Financial Times reports on China’s (political?) use of forex reserves

The Financial Times has a series of reports on the different government organizations and agencies in China that control the use of its massive, 1.8 trillion USD forex reserve. The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) is more secretive and has far deeper pockets than CIC, the China Investment Corporation, which is merely the country’s $200bn sovereign wealth fund.

FT reports that SAFE has used its vast wealth as an arm of Chinese foreign policy: it purchased $300m in government bonds from Costa Rica. Costa Rica then ended its 63-year old diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Supposedly, this switch was one of the necessary conditions the Chinese placed on the purchase.

The reports suggest that the Chinese wanted to keep the thing on the DL, despite Costa Rican diplomats’ advice to the contrary.

Ring the alarm bells! If the purpose of the shadowy SAFE is to use money to buy political influence, we better watch out where they are investing. Here’s a list of SAFE investments in the UK.

forex, SAFE, cic, bonds, costa rica, taiwan, diplomacy, investment, government, politics

Could the Chinese rip off Bon Jovi to sell sneakers?

Sure, why the hell not. Like Frank Yi said they copied his way.

I mean the publicly listed Chinese fashion sportswear company, Xtep, whose recent commercials during the Olympics caught my attention because of the music used. The song is called “It’s My Way” and it doesn’t take a New Jersey-born fan of 1980s hair rock to know that the song is a rip off of Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life”…I don’t know who the singer of the song is, but you can tell that they are going for the same kind of vocal style as well.

The commercial features some of the hottest youth stars from Taiwan and Hong Kong, including Nicholas Tse, the Twins, Jolin Tsai, and Wilber Pan, most of whom I thoroughly detest. From what I can tell on the commercial, their shoes look like shite too, but nonetheless, they are still a fairly big player in the China sportswear market, where they are still behind Anta and the now household name of Li Ning. And apparently they are also part of the Carlyle Group’s portfolio, which given the affiliations behind that group make me incredibly cynical about the world and reinforce an outlook which could be summarized thus: some shit capitalists are out there making shitty derivative products, and yet there are some powerful and elitist capitalists out there making sure that the former succeed for their mutual benefit.

Here’s a vid of the commercial, this one meant for the Olympics in particular:

and here’s the whole song:

A couple of thoughts on that commercial: firstly, it always get my goad when Taiwan and Hong Kong stars shil for mainland based products, just because if you are famous and from those parts of nominally free China, I somehow feel you ought to shil for some better brand–I mean what does it say about you that these shoes cost 150-300 RMB? On the other hand, I know that they’d never be remotely considered for brands like Nike and Adidas, who go for the real top-flight athletes. In that sense, Xtep is smart because they go for the youth demographic, for the fashion sportswear market, sell the image, sell the lifestyle. It’s not and has not been about the specs of the shoes for a long time.

It’s also ironic because the commercials plays on those common Olympic tropes of “1.3 billion people’s dreams and hopes”, which nauseates me to no end, and again, makes me wonder why Taiwanese and HKese stars would go for that. Oh yeah, maybe they are proud of the Olympics, and maybe they are getting paid a fuckload of money. Oh well Peijin, hold your nose and look the other way.

Last thought on this is the Wilbur Pan’s role in the commercial, where he plays the role of a street basketball player—that cheesy layup at the end and his knife across the neck motion—it’s like he’s some bad-boy gangsta baller, but I bet he’s a weakling on the actual basketball court. I doubt he really plays in the streets of anywhere, not even Taipei, where, if you know where to go, there are some ballers wid skeels. Wilbur is basically a pretty boy that likes to appropriate the tropes of hip-hop and b-boy culture to sell his image, which he can then parlay into record sales and concerts, sportswear and soda commercials. There is no need for him to be anything other than what he is. It’s one unified image, and all he’s selling are the various products that help him realize his lifestyle, one which, provided you outfit yourself with the same shit, you can have too.

Unfortunately, that’s another aspect of greater Chinese pop culture that I detest too—and I know that there’s no point in crying about the commercialization of hip-hope or black culture, that’s been the status quo for years and it’s not going to change. It’s just that to me, it’s even more meaningless when it comes from Chinese people. I know pop culture has an easy, lowest common denominator type universality to it, but somehow there’s a very atavistic and inchoate impulse towards Chinese purity that I cannot quite explain. It’s not that everything has to be traditional, it’s more that I was hoping that one day even in the realm of popular culture and lowbrow consumerism, Chinese people might do something that at least strikes people as having one or more iotas of originality.
Li Ning vs. Nike and Adidas, Lenovo vs. Apple, Baidu vs. Google—the west has a head-start and a superior advantage. Mimicry is a form of flattery. I talk of inspiration and originality, while these Chinese brands are locked in a fierce to the death battle for every percentage point of market share they can get.

