Click on the link to get the full story. These are published by Danwei which reports on general everyday life in China.
This post is an extract from the Danwei Bulletin, a briefing of company and market news collected from the Chinese news and social media before?the information appears in English language reporting and sent to premium subscribers of the FT’s China Confidential and Danwei. Please click here for more information. ? Chinese media last week reported that the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) announced that they had detected excessive amounts of lead in a foreign skin care product: “Almond Delicious Paste”, a skincare exfoliant product sold by the French company L’Occitane en Provence. L’Occitane is a Hong Kong-listed French company. AQSIQ said that tested samples of “Almond Delicious Paste” contained lead in excess of the 0.04 mg/g standard. The test results were included in AQSIQ’s regular quarantine list. This issue of the list, published in early May but covering the month of March, included 156 imported food products and nine imported cosmetics products. L?Occitane?s high domestic profile made it the media focus in China. The company blamed the problem on the presence of naturally-occurring lead in kaolin, one of the product?s ingredients that a supplier had not properly analyzed. However, it also said that it had already recalled the product when it identified the problem in December 2012, and could not account for the source of the March 2013 imports. Companies and brands affected AQSIQ: Excessive lead detected in L?Occitane exfoliant |
The millions of migrant workers in China have a tough life. Leaving their homes to find work and separated from their families almost all year round, they toil in the cities for little pay and reside in ramshackle lodgings. Yet this much we know about migrant workers, what we know less about is how these migrant workers deal with the loneliness and isolation of their long and difficult sojourns. After more than a month of research and interviews with migrant workers in the city of Ningbo, the Contemporary Gold (????) newspaper from Zhejiang province today published a front page story on the phenomenon of migrant workers forming “temporary couples” (????) in the cities. The newspaper recounts the stories of a few individual migrant workers in Ningbo that have formed temporary bonds of love and support in the cities to help shoulder the difficult burden of urban life. The newspaper quotes statistics from the Ministry of Health that around 80% of migrant workers in China are in a sex-starved state. And not only this, they are alone in an unfamiliar location, with little money, and no-one to comfort them. So perhaps it’s not at all surprising that migrant workers are seeking to make temporary arrangements. One of the stories that Contemporary Gold relates today is that of Old Shen and Xiaoyan, both married migrant workers, who found each other in Ningbo. Their tale illustrates just how some migrant workers are dealing with the difficult circumstances they face in the cities, and how they have to face the consequences of their decisions.
At this year’s Two Sessions in Beijing, Anhui NPC delegate Liu Li (??) made mention of the phenomenon of “temporary couples” that migrant workers are forming in China’s cities. The Contemporary Gold (????) newspaper from Zhejiang province today has a special investigative report on this phenomenon, the result of more than a month’s investigation among the migrant workers in the city of Ningbo. The newspaper cites data from 2011 that put the number of migrant workers in the city at 4.3 million, accounting for 43% of the city’s total registered population of 5.7 million. Old Shen from Jiangsu province has been working as an electrician in Ningbo since 2000. He works alone in an office with no computer, only a desk. His wife and child originally came with him to Ningbo, but they eventually returned home because it was too expensive to keep them in the city. He used to visit once every year during Spring Festival, but that ceased as well when Old Shen opted to stay in Ningbo and work overtime. Then one day Old Shen met Xiaoyan, a quiet fellow worker in the factory whose husband was working in Yunnan, when she asked him to go and fix the broken lamp in her rented room. They gradually became better acquainted and eventually were chatting every night. But Lao Shen was wary of falling in love with her. Then during August last year, Xiaoyan caught a bad cold, and Old Shen took her to the hospital and stayed with her there for a day, and next day accompanies her back to her room. But then Xiaoyan would not let him leave. That night, they had sex for the first time. “It was like eating of the sweetest honey”, Old Shen was later to tell the journalist from Contemporary Gold. From then on, Old Shen spent three or four nights a week with Xiaoyan. Yet Old Shen was deeply vexed by his infidelity. So during this year’s Spring Festival he decided to return home and tell his wife. The news was not at all well received by his family, and Old Shen and his wife eventually divorced. Xiaoyan and her husband also divorced, and she and Old Shen are now living together in Ningbo. Yet they don’t want to get married, as they are not sure how long their relationship is fated to last. Links and sources Migrant workers forming ?temporary couples? in the cities |
