Harper in China: Beyond the sea of troubles

By Paul Wells - Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 7:03 AM - 0 Comments

The old-timers in the press gallery know how to defuse an announcement like this. We dust a toolkit from the early Chrétien days off. A Canadian prime minister shows up in a fancy Beijing ballroom with a bunch of business executives wielding Montblanc pens. A big number is being tossed around — say, “$3 billion.” But if we subtract the deals that would have happened anyway, and then subtract the deals that aren’t really deals — then we can wear that number down to some innocuous nub.

But while individual elements of Stephen Harper’s signing ceremony Thursday night in a fancy Beijing ballroom may not pan out, at some point the weight of evidence starts to suggest something real is going on. The evidence at hand comes, not just from Canadian sources, but from Chinese. Continue…

Harper in China: rules of the game

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 8:54 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Paul Wells

It’s an odd visit. Today the middle of Stephen Harper’s day was taken up with what our itineraries described as a “round-table meeting.” The Prime Minister’s Office sent us a list of the Canadians who attended: Pierre Beaudoin from Bombardier, Roy Cook from the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, Duncan Dee from Air Canada, Lowell Jackson from CAPP, Amit Chakma from UWO, Lorraine Mitchelmore from Shell, Patrick Lamarre from Lavalin.

It actually took a while for me to ask the pool reporter (many of the events on these trips are covered only by a single reporter and camera, who share with everyone else) whether anybody Chinese was on hand. Nope. Just the Canadians. Chattin’ about the federal budget in Beijing. More of a semi-circle meeting, really.

The news came later: Continue…

Mr. Harper goes to Beijing

By Richard Warnica - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:34 PM - 0 Comments

China is home to the world’s second-largest economy. It grew by 9.2 per cent in 2001, even as its chief rivals, the United States and the European Union, continued to struggle. As a country that sells things—oil, natural gas, uranium—Canada needs access to Chinese money and markets if it wants to thrive going forward.

That is fact one.

China is run by an undemocratic regime. It spends billions of dollars controlling its own people, often violently, every year and it uses its influence to prop up some of the world’s most violent and unstable dictatorships.

That is fact two. Continue…

Harper touches down in China

By Richard Warnica - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments

Prime Minister Stephen Harper touched down in Beijing Tuesday, where he was to lead five days of diplomatic and business talks. The visit is Harper’s second to the Middle Kingdom as Canadian leader and is considered crucial as Canadian businesses seek a larger share of the huge and growing Chinese market. The Chinese, meanwhile, are expected to push for more unfettered, access to Canadian resources, especially Alberta’s oil sands. Human rights, once considered Harper’s main priority in Chinese relations, appear to have faded as an issue for the Conservative leader in the region, at least if his public rhetoric is any sign.

Maclean’s Political Editor Paul Wells is with Harper in Beijing. Though it is late Tuesday night in China, Wells has already checked in on Twitter with news of his luggage search and updates on his decision to not tweet a picture of his hotel toilet. On his blog, meanwhile, Wells reports that the government has named Mark Rothwell, aka Dashan, a Canadian entertainer popular in China, as a goodwill ambassador to the country.

Alice Wong’s China delegation

By Paul Wells - Monday, February 6, 2012 at 2:45 PM - 0 Comments

So who follows the Prime Minister to China anyway? There’s a selection of backbenchers, a handful of cabinet ministers, and about 40 business and community leaders whose names were given to us by the Prime Minister’s Office. Let’s have a look. Continue…

‘It’s being considered’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 3, 2012 at 6:28 PM - 0 Comments

The Prime Minister talks to Postmedia about OAS, China and Iran.

Postmedia: There are Canadians who are wondering, ‘What does it mean to me?’ So that’s why I asked the question. Are you in a position to tell us whether or not the OAS eligibility is being considered as an option?

Harper: Absolutely, it’s being considered. But what we have to be clear on is that we are not looking at changes that are going to affect people that are currently in retirement or approaching retirement. We’ve been very clear on that.

Postmedia: Should anybody over the age of 50 be concerned?

Harper: I’ve just said we’re examining these things. The government hasn’t taken final decisions, so I don’t want to speculate on particulars. But I think we have been very clear in our electoral mandate that we’re not going to make any changes to seniors or to pensions in any way that deals with the current deficit.

