There was a story at FT China, 中国私募业的“红色贵族,” (“Chinese Private Equity’s ‘Red Aristocracy’”) which not only was blocked but also seems to have been removed from the site completely. The English version is still up and accessible here, “China: To the Money Born.” A copy of the Chinese can be found at GFWBlog. It covers how party officials’ sons are beginning to set up private equity funds, seeking to cash in on the spate of deals that are becoming available as formerly state owned firms undergo restructuring. That de facto Communist royalty is getting involved in mainland PE is unsurprising, everyone is. In fact, the group structure of many large firms here mean that even clothing retailers are getting involved with mutual funds and securities companies, approximately equivalent to the Gap Capital Management (ah China). Still, these individuals are high profile, though someone apparently doesn’t want to much attention being focused on them at this juncture. From the article:

“Private equity is a very good area for princelings because with these sorts of connections you can get into companies ahead of their IPOs and make a lot of money in a short space of time,” says Professor Victor Shih of Northwestern University. “It is an easy way to make money because everyone will be willing to back them because of their connections. Everyone will do it willingly in order to potentially get favours from senior leaders in return.”

… But the constant jockeying for position within the party behind closed doors in Beijing is set to intensify as the next big leadership transition approaches in 2012. Some analysts say the private equity activities of the more aggressive younger princelings could be used by political enemies as a weapon against their parents.

One could argue in defense of this sort of nepotism, since private equity is as relationship driven as anything is here, and these guys, quite reasonably from their perspective, see the most opportunity there. The articles are more interesting as an example of exactly what is blocked. Since the Chinese version isn’t available, even behind a VPN, it means that the FT removed it, potentially after a suggestion from the Ministry of Truth.

Normally, journalism that focuses on economic/financial topics can get away with more in terms of potentially sensitive topics. Magazines like Caijing built their reputations on pushing these boundaries. At times, though, someone hits a soft spot.

Go to Google.cn, be redirected to the HK portal. Type in 你妈逼 (short version of “f*** ur mom’s c***,” a fairly common curse). Click on 手气不错 (“feeling lucky”), or just do a normal search return.

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Whether Google’s departure from the mainland jolts a segment of Chinese users to invest resources in completely evading the GFW depends upon their resources and preferences. Headlines notwithstanding, search results on Google’s HK portal are still subject to considerable filtering, though less sensitive topics (“religion in China”) return a much larger list of results than they used to. A less strict cens0rship and enforcement regime may be much more effective at limiting the types of information authorities are really worried about (which may be the information that is effective at motivating social/political change). Consider the following two cens0rship regimes step functions as examples:

And one with a more lenient filter:

The second situation is more threatening from a freedom-of-information perspective, in that individuals interested in accessing only certain sensitive information will find ways to evade the firewall but never make the leap to having complete online freedom (certain proxies work at certain times for certain sites. A full VPN, on the other hand, typically requires actually paying for overseas bandwidth but also provides total access). Whether full access is worthwhile will depend on whether someone can satisfy enough of their preferences within the limited regime. Total information access might simply not be worth it.

To be fair, this discussion is already focusing on a minority of Chinese internet users. Most are completely happy to chat on QQ and pick digital crops with their Happy Farmer Friends, and could really care less about spending much time gathering news and information online. This minority is non-trivial, however, in the sense that they are more likely to be educated, and will be (if not already are) in decision making roles.

My prior assumption is that (even among the liberal educated minority) Zhou-everyman is much more interested in the seemingly banal (finding images of scantily clad women, say) than in fact checking recent news stories or looking up details of Tian@nmen.* If s/he is able to satisfy the first preference, then s/he will not spend much more effort to gain total access. Those who gain total access (for the purpose of the seemingly banal) also have the ancillary capacity to access other information; presumably the ultimate goal of freedom of information proponents.

Stark contrasts within the Chinese intranet vis-a-vis the global world wide web, then, might motivate a larger number of Chinese internet users to seek out total access to information. Providing stepping stones along the way could potentially harm long-term information exposure.

* Confirmation bias: after gaining access to a VPN, the first thing I did was look at lolcats and failblog, both of which are blocked. I have yet to access anything that would be considered extremely sensitive in the eyes of Chinese authorities. Frankly, F@lunG0ng is kind of boring.

Dinner conversation with some young women from Chongqing, censorship comes up. Recently the government has been cracking down on all sorts of licentiousness. One of the ladies mentioned that she strongly supported these efforts (especially online cens0rship), since “yellow material can damage the development of young people, especially men.” This would, in turn, make it harder for her to find husband material later on. She continued, “especially foreign sites like Google have lots of yellow material.”

She is of course correct: it is easier to find scantily clad people on Google than on Baidu, though this is due to the efficiency of Google’s search algorithms vis-a-vis Baidu, not simply because it’s foreign, and all foreigners are smutty (though that’s a fairly prevalent meme as well).

I often struggle with making interesting, lasting friendships with ‘locals,’ who I (intolerantly) define as Chinese nationals who don’t speak English and and have no strong interest to learn about global affairs. Were I able to do so effectively, it would be possible to gather more information on a broader range of perspectives.