This post is an extract from the Danwei Bulletin, a briefing of company and market news collected from the Chinese news and social media before?the information appears in English language reporting and sent to premium subscribers of the FT’s China Confidential and Danwei. Please click here for more information. ? On May 2, Modern Life Daily ????? reported on a study of test results of whitening toothpaste from Guangxi University for Nationalities, located in Nanning. The study found that six brands of whitening toothpaste contained ?carcinogenic sulfites?. In response, the China Oral Health Products Industry Association cast doubt on the methodology of the study, but the report caused a spike of social media conversations on Sina Weibo, many of them negative. As the chart above illustrates, the day the news was first reported in the media (May 2, the blue lines), it caused an immediate spike, followed by a larger spike the next day (the brown lines). Conversation gradually receded over the next few days. The brands and companies affected are listed below. Note that the report concerns only whitening toothpastes, not the full range of products offered under the brands listed here. Companies and brands affected Whitening toothpaste safety scare |
A typical sanitary pad customer will remain loyal to one brand for several decades, so a company with a strong brand and good distribution has a license to print money. And where there is money in China, there are pirates. Southern Metropolis Daily ????? last week reported that counterfeit sanitary pads worth over 150 million yuan were seized by police in a port city famous for its smugglers: Quanzhou in Fujian province. The report explains that the reason why there are so many knock-off sanitary pads is the high gross profit of sanitary pad production, i.e. about 65%. The counterfeiters use cheap substandard materials, driving their margins sky-high. The report includes a number of interesting facts about the industry:
Notes on the chart ?The Danwei Bulletin A brief summary of each week?s report can be viewed on the China Confidential website, and the full edition is available by subscription. For more information on The Danwei Bulletin or on our custom media monitoring and research services, please contact jeremy@danwei.com The Danwei Bulletin: Stay ahead of the English news Gold Price May 3 – South China Morning Post May 9 – Bloomberg Nongfu Bottled Water – major bottled water and beverage brand May 3 – CCTV English – China Central Television News May 4 ? Shanghai Daily Fake sanitary pads: Massive margins driving rampant piracy |
Another public holiday in China, another mountain of trash. The front page of the Haixi Morning Post (????) from Xiamen today is one of a few newspapers around China looking back on a public holiday of gridlocked traffic, congested scenic spots and – inevitably – mountains of trash, again. What this means, then, is that less people are making bigger mountains of trash. In fact, on May 30th a mere 66,000 tourists left behind a full 75 tons of trash, a feat towering above the 80 tons of trash left behind by no less than 120,000 people on the 2nd of October last year during the Golden Week Holiday. All this is despite that during the May Day holiday the island was equipped with more than 100 sanitation vehicles, 100 rubbish bins, and almost 300 hygiene officials. The latter worked every day from 4:30 am to 12:00 pm to clean up the trash but – as the newspaper sardonically puts it – “were unable to always maintain a clean environment”. Here’s a few other front pages from China today on the congested and crowded May Day holiday:
Links and sources May Day aftermath: 180 tons of trash left on Gulangyu Island |
Soon after the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, donation fever gripped China as individuals and companies lined up to donate funds for disaster relief. Some of this enthusiasm turned sour: Internet users drew up a spurious list of the top ten ?international iron roosters? ????? accusing global brands like Samsung, Nokia, and Coca-Cola of donating nothing to the earthquake relief effort despite reaping in millions in profits in the China. After the Ya’an quake of April 20 this year, companies foreign and domestic have been swift and public about their donations, and donation announcements have sparked considerable discussion on China?s social network services. The chart above illustrates the conversation spike on Sina?s Weibo microblog platform for ten prominent brands after their donations were publicized in the media. Apple and Samsung are notably prominent. The above is adapted from The Danwei Bulletin, a weekly report produced by Danwei and published on the FT’s China Confidential?website and sent to premium subscribers. The Danwei Bulletin is a weekly briefing of investment intelligence from Chinese media and Internet, presenting company and market news collected from the Chinese news and social media. We focus on information that has not appeared in English language reporting or not yet been noted by the investment and business media and communities. A brief summary of each week’s report can be viewed on the China Confidential website, and the full edition is available by subscription. For more information on The Danwei Bulletin, please contact jeremy@danwei.com. Corporate earthquake donations and social media |
The black Audi has a reputation in China as the car of choice for the rich and powerful. Or for anyone pretending to be rich and powerful. And sometimes the dividing line between reality and pretense can become blurred. With the headline “Car blocks entrance to small community, is it the car that’s awesome or the driver?”, the front page of the Zhoukou Evening Paper from Zhoukou (??) in eastern Henan today relates the story of a black Audi whose driver, a traffic policeman, clearly considers himself above the law. At around 1 pm on Tuesday this week, members of a residential community on Zhongzhou Road (???) in the city of Zhoukou in Henan province were perplexed to find an Audi A6 with license plate AC0298 parked in front of the gate of their community, blocking all traffic in and out. A journalist rushed over to the scene and soon found out who the absent driver was, as this is apparently not the first (but the third) time this had happened: a young man aged 20 who wears a police uniform. According to the article, the guard explained:
