Imagethief

Just walking my pony, officer

Posted on November 16, 2006 by Will Moss

Imagethief has been watching with come concern the Beijing city government’s drive tocrack down on “stray dogs”. In the expansive interpretation of the authorities this means any unlicensed dog, any dog that contravenes the city’s 35cm height limit, or any dog that has the misfortune to be dog >n+1 in the household, where n is any other dog that the owners like better.

Mind you, this has zero personal implications for me. Being as I live in a two-bedroom apartment on the 17th floor and not, for instance, a ranch house on two wooded acres, I keep cats. It’s not that I don’t like dogs, it’s just that I’m not Parisian or Chinese and thus not compelled to keep an enormous dog in a tiny apartment that barely has room for me, Mrs. Imagethief, two ungrateful cats and some houseplants. Not only is space at a premium, but we also like to travel. The good thing about cats is they are similar to houseplants in many ways. They have about the same intelligence –although they barf more– and if well fed and watered they can be left on their own for a few days. If the cleaner drops by every now and then to make sure they are still fed and watered and no dried cat barf is bonding permanently with the carpet fibers, then all is good. If I could freeze-dry a dog temporarily while traveling, say in one of those 2001: A Space Odyssey-style tinsel-lined refrigerators, I might reconsider dog ownership in Beijing. But, you know, there’s always a chance the computer could turn evil and the dog might never wake up, in which case you’d have to dispose of an enormous, freeze-dried dog carcass. Although in a city where dog meat commands a premium, this might not be as hard as it sounds.

The challenges or apartment dog ownership don’t seem to be stopping my neighbors, however, despite a lack of dog freeze-drying apparatus. Although they appear to be normal, law-abiding citizens, it turns out that a vast number of them are apparently trafficking in contraband dogs. How else to explain the profusion of manifestly illegal golden retrievers and the one rottweiler (yes, rottweiler) that are often being exercised in the courtyard. If there was a reward, I’d turn the lot of them in and pocket the cash.

What has changed noticeably in the couple of weeks since the “strike hard at stray dogs” campaign began is that my neighbors have become much more furtive about walking the larger dogs. Whereas before you could pretty much count on a gamboling retriever or two (retrievers love to gambol) on any weekend afternoon, people are now hustling their dogs out under cover of darkness and walking them in discreet loops near the walls where they are less visible. This is a particular challenge for my rottweiler-owning neighbors. It turns out that a rottweiler is a hard animal to smuggle, especially if it is hyperactively sociable and prone to mob anyone who gives it a glance. Might as well throw a saddle blanket over it and claim to be walking your pony. Your hell-pony with especially large, sharp teeth, that is.

Truthfully, I think the dog campaign is misdirected. I can understand the licensing requirement, and even a drive to limit households to one dog. True, it cuts against the libertarian grain but, um, this is China. But I think the size thing is not on. After all, if a citizen wants to keep an inappropriately large wolf-beast in his miniscule shoebox of an apartment, that’s his problem. Well, and the dog’s, I guess. I don’t hear of many dog attacks in Beijing, and people don’t seem to be dropping dead of rabies in the city limits. I am far more likely to put a shoe in human feces deposited by one of the zillions ofkaidangku-wearing babies than I am in dog-shit. (Saw one child busy leaving a load on Tian’anmen Square during the National Day flag lowering ceremony. Surely crapping in the sight-line of the Great Helmsman has to break some kind of taboo. But the cops were too busy hustling away black-market ice-cream sellers to care.)

Anyway, I think the whole dog campaign is misdirected. From a quality-of-life perspective Beijing would be a much more pleasant city if the authorities made 35cm the minimumheight requirement for dogs. Think of the many benefits: People would think twice before keeping more than one dog. Sure you can put a dozen chow-chows in a siheyuan, but try putting a dozen Rhodesian ridge-backs in and see how long the furniture stays in one piece. Also, large dogs often have a more pleasant temperament I find. At the end of a long day, as I stagger home after 12 hours in the PR salt mines, the last thing I need is Fufu the Pekingese following me through the courtyard going yapyapyapyapyapyapyap! Listen: I am an avowed animal lover. I dote on my idiotic cats and to this day I am awash with guilt for every mean-spirited thing I did to any animal, no matter how lowly, as a misguided youth. (Well, except for the Flintstones-sized Roachasauruses we used to get in my house in Singapore. I’d kill them all if I could.) But more than once I have been sorely tempted to draw back my right foot and go for distance and hang time, like Hall of Fame punter Ray Guy. Plus, the nice thing about large dogs is that if the apocalypse comes they can be trained to guard or hunt, or provide meat for days. Imagine the whole family fighting over a Chihuahua haunch. Embarrassing.

But my influence over municipal policy is, alas, limited. Therefore it looks like all my neighbors will be walking their dogs under cover of night for some time to come. If I were them I might try draping the animals in camouflage nets to break up their outlines. Not only will that make them harder to spot, but any city management flunky who sees an enormous, shapeless, drooling green blob charging toward him will probably hightail it out of dodge and never come back.

Barely a nibble.

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That western ghost festival

Posted on October 31, 2006 by Will Moss

Imagethief would like to wish all readers a happy Halloween.

I’m a big fan of Halloween, and not just because I have wretched sweet tooth and rosy memories of childhood evenings spent sifting through pillowcases full of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Pixie Sticks, Sugar Daddies, Candy Corns and those goddamn inedible wax lips that I always got at least one set of. Those were the days. The unintelligible sugar-high days, that is.

For some bullshit reason, when a ten-year-old in a ridiculous costume knocks on your door begging for candy it’s considered “cute” but when a 39 year-old man does it people get all freaky and weird. As far as I’m concerned this is just one more sign of our society’s ruinous youth fetish, and is blatantly unfair. The only solution seems to be to have a child (which we’re trying to do), wait a tasteful few years (I think people might get suspicious if you show up with a basinet and claim the candy is for an infant that is still breast feeding) take the little rugrat out trick-or-treating and then ration the candy out over days “to make it last” while secretly skimming from the top. I’m pretty sure this is what my father did, and it would go a long way toward explaining some of my issues.

I also enjoy dressing in costumes. Especially ones that I can be seen in public in. I was a Jawa back in the Star Wars says. And Han Solo one year. And Luke Skywalker of course. And when I was in grad-school in the early nineties and had really long hair I event went in drag as Princess Leia. I actually made the cinnamon buns with my own hair, although they were a bit on the small side. More cupcake sized than the enormous dish antennae that Carrie Fisher wore. Thinking back on it, Star Wars seems to have been involved with most of my Halloween costumes over the years, which, I suppose, reveals my inner nerdly qualities. But at my age I’ve come to terms with that.

I also like fire, which is a big part of Halloween. After all, you’re either lighting candles in pumpkins or –once you enter high school– blowing them up. Both can be festive and cheery. Although, by the shaving-cream and toilet-paper drenched standards of my high school, I was pretty tame on the prank front. I was really in the whole thing to dress up like somebody from Star Wars and get a bunch of free candy.

Adults, of course, love Halloween as much as kids. But they all use at as excuses to go to fetish parties. Having grown up in San Francisco’s Castro district (which may explain the whole Princess Leia thing) I’m not much into fetish parties. Not because I have anything against fetishes, mind you. I like black vinyl, thigh high bitch boots and fishnet stockings as much as the next guy. It’s cool when girls wear them too. Rather, it’s that I feel I’ve seen most of it before.

This year I didn’t go to any parties and I didn’t collect any candy, although I am sure you can trick or treat in the villas. Even in Beijing it’s probably courting trouble to be a trick-or-treating 39 year-old in drag. And god knows what the police report would say. If I were the cops I’d just have me write a self criticism and call it a day rather than try to send that one up through the chain of command. “We have arrested a middle-aged foreigner dressed like a teenage fantasy space princess and begging for sweets in expensive neighborhoods. Hello? Hello, sir?”

I did carve a pumpkin this year, the first I have done in a long time. On our way back from Sunday brunch at The Orchard my friends and I stopped at a large wet market. Unfortunately, the Chinese don’t cultivate an ideal assortment of carving pumpkins, being more prone to see large gourds as food. I can understand this. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup and pumpkin brushed with olive oil and then roasted are all really good. Still, sometimes you need a carving pumpkin. And it should be big, bright orange and able to stand upright on its own. Not small and green or weirdly misshapen in a way that would require you to brace it somehow and thus constitute a fire hazard were the cat to brush against it and tip it over.

