Christmas Present

Jan(chinese blog) is so nice to share a German ecard website with me, and it is really fantanstic. You can write your wishes into the picture just as it is the real photo. I became crazy about it and spend my whole afternoon making cards for all my friends. Maybe you can try to make cards for your friends, too. But don't be that crazy like me.

Here is my card to Fons, and he asked me if it is real. Well, it is :)

Not only China has statistic problem

EU has called for great power of Eurostat, the European Union's statistical agency, to guarantee the quality of all the member's burgetary data, following the warning against Greece's burget promise, according to IHT.

Is there any similarity between the economic structure of EU and China? hmmm...

Three sectors worried Chinese government

A top trade official disclosed the obstacle of China's WTO comittment is local government protectionism, which may partly explain the reason for Chinese government to change the way to get the statistic.

Sun Zhenyu, the mainland's first ambassador to the World Trade Organisation, said local governments, as a whole, had been unable to fully understand the importance of abiding by WTO rules, according to SCMP.

Separately,the central government announced that the responsible authority to release the statistic of GDP will change from provincial goverment to the central statistic department. several days ago. The annoucement said that the central government will especially focus on the index of investment, agriculture and price.

Coincidentally, in the speech given by Sun Zhenyu, " Mr Sun's concerns had focused on the potentially harmful effects on sectors such as banking, insurance and agriculture", quote from SCMP.

It is not hard to imagine what will be the hot topic in mainland China in the next few years.

It is good or bad if Google make all the books readable on the Internet?

People oppose it when Google announced that it would turn all the books in several major library into the digital formet; They said it would bring problems to copyright and the damage of the valuable books. But please wait a minute: Do you see the future trends of digial book?

I have been reading the online resource to contribute to several of my term papers; I know there are many valuable books in the library. But I don't have time to go through the books one by one because I only want to know certain topics and chapters in the books. So I use "Google Scholar", which can return the exact information I want. Not only me, but also my classmates, did the same way. One day, I told myself, if we are all depending on the online resource, the content of all the paper work will disappear from people's mind in the future. Maybe our children will not know what has happened if there is no online book to tell them.

I may be afraid so much: Google has a dream to set up some digital library, so do others. So I don't need to worry about it. Copyright is the tool to protect the writers, but if nobody know the writers, why to protect them. Copyright and knowledge sharing are contradicted with each other. But knowledge is more important than the copyright in the long-term of human development.

The damage of the books is arguable, also. If nobody read the books, why spend so much money protect them? If everybody can read them online, why spend money to protect them. too? I know the books are valuable, but people's memory of the content from the books are even more valuable.

God bless digital library so that we will not forget the paper books.

Iraqi people can't sue

The veteran Chinese judge in the International law said that the Iraqi people can't sue against the United States in the International Court of Justice, the court adjudicating disputes between states.

Judge Shi Jiu yong, the President of International Court of Justic, said that the Iraqi people can't sue in the court because they are not on behalf of the state. Even if there is a temporary government, it can not sue in the case that it is not authorised by the United Nations.

In Dec. 15, the Court has released its judgement on the Legality of Use of Force between Serbia and other eight countries. In one judgement, it is said that Serbia and Montenegro was not a Member of the United Nations in 1999 and, as a result, was not then a party to the Statute of the Court.

It makes me remind of the book The Lexus and the Olive Tree wrote by Friedman. States should be last line of defense to protect the people.

Hong Kong 3G operators are running after each other, who will win?

Smartone has become the second 3G operator, in the competition with CSL, another carries who yelled to be the second, while the previous, sole 3G operator, Hutchson, is still struggling to earn more.

Smartone has done a good job on their website with detailed introduction of the new service, while CSL still advertises its Christmas discount of 2G phone. Except for the normal service like music and wallpaper, Smartone has done a good job to provide business news of Dow Jones. But I would like to remind that the direct news from the news wires always makes people confused. I am one of the example when subscribing to the Reuters.

I guess Smartone can do a better job than CSL in the coming future, while the two will both experience a hard time to make money. By the way, why every Hong Kong operators use the same or almost same tariff to charge the users? They are always based on the time, on the data volume, but don't they forget what they provide is the content? Why not using charging on content? (Wow, it is one of my favorite charging principles, but unfortunately, the billing system should be perfect enough)

GDP will be released by the national adminstration

The central stastic government will release the GDP data, include all the provinces, from 2005. It will especially focus on the index of investment, agriculture and price. (link in Chinese)

The number of GDP in China has been a great benchmark these years, though not many outsiders enquiries its validity. Part of the reason is due to the fault or error in the provincial statistics. Fortunately, they have paid attention to it.

But the question is how much money and human resource can they spend to detailedly record the national statistics?

speculate RMB's revaluation on the Chinese Art market

Chinese Art market is more and more popular these days. One of the famour Art companies called RongBaoZhai has held its autumn auction forum, where the trade money has been up to 100 million RMB(about 12 million USD) in the morning of Dec. 18. (Link in Chinese).
It is hard to imagine how many of the bidders are interested in the art, but some funds speculated at the ravulation of RMB are joining the auction, aiming at taking advantage of the revaluation of RMB in the future.
It is reported that the average auction amount for Chinese art market per year is about 3 billion RMB(about 360million USD). I assume that the number will be up to four times in 2004, according to the latest market trends. It will bring great pressure to RMB in short-term, though the foreign reservce is up to 100 billion USD in China.
There is two way to solve the problem: One is the Chinese government intefere with the market as they did in the property field, but it is hard; The other is to suggest the Chinese bidders to buy foreign art work to balance the exchange rate. But it seems that not many people are interested in the foreign art work now. They are still going after the Chinese art work now. One example is a tycoon in Tianjin has bought the stamp of the latest rocket launching signed by the astaurant, in the price of 2.2 million RMB.
The latest edition of Businessweek showed a story the reason why collectors are crazy for Chinese art. It is a pity that he only referred to the collectors' interest in the art work, without mentioning the purpose of some speculators.

