more electric taxis?
Posted by wangbo in Beijing transport on September 9, 2012
Here’s an interesting Weibo post from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport. It’s about improvements to public transport in Fangshan District and the claim that stands out to me is that 100 electric taxis have entered trial operations. Pity it doesn’t give any detail about the pictured taxi, but I presume it’s one of the 100 electric taxis.
A Baidu news search for “北京市房山区电动出租车” brings up this article from August 24 reporting that Fangshan’s Chang’an car production base hopes to sign a contract to produce clean energy vehicles, all of which will be used in demonstration operations of electric taxis in all of Beijing’s districts and counties. If signed, this would be the plant’s first big contract since the July 21 floods, which damaged the plant, and would see the plant’s clean energy vehicle production line put into regular operation. It does confirm that the first 100 electric taxis were put into trial operation in Fangshan District. Investigations have shown that each electric taxi can run at least 180 – 200 km per day and the drivers’ net monthly income can reach over 4000 yuan. Each trial district and county may get it’s own charging station, but the cars can also be charged using the regular civilian 220V power supply. The dashboard of each car has a charge indicator, and a warning light comes on when the charge drops to 20%, at which point the car can drive another 20 – 30 km, allowing the driver to find a place to charge up.
A bit more searching turns up this piece from April on the Fangshan government site confirming that the electric taxis are Chang’an E30s.
All I can say is I hope they signed the contract. It would be great to see more electric vehicles around, and using them as taxis seems like a great way to test and further develop the technology, allowing engineers to adapt taxi companies’ usual management systems to gather data on the vehicle’s performance and test out improved and new technologies.
more dodgy milk powder
New Zealand prides itself on its clean, green image. New Zealand tries to trade on that image to boost its agricultural exports. Those few companies selling New Zealand produce in China that bother to advertise play up that clean, green, 100% pure image in their advertising – and that makes perfect sense given the constant deluge of food safety scandals in China. Chinese parents are desperate to get their hands on imported milk powder for their babies because nobody trusts the locally produced milk powder or local dairy companies any more. And now what happens? After Friday’s reports of substandard and fake New Zealand milk powder, today comes more news of substandard New Zealand milk powder.
Both those articles report the same story. AQSIQ‘s latest information about substandard imported food and cosmetics shows that in July 300 batches of imported food and cosmetics failed to meet the standards. The line that really stands out to me in the Nanfang Daily report is this:
记者从上述公开的信息表中看到，在今年以来进口量持续攀高的洋奶粉中，多批次洋婴儿奶粉检出问题，其中由新西兰SUTTON GROUP LTD公司生产的24.76吨佳顿可儿金装婴幼儿配方奶粉，1阶段、2阶段和3阶段共计3个批次产品检出硒、碘、乳糖含量不符合国家标准要求，现问题产品 已被退货和销毁
This reporter saw from the above publicly open information that among the continuously increasing amounts of Western milk powder imported since the start of this year, many batches of Western infant formula have been found to have problems, including 24.76 tons of Golden Baby gold packaged infant formula produced by New Zealand’s Sutton Group [this one? Doesn’t seem to have much to say about it’s products]. A total of three batches, stages 1, 2 and 3 were found to have levels of selenium, iodine and lactose that failed to meet the requirements of the national standards. The problematic products have been recalled and destroyed.
Compare that to the Yoplait yoghurt imported from France mentioned in the same article: 0.44 tons past its use-by date and destroyed. It doesn’t even give an amount for the American cheese caught with too much sobric acid preservative, so I assume that was an even tinier amount.
Zero point four four tons of expired yoghurt versus twenty four point seven six tons of substandard milk powder. And reported in one of China’s bigger, more respected newspapers among other websites. Geez, Sutton Group, what’s going on? Are you actively trying to put a sudden end to your China business?
And come on New Zealand Inc, lift your game. It really does not take much time for China’s consumers to decide en masse that they no longer trust you, especially when what you are selling is targeted at their children. Companies importing New Zealand milk powder to China play up very strongly New Zealand’s clean, green, 100% pure and natural reputation. Chinese parents lap that up because they want, as all parents do, their children to be healthy, safe and well-nourished, and they don’t trust China’s dairy industry thanks to all the scandals over fake, adulterated, or otherwise substandard milk powder over recent years. If you want to close China’s market to you, keep going down this path of selling fake and substandard rubbish.