Fortunately we did manage to locate a couple of satisfactory specimens and haggled our way to an only slightly outrageous price. Our driver said it was still better than what we would have paid in the city, so we felt pretty good. My wife speaks better Chinese than me and she’s much more attuned to what’s being said in crowds around us. As we were trudging out of the wet market with large pumpkins under our arms, she overheard one woman say to another, “Oh yes, that western ghost festival is coming soon!”

That western ghost festival. I quite like the sound of that. In fact it was nice reminder that there is something to Halloween besides all the dressing like Luke Skywalker, amassing sugary swag and going to fetish parties. So in observance of that western ghost festival I have carved my Jack-o’-lantern and placed it in the window of my apartment where everyone across the street can see it. Tonight I’ll light it one more time and enjoy the nostalgia that the smell of slightly singed pumpkin always brings. And, if no one is looking, I might just take out that old Princess Leia costume as well. After all, I might be too old to beg for candy. But you’re never too old for drag.

Say, who’s the cute one on the right? The staff of KSFS Radio, ca. 1993. Can you guess Leia is me?

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The elephant in the newsroom

Posted on October 23, 2006 by Will Moss

Imagethief was interested to read in yesterday’s People’s Daily Online a brief articlereporting on a conference to address the problems that China’s international news organizations face in reaching foreign audiences. The discussion focused on how China is portrayed by services such as Xinhua, , China Daily, CCTV9 and the English version ofPeople’s Daily, which are meant to reach out to foreign audiences:

“The Chinese should develop more efficient ways of communicating with the outside world,” said Wu Jianmin, president of the Foreign Affairs Collegeand former Chinese Ambassador to France.

“An acclaimed foreign expert on China once told me China’s distorted image would be the largest obstacle for its further development,” Wu said. “Sometimes, even when information is reported objectively, it can still send the wrong signals.”

For example, some media focus too much on China’s GDP or exports growth, giving the foreign audience an impression that everything in China is rosy, but they forget the cost of the successes, for example harm to the environment, Wu said.

***

Experts believe Chinese media are facing tough challenges in communicating with overseas audiences. “The most difficult thing is that the most talented professionals are gravitating towards higher-paid jobs,” said Ma Shengrong, vice president of Xinhua News Agency.

“The voices of the Chinese media are still weak on the world stage due to various factors, including the difficulty of translating some Chinese values and phrases into English,” he added.

I am inclined to agree with those “experts” cited in the second to last paragraph, above. However, while loss of talent and translation may be part of the problem, I think they fit into a much larger picture that is conspicuously ignored by the article.

First, the general quality of China’s English language media is, by international standards, dismal. There are certainly talented people, both Chinese and foreign, working for China’s various international news services, but for various reasons the average level of quality in both print and broadcast is simply not up to international standards. This is true in the details, like copy editing in much of the English language print media and the foreign talent (in the broadcast sense) employed by CCTV 9, and in a broader sense, in the editing, story selection and frequent ham-fisting of the political slant.

All of these issues, however, are descended from the larger problem, the elephant in the room studiously overlooked in the article above. China’s international news services are explicit state propaganda organs. It is pointless to discuss whether Chinese media organizations are following a balanced editorial line, especially on issues that impact the image of China abroad, when the editorial line is heavily influenced if not dictated by the state. Even the perception of that influence is damaging, and tends to drive foreigners away or make them wary.

China isn’t unique in having state news organizations that fill a propaganda role. The United States maintains several state propaganda media agencies, and plenty of other nations do the same. And I would argue that there is a legitimate role for these kinds of organizations in the grand scheme of things. But China’s authoritarian government, with its reputation for micromanaging state public relations issues and zealous propaganda apparatus, will be seen by overseas audiences –correctly, I believe– as being much more deeply involved in the day-to-day operations of China’s international news services than the governments of liberal democracies are in most of their own. This is a problem for China, because I am sure that it wants CCTV9 to be seen as a peer of the BBC World Service or even the Voice of America more than as a peer of the North Korean KCNA. It certainly wants Xinhua to be seen as a credible global wire and financial information service, as we’ve all been recently reminded. But as long as its news organizations are seen as propaganda first and news second they’ll receive an immediate and steep credibility discount from foreign audiences.

The propaganda link and the general stodginess and stuffiness of state media probably also play a role in the talent drain as well. When state media was the only show in town that wouldn’t have been a problem. But China has an increasingly lively commercial media that is competing with the state behemoths for talent, including some magazines and newspapers with very good reputations. They might be subject to tight state regulation, but that’s not the same thing as being state-run. Also, there is an increasing number of foreign media organizations (and PR agencies) in China that are also able to woo the best and brightest, especially if they have English or other foreign language skills.

As for the ability to attract foreigners, I am acquainted with some smart and talented foreigners who have worked in Chinese state media. Many were fresh graduates or very young professionals for whom a year or two in Chinese state media was a reasonable way to work in China while moving toward a job in a foreign news organization or a grad school spot back home. Most of the older pros, however, had either grown an armor of cynicism or undergone a tortuous process of rationalization (or become embittered bloggers). And all foreigners working in Chinese state media, and especially the television presenters, had better reconcile themselves to being seen as complicit in China’s propaganda regimen, and to absorbing some of the bitter and often racially-tinged scorn that foreigners reserve for compatriots who are seen to have sold out their dignity or values to carry the Chinese government line. This scorn isn’t always fairly dispensed or justified, but it is there nonetheless.

Glossing up the production values in both print and broadcast might help, but it won’t be a solution as long as the hand of the state is seen to loom over newsrooms. Singapore, which has tried to turn its Channel News Asia cable news station into a regional equivalent of CNN has experienced some of this. CNA is relatively slick, manned by native English speakers, and should be able offer unique insight into Asia. But as long as parent Mediacorp and CNA are perceived as subservient to the Singapore government’s agenda other governments will be suspicious of them and people –especially the educated, affluent international businesspeople who make advertisers’ mouths water– will reach first for CNN, the BBC or their local equivalent.

The competition, every other English language print and television news source in the world, will be tough. Many of those organizations have cultivated reputations over decades. Ultimately success will come down to building a solid track record of good programming, editing and talent. China’s international media can’t be run like an English version of domestic media, which is what happens now. Foreign viewers won’t endure a stream of turgid articles reciting awkwardly translated political slogans and concepts, or news spots showing the Chinese leadership’s daily activities in protocol order. Even the Chinese seem to be growing considerably less patient with that, judging from the increasingly zippy and salacious Chinese language media. In fact, if the Chinese really want their global programming to fly, they might consider a significantly lighter government touch, perhaps just laying down some ground rules. That might enable them to do something else helpful, and hire top-flight, experienced foreigners or returnee Chinese from developed media markets to program or help edit. After all, Al-Jazeera has gleefully raided the BBC in its quest for respectability.

Such a move seems beyond the pale for the Chinese leadership and for the moment it probably is. The instinct to closely manage the media is probably too strong for the government to trust foreigners or even returnees to get too close to levers of power, although they’re welcome to copy edit and be talking heads. But as long they keep sailing the same path they have been, Xinhua the People’s Daily, China Daily and other English print media are doomed to be little more than attributions in foreign news reports and CCTV9 is destined to be a station of some use to locals practicing English, but shunned by most foreigners with access to anything better.

Note: See also the Peking Duck, especially the comment thread, in which a very good point is made. There is no monolithic “foreign” market, or even a monolithic “English language” market. Reaching out to Americans will be different than reaching out to Australians, Singaporeans or English speaking Italians for that matter. But every international broadcaster deals with that by either segmenting its programming, having different channels or publications, or targeting a narrower segment that crosses nationalities such as businesspeople. For the purposes of reaching a global audience, even via other country’s media, one of the best resources the Chinese ought to have at their disposal is savvy, quotable press officers with local knowledge stationed at embassies around the world. However one gets the sense that those people aren’t always the most quotable individuals around.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Censorship, China, China in the News, Journalism, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Soft Power | Comments Off

Adventures in mucilage

Posted on September 18, 2006 by Will Moss

Every now and then, just when I think I’ve got this living in China thing totally handled, something spins out of control in a way that reminds me to maintain a little humility. On Friday that moment came when I went to bank to change a bunch of US dollars to Singapore dollars prior to wiring it back to my Singapore account. I took my service number and waited in a drone-like trance for it to come up at the one window that seemed to be actually turning over customers. Three windows were open, but two of them were stuck in all day perma-transactions. You know the ones. Your number is 8,902. The open window is now calling 8,887 and the granny at the counter to the left was served with number 14 –apparently earlier that month– and is still there hashing out the paperwork to wire 1000 RMB in plitchkas –or whatever the currency is– to Guineau Bissau where her grandson is studying muskrat husbandry. Someday, when her grandson is the muskrat king (麝鼠王 if you were wondering – I had to look it up) of all China, her investment will pay off handsomely.