About an hour later the driver of the Audi appeared again, and some of the residents – now clearly somewhat perplexed as no-one could drive in or out – tried to reason with him. But with a cigarette in his mouth he was completely unperturbed and deaf to their appeals. Someone soon phoned the (real) police, who checked up on the license plate. Turns out not only was the license plate fake, so were the tags on the windshield. Yet it emerged that the?driver – a man named Li – was indeed a member of the traffic police of the local Public Security Bureau (PSB). At 4 pm on Tuesday when the journalist left the scene, the black Audi was still there. But when he returned the next morning, he found the Audi parked on the inside. A resident then informed him that the previous evening at 6 pm, an officer of Mr Li’s PSB unit had appeared with said Mr Li to apologize for the inconvenience. Not satisfied at leaving it there, the journalist went over to the traffic police where Mr Li worked to ask him about the fake plate and tags. Mr Li insisted that he had only lent the car from someone else (whom he would not name), and knew nothing about the fake plate and tags. The newspaper ends its report by noting that fake number plates can land you in jail for 15 days and cost you a fine of up to 5,000 yuan. Yet it then asks forlornly: will Mr Li face justice? Links and sources Traffic policeman leaves black Audi with fake plates blocking gate |
“In the Ya’an earthquake disaster zone I sobbed twice, and both times were by the side of cooking pots”. The Chongqing Times newspaper today has a special section on the earthquake that occurred in the city of Ya’an (??) in Sichuan province last weekend. The special section, entitled “We are all Ya’an people now”, looks at the state of affairs 72 hours after the earthquake with the observation that “The destroyed area is calm and collected as it was before“. In eight pages of in-depth coverage, we see the extent of the destruction, how the survivors are being looked after, and how some people are trying their best to get on with their lives. One page in this special section outlines the findings of a journalist who went to take pictures of damaged homes, and found himself looking at a myriad destroyed stoves and pots as a cruel metaphor for the immense destruction wrought on people’s lives and livelihoods by the earthquake. Seeing all this destruction, there were two occasions when he wept. The journalist was struck by this, and decided to go and inspect the kitchens of every destroyed house if perhaps any of the stoves and pots had survived. In the first broken structure he entered, the kitchen area and everything in it were utterly wrecked; the same went for the second and third house he saw. “The more pictures I took”, he wrote afterwards, “the angrier I became:
This was the first time that the journalist wept in Ya’an. Yet later he did find one house with its pots and stove still intact, even though there was a large crack in the floor. He retrieved the pots, and saw to it that they were used for preparing food. A few days later the journalist witnessed another mournful scene by the side of a cooking pot. In Lingguan township (???), Baoxing county (???), he saw women preparing food in a few large cooking pots while some men were stoking the fires with wood. All the people here, the journalist noticed, had tears in their eyes. The reason for this, he was told, was that the people had seen a television news report that proclaimed that everyone in the disaster area were eating good meals of fish and meat and were doing just fine. Yet this was far from the truth for the people standing next to the cooking pots: none of the leaders had come to visit them, and they had not much to eat. The journalist overheard an old man telling his wife that he had returned once to their destroyed home to retrieve some dried meat and mushrooms, but had ended up giving the food to a volunteer working in the area. In Baoxing as well the journalist went to look through the homes in the area, and found that from the outside some of them appear to have been left untouched by the earthquake. Yet inside they were all devastated; in none of them could you cook a meal. All this signified, the journalist concluded, that the sweat and labor of two generations have been wiped out. “We are all Ya’an people now”:
Links and sources Weeping over broken pots in Ya?an |
The global price of gold has tanked, and Guangzhou’s gold market is booming. The?front page?of the?Guangzhou Daily?(????) today has images of long queues that formed the last few weeks in the city of people seeking to part with loads of cash for cheap gold. Journalists from Guangzhou Daily noticed that people were waiting in long queues to purchase the stuff, and after parting with their cash, some happily brandished their spoils. One such was 70-year-old grandma Kong, who flashed the five bracelets, three rings, one set of large solid gold bars and a pendant she had just purchased for 70,000 yuan. Even gold jewelry items that usually sell much slower flew off the shelves in the last few days, and many stores ran out of stock. Yet customers were happy to pay in advance, even though (as some of the gold merchandisers told the Guangzhou Daily), most of the sellers in Guangzhou dropped their prices by only 12%, less than the 16% drop in the global price of gold last week. Links and sources Gold rush in Guangzhou |