A more positive item in today’s email news alert was this one about plans to open a store in Changchun specialising in New Zealand products by the end of the year. It starts by mentioning the large amount of interest in New Zealand products, especially lifestyle and food products, at the 8th Northeast Asia Investment and Trade Expo, and goes on to say that one Guo Yanxi, general manager China region for 新西兰高德赛（长春）商贸有限公司, explaining that this is the third time New Zealand products have been displayed at the Northeast Asia Expo and the interest generated has prepared the market well. Their store specialising in New Zealand products is being decorated and will be able to formally open by the end of the year, selling the products displayed at the expo and later expanding the range of products on offer. But why did I leave the company name untranslated? Because this is about the best information I’ve managed to find about it. I’m struggling to see a New Zealand connection in that. In fact, it simply says its head office is abroad, somewhere not in China. Maybe I’m getting a bit too sceptical of these things, but a warning light is on here.
not good news
So yesterday’s email (ran out of time and energy to write this up last night) news alert shows up three things of not exactly positive interest to New Zealand. Substandard milk powder, fake New Zealand milk powder, and antibiotic use at kiwifruit orchards.
First up, the substandard milk powder. CNTV (i.e. China Central Television’s website) has a report from China News saying that Hong Kong’s Da Kung Pao reports that a batch of New Zealand milk powder was found by Hong Kong’s Centre for Food Safety to contain low levels of iodine, potentially endangering the health of babies who drink it. CFS’s food alert is here.
The fake New Zealand milk powder report I find a little odd because it is on a site called Qinbei/亲贝网. I’m quite familiar with the baby products company 贝亲, and we’ve used lots of their stuff, but 亲贝? Hadn’t heard of that one before.
The article looks at milk powder marketed in China by 南京艾尔优先食品有限公司 as Cambricare, and quotes its official website (which I believe is that link there) as saying:
新西兰康宝瑞有限公司专营新西兰天然牧场奶粉。为中国广大消费者提供天然、安全，真正原装进口，与新西兰同步销售的优质乳品。此次引进中国的康宝瑞奶粉，和其在新西兰销售的奶粉，完全一样。是同一批次生产，同时供应新西兰市场和中国市场。
Cambricare New Zealand Ltd exclusively sells milk from natural New Zealand farms. Supplies nature and safety to China’s numerous consumers, real original packaging imports, selling quality dairy products in step with New Zealand. This Cambricare milk powder brought in to China is identical to the milk powder sold in New Zealand. It’s the same batch, supplying the New Zealand and China markets at the same time.
Yes, I know, I could’ve done a much better job of the translation. But the key claim is that it’s the same as milk powder being sold in New Zealand, from the same batch, even. Qinbei then did a bit of research, looking up Cambricare in the companies register, and found it was established on 14 November 2008, its address is 50 Hastie Avenue, Mangere Bridge, Auckland, and the shareholders are Ming GONG and Xuqi WU. But there’s something odd in how Qinbei presents their names:
明宫（Ming GONG）、徐其武（Xuqi WU）
A bit of confusion over which, precisely, is the surname and which the given name? ALLCAPS generally suggests surname, but Qinbei has taken the first syllable of each name as the surname. Odd.
Qinbei alleges 50 Hastie Avenue, Mangere Bridge, Auckland traces to a residential address, and that a Chinese person residing in Auckland was dispatched to check it out, finding no sign of Cambricare. Well, let’s have a look. I can’t actually see a number 50 there, but the numbering does suggest that it would be on the south side of the road, which, judging by Street View, is light industry (although Street View suddenly tells me I’m at “30 Hastie Ave – address is approximate”. Approximate, indeed). I certainly can’t see any sign of Cambricare, but I also can’t tell if #50 would be in that large Carter Holt Harvey complex or somewhere just to the west of the intersection with Mahunga Drive.
The Companies Office confirms that address (and the other details), but also gives 19 Mahunga Drive as the address for service. On Street View I can only see New Image International at that address. I can’t see a link to Gong, Wu, or Cambricare in the Companies Office’s register.