Sino-Forest: a prolonged moan from the investigators

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 6:48 AM - 0 Comments

Recommended to those following the Sino-Forest story: the final report from the independent committee empanelled by the company’s board of directors to investigate the company’s claimed assets and its relationships with suppliers. I have to say the report confirms what I thought in June: the issue with Sino-Forest is not necessarily fraud, but with the practical impossibility of confirming almost anything about its secretive business model. The committee did confirm that Sino-Forest’s cash holdings had been reported accurately, and was able to follow some selected title claims to timber more or less back to the actual trees. But with some extra emphasis on the “less”.

Could a curious investor look at actual maps of timber controlled by Sino-Forest agents, you ask? Well, you see, it’s not exactly kosher for foreigners to carry around maps of remote parts of China. You can borrow them from forestry officials if you really need to. Will the local forestry bureaus confirm Sino-Forest’s claims about plantations operated by its agents? Well, sometimes they’ll give you a certificate of sorts, for all the good it might do. “The confirmations are not title documents, in the Western sense of that term,” the committee report notes. (As I understand it, the Western meaning of “title document” is that it gives one an unquestioned, justiciable claim to ownership of something, whether the Party or the Army or the good Lord in heaven approve or not.) Continue…

China’s oil imports from Iran take a great leap forward

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 3:35 PM - 0 Comments

From the Wall Street Journal:

BEIJING—China’s crude-oil imports from Iran last year were up 30% from 2010, to 27.76 million metric tons, China’s General Administration of Customs reported Saturday. That works out to about 557,000 barrels a day.

China’s overall crude imports were up just 6.1%.

That 557,000 barrels a day is about 10% more than Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline would send to the B.C. coast, although it’s unlikely Gateway would export only to China.

Angela Merkel, in China this week, will urge Beijing to cut oil imports from Iran. U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner delivered the same message on a trip two weeks ago.

Stephen Harper leaves for China next Monday.

Chinese exports slump for second month in a row

By Alex Ballingall - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 10:29 AM - 0 Comments

For the second month in a row, Chinese exports have slumped in the face of declining demand in key markets such as Europe and the United States. Data from the Chinese government shows the country’s export index has dropped to 46.9 from 48.6 in the previous month.

China’s massive economic growth in recent years has been propelled by robust exports to Europe, U.S. and Canada, with many manufacturing facilities setting up shop near the country’s eastern port cities. But this latest data shows China is not immune to economic uncertainty. Leaders in the country are preparing to handle this changes, mainly by working to encourage domestic demand to make up for the fall in exports. Hong Kong, for instance, has promised its residents and small, corporate and businesses tax rebates, property subsidies, and two months free rent for public housing. In the last three months of 2011, Hong Kong’s economic growth failed to meet economic forecasts when it slowed to 3 per cent, the smallest expansion in two years.

BBC News

BBC News

Apple’s China factory conditions need perspective

By Peter Nowak - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 1:38 PM - 0 Comments

Staff members work on the production line at the Foxconn complex in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. (Kin Cheung/AP Photo)

The New York Times tried to stir things up over the weekend with a lengthy investigation into the working conditions at Apple’s manufacturing plants in China. The story detailed all the gruesome details at supplier companies such as Foxconn: unsafe working environments, unfair overtime, overcrowding in dormitories, violations of employments codes and so on.

It’s a damning story, intended to appeal to peoples’ consciences when it comes to the electronics they buy. It is, after all, hard to feel warm and fuzzy about your new iPad when you think of the human cost that went into making it.

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Threats at home and abroad

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

CBC has posted Peter Mansbridge’s complete interview with the Prime Minister. In addition to his concerns about “certain people in the United States” who “would like to see Canada be one giant national park,” Mr. Harper is also worried about Iran.

Military action has been discussed, Mr. Harper added. “President [Barack] Obama’s said all options are on the table and I can certainly tell you that, when we talk about these issues, we talk about the full range of questions around these issues.

“But there is certainly no consensus on, you know, ultimately how to deal with this matter.” Canada’s position on dealing with Iran is that allies should work together, Mr. Harper said. “I’ve raised the alarm as much as I can, but obviously I don’t advocate particular actions publicly. I work with our allies to see if we get consensus on actions,” he said.

Harper’s slow boat to China sets sail

By Paul Wells - Friday, January 13, 2012 at 7:40 AM - 0 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

The question before us is how Stephen Harper, of all people, came to give up on the United States and embrace Red China. It’s been a long time coming. Let’s have a look.

