Because we dislike Foxconn, should we relieve 900,000 people of their jobs?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Fear Factory
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

This is a tricky issue. Because on one hand, America needs jobs. But on the other, as this NY Times article currently making the rounds reported, "the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans -- it would require transforming the national and global economies."

The above video -- however funny -- is also yet another example of the always dumb "China Narrative," wherein Western press (in this case, CNN and the Telegraph, the two sources selectively quoted by Jon Stewart's comedy writers) seek to present stories in an "objective" fashion that happens to only cite facts (which are sometimes not facts) that make China look bad while ignoring anything that might suggest the Chinese government isn't all-bad. And it's a narrative that Evan Osnos deftly picks apart:

iPhone suicides, believe it or not, are not news to the Chinese. Nobody has done more aggressive reporting on the factory conditions at Foxconn than the Chinese press. Before foreigners noticed, newspapers in eastern and southern China were investigating the deaths of workers and Chinese bloggers were documenting more details about their daily lives than foreign visitors could hope to obtain. It’s one of those examples of how erratic the Chinese world of information is these days: the Chinese press is throttled on many issues, but when it concerns workplace conditions -- or, better yet, a factory with a boss in Taiwan -- the issue resonates with enough notes from old socialist hymns that it gets reported in astonishing detail.

Osnos quotes Nicholas Kristof in his post, and you should go to this link -- a transcript of a recent show from the excellent This American Life -- to read in full what Kristof has to say about sweatshops. Excerpt:

It's a very awkward thing to defend sweatshops, if you will. I mean, I think it's useful to be reminded about how grim the conditions are. But again, I just think that if you try to think how you can fight poverty most effectively, and what has fought it within China, then I think sweatshops are a key part of that answer.

Unfortunately, Kristof wasn't given as much time as Mike Daisey, one-man proprietor of the radio show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. As a follow-up to Kristof's comment, Daisey basically implies he wants American corporations to change Chinese laws. Anyone who's tried to do business in China is probably snorting right now.

By the way, here's what Daisey had to say about Foxconn's suicides:

And the biggest problem is that it isn't the quantity, it's the cluster. If there was any company in America where a sizable chunk of your workforce went up over a period of time, especially close to one another, and killed themselves in the same way very publicly, it would be an enormous news story because it's far outside the norm.

Problem No. 1: The comparison with an American company... huh? Shenzhen --> Houston?? There are no comparables except within the same country. As This American Life host Ira Glass notes, "Some people have pointed out that 12 suicides for 400,000 workers is actually much lower than China's suicide rate as a whole, as China has an unusually high suicide rate of 22 suicides per year per 100,000 people."

Problem No. 2: Daisey is simply wrong. See: Osnos excerpt, above.

But, again, the China Narrative demands that we acknowledge China is worse than the U.S. and that all the faults rest with the Chinese system. Something tells me it's Daisey's show and his sentiments that will get much wider play in America, and that a vast majority of people who listen to his show will think, Yeah, burn down Foxconn!

To those people, I have this to say: unfortunately, the world is the way it is. It's not the way bleeding hearts want it, and for that, we should all be sorry, we really should, but -- at the risk of repeating myself -- the world is the way it is, so that a 12-year-old child of an Anhui farmer who works 18 hours a day on the paddies might choose to seek employment in the big city to make four times as much as her parents at a company that draws the ire of the developed world. And what has the developed world ever given her? Never mind that American politicians don't give a shit about her, they only complain about their own country's jobs and the dollar-yuan exchange rate. That girl has a great story, and I applaud Mike Daisey for getting it and the hundred-plus other stories from Foxconn. I just fear that the China Narrative being the way it is -- much like the world is the way it is -- people will see the girl as merely a symbol of a "Communist regime."

Alex Hu, the king of fools

This PBS video, about the world's largest shopping mall -- South China Mall -- in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, is the sort of film that makes you drop everything and stare in absolute disbelief. Alex Hu, the developer, is said to have wanted to be "the king of Dongguan." He ended up creating a monument to concrete, desolation, despair. Greed, stupidity, etc.

