MSNBC Foils Debate Viewers in China (Plus: Facebook.cn?)

Viewing U.S. presidential politics from thousands of miles away is a bit of a relief for someone like me. But I still enjoy watching the debates in webcast form to keep an eye on the tone of competition. I should say, I enjoyed it. Heading over to MSNBC.com to catch up on the recent Democratic debate, I was stopped at the door for holding the wrong internet passport:

MSNBC is not the only site to block visitors from some countries. The music site Rhapsody refuses me service while in China. Google Video also refuses my requests, though it at least apologizes:

Thanks for your interest in Google Video.

Currently, the playback feature of Google Video isn’t available in your country.

We hope to make this feature available more widely in the future, and we really appreciate your patience.

These are just the few cases I can remember off the top of my head. Many other sites have refused service since I moved to China. As of now, I don’t know how far-reaching these restrictions are, but I don’t have any reason to believe it’s just China. I have some memory of reading about sites that only work in the United States or their home country.

There are several possibilities as to why this happens. Here are a few:

• Copyright concerns. Rhapsody, for instance, may not be ready to defend its delivery of copyrighted music to some countries. Though there are no such issues with a U.S. presidential debate, MSNBC may simply have disabled video delivery abroad because of other copyright concerns, thereby unnecessarily narrowing the reach of its non-copyright-sensitive material.
• Money. Streaming video is an expensive service. It involves either a large cost in development and maintenance or large fees to an established streaming service such as Akamai to run the show. If streaming is ad-supported and advertisers aren’t interested in an audience outside of the United States, then there is a financial incentive not to serve foreign visitors. (When I listen to podcasts from U.S. National Public Radio programs, they often ask me to support my local station so that the podcast can be paid for. The smarter pitches, which acknowledge that I may not have a local station, ask me to support the program’s home station.)
• Self-censorship. Perhaps the most insidious reason would come into play if it turns out that these blocks were specifically directed toward China. It might represent a decision by U.S. content providers to censor what they provide to Chinese visitors in hopes of preventing a move by the Chinese government to block their sites overall. This is not an unreasonable fear, as we have seen with Google’s Blogger and YouTube services, among others. These sites may not always be blocked, but uncertainty about their accessibility makes it unlikely that advertisers would choose these sites to reach a Chinese audience.

Amidst recent rumors about Facebook‘s possible entry into the Chinese market with a facebook.cn service, some very smart people have been remarking on a “silo” effect when national networks are created for otherwise transnational services, making cross-border communication more difficult. As Rebecca MacKinnon writes:

If they do end up having to create different Facebook “silos” in order to be compliant with Chinese government censorship requirements (and maybe other governments with other language services too), it isn’t just a missed opportunity to provide a great global, multilingual service that many people would find incredibly exciting.

The silo-ing of social networking sites like Facebook (and MySpace China already) is a sadly missed opportunity to build bridges of communication and understanding between the Chinese-speaking world and the English-speaking world.

The same applies when information is limited to borders. The key here of course is that these decisions are business decisions. MySpace, Facebook, and MSNBC are designed to make money from their audience, not foster international connections. I just hope they find ways to do both.

YouTube Unblocked?

This is a preliminary report, but while working out a technical problem on Transpacifica over the last hour, I have discovered that in the last few minutes, YouTube went from being blocked to unblocked. For the record, I’m browsing from a wireless connection that accesses the internet through a CNC Beijing IP.

This would seem to support either or both of the dominant lines of speculation among bloggers and media as to the reason for the block: that it was related to the 17th Party Congress, which concluded a little over a week ago, or because of the launch of a Chinese version of the site.

That said, both the Taiwan and Hong Kong versions are accessible from here.

Oof.

Oof. I’ll be back alive soon with much to come. Meantime, I’ve been doing some local tourist stuff in Beijing, and the pictures are showing up on my Flickr account. If you’re in China, use Firefox and this extension to view the images. This photo is from the summer palace (颐和园) where a man may have just realized he has to walk up those stairs.

Links: Net Filtering, Uncertain Green Beijing, and U.S.–China Business

I’ve been busy recently in Beijing and watching a lot of good stories go right by. You’ll forgive a Colorado native for using a baseball analogy: It’s time to make sure I don’t strike out looking. Here’s a quick summary of transpacific pitches I wish I’d had time to swing at.