This is probably not going the get the hated chengguan any love, but one of their number has made a short video in the style of a popular recent television advertisement to try and ?clear up some misunderstandings? surrounding his profession. His video probably did nothing of the sort, but you can?t fault him for ripping off another television advertisement to try and stem some of the overwhelming negative press his profession generates. Or perhaps you can. ? China’s urban law enforcement officers, known as chengguan, don’t have a very good reputation. Regularly in the news for abusing and assaulting street vendors or blind beggars, the chengguan have been a feature of urban security for noncriminal administrative concerns such as noise control, parking and sanitation ever since 1997. Yet theirs is a thankless job, for obvious reasons. But now one member of their ilk?has had enough of all the “misunderstandings”. In the city of Changzhou in Jiangsu province, one chengguan by the name Jiang Yifan (???) enlisted a few of his friends and colleagues to produce a video of 1 minute and forty seconds. The front page of the Yangzi Evening News (????) from Jiangsu province today reports on Jiang’s video, which can be viewed here. Described as a mild-mannered (????) man, Jiang got tired of all the jokes and jibes that ensued whenever he told anyone about his profession. The style of the video is a straight-up copy of a recent advertisement from the cosmetics firm Jumei.com that became popular on Chinese television (see the Baidu Baike page here to view the video of this ad). With a series of slow motion scenes and phrases that appear in bold on the screen, the Jumei ad was all about triumphing in adversity, self-confidently overcoming obstacles to succeed in your own way. Hence the chengguan ad follows the same formula of slow motion scenes and commentary, which are the following (screen text in italics):
And all the while there’s dramatic music playing for effect. How’s that for a little chengguan pushback? As Jiang himself points out to Yangzi Evening News, every day the chengguan are faced with numerous contradictions, and they will be blamed for whatever they do. People swear at them, and accuse them of meddling in other people’s business. What’s a poor chengguan to do?
Links and sources Chengguan makes video to ?clear up misunderstandings? of his profession |
The newspaper Daily Sunshine (??) from Shenzhen in Guangdong province today includes a special section entitled “Evil returns from the grave” (????) (or perhaps another translation could be “The recycling of evil”) as a “reflection on the relationship between animals and humans”. The largest part of the newspaper’s front page is taken up by a Xi Jinping headline and a large image on the ongoing standoff on the Korean peninsula. The top corner of the front page refers to the sudden cancelling of the Tarantino film Django Unchained. In light of all the animal massacres that have been so prominent in China news of late, the Daily Sunshine‘s reflection on this matter is – unsurprisingly – quite morbid, yet it also contains a message of hope. The opening sentences of the special section sets the scene as follows:
Is it ignorance that makes our stomachs into slaughterhouses for animals?, the newspaper asks. A third of all the animal species in the world are on the verge of extinction, it continues, yet are we but helpless in the face of this massacre? Will we let this tragedy play itself out until the bitter end??In Shenzhen, the Daily Mirror consoles itself, people are taking action. Volunteers are joining groups like the Cat Network (??) and the Bird Watching Society, and people are restricting their appetites and spreading awareness of animal preservation. As part of its special section, Daily Sunshine includes an?article about an undercover reporter that was sent to a Hakka restaurant in Shenzhen suspected of serving various kinds of wild meat. Indeed, outside the restaurant the journalist saw cages filled with wild mountain fowl and exotic birds, snakes, tortoises, porcupines, etc. Another article?”exposes” the cruel practice of people going up the mountains to catch wild birds for fun and them eating them. With all this the newspaper admonishes its readers:?”Don’t let your stomach become an animal graveyard”. Links and sources ?Don?t let your stomach become an animal graveyard? |
The Danwei Bulletin is a new weekly report produced by Danwei and published on the FT?s China Confidential website and sent to premium subscribers. The Danwei Bulletin is a briefing of company and market news collected from the Chinese news and social media before?the information appears in English language reporting. A brief summary of each week?s report can be viewed on the China Confidential website, and the full edition is available on subscription.?For more information on The Danwei Bulletin or about our custom media monitoring and research services, please contact jeremy@danwei.com. Stay ahead of the news Gold Price May 3 – South China Morning Post May 9 – Bloomberg Nongfu Bottled Water – major bottled water and beverage brand May 3 – CCTV English – China Central Television News May 4 ? Shanghai Daily The Danwei Bulletin |
Xiaomaibu literally means small selling department, and refers to Chinese corner shops or small convenience stores usually run by an individual or a family. The person who runs such stores may sleep inside the store. The range of products and services sold in such stores varies immensely. This post highlights such xiaomaibu in a few locations around China, looking at the most popular products sold in each store along with particular services offered that make each?xiaomaibu an essential local dispenser.
