Shanghai Scrap

Today, a brief post basically repudiating yesterday’s post on the increasingly tired topic of Yi Jianlian. It seems that Sporting News got it wrong: Yi, and not his agent, is the source of the demand that the Bucks trade him to a city with a larger Asian population. Marc Stein of ESPN reports on the meeting between Bucks GM Larry Harris, Coach Larry Kryskowiak, Yi, and – presumably – Yi’s representatives.

When asked how receptive Yi was to his pitch, Harris added: “He was very pleasant, very engaging. I think he’s excited about playing in the NBA. But I made it very clear [to Yi] — not in a negative way — that we’re not going to trade you.”

In response? Yi didn’t outright demand a trade but, according to sources, insisted that it remains his wish — as opposed to an agenda being pushed by Nike or his American agent Dan Fegan — to play in a bigger market with a larger Asian population.

[sidenote: why did Stein's sources insist on background? Obviously, the sources in question were at the meeting, and that meeting was attended by three or four people. Weird. Stein doesn't speak Chinese; Yi barely speaks English; Stein is a full-time NBA writer with very well-developed sources in the league, so that leaves ... ]

If this is the case – and I suppose it probably is – then I imagine that NBA commissioner David Stern is going to do everything in his power to preserve the integrity of the draft and somehow force Yi to play in Milwaukee.

Earlier this week I wrote about the unusual payment procedure at a Shanghai FedEx Kinko’s outlet located on Huaihai Road. Instead of maintaining one register for shipping and documents, this particular outlet has a separate cash register for documents … and a little tin box for shipping charges. When I visited on July 10, I was told that I could not use a credit card for the shipping charges, and that I could not be issued a receipt (the store clerk promised that a receipt would be mailed to me). As I handed over my cash, I watched with some astonishment as it was stuffed into the little cash box.

Anyway, FedEx has elected to respond to my post. In full, it is:

Under the FedEx brand, we have separate companies which are separate legal entities that operate independently, compete collectively and are managed collaboratively. We strive to offer seamless service to our customers. For regulatory and accounting reasons, we are unable to accept a single payment for services offered by separate companies. In the case of FedEx Kinko’s in China, we accept both credit card and cash payments for FedEx Express packages. These payments are however kept separate from the FedEx Kinko’s funds.

On July 10, FedEx Express credit card machines were temporarily out of service. For a short period of time only, all transactions had to be paid in cash.In regard to the first paragraph, I am inclined to give the company the benefit of the doubt. But just to be sure, I sent the response to a friend who runs a major business consultancy for overseas corporations in Shanghai. He has expertise in these matters, and writes back:

In a way, they are right…they probably do have two legal entities and need to account for them separately. However, it is VERY possible to pay one and then that amount can be divided among the two companies through back-office transfers, etc. It is a pain in the butt to do, of course, because this is China and we are all still on a cash-based system! Barter works too, I suppose.

Fair enough. However, the second paragraph of the statement – the one claiming that the company’s credit card machines were down on July 10 – defies belief and is, at best, misleading.

I’ll explain. Since writing this post, I have heard from two readers of this blog who have had the same payment experience at the Huaihai FedEx outlet. That is, they had to pay cash for the shipments (credit was not allowed), and that cash was deposited into the little cash box. No receipt – register or otherwise – was issued. In either case, the Huaihai outlet has only one cash register, and that register is used only for the printing business. There is no cash register – and thus, no credit card machine attached to a register – for the use of FedEx’s shipping business. Could there be a credit card machine attached to that little metal cash box?

Anyway, I am going to email FedEx’s media people and ask:

1. Do they have a credit card machine specifically for the shipping business in the Shanghai Huaihai outlet?

2. Can they produce a cash register receipt – either cash or credit – issued between July 1 and 10 for a FedEx shipping charge in the Huaihai office?

Bottom line for all of this: FedEx China cannot (and will not?) meet the company’s US service standards.

Updates forthcoming.

[UPDATE: In the comments section below, ScottL sums this up nicely: Whatever their spin service is not seamless, nor is the problem temporary as confirmed by others having similar experience. Why not fess up to the consumers’ experience that FedEx Kinko’s in China disserves FedEx’ well-earned US reputation? Rather than dissimulate, why doesn’t FedEx simply say, “we’re going to do better” and do it?]

I have no idea why the retired Scottie Pippen is commenting on this ongoing mess, but there he is – in China Daily, no less – encouraging Yi to abide by the draft and play in Milwaukee. This follows upon other reports mentioned in earlier posts that the rabid Chinese NBA fan base agrees with Pippen.