Not sure what to think from here. Maybe better solution would be to put on some Bon Jovi, which always reliable source of low dosage escapism:

我可不是一个阿陆仔

Nien 生活紀錄 – 阿陸仔呀阿陸仔呀 via kwout

The Taiwanese are always fulla hate for the mainlanders, with good reason at times. However, it’s gotten a bit out of hand–maybe not in the case talked about in the blog above, but because mainland-bashing is now one of their favorite pastimes, and they never say anything positive about the mainland. Their position is always that of the snob looking down their noses. Snobs are not always wrong, but they are still snobs.

Movies I’m Watching: Edward Yang’s Terrorizers (恐怖分子）

《恐怖分子》影评：杨德昌的手术刀-搜狐娱乐 via kwout

Edward Yang is, by any measure, a master of the cinema. Like his other films from this era (late 1980s and early 1990s), Terrorizers is a merciless dissection of the lives of the Taiwanese urban middle-class. I’ve been reading a Chinese review/essay on the film, and I think it brings out some interesting concepts. For
one, it mentions that one of the major themes of the film is the middle-age crisis, especially as it revolves around the Li Lizhong and his wife Zhou Yufen. He’s a doctor obsessed with trying to get a promotion by hook or crook, and Zhou is a writer who seems to have lost her creative spark. What at first seem like minor speed bumps, over the course of the film,
get magnified into something else–a crisis of meaning. Their marriage is on the rocks, there is adultery, both real and imagined, and soon Zhou wins a literary award and moves out just to shack up with her old/new lover.

Of course, things go pear-shaped for Li and he goes on a murderous rampage–or at least we think he does. It turns out this is just a dream. It’s a strange thing: a dream sequence in the film that for the most part remains staunchly on the outside of the characters, observing them from afar. However, when we get back to reality, we find that
instead of killing others, Li has blown his own brains out. The Chinese reviewer’s point is that the emotional cruelty inflicted upon us by “modern society” , so that it is impossible to just take Li Lizhong’s self-destruction as individual tragedy–the lives of all the characters, not just Li’s, are comments on or representations of what Yang thinks of life
in the present society. The reviewer also claims that the two younger characters–Xiao Qiang, the scion of a rich family who slums it as a photographer, and Shu An, the girl involved in the criminal underworld–are rebelling against the strictures of society; they do what they do because they are, each in their own way, rebelling against their lot in life, running away from the clutches of middle-aged meaningless that would no doubt overtake them otherwise.

This whole theory seems a bit too pat for me, but I think that the overall gist is right, if only because the overall gist of Yang movies is really hard to miss. I don’t know if it really amounts to some broadside against modern society per se–I think that like anyone, Yang sees both the good and bad things about the times we live in–but I think, like a trust artist
Yang has made it his mission to take an unflinching look at the darker side of things: the anomie, the desperation, the specter of meaningless that lurks inside and around even the most normal of lives. Anyhow, I think this essay is also quite interesting for the way that it discusses not only the movie but Yang himself: Yang, he says, takes a surgical knife
to modern society, peeling away its layers, exposing what lies inside and beneath. He/she claims that the title of the film refers not only to Shu An, the most regularly “violent” of the characters, but to all those characters who stand in opposition –or perhaps find themselves, unwillingly perhaps, thrown into a situation where they must go against grain. They are the “terrorizers” because they terrorize us into seeing what is normally repressed. In some sense, the darkness that exists beneath the calm veneer of the middle-class ego and middle-age stability and position is even darker than naked violence between say rival gangs or mafia families. That kind of violence is open, and in some ways, transparent–people know the rules, there is a ample cause and effect, but the kind of violence that erupts from the relatively staid and normal people in Yang’s films is altogether something different. It’s inchoate, and unpredictable. The victims aren’t even aware of
the fact that they are targets.

One last digression. The author of the review says that the first ten minutes of The Terrorizers reminds him of Antonioni’s Blow-Up, but says that the contrast between the two directors lies in the fact that MA explores the philosophical nature of things and existence, whereas EY takes his surgical knife and exposes the core of Taiwanese society for what it is .

影片的前10分钟让我想起了安东尼奥尼的《放大》，同样行尸走肉一般的社会环境，同样带有悬念的故事，还有同样以照相机记录事件的人物。两部影片为了达到纪实的效果自始至终都没有配乐，但安东尼奥尼的主题是想探讨事物存在与真实的哲学命题，展示社会情境只是他加入其中的附属品；而杨德昌的镜头就像一把外科医生的手术刀，抽丝剥茧层层递进地揭示出台湾社会的内核。

Interesting food for thought.

Unfortunately, scrolling up and down, I can’t seem to find a name attached to it. You can see the original link here.

Old man kicks Chen Shuibian in the ass, Chinese people rejoice

Well, I was about to write “old” until I realized that my parents are about the same age. Shu Anquan, 64, waited outside the Taipei courthouse where former
Taiwanese prez Chen Shuibian took the stand as the defendant. Shu comes from a group called 中华爱国同心会, which means that he’s more or less
pro-China, or at least pro-Chinese. Kicking the ex-prez in the tush instantly earned Shu his fifteen minutes of fame, which he used to promote his cause,
saying that he’d waited four years for the chance to give the Taiwanese independence-leaning politician a piece of his mind. Of course, Shu
says “I represent the one billion Chinese people in the world” in kicking Chen, which is what makes this news fit to print in China. They don’t really
print stuff about Chen’s supporters, or interviews with pro-Green camps about this court case, or about much in general. If you spend enough
time in Taiwan or the diaspora you realize quick enough that there are plenty of people who aren’t willing to harmoniously integrated into
the motherland just yet.

