Shanghai Scrap

Shanghai Scrap is withholding comment on Barack Obama’s economic stimulus in favor of compelling anecdotal evidence that – while the US Congress debates how to stimulate anything – the Chinese government is stimulating the US scrap industry.

Here’s the deal:

Late last year, with little notice, China’s State Reserve Bureau announced that – in an effort to stimulate its flagging non-ferrous metals sector - it would fund the acquisition of a large non-ferrous metal stockpile. Soon after, Yunnan Province – home to a thriving non-ferrous industry – announced its own strategic reserve to include 300,000 tons of aluminum, 100,000 tons of tin, 300,000 tons of zinc, 150,000 tons of lead, and 150,000 tons of copper (details on both programs, here).

Keep in mind that, in the wake of the economic crisis, and the collapse in China’s export manufacturing sector, the non-ferrous metals industry nearly collapsed due to a lack of demand and excess inventories purchased at record prices. As a result, raw material suppliers – including US scrap metal dealers and Australian miners – found that, in the space of two months, their biggest and best customer (China) simply disappeared.

Cut to this afternoon, and lunch with four mid-sized US scrap metal exporters (and one physician). I arrived expecting to hear market doom and gloom (despite a modest recovery in the markets), as well as harsh words for the large number of Chinese scrap buyers who had reneged on contracts during the October market collapse.

How wrong I was. (more…)

Compared to the last bird flu scare, China seems to be taking the current, unsettling spate of bird flu fatalities with unlikely aplomb. Consider: in January, there were five Chinese deaths from the feared pathogen; for the whole of 2008, there were only three. Perhaps the relative ambivalence is related to the fact that the pathogen is emerging during Spring Festival, when attentions are elsewhere.

But if China is taking the emergence in stride, others may not be. On Wednesday I spent two hours at Tokyo Narita Airport, a major air hub and transfer point for flights throughout Asia. And, while there, I saw something that I hadn’t seen since the 2003 SARS outbreak: passengers, and air industry employees, wearing surgical masks in hope of warding off airborne pathogens. A couple of notable cases: a Northwest Airlines boarding agent was wearing a mask while scanning the tickets of boarding passengers (what a way to greet them); on my flights in and out of Narita, a handful of passengers were wearing masks.

To be fair, I have absolutely no idea if the masks were related to bird flu, specifically, or were just a protective measure (and not a particularly effective one) to protect against winter colds. Also, the number of people wearing masks on Wednesday – maybe one in fifty – doesn’t come close to the numbers in 2003, when half had them. But I’ve been flying in and out of Narita a few times per year, for years, and I can’t recall another instance of mask wearing since SARS.

[Professional Note: In November 2002, two months before the international media found the SARS story, I visited Guangzhou for the first time, and was struck by the large number of people walking around the city in surgical masks. When I asked the person I was visiting, a source, for the reason, he told me that "Guangzhou has a particularly bad flu this year." I had no reason to think otherwise, and let it go. But ever since, I've been sensitive to mass mask wearing.]

[UPDATE: A friend writes to point out that "[S]urgical masks are just as effective as magic amulaets at stopping viral particles. That’s why Northwest should prohibit its employees from wearing both and scaring the passengers.” An excellent point. And since we’re on the topic of Northwest Airlines, I should probably mention that Wednesday’s edition of Flight 1451 was delayed for just over two hours because the airline couldn’t find a flight crew to pilot it. That, according to the flight attendants who kept the stranded passengers informed during the delay.]

I was feeling kind of bad about the lack of updates to Shanghai Scrap during the Chinese New Year period – until I stopped by the Shanghai Daily website and found that the Metro section hadn’t been updated in five days.

Other sections of the paper – business, world, and national news, for example – have remained current. But, presumably, that’s because those sections are generated by Xinhua in Beijing. So, at a minimum, we must conclude that Shanghai Daily’s entire English-language staff deserted the office for the Chinese New Year. Good for them. Still, can anyone out there think of another city newspaper, anywhere else on the planet, that would totally suspend local news for a several day holiday? I can’t.

TOTALLY UNRELATED, but I’m going to bring it up, anyway. This morning I had my first listen to Bruce Springsteen’s middling new recording (here, at the ‘Scrap, we are otherwise big admirers of the Boss), and no more than twenty seconds into the first track, Outlaw Pete, I said: “Holy smokes, the Boss just ripped off Kiss!” A quick google search revealed that I’m not the only one who thinks so. For further info on this emerging story, and a good laugh, see here.

ALSO UNRELATED, but a nifty piece of reported blogging … Dan at China Law Blog gets the scoop on Obama’s phone call to Hu Jintao in the wake of Tim Geithner’s (dumb) currency manipulation comments.

UNRELATED, BUT EXCELLENT is Rebecca MacKinnon’s outstanding open letter to President Obama in re to US-China relations. It includes this very, very good suggestion:

The U.S. embassy in Beijing should build a Chinese-language website modeled after change.gov, focused not just on U.S.-China relations, but on the range of concerns and interests – from environment, to food safety, to factory safety standards, to education and real estate law — shared by ordinary Chinese and Americans. Some linguistically talented State Department employees should start blogging in Chinese. Open up the comments sections, see how the Chinese blogosphere responds, then respond to them in turn. Translate some of the Chinese conversation into English for Americans to read and react, then translate it back.