"White guy in a tie"

This story in The Atlantic is equal parts humour, entrepreneurship and scandal. That's why it has garnered 202 comments!

Here's a precis: Chinese company pays Caucasian male handsomely to pretend to be an executive of a company to make a speech, meet some officials and shake some hands. Simple.

The reason for these shenanigans is that it's still 'flash' to be a (white) foreigner in China, especially in the provinces. So, if your company flies in your top executive or expert from America it's a big deal. And it goes a long way to cementing a business deal or contract.

The twist in this story is that these foreigners might well be American (or Canadian...even I can't tell the difference sometimes so I doubt the Chinese will ;) ), but they haven't boarded any planes, aren't  businessmen and the company might not even exist!

"...so I became a fake businessman in China, an often lucrative gig for underworked expatriates here. One friend, an American who works in film, was paid to represent a Canadian company and give a speech espousing a low-carbon future. Another was flown to Shanghai to act as a seasonal-gifts buyer. Recruiting fake businessmen is one way to create the image—particularly, the image of connection—that Chinese companies crave. My Chinese-language tutor, at first aghast about how much we were getting paid, put it this way: 'Having foreigners in nice suits gives the company face.'


After a brief introduction, “Director” Ernie delivered his speech before the hundred or so people in attendance. He boasted about the company’s long list of international clients and emphasized how happy we were to be working on such an important project. When the speech was over, confetti blasted over the stage, fireworks popped above the dusty field beside us, and Ernie posed for a photo with the mayor."

Google - A New Approach to China

Earlier this month Google reported on its blog that it had been hacked. Analysis of the security breach shocked Google executives who decided to spill the beans in this blog posting.

In summary, Google says that it and "at least 20 other large companies...including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors..." were hacked. Google had intellectual property stolen as a result of the hacking incident and informed the other companies and U.S. law enforcement of its findings. More concerning was Google's discovery that the orchestrated attack was focused on accessing Gmail accounts in the U.S., China and Europe and the account owners are known Chinese human rights activists who have also suffered at the hands of "phishing scams or malware..."

Although Google recognizes the benefits China has brought its people in recent years it says it's blowing the whistle on the incident "not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech."

When Google agreed to censor its search engine results as a condition of operating in China in 2006 it had its fingers crossed behind its back. Now, it says as a result of the attacks "we have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."

Cynics of Google's moves say that the reason for the potential withdrawal from China is the fact the search giant only has the #2 spot in China with 36% of the market compared to Baidu's 58% and hasn't been able to dominate as it has elsewhere.

China is the #1 car market

Business Week reported that not only has China's exports jumped 17.7% this past December, for the year China exported 41.2 trillion worth of goods which beats out Germany as the largest exported! Critics say that China's success is due to the yuan' artificially low exchange rate which is amplified further by the US dollar's decline.

Adding salt to the wounds, China also announced that it became the largest car market in the world as 2009 sales rose 46% to 13.6 million vehicles including trucks. Analysts say that China will remain #1 in 2010 since the US only had 10.9 million vehicle sales.

Timelapse of Typhoon Nangka over Hong Kong

Amazing timelaspse from last June 2009.

Chinese adoption gone wrong

I picked up my LA Times subscription this week and found a shocking story that really soured a topic that I've had mixed feelings about in the past: adoption of Chinese babies.

Yang Libing and his wife, Cao Zhimei, with their son. Their daughter was taken away in 2005. "Our children were exported abroad like they were factory products," said Yang, a migrant worker from Hunan province. He has since learned that their daughter is in the United States.

This LA Times story must be adopting parents' nightmare and one that doesn't seem possible outside of some crime fiction novel. Even though I try to cast some doubt on negative stories about China since not all the stories read on the internet are true I know there are plenty of other stories that never make it out of the country. I believe this is one of those true stories that has only just surfaced and will send shock waves across the world and hopefully where it counts - the adoption agency networks.

Something has to be fixed! What does this say about the Chinese system, the officials who hold power and the agencies that govern the adoption process? Nothing in the remedy will ever be enough for the parents that lost a child or the parents that gained one.

This is one of the saddest stories I've read and I think the last paragraphs of the article capture the reality of what has been created in the name of greed. I wonder if the author of White Swan will update her book with a new chapter.

"In Philadelphia, Wendy Mailman, who adopted in 2005 from the orphanage in Zhenyuan that took in confiscated babies, now questions everything she was told about the girl who orphanage officials said was born in September and abandoned in January.

"Why would a mother who didn't want a baby girl be so heartless as to wait until the dead of winter to abandon her?" she said. She wonders what she would do if she discovered that her daughter was one of the stolen babies. She knows she could never return the Americanized 6-year-old, who is obsessed with "SpongeBob" and hates the Chinese culture classes her mother enrolled her in. But she said, "I would certainly want to tell the birth family that your daughter is alive and happy and maybe send a picture."

"It would be up to my daughter later if she wanted to build a relationship," she said. For many birth families, that would be enough.

"We'd never make her come back, because a girl raised in the West wouldn't want to live in a poor village like this," said Yang Shuiying's mother-in-law, Yang Jinxiu.

"But we'd like to know where she is. We'd like to see a picture. And we'd like her to know that we miss her and that we didn't throw her away."

Exemplary example of Chinese human rights

It's a little known fact that China took in 20,000 Jews escaping persecution from the Nazis in the 1930s! Who says the Chinese have a human rights issue?

Today, NPR interviewed some of these survivors who fled to China about a neighborhood called Tilanqiao or "Little Vienna" in Shanghai. This quaint bit of Europe was transplanted to Shanghai, but is the lesser known Eurozone compared to the well ventured French Concession district I walked through during my stay last year.

In the Hongkou district near the Northern Bund sits Ohel Moishe Synagogue which is recognized as the heart of this historic area. It's one of two synagogues, but there used to be six here at the height of the area's boom. Now, beside the place of worship all is not peaceful since the area has been under threat from the relentless cycle of development.

A fight to get Tilanqiao recognized goes back to April 27, 2006 when about 120 former Jewish refugees and their families returned to Shanghai from all over the world for a '2006 Shanghai Reunion.' The aim was to get the United Nations to list Tilanqiao as a world heritage site.

I read that in 2003 Professor Ruan Yishan of Tongji University, an ardent preservationist and dean of the National Cultural and Historical City Research Institute, helped restrict the urban development plans for the North Bund by challenging the Shanghai Urban Planning Bureau. He and his supporters succeeded in geting the city to declare "12 Key Preserved Historical Zones," including Tilanqiao.

Today, however, the White Horse Cafe that was founded by Jewish immigrants in 1939 is finally succumbing to the push for modernization. A new road is being built and the cafe must go. Without the road the future traffic in central Shanghai will be unbearable said an official. It seems that urban historical areas aren't in vogue in China. Although sections of Tilanqiao will remain, we don't know for how long? I hope I get to return and walk those streets myself before it turns into Spaghetti Junction!

Jet Li in Davos for the World Economic Summit!

Amazing to see Jet Li representing his causes at Davos, Switzerland, rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful leaders of the world.