Professor He declined to be interviewed this week. China Daily quoted a colleague as saying that the authorities had pressured the professor to stop talking to the media and that he had also received personal threats.
The quick summary is the Rio Tinto executives were punished because they broke handshake deals with their suppliers, where trust is an issue.
To me this does not make sense. China is this place where you need to do deals with a handshake, but at the same time a deal can be broken by either party and a handshake has no worth, and business is business.
My guess is what happened was not so much about trust, but rather making the other person lose face. Especially people with a lot of power. And these people with power had also done the bribes to the Rio Tinto executives. When Rio Tinto embarrassed some state owned firms by causing losses by going by the letter of the contract, and not the spirit.
Basically the Rio Tinto executives are accused of taking bribes to channel high quality steel ore that was in short demand to suppliers. Prison sentences varied from 7 to 14 years.
What does this mean for Western owned companies:
Don't upset the Chinese government, or they will make you pay. The timing of this case is extremely suspicious.
Chinese born employees, even if they are citizens of a Western country, are still treated as Chinese citizens.
Chinese law is murky. Parts of the trial were closed to outside observer. A politer way of putting it is a weak rule of law. The original charge was theft of state secrets, but that later changed to the bribery charge. The state secret was a nasty charge, since the sentence could be life in prison. The bribery charge is politically smart for China, since now Rio Tinto fired the employees.
Bribes are a fact of life in China, unfortunately, but enforcement is often politically motivated.
Openness with materials in high demand and short supply prevents bribery by your employee, or even allegations of bribery.
Your country, such as the US, Britain, or Australia, is probably not going to have any meaningful support for your company in legal disputes with China if it's a business dispute. Australia has an agreement with China to people from the embassy to attend the entire trial, unfortunately it was ignored by China. The US has a similar agreement.
Courts are often used in China as a way to put pressure on a business. A business with a lot of connections/political power can put a business person from overseas, especially if they are ethnic Chinese, in jail.
37 percent of tech companies complained of lost sales because the Chinese government favors products from local companies.
Many U.S. companies, said one example of the new hurdles its members face in China is government procurement policies requiring that products contain intellectual property developed and owned in China.
Tech companies also chafe against rules that require their products adopt China's local technology standards. That means they often must create two versions of a product: one for China and one for the global market.
The reason for the IP policy (owned and developed in China), as well as forcing licensing to Chinese partners if you want to do business in China is the Chinese government wants to be creating IP, and not just a low cost place for manufacturing. China tried to do this with their own 3G standard, which was a failure. They have also tried for their own WiFi standard, which is the reason the current iPhone sold in China does not have WiFi.
Peter Drucker had a famous question, "Are you doing the right work?" The question for China and other countries, are they making the right investment in clean energy? Some countries have made massive investments in alternate energy that do not make economic sense (Spain is an example of this). The challenge is making the right investments in alternate energy that provide a long term benefit.
Godaddy is the largest domain registrar in the world. They will no longer sell .cn domains, since China started to demand more info. about their users. Network Solutions is also pulling out.
In December, China began to enforce a new policy that required any registrant of a new .cn domain name to provide a color, head-and-shoulders photograph and other business identification, including a Chinese business registration number and physical, signed registration forms. That data was to be forwarded to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), a quasi-governmental agency. Most domain name registries require only a name, address, telephone number and e-mail address.
My family is a Golden Retriever family :=) Having Golden Retrievers were a fad in Taiwan for a while.
I am now on my third Golden Retriever. I had one as a child. Then after I got married my family had another for 17 years. Super smart dog, may be to smart. And then we just adopted one from a shelter that is being challenging - he likes to chew...
China did not expect Google to do what it did. Forwarding Google.Cn to Google.hk
China's government will "suggest" to Google's partners within China, to find another partner. This will substantially reduce the revenue for Google within China.
China's Golden Wall will continue to censor individual Google pages from Google.hk that Google.cn as accessed from within China.
