Information Times
November 18, 2008

The Guangzhou-based Information Times and many other newspapers featured con artist Wang Xiniu on the front page today.

Wang's handiwork made the news in Inner Mongolia back in 2005. On the morning of May 17, 2005, two government buildings in Hohhot were turned into two piles of rubble. An 8-story municipal government office building and an 11-story PSB office building, were demolished to make room for the "Golden Eagle International CBD Center," a skyscraper that would soar 169 meters into the air, making it the tallest building in western China.

A very successful explosion

In 2007, Wang was arrested by the police. It turned out that instead of being a businessman from Hong Kong, he was a former carpenter from Hubei Province. His "Golden Eagle Group" was a shell company registered in Hong Kong with HK$10,000 dollars in assets and not a single employee.

Further investigation revealed that Hohhot was not Wang's first victim: He played the same trick in 2001 in Yinchuan, the capital city of Ningxia Autonomous Region. In a string of scams conducted from 2001 to 2007, Wang fleeced banks, construction contractors, and private investors for a total of nearly 1.8 billion yuan. On August 21 this year, Wang was sentenced to life in prison for fraud. He recently lost his appeal.

Wang explained his strategy in a few choice quotes:

"Get in good with big leaders, hold up big banners, and make big money."

"Archimedes said that if you gave him a pivot point he could move the Earth. My law is this: Find out a leader's weak point, and I can unsettle a city."

The many reports about Wang seem to overlook the most obvious questions: Why did it take so long to catch him? And have the government officials who apparently played a role in his scam been punished?

This article is from Danwei.org

Zafka Zhang (from 56minus1 on Flickr)

This interview is re-published on Danwei from 56minus1.

Zafka Zhang (张安定) is the co-founder of China Youthology, a boutique consultancy that works on consumer insights for marketing, communications, and product design targeting Chinese youth. He is also the head of research at HiPiHi (a leading Chinese virtual world platform), a lead adviser for the Association of Virtual Worlds (global industry association), a project member with Creative Commons in China, and a bona fide expert on Chinese subcultures, music, art, and digital marketing.

56minus1: Sean Leow, CEO of Neocha.com, once told me you are the most knowledgeable person on virtual worlds in China. Can you give us a brief overview of the virtual world space in China?
Zafka Zhang: In the past 2 years, I have heard a lot of discussion about virtual worlds (VWs) with many different definitions. My basic definition of a VW is an integrated, persistently existing world with avatars, virtual environments, and social-economic system. MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) is a classic type of VWs. Second life is a non-gaming virtual world.

Many current virtual rooms / scenes / spaces, which provide convenient, small-scale, visualized environment for chatting and social purposes are NOT VWs. For example, Google Lively and Vivaty. They are just the augmentation of the existing web services but not integrated and immersive "world."

Technically, there are 2D VWs and 3D VWs. 2D virtual worlds, especially those for kids, tweens and teens, have gained the success globally because of lower technical and user entry barriers and clear business model. In China 2D virtual worlds are still in 'infancy' stage. According to my knowledge, they are 51mole (摩尔庄园), Club Fish, Stardoll (明星派), Bobou City (抱抱城), Nami (娜娜米米), 1D, Great Dreams (宏梦星球), etc. I visit 51mole most often. I have noticed some impressive progress of 51mole both in platform performance and community development.

There are 3 types of 3D VWs. The first is VW platforms. The core competency of this type of VW is online creation and the capability to run different types of applications. Worldwide speaking, there are Second Life,OpenSim and some other open source platforms. HiPiHi (China) is the earliest of this type in China and is still in the process of technology development. The biggest challenge for this type of VW is technology and user entry barrier.