Here’s the Prime Minister more than four years ago, complaining to our John Geddes in a pre-Christmas 2007 interview about the deterioration in Canada’s relations with the United States:

“We continue to see what we call the thickening of the border. The building up of more regulations, new agricultural fees. And to be blunt with you, this has happened despite a good working relationship between my government and the American administration. I’m not optimistic this trend will be reversed. In fact, I’m certain this trend will not be reversed in the lifetime of the current American administration.”

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North Korea echoes China’s horrors under Mao

By John Fraser - Friday, January 6, 2012 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

KCNA/Reuters

Nightmares are best left unrevisited, but the death on Dec. 17 of the “Dear and Great Leader” of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, deserves a deeper look down a particularly grisly memory lane. The entire Sturm und Drang of the death and succession to the third generation Kim Jong Un, already dubbed “Respected” and “Supreme Commander,” evokes some of the worst propaganda excesses of the Maoist regime in Communist China, especially during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, nearly half a century ago.

The pictures of North Koreans amassed in central squares across the country, sobbing their grief to the nation and the world, are almost identical to the pictures that came out of China in 1976 when the Great Helmsman reluctantly gave up the ghost. Militarized mass mourning is at the heart of these wretched regimes, as if the forced or brainwashed operatic bawling of the masses can—through sheer volume if nothing else—comfort the worried dinosaurs who struggle to maintain the totalitarian status quo.

When people ask what it was like in China during the Hundred Flowers campaign (1955-57), or Great Leap Forward (1958-60), or the Cultural Revolution itself (1966-68), you just have to say: “Tune in to North Korea.” Ditto for forced labour camps, human rights abuses, avoidable starvation, and all sorts of mind-numbing terror campaigns to engender “enthusiasm” in the masses—a cowed and brutalized population ignored by a world that can’t do much about their lot except call their regime “evil.”

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China’s panda census

By Jen Cutts - Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 10:45 AM - 0 Comments

CDSB/ChinaFotoPress

They might be easy to come by on YouTube, but panda sightings in the wild are nearly once in a lifetime—making the bears awfully hard to count. But researchers in China are trying anyway, in the first census of the endangered population in 10 years.

Pandas are shy and solitary by nature. “I’ve been working in these mountains for 20 years, and I’ve never seen a panda in the wild,” Dai Bo, a biologist with China’s forestry ministry, told the Los Angeles Times. So, for the next year, more than 100 people will be scrambling over 32,000 sq. km of mountains in central China, not looking up for the bamboo-munching mammals, but down, for their pale-green droppings.

By analyzing those droppings, scientists can estimate how many pandas are living in an area. In 2000-01, when the animals were last counted, the number stood at around 1,600. Researchers are hoping that when results from the current survey are published in 2013, they will show that conservation efforts, such as a quadrupling of nature reserves and strict anti-poaching laws, have made a difference.

Leading the world

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 10:14 AM - 0 Comments

France is unimpressed.

“Canada’s announcement that it is withdrawing from the Kyoto protocol is bad news for the fight against climate change,” ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told journalists. ”It is out of the question to relax our efforts or to break the dynamic of the Durban agreement,” he said.

China too. The Guardian, New York Times and CNN take note. John Ibbitson says we should all be ashamed. NDP MP Laurin Liu says the Environment Minister was sidelined at Durban.

China discovers massive shale gas reserves

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 1:12 PM - 0 Comments

China–the world’s biggest energy consumer–has discovered vast amounts of shale gas in its southern province of Sichuan, The Financial Times reports. The discovery is expected to transform China’s energy industry and will provide the country with a “cheap and plentiful” source of fuel for up to the next 300 years, based on amount estimates and current consumption analyses. This unconventional type of gas is extracted from shale rock using highly pressurized water and chemicals–a technique known as “fracking.” It has become an increasingly popular method in energy production, revolutionizing markets around the world, including the United States, the world’s biggest shale gas producer.

The Financial Times

That cheap manufacturing labour: a portrait gallery

By Brendan Brady - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 11:48 AM - 0 Comments

Cambodia: enjoying China’s long shadow

By Brendan Brady - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 1:07 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Brendan Brady

With per capita GDP well under a thousand dollars and a government dependent on foreign aid, Cambodia is among the poorest of the poor in Southeast Asia. But with workers in China, Thailand and Vietnam, demanding and obtaining heftier paychecks, Cambodians are getting a residual lift. Rising wages, labour unrest, as well as currency instability and political turmoil in some cases, elsewhere in the region’s traditional manufacturing centers are improving the prospects of Cambodia, an industrial minnow.