The question is: Just who is responsible for Yi’s increasingly unpopular and ill-advised holdout? In prior posts, I suggested that it was Yi, and not his managers. But Sean Deveney of Sporting News, who clearly knows much more about these matters than me, suggests that the problem is actually the Guangdong Tigers, the Chinese club which still holds rights to Yi. Deveney writes:

The Tigers interview agents, and one of their first questions is sure to be, “So, how much of a buyout can you give us?” The team is mostly owned privately, and they knew they could make some real money off of Yi. Fegan is a very slick and accomplished agent. It would only make sense that he would assume he could manipulate the league and promise the Tigers to deliver Yi to a big market with a large Chinese community, where he could make serious endorsement dollars. The Tigers, of course, would get a big slice of those endorsements.

[One possible disagreement with Deveney: It seems to me that the really big endorsement money will come from Chinese companies - in China - wanting to get involved with Yi - and not from American ones.]

Perhaps the most interesting piece of reporting in Deveney’s piece concerns Yao Ming, and the fact that Yi did not have the ability (or courage?) to stand up to the Guangdong Tigers in the way that Yao stood up to his former club, the pitiable Shanghai Sharks. This might explain Yao’s cryptic comment cited in an earlier post, that “Yi must walk his own road … Chinese players are very modest, but this does not mean that he should not make his own feelings known.”

Finally, I think it safe to assume that no matter how this turns out, the brochure and promotional video sent to Yi by the Milwaukee Association of Commerce, will have had limited impact.

Over the last two weeks Pope Benedict XVI has issued what are likely to be viewed as two of the most consequential documents of his Papacy. On June 30, he issued his landmark letter to China’s Catholics; and on July 7 he issued his Motu Proprio de-restricting the use of the pre-concilliar traditional Latin liturgy (commonly referred to as the Latin Mass). I’ve had quite a bit to say about the former document, and I’ll have almost nothing to say about the latter (it is well beyond my area of expertise). Nevertheless, I’ve been meaning to post some information about the history of the use of the Chinese language in the mass in China, and it seems to me that the Motu Proprio offers the perfect opportunity to do so.

But first let me state that I don’t intend for this post to be taken as an argument for or against the Motu Proprio, the vernacular, Vatican II, or anything else that gets the blood flowing on either side of the pews. Quite simply, those are not my battles. Instead, I post this information as a matter of historic interest and, to a slightly lesser extent, contemporary perspective on the Church in China.

Here goes.

From the beginning of Chinese Catholicism in the 13th century, the mass was performed in Latin. Yet quite early on, in the 16th cenutry, the Jesuits decided that evangelization would be easier – if not more successful – if the Chinese language could be used in place of Latin. In 1615, the Jesuits received permission from Pope Paul V to use Chinese in the liturgy, and to ordain priests who had no knowledge of Latin. However, because of the ensuing Chinese Rites Controversey, this development was blocked for more than three centuries, until Pope Pius XII renewed permission in 1939. But World War II and the ascent of the Communists, blocked this development, too.

Anyway, in my profile of Shanghai’s Bishop Jin Luxian in the current issue of the Atlantic, I describe the process by which then-Father Jin accepted the rectorship of Shanghai’s government registered seminary in 1982 (the first to open in the post-Mao period). Shortly after accepting, Jin commissioned an architect to design the building. The structure was – and is – nothing architecturally interesting, yet several foreigners who were shown the plans in 1982 and 1983 distinctly recall that the chapel altar was unlike any they’d seen before. In effect, the plans called for a stone altar to be placed several feet from the back wall of the church, and then a false wooden backstop would connect the table to the wall. With the backstop in place, the altar was a classic pre-Vatican II design requiring the priests to turn away from the congregation (or, conversely, toward God, in leading the congregation) during the mass. But the backstop was a temporary device, and it could be removed, thus allowing priests to move behind it and turn toward the congregation. Jin didn’t know when, but he hoped that eventually a time would come when that backstop could be removed and the new form of the mass could be performed.

According to Father Thomas Law, a Hong Kong liturgist who played an important role in preparing the Chinese language liturgy used today throughout China, the Chinese government preferred the older form of the mass “because the people didn’t understand it [Latin].” However, it was not only about language (otherwise, the older form could have just been spoken in Chinese). “If the priest turns toward the congregation and speaks Chinese, then suddenly it’s easier to give a homily in Chinese,” Law recalled. “And that wasn’t acceptable, either.” Jin was quite aware of both factors, yet he was also determined to introduce Vatican II (he translated the documents into Chinese) into the Chinese Catholic Church (due to the political events that began in the 1950s, the Chinese Church was still very much frozen in 1951).