Richard of Peking Duck calls the video "unforgettable" (earlier this year he also wrote about China's "luxury mall calamity"), and that it is. Maybe this video will get people to visit Dongguan, a city without an airport, and then swing by South China Mall, which is out in the middle of nowhere, next to a smelly canal.

Then again, maybe not.

A reason for optimism?

CNN on the China National People's Congress:

The delegates will represent China's central leadership, the military, every province, including minority groups such as Tibetans, and overseas Chinese.

Landmark social security legislation will be considered that would make health care, unemployment and retirement benefits universal. If implemented, it would mark a major change in the nation's social welfare system.

Grandpa Wen on CNN

China's exceedingly popular statesman appears on CNN for a conversation that interviewer Fareed Zakaria called "the most open and frank conversation I had ever seen or read with a Chinese leader." Judge for yourself:


Transcript here.

Censorship is alive and well in the States, too

YouTube has officially deleted my account for posting one too many videos from inside Olympic venues. NBC's orders, I think.

Now, I know NBC issued restrictions beforehand, but most of my videos weren't even of the events themselves -- just of crowds and post-games. Human interest stuff, in the interest of sharing with my couple dozen readers of this blog what it feels like to be at an Olympic event. Ultimately, everyone benefits. Alas, NBC didn't agree, and YouTube/Google had no choice... or something.

But to have my account and my 30-plus videos deleted... that sort of makes me mad. And I'm sorry for saying this publicly, but you're a piece of shit, Universal. This is just anger speaking, sure, but deep down, perhaps I'm expressing something true. I don't know. If anyone has any ideas for how to get my account back, please let me know.

Now my post-Olympics depression begins.

Now this is getting sort of annoying

I got another message in my inbox today, and let's just say they're getting more succinct:

Dear AntfarmKS5,

NBC Universal (Sports) has claimed some or all visual content in your video Crystl Bustos hard single vs. Venezuela in Olympics. This claim was made as part of the YouTube Content Identification program.

Your video is no longer available because NBC Universal (Sports) has chosen to block it.

Same story with Chinese Taipei's Chiu-Ching Li homers in 2008 Olympics.

This isn't over.

NBC removes video due to copyright infringement

A video I posted on YouTube about 48 hours ago titled "Brazil vs. Nigeria - awesome bicycle kick" had received 2,327 hits. It will get no more. I got this message from YouTube in my inbox just now:

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by NBC Universal claiming that this material is infringing:

Brazil vs. Nigeria - awesome bicycle kick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy2vpLOSCBQ

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to prevent this from happening, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube's copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

Stay tuned...

Earthquake kills thousands in Central China... to the world, whatever you are: please stop

Sometimes -- it's rare this happens, and when it does it's usually self-incurred, me spending too much time in a room by myself -- I get a sinking feeling the world's gone mad and I'm the last witness. I opened a browser just now and look what popped up:


In case you're keeping score at home, that's:

Storms kill 22 over Mother's Day weekend ... gas prices hit 5th straight record ... bloated bodies rot along Myanmar river ... 3 men die in 'detergent suicide' pact ... wildfires rage, stamp prices increase, death and love, another suicide and, oh yes, a horrific earthquake. The entire gamut of human tragedy, menial to profound, edited to fit into one website sidebar.

Then I refreshed my browser and this came up:



3,000.

Add that to the spiraling death toll in Myanmar -- if you've followed the story at all, you have to understand how surreal it seems, when at first our reaction was, "Oh, cute, a cyclone," and progressed to, "What, 350 dead?" to "What, 4,000 dead?" to "What, 15,000 dead?" to "What, more?" Radio Netherlands Worldwide dropped this bombshell recently: 80,000 are feared dead from a single district. I'm usually a stickler for grammar, but I think it'd be okay if I ignored conventions for a bit: !!!!!!! !!!! !!!!!! -- and the tornadoes that hit the Midwestern United States and the nearly 300,000 that died in Asia from the tsunami in late 2004 and Katrina in 2005 and you just have to wonder...

