哇。快四年在上海，今天终于找到了方便查询上映时间的网页。当然当前有许多电影时间表，但都没有好的调理。但谷歌的这个是不错！

There are a lot of things going on right now.

• Chinese Gov’t driving in wrong direction. China Bubble is getting ready to Pop!
• Broadcast Media, Physical Media and Middle men are being creatively destroyed!
• Global labor force is doubling (China, India and Brazil) so labor supply far outstrips demand for labor.

First, I expect that the Chinese economy is now in full “bubble mode” and will be popping sometime soon.

• Caijing Magazine, through government support has exposed some of the largest corruption cases in the country is going to stop covering corruption – so now who is watching?
• Urban China Real Estate prices have been increasing 20%/year for at least 5 years and even the new Shanghai World Financial Center is 70% empty.
• Wen Jiabao just went to the World Economic Forum summit in Dalian and announced that China’s GDP growth target “appears to be achievable“, which the US press will read as “9% AGAIN!” Perhaps they should read How China Cooks Its Books.
• Meanwhile, everywhere I go Taxi rides are down, the reported rail freight numbers for 2009 are 30% below last year, night clubs are empty, KTVs are closed. People are not consuming. Retail sales are down 12%.
• Factories in the south that closed have not yet reopened – perhaps 50,000,000 people are out of work, and the last 2 years worth of college graduates have been unable to find jobs.
• Yue Yuen, the Shoe Factory I visited here on my first trip to China has reported it’s biggest loss ever.
• The largest rail line in China reports freight loads down by 12%.
• Banks call my WOFE registered phone number on a regular basis explaining how it would be beneficial to take out a loan.
• When asking people “how’s the economy”, everyone says it’s doing great.

Second, What will happen next? I’ve set myself up to be a middle man, an intermediary between US producers and Chinese consumers. This is what I’ve been doing for movie cameras and this is what I can provide value doing long term. My value is largest for products that are more complicated (specialized technology products) since these are more difficult for local providers to support.

• MEDIA: Physical Media (Newspapers, Magazines, CDs, DVDs) and Broadcast Media (TV, Radio) is finally being “creatively destroyed” – being replaced by a more efficient (low distribution cost, large selection) medium – the Internet.
• DISTRIBUTION: Middle Men will become less and less relevant.
• POLITICS: The Internet makes voting extremely efficient. Not only can we reshape the way we elect our representatives, but we can reshape the purpose and power of our representatives, returning the power to the people.
• BANKING: We all bank online. We no longer need a bank branch on every corner. Banks can lease space in the Grocery Market and put their ATMs there. Remember, ATM is “Automated Teller Machine” – if the Teller can do it, we can surely make a machine that can do it.
• MOVIES: Movie Theatre (in terms of the box office) is a Retail Service (atmosphere, seating, timing, snacks) and not likely to be affected, however changing media consumption habits will impact the requirements for future feature films.
• RETAIL: The 25 and under generation downloads everything over the Internet. The iTunes Music Store is the largest Music Store on the planet (in annual revenue)
• MOBILE: The iPhone is the only smartphone that meets the definition of “a computer in your pocket”, but Apple is not going to be able to lock MSFT, DELL, etc out of this market. Google will try hard to get in too.
• COMPUTING: 10 years from now, the AVERAGE person will only use a desktop computer for the times that lots of research of lots of text input is required, but notebook/laptop computes will be like desktop computers. Laptop (R&D, Professional Content Creation, Finance & Accounting). Desktop (High End Media Creation. “Time Clock” office workers who shouldn’t bring devices home)

Third, in terms of creating products or services, be aware that long term the consumption market will not grow significantly, but the supply of labor for all forms of production markets will grow, driving labor prices down in nearly every sector. Going forward, anyone who is directly trading labor for income could find themselves in trouble, especially if their labor was at a premium due to their location.

Depending on your product or service, you’ll need to alter this list, but this can help you get started:

1. Create a Chinese Company name and Chinese names for your key Products/Product lines
   (in modern mainland China phonetic translations rather than translated meaning is optimal. In Taiwan and Hong Kong, better to simply use the English names. for example, Chinese people can’t pronounce “Nike” so they say “nàikè”. In Mainland China it’s typically an operating flaw to use english for anything important)
   
