Shanghai Scrap

Today Foreign Policy publishes “A Sorry Spectacle,”  my history of the regrettable and often bizarre effort to build a USA pavilion for Expo 2010 [a/k/a, the World's Fair] to begin on May 1, in Shanghai. Some of the material has been aired on Shanghai Scrap and elsewhere over the last year; much of it has not. The full FP story can be found here.

The USA pavilion saga is a difficult, murky story, and one that I haven’t always enjoyed reporting, to put it lightly. But, for the record, if my reporting has given anyone the impression that I’m somehow opposed to a US pavilion, I’d like to set the record straight. I’m very much for a quality USA pavilion, designed, selected, and built in a manner that displays the best of American architecture, design, and values. For reasons which I detail in the FP piece, I don’t believe that the 2010 US pavilion accomplishes that; rather, the design and machinations surrounding its selection, funding, and construction, have served to embarrass the US. Are we better having a poor pavilion than no pavilion at all? I suppose so, but that’s a sorry, sorry choice. Fortunately, I’m not alone in the opinion, and as a result there’s good reason to hope that – if the US decides to participate in Expo 2015 in Milan – things might be better. More on that another time. (more…)

[UPDATE: Outside of the Chinese media and the Daily Telegraph, it seems like nobody is particularly interested in covering Apple's child labor record. TechNewsWorld takes a hard look at why, and comes down hard on a compliant, Apple-infatuated media.]

Spend any time reading online technology reviews and you’ve inevitably come across the Apple Fanboys – collectively, Apple’s most devoted customers, prone to blast away at any commentator with the temerity to write negatively about Apple’s products (or extol Microsoft’s). They’re a predictable bunch, but I must admit that I really didn’t expect them to show up for “Apple admits using child labour” a Saturday article in the Daily Telegraph by my friend Malcolm Moore (a very good reporter who follows up the article with an op-ed, here). Yet there they are, lambasting Malcolm at a rate of 2 to 1 (in a thread that now runs 120+ comments) for having the nerve to report that “only 61 per cent of Apple’s suppliers were following regulations to prevent injuries in the workplace and a mere 57 per cent had the correct environmental permits to operate.”

It’s worse at blogs devoted to Apple products. As just one example: an unusual number of commentators at TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) going so far as to suggest that child laborers at Apple are lucky. This borderline obscene example is a good example, and hardly an outlier:

“I would have jumped at the chance of build Apple mac at 15. think of the work experience. The headline should be “Apple giving teenagers valuable work experience”!

Presumably, the commentator wouldn’t have felt so lucky if he’d been employed at the iPhone manufacturer in Suzhou that recently exposed 49 workers to toxic n-hexane.

Snark aside, what distresses me most is an apparent erosion in the standards expected of developed-world companies operating in the developing world. Twenty years ago, when NGOs first started organizing around labor abuses at Nike and other foreign manufacturers in the developing world, misconduct much milder than what’s happening at Apple was cause for protest and boycotts. What’s changed in the intervening years? I’m inclined to say that consumers in the developed world have become acclimated, if not accustomed, to the idea that affordable products must be manufactured in facilities that don’t meet the minimum requirements of their home markets. But I’m not convinced, and I’d be interested in hearing other perspectives.

However, I am convinced of this: the Chinese public isn’t acclimated to the idea that companies like Apple demand and ensure better working conditions for employees and contractors in San Francisco, than they do for employees and contractors in China. So far, there’s been little call for Apple to rectify that situation. But as the self-reported violations pile up, I have no doubt that Chinese consumers will start to wonder why, and Apple’s advantages – whatever they might be – will start to erode in a market that the company covets badly.

[On a related note: In September I reported for Foreign Policy on the double standard that separates Apple's US-based e-waste recycling initiative, and the pathetically inadequate one that it's barely implemented in China.]

Over at Bill Bishop’s new Sinocism blog, there’s a very interesting post and discussion about how the New York Times handles corrections to its online edition. The example in question concerns a switch in a China-related headline, from “Beijing Police Beat Artists Protesting Evictions” to “Evicted Artists Protest After Attack in Beijing,” once somebody at the paper realized that the first one was inaccurate. Bishop’s concern – and it’s one that I share in the comments – is that the correction was made on the fly, with no correction or apology appended for running an inaccurate headline in the first place. [UPDATED: Three days later, following Bishop's widely-linked post, a correction has been appended to the online version of the evicted artists story.]