China's government is going to be very careful on dealing with Google and has not decided how to react yet, beyond the suggestions to partners and blocking individual page results.
China's government has lost face by how Google has thought outside the box.
China's government considers control of information of the Internet within China as key to continuing in power. They don't want an Orange or Green revolution to happen within China.
China's government is favoring Chinese companies over foreign companies. And government run companies over private Chinese companies.
Microsoft will not follow what Google has done.
Leaving China has helped Google's reputation worldwide.
In the long term leaving China as Google has done may actually help it.
Google forwarded Google.cn to Hong Kong, where Google.hk is hosted.
My 2 cents:
1. Google HK is still in China. 2. China has made the statement that their employees in China are not involved. 3. Now the responsibility for blocking is with China's government. 4. Google keeps their word by removing censorship, while not directly going against China's law. 5. Google wants to keep their other operations in China.
1. You are the boss, and the tutor is your employee. So make sure your Chinese tutor understands what you want to accomplish and has a plan. Treat your tutor with respect, but good communication is key. Getting feedback after every lesson is good for both the tutor and you. Ask your child how the tutor is doing and what you learned this week!
2. To make progress in Learning Chinese, a curriculum/textbook helps with a framework and structure. There are brilliant Chinese tutors who don't need this, but for the other 95% this helps a lot. When interviewing a tutor, ask about what materials they plan to use. When selecting a curriculum, it helps to find one that is a good fit for the tutor. ChildBook has lots of sample pages to help tutors choose the right one.
3. Ask about their experience and how they would handle potential issues, such as your child not doing their Chinese home work.
4. Talk about Home Work and have clear expectations in this area. Some Chinese parents expect their kids to be given lots of homework.
5. Ask your tutor what extra material would be helpful and compliment their tutoring. Coloring Books,CDs of Chinese Songs/Stories, DVD's, and Flashcards can all add a lot to teaching Chinese. Games are another great way to Learn Chinese.
6. Have the tutor you are considering hiring do a sample lesson with your child. See how they interact. I would pay for the lesson no matter what. Just because a person is a native speaker of a language does not automatically make them an excellent teacher. And it has to be a good fit with you, your child, and the tutor.
7. Your place or theirs. If you can have the tutor come to your house. This can help your time a lot. Driving can take a lot of time.
8. The tutor may need their own set of textbook to work with your child, so you may need to buy two sets.
9. College Students vs. Professional. If you have a local college you may want to consider using a college student. Or the significant other of a college student.
10. The tutor can also be a role model for your child, so you may want to consider this when hiring a tutor.
Jerome Cohen, a professor at New York University and an expert on China’s legal system, says he is troubled by the closed nature of the proceedings Monday, and the government’s attempt to turn this into a bribery case.
“The first thing they did to quell foreign protests was to reduce it to trade secrets,” Mr. Cohen said in a telephone interview. “The second was to discredit the defendants in the eyes of their employers. It was a brilliant move. But there are a lot of unanswered questions. A bribe for what? What did they do for it? Was it with Rio Tinto’s knowledge?”
With times of budget cuts in education, I do see school libraries as being important. To teach students that not everything you read on the Internet is true is a major task. The ability to question and analyze, and do research. Internet searches are great tools, but it is a huge challenge to find good information. Wikipedia is a great tool, but there are often inaccuracies, some of them deliberate.
I like this quote:
And to most kids, whatever they read on the Internet is "all good." I've been told, quite emphatically, that the Apollo moonwalk never happened, the Holocaust was a hoax and George W. Bush orchestrated 9/11 -- all based on text, photos or videos found online.
A Chinese graduate student wrote a paper on attacking the US power grid. Why? Because the data was available, where in other countries it is not. The paper created quite a stir and the question was it an over reaction with a bit of paranoia? What type of image is being projected by China to the US? How is China being perceived?
My 2 cents...