2. Chinese Language operational/interaction instructions
3. For Business to Business products, Chinese can often accept USD pricing
4. EMAIL is not a good lead generation tool for Chinese clients – but it is a good way to transfer attachments. Instead:
   • Exchange Business cards at Trade Shows
   • Engage in online communities
     (However, beware most active online community members lack the ability to buy)
   • Establish your own promotional seminars
   • Chinese language website with: Address, Phone Number and MSN information
     (Chinese people want to stop by or talk to a human about it, now)
   • Create service center to handle Phone/MSN/Walk In inquiries. Operating hours vary by product category. Staying open later in China is typically more useful than opening earlier.
   • Learn how to quickly identify customers who have the financial ability to purchase your products,
5. China Customs is a very slow (typically delays shipments 3-5 days) so all efforts should be made to repair product in country
6. Import Tariffs are very high, so don’t let product diverted from Hong Kong (0% VAT, 0% Tariff) compete with your Mainland China sales (17% VAT, 10+% Tariffs) and distribution plans.
7. Be Careful: in Chinese culture “tricking” someone for your personal gain only proves that you are smarter than they are, and if a Chinese person has a good opportunity to make money that they don’t take (even if it is “wrong” in western eyes) then their friends and family would accuse them of being dumb.
8. Be Aware: that the more that someone speaks a language, the better they get at it, and the less they speak one, the worse they get at it. When you meet the Chinese guy that speaks really great english and claims to protect you and “unlock a market of 1.3 billion customers” for you, most likely this guy is not connected at all and only knows how to trick western people out of their money.
9. Legal system is unlikely to grant proper recourse, especially in native vs/ foreigner cases. You should always sign proper contracts, but if you are taking any risk on the part of your partner, YOU MUST REQUIRE A DEPOSIT (押金) in exchange for that risk. If the Chinese partner can save 1¢ by pretending the contract does not exist, then they will try it.
10. Chinese customers are EXTREMELY PRICE SENSITIVE, and are particularly unwilling to pay for services.
11. Long term, the Middle Men in China will be out of work, but in the short term, for most sales you are far better figuring out a way to with multiple resellers (avoid letting one crook control your destiny). Depending on volume and cash flow requirements, working with large stocking distributors is probably not the optimal way to operate because they have very fat margins, and with a fat margin it’s too easy for them to divert product back into your other markets. On the plus side, Agents can also keep you insulated from the darker side of Chinese business practices.
12. Keep costs down. If you operate like a traditional international company while in China, it could be very difficult to make a profit, but all of your suppliers will take profits.
13. Chinese customers want to hold the product in their hand and are particularly weary of Internet sales.

This was taken from a comment (not the original article) on seekingalpha, but I think that it is 100% on.

They [CHINA] cannot transition to a consumption driven economy any more easily than we [USA] can transition to an investment and export driven economy; there will be painful adjustments. Current tensions identified by the author are symptoms of these underlying stresses and China’s determination to be something more than a source of low cost labor to the western world and evolve into a super power in its own right.

What distinguishes the two countries is that China has an idea as to what direction it wants to move towards; the US bogged down in deleterious debates as to how to share an ever shrinking economic pie. China will eventually eclipse the economic power of the US, it’s only a matter of timing. Along the way, there will be natural frictions as China and the US rebalance their relationship.

[From Will Chimerica's Demise Take Down Global Economy? -- Seeking Alpha]

Jet Li and Tony Blair launch 1000 village plan to tackle climate change from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

As the Qing Dynasty was crumbling and the Chinese people were at war with themselves, foreign powers swooped in to divide up the spoils, effectively dividing up the country. There were more than 80 treaty ports established in China – both on the Pacific and on major inland waterways.

This is a map of the foreign enclaves that were established at the time, but does not yet included all 80 of the treaty ports. The important lesson to learn here is that when you here about some of the colonies that were in China, you perhaps think of Hong Kong and Shanghai, but looking at just this partial map should help you see (as it did me) the extent of the colonization prior to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.

In addition to the foreign enclaves listed here, entire provinces were controlled by specific foreign powers:

• UK: Hong Kong, New Territories, Guangdong Province. Yangze River Valley
• FRANCE: Yunnan, Guangxi, Hainan, and Guangdong Provinces
• GERMANY: Shandong Province
• RUSSIA: Parts of Liaoning and Shandong Province.
• JAPAN: All of Dongbei (Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia) and Taiwan

If you’ve still got any doubts about China being divided up between the world powers of the time, take a look at this political comic from the period: UK, Germany, Russia, France and Japan dividing up China…

The Treaty of Nanjing signaled the end of the First Opium War between the British Empire and Qing Dynasty. The treaty was signed and negotiated aboard the British gunship HMS Cornwallis while anchored at Nanjing.