The country’s garment exports have soared in the past year, increasing by nearly 40 per cent, according to the government. Independent observers might put the figure lower, but they would agree with Ken Loo, the secretary general of the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia, when he points to rising wages and work stoppages in China as one of the main causes of Cambodia’s increased share of the market. It’s an important boost in a sector that has been Cambodia’s main engine of growth since the late 1990s, when the country stabilized after years of debilitating civil strife. The garment and footwear industry employs some 400,000 people in this country of just over 14 million (the Gap, H&M and Nike are among the major brands that have suppliers in Cambodia) and account for more than two-thirds of Cambodia’s exports.

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The next man on the moon may well be Chinese

By Kate Lunau - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments

Qin Xian’an/Xinhua/Corbis

On Sept. 29, at a remote location in the Gobi Desert, China launched its Tiangong-1 space module into the night sky. With President Hu Jintao and other dignitaries looking on, China’s Long March rocket blasted off just after 9 p.m.; 10 minutes later, Tiangong-1 (the name translates as “Heavenly Palace”) broke away from the rocket, deploying solar panels for power, and continued into orbit.

In terms of technology, Tiangong-1 isn’t a major step forward. The Chinese spacelab, currently unmanned, has a small compartment where up to three astronauts can stay for short periods; it’s been compared to NASA’s Skylab, launched in 1973, or Russia’s first space station, launched in 1971. But China isn’t dallying: since its manned space program was approved in 1992, it has moved at breathtaking speed. China launched an astronaut into space in 2003, becoming one of just three nations with its own human space flight capabilities (the U.S. and Russia are the other two). Last year, for the first time, it launched more satellites than the U.S., and it’s the only country building a space station by itself. After 2020, China hopes to put a man on the moon. “They’re trying to place themselves in the category of superpower,” says Swansea University’s Michael Sheenan, who studies international space politics. “The Tiangong-1 launch is a step in that direction.”

What China’s space program lacks in technology and experience, it makes up for in financial resources and political will. “It’s very hard to do manned space flight in democracies,” says Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College. The Chinese space program is closely linked to its government, which—without an electorate to worry about—has been able to push ahead with its ambitious goals.

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Beijing’s forbidden city is being plundered

By Emma Teitel - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments

David Silverman/Getty Images

China’s Forbidden City may be under siege for the first time since 1860, when Anglo-French soldiers occupied it during the Second Opium War. This time, though, the culprits aren’t foreign invaders, but local ones, and even employees of the attraction itself. Recent troubles began for the ancient Beijing palace turned tourist attraction (its 980 palatial structures lure in 80,000 tourists a day) in May, when a 28-year-old migrant worker broke into one of its exhibit halls and carried away “gold and jewel encrusted boxes” valued at $1.5 million. According to reports, the thief escaped in true Indiana Jones fashion, “breaching a vaunted fortress designed to protect the long-ago emperors of China from barbarian invaders.” However, he forgot to wipe his fingerprints off one of the display cases and chose to frequent a nearby Internet café immediately after the heist, where he logged on to a computer under his real name. Suffice it to say, both loot and looter were quickly recovered.

But not all Forbidden City swindlers are so inept. Amid a string of ill-conceived burglaries and embarrassing accidents (in July, a palace researcher broke a 1,000-year-old porcelain dish), it seems the most serious finger-pointing has been aimed at Forbidden City employees themselves. Or as Chen Bingcai, a former state administration official, told the Guardian, “The [Forbidden City] museum is openly taking money from visitors without putting it through the books.” And Chen’s allegation—first made on one of many microblogs credited with publicizing palace scandals—isn’t exactly unfounded. Palace staff members have since been caught on camera pocketing nine-dollar admission fares.

Still, that’s an arguably small offence, in contrast to a slew of others. Of late, palace employees have confessed to misplacing over 100 ancient books, not to mention submerging an antique wooden screen in water during a botched restoration attempt. Most egregious though, especially to the Communist sensibility, was the online accusation made by television host Rui Chenggang that Forbidden City officials were in the process of opening an exclusive palace club for the upper crust of Chinese society—with membership fees beginning at $150,000.