Still, in the early and mid-1980s, Jin was in no position to challenge government policy on the language used in the mass. As it was, he had struggles enough just getting books and teachers for his seminary. But in 1988 he became bishop and his position was strengthened. In late summer 1989 he asked Father Law – who was then teaching at the Sheshan seminary – to begin quietly training Sheshan’s seminarians for a Chinese mass. Those preparations took roughly one month (the seminarians only knew the older rite), and on September 30, 1989, the backstop was finally removed from the seminary chapel altar. Father Joseph Zen, the future Cardinal Archbishop of Hong Kong, and a native of Shanghai, was then teaching alongside Law at Sheshan, and he was given the honor of being the celebrant at the historic event. Also present was the late Father Edward Malatesta, a Jesuit associated with the University of San Francisco.

When I spoke to him, Law recalled that the mass was extremely “emotional” and that some people “had tears afterwards.”

Over the next months and years, the new mass was celebrated intermittently – but with increasing frequency – in Sheshan, and then, slowly, in Shanghai’s few other churches. Significantly, though, the government did not approve the use of the new mass until 1992 – by which point Father Law had completed work on a Chinese language missal that met the standards of the Vatican (which approved it at a very high level), and Chinese congregations.

The following three photos of the historic mass were taken by Father Law, who kindly provided them to me last fall when I met with him in Hong Kong.

The scene from the chapel. Built in the mid-1980s, the Sheshan Seminary facility was the first Catholic seminary in post-Mao China. It was and is an “open” church facility, registered with and monitored by the government. The curriculum is partly determined by the government, but overseas clergy – such as the future Cardinal Archbishop Zen – have chosen to teach there, anyway. According to Father Law, there were approximately 100 seminarians and priests present for the mass. Among them were several future bishops, several of whom would be ordained with the pontifical mandate (the exact number is lost to history; we don’t know who, exactly, attended the event).

Father Joseph Zen, the future Cardinal Archbishop of Hong Kong, is accompanied by two unidentified attendants to the altar.

Again, Father Zen, now facing the congregation. Note the proximity of the altar to the wall. Prior to September 30, a removable wooden backstop had rendered it a traditional altar appropriate to the older form of the mass.

Before concluding this lengthy post, I should acknowledge that the Pope’s letter calls for May 24 to be a day “dedicated to the liturgical memorial of Our Lady, Help of Christians, who is venerated with great devotion at the Marian Shrine of Sheshan in Shanghai.” The seminary is located just below the shrine, and though the shrine’s importance to China’s Catholics long preceded the seminary, I suspect that the seminary and its many important roles over the last twenty-five years (approximately 400 priests have trained there) may also have played some role in its inclusion.

One of the more interesting business stories of recent years is the mostly failed integration of freewheeling Kinko’s into the buttoned-down corporate discipline culture of FedEx. The shipping behemoth purchased the copy center chain in 2003 with high hopes of taking advantage of presumed synergies between the two brands. It made perfect sense: make your copies … and then express them to wherever.

Nobody could have foreseen that the two cultures wouldn’t meld, nor the fact that Kinko’s would be a drag on FedEx earnings, even four years later. But one would think – at a minimum – the retail outlets would have figured out a way to integrate their cash registers …

Which brings me to FedEx’s little tin full of Chinese cash:

Yesterday afternoon I stopped by the FedEx Kinko’s outlet on Shanghai’s Huaihai Road with the intention of shipping several packages to the United States and ordering a large copy job. I arrived with roughly US$40 in cash and relief at the sight of a sign promising that FedEx Kinko’s accepts Visa.

Except they don’t. When it came time to pay for my order, I pulled out the plastic and was immediately informed by the clerk that I could use credit for the copies but the shipping charges had to be paid in cash because “they are separate.” I begged to differ, and pointed out that the two companies had been one and the same since 2003. The clerk just smiled and repeated that “they are separate.”

So, after a mad dash to an ATM, I returned to the store with the cash which I handed to the clerk. However, instead of taking it to the register, he reached beneath the counter and placed a small cigar box-sized metal tin on a work station where another employee was collating copies. It looked like the tin that my grandmother uses at her garage sales, except hers isn’t stuffed tight with pink 100 yuan notes (roughly US$13, each) – including the ones that I gave the clerk. When I asked for a receipt, the clerk told me that he could not issue one, but would instead mail one later in the week.

This, from a company that generated US$9 billion in revenue last quarter.