# 1: “White bread”?mobile breakfast Location: near the entrance to Chongqing University, Chongqing  “One bite, one gulp” – White bread and milk for breakfast on the go When the store began stocking this food product several years ago, they decided to do so primarily because they had been exposed to the stereotype that “Foreigners prefer eating bread over noodles”, and hoped to attract them. Initially it was indeed primarily foreigners who bought it, “particularly Koreans” the owner said. Then, gradually, the owner witnessed a change, and before long there were just as many Chinese buying bread as there were foreigners. Though seemingly designed to be prepared in a toaster, the bread is not consumed by most of the store’s Chinese customers (that is, university students)?in this way. Most purchase it in the morning on their way into campus for class, and eat it by holding the package of (untoasted) bread in one hand and a carton of milk in the other hand. The owner termed this style ?one bite, one gulp” or, washing down each bite of toast with a swig of milk. The owner said that she thought it had mostly to do with their lack of time to sit down and enjoy a lengthy breakfast as they rush to class.
#2: Sliced fruit in syrup with re-usable jar Location: Long-distance bus station in Chongqing  Sliced fruit in syrup in a very useful jar “I can’t speak for ‘most popular’ – all of the things I sell here are popular,? the owner of this store conceded, ?but one very common choice is this [Huanlejia (???) brand] sliced fruit in syrup.” He grabbed a jar each of pineapple and peach and placed them on the counter. It wasn’t immediately apparent why travelers are so fond of it, as consuming it required utensils and would naturally be easier while not riding a form of transportation prone to unpredictable bumps, stops, and starts such as trains and buses. Yet the owner revealed that its popularity didn’t have as much to do with the contents of the container as with the container itself. Around the lip of the glass jar is a plastic ring with a loop attached for simple carriage. “When people finish the fruit, they reuse the jar by filling it up with water or tea and carrying it with them on their trip, or they give it as a gift to whomever they are traveling to see”.
#3: Lunch and cellphone account/battery charging Location: Residential middle school entrance in Tongren, Guizhou  Lunch with cellphone top-up and charging Although nominally a xiaomaibu, this store’s capacity as a retailer of daily-use goods and cold beverages is of only secondary importance to the throng of middle school students regularly passing through. The students’ priorities appeared to be 1) eating, and 2) charging and adding credit to their cellphones. Many students chose to add a relatively small amount of money ? ten or twenty kuai in most cases. Every student who added credit to their phone also stayed for lunch, and a few also handed their cellphones over to the owner to be plugged into the powerstrip behind the counter. Although a natural draw as a place to fill one?s stomach and cellphone accounts and batteries, the store owner does not receive any commission from China Mobile for charging their cellphones. ?I [offer this service] for free in order to ?serve the people? more effectively,? he said, evoking the dictum of Chairman Mao to ?serve the people? (wei renmin fuwu, ?????). He identified the most common-selling item as the Tongyi (??) brand orange juice beverage (???). ? #4: Cigarettes and real estate brokering? Location: Near Xiangqian Square in Wanyuan, Sichuan  Xiaomaibu and local apartment broker Positioned at the end of an alley of residential buildings, this xiaomaibu serves as a social hub for many apartment residents. Like other xiaomaibu, the store’s inventory has been finely tuned over the course of years to correlate with and keep pace with the evolving consumption patterns of the neighborhood. The most sold item is Yun Yan (??) cigarettes, produced by Hongyunhonghe (????) Tobacco Group ? the price a mere ten kuai (US $1.60). In addition to serving the neighborhood?s nicotine needs, the owner has also established herself as the area?s apartment broker. While full-time professional brokers abound in China?s dense urban areas, part-time brokers such as the owner of this xiaomaibu are the norm in smaller cities like Wanyuan. The white board is for apartments that are for sale, while the chalk writing on the door of the xiaomaibu is for advertising apartments and separate rooms within larger apartments for rent.
