The China blame game - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein Fantake via Flickr

Shaun Rein addresses, after the country got wrongly accused last Friday of blocking all of Google's services, the China blame game many Western media play at this clip in CNBC.In the debate Rein gets actually told he acts like an apologist for China, but rebuts this blame-game very well.
Rein explains how important it is to dig a bit deeper when Western media reports talk about China and why we should not take all they write for granted.

Commercial
Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Key lesson China billionaire: Sharing - Shaun Rein (chinaherald.net)
• Inflation around the corner - Shaun Rein (chinaherald.net)
• Military expert hits top-10 most-sought speakers in June (chinaherald.net)
• Take care when investing in China - Shaun Rein (chinaherald.net)
• Saving no longer tops China's agenda - Shaun Rein (chinaherald.net)

What has Interfax been smoking ?

I just received a press release issued by Interfax China that makes me wonder if there are perhaps two countries in this world that are called "China". They want to promote an undoubtedly very expensive survey on the Chinese print industry and they come with some amazing figures and statements.

A full 83% of respondents stated that they believed that foreign invested magazines are better than Chinese published magazines. Furthermore, this advantage in public perception extends beyond magazines to also include newspapers, books and bookstores (details provided in the full report).

Now, only very few Chinese can lay their hands on a foreign magazine (be it in Chinese or a foreign language), so it is a pity we do not know who they have been asking the questions, since that often defines what kind of answers you get.
The results are definitely at odds with a survey done by Guo Liang a few years ago who discovered that the online urbanites had hardly any interest in foreign media of the online kind. Basically only three percent of the surveyed online population said they would look at foreign websites. At the time I found that percentage of three percent very low, but 83 percent with a positive viewpoint sounds like researchers who have been cooking the books.
We go on:

This finding has very strong strategic implications for foreign companies competing within China’s print media sector which, thanks to the WTO, is now largely open to foreign investment. Although it is not necessarily very easy to navigate the required permits and licenses, with the notable exceptions of editorial and national level distribution, almost all other areas of print media are now largely accessible.

Media, including the print media, have never been part of the WTO-process and have been carefully excluded. Regulations have never changed in such a way they would facilitate in stead of ban foreign participation in Chinese media. When foreign media got access to China was only because they have up editorial control and published small quantities anyway.
We read on:

As of 2007 China led the World Association of Newspapers global top 100 ranking
with 25 Chinese newspapers topping the list by circulation volume.

Now, the circulation volume in China is not audited by any independent organization and according to industry sources halving the "official" circulation figures is not enough to get closer to the reality. In fact, the print industry is the only media industry that saw the growth of its advertisement revenue drop since 2005, causing a bit of a panic.
Otherwise - I do not have enough time to find links that support my arguments - listen to our Chinabiz Speaker Tom Doctoroff, interviewed by the China Business Network.

The future of the foreign correspondents Clubs

Yesterday, during the weekly journo-drinks at the Cotton Club, one of the newcomers brought up the subject of the future of the foreign correspondents Clubs. Well, that was a nice subject.
Both Maria Trombly and me have very outspoken ideas about that, so we gladly delivered our two cents.
The classic foreign correspondents as we knew them from last century are gone or on the way out. That is for me already an old story.
While cities like Hong Kong and Tokyo still have prestigious places where foreign correspondents used to go to, most correspondents have fled those cities. Since most journalists cannot afford the high fees (and certainly do not get them reimbursed anymore from their bosses), its mostly bankers and other business people who keep those clubs running.
When we set up the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club at the beginning of this century, we realized that membership fees for journalists would have been low, otherwise there would be no club at all. The new style foreign correspondent has little money and hardly any time for those clubs.
According to Maria Trombly the word fee in the US for journalists was in the 1950s one US dollar and that fee has not gone up since: the average word fee is still one US dollar. Well, local tariffs in Shanghai are down to one Renminbi per word, about ten percent of that fee. Experienced journalists who a desperate for work sign up as interns for China-based media and work for free. One idea floating around was let those journalists in the future pay for their China-experiences, so at least we would have a decent business model.
Maria, who focuses on payment systems worldwide, has probably found one of the better paid niche market: payment systems. When you work for such a global niche market, yes, you can survive as a journalist in Shanghai in the future. And you need to employ many interns so you can go out and have drinks, like Maria does.
Journalism schools worldwide still churn out every year larger numbers of students that are being prepared for jobs that will not exist anymore in the future. They should save some money, so they can afford an internship in Shanghai.

Blogger Zola investigates

Zola and Mrs Wuping

Most webloggers just sit behind their computer and do not investigate anymore, is a much heard complaint, especially from traditional journalists. But there are exceptions, shows Yee, pointing at blogging hero Zola, who is investigating the Chongqing nailhouse now Chinese media cannot write about it anymore.

The favorite blogger (of this moment) Zola is at the spot and Yee translates.