A regular Google NZ search for that address has the map with that address as #1, and the cambricare.co.nz site Qinbei alleges is actually registered to 南京艾尔优先食品有限公司, the Nanjing based “importer”. But a Google NZ search for Cambricare gets that same Cambricare website at #1, but #2 is Cambricare milk powder on sale in Countdown for $12.99 a packet. Considering Countdown is one of New Zealand’s biggest chains, I’d be very surprised if they were selling fake products. Further down we find news that Cambricare won a lawsuit filed by Nutricia, makers of Karicare. Curious.
And who, precisely, is Qinbei? Unfortunately their Baidu Baike page reeks to me of having been written by Qinbei’s own marketing department. Well, Baidu, ’nuff said. And I really can’t find much more information.
All very strange, indeed.
And now antibiotics at kiwifruit orchards. Pharmacy.hc360.com says that the New Zealand media has reported that 45 kiwifruit orchards have been illegally spraying their vines with antibiotics to prevent the spread of the Psa virus. Ah yes, here’s a TVNZ article about it from August 26. But that says they were injecting their vines with streptomycin. And to cast a little more doubt on the quality of pharmacy.hc360.com’s reporting:
Psa is a bacterial canker of kiwifruit caused by Pseudomonas syringae pv. Actinidiae.
So, um, not a virus, and something which an antibiotic is useful for treating. Even so, it is worth noting that people in New Zealand’s export markets do actually notice what goes on in New Zealand. Clean, green, huh…
sad
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on August 30, 2012
I was recently reminded, indirectly, that this happened eight years ago. Clearly the older you get, the slower you move, because time has perceptibly sped up. It was not long after we moved to Tongzhou. I got home and my wife said, “I finally found a good restaurant in the neighbourhood!” Our first experience of restaurants in the area had been being told to bugger off because they were closed for the afternoon. Great way to run a business. But this place she had just found was really good. We’d show up at any reasonable time and be fed. They were friendly. When business was slow they’d sit and chat with us, and not just “polite, meaningless words”, to rip Yeats’ phrasing way out of context, but chatting like we were actually friends, because we were friends. We could sit there for hours if we wanted, just passing time, as you do. Then one day after spring festival they were closed. The next day open. Day 3, closed, but them all hanging around but expressions as closed as their restaurant and as cagey as a third-rate crim caught in the act and trying to weasel out. Eventually, just closed. Gone. Who knows where. Never came back, at least, not while we were living in the area, or not to that area.
A few days ago I went off for a walk. I strolled through a neighbourhood I often stroll through up to their north gate. Something had changed, drastically, but drastically in a way that made me stop and look. Two rows of shops on either side of the lane just inside the north gate had vanished, to be replaced by gardens. I wondered if it had really been that long since I’d strolled through the area – well, yeah, it had been, for a variety of reasons – the business of the end of last semester, summer humidity, travel, and so on, the usual list of excuses why I hadn’t been through. I used to always stop in one of those shops to grab a drink on my way out or back. Vanished, struck on the head with the magic wand of some malevolent old hag of a fairy tale witch and transformed into rather mediocre, already tired-looking gardens.
Today I was off to get some takeaways for lunch. Ma had put some rice on, but there was precious little else at home to eat. The campus muslim restaurant, the closest restaurant, still hadn’t opened. Around the corner, grab a newspaper for the wait. Bumped into the boss of my favourite local restaurant. Again, a very friendly guy. Happy to chat, asks after the family, plays with my daughter when I take her there, super proud of and caring for his own wee girl, as soon as I walk in he plonks a cold Yanjing on the table, he knows perfectly what I like to eat, just one of those beautiful, genuine souls who’d take good care of anybody who happened to stumble his way. “I just closed my restaurant” was the first thing he said. What?! “Yeah, I closed it up, it’s going to become an Old Beijing hotpot place and I’m going home to Henan to do business there.” His daughter, who’s nearly a year younger than mine, gave me a big, sweet smile. He said he’d be back in Beijing fairly regularly and would call me when he is here. He offered to buy me lunch, but I said no, I’ve got to take it home, and went off to look for an alternative. His restaurant wasn’t just closed, the new owners had already gotten a decent start on the renovations.