The case in question is China-related, but this is an issue that gets at a phenomenon – I’d characterize it as a problem – that I’ve noticed, and a number of my colleagues have noticed, over the last couple of years. And that is this: inaccuracies and outright mistakes that would have been corrected if they ran in the print edition of the NYT, are routinely erased from the online NYT, without note. This, despite the fact that the online side of the NYT is far more widely read than the print side.  I’ve touched on this phenomenon at Shanghai Scrap, a couple of years ago, here; I’m surprised that other reporters have shied from it. (more…)

[UPDATE: I've received an email from an IHT editor assuring me that a correction is being prepared for online and print.]

[UPDATE 2/26: The digital version of the story mentioned in this post has been corrected. Many thanks to the editors and writer who helped the process along. I appreciate it.]

Late this afternoon I began to receive emails from friends pointing out that I’m quoted extensively in a story about Shanghai blogs in today’s International Herald Tribune. Ordinarily, that’d be a good thing, something that I’d be proud to hear. Unfortunately, most people were emailing me in response to this passage:

Mr. Minter chose to make Shanghai his home because of “all of the money sloshing down these streets,” a testament to the entrepreneurial vibe that pulses through the city.

For the record, and for what it’s worth, I’d like to point out that I never made that statement. Somebody else did, and I merely quoted it in the written answers that I provided to a reporter’s questions. Below, the specific reporter’s question, and my answer, as copied from a February 16 email:

16. Talk about the changes to the city since you first moved there, physically, socially, economically, etc.

[My answer] The physical changes are dramatic. I’ve watched with real regret as the city’s historic architectural core has been demolished in favor of modern high-rises. That’s a pity.

Economically, the city has become visibly more wealthy. A friend recently referred to “all of the money sloshing down these streets.” I think that’s accurate – and it’s recent.

Shanghai remains the same cultural firmament that I first experienced seven years ago. Constant flux. And yet, despite the flux, I haven’t sensed much change. The Shanghainese still maintain their traditional value and culture – despite tinkering at the edges.

To summarize – I did not move to Shanghai due to all of the money “sloshing down the streets,” and neither am I the author of that quote. What might have motivated the authors of the IHT piece to manipulate my answer is beyond me. But they did it, and I not only noticed, I have a copy of the original emailed interview … you little bastards. [temper, temper, apologies, apologies]

[UPDATE 2/26: My admittedly intemperate comment above (since crossed out) shouldn't obscure the fact that I've been extremely impressed with with the professionalism exhibited by Maile Cannon and the IHT editors. They communicated with me promptly after the mistake was pointed out, and they really did attempt to correct the situation to the best of their abilities. Worth noting, too, that Maile has a self-effacing sense of humor - a good quality in anyone, but especially in a journalist.]

On the bright side, some of the emails that I’ve received as a result of this debacle are keepers, with the best one beginning: “In the years we’ve known each other we’ve been in the presence of money sloshing down the streets on several occasions and you managed to miss all of them.” Uh, thanks.

[UPDATE 2/26: Of the many emails I've received in regard to this article - 95% of which reference that quote - this is my favorite: "I did, however, obtain a needed dose of amusement today by imagining you telling some IHT reporter that you moved to Shanghai because the streets were sloshing with money. A modern update to the immigrant tale where the streets are paved with gold, but more tangible and more liquid." Indeed.]

Sheepishly, I concede that this is the second or third post in which I’ve promised to get back to regular blogging shortly. But, you know, Chinese New Year leads into a new year of work, and now I’m bogged down in a couple of projects that require my fixed attention. In the case of one project, it feels a bit like sorting scrap – fines, to be precise, the exceedingly small pieces of mixed metals that come off metal shredders and are exported to China and other low-cost labor countries for hand-sorting. Below, an image taken at a facility devoted to this kind of recycling in Guangdong Province.

In the interest of dispelling some stereotypes: being able to identify, by sight and feel, various metals, is a skill, and the women who do this work – and they are mostly women – are highly sought by Guangdong’s recyclers, and highly compensated (by Chinese labor standards). For example, the woman in this photo is paid between RMB 2000 (US$291)and RMB 2500 (US$365) per month, for a forty-hour week, and she would have no problem finding another job, tomorrow, for similar wages, at a similar facility. Entry-level white collar workers in the same town would have a very hard time finding similar pay.