Prior to the treaty, the Thirteen Factories in Canton had a monopoly on foreign trade with China. After the treaty, five ports were opened for trade:

• Canton (Shameen Island until 1949)
• Amoy (Xiamen until 1930)
• Foochow (Fuzhou)
• Ningpo (Ningbo)
• Shanghai (until 1949)

In addition, the island of Hong Kong was made a crown colony, ceding it to the British Queen “in perpetuity”. In 1860 the colony was extended with the Kowloon peninsula and in 1898 the colony was given a 99 year lease of the New Territories.

The Treaty of Tianjin, signed at the end of the Second Opium War opened 10 more chinese ports of foreign trade including: Niuzhuang, Danshui, Hankou and Nanjing. It also opened the Yangze River to free navigation by foreigners, and secured the right of foreigners to travel freely to the internal regions of China.

In short, the Qing Dynasty was very weak in the 1850-1900 time period, and foreign powers exploited that for their own gain.

30 years ago Nixon and Kissenger agreed with Beijing on the “One China Policy“, breaking off relations with Taiwan as the “Republic of China” and officially recognizing the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate government of China. The US Embassy in China put together a nice logo in honor of the event, and combining it with an iPhone wallpaper template I’ve converted it into a nice iPhone wallpaper. For reference the Chinese says:

中美建立外交关系30年
Meaning:
30 Years of USA – PRC Diplomatic Relations

Click through the image below to download the “wallpaper” version or the Photoshop template.

Unfortunately Twitter in China is blocked by the Great Firewall, so if you are in China and want to Micro Blog, you should choose from one of the local alternatives.

1. Komoo
2. Zuosa (做啥网 zuòshá wǎng)
3. Taotao (滔滔 tāotāo)

Previously there were several other local alternatives such as Fanfou, Digu and Jiwai, but all of these are either under “server maintenance” or simply offline.

UPDATE: SINA just launched an online twitter service that should never be blocked by the great firewall. t.sina.com.

Unfortunately Twitter in China is blocked by the Great Firewall, so if you are in China and want to Micro Blog, you should choose from one of the local alternatives.

1. Komoo
2. Zuosa (做啥网 zuòshá wǎng)
3. Taotao (滔滔 tāotāo)

Previously there were several other local alternatives such as Fanfou, Digu and Jiwai, but all of these are either under “server maintenance” or simply offline.

Over the last 100 years, The Atlantic has released a series of interesting stories about Sino-US relations, covering the weakened state of the Chinese government at the start of end of the 19th century, anti-Chinese discrimination, creation of a democratic government at the start of the 20th century, and then the break of relations after the Chinese civil war. You should be familiar with 20th century Chinese history to follow the stories below. In typical Atlantic style, all is very well written:

In “The Break-up of China, and Our Interest in It” (August, 1899) an anonymous contributor pointed out that in the wake of the Sino-Japanese war, other nations were taking advantage of the Chinese government’s extreme weakness to exploit China’s “immense general market.” If America did not move to “buttress the tottering colossus of China,” the author contended, the favorable diplomatic and trade relations that the United States had long enjoyed with the dynastic Chinese government would be in jeopardy.

In “The Chinese Boycott” (January, 1906) John W. Foster criticized America’s discrimination against Chinese immigrants in America as racist, and emphasized that such behavior was especially offensive given the pains the U.S. had taken to secure friendly diplomatic relations with the Chinese government. Despite U.S.-government affirmations of “reciprocal and sincere friendship,” and the fact that the United States had granted China “most favored nation” status in 1868, the United States persisted in mistreating and expelling Chinese immigrants. It was this behavior, Foster explained, that had incited a Chinese boycott of American trade then in effect.

In “A Parliament for China” (December, 1909) Paul S. Reinsch described China’s efforts to transform its position in the world of global politics from that of a weak, exploited pawn to that of a competent, international power by developing a Western-style parliament.

In “A Plea for the Recognition of the Chinese Republic” (January, 1913) Ching Chun Wang proudly declared that “we have transformed our immense country from an empire of four thousand years’ standing into a modern democracy,” and asked that the United States lend its support to the fledgling government through official recognition: “She stretches out her hands to America first, because she prefers to have her best friend be the first in giving her this deserved encouragement.”

In “China: Time for a Policy” (April, 1957) the renowned China scholar John K. Fairbank evaluated policy options toward newly Communist mainland China and considered the extent to which the United States should commit itself to supporting and defending an independent Taiwan. “Our opportunity and that of our friends on Taiwan,” he argued, “is to help develop there an economy, a political process, and a body of trained personnel, within the Chinese world but free of Peking’s totalitarian control, as an investment for a happier day when these same ideals may apply to all the Chinese people.”