See, I’m a creature of habit. Human, in other words. But here’s how it works for me: I like to cultivate shops and restaurants and so on. If I get good, friendly service one place, I’ll go back, and keep going back so long as it lasts. I let them get to know my particular foibles. I take my wife and daughter along. I let the owners and/or staff (as the case may be) get to know me and I do my severely introverted best to get to know them. I like walking into a restaurant and ordering a dish only to be told, “No, you don’t want that, the broccoli’s got bugs in it.” See, that’s good business. When they tell me that, I know I can trust them, I’m going to be back. This gets us to a point where, if I’m short of cash, I can tell them so and say I’ll just pop over to the ATM and be back in 2 minutes, and they trust me. This is the way it should be.
But my buddy Mr Zhang has shut up shop and will soon be leaving town.
different fees for different passports
Posted by wangbo in news, tilting at windmills on August 9, 2012
Curious. I came across this story, then opened up the NZ Herald’s Education section to see what they had, and found this. Both tell pretty much the same story, but with a few differences in emphasis, and the Herald’s Lincoln Tan gives a little more detailed information. A quick summary: A Chinese student by the name of Cathy Luo went to different private training establishments with her Japanese friend to find an English course, only to discover that she would be charged considerably more for the same course than her friend because she held a Chinese passport.
Different emphasis: Whereas CNR’s report waits until the very end to present the Human Rights Commission’s response, Tan puts it right in the second paragraph, sending the reader into the article knowing that the practice of school’s charging different fees to students from different countries studying the same courses has already been deemed probably illegal.
Extra detail: Tan names one of the training establishments, Kingston Institute, which charges students from China, Korea (presumably South) and Vietnam NZ$2250 for a 12-week English course for which students from Japan, Brazil and Saudi Arabia are charged NZ$1500.
Both articles state that Ms Luo was offered a bulk discount rate – the same fee as her Japanese friend – if she recruited at least 2 other Chinese students, but Tan in the Herald adds:
“I really didn’t know trying to find a price for an English language course at a school here can be so complicated,” Miss Luo said in Mandarin [my emphasis]. “I feel it is really unfair that international students are being penalised just because of where we come from, and I don’t think language schools should behave like they are souvenir shop retailers trying to rip off tourists.”
Now, I emphasised the in Mandarin because I find this a curious little detail to add. Does this imply her English skills, or perhaps her confidence in her English skills, are not up to an interview with a journalist in English? She is, after all, looking for an English language course. If that is the correct reading, then can we infer anything about the behaviour of Kingston and the other unnamed institute?
Both articles quote Darren Conway, chairman of English New Zealand. I’ll use the Herald’s quote – why translate when I already have an English version?:
But English New Zealand chairman Darren Conway said it was “reasonable commercial practice” for providers to charge different rates for students from different countries.
“The ability to pay by students and the general market conditions vary from country to country.”
Mr Conway, who is also chief executive of Languages International, said overseas education agents were also paid different commission rates to recruit students for Kiwi schools.
“For example, while our standard agency rate is 20 per cent, we pay 25 per cent to most of our partners in Switzerland because they are so professional, and the costs of operating in Switzerland are much higher than they are in, for example, China,” he said.
Ah, right. But hang on, Tan of the Herald also goes to Andy Leighe, Kingston’s international department head, saying it’s about Kingston’s marketing direction:
One of the reasons we are offering South American and Middle Eastern students a cheaper rate is because we want to get more students from those markets
I think I can see Leighe’s point. They want to build a market in South America and the Middle East – fair enough, New Zealand’s export education centre does seem very heavily reliant on East Asia, China in particular – and one way to do that is offer discounts. Get more people in, let them talk to their friends and families back home, in conjunction with more formal marketing build a reputation in those regions, attract more students….. it seems to make some sense.
I can also see Mr Conway’s point about paying different agents different commissions. You get what you pay for. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Other relevant cliches.