The second is virtual community, such as There.com. There is not much user creativity involved in this type of VW. Users come to this type of VW for entertainment and social networking. MTV has already built 7 virtual communities. In China, there are ChinaQ and Dream World who both use the OpenSim platform, anduWorld, Novoking, M World, Hapa World who have developed their own platforms. Currently, these VWs are still under development. I think the giants in traditional media (eg. Warner Bro) and consumer goods companies (eg. Barbie Girl), with their resource to create compelling content and provide high quality services / virtual products, will dominate this area in the future.

The third type is communitilized online gaming worlds. Traditional online gaming is reinventing itself with openness and adding Web 2.0 features. In 2008, Giant, 9You and several other gaming companies focused their attention and resources on the "communitilization" of online gaming worlds. With more than 30 millions users, well-established content, virtual social-economic rules, and clear business models, in the next 3-5 years, communitilized online gaming worlds will the biggest competitor to the non-gaming virtual worlds.

I'm keen to look at two main aspects of VWs in the future:

Firstly, (non-technically) no matter 2D or 3D, biggest challenges lie in 1) how to deal with user privacy, user data, and user assets, and 2) how to develop and maintain the community on the basis of a good understanding of the local context.

Secondly, (technically) I am watching the mobile-based VWs and the augmentation of VWs. Of course, the interoperability and openness of Opensource and Second Life are still my concerns.

56minus1: What has the Internet done to change / empower youth culture in China over the past 5 - 10 years or so, and how do u see it shaping youth culture going forward?
Zafka Zhang: This is a very important question to ask, however, its difficult to answer without writing a thesis. A lot of the work that we do at China Youthology is to understand the role of Internet in Chinese youth’s lives. In most of cases, others simply chalk up the Internet in China as just a "channel" that's increasingly influencing local youth. However, in our opinion, the Internet is much more than a just channel – it's part of their lifestyle and it is shifting the way youth perceive themselves, each other and the world. The use of the Internet in branding and marketing has been largely confined or restricted because of people inability to see the Internet as something more than just a channel. Its much bigger than that in China.

The research we do incorporates cyberspace ethnography. We not only research social networking sites, discussion forums (BBS), online games, etc. but we also use these online platforms in our daily life to connect with youth. We have started to share some of our findings in our blog. For example, brand experience on SNS. More will be shared on the blog in the future.

56minus1: Tell us more about your new company China Youthology.
Zafka Zhang: My wife Lisa Li has been working in the market research industry for 5+ years, but only until last year did I start to really understand her work and realize that she has been at the cutting edge of her industry, especially when she was invited to speak about her research at ESOMAR, the "Oscars" of the market research industry). As I have a similar educational background in sociology and politics, we have found our discourse on research methodologies and markey insight very enjoyable.

Moreover, my experience with Internet ventures and entrepreneurial firms (start-ups) has proven as valuable inspiration to her on various pieces of her research. Based on my past professional experiences, I think better research and consultancy can be conducted without handicaps of big organizations. Hence, we started our own company, China Youthology (青年志). Our research and insights are all about local Chinese youth, with the simple mission of helping companies / brands connect with local Chinese youth.

Over the past 2 years, digital marketing has developed into a huge interest of mine. Since we started China Youthology, I have found it very exciting to finally have the chance to implement various ways of digital marketing. We have shared some of our thoughts on this on our blog, which, by the way, has been very helpful in terms of connecting us to people from all over the world who have similar interests as ours, introducing a new company to the industry, and establishing thought-leadership. We have been surprised time and time again by well-established and respectful youth research and marketing agencies taking time to leave comments or write us emails. We use Twitter (China Youthology, Zafka, and Lisa) Facebook, Linkedin (Zafka and Lisa) etc as well...
56minus1: In August, New Weekly (新周刊) published an interesting piece titled 穷忙族 (loose translation: The Young / Working Poor Class) about Chinese youth life / working styles, consumption habits, "meaning of life" quest, ambitions, etc. What's China Youthology's point of view on this piece?

Zafka Zhang: We found that the "young working poor" has a unique connotation in Chinese context. And as a prevalent phenomenon, it is reshaping the consumption attitudes and behaviors of Chinese youth and hence has implication to brands. We actually talked about this on our blog. Check it out here.