Muskrat husbandry in Guinea Bissau was sounding pretty good about the moment the teller gave me a quizzical look and said, “There are no US dollars in this account”. Yes, Imagethief had waited in line for half an hour with his wife’s passbook. At least she didn’t say, “You don’t look like Lee Yu Foong” (玉凤; it’s clearly a girl’s name) and put security on me with their sinister, candy-stripe electro-batons.

But it got worse today when I went to the post office to mail my US tax return (late, I know, but I don’t owe so they don’t care) and some paperwork for my dive certification agency. At the counter where one buys postage, which is separate from the counter where one does everything else, I was told that I would have to insert my various envelopes into other envelopes that I would have to purchase. it seems that the Chinese postal service is intolerant of nonstandard envelopes, which is to say any non-Chinese envelope. No big deal; it was only 5 mao (six cents) for the envelopes, although it did leave me wondering as to the fate of two shockingly nonstandard envelopes I had mailed internationally the week before. We’ll find out, I guess.

It turned out that neither Chinese envelope was big enough to accommodate the foreign envelope it was meant for. Both were close, but not quite there. I could have gone back to the counter and traded up to two larger envelopes, but at this point I was having second thoughts about sending my tax forms to Uncle Sam in a cryptically marked Chinese envelope. US tax envelopes use all manner of complex bar codes, stickers and machine-readable type to make sure they are routed to the clerk most likely to select you for auditing on the basis of some minor, personal quibble, like a wife with a Chinese name. Why interfere with that? So I decided to mail my tax forms from Singapore in two weeks. They’re already five months late, so two more weeks probably won’t make a big difference in the size of the stick that gets jammed up my ass. And Singapore’s postal service is both reliable and tolerant of registered mail using nonstandard envelopes.

That left the larger envelope free for the dive paperwork. It just fit inside. I addressed the new envelope and took it up to the counter to send. As I was handing it to the clerk I noticed that I had forgot to seal it. And it was here that my entire errand unravelled.

I should have just licked the envelope. Licked it and handed it to the clerk with a big, sweet grin. But, I thought, I don’t really want to lick this Chinese envelope, and I certainly don’t want to lick it and hand it back to this poor girl all damp with my drool and laowai tongue mites. Yes, I know this is a country where hocking a glistening, irridescent loogey is a crowd-pleasing national art form, but I’m American, dammit, and I keep my phlegm below the epiglottis except on the rarest of occasions.

Seeing me looking for a moistened sponge or glue, the clerk directed me to a table by the wall. There was a grey washcloth in a dish, the sanitary status of which I daresay made my mouth look like the inside of a freshly used autoclave. Fortunately, the washcloth had dried out. There was also a little device for applying mucilage to envelopes. I swiped the flap of the envelope along one of the wheels of the mucilage machine and pressed it shut.

Chinese mucilage does not stick. Not even a little. Whether this is because of deficient mucilage technology or in order to make it possible for the PSB to open envelopes without steaming them, I do not know. It’s tacky, but it doesn’t stick. I noticed a little slot in the machine that looked like it was for swiping the edge of a sealed envelope through. Perhaps, I thought, this heats the mucilage or applies even pressure, or magic postal pixie-dust, or whatever else is necessary to make the goddamn mucilage stick. So I swiped the envelope through it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. This applied another layer of mucilage to the outside of the envelope. I now had an unsealed envelope coated with tacky mucilage and fingers that looked like I had just crammed them up the nose of a three-year old.

So I gave up. I figured I was only 5 mao down, and I simply wasn’t going to go through the whole process again. I’ll mail the works from Singapore.

It is widely said that the Chinese think all Jews are smart. I may be the man who does more to undermine that remarkably durable impression than any other.

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Dear lord, why not Paul Hogan?

Posted on September 6, 2006 by Will Moss

Or Yahoo Serious, for that matter?

I was raised never to speak ill of the dead. Unfortunately that lesson, like so many others, didn’t really stick. So I thought I’d take a moment to reflect upon the early passing of Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin. I realize this is neither a China nor, strictly speaking, a PR story. But I do scuba dive a lot –and in some particularly risky circumstances– and I am always interested in situations where people meet a nasty end while in the ocean. I am also interested in how Irwin’s death is being described in the media.

I was never a big Crocodile Hunter fan. I am a product of the Marlin Perkins era; an age of more restrained approaches to nature documentaries. (Ironically, Perkins’ show, The Wild Kingdom, was sponsored by Mutual of Omaha, an insurance company. Perhaps they were onto something.) Irwin’s shtick, on the other hand, seemed to consist of a lot of molesting of animals and insightful commentary along the lines of, “Wow, look at that [insert dangerous wild creature here]! He’s a whopper! Crikey! I’m just gonna grab his tail. If he gets those fangs into me, I’m a goner. Look at that! You’re alright, fella, you’re alright.”

It’s like knowledge pouring into my head. If they’d known I’d someday be able to get that kind of information from the Discovery Channel, my parents probably wouldn’t have bothered spending all that money on my biology degree.

My personal disregard for Irwin’s pedagogical style aside, any early death is a tragedy. Irwin leaves behind a young daughter and a toddler son who will only ever know his father through reruns (and who, you may recall, was once dangled perilously close to the snapping jaws of death in what, after his execrable “movie”, was Irwins’ biggest PR blunder). But my real interest in Irwin’s demise isn’t the circumstances per se, although they are somewhat unusual. Rather, it is that Irwin’s passing is being described as shocking, both by a random sample of Australians interviewed by CNN yesterday (indeed, the headline on the CNN web video story is “Australians Shocked“) and, most notably by Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, who said…

…he was “shocked and distressed at Steve Irwin’s sudden, untimely and freakish death,” according to AP. “It’s a huge loss to Australia.”

Untimely, yes. Shocking or freakish? No.

Well, maybe it’s statistically freakish. From reports last night, I gather that there are approximately three confirmed stingray deaths in Australia since World War II. But it’s still not shocking. If Steve Irwin had died leading a hostage rescue mission on a plane full of tourists being held at gunpoint at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, or in a botched stage dive during a drag revue in Zagreb, that would have been shocking. Being killed by a wild animal was, well, predictable. Just like Roy Horn being mauled by a white tiger and Layne Staley dying of a drug overdose were predictable (my brother, gifted with a sense for such things, once described the then still performing Staley as, “clinging to life by his fingertips”). As Time noted of Irwin:

He leapt fearlessly on to the backs of man-eating crocodiles, wrestled Komodo Dragons and deftly juggled snakes as they sought to plunge their venomous fangs into his arm or face, all the while keeping up a lively commentary for the cameras of his multimillion-dollar documentary operation. Scratched, bitten and bruised, he would display his wounds like trophies, casually using gaffer tape to bind up a severe bite from a large saltwater crocodile that he had been wrestling in a mangrove swamp.

Yep, sounds like a man who stood a much higher chance of being killed by a wild animal than by, say, a Pushtun militia during a botched heroin deal on the Khyber Pass. Admittedly the animal involved was a bit of a surprise, but to be killed by a large stingray is not beyond the pale in the way that being killed by a hummingbird or a tree shrew might be. Big stingrays can be two meters across and have tail spines like those nasty, cheap serrated steak knives. The ocean is strange and wonderful, if slightly dangerous. Almost everything in it is pointy, venomous or both. In Southeast Asia people are periodically impaled by pointy, leaping trumpetfish or longtoms. That’s life. Or death, as the case might be.

In fact, it’s not unusual for adventurers to be killed while adventuring. And, presumably, the rush of cheating death, or at least pushing the limits, is part of the motivation. Cave diver Sheck Exley died while trying to set a scuba depth record. Climber George Mallory died while trying to summit Everest (or Qomolongma if you’re not into colonial names). Test pilot Scott Crossfield died in an air crash. And the Crocodile Hunter died screwing with wild animals. He did, as they say, know the risks. And it’s a good bet his insurance company did too.