Greener Beijing?
• Will Beijing’s air be ready for the Olympics? The Worldwatch Institute has a good summary of what’s being done, who’s doing it, and what the challenges are, from Yongfeng Feng, a journalist for China Guangming Daily.
• Alex Pasternack picks up on a Christian Science Monitor story on the emergence of short-term bike rental service in Beijing. Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned here is that folding bikes, trendy here despite being a pain to ride, have been banned on the subway recently to prevent overcrowding. Razor scooter, anyone?

Internet Filtering and Reactions
• Blogspot is blocked, again. It came back online along with Flickr, which I have just noticed is also blocked. Firefox users in the P.R.C. can use “Access Flickr!” to get those photo feeds back working.
• The U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs voted the Global Online Freedom Act (H.R. 275) out of committee. The law, according to Forbes.com, would “penalize U.S. companies up to $2 million if they cooperate with the technological surveillance of political dissidents or share technology and information used for ‘Internet-restricting’ purposes.”
• Rebecca MacKinnon has smart commentary as usual on this issue. Go read what she writes, but here’s her bottom line:
  

  GOFA’s intentions are honorable in many ways. I think many of the people who support it certainly have honorable intentions. I know and respect many of them, despite having had some pretty heated arguments with some members of the human rights groups who say they support it for strategic reasons. But from where I sit in Hong Kong, this proposed legislation comes off as something that my Chinese friends who hate censorship and surveillance would find arrogant, patronizing, and interventionist, with the likely result that it would kill U.S. tech companies’ ability to do business in China in the first place – a result which by the way they don’t think would enhance their freedom.

• Also from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I haven’t mentioned yet that Chairman Tom Lantos is calling Yahoo’s Jerry Yang back to Congress under suspicion of misleading Congress in previous testimony. Go check with MacKinnon on this, too. She’s been on the story since a civil society group published a document that contradicted Yahoo’s statement that they did not know the nature of the investigation when they turned over information on reporter Shi Tao to Chinese authorities.
• At Wired, a writer with firsthand experience being monitored on a reporting trip in China declares that the “Great Firewall” is futile. Maybe, but I had to enable Tor to get the full article to load. The article is a good read though for those interested in Oliver August’s experiences talking to Chinese dissidents.
• Wikipedia‘s Chinese-language service was crippled by the mainland’s block, reports Eva Woo at BusinessWeek.com.

In other news…
• From the Tokyo Auto Show, Michael J. Dunne who works on China for J.D. Power and Associates, writing in the Detroit News, notes that the talk is about China, not Japan. My favorite is the writer’s casual contextual note about when his cohort got interested in China: “Fascination with the China market started when the Middle Kingdom first challenged Japan for sales leadership. Two years ago, Chinese bought 5.3 million vehicles, just shy of the 5.7 million cars and trucks sold in Japan.”
• U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said she sees protectionism in both countries as a threat to U.S.–China trade.
• Relatedly, Andy Scott at China Briefing Blog ventures a coinage for China’s WTO practices: “Compliance With Chinese Characteristics.”
• It’s not just the United States hosting the Dalai Lama. Japan’s doing it too.
• The questionably hyphenated Trans-Pacific Express will for the first time link the China and the United States with an undersea telecommunications cable.

Hillary’s China Focus, and a Lonely Japan?

Clinton says the U.S.-China relationship will be the world’s “most important bilateral.” What should Japan think?

The main candidates for U.S. president are all contributing essays on their foreign policy vision to Foreign Affairs, and Sen. Hillary Clinton (as well as Sen. John McCain) came up this issue. Tobias Harris, in an entry called “The Vanishing Ally,” notices that Clinton made a bold statement, putting the U.S. relationship with China at the top of her list of priorities.

“Our relationship with China will be the most important bilateral relationship in the world in this century,” Clinton writes. She continues:

The United States and China have vastly different values and political systems, yet even though we disagree profoundly on issues ranging from trade to human rights, religious freedom, labor practices, and Tibet, there is much that the United States and China can and must accomplish together. China’s support was important in reaching a deal to disable North Korea’s nuclear facilities. We should build on this framework to establish a Northeast Asian security regime.

But China’s rise is also creating new challenges. The Chinese have finally begun to realize that their rapid economic growth is coming at a tremendous environmental price. The United States should undertake a joint program with China and Japan to develop new clean-energy sources, promote greater energy efficiency, and combat climate change. This program would be part of an overall energy policy that would require a dramatic reduction in U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

We must persuade China to join global institutions and support international rules by building on areas where our interests converge and working to narrow our differences. Although the United States must stand ready to challenge China when its conduct is at odds with U.S. vital interests, we should work for a cooperative future.