56minus1: Your thoughts on innovation and the creative industry in China?
Zafka Zhang: The growth of creative industry and innovation in China is a result of Chinese economic transformation. We have talked more about it here. On one hand, the number of local "creative youth" is increasing dramatically; on the other hand, the youth today are a generation of creativity-seekers. The success of creativity flee-markets (such as iMart; see our report on it here) and various forms of festivals (see our report about Modern Sky Festival) shows great potential for China’s creative and cultural market.

Since the opening of China in late 70's, trends have been trickling down to China from Western and Japanese trendsetters. However, in the last couple of years, with a growing sense of cultural identity, Chinese youth have established a good connection with local Chinese creativity. The mash up of foreign and local styles will continue to be the trend for Chinese youth. Recognizing the value of Chinese creative youth, we are working with Neocha.com on a project to help brands better understand emerging trends among local creative youth.

56minus1: Tell us about the types of projects / issues you are focusing on in China with your role at Creative Commons (CC).
Zafka Zhang: CC is a non-profit organization founded in 2001 in the US that provides free tools, both legal and technical, to help authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. CC, with a statement of "Some Rights Reserved," advocates and encourages legal sharing, remixing, and re-usage of creative works. There are already 49 jurisdictions with local versions of the CC license. Now, the CC licenses have become pervasive standards with large-scale adoption for user-generated content licenses.

I got to know CC and the free culture movement when I did research on the history of Second Life in 2007. I was intrigued by the business innovation of SL based on the protection of the IP rights of user-generated content. In the same year, I got to know Professor Wang Chunyan, the head of CC in China. We got to know each other better when CC cooperated with the mini-midi2008 festival to release my CC-licensed album Noise is Free this May (2008). The album is downloadable here. At the festival, my side project band "The Wedding Beast" also performed.

I recently joined CC and am now the local Chinese music community liaison and am responsible for public relations. My job is to evangelize CC in among the local music community and let more people know the philosophy of CC through the social media. As we all know, copyright, when it was born, was developed to benefit both content creators and content consumers. With the revolution of the Internet, the mechanism of creation and distribution of content has dramatically changed; a lot of digital content is produced by so-called amateurs, and the culture of sharing, remixing, and reusing has become mainstream. CC is a Web 2.0 tool and a legal infrastructure to support the "sharing economy."

Although I am not an expert in law and copyright, I am a believer in free culture and the power of the Internet. CC is one of the initiatives exploring new ways of balancing innovation and protection in the digital era. I would like to talk with more people who are interested in the topic of Internet, free culture, and business innovation. ALl are welcome to contact me at anding.zhang AT gmail DOT com.

56minus1: You are a sound artist and an experimental musician, what is your favorite sound? Why? Any links to your work?
Zafka Zhang: My previous released sound-art works are focused on political listening of urban soundscapes. Please check my bio here. In 2008, I released two albums under Yao Dajun's label POST CONCRETE PRiCELESS SERiES. Yong◎He is based on field recordings around Yong He Lama Temple area (in Beijing). I.Mirror is based o online virtual world field recordings from Second Life. I have put my thoughts in the inner pages of the albums.

I have favorite style of music but I don't have favorite sound. I love and respect all kinds of sound. I spend my time in field recording while doing improvisations with instruments (including synthesizers and the iPhone) on stage. I go to WaterLand Kwanyin, a bi-weekly event at 2 Kolegas (in Beijing) quite often to either perform or meet friends. Hope to meet you guys there some day.

56minus1: Tell us more about your band Prague?
Zafka Zhang: We started in 1998 as "Surging Prague" when we were all Fudan students, and changed it to "Prague" in 2002 when my wife joined the band. At that time, our style was mostly post-punk and a lot of avant-garde stuff, then we gradually shifted to instrumental and sentimental music, which we found as the best way to express our emotions and views.