So, RIP, Steve Irwin. I’m sure generations of children will see you in reruns. Unless, of course, the world simply shifts its attention to Austin Stevens, Jeff Corwin or the dangrously named “Shark Gordon”.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Environment, Media, Scuba Diving, Whatever | Comments Off

Foxconn shoots themselves, Apple in foot

Posted on August 29, 2006 by Will Moss

Note: This post consolidates three original posts on this topic that were published on consecutive days. It was also cross-posted on my CNET blog, published in 2006 and 2007.

Part One: Foxconn shoots themselves, Apple in foot

You may recall Foxconn, AKA Honhai Precision Manufacturing, as the company at the center of a recent PR crisis for Apple Computer, when a British newspaper published reports that they were mistreating the workforce responsible for assembling luscious (and expensive) iPods. In the last few days Apple, ever image conscious, got round to publishing their own report on the situation, and it has largely faded from the public consciousness.

But Apple isn’t the only company that was left scrambling to protect its reputation in the wake of the scandal. Foxconn too felt hard-done by, and is taking steps to assert itself. Unfortunately, rather than take constructive steps to reassure the international companies who’s own brands are propped on Foxconn’s labor practices, Foxconn has instead decided to make an example of two Chinese journalists. This looks like a move that has the potential for mighty backlash.

China’s English Language Shanghai Daily broke the story in the mainstream. Here it is reprinted by Xinhua:

BEIJING, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) – A Chinese court has frozen the personal assets of a reporter and an editor at a Shanghai newspaper after Apple iPod manufacturer Foxconn sued the pair for 30 million yuan (US$3.77 million) for allegedly damaging its reputation over reports of substandard work conditions.

Foxconn’s subsidiary in Shenzhen reportedly petitioned the city’s Intermediate People’s Court on July 10 to freeze the property of Wang You, a reporter for China Business News, and Weng Bao, an editor at the newspaper. The locked-up assets include apartments, a car and bank accounts.

The company also filed a lawsuit against the journalists, seeking 20 million yuan from Wang and 10 million yuan from Weng. The case is the biggest of its kind on the Chinese mainland in terms of the size of the compensation claim.

I am not the only one who sees Foxconn’s response as being perhaps a bit disproportionate. Sentiment seems to be gathering that the lawsuit is a blatant press intimidation tactic rather than a dispassionate seeking of legal redress. Two excellent English language China blogs have taken Foxconn to task. Non Violent Resistance writes, in a post scathingly titled “FoxConn is not dumb, but downright vicious“:

Words in the Chinese press circles are, that FoxConn, therefore Hon Hai, had deliberately picked the two journalists from China Business News to sue in a painstaking plot to harrass and intimidate media outlets and journalists. After all, China Business News was not the only newspaper that doggedly followed the iPod sweatshop story. It seems that FoxConn, before launching the much criticized lawsuit, had also considered targeting 21st Century Economic Herald, another popular business newspaper who had similarly covered the story. But FoxConn’s lawyers, after much investigation, found out that the 21st Century reporters who were involved in reporting the story had solid, formal employment contracts with the paper — therefore, unlikely to be held as legitimate defendants in a court.

Roland Soong, of EastSouthWestNorth, writes:

If I can make this case very simple. This is not a question of whether the First Financial Reporter was right or wrong in his reports. Either way, FoxConn is entitled to file a civil libel suit against the newspaper, which employs that reporter and his editor. But since when does a civil libel suit involve freezing the assets of the reporter and the editor, including their bank savings accounts, stock holdings, homes and automobiles, to the tune of 10 million RMB for the editor and 20 million RMB for the reproter? As the reporter noted, this amount is many more times than that which he can ever expect to make in his lifetime. By comparison, how would the western media react if a prominent American newscaster such as Katie Couric were sued by a large corporation and have all her personal assets frozen for the duration of the legal proceedings? The Chinese media workers are of the opinion that if this case were allowed to go through, it will be the end of any coverage of the doings of large corporations.

More good information from Roland here.

I can see the thought forming in your head. Dude, it’s China. Press intimidation? So what else is new? But it isn’t quite that simple. Yes, the press in China doesn’t operate with the same freedom that is does in the west, especially when it comes to political reporting. But what the government can get away with in the name of social harmony and what a Taiwanese corporation –even a connected one– can get away with are not the same.

So what might the PR implications be? Well, the story is now being picked up by various foreign media, including specialized voices such as China CSR, and wire services like AFX,AFP (here on the International Herald Tribune) and Reuters, whose headline suggests that, despite what Non Violent Resistance fears, the newspaper will vigorously defend its journalists. Reuters has actually bothered to get out and do some reportage, and their story includes a quote from one of the sued journalists and a quote lifted from a party-managed Chinese newspaper’s editorial, and written apparently without irony:

“(The case) has sent a dangerous signal to society, and means legal procedures could be used to suppress freedom of speech,” said an editorial in the official China Youth Daily.

How about that. If China Youth Daily is complaining that you’re infringing freedom of speech, you have a problem. But journalists –even at official news organizations– will look after their own. Superb China media blog Danwei thinks the story has all the right ingredients to keep titillating western editors (and I agree). The China blogosphere is also gathering heat. Yesterday mega-portal Sina, smelling a juicy story, set up a blog for the two journalists, and the posts are attracting lots of comments and lots of readers. The momentum may not last, but its got off to a good start. The net result is that Foxconn is committing one of the great PR sins by busily making itself look worse than the people it is angry at ever did. And there is no damage worse than self-inflicted damage, which suggests stupidity.
So if you’re Apple what do you think of this? Remember, this incident is descended from an Apple-related story, and MacWorld UK has also picked up the lawsuit story, so it’s creeping close to Apple’s own brand. The whole thing has now gone beyond simple libel lawsuit and in just 48 hours has spiraled into something nasty with a real whiff of media intimidation about it. Reputation damaging questions are also being asked about Foxconn’s relationship with the Shenzhen government and courts. Chinese press isrubbishing the case. Well, if I’m Apple (or their PR guy), the last thing I need is for the contract manufacturer who just gave me a mighty PR headache to give me another mighty PR headache just ten days after I’ve put the last one to bed (Apple’s report was released August 17). Despite their own recent, poorly thought out lawsuits, media intimidation is not something that resonates well with Apple’s cerebral, trendy brand. If I was Apple I’d be gently suggesting that Foxconn back off if they want to keep my business.

But, hey, that’s just me, and I’m a nice guy who likes reporters, even though I do bug them with pitch calls from time to time.

Part two: What was Foxconn thinking?

Originally published August 30, 2006.

Every now and then, Roland [Soong, of EastSouthNorthWest] dangles a PR question in front of me and, like a shark rising predictably to the bait, I pretty much always go for it. In yesterday’s post [above] about Foxconn’s fit of PR self destruction, Roland asked in a comment:

What is the matter with FoxConn? Why is this “no comment” thing? Keeping their fingers crossed and hoping that it will all go away? Can you guess what is going on?

Well, I am happy to guess. But I’d like to remind all readers that this is nothing more than speculation, innuendo and hypothesis. Of course, that’s never stopped me before.

From a PR point of view, there are a few things going on here: the original foreign and Chinese newspaper reports about Foxconn’s labor practices, the subsequent lawsuit filed against two Chinese journalists, and the current (entirely predictable) coverage explosion over the lawsuit and refusal of Foxconn to comment. This would be a complex situation for any company to manage from a PR point of view. But it’s going to be even harder for Foxconn. I am going to make a sweeping generalization here: Chinese companies (including Taiwanese ones – please keep your “one China” screeds to yourself) by and large don’t “get” PR. As an old China hand friend of mine said, “They don’t understand PR. They understand face.” Well, just like face can get you into a fistfight that never needed to happen, it can also get you into a PR disaster that never needed to happen. But I think the Foxconn situation runs deeper than simple face.

Putting the problems of Chinese companies with PR somewhat more scientifically, many of them are just learning what PR is and how to use it. As a Taiwanese company and contract manufacturer, Foxconn evolved in a somewhat more developed media market than mainland companies. It has also been around for more than thirty years, although its internationalization in earnest started in 1993. But as a contract manufacturer –and not, say, a consumer brand– Foxconn may also think that it is insulated from certain kinds of PR problems. This may have been true once, but today, when the bloom is off the outsourcing and contract manufacturing rose, and MNCs are under increasing scrutiny for the behavior of their partners, this is not the case. That lesson should have been made painfully apparent in the original Apple scandal of a couple months ago.