#5: Electric vehicle charging Location: Qingyang District, Chengdu, Sichuan  Xiaomaibu equipped with e-bike battery charger The owner of this xiaomaibu was at a loss for deciding upon his ?most popular item?, though he said that hot dogs sold consistently well on account of the children from the nearby school liking them. While this particular xiaomaibu conforms to the standards set by others across China in terms of its miniscule size (roughly the dimensions of a large walk-in closet) and convenient location (right next to a busy bus stop on a main thoroughfare), it is distinguished by its electric vehicle battery charger. It costs vehicle owners (mostly of?two-wheeled electric vehicles such as scooters and ?e-bikes?) one yuan (around US $.15) to charge their batteries for ten minutes. The owner agreed to split the revenue of the charger with the company that installed it, while he himself?must pay for the additional electricity consumed by the machine. The charger?s revenue varies seemingly randomly by month, ranging from around 100 kuai (US $16) up to around 300 kuai (around US $48). Corner store consumption: profiles of small Chinese convenience stores |
Just see Swallow in action – China’s champion search and rescue dog in the making.? The semi-finals of the All-China Search and Rescue Dog Championships, organized by the fire department of the Ministry of Public Security, have just concluded. As yesterday’s front page of the Yanzhao Evening News (????) from Hebei province told us, there was one outstanding star at the event: a one-year-old Springer from Hebei province called Swallow (??). Swallow was top dog in the small-scale category, and will now go through to the finals of the event. According to the handlers, Swallow has a very smart sense of smell, and is very obedient. Swallow is currently undergoing training as a search and rescue dog. Every morning at 8 am, Swallow and her companions are first taken through their paces in endurance exercises lasting around 15 minutes. At the command of “sit!” (??), all the dogs must line up in a line in front of their handlers, and remain in this position for another 15 minutes in a sort of “patience drill”. This completed, its time for breakfast, which is made to order for every individual dog. And then its time to strap on the search and rescue gear and head out to the training ground. The daily training routine is stiff, encompassing such exercises as learning to obey orders, searching through boxes and ruins, and jumping over barriers. Then of course there’s also the more fun game of fetch. According to her handler, Swallow is not the fastest dog but she always manages to rush forward and grab the ball first and retrieve it. The reason for this is because she is the smartest. While all the other dogs would wait until the handler throws the ball before setting off, Swallow would already be running when the handler lifts his arm to throw the ball. Although Swallow is still in training, she has already heroically participated in two operations. One was when a building collapsed and she searched the ruins for signs of life, while in the other case she searched for survivors after an explosion caused by fireworks. And the best thing about Swallow is that she’s still just one year old – she has a bright future ahead. Links and sources Meet Swallow, China?s champion search and rescue dog |
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At the north-eastern corner of Anhui University’s old campus in Hefei, capital of Anhui province, there’s a scenic pond that’s inhabited by a bevy of black swans. The swans have been there for more than a decade already, and were – as the front page?of local newspaper?Star News?(????)?laments today – an object of fondness for locals.  The black swans at Anhui University in happier times Yet early this morning, five of these black and beautiful swans were found floating lifeless on the surface of the pond. The latest instance of floating dead animals in China – first pigs, then ducks, and now black swans – these mere five black swans became an object of heated discussion on the Internet right after the announcement was made. How did they die? Was it a natural disaster or another man-made one? As?Star News?tells us today, upon hearing of the news yesterday?it immediately sent a journalist to the scene to find out exactly what happened. What he found was just one more filthy pond filled with oily water and garbage. The swans are something to behold. The picture above is taken from a photo album that was uploaded to the website ????, or “Ten Thousand Hotline” (a news and information portal focused on Anhui province), in 2011. Now clouded with a sense of sadness, the album shows the then 13 black swans as they appeared last winter. There are now eight swans left. The journalist was not impressed by the scene he found the pond. The water had an oily quality to it, and quite a lot of garbage could be seen on the surface. From what he could ascertain from locals, many people often used the pond to rinse cloths, mops, mats and other items containing various chemicals. The journalist could not see the dead swans anymore, because, as he was informed, they have been preserved and will be studied carefully to determine the cause of death. After this their remains will be used as specimens for academic research. With the cause of death as yet entirely unknown, the Star News today offers four possible causes of death in a desperate attempt to establish whether it was a natural occurrence or not:
So what caused these five black swans to go the same way as thousands of pigs and ducks, all discarded into a watery grave??Speaking to the people responsible for the maintenance of the area, the journalist was told that new measures are now to be implemented at the pond, including strengthening patrols by local security, improving the quality of the water, and removing the garbage. But alas, it’s too late for the five black swans, who were preyed on by predators, bombarded with garbage, and left floating lifeless like just some worthless pig.?