In any case, I’m sorting facts and figures (though I’m hardly as adept as a good south China metal sorter), sentences and paragraphs, and hoping to be free and clear in a day or two.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll join me in wishing the China Beat – one of the truly great China blogs – a happy third birthday. Even if you don’t visit China blogs on a regular basis, the anniversary post is worth reading as a quality guide for how and why to blog as a group. Very impressive.

The Chinese New Year holiday is coming to an end, and so is this blog’s reticence on a range of issues. We should be back to full-strength – or pretty close – early next week. For now, one quick Chinese New Year item that I meant to post before the holiday, and forgot. Here’s the deal: back in January, World Expo 2010 organizers told Shanghai Daily that nearly 20% of the more than 100 pavilions to be built for the massive event would not be ready for the opening on May 1. Part of the problem – and it was a big one – was that much of the migrant labor force required to build the 2.5 mile fair-ground and its pavilions was planning to take two weeks off to enjoy the New Year holiday. Below, some of those laborers enjoying a break outside of the terrific Dutch pavilion.

Anyway, a few days before the Shanghai Daily story ran, I happened to be at the Expo site, visiting one of the incomplete national pavilions (to be clear: not the Dutch pavilion). While there, someone associated with the structure told me that – out of fear of losing the structure’s two-hundred man labor force – New Year bonuses were being offered. According to this person, the regular daily wage at this particular pavilion (can’t speak for the others) was/is RMB 200, or roughly US$29.00/day. That’s one hell of a good wage for a Chinese construction worker, but – apparently – not nearly enough to keep a migrant worker with leverage – in this case, incomplete Expo 2010 pavilions – in his back pocket. And so, according to the national pavilion official with whom I spoke, cagey/homesick migrant laborers rejected offers of RMB 400 (US$58), RMB 600 (US$87), and RMB 1000 (US$145)  per day to work during the two-week Chinese New Year. Those are serious wages for white collars in Shanghai, much less a migrant construction workers, and I hereby offer my sincere respect to whomever was responsible for the migrant side of that negotiation. Alas, I didn’t manage to follow-up on what the ultimate outcome/wage was, but – with labor rates like that – I suspect that more than a few migrants called home to ask that the fireworks be lit without them.

Year of the Tiger blogging, coming next week.

First things first: yesterday Foreign Policy published Rich Dog, Poor Dog, my take on China’s proposed animal cruelty law. In it, I suggest that animal protection is a Chinese-style wedge issue, dividing opponents and supporters by region and socio-economic class (read it here). For the record, I think not enough credit is given to magazine editors when they come up with topics … so let me take a moment to thank Christina Larson, a contributing editor at FP, for thinking that I might be the right person to write this piece. It’s a subject that’s long interested me, but quite honestly it never would have occurred to me to propose an essay to a publication if she hadn’t asked. Larson’s very useful twitter feed can be found here, and her blog can be found here.

Those following my twitter feed know that I’m in Rio de Janeiro – on assignment, mind you – and it just so happens that my assignment coincides with Carnaval. Funny that. Anyway, tweeting and blogging will continue to be light through the middle of the week, at which time I’ll resume somewhat regular posting. For now, a photo taken in a Rio-area recycling plant partly devoted to recycling the flood of aluminum beverage (read: beer) containers that this region generates – especially during the raucous Carnaval season. (more…)

The staff of Shanghai Scrap has been traveling for the last week or so – three continents, 15,000 miles, in a week or so, actually – and thus posting has been light to non-existent. But, thankfully, we have found a port to call our own: Guarujá, Brazil. We’ll be spending a week on assignment here, meeting members of the local recycling industry – including this gentleman, whom we found on the beach this afternoon. According to him, aluminum cans are going for $.75/lb., roughly, and he’s not happy about that market at all.

While traveling I’ve had the time to read Michelle Mercer’s terrific Will You Take Me As I Am: Joni Mitchell’s Blue Period, a careful examination of Mitchell’s work from Blue, to Hejira (Shanghai Scrap’s all-time favorite recording). It’s not a music biography, though, so much as a careful consideration of how memory intersects with imagination to create art. Highly, highly recommended – whether you’re a Joni fan or not.

Posting to be intermittent for the next few days.

I’ve been facing the working journo’s version of a devil’s cocktail: multiple deadlines mixed with lots of travel. But despite my burdens, I was still able to take note of Daily Beast’s over-the-top effort to render recent diplomatic spats between the US and China into something … scary. Specifically,  a (re)package of stories that it labels “How scary is China?” Below,  the very picture of mindless fear-mongering (click to enlarge).