But there is another complexity operating here: this isn’t just a PR crisis (yes, its an official crisis now). It’s a legal PR crisis. And legal situations are always particularly difficult. With all due respect to my good friends at China Law Blog (who may wish to comment upon some of the legal aspects of this case), lawyers and PR people often rub along poorly. A sound legal approach and a sound PR approach to a given situation do not always agree. I am perhaps nursing a bit of resentment here. Put a CEO, a head of PR and a general counsel in a lifeboat together and maroon them at sea until they begin to starve and see who gets eaten first. Nine times out of ten the CEO and general counsel will eat the PR guy. The CEO’s calculation may be that he’ll need a lawyer to keep him out of jail for cannibalism. Personally, I think that’s misguided. After all, who’s going to do a better job of explaining cannibalism to the public and protecting his reputation?

My personal issues aside, the upshot is that legal decisions are often considered to trump PR decisions, and are thus taken without regard for the PR consequences. This is especially true in companies with an unsophisticated approach to PR, but it can happen to anyone. In China we see this with things like IPR lawsuits by MNCs against local companies, which make perfect legal sense but can sometimes have PR consequences far more damaging than the actual infringement. But somehow legal problems are considered “real” while PR is considered, well, just PR. So it’s possible that even if someone within Foxconn explained to the management that suing journalists directly was a stupendously bad idea PR-wise, it’s possible that they were simply dismissed as a touchy-feely PR type without the spine to face up to hard-boiled business issues.

To which that PR person, if he exists, should be saying who’s laughing now, dumbass? Of course, now this poor flack is busy trying to deal with the PR crisis upon which he will probably be judged, so he has no time to gloat. It’s a hard life in the spin doctors.

So that brings us to the “‘no comment’ thing” mentioned by Roland. Regardless of whether PR people were consulted prior to the lawsuit or not, it’s pretty standard practice for companies to refuse to comment on pending or ongoing litigation. Doing so can often create further legal problems, anger judges, etc. Unfortunately, this can also evolve into a sort of programmed, knee jerk response that is automatically given even in situations where companies really ought to comment. Personally, I think this is a situation that increasingly merits comment. Furthermore, my advice to clients is that you always return a journalist’s phone call, even if it’s just to tell them that you can’t comment, and even if you expect to get roasted for that. It’s a basic courtesy and “could not comment” or even “refused to comment” generally looks better in print than “could not be reached for comment” or “did not return phone calls”, both of which make it sound like you’re hiding and amplify the appearance of guilt. Next to the image of you cowering in a smoke-filled crisis room while unanswered phones ring away, the blandest of holding statements can seem like pure gold. In this case, Foxconn is apparently not returning any calls, so, true or not, they look like they’re hiding. It also makes it hard to know if they’re playing the “don’t comment on litigation” card or if they’re just being obtuse. I’m betting on obtuse.

Ultimately the question of motivation looms here. Is Foxconn motivated by a sincere desire to address a slight to its reputation by seeking legal redress? Or is it seeking to intimidate the Chinese press as a way of buying future insurance against bad coverage? If it is taking the first course it has committed some serious PR mistakes. It is almost always a bad idea for corporations (or governments) to sue individuals who were working on behalf of an organization, such as a newspaper. For examples, see Apple’s lawsuits against leakers and the RIAA lawsuits against file sharers, both of which were PR disasters even if they were legally sound. Suing an organization looks like seeking redress. Suing an individual looks like petty vindictiveness. David v. Goliath. It’s not that difficult an equation. (Mind you, I am speaking strictly from a PR point of view, not a legal one.) Foxconn has sued the journalists rather than their newspaper. Not only that, it has sued them for far more money than either of them is ever likely to possess, and has had their assets frozen. This not only looks petty and vindictive, it also looks sleazy since they have somehow managed to engineer a presumption of guilt and, without the benefit of a judgment, inflict considerable misery on…a journalist and an editor. And we all know how much Chinese journalists are paid. So if Foxconn was seeking to address a slight to its reputation, it has failed monumentally and is now doing even more damage to its reputation.

On the other hand, if Foxconn was seeking to intimidate journalists…it has also failed monumentally since the Chinese (and International press and, um, bloggers) are now going crazy. Nice work guys. It’s Miller time.

In addition to the China PR problem, Foxconn is also entering into extremely risky territory with regards to its foreign customers, like Apple. Anyone who has followed the recent problems of US Internet and technology companies in China knows that freedom of speech issues are weeping dynamite for foreign companies doing business in China. The last thing a company like Apple needs is a contract manufacturer being accused of media intimidation in China. Imagine:

“Hey Apple! Your contract manufacturer was just accused of horsewhipping underage girls for sixteen hours a day and now they’re trying to intimidate Chinese journalists into silence on the issue. What’s your comment? How do you feel about the freedom of Chinese media to report on these kinds of issues?”

Despite my advice above, I’m thinking Apple doesn’t return that phone call. Or if they do, they give a non-answer about how this is an issue for the Chinese courts to settle, Apple has taken great pains to blah blah blah noise noise noise. Apple, you will recall, has had its own problems with the media, and may not want to attract charges of hypocrisy. They will also, somewhat justifiably, want to get All The Facts first.

But that’s tough for them, because this is their PR problem too and, as I wrote yesterday, if I’m Apple I’m on the phone to Foxconn right now telling them to drop the suit, save face by announcing that their point has been made and suck it up. Better yet, Apple should set a further example for MNCs using contract manufacturing in China and come out with a statement vigorously defending the right of the Chinese press to look into the practices of MNCs and contract manufacturers in China. Apple sells jack here and has essentially no market to lose in China, and can always shift its manufacturing to Vietnam or wherever, so why not retake some of the high ground it lost over the original scandal? What’s Foxconn going to do? They’re Apple’s vendor, and there are plenty of business-hungry contract manufacturers in line behind it.

And this situation has begun to touch Apple. RSF is already on the case, with an open letter to Steve Jobs.

But what if the journalists actually did libel Foxconn?

Interesting question. But from a PR point of view (not a legal one, mind you) now irrelevant. The public opinion and reputational battles have already been lost. A legal victory would be Pyrrhic at best. Foxconn absolutely has a right to defend its reputation in the courts and to respond vigorously when libeled. But legal action in defense of reputation must be considered, planned and executed with an eye on further reputational consequences (this is where PR people and lawyers often diverge). And that is something that Foxconn did not do. Furthermore, Chinese journalists will, if anything, probably be motivated to scrutinize Foxconn even more closely from now on.

So if I were Foxconn’s PR person what would I now advise them? Presumably after I got done berating them for not talking to me before they launched the lawsuit?

Drop the lawsuit. It’s too late to salvage this one. Drop it, make a face saving announcement and let it go. And if you must pursue the lawsuit, admit that you were “overzealous”, have the court unfreeze the journalists assets and allow them to go on with their lives pending a judgment. And reduce the damages sought to something symbolic. Remember, this is PR advice, not legal advice. I have no idea how possible any of this would be in Chinese courts. But, at first glance, Foxconn’s relationship with the Shenzhen courts looks pretty cozy, so it shouldn’t be too hard.

And, really, stop making life difficult for your customers. You don’t need a PR man to tell you that’s a crappy way to do business.

Notes:

iSuppli analyst Adam Pick recently wrote a story hailing Foxconn’s success. Among the factors he noted, “making the most of the China advantage”. It scarcely needs be remarked that one can take “the China advantage” a bit too far if not careful.
I should note, by way of full disclosure, that I am not a litigation support expert. That’s a specialized PR field, like financial communications, best practiced by people with a good understanding of the legal environment in which they operate. So my observations are those of a PR generalist. Litigation support experts are welcome to comment.

Updates:

Danwei with some more interesting background and opinions from Chinese media.
Sina’s tech news page (not the journalist blog) devoted to the situation, including a handy timeline graphic (Chinese).
One of my bosses, a very experienced Chinese PR professional, thinks that Foxconn will be forced to withdraw the litigation. He even thinks it is possible their chairman may have to apologise. We’ll see.
Roland’s excellent follow up on the PR war between Foxconn and the journalists includes translations of some of Weng Bao’s blogs (the sued editor). Roland also makes an excellent point that I should have, and which is key to how Foxconn needs to think about this PR battle. From a public communication point of view this PR war is assymetrical. Foxconn is an enormous, faceless corporation speaking in corporatese. The journalists are identifiable human beings able to muster emotion and personal sympathy and use press freedom (in an acceptable local context) as a rallying cry. That means that even if they are guilty, they have the upper hand in the PR battle. Foxconn needs to consider that in all of the their PR strategizing if they are to have hope of looking like anything other than relentless bullies. (Hint: get some real people front and center.) As I wrote above, whether or not libel was committed is now essentially irrelevant. Foxconn can win but still lose if they are not careful.
I hear that CCTV 2′s “Dialogue” program is planning a special segment on the affair.