Links and sources Five floating dead black swans join China?s animal apocalypse |
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In the city of Huangshi in Hubei province there’s a lake called Cihu Lake. Situated close to the Yangtze River, the lake area appears to be an idyllic scenic spot. Yet, especially in light of recent events, Cihu Lake is blemished by the existence of ten pig farms that are situated on the south-western edge of the lake. After 108 pigs were fished out of the lake in the last few days and several thousand more in lakes and rivers elsewhere in China, the local newspaper Dongchu Evening News wanted some answers, so it sent a journalist to the ten pig farms on Cihu Lake to investigate. The situation the newspaper uncovered is startling. Not only were all the pig farms technically illegal, none of them had the proper paperwork, and the farms were falsifying the labels on their pigs’ ears. Yet making this deplorable situation worse is the state of government regulation being applied to the pig farms, regulation which can only be described as messy and inefficient. So while we may not yet know the full details of where all the dead pigs in the rivers originated from, the out of control pig farms on Cihu Lake can shed a lot of light on the situation. The front page of the Dongchu Evening News?(????) from Hubei province today makes an insightful contribution to our understanding of why several thousand dead pigs ended up in rivers in China.?108 pigs were fished out of Cihu Lake (??) in Huangshi (??), Hubei province, and the newspaper today casts a suspicious eye on the ten pig farms on the south-western edge of Cihu Lake. And not without reason, because after the pigs were removed from the lake, authorities in the city went to check up on the ten pig farms and found that not a single one among them had its documents in order, and in particular none of them were holding a valid certificate for animal disease prevention. Yet when a journalist from the newspaper went to interview some people at the ten pig farms, the manager of one farm let on more than he intended when he protested: “I have a valid business license, and that’s all you need for a pig farm!” This was strongly denied by the animal health authorities in Huangshi, who maintained that you can only obtain a business license once you have the animal disease prevention certificate. According to regulations from the Ministry of Agriculture, however, the Cihu pig farms are not even supposed to exist. The regulations specify that no pig farm can be situated closer than 500 meters from sources of drinking water or from residential areas, and the Cihu Lake pig farms fail on both these criteria. Not only are the documentation of the pig farms not in order, the labels on their pigs’ ears are all highly suspicious as well. The label is supposed to state exactly where each and every pig came from, yet the pigs fished out of Cihu Lake have labels linking them to locations far and wide such as Anhui, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces – but none from Hubei. What this suggests is that the farms on Cihu Lake didn’t bother to update the labels or simply falsified them. Throwing dead pigs in rivers is in fact nothing new and has been happening for years. So why, the newspaper asks, has regulation of this issue been so lax? In fact, as the journalist discovered, government regulation on the issue of pig farming is convoluted to say the least, with no less than seven different government departments (e.g. agriculture, quality supervision, health and hygiene, etc.) having some responsibility for regulation. So the journalist decided to get in touch with each of these departments to find out who is really responsible, but the only reply he got was “it’s not our responsibility”, before being fobbed off with the instruction to get in touch with some other department. With this chaotic situation, thousands of dead pigs in rivers seem a lot less surprising, if not any less awful.
Links and sources Hubei farms and dead floating pigs |
Has tragedy become farce? As the vile mystery of several thousand dead pigs floating down rivers in Shanghai continues to roil, Chinese newspapers today report that a thousand dead ducks have been found floating down a river in Sichuan, and fifty dead pigs (mostly piglets) have been found stranded on a shoal in the Xiangjiang River in Changsha, Hunan province. Yet there’s no need to panic, the newspapers point out, the ducks and pigs have all been buried and no sources of drinking water have been polluted. No, only our own souls remain polluted with the stench of rotting animals cast into rivers to float out of sight and out of mind.
On that afternoon, the phone rang at the local branch of the environmental protection office. The caller informed the agency that there’s an almighty stink in Pengshan, because there’s dead ducks floating down the river. Officials rushed to the scene and later found more dead ducks – in various states of decay and some wrapped in white bags – piled up on a river bank some distance upstream close to the towns of Qinglong (??)?and Guanyin (??). The ducks were piled on this spot a few days before – by whom no-one knows – and the river gradually swept them along. When CCTV reported the news yesterday, journalists from Tianfu Morning News?rushed to scene and were able to ascertain that all the dead ducks had been fished out, disinfected and buried. And since the South River is not a source of drinking water in the area, there’s no cause for alarm. This is the overriding message of Tianfu Morning News’s?coverage today of the dead ducks in the river. With front page images of white-clad officials testing the water, we’re told that there is no danger to humans in the slightest. Right at the top of the paper’s coverage, there’s the following question and answer series to put everyone at ease:
More dead pigs in Hunan Upon closer inspection, one of the pigs was found to have a tag in its ear. The tag was imprinted with the serial number 1430181. RIP 1430181 in your watery grave, such a trendy way for a pig to die in China these days.