But I absolutely can not for the life of me mesh Conway’s “The ability to pay by students and the general market conditions vary from country to country” with the practice of charging students from relatively poor countries like China and Vietnam so much more than students from wealthy and stonkingly rich countries like Japan and Saudi Arabia. Even less so when New Zealand’s human rights laws expressly forbid discrimination on the basis of national origin, among other things. I agree with the Human Rights Commission in that this certainly reeks of illegality – might as well put a sign on the door saying “Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese not quite banned, but not especially welcome”, cos that’s effectively what they’re doing – but even if they could get the approval of a court of law for this practice of charging depending on the passport presented, I can not see the economic logic. You want to strengthen your left foot, so you get a revolver and shoot yourself in the right foot? I’m sure it’d be an effective method, albeit with the minor drawback of later requiring you to shoot yourself in the left foot in order to get your right foot back up to speed. Or find a better exercise regime.
I dunno, for years now I’ve been reading of all kinds of dodginess in the privately owned and operated branch of New Zealand’s export education sector. Schools suddenly closing leaving students in the lurch. Rampant plagiarism and massaged grades. Students being sent off to university with all the right bits of paper but woefully inadequate English skills. Attendance systems that allow students to keep their student visas while they’re really out working in vineyards and orchards instead of studying. Something’s gotta give, cos this news filters back to the sources of our foreign students. Do we really want New Zealand to be to international education what China is to cheap, mass-produced consumer goods?
I guess when I hit publish, I will instantly narrow my chances of being able to find work in New Zealand…. deap breath…. here goes…
…sigh…
Yanqing Roaming
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing, travel on August 1, 2012
July 21, the day of That Big Rain, the storm that wiped out Fangshan, we piled in the car and drove up to the National Convention Centre up by the Olympic Green. It was mostly a waste of time, this so-called toy exhibition. But we wandered around, had a look, got some lunch, then the mother in law, the Wee One, and I got back in the car, while lzh jumped on the subway. Our plan had been to go to this exhibition on the Saturday, then on the Sunday for Ma, the Wee One and myself to head out to Yanqing for the week. But lzh heard of heavy rain forecast for Sunday, so we decided that we’d head out on Saturday to try and beat the rain.
July 21 dawned grey and murky. Hardly dawned at all, the haze was so thick. When we got to the exhibition centre very light rain started to fall. We tried to leave just before lunch, but the rain had become much heavier and we’d had to park at the shopping centre next door because the Convention Centre carpark was full. So we got lunch. The rain lightened up, and I made a run for the car while the others walked down to a convenient corner where I could pick them up. Then the three of us set off for the peace, quiet, and comparative cool of our village, while lzh trundled home, alone, still having to go to work on Monday.
Being so close to where the 4th Ring meets the G6 was a bit annoying. Normally, I’d take the Jingcheng Expressway out to the North 6th Ring, thence across to the G6, as that lets me avoid all the traffic heading for the real estate scams along the G6 in northern Haidian and southern Changping, and traffic at the Qinghe tollgate is awful on a good day. But that didn’t make any sense from where we were, and the alternative routes would have traffic just as bad, but with traffic lights. So, bite the bullet I did and got us on the G6. Fortunately, the traffic does generally lighten up as you work your way northwards, but it takes time.
I guestimated visibility to be about 200 metres and turned the foglights on, and then got annoyed. Everybody southbound had their foglights on, but northbound there was only me, and a few with their hazard lights on. We got through the tollgate ok, but then it happened. The heavens were rent asunder, as if some celestial woolly mammoth had sucked all of Lake Baikal up into its trunk and sprayed it over Beijing. That was not much fun to drive in, and made worse by a certain few idiots who could not see any need to adapt their driving to the crap visibility and multitude of opportunities to go hydroplaning.
Ah, whatever, we got to the village ok, and the Wee One found it great fun watching the water go shwoosh! up all over the walls lining the village lanes that had been turned into torrents of muddy water. The father in law met us at the gate with umbrellas so we could get inside relatively unsoaked, we unloaded, we settled in, the rain stopped.
Later that evening I heard how bad the rain had gotten down in Beijing and especially Fangshan. It was a little surreal, because I’d just been driving for the better part of two hours through that storm, including along a narrow, windy old road across the mountains, but had seen nothing beyond the behaviour of other road users to give me cause for concern. Clearly the storm had gottten much worse as it made its way south.