What is it Joseph Stalin said, One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic? What a brilliant quote, seething with the cold, malicious cackle of irony. There is nothing statistical about this:



My uncle (Jiujiu) called me while I was sitting down to dinner today and asked if I felt any tremors. I told him I did not. He said, rather matter-of-factly, that an earthquake had hit Sichuan, and that the aftershocks should be rolling around sometime soon, and for me not to be worried. I told him OK.

I had no idea 3,000 are dead.

I know this is natural, just nature's way of shaking its coat of fur of bits and pieces that have bogged down its circadian rhythms. When we overpopulate, there will be repercussions: taketh what he giveth, that sort of deal. Still. There can be something powerful yet about statistics, something evocative of absence, which cannot be known except through juxtaposition with presence. Something warm has been blasted into oblivion and here I am, by myself in a room quiet as a summer breeze, wondering how we get it back, if such is possible or desirable.

Let's pause a moment. Links from this past week follow.

• More on the Sichuan earthquake, from Times Online.
  
  
• Elaborating on two stories from CNN's sidebar, above: Time reports that the D.C. Madam preferred suicide to prison, and the Economist, a couple weeks ago, wrote about Japan's new suicide craze, toilet bowl cleaner with bath salts (or "detergent and other chemicals," as CNN puts it). "Death be not proud" was the article's title. Amateur scholars who modernize the poem "Death be not proud" inject it with exclamation marks, as if the narrator were some young, lovestricken soul raging against this dark, nebulous force for which our only defense is recalcitrance; in reality, John Donne's voice was one of rueful acceptance, of receiving death not as an adversary but a friend, imagining him as some gatekeeper allowing him to pass into an otherworld where death, poor death, is never heard from again. In other words, the Economist did Donne no credit, but I give them props for shedding light on an important issue.
  
  Of prostitution I have only this to say: what's so wrong with it? I've read both sides of the argument -- more swayed by one side than another -- but I'm interested to hear what you have to say.
  
  
• Speaking of suicide and young lovers... via Shanghaiist: "Lovers commit suicide at Xujiahui's Grand Gateway." Don't click on the hyperlinked word "abuzz."
  
  
• More on Hu Jintao's visit to Japan: does anyone else find it pleasantly odd that a world leader can be so well-balanced? We know President Bush can throw a baseball (unless he's being booed by 2/3rds of the stadium in his adopted town of D.C. on Opening Day), but Hu Jintao can probably do that while hitting high Cs in a falsetto. In Japan he wrote calligraphy, taught Li Bai and, in case you missed it, slammed home a series of points in ping pong (my shushu, somewhat of an expert ping pong player himself, commented that it takes skill to successfully spike four times consecutively, which President Hu apparently did). According to Japan Today, "[Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo] Fukuda later in the day told reporters that he 'chickened out in the face of good players.'"
  
  
• We talked about Chinese nationalism last week, so this is a good follow-up, from the San Jose Mercury News: "The worrisome rise of pro-China youth." [HT: Shanghaiist]
  
  
• "Bear-baiting," via The Opposite End of China (newly added to blogroll). Exerpt from The Age (Australian newspaper), quoted within: "Today, the West is involved in a game of bear-baiting with China. China has been awarded the right to host the Olympic Games, about which it has worked itself into feverish excitement and so, correspondingly, the West is in the process of humiliating China, with the Tibet issue being the West's most effective stick. It is daring China to respond, knowing that China won't because it does not want to risk a boycott of the Games. China is like a tethered bear."
  