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China’s great wall of Canadian sound

By Ian Gormely - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 6:05 AM - 0 Comments

When Ontario rockers Hollerado booked their gig in Yangshou, China, they knew things wouldn’t run as smoothly as they do at home. But nothing could have prepared them for when they saw their backline—the set of amps a club provides for bands—roll up to the venue in a trailer hitched to the back of a bicycle. “He had apparently been biking for four hours to get it into this town,” says Menno Versteeg, the group’s lead singer. So hungry are Chinese fans for rock music that the promoter had a set of old Soviet amps from a nearby town peddled in specifically for the group’s set. “It reminded me of when I heard rock music for the first time, the effect it had on me,” says Versteeg says of their dedication to making the show a reality. “You could you see it in their eyes.”

Hollerado are one of a growing number of Canadian bands heading to China in the hopes of tapping into the country’s newfound appetite for rock music, particularly from the West. And Canadian bands are finding themselves well positioned to take advantage. Continue…

The dark side of Steve Jobs

By Claire Ward - Friday, October 14, 2011 at 10:28 AM - 24 Comments

In what seems like an endless stream of Steve Jobs tributes and devotions, one voice stands out as a reality check. Mike Daisey, New York-based author and monologuist, is hoping to cut through the nostalgia and remind people of the nastier side of Jobs’ legacy.

“I’m almost tired of hearing what a genius he is,” says the 37-year-old creator and performer of The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, a one-man show about the life and work of the former Apple CEO that opened off-broadway at the Public Theater in New York City on Tuesday. “I think he’d be disgusted by this level of nostalgia. He was a very unrelenting, unwavering person—focus was really the centre of his skill set, his genius.”

Daisey’s show touches on everything from Jobs’s mastery of industrial design to the objectionable practices of iPhone and iPad manufacturing plants in China. The monologue tells the story of Jobs’s obsessions and his impact on humanity—from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen. Daisey’s style is semi-improvised, or what he calls “extemporaneous monologing”—which means the show differs from night to night, often depending on the mood of the room. “The work happens in the room so it’s hard to say what is going to change,” says Daisey. “At the same time, the fundamentals of the story aren’t affected by his death. In fact, they’ll be amplified. The end of an era, the loss of individual personal power in the face of corporatism.” Continue…

In Sichuan, it’s all better now

By Richard Warnica - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 12:15 PM - 0 Comments

Jiang Hongjing/Xinhua/Redux

In the centre of the page on A8 of the New York Times on Friday, Sept. 30, nine giant pandas sat in a field of almost impossible green. Some slouched in that fat-baby way pandas have. Others chewed grass. Together, they offered an image of bucolic perfection. The picture was in the centre of a full-page ad paid for by the People’s Government of Sichuan, the Chinese province devastated by a powerful earthquake in 2008. Alongside images of pristine houses, smiling children and new roads, the bears presented an unequivocal message: everything here is awesome now.

The earthquake was a disaster in many ways, including, for the government, public relations. Dozens of schoolhouses collapsed in the quake, which killed about 90,000 people. Questions about shoddy construction, tied to corruption or incompetence, dog officials to this day. The ad was clearly an attempt to show the other side. Captions to the photos boast of 12 million people resettled, 3,000 schools rebuilt and over 3,000 babies born since the disaster occurred.

No one can deny the Chinese have spent billions on rebuilding in Sichuan. But as recent high-speed rail disasters have shown, money isn’t everything in China. Graft and a rush to get the work done have plagued large projects in that country for years. Slick advertising is one thing—buildings that can withstand a significant shake are another. For the people of Sichuan, only the latter will count in the long run.

A foot in two worlds

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

Natalie Castellino/Maclean's

Ray Newal needs few words to describe his first attempt to conquer the Indian market. “What ended up happening,” he says, “was . . . nothing.”

The 35-year-old entrepreneur is the co-founder of Jigsee Inc., a Canadian start-up whose technology enables video streaming on older model cellphones and shaky networks. India, he says, where mobile subscribers number 800 million but only a privileged few have BlackBerrys and iPhones, looked like the perfect target market. But a first attempt to reach out to consumers by partnering with a Mumbai-based powerhouse quickly fizzled.

Months after Jigsee teamed up with Hungama Digital Media Entertainment, the world’s largest distributor of Bollywood and South Asian entertainment content, in 2009, Newal knew something was wrong. It took a move to India to find out that Hungama was trying to pitch his company’s technology to high-end smartphone users, who plainly didn’t have as much need for it. “That,” says Newal, “is when the awakening occurred.”

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