Having been separated all over the world since the release of Printemps in 2002, band members gathered together again on-and-off in the summer of 2005 and recorded a new album called Le Pont. Six of the tracks from Le Pont have been used by the Chinese artist Cao Fei in her Whose Utopia video and iMirror (part 1, 2, and 3) Second Life projects and exhibitions...we love her work, its so beautiful...check all of her videos here, they are amazing.

We've recently recorded 6 new tracks in Beijing this October; production will be done soon. I recently set up an artist page on Douban.com where all of course are welcome to listen to our old songs and new demos.

56minus1: What are you reading these days? Listening to? Watching?
Zafka Zhang: I am reading Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. I am listening to Nils Petter Molvaer, Eivind Aarset, and Tortoise, and watching Justice Yeldham’s performances on Youtube.

This article is from Danwei.org

Beijing Times
November 17, 2008

Private money lenders are likely to be recognized by law in China.

Today's Beijing Times reports that Liu Ping (刘萍), a vice director of the People's Bank of China (PBC), said yesterday that a draft bill regarding the status of private lending has been submitted to the State Council for approval.

The new policy is intended to help small businesses, whose difficulties in obtaining credit from state-owned commercial banks have worsened thanks to the global financial crisis. The gap left by commercial banks is currently filled by pawnshops, for-profit guarantee providers, and unauthorized private money lenders, or "underground banks" (地下钱庄), which have lower lending standards and demand higher interest rates. Underground banks have been around for a while and have even prospered as an important alternative source of funding in some parts of the country.

In the article, Liu is quoted as saying that in China, "the credit market has been monopolized by banks. The new law will hopefully break their monopoly by allowing qualified lenders to make loans, making it easier for small businesses who seek fund."

According to the draft bill, businesses or individuals can register to be a "private money lenders" on the condition that they do not take in deposit money; business owners must have clean records. A statutory maximum for loan interest is set to be no higher than four times of the base interest rate. According to an investigation conducted by the PBC, some underground banks impose interest rates of 200% to 300% on loans. Overall, the average interest rate of these loans is between 12% and 15%, compared to the current rate of 6.66% for commercial bank loans.

Also on the front page:
● Beijing plans to construct six new subway lines starting next year. It is estimated that the total length of Beijing subway will reach 561 kilometers by 2015; it currently stands at 209 kilometers.

● Three people were found dead in a room on the second floor of a two-story building in Fengtai District. It is suspected that they were killed by carbon monoxide generated by a boiler on the ground floor. The landlord was taken away by the police.

● Police raided a firework storehouse in Pinggu District and confiscated over 6,000 cartons of illegal fireworks (see the big photo on the front page).

This article is from Danwei.org

Two hundred residents of the Xinxin Garden community in Urumqi, Xinjiang, found this noticed taped to their doors ten days ago:

NOTICE

Buildings 3 and 4 belong to us. The brutes currently living in them are requested to move out within 7 days.

Otherwise, your entire family will be killed.....!!!

The inhabitants of the neighborhood are understandably upset by this development, according to an iYaxin report that quotes someone from building management: "The entire community is apprehensive, especially the more than 200 households in buildings 3 and 4. They're staying at home night and day because they're afraid that someone take their apartment by force when they're not at home."

A developer dispute apparently lies behind the threat. Xinxin Garden was built in 2001 by two property developers who later had a falling out.

This article is from Danwei.org

In October, 1949, soldiers from the PLA's 28th Army who landed on Quemoy were wiped out by ROC forces. A young girl who had previously been rescued by the army made clay figures to commemorate the 27 soldiers she knew, and in 1993 built this temple in Chongwu, Fujian.

The temple founder, Zeng Hen, is now 67.

The temple was completed in 1996. The following year, local residents erected a memorial to the 27 soldiers, followed by a memorial hall.