Dealing with China is just one of many issues Clinton’s essay lists as challenges for the next president (some others—two wars, Iran, “a resurgent Russia,” threats to Israel and oil supplies in the Middle East, climate change, and possible global epidemics). But consider this quick count of the most-mentioned countries. The count includes adjectival forms, so “China” and “Chinese” would both be counted.

(This counting exercise I admit can be a bit silly; it threatens to elevate a Foreign Affairs piece to the level of the State of the Union. But it can demonstrate just how high on the public agenda China has risen, at least in the mind of Clinton’s foreign policy writing.)

Regarding the statement that the U.S.–China relationship is the century’s most important, Tobias writes, “That may be disconcerting for Japan, used to hearing U.S. officials insist on the importance of the U.S.–Japan relationship, but it also happens to be true.” He adds later, “[T]he U.S.–Japan relationship could be an essential part of the U.S. approach to China, helping smooth China’s ascension to regional and global leadership (and hold China accountable). Senator Clinton hints at this—she mentions cooperation on clean energy—but no policymaker or presidential candidate has discussed a Sino–U.S.–Japanese triangle.”

Given that the Sino–Japanese–U.S. triangle was my blogging bailiwick for an entire year, I can confirm that, indeed, no one talks much about this. But I don’t go as far as Tobias when it comes to actually fearing the U.S. government under a new administration would forsake Japan. Japan remains essential to the United States as a security and economic partner. All sides of the triangle need both security and business relations to remain smooth throughout the trilateral. It may be the case the Clinton and her campaign simply decided against giving much space to reiterating the U.S. relationship with Japan in this particular essay. It looks to me from the table as if some countries were included in the essay as a political hat-tip (see especially the passage on Latin America, where the Bush administration is scolded for inattention but Clinton offers little other than a laundry list of nations).

My main message here is that this is a campaign document, not so much a policy proposal. It may have been a bit of a diplomatic gaffe not to give Japan a little more space, but I doubt the omission will have any adverse effect on the campaign. On the other hand, when China-related issues inevitably come up in force during the Olympics in August 2008, just three months before the general election, it will be key for candidates to have a record on China. Barring any unforeseen disasters, Japan will not likely be a major topic in U.S. media coverage leading up to the election.

Hillary Release Sets Up China–U.S. Competition

A press release from the Hillary Clinton campaign uses China as the primary “other” for the United States, a nation to which the United States should compare its progress.

An Oct. 10 press release outlining Clinton’s agenda on “Rebuilding the Road to the Middle Class” comes with several policy proposals and an attempt to frame the country’s economic challenges. And in the process of framing, China is set up as a main challenger for the United States, and a main point of comparison for U.S. development. Here, in full, is the section outlining “The Challenges”:

Other nations are increasingly investing in their innovation infrastructure, positioning themselves to challenge our leadership. In the last 12 years, China has doubled the percentage of GDP dedicated to R&D, and over that same period GDP itself doubled. Also, our share of the world’s scientists and engineers is declining, and too few American college students are preparing themselves for these careers. Fewer than 20% of American undergraduates are earning degrees in science or engineering, compared with more than 50% in China. Between 1970 and 2000, our global share of PhDs in science and engineering declined from 40% to 20%. And today, our global ranking in broadband has deteriorated to 25th.

Here, China is the primary “other” to which U.S. achievements are compared.

Later, in a section outlining a proposal for more education funding, China again is the only country named in comparison. “Education is the ultimate innovation prerequisite, but we are ceding ground to other nations,” the release states. “For example, 50% of undergraduates in China are earning degrees in science and engineering, but in America the rate is less than 20%. Our global share of PhDs in these fields has declined from 40% in 1970 to less than 20% today.”

Clinton’s rhetoric in this document compares the United States to China and to the world at large. But notably, no other country or political unit, not even the European Union, is mentioned by name. This is not an overt statement on China, but it tells us something about the way Hillary’s campaign views the rhetorical landscape: Among world powers, they apparently believe, the media and voters are concerned about China above all others.

Tomorrow, Clinton calls the U.S.–China relationship the world’s most important for the coming century, and Japan faces a demotion from the position of the United States’ most important Asian counterpart.