Now, I happen to think a package of stories that examines recent diplomatic difficulties between the US and China is a fine idea. And I’m all for flashy headlines. But if, say, someone were looking for proof that certain elements of the US media are reflexively anti-China (define as you see fit), headlines that ask how – not whether – China is scary, would be a fine place to start. Me, personally, I don’t find anything particularly unusual about the recent US-China flare-ups – except for the amount of coverage they’re receiving from US and Chinese press compared to, for example, past coverage of Taiwanese arm sales. And, generally, I think that’s a good thing: it means more people are paying attention to US-China relations. A pity, though, that the Daily Beast’’s contribution to that generally positive development is a headline unworthy of a high school newspaper, much less a news organization that fancies itself respectable. Way to go.

[Thanks to Anup Kaphle for pointing out the Beast package via one of his tweets.]

Regular readers may recall this blog’s comprehensive survey of 141 Shanghai Christmas trees, posted in December. Ever since and, really, before, Shanghai Scrap has taken a keen interest in these Western holiday accessories: who owns them, why, and what happens to them after Christmas. One answer suggests that certain Christmas traditions are universal: namely, the owners have simply forgotten to take them down, despite the fact that the holiday season, by any reasonable definition, is over. But in recent days I’ve noticed a different answer popping up in and around some of Shanghai’s shopping malls: Christmas trees are being converted into Chinese New Year trees. The transformation is usually rather simple, usually requiring little more than a change in color, and perhaps some fake gold coins sprinkled around the trunk. I’ve seen several examples of these transformed trees  in the last few days, but none quite so grand as the giant gold tree in front of Plaza 66 on Nanjing Road. First, the tree as it was decorated for the Christmas season:

And, below, the same tree, as photographed yesterday, spray-painted red for the Chinese New Year season. Awesome! FYI: the giant red rose was there before Christmas – then gold, of course – but for some reason I failed to photograph it. If anybody has an image of the pair, I’d be grateful for permission to post it above [UPDATE: Flickr user ybouc tweeted this image of the Christmas-era tree and rose. Thanks!].

This is not the only Shanghai instance of this phenomenon. I’ve seen similar holiday metamorphoses take place in the Grand Gateway mall, and outside whatever that mall is next to Jing’an Temple. Now, I concede that this sort of thing may have been happening in previous years, and I just failed to notice it. But whatever. To my eyes, it’s another example of China’s über-pragmatic recycling culture (indeed, recycling of cultures) at work, where re-use is privileged over re-processing any day of the week. In any case, if you don’t share China’s enthusiasm for the lunar new year (even though you really should), you can always take the dull, developed world approach to recycling Christmas trees, offered here.

[UPDATE - February 22, 2010. Three weeks later, Tim Stratford accepts a job in the Beijing law office where Dr. Kasoff's wife is a partner.]

Tomorrow at 12:30 PM, the US-China Business Council [USCBC] and the US Information Technology Office [USITO] in Beijing will host a luncheon briefing featuring Tim Stratford, an assistant US Trade Representative, and Dr. Ira Kasoff, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Asia. According to the notice for the event posted at the American Chamber of Commerce, the two gentlemen “will provide an update on plans for the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) in 2010 and a briefing on their meetings with Chinese officials during their visit.” It should be an interesting briefing: the JCCT is a twenty-seven-year-old dialogue between senior US and Chinese government officials that has played a key role in resolving trade disputes and, in the process, has directly benefited – and penalized – companies involved in that trade (a list of China’s JCCT commitments between 2004 and 2009 can be found here).

The presence of Dr. Kasoff at the event should be particularly informative. As a senior Commerce Dept deputy for Asia, and a member of the Market Access and Trade Compliance Staff at the International Trade Administration in Washington, D.C., Dr. Kasoff is a highly influential figure in US-China trade relations. And he has been so for years: prior to his current role, he served in six US Commercial Service assignments in Asia, including a stint as the Chief Commercial Officer in Shanghai.

Thus, when Friday’s off-record lunch convenes at the Westin Chaoyang in Beijing, Dr. Kasoff’s stature ensures that he will look out at an audience that includes  representatives of leading American and Chinese businesses with a keen interest in how his actions – and, by extension, the work of the ITA and the JCCT – will impact their operation in coming weeks, months, and years. No doubt, many of those faces will be familiar to Dr. Kasoff from his years of work on US-China trade issues and, no doubt, many of them will be familiar to Dr. Kasoff’s wife, Ellen Eliasoph, a co-chair of the troubled US pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai. [She is also a partner in the Beijing office of Covington &Burling, the law firm which Stratford announced he was joining three weeks after his joint appearance with Kasoff.]