The temple entrance

The memorial monument and hall

Links and Sources

This article is from Danwei.org

This is a recruitment advertisement. Please contact the advertiser directly if you are interested. See all job ads or place a job ad.

City Weekend Shanghai is hiring a full-time Editor to manage both our Parents & Kids and Home & Office Magazines in Shanghai. These publications directly serve Shanghai’s dynamic community of families as well as property owners and renters. Parents & Kids comes out every other month (6 times a year), Home & Office comes out quarterly (4 times a year).

We are looking for editorial candidates with the usual qualifications:

• Native English speaker
• 2 years editorial/writing experience
• Mandarin ability
• Demonstrated leadership ability
• Detail oriented
• Deadline obsessive

EVEN MORE THAN THAT, we are looking for an editor with the drive to run an entire publication from top to bottom.

City Weekend is owned by Ringier, a Swiss publishing group with 175 years of history. Here, we use the latest technologies to create top of the line media products, including our cutting-edge, reader-powered website. You will be supported by a full staff of designers, sales, photographers , bloggers and IT. This is an excellent opportunity to put your editorial/media career into high gear. Competitive salary commensurate with experience, full medical benefits and expense budget all included.

Send CV and statement of interest to Lee Mack at leemack@cityweekend.com.cn. Position closes Dec. 1.

This article is from Danwei.org

Beijing Morning Post
November 14, 2008

Qin Xuefeng, a man accused of robbery and extortion, was on trial yesterday in Haidian District Court. The victim in the case, a woman whom the newspaper only identified by the surname Zhang, was reportedly a "well-known TV host in Beijing."

On December 18th of 2007, Qin called Zhang's TV station claiming to be the secretary of the director of SARFT. He invited Zhang to host an Olympic-related event at a hotel. Qin later confessed to the police that he saw the name of the SARFT director on TV and then looked up the name of his secretary.

Also on the front page:
· 50 Chinese students enrolled in Newcastle University in the UK were expelled after their application documents were found to be forged. More at the Daily Mail.

· Taiwan's former president Chen Shui-bian, now in jail on corruption charges, declared a hunger strike.

· Beijing pledged to raise unemployment benefits for urban residents and build 8.5 million square meters of low-income housing.

This article is from Danwei.org

An odd rock formation

A bodhisattva has appeared on a hillside in Chongqing's Wanzhou District.

After a local construction worker saw flashes coming from a rock formation shaped like a human form earlier this month, the hill has draw thousands of pilgrims. The Beijing News reports today that as of yesterday, a crowd of nearly 5,000 people had gathered at the site. Police tape had been set up and signs posted explaining that the "image" was only a natural formation.

The Chongqing Evening News sent a skeptical reporter to investigate:

Yesterday [Nov. 13] at around 11 am, at the Wei'an Cliff in the resettlement city of Bai'anba, Wanzhou District, over one hundred people from all parts of the city crowded along the winding mountain road. The air was filled with the sound of firecrackers, and ghost money drifted about in the wind. Smoke and scraps of paper extended for hundreds of meters.

These people were headed for Wei'an Cliff's "bodhisattva image." According to a few people from the Chongqing Three Gorges Institute, whose new campus is under construction nearby, on the night of November 7, workshed manager Lao Cheng saw a golden flash on the rock wall all of a sudden. He went up to have a look, and then discovered the bodhisattva image. The workers said that from then on, Lao Cheng kept exclaiming that he had seen a "divine light" and was under its protection. Rumors about the "bodhisattva apparition" quickly spread, and more than 1,000 people have come every day to worship. Someone even made a post online saying, and the rumor grew even more fantastic.

What does the bodhisattva image look like? Pressing through the crowd, this reporter arrived at the ground beneath the rock, where people were kneeling in adoration. The rock face in the center was sandstone, but perhaps my eyes are bad, because I couldn't see an image of a person.