I understand the concern in the US, since the Chinese government has built up large and state of the art cyber force and seems to be using it. The hacking of Google, along with 26 other US companies was impressive. But it still has not been proven that Chinese were behind it, may be, some computers in China had been hijacked. And no, I don't want to buy a bridge in brooklyn :-)
The US has a cyber force, but due to legal issues such as liability has not used it against other countries in retaliation to cyber attacks. Due to the legal issues that have not been resolved yet, I don't see the US using their cyber attack abilities yet. I do worry that a lot of computer networks in the US, including power companies, are very vunerable. If Google can get hacked, I don't have faith that a power company is unhackable.
It seems before Google made it's announcement that the Chinese government was also beating it up through the state media with false accusations. Probably as a way to indirectly help Google's Chinese competition.
Linda Zhou, Alice Wei Zhao, Lori Ying, Angela Yu-Yun Yeung, Lynnelle Lin Ye, Kevin Young Xu, Benjamin Chang Sun, Jane Yoonhae Suh, Katheryn Cheng Shi, Sunanda Sharma, Sarine Gayaneh Shahmirian, Arjun Ranganath Puranik, Raman Venkat Nelakant, Akhil Mathew, Paul Masih Das, David Chienyun Liu, Elisa Bisi Lin, Yifan Li, Lanair Amaad Lett, Ruoyi Jiang, Otana Agape Jakpor, Peter Danming Hu, Yale Wang Fan, Yuval Yaacov Calev, Levent Alpoge, John Vincenzo Capodilupo and Namrata Anand.
No, sorry, it was not a dinner of the China-India Friendship League. Give up?
O.K. All these kids are American high school students. They were the majority of the 40 finalists in the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search, which, through a national contest, identifies and honors the top math and science high school students in America, based on their solutions to scientific problems. The awards dinner was Tuesday, and, as you can see from the above list, most finalists hailed from immigrant families, largely from Asia.
A friend of my wife, from Hong Kong, mentioned that the Hong Kong Mafia will often determine who the winner of a beauty contest is in some type of exchange. I was surprised to hear that triads were still very powerful outside of the movies.
Basically after 1949 they got eliminated in China after the communist took over, so many moved to Hong Kong. Some Triads may have up to 30,000 members today in HK, estimate 80,000 total in HK. Seems to be several societies and do all sorts of crimes. Software counterfeiting, drugs, and smuggling people seem to be major sources of funds. From what I read they have some influence in the movie industry, counterfeiting, as well as relations in Chinatowns in the US. Tongs and Triads both seem to have a relationship to Chinese street gangs in the US. Tongs were formed in the US by immigrants, where Triads have a longer history going back to resistance against the Manchus.
The problem I see is there is not enough true bilingualism being taught in schools, where students are expected to be fluent in both languages.
Problems I have seen in Chinese Schools:
1. All they learn is Characters, and they can't hold a conversation in Chinese. 2. It's more like baby sitting for after school and in the summer. 3. They teacher just goes over the same thing, over and over again never moving forward.
Interesting point of view. The article also mentions how China has under appreciated their currency, as well as the problem of inefficient growth.
China: the coming costs of a super bubble - China may seem to have defied the recession and the laws of economics. It hasn't. When China's bubble bursts, the global impact will be severe, spiking US interest rates.
What the article did not mention is how the changing of China's top leadership in China may be influencing the current economic nationalism and merchantism in China.
We don't have it yet, but I'm sure we will offer it as soon as available. And yes, I will update all of you as soon as ChildBook has it.
In the meantime, if you need any of the items in New Practical Chinese Reader 1-5, we do have the textbooks, CDs for the textbooks, workbooks, CDs for the workbooks and teachers' guides.
Please note that there are different CDs for the textbooks and workbooks, so you learn a lot more words than when using the usual textbooks that come with only 1 CD per level.
One nice thing about New Practical Chinese Reader is they have videos of the storyline in the textbook series. If you haven't seen the videos, here is a sample of the dramatization:
Do check out all the videos and use New Practical Chinese Reader for your Chinese lessons. This series is especially made for late teens or early 20's set to learn Chinese easily.