  
• An English Teacher in China, just discovered today, is quite a nice resource for those interested in teaching English in China (there's a light bulb warming up in my head). In today's post, the author wrote, "Her friend, the married one, thought that while Americans may date a lot before and are more 'open' than Chinese before they get married, but after they get married they become quite conservative maybe more so than Chinese are." I concur. I've heard the same thing -- Jiuma and her friend, Zhang Ting, said this a couple weeks ago -- that Chinese husbands are much less loyal to their wives than Western husbands. It makes sense, I suppose. Then again, it's my theory that unmarried Chinese women are a lot less conservative than people suspect. This theory will have to be tested.
  
  
• The Wall Street Journal throws its cap into Olympics coverage.
  
  
• Via China View: "Beijing, with 5,174 public toilets, has outpaced New York, London and Tokyo and become the world's No. 1 metropolis as far as public toilets are concerned." I wonder if they're counting squat toilets, because those most definitely should not count.
  
  
• We should end on a light note. From BBC News: Great tits cope well with warming.
  

POSTSCRIPT: Please notice the tags on this post. This blog better get red-flagged after this.

UPDATE, 12:07 a.m.: 8,500 dead and counting. Jiujiu's in that part of the world right now -- not that far southeast, I don't think, and he did call during dinnertime, so I think he should be just fine. He was supposed to take an overnight train back to Beijing three and a half hours ago, but with aftershocks registering 5.0 on the Richter Scale around the countryside -- felt even in Pakistan -- I don't think he's going anywhere. Tried calling but his cell phone's off -- CNN's reporting communication lines have been cut off everywhere. Will update tomorrow.

Conversations about China and nationalism

An American friend and I had a conversation last night about the Chinese government's obligations to its people. The crux of his argument, in his words, was that, "I just think Chinese pride and nationalism are being appropriated and used by the government... [and] being taken advantage of." I countered, begrudgingly at times, that the majority of Chinese citizens have benefited from the current party in power, and that considering historical context, China's better off now than ever before. The Tibet question was raised, which I hesitated to answer due to ignorance and ambivalence -- that discussion ended rather quickly with me answering in the negative to his question, “You think it would be worse if Tibet had regional autonomy?"

Of course, I expressed a very Western idea, and even though I'm embedded deep in the middle of China, I didn't realize at the time I said "no..." exactly how far removed I was from the popular opinion here. This afternoon, on an outdoor basketball court, I met a guy my age currently studying for his Master's who expressed what I believe is the prevailing belief among Chinese citizens concerning the Tibet question. He said, in English as if to make sure his point would be fully absorbed: "Was, is, forever part of China." What could I do but nod?

Later we discussed the press, and he conceded that a free press has its advantages, mainly in its function as a wellspring for human knowledge -- he surmised I was more worldly because of my ability to access information with a click of the mouse. But he also stated -- correctly, I think -- that a free press would be disastrous for China at this juncture, not because the press would necessarily do a bad job, but because the citizens would create so much chaos as to render government impossible. "Five thousand years of turmoil," he said. Yes, 5,000 years of that might tend to make one a bit hesitant to allow opinions to flow uninhibited.

Also, I mentioned ESPN The Magazine is the second-largest in the U.S., behind Sports Illustrated, which gets all its profit from the swimsuit issue, a point that made him reply, "But you could find pictures [of girls in bikinis] easily there." Yes, I agreed, I have no idea why the swimsuit issue still matters. Then I mentioned China's version of FHM.

I bring this up so that I have an excuse to link to this, via Danwei. I'm sorry for this digression.

It's hard to describe how deep nationalism runs in this country. The form of nationalism the basketball player displayed is not the kind the government takes advantage of, and it isn't the kind the government instills. It's innate, I think, passed along in the same way that Confucian virtues are passed along. It wasn't so long ago that China, with its long and proud history, was made to suffer the indignity of what amounts to international serfdom. Now the country at last has the might to make its voice heard, and the people want you to understand that they want an audience. That they have more to offer than inferior goods and cheap labor.