Facebook now in simplified and traditional Chinese

What i noticed is that, like with most computer/software applications, it’s divided into simplified Chinese for China, and traditional for HK as well as traditional for Taiwan.

Taiwanese allowed free movement to China and back through JInmen and Mazu

Before, I guess, only Taiwanese that had their hukou in those two places could move back and forth, but now any Taiwanese with the proper documents can move between Taiwan and the mainland freely, at least through those two places. I was at the Chinese visa office in Paris a couple of days ago, and some woman was talking about the Tai Bao zheng, the Taiwanese ID issued by the PRC government. I don’t actually know much about what you can and can’t do with the Taibao ID, like how often you can enter and leave, and for how long the thing is valid for…oh well. If they get rid of mandatory military service I will be try to get Taiwanese “citizenship”* and perhaps from then on I won’t have that many problems getting into the mainland…but god knows when that will happen.

Anyway there was news elsewhere that they are getting the five airports ready (Nanjing, Shanghai and three other places where they are initially starting the charter flights) for charter flights, which will start on weekends, in July. Good stuff…I think.

*insidious self-censorship at workTechnorati Tags: china, taiwan, ma, santong, politics, charter flights, airplane, travel, jinmen, ROC, taipei, taiwanese

Xinhua, Cuba, and freedom from want

Xinhua has an interesting opinion piece about the recent unbanning on mobile phones and computers in Cuba. First, the title of the article: ?????????? meaning “Starting with the freedom from want”. The political significance of the phrase “freedom from want” comes from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State of the Union address, and comes, as we say nowadays, bundled with three other freedoms: speech and expression, religion, and fear.

After reviewing history, the author then begins to discuss what “freedom from want” means, describing the lines of Cuban pepole buying mobile phones and computers (assembled from parts imported from China) as reminiscent of the old days in the USSR and China, even before the release of the iPhone, people used to have to wait in long lines outside stores to get stuff they wanted. Cuba, like China before it, is learning that the only way of satisfying the people’s natural desire for material comfort is to loosen the state’s control over goods and resources, allowing people to buy, sell, dispose of and accumulate wealth as they please. Facilitating this process, says the author, is the sign of a good government and leadership.

There is a typically Chinese assertion that this freedom is the most basic of them all, and according to their logic, is a necessary condition that must precede the other basic freedoms. This has sort of been the official consensus on the way that China has to do things. You can’t tell a country emerging out of war and poverty to care about political rights or the freedom of worship. Not when the people are hungry, and not when they only have the clothes on their backs.

There’s a certain sense in which that is true, but the more we read essays like this, the more we feel ourselves getting lulled into the belief that there will be a “some day” in the not so distant future where China’s leaders say, ok, we’ve pretty much finished up with the freedom from want, let’s move onto worship or maybe freedom of speech and expression for the next few decades.

But of course, we all know that these arguments, whatever their stand-alone intellectual merit, become suspect as soon as it dawns on you how self-serving they really are. It’s that very emphasis on “freedom of want” over all else which explains why, although China has signed the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political rights in 1998, it has not, ten years later, yet ratified it through the NPC. Sure you could argue that “freedom from want” is not too ambiguous and more easily quantified and measured, making it a worthy goal as a whole, whereas “freedom of speech and expression” is a whole lot more vague and therefore contentious. Do you want freedom of speech a la France, or more along the lines of Singapore? Do you allow cartoons satirizing/insulting certain religions? Do you allow comedy shows that satirize politicians? So many countries have “freedom of speech,” and yet their history and culture determines, in part, how “freedom of speech” is understood and practiced in their respective mainstream political cultures.

It has been thirty years since China began its reforms, and almost twenty since many Eastern European countries began theirs. Thinking about Cuba does make for some interesting comparisons between the post-socialist path of these various countries, especially in terms of how the old ruling elites fared both during the transition and now that their political evolution has, at least in the short-term, come to some kind of rest. However, most of those countries have managed, to some extent, to make some substantive progress on civil and political rights. But of course, the ruling elites in those countries often paid a huge price for that (Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, etc.), either by losing their power or their heads. It will be interesting to see where Cuba goes in the next few years. It’s interesting how the Chinese laud Raul Castro as being one of these pragmatic leaders of courage and insight a la Deng Xiaoping. This reminds of us another political leader of some courage and insight, this one a little closer to home: Chiang Ching-kuo (???), who you might say was quite instrumental in Taiwan’s democratization. But we haven’t seen any laudatory articles about him in Xinhua, at least not recently.