Part Three: All’s well that ends in retreat

Originally published on August 31, 2006.

According to ESWN Foxconn has reduced the damages requested to 1 yuan. Roland is citing a very brief Netease report, and I am not sure how authoritative it is. But if it is true, then it means that Foxconn has taken one of the possible paths I outlined yesterday: reduce the damages to a symbolic level but proceed with the lawsuit. Apple also interceded in the dispute, as I suggested they should. I’d like to claim credit for remote PR genius but, a) it’s not genius, it’s common sense; b) Foxconn and Apple are probably not reading this blog and c) we’ll see how things play out for Foxconn in the Chinese press over the next few days.

Just as interesting as the Foxconn scandal itself is a sideline discussion that has broken out over the newsworthiness of the story with regard to western audiences. Roland was originally disappointed with slow uptake of the story by Western media. Do read his post above, which offers his point of view on this and lists many of the foreign news sources that eventually did carry the story. Then be sure (especially if you’re a China PR pro) to read this post from Richard Spencer, bureau chief of UK newspaper the Telegraph. Richard keeps one of the best journalist blogs in China and he explains very clearly what news value this story has and doesn’t have with regard to his (middle-England) readers. I should send this post to my clients when they ask why I don’t pitch their China business stories to general-interest Western media like the Telegraph, as opposed to specialist business media such as The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Business Week.

I’m a technology PR man so I think in terms of brand and reputation with regards to technology companies. I wrote the story for my CNET Asia blog, but then I have a specific China technology mandate, no editing to speak of, and write for an Asian readership specifically interested in technology. More generally, I tend to judge a story this way: “If I was that company’s PR man, would I be worried?” For me this story had potential legs overseas for one reason: Apple. Apple is a hot brand that just navigated a China PR scandal involving Foxconn. With an Apple press story as the origination of the of the lawsuit this is potentially interesting to foreign audiences and thus a PR risk for them. If was Apple’s PR man, I would have been worried.

I see that a lot of the overseas coverage was fairly narrow. Some of it is in journalist blogs (as in Barron’s and the San Francisco Chronicle) and much of it in specialist technology news (Slashdot, VNUNet, MacWorld) interested specifically in the Apple connection. I put “Apple” in my own CNET headline. Most of what might considered mainstream coverage with a broad impact is either from the wire services –which covered the story widely– or business media (The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times), many of which ran the wire coverage. That’s understandable; Foxconn is a large, listed company and a major supplier to many enormous, Western technology firms, so there are business implications.

So it was a story outside of China, but a particular kind of story. It’s interesting what crosses borders and why. When I do internal training in foreign media relations for my company I spend some time on what different kinds of foreign media consider an interesting “China story”. It always raises some eyebrows among my local colleagues.

A closing thought. I love my summer PR scandals. Last year: the Songhua River. This year Foxconn. Gotta love those crazy August days.

Disclosure: I am not Apple’s PR man.

Update: Xinhua has run a story on Foxconn’s claim reduction:

Foxconn said it lowered the compensation claim so that the public could focus on the fact that “the untrue reports had damaged the reputation of our company,” and not just on the 30 million yuan compensation claim, Sina reported, citing company spokesman Edmund Ding.

Damn straight. And the newspaper reports aren’t the only thing damaging Foxconn’s reputation now, and it’s a little late to refocus the public’s attention. Next they think they have been libeled, they can sue the newspaper. Then, if they win, the newspaper can discipline the reporters and it won’t be their problem. Hard lessons learned. Note that I have no opinion on whether the journalists did libel Foxconn or not. That’s something for an (ahem) impartial court to work out.

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The kid

Posted on August 20, 2006 by Will Moss

The kid had staked out a patch of sidewalk and was working the steady stream of locals and foreigners passing through. The limits of his territory were the entrance to a restaurant popular with foreigners and that of a convenience store ten meters further up. He wore a stained blue t-shirt and ragged sweatpants with a scuffed seat that sagged from his rear end. His feet were bare. He was perhaps ten years old. Hard living had thinned his face, and it was hard to tell. He could have been two years older and desperately malnourished, or two years younger and a bit precocious.

It was a good patch to work. The two businesses and the luxury hotel across the street ensured steady, well-monied traffic. But it was a hard job nonetheless. Most people were completely indifferent to the kid, and those who weren’t tended to be hostile, either scolding him or batting him away. A chinese man smacked him in the head. One large westerner mocked him, cupping his hands in the same alms-receiving gesture as the kid and pretending to beg back.

Through it all the kid stayed remarkably cheery. He was a natural showman, sassing the people who ran him off the steps and bursting into histrionics in front of marks. When he wasn’t actually working a mark he had a perpetually bright smile on his face. He had perfected a positive mental attitude; a mighty feat for a ten year-old Beijing beggar with poor prospects. He was not going to be one of the new China’s winners. He was going to be a loser. It was inevitable. He probably couldn’t see his future, but I could take a guess at it. Juvenile crime, perhaps, as he eased into more aggressive teenage years. Maybe addiction, another victim of the river of heroin coming over the Burmese border at Ruili or in from Central Asia. If he was lucky he might end up a migrant laborer, drifting from city to city in search of work. If he was unlucky he would end up in jail, or in a quarry with a bullet in the back of his head. Or perhaps he would just go on to a career as a begger, another one of the shabby, hopeless men who stalk intersections and tourist hangouts. But he kept smiling. He could have been subject of a motivational poster on perseverance, adorning a conference room somewhere.

The kid was energetic and fidgety and had a hard time sitting still. That wasn’t entirely his own fault. Every time he settled on the steps of the restaurant or the store an attendant would be out within moments to shoo him away. A woman from the store tried to engage him. Earlier she had scolded the kid, but now she wanted to talk. Perhaps telling him that he should find something more productive to do with his time. He chatted with her for four or five minutes before she went inside. When she came out again, it was with a switch to run him off the steps again. He had given the wrong answer.

The kid wasn’t alone. His minder was a fat woman in clean clothes who sat across the street on a low stone wall in front of the hotel. She had a second young boy with her as well, about the same age, but he was the favored child. His clothes were clean and he didn’t have to beg. Instead, he sat with the woman, holding two empty plastic bottles. Occasionally, he would come over and give the kid some trouble. For a while the woman sent the kid across the street to work the front of an expensive ice cream parlor, but perhaps traffic was bad because he was soon back working the stretch of sidewalk between the restaurant and the convenience store.

And the kid had some luck. Three people, all women, gave him cash. A few yuan, which the kid counted carefully before stuffing into the pocket of his sweats. Part of the kid’s repertoire was pointing at his mouth and asking for food, and one woman gave him a wrapped piece of something that looked like a slice of cake. But the kid didn’t get to eat it. The better dressed boy was across the street in moments, demanding the cake. The kid handed it over, possibly along with a smart-ass remark because he ended up taking a swift kick. The better-dressed boy took the cake across the street to the fat woman. She clearly got all the cake. It seemed likely that she was going to get the money too.

There was another beggar working the same strip of sidewalk as the kid. A middle-aged woman in the standard beggar’s outfit: blue cotton coat, white towel wrapped around her head, shoulder bag, stick and white enamel cup. She had perfected the beggar’s misery-ridden shuffle but once, as she crossed the street, an approaching taxi forced her to break character and she hustled energetically out of the way. The begging woman didn’t compete with the kid. She was a practitioner of the “persistence” approach, shadowing a mark for fifty or a hundred meters tugging at the sleeve and shaking the few coins in the enamel cup. She would return to the space of sidewalk between the restaurant and store for a minute, but often follow marks to the end of the block or cross the street to work people in front of the hotel. The kid would stay put and focus on his small patch.

The begging woman and the fat woman seemed to be friends. Once, the fat woman and the well-dressed boy crossed the street and the three of them gathered under a poplar tree for a congenial chat. How’s business? Who’s giving it up tonight? Is the kid pulling his weight? A couple of promising looking groups walked by during the conversation and the begging woman gave a couple of desultory shakes of her enamel cup, but it was clearly coffee break and her heart wasn’t in it. Meanwhile the kid hovered at the edge of the conversation, restless, nervous, and pointedly not invited into the little circle.

