Danwei Noon Report is a daily roundup of new and old media coverage about China from Chinese and English sources.
iPod subcontractor attacks the press
This story contains all the juicy ingredients needed to make Western editors excited about a China story: sweat shops, Apple computer and the iPod, and attacks on the freedom of the press. Nonetheless, it seems that no Western news organizations have yet published anything about it.
The story so far:
June 11
Britain’s Daily Mail published story about sweat shop working conditions in Mainland factories run by Taiwanese company Foxconn that produce iPods. The story causes a minor fuss that soon dies down.
June 15
China Business News (第一财经日报) runs a story by Wang You about working conditions at Foxconn plants.
July 10
Foxconn fights back, and fight dirty by asking Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court to freeze all assests belonging to Wang and his editor Weng Bao. The assets include apartments, cars and bank accounts. Note that Foxconn did not sue the newspaper, but went after the journalist and editor personally. In addition to the asset freeze, Foxconn also sued the pair for RMB 30 million ($3.8 million).
July 13
The court starts processes to freeze the assets of the journalists
August 26
The Beijing News runs a story (Chinese) about the case. Bloggers ESWN (1, 2, 3) and Non-violent Resistance (1, 2) start writing about the case in English.
August 29
The Shanghai Daily publishes a report: Journalists sued over iPod story.
Whenever the Chinese government does anything to restrict media, Western newspapers start crowing about clampdowns.
In this case, one of Taiwan’s richest companies, a major subcontractor for Apple computer, is using its financial clout and infuence to intimidate Chinese journalists by extremely sketchy legal means, and the Western press is silent.
UPDATE: As reported on ESWN: Western Media Begins FoxConn Coverage
Crazed Chery QQ car fans
Sam Flemming’s Word of Mouth blog has a post about online conversations about Chery’s QQ car, most of which seem to be highly positive.
What is driving Chery conversations, especially those about Chery QQ? One big element behind all the buzz is a nationalistic pride in one of China’s automobile brands already exporting around the world…
… [But] in the end, “value for money” is a big driver for QQ buyers. In China, you can get the car for around US $12,000 with all the same features as more expensive, comparable models, and with decent quality. As one of my Chinese colleagues told me, Chery’s cars like the QQ make the “American dream” (his words) of owning a car more attainable. (Link)
Note that General Motors filed a lawsuit against Chery in 2004, alleging that the QQ’s design was a copy of the the Matiz model made by GM affiliate Dae Woo in North Korea, and sold in China as the Spark (see China Daily story – link).
Two new laws
China’s top legislature on Sunday voted to adopt a new law, trying to enable its lawmakers to better supervise the government. The Supervision Law of the Standing Committees of the People’s Congresses at Various Levels will go into effect on January 1, 2007. It seems that the law is intended to provide checks and balances against local governments abusing their power, but the official statement about the law are written in unintelligible Party speak. (Xinhua – link).
Also on Sunday, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress adopted a corporate bankruptcy law, aiming to protect both creditors of bankrupt enterprises and the people who work in them.The law will come into effect on June 1, 2007. (Xinhua – link).
Woes for the Carnival
In the Chinese press yesterday and the English press today is a report on the worse-than-dismal performance of this year’s World Carnival, which closed last weekend after 116 days in Beijing. It had expected to generate 150 million yuan in profit, but with poor attendance bringing in just 11 million yuan, total losses will reach 35 million. Blame is being placed on competition from local amusement parks like Happy Valley as well as a promotioal campaign that failed to convince jaded Beijingers that this year’s carnival was any different than the previous two (Shanghai Daily, link).
Today, a Beijing Times report finds that the homepage of the operator, Dubai-based Freij Entertainment, had a Flash-based index file that appears to destroy a major Beijing landmark, the LG Twin Towers outside of Jianguomen. A Freij representative said that the towers had never been in the Flash file before, and that this may be a malicious attack on the company (link – Chinese).
The Freij homepage is currently offline, but you can watch the Flash file here on Danwei, saved out of the Google cache. Click on any region, and then any city, to see the towers come tumbling down.
This report prepared with help from Bill Zhang