Pilgrims at the rock

"That's a finger, that there is an arm....," pious worshipers explained, pointing to fissures and furrows. I looked again, but I still couldn't seen anything. As this was going on, people were draping red sashes onto the "bodhisattva," lighting incense, kneeling on the ground as they chanted, praying to the "bodhisattva" to protect their families, and then setting off firecrackers.

Mr. Wan, a local resident who had come to see the commotion, didn't believe that this was a bodhisattva apparition: "It probably just looks like a person, a natural coincidence. It's not worth worshiping. If it's not, then there are tons of rocks that look like people or gods in the Stone Forest. You'll break your skull with all that genuflecting."

Does the "bodhisattva image" really "flash"? Reportedly, local reporters investigated this claim. on November 11, they waited until 2 am but saw nothing. During my investigations, I never found "workshed manager Lao Cheng."

The new campus of the Chongqing Three Gorges Institute is only a few hundred meters from the "bodhisattva image." The sheer number of people that have been streaming in from the city the past few days has caused no end of headaches for the Institute and the construction workers. "Every day more than 1,000 people come to worship and burn insense, and it's seriously affected the progress of our work," said a person in charge of one construction project for the new campus. The campus construction site is right in the path of the people who are coming to "worship the bodhisattva," and the thousand visitors a day who pass through, plus the noise from the firecrackers and the drifting paper money annoyed the workers to no end. The construction team said that it was very worried about the safety of the pilgrims because the area was under construction.

Yesterday afternoon, a representative of the office of the Wanzhou Propaganda Department said that experts had verified that the so-called "bodhisattva image" was merely eroded stone, an entirely natural phenomenon. The individual said that the district government was highly concerned about the crowds passing through the Institute campus on their way to worship. It had held an emergency meeting on November 12, where it was decided to discourage superstitious activity and to allow construction to proceed normally.

Geologists sent by the Wanzhou District government to investigate the phenomenon said that the sandstone contained reflective minerals such as quartz and mica, which could explain the flashes that Lao Cheng saw.

The Beijing News concludes its report on an ominous note:

Assistant director Wang of the Wanzhou Land Bureau said that after consulting experts, it advised the district government to blast the rock apart.

This article is from Danwei.org

Xinhua, now faster and more attractive

Mure Dickie and Kathrin Hille in The Financial Times report:

China has opened its market to financial information providers, ending an attempt to give the official Xinhua news agency tight control over its foreign competitors and resolving a trade dispute with the US, the European Union and Canada.

Under a deal signed by the four parties in Geneva on Thursday, China agreed to transfer Xinhua’s role in overseeing foreign financial information suppliers to an independent regulator and to allow such suppliers to set up commercial operations.

The agreement, reached after seven months of World Trade Organisation consultations, removes a big operational risk for financial information providers such as Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. It also represents a victory for advocates of market reforms over the interests of Xinhua, which sparked the dispute by issuing tough new rules on the foreign agencies in September 2006.

China has required foreign news agencies to distribute to media clients only through Xinhua for more than 50 years. The agencies do not challenge these restrictions, which help the Chinese government ensure news does not reach the ­public uncensored...

...Xinhua denied it was in competition with foreign agencies. “This issue does not exist anymore,” said Liu Jiang, the agency’s deputy editor-in-chief, before the deal’s announcement. “We don’t want to restrict foreign news agencies: that would be backward behaviour.”

Mr Liu said the agency was going through a “strategic transformation” that should make it faster and its content more attractive.

Faster and more attractive? That is something to watch for.

This is also hopefully the end to a struggle that has been going on for decades: Xinhua both regulating and competing with the foreign wire services offering financial news in China. The first round of the fight between Reuters and Dow Jones et al. was won by the barbarians; James McGregor's book about business in China One Billion Customers contains a insider tale of the fight.

This article is from Danwei.org

If you are in Beijing and know American Sign Language, please contact Mike McDermott: michael@gunghofilms.com.

This article is from Danwei.org