The copies were another matter altogether. My credit card was accepted without issue, and I was given a cleanly printed receipt from a modern, computerized cash register.

What’s the point? Well, it’s one of the dirty little secrets of doing business in China that major multinationals typically don’t bring their A game to the Mainland. Often, they don’t even bring their B game. Clearly, this is the standard that FedEx and its little tin full of cash is living up to. Seriously: could any FedEx Kinko’s outlet in the United States even dream about this kind of stunt? I’ll post an update if and when I receive my receipt in the mail.

If Yi Jianlian ends up spending his season watching NBA highlights on a flatscreen in Guangzhou, he’ll at least have some Milwaukee Bucks gear to keep him company. According to ESPN, Yi had a sit-down with Bucks management on Friday, during which he was given his very own jersey. The ESPN story isn’t very clear about what constituted management – it could have just been the equipment manager – but it’s quite clear that Senator Herb Kohl, the Bucks owner, was not there. Which just goes to show that Yi Jianlian is still willing to snub the four-term US Senator and his (still) likely future employer by demanding a trade.

In an age of coddled pro athletes, Yi might be the most coddled of all. After all, what other US employer would be willing to listen to this: “Thanks for the job offer and visa – But if you know what’s good for you, you’d better go and find someone else to employ me.” The Immigration and Naturalization Service would be on the case within hours and, after grilling Yi about possibly lying to his future employer about his real age, not to mention refusing to work, he’d be on the first plane back to China.

Enter Yao Ming. Yao, when asked to comment on his national team colleague, seemed to imply that Yi has nothing to do with this stand-off beyond an inability to stand-up to his managers:

“Yi must walk his own road,” Yao said. “Chinese players are very modest, but this does not mean that he should not make his own feelings known.”

Modest or not (and this is standard Chinese boilerplate for any misbehaving native of the People’s Republic), Yi shouldn’t expect a free pass just because his management seems determined to singlehandedly resuscitate the recently failed US immigration legislation.

In the end, I expect the Bucks will prevail in this thing (though I’d sure hate to be on the receiving end of what the Milwaukee fans will send Yi’s way during his first player introduction), if only because the Chinese national team is determined to see Yi gain NBA experience in advance of the 2008 Olympics. As is, if Yi refuses to play for the Bucks in 2007, he’ll only be able to enter the 2008 draft if he forgoes professional play entirely in 2008. And that means anywhere, including China.

[UPDATE: A comment below points to a China Daily article reporting that Yi’s meeting with the Bucks included Bucks general manager Larry Harris and coach Larry Krystkowiak. The overall point of the story, however, is that Chinese NBA fans want Yi to suck it up and play for Milwaukee. My personal weekend poll of two Chinese NBA fans came up with the same results. However, none of that would matter if it wasn’t backed up with a quote from the coach of the Chinese national team (who blamed all of this on the foreigner – er, I mean, Yi’s agent). Anyway, this should be over soon.

The letter has been out a week, and the more reflective responses are beginning to appear (… I’ll just pretend that I didn’t blog on the text within hours of the release …). Before I get to those, though, I’d like to point out a passage – actually, a sentence – that I only noticed yesterday, while going through the letter for a different essay. At the beginning of the ninth paragraph of the section entitled (in English) “The Chinese Episcopate,” it reads:

Currently all the Bishops of the Catholic Church in China are sons of the Chinese People.

This is a statement of profound importance in the history of the Chinese Church, as it acknowledges, in effect, that for most of China’s Catholic history, the bishops were not sons of the Chinese People. As late as 1949, roughly 80% of Chinese dioceses were in the hands of Europeans, a situation which many Chinese Church experts look back upon with no small amount of regret. At a minimum, the large number of foreign bishops lent credence to Communist accusations that the Chinese Church used religion as a cover for imperial and colonial politics. At worse, it prevented the Chinese clergy from developing their own indigenous leadership, and that had a seriously negative impact on the development of the Church after 1978.

Thus, this sentence strikes me as an acknowledgment of this difficult history, as well as another assurance that the Church has no political (read: imperial) ambitions in China (thus acknowledging China’s greatest fear of the Church). That’s all that I have to say about that for now, though I do think it’s worth noting that the sentence seems out of place in its context, almost a non-sequiter bordered by two sentences that seem to be having a different conversation.

Next, I’m pleased to note that UCAN has published Fr. Jeroom Heyndrickx’s commentary on the letter. I mentioned this commentary last week, (it had been sent to me privately).