After a few minutes the conversation broke up. The fat woman and well dressed boy returned to their perch in front of the hotel. The begging woman shadowed another group of foreigners. And the kid went back to miming hunger and clasping his hands in front of the groups leaving the restaurant and going into and out of the convenience store. Somehow, he was still smiling.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Beijing, China, Resident Alien, Whatever | Comments Off

Infernalture

Posted on August 17, 2006 by Will Moss

Apartment prices are down and my lease is up, so Imagethief has been looking for a new, larger apartment to accommodate himself, Mrs. Imagethief, two whiny cats and the various junk that has accumulated in the past two years.

I hate looking at apartments. The whole process is annoying and seedy, like buying a used car, if you were going to live in it. Of course, if you were buying a car at least the whole process would be over when you drove it off the lot (unless, of course, it was a lemon). With apartment rental, once you sign the lease you then have to deal with the brutal moving. I don’t know about you, but I find it impossible to move without losing at least one thing. Once it was the rice cooker (no big deal — it had bicycle shorts crammed into it, so whoever lifted it deserved what they got). Once it was my wife’s dive computer. This time, if I’m lucky, we’ll lose one of the cats.

Rental agents in China are motley crew, and not all of them strike me as entirely together. One young man greeted me and my wife in a white T-shirt with the sleeves torn off (and wore the same shirt on two separate occasions), and then wondered why the security guard at Huamao gave him trouble at the door. Another explained to me at a certain complex that 160 square meter and 180 square meter apartments “cost the same because the 180 meter ones don’t rent, so the price has come down”. I didn’t have the heart to explain to him that this was both economically impossible, and not supported by the evidence of a real-estate ad listing different prices for 160 and 180 square meter apartments.

But by far the worst aspect of renting an apartment in China is the furniture. In fact, I will extend this beyond China, since I have seennumerous apartments in Singapore and seen places belonging to Korean landlords, and make a sweeping statement: Asian landlords have, on average, the world’s most appalling taste in furnishings and fixtures. If there is a hell, it will have been furnished by an Asian landlord. And, just playing the odds, probably a Chinese one.

What is it about buying an apartment in Asia that makes a person instantaneously lose all contact with good taste and common sense? The furniture I see in these apartments is beyond ugly, ranging from Logan’s Run-style 1970s retro-future abominations that would make orange shag carpet cringe in shame (in the future, all furniture will be inflatable leatherette!) to coccyx-shattering rosewood chinoiserie with all the inviting warmth of an ice chastity belt to faux Louis XIV rococo obscenities that could be lifted from Versailles, if Versailles was in Branson, Missouri and lined with neon.

The other thing that really gets me is chandeliers. If wanted to live in a luxury hotel I’d live in a luxury hotel. I don’t want my apartment to feel like a luxury hotel. I certainly don’t want things that look like inverted, crystal pine trees hanging from the ceiling. These things are like the Chandeliers of Damocles. I’d be waiting for the whole jangly works to tear loose and land on my head as I’m working my way through my morning Grape Nuts. I don’t want to die with my face in a bowl of Grape Nuts and an enormous, crystal pine tree embedded in my skull. The morticians will make fun of my corpse and my family will refuse to take delivery of the remains. The hearse will make jingly crystal noises every time it goes over a speed bump. New-agers will come to worship at my grave. (“He didn’t die! He transcended space-time with the help of crystals in his skull!”) How humiliating. I’ll end up was one of the “odd news” bites in the China Daily: “Foreigner dies in blaze of glory!” It’ll be right above, “Two-headed goat in Shaanxi sings Donny & Marie classics!”

I suppose chandeliers are better than the alternative, which is relentlessly cold fluorescent lighting that makes the inside of the apartment look like a meat locker. Notice how fluorescent light can make anyone look like a serial killer? Under incandescent or warm fluorescent light Mrs. Imagethief is a gorgeous woman with intoxicating, brown skin, lustrous hair and sparkling eyes. Under fluorescent light she looks like Norman Bates’ mother in Psycho. And, if you don’t recall, Norman Bates’ mother was dead. God knows what it must make me look like. Lurch from the Addams Family, perhaps. Or Dick Cheney.

But who will notice the cheap lighting when there is a TV the size of a billboard? Yes, every apartment I look at has furniture that looks lifted from Peewee’s Playhouse, either hallucinatory chandeliers that would make Steve Wynn blanch or soul-destroying dimestore fluorescents and, for some reason, a brand-new flatscreen TV big enough burn your shadow into the wall behind you (but inevitably paired with a 200 kuai cheapie DVD player).

Here’s an idea: Take the money you’ve spent on the forty-inch LCD television and plow it into some decent lighting and tolerable fucking furniture. There’s an Ikea in this town. I know; I’ve seen it. It’s the size of a small planet. It’s Ikea-World. It’s so big that there are probably people who have been lost inside since the day it opened, subsisting on Swedish meatballs that have rolled under the displays. I don’t like Ikea. In fact, in Singapore I was busy purging the Ikea furniture from my house. But it’s so big that, even if they’re catering to dire, nouveau riche tastes, they must have some furniture that, if not exactly nice, is at least bland and inoffensive. I’ll take a piece of furniture called “Kysblispinyx” or some other too-precious Nordic name if that’s what I have to endure in order to have a couch that supports my legs completely rather than suddenly folding down when I slide forward and slamming my face into the glass coffee table. Honestly, why not just have knives shoot out of the cushions?

I know, I know. You’re thinking I should get an unfurnished place and buy my own furniture. I would, but I already had to sell one houseful of furniture when I moved to China. I don’t relish the idea of accumulating another raft of miscellaneous possessions that I’ll have to unload three or four years hence when I move back to Singapore. And, from what I’ve seen, the chances of my buying anything here that I’ll want to treasure for the rest of my life are slim.

So I’m sucking it up. I’ll find a chandelier-free apartment with classy furniture in this town if it kills me. It can be the dankest, most cockroach-ridden, formaldehyde-infused shithole in Beijing as long as the furniture doesn’t give me cataracts. If I can’t manage that, I’ll just buy a used car and sleep in that.

Note: Imagethief would like to tip his hat to his current landlord who, with the exception of the couch, did a reasonable job furnishing his apartment.

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The trouble with English teachers

Posted on August 7, 2006 by Will Moss

AP ran an interesting article (via Peking Duck and Paper Tiger) on the perils of being an English teacher in China. I found it a fascinating read both because it strengthened my own reservations about the seedy Chinese black market for English teachers, and because it made me think about some of my prejudices as an expatriate in China. The article is worth a read in its entirety. An excerpt:

For decades, Chinese made their way to the West, often illegally, to end up doing dangerous, low-paying jobs in sweatshop conditions. Now some foreigners drawn by China’s growth and hunger for English lessons are landing in the schoolhouse version of the sweatshop.

In one case, an American ended up dead. Darren Russell, 35, from Calabasas, Calif., died under mysterious circumstances days after a dispute caused him to quit his teaching job in the southern city of Guangzhou. “I’m so scared. I need to get out of here,” Russell said in a message left on his father’s cell phone hours before his death in what Chinese authorities said was a traffic accident.

As China opens up to the world, public and private English-language schools are proliferating. While most treat their foreign teachers decently, and wages can run to $1,000 plus board, lodging and even airfare home, complaints about bad experiences in fly-by-night operations are on the rise. The British Embassy in Beijing warns on its Web site about breaches of contracts, unpaid wages and broken promises. The U.S. Embassy says complaints have increased eightfold since 2004 to two a week on average.

Though foreign teachers in South Korea, Japan and other countries have run into similar problems, the number of allegations in China is much higher because “the rule of law is still not firmly in place,” said a U.S. Embassy official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“A number of substandard English language teaching mills have sprung up, seeking to maximize profits while minimizing services,” the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee said in a recent report on Russell’s case. These institutes have become virtual “‘sweatshops’ where young, often naive Americans are held as virtual indentured servants.”

Well, indentured servitude might be laying it on a bit thick. I’d wager your average young American in a crappy English teaching job in China has rather more options open to them than, say, the undocumented Guatemalan picking Strawberries in Aptos for hour after backbreaking hour. Still, I don’t doubt that you could end up in a situation that was scary at best and dangerous at worst. Indeed, the article discusses the death of one foreign English teacher in murky circumstances.

I’ve always been a bit contemptuous of the English teaching scene in China. Not because there is anything wrong in teaching English; it is good and noble work and many smart people dedicate their lives to it. Rather, my contempt has arisen because of the distinct atmosphere of sleaze that surrounds the industry here in China. Now I know that many English teachers read this blog (and some of you do fine blogs of your own), so bear with me before you start leaving angry comments or deleting me from your RSS reader. After you’ve finished you can still delete me if you want. Or leave the flame.