Ten years later, in “Dragon Under Glass: Time for a New China Policy” (October, 1967) history professor and former special assistant to the U.S. State Department James C. Thomson Jr. argued that the time had come for the United States to reconcile itself with Communist China, and to begin to initiate civil interaction with its government. Until China’s adoption of communism, Thomson explained, Americans had “admired Chinese culture, liked the Chinese people, delighted in Chinese food….Our emotional investment in China was uniquely high, far out of line with our strategic or economic stakes.” To be able to progress to a more constructive relationship with China, he suggested, America would need first to overcome its bitterness toward what it had come to think of as China’s “betrayal” of United States good intentions by becoming communist.

In “China’s Andrei Sakharov” (May, 1988) China commentator Orville Schell profiled Chinese astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, whose outspoken criticisms of socialism and the Communist party had spurred student protest movements, planted seeds of doubt in the minds of party members, and frequently landed him in trouble with party leadership. Schell potrayed Fang as a hero in the crusade for modernization and democratization in mainland China.

In “Once Again, Long Live Chairman Mao”(December, 1992) Schell considered the importance of Chairman Mao’s recent emergence as a pop culture icon in China. Though perceived as a heartening reaffirmation of traditional party values by many hard-line communist leaders, Schell suggested that the phenomenon might instead indicate an erosion of socialist values by the forces of commercialism.

In 1873, Mark Twain wrote a book satirizing greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America. Instead of calling the book “Golden Age” the less worthy “Gilded Age” was chosen since it represents only a thin layer of gold coated over a base metal. Shortly after the publication of the book, the word “Gilded Age” because synonymous with graft, materialsim and corruption in public life.

Back in 1994, The Atlantic’s Yin Huangxiao came back to China after 10 years in the USA and wrote “China’s Gilded Age“.

A distant cousin who was a high school teacher until 1986 told me modestly that he had made “a little money” by opening a factory that produces bristle brushes for export to America. He drove me to his new summer house in his new Mercedes-Benz 500SEL, one of his three luxury cars. “This is China’s Gilded Age,” a former colleague of mine commented sarcastically. “These Chinese Carnegies and Rockefellers are more successful than their American counterparts — they made more money within a shorter time.”

More recently, in 2007, David Baskin from CBC news wrote that “China’s Gilded Age of Capitalism“.

It is true that China is still governed by the Communist Party, but I have never been in a more capitalistic environment in my life. Ruthless competition is taken for granted; that economic success should be rewarded with wealth is a given; and that upward mobility is possible for those who are smart and hard working is widely believed – the Chinese equivalent of the American dream.

Baskin does write that:

… and that upward mobility is possible for those who are smart and hard working is widely believed – the Chinese equivalent of the American dream.

This last comment doesn’t seem to accurately represent local folks. The local sentiment seems to be that if you are well-connected, then you’ll be fine. However, there isn’t much hope for the average person to be successful. The key difference between the “gilded age” in China now, and the “gilded age” in America 150 years ago, is that Carnegie, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt were all born poor, and managed to work their way up. In China, the sentiment seems to be the strength of your connection to the government determines how much you can earn.

UPDATE PPS releases official Mac version.

PPS recently released the first official Mac OS X version of PPStream. Mac OS X “.pkg” or “.dmg” installer packages are available. It’s probably easiest to just grab the installer here pps.dmg. Or you can directly visit the new PPS for Mac download page to view all available options.

Note that PPS is also available for iPad, iPhone, Android and Linux!!!

Way to go PPS team.

For reference, I’ve included the origional PPS vmware instructions below, but they are now obsolete.

Our last Mac OS X problem is the “U盾” for online banking “网上银行”. Even QQ works quite well on Mac OS X these days.

One of the most popular applications in China is the domestically developed “PP stream”. It’s closest analog in the west might be Joost or the iTunes Music Store. The key difference is that everything is free.

You’ve heard the legends of the China DVD market – where everything every published is available for $1 USD. With PP stream, the Chinese DVD market has come to you and all the DVDs are now free.

Currently PPsteam is only available for the Chinese version of Windows, but you can use PPStream with VMware Fusion. Ideally you should install the Chinese version of Windows. If you only have the Int’l-English version of Windows, you’ll need to first install the Chinese Language pack. Additionally, you’ll need to under the Int’l-English version of Windows, the codepage will be incorrect and many parts of the interface will be rendered/decoded incorrectly (乱码). The codepage should be 936. Using the Control Panel / Regional and Language Options / Advanced tab set the Language for non-Unicode programs to: Chinese (PRC).

The format of the media files played by PPStream is readable by VLC, so there should be some way to access the files directly without the PPStream client, but current versions have hidden the URLs holding the media files.