UCAN has also published a very important and illuminating interview with Anthony Lam of the Holy Spirit Study Centre in Hong Kong. Lam is one of the world’s great experts on the Chinese Church, and his books are absolutely essential for anyone who wants to understand it (they are available through the Study Centre). Anyway, his UCAN interview reflects upon the Pope’s revocation of special faculties and privileges for the underground Church – some of which were being exercised right up to the letter’s release.

Two additional UCAN articles offer early hints that the underground Church is less than thrilled with the Pope’s letter. The ever-loquacious Cardinal Zen says that the letter “certainly does not encourage” the underground bishops to surface. This is a curious statement, especially in light of Zen’s obvious efforts to distance himself from the letter and the fact that the official English-language translation of the Pope’s letter reads as follows:

Underground bishops are encouraged to apply for recognition by civil authorities.

[CORRECTION 7/10/07: When writing this post, I had intended to compare Cardinal Zen's statement with the text of the Pope's letter and the commentary published by Jeroom Heyndrickx (to which Zen seems to be reacting). In my haste to post, however, I left out the relevant text from the Pope's letter while managing to suggest that Heyndrickx's quote is from the letter itself. It is not. Please note that the above quote is from Jeroom Heyndrickx, and not the Pope's letter. The correct quote from the Pope's letter is:

"There would not be any particular difficulties with acceptance of the recognition granted by civil authorities on condition that this does not entail the denial of unrenounceable principles of faith and of ecclesiastical communion."

This quote suggests, I believe, the reason that Rome will need to clarify the "civil effects" issue at some point. It is also worth noting that Rick Garnett, a thoughtful scholar of law and church-state relations at Notre Dame, also notes this passage. I imagine that he will have something interesting to say about it, and soon. ]

If I had to guess which passage of the letter will be clarified first, it would be that one.

Finally, UCAN publishes a letter from an underground priest with some very pointed criticisms and a request:

Church history tells us that those who give their lives and blood for their faith in any country subsequently have no important position at the negotiation table … However, the fact that the pope, as pastor of the Universal Church, does not even mention those still suffering in his letter is frustrating and shocking … We only want assurance that the Universal Church has not totally abandoned these people who are suffering, in silence.

More than any other document that I’ve yet read, these passages indicate just how fundamentally the letter has altered the dynamic within China’s Catholic Church. A mere two weeks ago such a statement from the underground – which has always emphasized its singular loyalty and obediance to the Pope – would have been unthinkable.

Sunday’s South China Morning Post had a story about an array of rumors which are driving people from the countryside into Guangdong Province’s thriving recycling industry [subscriber only]. The essence is here:

Zhang Wulong is an unlikely looking bounty hunter. A gawky 19-year-old in a shabby T-shirt and jeans, his face still bears the marks of teenage acne as he chatters excitedly about his hopes of stumbling across a secret fortune so huge that he will never have to work again.”I came here to try my luck,” he said, explaining why he left his home village 1,000km away in Hunan province with a group of young friends to come to Guangdong province. “That’s why we all came here. If we find what we’ve come here to find, it will be like winning the lottery.”

… The motivation is not the miserly wages, but instead a succession of fantastical stories that have spread like wildfire in recent months in rural provinces that migrant workers are finding bundles of [bank]notes accidentally thrown out with the trash by wealthy westerners.

Simon Parry, who wrote the story, attempts to find sociological significance in these stories, which he labels “apocryphal” and “rumors,” via an anthropologist: “an oddly distorted perspective on wealth creation and its morality among ordinary mainlanders who have seen so many fortunes apparently made overnight in the course of the country’s economic revolution.” However, on the all-important topic of who actually started the rumors, Parry dodges:

“… the crucial aspect was not who first told the story but why the story was so enthusiastically passed along from person to person.”

Actually, no.

Nearly five years ago, on my first trip to Guangdong’s scrap yards, I heard the same rumors about banknotes being tossed into loads of overseas scrap metal and paper sent to China. When I inquired, one owner of a yard explained – with a smirk – that other yards (certainly not his!) would purposely slip US dollar bills and other valuables into sortable scrap so as to improve the overall productivity of the small army of labor necessary to sort through the mess that is – typically – an overseas load of mixed scrap paper and cardboard. The SCMP story didn’t provide any photos of what this kind of sorting looks like, so I’ll volunteer my own images to fill in the gap. Here, for example, is a sorting facility just outside of Zhengzhou, in Henan Province. Now, imagine how productivity would be improved if a few dollar bills were suddenly scattered among the old pizza boxes:

Below, one more photo, taken in a plant outside of Jinan, in Shandong Province. Here, the paper is Canadian and baled, and the workers are breaking up the bales. Most (if not all) scrap paper and cardboard shipped to China is baled, and thus I have to wonder how plant managers are able to slip banknotes – convincingly – into the bales … but that’s a topic for another day.