It has always seemed to me that teaching in English was the job of last resort for people who wanted to spend an extended period of time here. Obviously, there are organizations here willing to take advantage of that situation. While I know people who have taught English here for many years and enjoyed it, I also know some that have had bad experiences and came away feeling exploited and angry. Not surprisingly, the rate of exploitation seems to be higher for those who enter into situations willing to play fast and loose with things like employment documentation. Really, that ought to be a warning. Remember kids: if someone asks you to surrender your passport or tells you not to worry about the paperwork, be extremely suspicious.

The funny thing is that when I tell Chinese people I work in China, many of them ask if I am an English teacher. After reading the article above it occurred to me that I often react to that question badly. “No,” I’ll huff. “I’m not an English teacher.” Subtext: I have a realjob, you clown. I had, without meaning to, constructed in my mind a pecking order of resident foreigners in China, which went something like this:

Grizzled China hands who know everybody and senior diplomats
Business professionals (including myself), journalists, NGO people etc.
English teachers
Underage foreign students getting drunk at Babyface or Kai

Note that English teachers were not at the bottom of this heap, although it was a thin layer between them and the cellar. Of course, being a professional spin-doctor is liable to attract scorn in its own right, so I probably have no business putting on airs. It’s not like ahyi on the train asked me if I was a professional man-bitch at a state prison (that always flatters me) or an arms smuggler or some such. I was even in the dreaded foreign student category briefly, although I was thirty-six when I arrived and had a hard time keeping up with the teenagers. But my mild insult at being asked if I am an English teacher is rooted in my prejudice toward the industry here in China rather than toward the act of teaching English itself. That makes it different from the mild insult I’d feel at being asked if I was a drunk, underage foreign student (although in that situation I might also be secretly pleased by my apparently youthful looks).

Of course many of the people in the top two spaces on my little list above started their China careers as English teachers. A few even started them as drunk, underage foreign students, although most of them are old enough so that international hotel bars were the only places they could drink when they were students. So this is my confession that I have been too hard on China’s English teachers (that this blog is, after all, the confessions of an American spin doctor in China), scorning you for no fault of your own even as you labor in intolerable circumstances for meager coppers. I hereby apologize.

Now quit fooling around and go get a real job.

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Electro-sphere and other photo-opps

Posted on August 3, 2006 by Will Moss

I know what I am good at and what I am not good at. For example, I consider myself a pretty good writer and PR strategist. Both of those convictions are regularly reinforced by the fact that I get invited to write professionally and I continue to be employed in the PR industry. On the other hand, I am pure ass-monkey when it comes to dreaming up creative PR “tactics” such as events, stunts and location campaigns. My creativity just doesn’t manifest itself in that way, no matter how hard I try. In Singapore I once famously presided over a brainstorm where the best idea to emerge was firing the local MD of a multinational technology company out of an enormous cannon, an idea that I think owed more to a great deal of overwork and suppressed resentment than any creative inspiration. I had a vision of him sailing through the air trailing smoke and tattered clothing while yelling, “you’re fiiirrrred!” in my direction. I did not include this idea in my recommendations to the client.

Among the various things that I am bad at dreaming up is photo opportunities. This is largely because I despise staged photo opportunities and all they stand for. If PR is sometimes guilty of creating fake news (although in our defense, we also often create real news), it is regularly guilty of creating fake news photography. And it’s not just corporate PR that is guilty of this. Think of every photo you’ve ever seen of two wooden diplomats standing side by side, clasping hands and forcing smiles as flash guns sizzle. Do I need to see a photo of Condi Rice and Ehud Olmert shaking hands to drive home the point that, yes, they actually met? Probably not. They met. I believe you.

Whenever we have a launch event for a client –be it a product launch, new facility or even a partnership announcement– there always has to be a photo opp. I can understand this; a photo can help to sell a story and some publications that won’t run a full story might still run a photo and caption, which can be just as good for us. Still, it often ends up being pure torture for me. A favorite technique of mine is to palm the entire responsibility for the photo opp off on the event management company, which is often better at dreaming such stuff up anyway. Still, that doesn’t always make for a complete escape. I once went through a week of pure hell with one MNC in China, going back and forth on an acceptable photo opp for a leadership transition announcement. The idea had been proposed by the event company, but it was we who had to haggle every conceivable detail of coloring, placement and final design with the client. The final result was, I have to admit, not bad. But I nearly committed suicide getting there. I also worked on an event where a bunch of executives had to assemble a large, block-like puzzle device to symbolize various components fitting together in harmony. Trust me, you never want your photo-opp to involve too many guys in suits bending over.

The brutal reality is that 90% of photo opps are completely uncreative. I have long since lost track of the number of ribbon-cuttings, ground-breakings and laying of hands on plasma spheres I have attended or –worse– had a role in orchestrating. The plasma sphere, or light ball, is a local favorite. Many launches or announcements, such as new partnerships, are abstract. You’re not launching the A380 or a new sports car. There is nothing physical to unveil, just an idea. But clients still want a “moment” that can both symbolize the launch and provide a photo opp. An orb-shaped light or one of those plasma spheres is a common dodge. At the appropriate moment, all the executives on stage put a hand on the orb, which lights up. Simultaneously a backdrop or plaque or obelisk or some such totem is unveiled or dramatically lit. A fanfare swells to fill the hall. Flashbulbs pop. PR consultants exhale with relief. Everybody goes home safe to their spouses, pets and children.

Of course, it’s all dull as shit and, in the end, profoundly meaningless. And the photos that result, while they sometimes get run by content-starved news organizations, are generally not the kind of thing to make a photo editor snap upright in his chair and get on the phone to the page-one editor. The impression on most readers is probably similarly null and void, beyond making sure the client’s logo –always part of the design– drifts past their eyeballs yet one more time in the grand river of noisy clutter that is modern media.

So, as agreed all around, I am an ass-monkey when it comes to dreaming up photo opps that are creative and practical. But I am pretty decent at dreaming up photo opps that are thoroughly impractical but entertaining. There are so many things that I desperately want to make happen the moment all those executives lay their hands on the plasma ball. Here, for your edification, are the ones I most wish I could stage:

Instead of a plasma ball or harmless light ball, I’d like to have all the executives lay their hands on the sphere of a Van de Graf generator, making all their hair stand on end and their clothing bunch up. For extra fun, we could ground them simultaneously.
At the moment they all touch the ball I’d like to drop upon them an enormous, trapezoidal weight with “20 Tons” stenciled on the side. As a Wile E. Coyote variation, I’d also consider dropping a grand piano acceptable.
At the moment of launch I’d like to open a trap door that plunges all the executives into a well-lit tank of ravenous saltwater crocodiles. Tiger sharks –a la Thunderball– also acceptable. Whichever is handy.
At the moment of launch, I’d like the curtain behind to executives to rise on a topless revue in the style of the Moulin Rouge. We could serve absinthe to all the attendees to sell in the effect.
At the moment of launch a squad of professional dominatrixes with riding crops would rush onto the stage and thoroughly spank all the attending executives.
Variation: At the moment of launch a high school football squad would rush onto the stage, give everyone wedgies and then upend them into nearby trash cans filled with cafeteria refuse. I’ve seen this happen, so I know how dramatic the effect can be.
At the moment of launch, the curtain at the back of the stage would drop to reveal…Marilyn Manson, live in concert! (No one has the budget for this, which is a pity. I think several multinational brands could benefit by closer association with Marilyn Manson, although whether he would benefit is debatable.)
At the moment of launch, lasers, animatronics, rear projection and cleverly designed scrims could be used to present the effect of all of the attending executives being rapturously assumed bodily into heaven. After all, from the speeches you’d think that was what about to happen.
At the moment of launch the presiding PR consultant is fired out of a cannon (it’s only fair).
And, for that special Chinese flavor, at the moment of launch I’d like cages to drop open, releasing twenty rabid pandas onto the stage. No one would ever forget that.

I realize that many of the suggestions above might be interpreted as displaying a degree of hostility toward my clients. I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. Most of my clients are genuinely very nice people to work for, and I want only the best for them. But if you want to make an impression in this over-mediated world, you need to be prepared to go out on a limb. Plus, I grew up watching violent cartoons (per my Wile E. Coyote reference above) and suffer the lingering psychological effects. But look at the upside. A few events like this and not only will I be able to throw the 车马费 overboard, but I figure I’ll be able to start charging the press to attend.

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