The new version of PPstream actually continuously splits the signal across several connections. Watching my Network Filter while playing video you can see the network connection is constantly jumping between servers. Accessing the media files via some reverse engineering may be very difficult. On the bright side, the client works perfectly under VMware fusion.

The Yen carry trade is over for now, but there’s a new carry trade in town. For those (like me) not terribly familiar with a carry trade, it’s:

Strategy in which an investor sells a certain currency with a relatively low interest rate and uses the funds to purchase a different currency yielding a higher interest rate.

Basically, it’s a type of arbitrage where you borrow one asset, and use it to buy another asset assuming that exchange rates WILL NOT CHANGE. When the Bank of Japan set interest rates near 0%, speculators would borrow Yen, trade them for dollars, and then buy dollar denominated assets. The new carry trade is: USD -> RMB -> Commodities.

2009 US federal budget deficit will be $1.75 TRILLION or more.
Not even Bank of China can lend this money, it has to be borrowed.

US dollar bear leads to commodities bull.
People and nations will hoard physical goods to preserve wealth, hence generate demands higher than immediate needs and higher than available supplies.
China is on a big natural resources shopping spree around the world lately, in order to divest its huge foreign currency reserves.

Both events are occurring as people have noticed: Capital is escaping American soil; and China is on a global shopping spree of raw materials.
But people who notice these two things explain it as simply market behavior driven by speculative forces.
They fail to see a more direct, conscious and deliberate reason behind what’s going on, because no one noticed one quiet fact…

That is because for the past one year, trading between USD and CNY is equivalent to exchange one dollar into four quarters, nothing is gained or lost.

[From China, Shipping and the Great Commodity Carry Trade -- Seeking Alpha]

But the interesting part is that: As the flood of US dollars flows in, China merely cranks up its own money printing press to print more RMB Yuan to exchange for the US dollars. It then uses some of the dollars to buy US Treasury bonds and prop up the value of the dollar, maintaining a constant USD/Yuan exchange rate. But China’s real goal is not to support the dollar in long term, but to buy time to allow it to divest the huge dollar assets it is holding, in exchange of physical assets: natural resources, raw commodities, foreign mining companies and other physical assets. It costs China nothing to print more Yuans to buy more US dollars and then use the dollars to buy up the whole world.

There are a few conditions that are important to point out and make changing the current status quo (exchange rate) very difficult in the next 12-36 months.

• Speculators are dumping USD because of financial policy that is not helping to preserve wealth, but those dollars could be used to buy assets anywhere – so why in China?
• Speculators are dumping dollars and buying CYN due to the long term positive fundamentals in the Chinese economy (large inexpensive labor force, good infrastructure, large trade surpluses)
• 4 years ago, exchange rates were 8.3:1, for the last 12 months it’s been 6.84:1 (that’s a 17% rise)
• This 17% rise is partially responsible for the closure of many export oriented businesses here in China — many were already struggling to survive before softening demand in western markets destroyed them.
• The population in China Mainland is not nearly as productive or as well educated as the populations in Taiwan or Hong Kong, where wages are approximately 2x higher but trade barriers (import tariffs) are lower/non existent.
• China Mainland Gov’t has raised Export Rebates (to manufacturers) 7 times in 2009 — making the official policy clear – the current export oriented growth is to be salvaged and preserved for the foreseeable future (rather than moving to fill domestic demand)

There are also very practical considerations though. If you own raw materials all over the planet, you must have a way to maintain peaceful seas to ensure delivery of those materials.

Basically, the US economy and the CYN economy are locked together for the foreseeable future – a pair of codependents, but the relationship has the impact of long term strengthening the CYN at the expense of the USD, migrating intellectual property, skilled labor, entrepreneurs, and assets from the US to China. The breakup will be rough, but when the dysfunctional couple is finally ready for a divorce, China is walking away with much more than 50%.

Jon Meade Huntsman, Jr. (born March 26, 1960 in Palo Alto, California) is the governor of the state of Utah, having first won the office in 2004. His first term as the 16th governor of Utah began on January 3, 2005. He was re-elected, with running-mate Gary R. Herbert, on November 4, 2008, with over 77% of the vote.^[1] It was reported that Huntsman will be nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as United States Ambassador to China on Friday, May 15, 2009.^[2] It is anticipated that a press conference will be held to make the official announcement on Saturday, May 16, 2009. ^[3] Huntsman is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints.

He served an LDS mission in Taiwan and speaks fluent Standard Mandarin Chinese.

Huntsman’s name has appeared on some lists of potential Republican nominees for the 2012 presidential election,^[9] and John McCain has gone so far as to mention his name as a potential candidate as well.^[10]

[From Jon Huntsman, Jr. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]