So the Wee One spent her week out in the village much as 16-month olds do: Eating, playing, visiting friends, hanging out with the other toddlers who gather on the village square. I had given myself two missions:
- Get out and see some of these interesting-seeming places around Yanqing that after all these years I still haven’t gotten around to visiting. Stop being such a bloody recluse, in other words.
- Get some recordings for Phonemica.
Both were achieved, although I would’ve liked to get a few more recordings.
Judith Collins in China
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on June 26, 2012
So my Baidu news alert for 新西兰 threw up three potentially interesting articles this morning, and once again I find myself better served by the Chinese media than the NZ Herald or Stuff. New Zealand Minister for Ethnic Affairs Judith Collins is in Beijing meeting State Councillor Meng Jianzhu, State Ethnic Affairs Commission chairman Yang Jing, and vice chairman of the State Council’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office Zhao Yang. A google.co.nz news search for “Minister of Ethnic Affairs” (yes, that ‘of’ should’ve been a ‘for’) gets a list of 7 articles about her impending visit here – but I notice it’s once again Chinese media at the top of the list, and of the NZ websites, there’s only one that I’ve heard of before (not that that is in anyway meaningful) – and 2 here – and once again, Chinese media at the top and I’ve never heard of the NZ site. There’s also a press release on the Beehive website, which was picked up by Scoop – the only NZ website in those two pages of google.co.nz results I recognised. No commentary or reporting. Changing the search to “Judith Collins” gets nothing about her visiting China on page 1. Nope, you have to go to page 2 to find this lonely and rather pathetic articlette, and page 3 reveals the Global Times’ piece.
I still find this frustrating. Stuff is the website of Fairfax’s NZ newspapers and represents many of NZ’s major dailies, while the Herald is the daily newspaper of NZ’s largest city – and a city with a huge Chinese population. This government seems to have sent an awful lot of ministers and officials to China this year. Well, this year is the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between NZ and the PRC, as every one of the Chinese articles about visiting NZ officials reminds us. But this government also seems pretty keen to continue building the relationship with China, including attracting more Chinese investment in NZ. Given the recent kerfuffles over attempted Chinese investment in NZ farmland, I would’ve thought the NZ public would want to know what its government ministers are up to in China. So why, yet again, such a lack of coverage on websites representing NZ’s largest, most important newspapers?
There may be a clue in this comment on this thread (which, in the grand PAS tradition, covers a variety of topics, including the legalities of NZ citizens, those ordinarily resident in NZ, and visitors to NZ making nuclear bombs, among other things), specifically:
Then there’s the very real added problem of producers/editors towing the populist line and telling their journalists the public wants gaga, one direction or whatever other crap over business, finance or other subjects with meat.
Well, forgive me, but the reemergence of Winston Peters and his old populist racist ranting and all the fuss made over Shanghai Pengxin’s purchase of the Crafar farms suggests to me that perhaps the producers/editors may need to rethink what the public wants.
But let me go back to that article on Collins meeting Zhao Yang of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, because that one was actually quite interesting. Firstly, it drops the usual template of introduction, long paragraph or two in which the Chinese official recites the usual political blether, shorter paragraph or perhaps two in which the foreign official recites the usual polite, meaningless words (to steal a phrase from Yeats and use it way out of context), then perhaps a few extra scraps of information and a conclusion. No, this one starts with Collins and actually makes her meeting with Zhao sound interesting. For example:
“新西兰约4%的人口是华人，我的丈夫就有中国血统。”柯林斯笑着说，在她看来，华侨华人在新西兰的生活状态与自己息息相关，可谓是感同身受。
赵阳对这位“中国的亲戚”的来访表示十分欢迎
“Around 4% of New Zealand’s population is Chinese, and my husband has Chinese blood,” Collins said with a smile. In her view, the living conditions of New Zealand’s ethnic and overseas Chinese are closely connected with her own, it could be said she identifies with them.
Zhao Yang told this “family member of China” he completely welcomed her visit.