Tacos in China

A Mexican mall opens in China—good news for China residents who like good tequila. But the mall is a rare example of Mexico selling to China. Usually China does the exporting, to Mexico and to Mexico’s most important market, the United States. Mexican companies are struggling to compete.

The Mexican consulting firm Latinasia will inaugurate a USD$300 million retail pavilion in Hebei next week, providing a space for sales of Mexican products such as Sangría Señorial, Tequila Noche Mexicana, and the unbeatable tacos of El Fogoncito. The megamall is likely the largest Mexican project in China to date, surpassing last year’s $100 million Maseca tortilla factory.

Niu Shuhai, president of Latinasia’s partner Hebei BODA Jituan Group, said he hoped the space will strengthen ties between the two nations.

Mexico and China have been strengthening ties for years. At a forum on Sino-Mexican relations at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México last week, Carlos Jiménez Macías, President of the Asia relations committee of the Mexican senate, pointed out that trade between the two nations has increased 500 percent since 2002.

This is good for China: Mexico provides yet another market for its manufactures. For Mexico the relationship is problematic. Unlike other Latin American countries such as Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, which send China colossal quantities of natural resources (providing more than half of all China’s imports of soya bean, fishmeal, poultry, and wine, for example), Mexico is trying to export textiles, electronics, and machinery—the very products China so successfully sells. (A recent paper from scholars at University of Southern California explores the details of this dynamic.)

But China’s products are often cheaper. This year, Mexico will sell China just $1 billion of goods, while Mexico will buy $15 billion of Chinese products. Worse, Mexico competes with China not only for the domestic market but also for U.S. buyers, who purchase more than 80 percent of Mexican exports. In 2005 China replaced Mexico as the U.S.’s second-largest trading partner (after Canada).

Thirteen years after the implementation of NAFTA, China is eroding Mexico’s share of the U.S. market. This is due in part to China’s raw advantage in price of inputs, quantity of semiskilled labor, and exchange rate. But it is also the result of Mexico’s failure to reform. When NAFTA was signed, economists were already clamoring for energy sector modernization, labor market liberalization, fiscal restructuring, and other measures—most of which are still unrealized. Mexican President Felipe Calderón has made some inroads since taking office last year, but there is a long way to go. China won’t wait.

YouTube Blocked in Beijing

If you can see this photo and you’re in China, Flickr’s available. But so much for my video feed.

Thomas Crampton reports, and a quick check confirms: YouTube videos now unavailable at least from my seat in Beijing. The standard “connection reset” tactic is being used. This comes at the same time as previous blocks on Blogger and Flickr apparently have been lifted. I’ve even been getting intermittent function out of the FeedBurner relays that have been plaguing so many China-oriented bloggers. I even heard that some have gotten through to the BBC.

[UPDATE 12:59 p.m.]: Ken Wong has noticed that Google Blogsearch has also disappeared. He asks: 黑色星期四？ (“Black Thursday?”)

[UPDATE II 5:35 p.m.]: Commenters all over the web are looking for a circumvention method. I have my issues with this service, but Hotspot Shield, introduced by “花崗齋雜記 Jottings from the Granite Studio” seems to have the bandwidth to handle YouTube.

[UPDATE III Oct. 31]: YouTube appears to be back.

‘One-Child’ and a Graying, Less Trustful China

China’s “one-child policy” will likely lead to a fast increase of the retired portion of the population. In the United States and Japan (and many other countries) this means trouble for national pension systems. China won’t have this problem: There is no universal pension system. But the institution traditionally responsible for care of elders, the family, is changing rapidly, and one effect may be an erosion of trust in society.

Through the lively academic blog orgtheory.net, I found the work of Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar based at the American Enterprise Institute. Writing at orgtheory.net, UCLA sociologist Gabriel Rossman picked up on an op-ed Eberstadt wrote for The Wall Street Journal in which he declares that the Chinese government is creating a great problem for itself with its population-control policy. One illustrative estimate he makes is that in 20 years, one-third of Chinese women over 60 will not have a living son, meaning many women will have to find other ways to get support in old age.

What really caught my attention here is a point made by Rossman: Once people born under the “one-child policy” have their own kids, people will have no blood-relations in the same generation. Not only will there be no siblings (that’s not so remarkable), there will also be no aunts or uncles. And with no aunts or uncles, there are no cousins. As generations pass, the closest intragenerational relations will be cousins one-removed, then twice-, then thrice-.