[UPDATE: In response to an email - I did not intend this post to come off as insensitive to Chinese scrap laborers. I've documented the lives of Chinese scrap laborers in several places (and will again, soon), and I understand and respect their sacrifices and conditions well.]

I have to admit that I was a bit startled to find my name in a July 6 column written by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in First Things. Neuhaus, for those who don’t know him, is a Catholic priest and writer probably best known for forging a political alliance between conservative Catholics and the American evangelical movement (he is also known to be a close advisor to President Bush). Politics aside, however, he is an eloquent and forthright writer on a range of topics, and as the founder and editor of First Things, he has a place to publish them.

Anyway, I managed to appear in the last paragraph of a column devoted to the Pope’s letter to China’s Catholics. Neuhaus mentions my profile of Shanghai Bishop Jin Luxian in the current issue of the Atlantic, and then writes:

It is most regrettable that Minter thinks it necessary to take a slap at Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong, who is a man of enormous courage and a real hero in the cause of religious and other freedoms.

[Neuhaus also suggests that I was too uncritical in the profile - a charge repeated by others, and one that I will answer in another forum, soon]

The article in question makes two references to Zen – one a note on his role in the first Chinese language mass, and the other an off-handed quote from Jin – neither of which could be construed as a slap. So my guess is that Neuhaus is referring to what I had to say about Zen in the interview that accompanied the Atlantic article:

But I think what’s come as a surprise is that since he’s ascended to this role of Cardinal he’s also been critical of the Open Church. For many Chinese Catholics, such criticism has come kind of out of left field, and nobody really knows what to make of it. It also hasn’t proven to be very helpful in his efforts to serve as an informal bridge; Beijing has made it clear that he’s not welcome there, and his relationship with the leaders of the CPA has completely bottomed out. I don’t think it’s a controversial statement to say that he’s changed since becoming cardinal. And that has surprised and hurt a lot of people who he’s known for decades. They seem to feel like he should know better.

I’m not sure that this can be characterized as a slap. If anything, it’s reporting; that is, it’s a statement of fact, and one that can be verified. Neuhaus may not like the facts – that’s his prerogative – but it would be nice if he could acknowledge them instead of conflating them with disagreeable opinions.

[update: Jen Ambrose defends me - generously! - on this point, and makes some very interesting observations on Zen, in the process]

[2nd update: Ross Douthat, in his thoughtful blog at the Atlantic’s website, also mentions the Neuhaus quote. I think Ross is correct that Jin is envious of Zen’s ability to be outspoken, and I distinctly recall that moment in the interview. Jin had a kind of wry smile on his face – wry, because he was commenting upon Zen, a complicated figure with whom he has a long and deep acquaintance (Zen is a native Shanghainese, and he taught in Shanghai’s seminary during the 1980s and 90s, when Jin was rector – and bishop).

There’s been a dramatic uptick in visitors to this blog over the last two weeks, and with the uptick has come a new round of emails, posts, and even a phone call on the topic of the shanghaiscrap.com domain name. One friend, who probably prefers to go unnamed, writes:

“Like some others I thought your blog title was intentionally, cleverly, and subtly double-entendre Shanghai/Scrap and Shangha/is/crap. I think the ambiguity is feature rather than bug.”

Honestly, I wish that I could be that clever, on purpose, all of the time. But I can’t, and I’m not and so, for the record, and probably not for the last time, let me state unequivocally: shanghaiisNOTcrap

… though, to be honest, this week’s weather (38 degrees, 90% humidity, polluted) kind of was. Anyway, as was the case the last time I addressed this topic, the shanghaiiscrap.com domain is still available. If it’s still around in another month (when I next address this topic), I might just grab it myself.

A shipping container arrives at a port and is immediately sequestered for inspection. The product that it purportedly contains is legal for import, but two decades of unfortunate experience have taught the customs and environmental authorities that the foreign shipment possibly contains materials hazardous to human health. In the case of the newly arrived container, the authorities open it, and quickly find that it does not match the shipping manifest. On that basis alone it will not be allowed to leave the port.