[Translation help most welcome, especially with Collins’ statements]
Now, I can’t say I’ve ever seen a Chinese news article getting in any way personal about government officials. The pictures painted of officials are usually so staid and stodgy, like a cardboard cut out in a single shade of grey. But here we have just a tiny touch of colour and personality. It makes a nice change. Especially considering the “Crusher Collins” image the NZ media prefers.
赵阳坦言，中国非常欢迎新西兰以及世界各地的企业家到中国来投资发展，也希望中国的一些优秀企业能够通过侨胞牵线去海外发展。此外，他还呼吁新西兰的华侨华人为中新友好关系充当桥梁和纽带。
Zhao Yang said frankly that China greatly welcomes entrepreneurs from New Zealand and the world to come to China to invest and develop, and hopes some outstanding Chinese enterprises can use overseas compatriots as a bridge to go overseas and develop. Also, he called for New Zealand ethnic and overseas Chinese to act as a bridge and a link in Sino-New Zealand friendly relations.
The Chinese are coming! Quick, somebody call Winston!
There’s also a lot of talk about cultural exchange, including Collins’ commenting on the number of her Chinese friends who send their children who grew up abroad back to China to learn Chinese culture, leading Zhao to introduce his office’s efforts to spread education in Chinese culture and that cultural exchange is a two way street, and:
他深知中外文化都有很优秀的地方，两者相互交流、相互融合是十分必要的，中新两国政府应该共同努力，加强文化方面的合作交流。
He is fully aware that Chinese and foreign cultures all have their greatnesses, and communication and fusion of the two is absolutely essential. The Chinese and New Zealand governments should work hard together to strengthen cooperation and communication on the cultural front.
Yes, he does seem to set up ‘China’ and ‘foreign’ as a binary. It’s an attitude I find extremely frustrating, and something I do my best to stamp out in my students and family, but whatever, his basic point is pretty sound. Cultural exchange is fundamentally good (not to mention perhaps the only constant in human history), and a fusion of all the world’s cultures get right could be a beautiful thing.
The final paragraph offers up a few stats I found interesting:
新西兰2010年人口普查有关资料显示，新西兰的华侨华人总数已达15万人，在新西兰少数民族中名列第三，其中80%聚居在新西兰最大港口城市奥克兰，其余居住在首都惠灵顿、南岛的基督城和其他中小城镇。
Material from New Zealand’s 2010 census shows that there is already a total of 150,000 ethnic and overseas Chinese in New Zealand, making them New Zealand’s third largest ethnic minority. 80% of them live in New Zealand’s largest port city, Auckland, with the remainder living in the capital, Wellington, the South Island’s Christchurch and other small and mid-sized towns.
It’s mildly amusing that the author seems to be listing two of NZ’s larger urban areas among ‘small and mid-sized towns’, although from a Chinese point of view, they certainly are small, and I doubt the author intended to imply that they’re small or mid-sized anyway. It’s also interesting that the commonly used Chinese name for Christchurch, “基督城” (“Christ City”) was used instead of the apparently more official transliteration “克赖斯特彻奇” (kèlàisītèchèqí) that the media seemed to prefer in the aftermath of the Christchurch quakes.
But it’s still frustrating to find out more about the visits of NZ cabinet ministers to China from the Chinese media than from NZ’s English-language media. Perhaps NZ’s Chinese-language media does a better job – that would seem logical – but I’m running out of time and this blog’s prolonged silence has been due to all the end of semester stuff that needs to be done, and is a long way from being finished. So I should stop rambling, get my stuff together, brave the rain, and actually try and do something productive.
Fonterra and China
CQ News has a tiny, little report on Fonterra’s plans for investing in China. There’s not a lot in it, but there are some impressive numbers. A quick summary (which is really all the original article is, anyway): Apparently Fonterra plans to build safe, high-quality local milk supply bases with a goal of producing 1 billion litres of milk annually by 2020. Fonterra currently has two farms in Hebei and a third under construction and in the future will invest 100 million New Zealand dollars to build two more. China’s milk consumption is projected to reach 70 billion litres annually by 2020.
