While companies do avoid answering questions from the press, and from Congress, they do open up a little more :

Anthony Noto - Goldman Sachs

Thank you very much. I wanted to focus on three areas that I think you’re generating very little revenue from if not any at all. Specifically, Google images, Google local and then Google China. I think the last time we touched base you were generating zero revenue in Google China, is that still the case?

Omid Kordestani Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Business Development

Hi, yes. China, we actually have both the online availability, the advertising available so that customers can come through the online channel and we’re very actively building our direct capabilities there. One of the things that’s important, obviously, is having all the right infrastructure on licensing available for us to be able to operate locally. So we’ve been very focused on just establishing ourselves. We’ve had great success actually in signing up resellers and the results from working with these resale appointments have been excellent, actually, in terms of a number of advertisers have actually joined our online program. And we’re looking forward to establishing direct relationships with both agencies and clients directly as our capabilities are getting built up.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, , northeast asia

The world’s oldest profession is illegal in most of Asia. Singapore is an exception, but neither the Straits Times nor any of the state-run broadcasters would ever run ads for certain services. Thankfully, Taiwan has private television networks.

On late night TV in Taiwan, you can often see ads for hotels, bars, and KTVs, with women in provocative outifts or dancing lasciviously, beer in hand. Hmmm….what could they possibly be selling?

In Shanghai, the escort and massage services will regularly run spots in the government-linked Shanghai Daily.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, northeast asia, taiwan

Via the Globalization Institute, sad news that is reaching us late:

Sir John Cowperthwaite was the main figure responsible for Hong Kong’s economic transformation, lifting millions of people out of poverty. While scholars like Milton Friedman and F. A. Hayek put an intellectual case for the free markets, it was Cowperthwaite who provided the textbook example showing laissez-faire policies leading to swift economic development. His practical example provided confidence to the Thatcher and Reagan governments, and was a key influence in China’s post-Mao economic liberalisation.

Cowperthwaite read classics at St Andrews and Christ’s College, Cambridge. While waiting to be called up by the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), he went back to St Andrews to study economics. This Scottish education imbibed him with the ideas of the Enlightenment, especially the work of Adam Smith, who had been born nearby in Kirkcaldy. He was a liberal in the 19th century sense, believing that countries should open up to trade unilaterally. In 1941, he joined the Colonial Administrative Service in Hong Kong. When it fell to the Japanese, he was seconded to Sierra Leone as a district officer, before returning in 1946 to help the colony’s economic recovery. "Upon arrival," the Far Eastern Economic Review put it, "he found it recovering quite nicely without him." He quickly worked his way up the ranks and was made Financial Secretary in 1961, in charge of its economic policy for a decade.

When he became Financial Secretary, the average Hong Kong resident earned about a quarter of someone living in Britain. By the early 90s, average incomes were higher than Britain’s. Cowperthwaite made Hong Kong the most economically free economy in the world and pursued free trade, refusing to make its citizens buy expensive locally-produced goods if they could import cheaper products from elsewhere. Income tax was never more than a flat rate of fifteen percent. The colony’s lack of natural resources, apart from a harbour, and the fact that it was a food importer, made its success all the more interesting. Cowperthwaite’s policies soon soon attracted the attention of economists like Milton Friedman, whose television series Free to Choose featured Hong Kong’s economic progress in some detail.

Asked what is the key thing poor countries should do, Cowperthwaite once remarked: "They should abolish the Office of National Statistics". In Hong Kong, he refused to collect all but the most superficial statistics, believing that statistics were dangerous: they would led the state to to fiddle about remedying perceived ills, simultaneously hindering the ability of the market economy to work.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, economy, hong kong, northeast asia

AsiaPundit was never a big fan of Masked Rider, although he is pleased that Bandai has started to consider men in their 30s as a target market.:

Toy manufacturer Bandai Co. will start selling from March replica belts identical to the one ’70s superhero Masked Rider used to transform into a powerful defender of justice.

Not the kind of gadget i usually blog but what amazed me is its targets are men in their 30s to 40s, as attested by the waist size, which extends from 85 centimeters to 110 centimeters. The men would have been children during hero’s heyday on TV.

The belt has a windmill built into the front which, upon pushing a button, whirls around and flashes red, blue and white lights.

Wearers can also mimic the superhero transformation by triggering a switch that sets off weird sound effects identical to those used in the TV show when the motorcycle-riding crime fighter changed from his alter-ego.