The reason is pretty straight-forward: Ms. Eliasoph, in her official State Department-designated capacity, has naturally solicited many if not most of the leading US companies operating in China for donations to the privately-financed US pavilion project (donations that are often measured in the millions of dollars). She has also solicited and raised money from Chinese companies. In both cases, her actions, and relationship to Dr. Kasoff have gone mostly unquestioned.

Those questions need to be asked. (more…)

I’m tied down on deadline today (breaking only for the inaugural meeting of the Shanghai Metals Club – more on that another time), but I would be seriously out of line if I didn’t alert folks to a couple of fascinating posts on the Chinese pearl industry over at Deep Glamour (Part I, here; Part II, here; interview with the author, here). They’re excerpted from Stephen Bloom’s new book, Tears of Mermaids: The Secret Story of Pearls. Below, an image taken in Zhuji, China’s pearl capitol, two years ago, by my friend Randy Goodman (a great non-ferrous scrap metal man).

Of the pearls extracted from these shells, Bloom writes:

The Chinese freshwaters were a breakthrough in the fashion marketplace. Fashion-conscious women around the world started wearing pearls that weren’t just white or cream-colored, and not always round. Stylish younger women gravitated to them. These pearls had four things going for them: they were colorful, they often weren’t symmetrical (the baroque shapes appealed to non-traditional pearl wearers), they had the legitimacy of being real pearls, and they were downright cheap when compared to traditional pearls. As their size got larger, the Chinese freshwaters readily turned into trendy fashion items, turning into accessories fashion-forward women in their twenties and thirties from Paris to São Paulo just had to have. It didn’t hurt that women like Meryl Streep, Jennifer Aniston, and eventually Michelle Obama started wearing them, too.

Back tomorrow with some questions for and about one of the more mysterious figures in the US Pavilion at Expo 2010 fiasco.

I like scrap yards; I’m fascinated by what happens to the things that developed societies don’t want anymore; and I’m even more fascinated by the ingenuity that developing societies do with those throwaways. Scrap yards are not, by their very nature, sentimental places, and I really can’t say that I’ve ever felt emotional about the automobiles, appliances, and other recognizable items that I’ve witnessed being cut, crushed and shredded, worldwide.

But there’s one exception: ships. I don’t know why, but there’s something undeniably poignant about witnessing a large sea-faring vessel reduced to steel, and then to nothing. Below, a photo that I took on Saturday at a Chinese ship-breaking facility. To the left, a just arrived vessel undergoing the first stages of its demolition. And to the lower right, its eventual fate (roughly two months from now) as embodied in a (once) similarly-sized ship. Click to enlarge.

I’m told that vessels which arrive at this particular ship-breaking yard are greeted by a shower of fireworks ignited to scare off any ghosts that they might be carrying. In one notable case, the shower of fireworks was accompanied by bagpipes played by the ship’s captain – in his kilt – as the ship docked. I’m also told that – due to a superstition that nobody was willing to explain – women were only recently allowed to board the ships. If somebody knows why – perhaps a sea-faring reader? – I’d be much appreciative if you commented or emailed via the contact form.

After the jump, we get even more poignant … (more…)

Earlier this week I was skimming my favorite state-owned Chinese newspapers when I came across this rather startling People’s Daily headline regarding I.M. Pei, the last of the great modernist architects:

According to the article, the developer of the museum “has invested 50 million yuan to invite Pei to design the museum” and “[r]eporters also learned that the museum will be Pei’s 75th design.”

Well.

An I.M. Pei commission is big news whenever and wherever it happens, but particularly in China, where the Guangdong-born architect designed a mere two buildings, and the last one – the Suzhou Museum (2006) – was widely rumored to be his last. If he were to take on a third building, it would be major news – major China and architectural news – and surely People’s Daily and other influential state-run newspapers would have the story on the first day. But, curiously, even two days after the People’s Daily story, no other newspaper in China or outside of it was reporting that I.M. Pei had just accepted his 75th commission.

So I contacted Mr. Pei’s office and asked whether or not there was anything to this Nanjing commission. This morning, I received the following emailed response from Nancy Robinson, I.M. Pei’s Executive Assistant:

We received your message about the report in the Chinese press about the Nanjing project. I was not familiar with this, so I asked Mr. Pei about it. He has no involvement in the project described in the press.