So, my cynical side is thinking, great, it’s not just New Zealand’s lowland waterways that Fonterra is threatening to clog with cowshit. But I’m also looking at those numbers, and although I should be well used to seeing staggering numbers by now, those are still mindblowing.
But wait, Fonterra wants only 1/70 of the Chinese milk market in 2020? Really? Well, “high-quality” appears repeatedly in every article I ever read about Kiwi involvement in Chinese dairy, weather its selling cows to produce better milk, or building farms and production bases. And I noticed the word “safe” taking a fairly prominent place early in that article. So is it more that Fonterra is aiming for the very top end of the market rather than a complete takeover?
And is Fonterra trying with its Chinese name “恒天然” to claim to be “permanently natural”? Greenwashing built right into the name? Well, considering all the marketing their Chinese partners do plays up the ‘clean, green New Zealand’ angle for all its worth, I wouldn’t be surprised.
the ghost bus of Beijing
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing, random on April 22, 2012
This week I got my students to tell me stories about mysteries. Two separate students in two separate classes on two separate days both whipped out their cellphones and Baidu’ed them up an old story they obviously knew about, but couldn’t remember all the details of. Here it is, based on my memory of what these two students told me:
One night back in 1995, the last bus of the night left Yuanmingyuan bus station bound for Xiangshan. It picked up a few people, including an elderly couple and a young man. It was an unusually quiet night with very few people around. Then three people were seen waiting for the bus, but the elderly couple noticed something odd – these three people had no feet, they were floating there. So they told the young man, “Hey, those are three ghosts waiting for the bus, let’s get out of here”, and they and the young man got off the bus. The bus went on its way.
The next morning the bus was found in the Miyun Reservoir with three people dead on board. Nobody could figure out how it got from its bus route from Yuanmingyuan to Xiangshan on the northwestern fringe of Beijing to the Miyun Reservoir in the far northeastern rural exurbs.
Now, I suppose I could get on Baidu and rustle up some more details and figure out how much factual basis there is to this – was there really a bus in 1995 that was fished out of a reservoir far from where it was supposed to be? Is the mystery really unsolved? But my daughter is probably going to wake up soon and we’re home alone, so I thought I’d just put it out there, let whoever reads it make their own decision.
criticism? almost
Posted by wangbo in news, tilting at windmills on April 22, 2012
Geez, even an article attributed to Global Times and headlined “New Zealand government approval of Chinese company’s purchase of farms criticised by opposition parties” can manage only the most painfully tepid attempt at criticism:
中国上海鹏欣集团购买新西兰牧场可谓一波三折。今年1月，新政府首次批准该交易，在新西兰国内引发激烈争议，反对者担心外国投资商进入新西兰会导致新重要的农业用地被屡屡“抢购”。2月，新西兰最高法院驳回交易，要求政府重新考虑。
China’s Shanghai Pengxin Group’s purchase of the New Zealand farms could be said to have been full of twists and turns. In January this year the NZ government approved the purchase the first time, sparking intense controversy in New Zealand. Opponents were worried that foreign investment in New Zealand would lead to important NZ farmland being sold off. In February, the New Zealand Supreme Court overturned the purchase and required the government to reconsider.
- Weren’t they far more worried about Chinese investment than foreign investment more generally? I mean, compare with the lukewarm response to James Cameron’s purchase of two Wairarapa farms very soon after the initial approval of Shanghai Pengxin’s bid. Not even Global Times can mention that aspect of the case?
- I really don’t know what to make of “屡屡“抢购”” here. It’s not ‘repeatedly’ or ‘time and again’, but the prospect of gradually, inexorably becoming ‘tenants in our own land’ as rich foreigners gobble up all the land. And it’s not the ‘panic buying’ that the dictionary says “抢购” means. No, it’s buying that is causing some Kiwis to panic. Different phenomenon.
- Supreme Court? I thought it was the High Court, and every other Chinese article on the subject I’ve seen has said “高等法院”.
- Funny how it “集团购买” mis-parses “团购” as one word, “group buying”, rather than parts of two separate words “集团” “group” and “购买” “buy”. Careless or hasty subediting? Or yet another example of how automation is still very, very far from linguistic competence?
Oh well, never mind, the deal is done and dusted…