Links and sources More dead pigs and a thousand dead ducks dumped in rivers |
Apple in the crosshairs, and the shadow of Google’s misadventures in China On March 15 ? World Consumer Rights Day ? China Central Television (CCTV) broadcast its annual investigative program that seeks to expose companies that harm or mistreat Chinese consumers. Several companies, both foreign and domestic came under the spotlight, and the program rehashed familiar accusations of Chinese consumers being treated unfairly by multinationals. Specifically, CCTV accused Apple of discriminating against Chinese customers by offering lower levels of service and charging fees for replacing back covers of faulty iPhones, which is done for free in other countries. There also seems to have been an organised campaign on Sina Weibo in which celebrities criticised Apple for the problems exposed by the CCTV report. The campaign backfired when the aptly named Peter Ho tweeted his message criticizing Apple, but forgot to delete the instructions it came with telling him to post it at 8:20 pm, just after the CCTV report aired. The word on the street in Beijing is that this campaign was organized on behalf of one of Apple’s competitors. Samsung is the name most often cited, but this is only hearsay. (See China Media Project’s posting for more on what has become known as the 8:20 affair: Did CCTV conspire to smear Apple?.) The CCTV broadcast was not the first time Apple has been accused of treating its Chinese customers differently from those in other regions. On 15 February 2012, Beijing Business Today (????) a weekday business newspaper published by the Beijing Daily Group, ran a report critical of the high support fees and mandatory replacements for damaged iPhones at Apple stores in China. The focus of the article was on Apple repair staff purportedly pressuring consumers into paying high prices for comprehensive replacement of iPhone parts rather than lower-price part repairs. Rather than simply fixing the broken screen, it cost up to RMB 1,598 to replace a broken screen, main board, and battery with factory refurbished parts on a water-damaged iPhone. The article also quoted from Chinese consumer protection laws governing fair treatment of customers, and concluded by asking how long Apple can expect to survive if it exhibited such disregard for its customers. (?Who is hurt by Apple?s sky-high service fees?? ???????????) Most of the information contained in the CCTV report was in the Beijing Business Today article ? the phone back enclosure that isn’t replaced, the 90-day warranty that might violate regulations ? with one key difference: the Beijing Business Today article compares the prices Apple charges for replacement parts to the much lower service fees that other shops charge for basic repairs to suggest that Apple’s high prices demonstrate an arrogant disregard for consumers, but it does not mention Apple’s behavior in other countries. CCTV’s report, on the other hand, emphasizes this “double standard” of customer service, and it was the allegations of discrimination against Chinese consumers that appeared in the astroturfed celebrity microblog posts after the program segment was aired. The sense that Chinese consumers are being treated worse than consumers in other countries has cropped up in the way the media reported on Apple in the past (e.g. delayed product launches, handling of scalping) and may be the reason that this turn of the news cycle received more attention than the complaints in 2012. Although the attempt to drive online public opinion through celebrity microblog posts was exposed and is now the butt of online mockery, it’s instructive to compare CCTV’s report on Apple’s misdeeds to its June 2009 report on the “pornographic content” of Google’s predictive search technology. In that incident, CCTV was roundly mocked when it was revealed to have used one of its own interns as key evidence of public disgust with Google. Additionally, evidence pointed to the possibility that it might have generated the list of obscene predictive searches in the week leading up to its national broadcast (see links to Danwei stories below for more). But the online backlash to CCTV did nothing to help Google, and the TV segment, however flawed and manipulative it may have been, was merely the public prelude to a government-ordered cleanup and overhaul of the Internet search market in China. In a move possibly related to Apple?s run-in with CCTV, Google?s mobile operating system Android was recently singled out for criticism by a government report in China. A white paper (PDF) by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology?s China Academy of Telecommunication Research warned of excessive dependence on the Android mobile operating system in China, where 80% of smart phones apparently use Google?s operating system. The report accused Google of discriminating against Chinese companies. The signs are clear that regulators and establishment media would both be happy for foreign mobile phone handsets and operating systems to lose market share. This should be remembered by anyone betting on Apple as a China play, including CEO Tim Cook who earlier this year told Xinhua News Agency that he believes China will become Apple’s largest market. Links and sources Taking the shine off Apple?s China prospects? |
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