US manufacturers should take note — Mrs AsiaPundit has been searching for a man-sized pair of Spider-Man underoos for years.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, japan, northeast asia

The Shanghaiist is running a Shanghai fake photo contest. It’s not about photoshopping, but about getting photos of conspicuous counterfeit goods.:

They can close down Xiangyang Market if they want to, Shanghai is still going to be the world capital for fakes. We’ve got the obvious ones: bags, shoes, watches, DVDs, CDs and the like. But we’ve also got fake maps, fake Starbucks and, yes, even fake eggs. And now Sinosplice shows us fake oranges. Well, we imagine it’s the sticker that is fake, not the orange. (It appears these “Nalencia”s have been around for a while. And, for those of you not familiar with American oranges, it should be “Valencia.”)

So, readers, what other fakes have you seen out there in Shanghai? Send photos to photos(at)shanghaiist.com. We thought we’d be able to find a Flickr gallery of Chinese fakes, but we didn’t. is the closest we came. Got any good “fake” links? Share them below.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia

Evil is afoot!  In China!  Evil, Evil Evil!!! Lets boycott everyone!

From Getty Images:

The third part of our business is the Licensing of our International Imagery on the Editorial side into China, in other words, News, Sports, Entertainment Imagery from all around the world being sold into China. That is done by an agent and that agent operates under the auspices of one of the organs of the Chinese, not government but related to the Chinese government. And as a result of that, they make sure, that agents that they do not pull foul at the authorities because we think that it’s very important to be very sensitive to what’s happening in that market. I mean at the end of the day what speaks most about the Chinese situation is that long-term, it’s going to be very big market for us, short-term it won’t be and it’s the only joint venture we had anywhere in the world and that’s the joint venture on the Creative side and that’s because of sensitivity to the local market and how things are going over there. So yeah we are investing in it and we are pretty confident but don’t expect China to significantly or radically move to get the images numbers in the next several years.

News Corp:

Google isn’t the first to put profit above principle in China. In 1994, Rupert Murdoch stopped broadcasting British Broadcasting Corp. programs on the News Corp. network in China after the government complained about coverage of the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations. In 1998, News Corp.’s publishing house, HarperCollins, refused to publish a book by Christopher Patten, former governor of Hong Kong, that was critical of China.

Siemens AG:

Shanghai’s city administration has already enquired (about subscribing) and wants to use IPTV for its own community information network, Muhrer said.

Programming contents are supplied by Shanghai Media Group, a media subsidiary of Shanghai Media & Entertainment Group.

‘Programming content is a delicate subject in China, of course, so any information content supplied through the Internet must be treated according to the country’s regulatory laws,’ Muhrer said of the prevailing censorship by the Chinese authorities.

‘However, there still is content that does not fall under censorship laws, like online games or sports broadcasts.’ Leading Chinese online games provider, Shanda in Shanghai, had already expressed interest in the IPTV project, he said.

AsiaPundit recently spoke with a Siemens executive who was in China who was very upfront in admitting that the company would be abiding by Chinese restrictions in its Internet protocol television (IPTV) venture. Fons noted (in comments here) that European companies have confided that their filters are just as good as Cisco’s.

The above items are worth noting for several reasons. Firstly, the big US search engines are not the only companies censoring content in China — they just get the most attention due to their successful branding.

As well, it seems that many of those who are calling for a boycott of Google are avid watchers of Fox News (brought to you by the company that censored both the BBC and Chris Patten).

This is not to suggest that they should also be calling a boycott of News Corp or Siemens products. AsiaPundit is deeply concerned about censorship in China but he will still use gmail, play with his xbox, watch the Simpsons and make toast with his Siemens toaster.

However, those who are having so much fun suggesting that Google is hypocritical and those who enjoy bashing American tech companies should take a wider view.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, east asia, media, northeast asia

AsiaPundit’s initial take on Google’s foray into China was not that the company was committing a grave sin, nor that it was doing a good thing for Chinese users (see and ). Establishing the China portal was neither good nor evil, but it may yet prove to have been profoundly stupid. AsiaPundit believes that Google has diminished its brand to enter a market that is simply not (yet) lucrative.

That theme has now been picked up and argued elsewhere.

A Tech Central Station column by Instapundit Glenn Reynolds argues that Google has lost something that made it special.:

In taking this approach, Google doesn’t distinguish itself much from other big American companies — Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo!, etc. — that have cooperated with the Chinese. (Arguably, its behavior here is “less evil.”) It’s a big market, offering over a billion customers, and the Chinese government itself is a big purchaser. Why make them mad? How many people, besides a few human-rights types, will care that according to the Chinese Google, that And how much money do they spend on IT?