Eberstadt writes that China is regarded as a “low-trust society.” This means that people have low latent trust and rely on networks of trust—the famous guanxi, or “relationships”—to feel confident in all manner of social activities, from business transactions to personal relations. Thus the elimination of large family networks represents a considerable reduction in the size of individuals’ trust networks.

All right, you might say, so now people will just have to make friends outside the family. That’s true, but there are two problems. First, Rossman notes that family members can’t be replaced—”you can stop talking to your brother, but you can’t recruit a new brother to replace him.” Second, people will still be able to make friends outside the family, but they won’t be able to depend on a network of “family friends” when there’s no network of family. Myself, I lack siblings, but my parents have three each. Most of them got married and have children. Through absolutely no effort, I’ve been given a large network of people who might help me out of a bind: my relatives and in a real pinch, possibly even their friends.

So who’s going to help Chinese people out of a pinch when this effect sets in? Well, there are of course those personal friends. Also, in my short experience in Beijing, I have noticed my hutong neighborhood has a good deal of trust. People lend each other bikes, look out for each other’s security, and help each other get some practical things done. In language, people often refer to close (or sometimes not-so-close) friends using familial terms. (The practice of calling folks “comrade” has faded for the young, and the term is now a euphemism for homosexuals.) But what network of trust is going to secure business transactions? An increase in the rule of law would likely have that effect. If rules are enforced and public authorities are more available to mediate disputes between parties with no relationship, then a wider trust could set in.

Social engineers, if they had arbitrary power to change society, might even study Japan’s “high-trust” society to see just how it works that lost wallets on Tokyo subways are often turned in with money intact to the nearest station. Many scholars speculate that Japan’s identity as a national family (国家, kokka) headed by the emperor, and a level of ethnic homogeneity much higher than the P.R.C., fed into this. If that’s the case, its notable that China has not developed greater trust with similar national rhetoric (if dissimilar domestic government behavior). Certainly, something other than the rhetoric must be at work.

The U.S. Candidates on China I: Democrats

The Council on Foreign Relations has compiled a summary of what the candidates for U.S. president have to say about China, or really, what they’ve had to say—most statements are vague and many are a few months old. The CFR compilation only tracks more prominent statements on China. Statements not directly related to China, say releases accompanying Obama’s support for a Senate bill banning lead in products for children, don’t make it in.

Here’s a summary of the major points for the major candidates. I’m adding in some recent commentary and links via my Google Alerts and other feeds.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D–N.Y.)
• Clinton’s most prominent statements on China came last March and included a few media appearances in which she called for the U.S. to reduce its dependency on Chinese lending. This came amidst a series of visits to China by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and a surge in media attention to the U.S.–China trade imbalance surrounding the Chinese stock scare that winter. CFR links to the same article that many other sources do when talking about Clinton and China. It’s the article that triggered my March 3 entry on this site.
• Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama both said they would support punitive tariffs against China if it doesn’t revalue its currency. The National Interest cites this among the reasons the United States and China may be headed toward a trade war.
• CFR also dug up a 2005 release on Clinton’s Senate website asking President George W. Bush to bring up human rights in talks with the Chinese government.

Sen. John Edwards (formerly D-N.C.)
• Edwards has kept quiet on China for quite a while. CFR notes the speech he made in 2006 at the Asia Society in which he declared the U.S.–China relationship his country’s most important bilateral relationship. The speech is something I never got around to writing about here, partly because the speech itself didn’t reveal much of interest. …
• … But, in the Q&A, Edwards did have something interesting to say on the China–Darfur issue. In response to a question from Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, he said:
  

  I mean, the starting place is something that we’re not doing, which is to make it a priority – to make it a priority that the Chinese are propping up these governments and in the case of Sudan, allowing a genocide to continue. I think the first thing is we have to make it a priority in our relationship with China. And the Chinese have to know that it’s a priority.

  That’s something to watch as the issue festers leading up to the Olympics. File it under “stuff he said that someone will quote sometime”—especially if he gains in the polls.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)
• Obama’s “neither our enemy nor our friend” statement is still the main enunciation of his view on U.S.–China relations. Instead, he said, the countries are “competitors.”
• CFR notes Obama’s speech at my former haunt, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, in which he said he’d “forge a more effective regional framework in Asia that will promote stability, prosperity and help us confront common transnational threats such as tracking down terrorists and responding to global health problems like avian flu.”

Next up: the Republicans.