The nationalism isn't always healthy, of course. Just this morning, the newest Economist passed through my inbox, and wouldn't you know, the cover story is titled "Angry China." It's a startling but grounded take on the nature of Chinese nationalism, and it's a highly recommended read:

For three decades, having shed communism in all but the name of its ruling party, China's government has justified its monopolistic hold on power through economic advance. Many Chinese enjoy a prosperity undreamt of by their forefathers. For them, though, it is no longer enough to be reminded of the grim austerity of their parents' childhoods. They need new aspirations.

The government's solution is to promise them that China will be restored to its rightful place at the centre of world affairs. Hence the pride at winning the Olympics, and the fury at the embarrassing protests during the torch relay. But the appeal to nationalism is a double-edged sword: while it provides a useful outlet for domestic discontents (see article), it could easily turn on the government itself.

Let me relay an anecdote. Shushu’s wife told me a story today of a Westerner getting scolded by a cab driver for being one of those “anti-Chinese media supporters," though he had done nothing to elicit this condemnation. This sort of thing borders awfully close to xenophobia. When I assured her that the American media is large and less an empire than a sprawling metropolis (I didn't use those words), and that if one looks hard enough one could dig up anti-anything rants from notarized media members, she postulated that Chinese reactions to CNN’s Jack Caffrey and other perceived anti-China bias was more like the country's defense mechanism against anti-Chinese sentiment -- the equivalent of a preadolescent throwing a tantrum despite knowing better. It wasn't personal, basically. Perhaps that means the Chinese have a victim mindset, I don't know. Simon Elegant of Time filed a dispatch about just this issue.

While my American friend and I were embroiled in our discussion, another friend – an American-born Chinese nicknamed Nuprin – messaged me about the Olympics. "Don't you think China's going a little overboard? ...There is a line between nationalism and patriotism, and I think China has crossed that line." I told him I didn't agree. Eventually the conversation turned into a discussion over China's role in the future world. I'll reproduce a snippet of the conversation here:

Nuprin: As China gets more powerful, its citizens are emboldened by (nationalism). At least that is the impression I got from my students. [I should mention here that Nuprin taught in Nanjing for a year.]
Me: Emboldened to do what though? They're not an aggressive country. Never have been. The worst that'll happen is they'll resent foreigners. And that's bad, granted, but it's not bombing the Middle East.
Nuprin: All of my students thought that a powerful China and United States could not co-exist. So with the rise of China, they were convinced that we would see a power struggle and war and they felt like it was inevitable.
Me: No one in either government wants war.
Nuprin: I know. But I think Chinese citizens feel animosity towards the U.S. and other powerful Western countries. It would be dumb to go to war, and I tried to tell my students that but they didn't believe me.

At this point I told him there are idiots everywhere, and it's true: the Chinese boycott of the French retail giant Carrefour calls to mind the renaming of French fries in the U.S. (what is it, exactly, about the French that makes them so hateable?). Still, the question should be addressed: war? Between the U.S. and China? That would be the ultimate doomsday scenario for life as we know it. Nothing would ever be the same, and it would prove that the fate of human beings lies with extinction. But need we be worried? China is not ready to challenge the U.S., not with its restive citizenry -- “China, like India, is a land of a million mutinies now,” the Economist writes -- and America has other worries on the global stage, where they've held court for the past 50 years. It goes without saying that a conflict between the two nations is in no one’s best interest. As the Economist puts it, “the world and China have to learn to live with each other.”

For China, that means learning to respect foreigners' rights to engage it even on its “internal affairs”. A more measured response to such criticism is necessary not only to China's great-power ambitions, but also to its internal stability; for while the government may distract Chinese people from their domestic discontents by breathing fire at foreigners, such anger, once roused, can run out of control. In the end, China's leaders will have to deal with those frustrations head-on, by tackling the pollution, the corruption and the human-rights abuses that contribute to the country's dangerous mood. The Chinese people will demand it.

In other words: they don't need Westerners demanding it for them.