As a result, expats living here often suffer from a ‘foreign-friendly-exposure’ bias, even if the interactions are conducted in Mandarin, for the simple reason that people are interested in talking to us are much more likely to be politically liberal. The only instances of lasting relationships with a ‘genuine local’ I know of are where people are able to substitute very specific interests (like making out) in place of the cultural gap. Sort of depressing that there seems to be no middle ground.

Rather than engage in substantive discussion with locals, I often resort to Communist propaganda slogans from the 60s and 70s in an attempt to both utilize reductio ad absurdum argumentation techniques and practice Chinese. Perhaps I’m incapable of communicating sarcasm in Mandarin since this morning my office mate, a teacher turned fund analyst, gave me a book as a gift today titled 新帝国主义在中国 (New Imperialism in China) which came out in January. The book was written by Nationalist public intellectual (intellectual here being used in the Glenn Beck sense) Lang Xianping. There’s a section in the intro titled 美国到底在干什么 (What, after all, is America doing?) which concludes with:

I believe that after reading this book, readers will understand, imperialism has never really gone away; it has just been reincarnated in a new form. So, what should we do? Chairman Mao once said a very important guideline: when illusion is lost, prepare for struggle!

我相信在读完本书之后，给位读者会了解，帝国主义从来没有消失过，他们只是以不同的形态借尸还魂罢了。那么，我们该怎么办呢？毛主席的一句话非常具有指导意义：丢掉幻想，准备头争！

Will report again if I read it cover to cover, at this point the text seems to focus on various reasons why American financial hegemony is extremely harmful to Chinese interests. American conservatives often point out that China owns ~USD2tr of Treasury Debt; Chinese conservatives lament that the American Treasury has a printing press. American conservatives say that free trade has hollowed out the American working class; Chinese conservatives say that free trade has forced Chinese laborers to manufacture products in exchange for increasingly worth less pieces of paper.

Potentially as the result of developing a very niche skill set (asset management in the Chinese mainland), and a pseudo-familiarity with China in general, many media articles come off as either incorrect or under researched. Bank of China to Issue New Shares (Wall Street Journal) originally reported that Bank of China was issuing lots of bonds to increase its capital, which had been depleted by lots of lending. This was true, though the original article missed that it was a simultaneous bond and stock issue, and that the bonds were convertible. The article was later edited, though I cannot imagine a similar omission being made with regards to, say, Morgan Stanley. This distinction between bond/convertible bond is significant insofar as mainland fixed-income markets are not very well developed by global standards, and a move by such a large player is important for anyone who cares about the depth of China’s financial markets (which relates to global imbalances caused by high savings rates). The alternative explanations in these cases: I simply misread the Chinese, or the world has suddenly turned into an interactive Kafka novel.

Even the NYT’s reporting on China often seems anecdotal at best, though certainly the quality of the work the publication delivers, given time and resource constraints, is impressive. However, every month or so there’s an article about Americans working in China, the latest of which concluded that ‘in some workplaces there are conflicts. If they happen while Americans are working in China, they must be due to cultural conflicts because China is strange and different.’ The article came off as under-researched, and played up broader narratives for the sake of mass appeal, such as when the author notes that “Chinese workers have a deeper understanding of the influences, like Confucianism and Communism, that play a part in their country’s culture and economy.” Sure these two systems existed at different points throughout Chinese history but they aren’t particularly relevant modes of discourse at present. It comes off as crass as writing “France’s Catholic history, a religious system that stresses a particular combination of guilt inducing mechanisms and flagellant self-sacrifice, has made the nation particularly amiable to the demands of the modern welfare state, unlike its Protestant neighbors.”

As for myself, I tend to have many more genuine cultural conflicts with people from the east coast of the US – they are tall and mean – whereas urban Chinese are polite and fun to talk to.

Seriously how is the above plot different from any given week here. I haven’t seen Avatar, nor do I really want to (preferring to convince myself that I’m able to lord some sort of indie-film-hipster sensibility over the easily entertained masses of humanity… it’s also hard to get a ticket). The film is a big deal here, and many have commented extensively on mainland interpretations of the film as an easily celebrated allegory for eminent domain, which seems like a fairly Sinocentric reading. Recently, the 2D version of the film was pulled to make way for the domestic epic, Confucius, which makes perfect sense since both films are science fiction/fantasy.

Ancient philosophers meh: Hunan claims to have mist-covered picturesque mountains similar to those featured in Avatar (English here), using the resemblance to draw tourists. The city of Zhangjiajie has renamed even named a local peak Avatar Hallelujah Mountain, the first two terms being phonetic transliterations (阿凡达哈利路亚, Afanda Haliluya) which just seems sort of wrong, though not quite Starbucks in the Forbidden City wrong. Popular culture will of course be interpreted in a local context, and instead of assimilation one should view these things as fusion. Perhaps we only wish the interpretations weren’t so crass. HT Ellie.