There have been several articles about how China's currency is being deliberately undervalued as a way to keep China's exports at a high level. By having an undervalued currency China's exports are more competitive due to this cost advantage. The IMF has a report that China's currency is undervalued, but the Chinese government has been blocking it's publication.
A more useful tool I have found for comparing currencies is The Big Mac Index published by the Economist. The Big Mac Index compares the cost of the Big Mac in different countries. Per the index, China's currency is undervalued by 49%. Paul Krugman uses 20 to 40%. Other countries that are competing with China, such as Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia also have undervalued currencies. Krugman also has a interesting technical explanation on why it does not matter if China starts to sell it's US treasury holdings - China's Water Pistol - Paul Krugman Blog
It seems that Google.cn for search will end. The challenge for Google has it been doing more good by being in China, and returning search results that when censored, tell the user they have been censored, or not being available and forcing users to around the Golden Wall (inconvenient), or to use a local search engine that censors without telling you. And of course by leaving China, Google may be losing out on the Chinese market that is growing, but with government favoritism for their competitors.
New Eclipse (from Twilight Saga) Movie Trailer is Out!
Wow, movie 3 of the Twilight Movie series is on June 30, 2010 already. So soon? I feel that I haven't even recovered from the Movie # 2 yet.
The trailer of the Eclipse movie is out already. There is a new Victoria in this movie. Bryce Howard replaced Rachelle Lefevre.
If you want to read The Twilight Saga in Chinese, we have all four books: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn in Traditional Chinese. Drop by over at our Chinese Twilight Section, these are great additions to your Chinese books collection.
Arbor Day is an international holiday where individuals or groups are encouraged to plant trees. This holiday is celebrated by numerous countries on dates depending which time of the year is best for planting trees. In the United States, National Arbor Day is celebrated every 4th Friday of April. Some states choose to celebrate Arbor Day on a different date the corresponds to the best time to plant trees in their area. To find out when your state celebrates Arbor Day, visit arborday.org.
There are several ways of celebrating Arbor Day one of which is watching one of the series on
New Practical Chinese Reader has over 300,000 books sold! It seems to be the most widely used book for college classes. The number of books sold just amazes me.
I created a table for New Practical Chinese Reader showing the Textbooks, workbooks, CD for textbooks, CD for workbooks, and instructor manuals. On the same page there is more info. on the contents and sample pages.
Interesting article that has both arguments on which on you should learn.
The headache I have seen with some traditional material is it does not do a great job of explaining the system behind Traditional Characters. I do sell Learning Chinese material in both :-) References:
I have such mixed feelings on this quote from the article. Sad, Amazement, & humorous at the same time.
Chinese language learners are now attempting to learn the so-called Chinese wisdom of twisting rules and playing dirty tricks, just like Little Zhao is taught to do in "Funny Business" dialogues. My friend said he found them quite useful and practical when it came to doing business in China.
Chinese politics are very much alive in the US! I kinda feel sorry for the city of Boston on this one. At least Taiwan politics in the US stays within the community (Blue & Green, Red has gone away).
When my family visited Washington DC we got a bit lost going to the zoo and somehow ended up at the Chinese embassy. My wife asked for directions and they were very helpful. Next to it was a bunch of posters by FG (adding to our Washington experience).
The shopping cart provider (I basically rent the shopping cart monthly) has recently had some down time recently due to a DDOS attack. This has meant down time 3 times in the past week. The DDOS attack was not against my site, but another Volusion site that affected all of their 10,000+ sites.
Having my site down is incredibly frustrating to me and not acceptable. I am hoping that the shopping cart provider, Volusion, fixes this ASAP and I am closely monitoring the situation. I am looking at other cart providers and may be changing carts if the situation is not improved very quickly.
Amazing how high the prices are. $45 million price tag for a duplex is one example. And I agree, when the rents are so much lower that usually signals a bubble.
And from this pdf on construction in China, the law seems to still be a bit chancy in the area of property rights.