There’s also a not-entirely-bogus counterargument, that Chinese citizens with access to a censored Google are still more powerful, relative to their government, than Chinese citizens with no Google at all. Though this claim seems a bit, er, convenient, it may still have a grain of truth to it. The experience of empowerment that the Internet provides seems to affect people in ways that go beyond specific issues, and make them less tolerant of bossiness elsewhere; the more Chinese surf the Web, the more will have that experience. Maybe. It’s possible. After all, plenty of people made similar arguments in favor of “constructive engagement” with the Apartheid regime in South Africa, and against sanctions designed to force an end to its racist policies.

But it’s kind of odd to find Google in the position of making those sorts of arguments. There was always the sense — despite its ruffling a lot of feathers over what sources were included in Google News, or various complaints about the limited privacy afforded by Gmail — that Google was something different: Not just another big corporation.

A Wall Street Journal column by Andy Kessler argues that Google is no longer cool.:

Americans have a long history of selling out - think Warren Beatty and “Ishtar” or politicians and Indian casinos. The public is trusting until proven otherwise, then turns on icons like rats on garbage. Never more so with culture: Being “cool,” “tight” or “wicked excellent” is a hard image to keep and one boneheaded move can send you to tomorrow’s cut-out bin. Ask Michael Jackson. Or Madonna.

Which brings us to Google. As a company, even more so than Ian Schrager’s hotels, it reeks of cool—Google Maps and Google Earth and gmail bring a kind of geek chic to the dull old media world. Plus, there are those lofty ideals like “organizing the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It’s why we all use them. Google should do everything to stay cool. GM is spending millions on ads that say “Just Google Pontiac” to get in on the zeitgeist.

And now, poof.

a billion soon-to-be-online Chinese will forever associate Google with lame and censored search results

One of the ways urbandictionary.com defines “sellout” is to alienate core fans by changing one’s style to appeal to a broader audience—and becoming what one’s fans were rebelling against in the first place. The U.S. government wanted search history to help fight child porn and Google said no way, to cheers from their Big Brother-hating constituency. But for its search service in China, Google caved to the communists, removing offending results for “Human Rights” and “Things that are Democratic.”

And Nicholas Carr writes that Google simply did something stupid.:

I think the reason Google is getting its feet held to the fire is simple: It asked for it. As soon as the company broadcast its “Don’t Be Evil” pledge, it guaranteed that any time it stepped into ethically ambiguous territory it was going to touch off a firestorm in the press - and, in turn, draw the attention of the public and the public’s media-hungry elected representatives. It’s the old Gary Hart effect. Plenty of Senators get a little on the side without finding their dalliances on Page One, but as soon as Hart claimed to be pure, he guaranteed that reporters and cameramen would come knocking on the door of his lovenest. Whether it was hubris or just naivete that led Google to proclaim its moral purity can be debated, but from a business standpoint it was a surpassingly dumb thing to do - and the consequences were entirely predictable.

Support Bloggers’ Rights!

Among its many activities, EFF promotes one of the best proxy server packages available - allowing users in China to access any number of blocked sites. In lieu of a donation, users in the West can volunteer time or bandwidth to help improve the service.

AP picked EFF for support because of it’s blogging focus, because of its proxy tool and because he gets a really cool t-shirt.

As EFF may not be to everyone’s liking, there are other organizations that can be supported, either financially, through volunteering or by aiding publicity. They may or may not have cool shirts.

Technorati Tags: asia, blogs, censorship, china, cisco, east asia, EFF, , media, microsoft, northeast asia, yahoo

AsiaPundit appreciates complaints from Russia, Japan, Korea about China’s pollution, and shares the despair felt by Hong Kong residents. However, this seems a bit extreme.

China is already the world’s second-biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions and is expected to surpass the United States as the biggest. Roughly a third of China is exposed to acid rain. A recent study by a Chinese research institute found that 400,000 people die prematurely every year in China from diseases linked to air pollution.

Nor does China’s air pollution respect borders: on certain days almost 25 percent of the particulate matter clotting the skies above Los Angeles can be traced to China, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Environmental experts in California predict that China could eventually account for roughly a third of the state’s air pollution.

(Via Boing Boing)

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia, environment