The Shell for the first time were seminal moments in my life. I was fortunate to have lived in Liverpool when the 051 was an arthouse cinema and later on going to the BFI in London on a regular basis.
Today this is where I share anything that relates to Japan, business issues, the Japanese people or culture. Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Lawson launched a new brand collaboration with Nissan to sell a special edition Nissan Skyline GT-R. And that I thought was particularly interesting or noteworthy, that might appear in branding as well as Japan.
There is a lot of Japan-related content here. Japanese culture was one of odd the original inspirations for this blog hence my reference to chambara films in the blog name.
I don’t tend to comment on local politics because I don’t understand it that well, but I am interested when it intersects with business. An example of this would be legal issues affecting the media sector for instance.
If there are any Japanese related subjects that you think would fit with this 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
Ernest Shackleton, the Irish explorer and the heroic age of antarctic exploration are evoked in Apple’s ads for its Apple Watch Ultra – a rival to Casio’s G-ShockMaster of G range and the Protrek range, Seiko’s similarly named Prospex range and Citizen’s Promaster range of watches.
https://youtu.be/tidgsqAf_tI
The underlying dialogue uses the text to a newspaper advert attributed to Shackleton when he was looking to recruit crew members for his ship the Endeavour. The Endeavour expedition competed with the rival Roald Amundsen’s expedition to reach the South Pole.
The monologue also reaches back to the way Apple did its Think Different brand campaign rather than the kinetic iPhone, iPod and iWatch ads of the past.
Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.
The reality is that the ad didn’t become widely known until decades after Shackleton had died. There is no evidence to suggest that he ever wrote the words (stirring though they are in nature), or that the advert was ever published by Shackleton.
Instead of Shackleton, who then wrote the words attributed to him? We’ll probably never know. What we do know is that they were first published in a book published in 1959. The 100 Greatest Advertisements: 1852-1958 written by Julian Lewis Watkins and was first published by first published by Dover Publications, Inc. Whether it was Shackleton who wrote them or not, they went into popular culture and sparked additional interest in the Irish explorer. Shackleton died in 1921 when returned to the Antarctic with the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition, he suffered a fatal heart attack while his ship was moored in South Georgia. We don’t know whether Ernest Shackleton would have appreciated the Apple Watch Ultra as a technical marvel concocted by wondrous boffins, or a pointless exercise in frippery for the serious explorer.
Rolex Deepsea Challenge – a watch even more worthy of Shackleton?
I know a watch is special when my Dad is telling me about it as soon as it’s launched. Rolex has upgraded its Rolex Sea-Dweller Deepsea to create the Rolex Deepsea Challenge. Out goes the largely useless date window, in comes an an all titanium grade 5 alloy case that’s 50mm across. This means that the watch moves from being waterproof of a depth of 3,900 meters to 11,000 meters (or just over 6.8 miles) with the new Deepsea Challenge.
The Deepsea Challenge watch follows on from the years of experience that Rolex has had making titanium watches under its secondary Tudor brand using a similar (if not the same) grade 5 titanium.
Titanium Grade 5 is the most widely used titanium alloy. It has (relatively) good hot formability and weldability. It is resistant to salt water, marine atmosphere and a variety of corrosive media temperatures below 300 ° C. Grade 5 titanium alloy is most likely to be accepted by the human body – its hypoallergenic and ideal for medical transplant components like hip joints.
It is made up of 88.74-91.0 percent titanium, 5.5-6.75 percent aluminium, 3.5-4.5 percent vanadium and no more than 0.015 percent hydrogen.
There is obviously osmosis between the two brands in terms of innovation, materials, process and technologies. This also explains why Tudor tries to do innovative designs in its range rather than just digging into the rich seam of ‘heritage looking’ watches with the Black Bay, Ranger and Heritage Chrono models.
The watch community has already started spoofing the watch, which is another sign of it having become an icon. Whether it’s a famous icon, or infamous icon remains to be seen.
35th Tokyo Girl’s Collection
I talked years ago on this blog about the innovative approach to retailing behind the Tokyo Girl’s Collection. I came across their 2022 autumn and winter collection opening stage event, which I am sharing here.
https://youtu.be/vx4AzkAtD3o
USB-C
Apple on the EU regulating connectors to standardise on USB-C. The reason why Apple went to detachable cables on chargers is very interesting. Apple are reluctantly complying over USB-C. The discussion around innovation is really interesting, particularly the way in which Apple executives duck the question.
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