Includes: - Soup Dumpings at Din Tai Fung - Traditional Taiwanese Baked Goods at JJ Bakery - Taiwanese snacks and street food at Sinbala - Japanese influenced Taiwanese desserts at Bin Bin Conjac
Din Tai Fung is very good, but expensive, portions are small, and a long line. Being able to see the kitchen is nice. Longer blog post about them.
I have not been to the other two places yet. I like Live Plaza with their Mango Smoothy, but the dishes there are not very Taiwanese. There is a food court at the 99 market just down Duarte.
The Chinese government through Hanban and the Confucius Institutes is spending a tremendous amount of money funding Chinese studies.
Currently there are 523 Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms in 87 countries and regions across the globe. The Confucius Classroom in Hacienda Heights will include a Chinese Teacher and 1000 books to start. My guess is the operating cost for China per year per classroom is $100,000. The goal is to have 1000 institutes world wide by 2020, and the program only started in 2004.
523 X $100,000 is about $52 Million dollars per year. This is probably a very low figure.
Hanban Activities:
Free Textbooks
Confucius Institutes
Teacher training for foreign Chinese Culture and Language experts to China.
Confucius Institute Scholarships
Supplying of Chinese Teachers to the US.
My guess is the total support for Hanban from the Chinese government is in the hundreds of million dollars per year and is seen as a soft power outreach. And with the huge interest in Learning Chinese and lack of resources, it's a win win for all involved parties.
The Alice movie is finally out! I have been waiting for a year for this, really, especially when I heard Tim Burton's doing it. It's a befitting addition to Burton's lifetime work.
I don't know how children will take to Tim Burton's interpretation of this wildly imaginative story, or how parents will think about it for their kids' sake. But I for one believe this is a fantastic story that should be read or listened to or watched by each little girl or boy.
Or, if you're a Tim Burton fan and plan on taking your child to see it, why not read the Alice in Wonderland story first so they can also practice comparing and contrasting the movie with the book. Yeah, brain bubble gum for the kids too.
But of course, when we start on the compare-contrast discussion thing, let's just use daily conversation dialogue, instead of "let's compare and contrast the movie and the book" because your child might jump into the next rabbit hole and hide. :-)
It is believed that the panda is the embodiment of the yin and yang, due to its black and white color. People believe that the panda's peaceful demeanor symbolizes the peace and harmony that results to when the yin and yang are perfectly balanced.
During the Xizhou Dynasty, it was recognized that the panda has never been observed to attack people or other animals. Thus, during war time, when one warring side raised the flag with a drawing of the panda, it was a signal for cease fire. Thus, temporary peace would ensue.
Even today, pandas still symbolize peace. This can be seen from when China gifts (or recently, loans) these cute animals to other nations in this modern day and age, as a symbol of peace with that other country.
This week, ChildBook celebrates the peaceful panda in our Weekly Discount section. Some panda books that your child may like from ChildBook:
In California is seems there is an issue of Foreign Language Schools being classified as day care, which has very specific staffing requirements. And because of this some schools have been shut down.
This week we are having Panda Sale week, and will be including more articles about this peaceful, Chinese animal.
Are your kids having a hard time learning Chinese? Tell them pandas are learning Chinese, so they can too!
Last Friday, 2 of the world's most famous pandas are back on Chinese soil and they will be getting Chinese classes as well.
Tai Shan, 4, and Mei Lan, 3, arrived in Chengdu, China last February 26, 2010. They have gone back home as part of the deal with the US that adult pandas are to return home when they turn 3. The pandas will go their separate ways after. Tai Shan will be go home to Bifengxia Panda Base. Mei Lan goes on to Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.
Interestingly enough, both pandas will be having teachers to be taught Chinese. Tai Shan will be immersed in Mandarin while Mei Lan will be immersed in the Sichuan dialect.
I think Tai Shan will be able to appreciate Mandarin if he sees how Bao Bei panda or Little Pim is speaking it and sharing to kids Mandarin words and phrases that are useful to kids.
Bao Bei Panda (from Early Start Mandarin DVDs) clowning around