Alas, this is not a description of how the United States prevents tainted Chinese imports from harming the health and safety of its citizens. Instead, it is a precise description (personally witnessed) of the process used by the Chinese to prevent American hazardous waste from entering China and harming the health and safety of China’s citizens. Below, a photo of a rejected load of American scrap refrigeration compressors (hazardous due to the oils contained inside of the compressors) shipped illegally to Tianjin:

This situation has been on my mind ever since the first of the many recent reports on China’s export of contaminated and low-quality products, including pharmaceuticals and personal care items, began to appear in the international media (of these reports, the best have been produced by David Barboza of the New York Times). Foreign governments and consumers are rightfully concerned about trade in these products, and they have every right to expect the Chinese government, and their own governments, to take steps to ensure consumer health and safety or – in a worst case – cut off trade. However, at the same time, I think that consumers in developed countries – and particularly Americans – have a very well-developed blind spot in regard to the export of illegal hazardous materials.

For almost five years I have covered the Chinese scrap trade, and in the course of visiting Chinese ports and scrap facilities, I have seen American scrap shipments contaminated with medical waste, household garbage, dead animals, sludge, mud, and other items not included on the shipping manifest. And these are just the shipments that DON’T contain e-waste. All of this occurs despite China’s strict laws on waste imports – many of which were implemented in reaction to American exports of hazardous materials to China.

This is not a strictly American phenomenon. European and Japanese exporters of scrap materials to China equal, and often exceed the American scrap exporters in both volume and shady dealings. Below, a photo of a suspicious container of Japanese scrap wire being inspected in Tianjin:

However, what makes the US shipments worth special attention is the simple fact that scrap – paper, plastic, and metal – is the top US export to China, by volume, by far.

In a March speech delivered in the northeastern port city of Dalian, a representative of China’s State Administration of Quality, Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine [AQSIQ], China’s product quality inspection agency, reported that – of the 265,990 shipments of scrap materials that China imported in 2006 – 1.47% were disqualified. Of those, 689 were environmental disqualifications, with Russia and Kazakhstan accounting for 269 (primarily radioactive scrap steel), and the United States accounting for sixty (primarily e-scrap). However, the AQSIQ rep was careful to note that – despite the smaller number of shipments – the United States actually led in volume of environmentally disqualified materials. Under the Chinese accounting system, a single shipment might encompass thirty separate containers weighing twenty tons, each. Whatever the numbers, AQSIQ and other agencies involved in the inspection of waste shipments generally concede that the statistics on contaminated shipments are significant undercounts as a result of smuggling and thin staffing levels at the ports.

The laws violated by shipping scrap materials illegally into China are not only Chinese. The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, effective in 1992, regulates international shipments of hazardous materials, effectively prohibiting the shipment of hazardous wastes to developing countries. China and 170 countries are signatories; the United States is not.

[CORRECTION: My friend Bob Garino, Director of Commodities at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, correctly points out that the US signed onto the Basel Treaty, but the United States Senate has not ratified it. Thus, the US is a signatory, but not a party to the treaty. That is, Basel is not binding toward the US or its citizens.]

How would the United States react if China’s leading exports to the United States were commonly laced with household waste, occasionally filled with hazardous waste and – to top it off – were usually shipped with fraudulent manifests? In the case of the tainted pet food shipped from China to the US, public and media indignation led to the dispatch of American inspectors to China and demands for better export controls from the Chinese.

In China, unlike in the United States, the government has publicly proclaimed an interest in promoting quality and legal exports; the United States government has never taken such a step in regard to the scrap trade. Ratification of the Basel Convention Treaty would be a fine first step. But in lieu of that, the Bush administration could take the honorable approach, and address the decades-long practice of illegally shipping American wastes to China.

Two years ago, on assignment in China’s Sichuan Province, I was stuck in a traffic jam caused by smog so thick that visibility was reduced to ten meters – at best (to my dismay, that would not be the last time). It was mid-afternoon, and I was seated next to an American scientist with more than a decade of experience in Chinese public health. As we waited, hardly moving, I watched him turn to stare out of the window, tap the glass, and suddenly ask: “Can you imagine what the respiratory illness data for this country would look like if we could get it?”

Alas, the need for imagination is over. According to BBC and AP reports (derived, apparently, from an FT story), the unpublished data has been collected by the World Bank and several Chinese government ministries as part of a series of yet unpublished papers called “Cost of Pollution in China.” Here goes:

Annual urban deaths caused by air pollution: 350,000 – 400,000

Annual deaths caused by poor INDOOR air quality: 300,000

Annual deaths caused by poor quality water: 60,000

If that’s not bad enough, it actually gets much, much worse. According to the various agencies reporting the story, the World Bank has agreed to China’s request to suppress this material from the pollution papers out of fear that it would cause “social unrest.” I’m not one to make these kinds of judgments, generally, but I think there’s little question that the World Bank’s actions are both cowardly and immoral. But more on that in a few days, after the World Bank releases its statement on the matter. For now, a January 2007 photo taken from a downtown Beijing hotel room:

Media and blog reactions to the Pope’s letter to China’s Catholics have been diverse and unpredictable, but I’ve noticed that most tend to emphasize the Pope’s call for a more public declaration of unity with Rome from open Church bishops who have reconciled with the Holy See. It will be interesting to see how that provision is handled. In some dioceses, the standing of the open Church bishop is an open secret, widely known but rarely spoken. In Shanghai and other dioceses where ordinations of auxiliaries have taken place with the apostolic mandate (a fact leaked, made known by the presence of Vatican intermediaries, or – as happened in Shenyang -declared from the altar), the bishop’s status is known by the fact that he is the consecrating bishop at the ordination. Whatever the means, the situation tends to be a discrete one.

In either case, I think the letter’s most remarkable passages are related to underground bishops. These passages have barely been noted online, or in blogs, but among close China Church watchers, they are of intense interest. Fr. Jeroom Heyndrickx, CICM, a Belgian priest who figures prominently in my profile of Shanghai’s Bishop Jin Luxian in the current issue of the Atlantic, has sent to me his commentary on the Pope’s letter. It is a lengthy document, with many passages of interest, but for now I’d like to just quote him on the Pope’s commentary in regard to the underground Church:

Underground bishops are encouraged to apply for recognition by civil authorities. An underground Church “is not a normal and lasting situation” for the Catholic Church, says the pope. All bishops should now unite so that Rome can finally recognize officially the already existing Chinese Bishops Conference. Till now this cannot be done because the underground bishops are not members while some other members of the conference are not appointed by Rome.

In a post immediately following the letter’s release, I expressed some confusion about the letter’s line expressing hope that underground bishops “may be recognized as such by governmental authorities for civil effects,” but Heyndrickx clarifies that point well: the underground bishops need to legitimize themselves with the relevant government authorities.

This may come as a shock to some who still cling to the notion that China’s Church is divided between “Patriotic” Catholics, and those loyal to the Pope. But the truth is, the line blurred years ago. In 2006, three bishops were ordained with both the Papal mandate and government approval (the negotiation process was complicated) in the dioceses of Suzhou, Shenyang, and Shanghai. At least in Shanghai, the goal was to unify the underground and open Churches in a public manner (and most underground Catholics – around 85% – accepted the appointments). At the same time, China’s Church hasn’t had an underground ordination in more than a decade, and the Pope’s letter explicitly revokes the authority of the underground bishops to make such appointments (Pope John Paul II granted the authority).

So, the Pope’s request that the underground reconcile itself with local authorities is not such a stretch, and really just an extension of the letter’s repeated statement that Caeser should be given his due. At the same time, in its own way, the letter makes clear that both sets of bishops need to move closer to each other on recognizing – publicly – spiritual and civil authorities.

ESPN news services are reporting that Milwaukee Bucks owner Herb Kohl has written a personal letter to his first round draft pick, Yi Jianlian, requesting a meeting with the player and his family. So far, the disgruntled Yi – who tried to engineer being drafted by a team in a city with a large Asian population, has not had any contact with the Bucks. As I mentioned in an earlier post, none of this would be of much interest but for the fact that Herb Kohl is also a four-term US Senator, in the majority, and with powerful, senior committee assignments.

Whatever happens, I have to think that the longer this drags out, the more important it will become to Chinese athletic authorities, and the more anxious they will be to tell Yi to sign a contract with the Bucks. After all, it is well known that Yao Ming had trouble adjusting to Houston, and I really don’t believe that the image-obsessed Chinese athletic authorities are going to allow anything more to damage the long-term prospects of other Chinese players in the NBA. More than that, I think it highly unlikely that the Chinese Foreign Ministry is really going to stand for a basketball player sticking it to a very senior US Senator and his financial interests (that is, his ownership of the Bucks).

On a (ahem) personal note: I really wish somebody in the US sports media (hello, ESPN?) would call out Yi on his ridiculous demands. If this really is about playing in front of Chinese crowds, then maybe Yi should skip the NBA entirely and content himself with his team in Guangzhou. After all, if he can’t handle playing for a crowd with Milwaukee’s demographics, then I really don’t know how he’s going to handle games in places like Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Charlotte, or the 25-some NBA cities without significant Asian populations.

[UPDATE! There's a really thoughtful post on this topic over at Yellow Chair Sports. If you care about the internationalization of the NBA, then this is worth reading.]