Paper was created for the purpose of packaging and cleaning

Paper was first created for the purpose of packaging and cleaning instead of writing, according to one of the senior engineers in China. (link in Chinese)
The first type of paper is hard to write, because it is made up of hemp. It is hard for the ancient people to write in ink. At that time, people found it is convenient to use the hemp paper to package stuffs. Also, they use the paper for the clearing after the human excreting.
The two function of the paper pushed the usage of the paper, and then people created the silk paper for writng, which is recorded in the history.

Blog for Christmas.

It will be too early to say how to send out the blog posts as the Christmas gift in Hong Kong. But in the U.S., they did it. There is a website called blog4Chritmas, where you can pick your favorite blogs and send it to your family as a gift via Email every day. It looks like Emailletter has been involved in reading blogs. Not a bad idea indeed.

Memory the blog who can record the truth

A man killed a woman on the Wangfujing, recorded by the bloggers. Memorial for her.

It is right for George Soros to suggest the International Bankruptcy Law

I remember George Soros said in his book that the International Banruptcy law should be introduced to reduce the risk taken by IMF and the World Bank. But it is pity that Yukos Company can't not wait for the day to come. It is irony that the US Brankruptcy Court ordered that the sale of the company should be blocked, while Russian authorities didn't care. Who will be the winner of the auction? No matter who will be, he should be very happy because the price is so low. Yukos people said they should worth twice.

Another voice came when I viewed the forums in Russia. I quote some of them here:

read Financial News, this news parep once published very interesting article about Khodorkovsky, and how many "first"and last millions were dirty. And don't listen to liberals who blame Kremlin - Khodorkovsky spent over $ 300 million on propaganda after his arrest.

Anyone talking about the human right of Saddam Hussein?

He met his lawyer after being captured for a whole year. But no one cares. All the focus is on the new Iraqi election. Is that because people always think highly of new things?

Dan left his newspaper

It is not the latest news, but I hope it can bring more information to the people. The interview of Dan at ohmynews. He is one of my professors here, though I don't have change to communicate much with him.

Chinese blog,or paripatory journalism, is another story.

If Chinese buy another major business from western?

Rumors said that Ningbo Bird will buy the mobile phone unit from Siemens, the German electronic company who has suffered great loss from cellular phone division. If that will be the final deal, another story will come out as the deal between Lenovo and IBM. The same problem exists, but it may be the trend.

What is the relation between Politics and Economy

Hong Kong is full of the political voices now. West Knowloon Cultural District, an intergrated art, cultrual, and entertainment district, are being discussed by people from different society classes. It definitely creates a beautiful picture for Hong Kong, and it definitely creates tons of jobs to Hong Kong people. But why they oppose to it, at least from the voice of newspaper?

Here is some quote of opposing voices from the latest South China Morning Post( not available online), the largest English newspaper in Hong Kong:

" There has been strong concern that the cultural hub could turn into another commercially driven property project."

" The government has come under fire for its insistence on building the giant canopy over the cultural district. Lord Foster believed such a design would reduce the temperature of the sheltered area, according to Kwan Pak-lam of the Civil Engineering and Development Department."

"Activists are hoping tens of thousands of people will turn out for a New Year's Day rally targeting poverty and alleged collusion between government and big business. Some of them are concerning about the West Kowloon tendering process and power to be granted to the successful bidder"

In a word, what they concern about is that businessmen will make great profit from the project, without sharing them with the poor. But businessmen are always making money, which is the soul of the city. Li Ka-shing is one of the legends in Hong Kong, who inspires people to persue their dream here. They, of course, want to make money from the government, from the employee, and the poor, just like the capital in the free global market. One of my readings these days, is "George Soros on globalizatioin". He believed that capital is the most libralised factor in the globalization. It is not wrong, but people should also focus on others, like community, law, environment and other factors, which is the responsibility of the government, in another words, relating with politics. Then my question is: Does Economy growth always go ahead of Politics? Should Politics try to catch up with Economy or inhibit instead?

Some officials from the administration scolded one of the Parties in Hong Kong, that it is attacting people's votes on the expense of inhibiting economy. Maybe he is right, but the reason is not the that Party's fault only. It is the global problem, and the two strength are fighting with each other. It is hard to say who will win at last.

Lenovo's deal is at the right time

I have a dream yesterday, the content of which is about the deal of personal computer business between Lenovo and IBM. I have defended Lenovo on one of my classes. I told the audience that Lenovo would not depend on IBM's brand because it is only awarded the five-year usage of the IBM PC brand. The time is so short that Lenovo can't benefit from developing it. Instead, Lenovo will develop its own brand overseas, I said in my dream. IBM has the best sales people and resources, which can be made full use of by Lenovo. Then I woke up. I don't know why I was so excited in the dream to defend Lenovo. If I can assume the reason, it should be one, the deal itself made me excited.
It should be a tought deal as predicted by Michael Kanellos from CNET. But there's an assuming before his article, which is teh failure, or in another word, unsuccessful fact of the merging between HP and Compaq. Are the two deal same? Of course not. If we had the chance to look at the customer list between HP and Compaq, we would see the duplicate names definitely. But there will be much less same name between IBM's customer list and Lenovo's. The customer is the most important part bought by Lenovo. In the PC industry where profit rate is so low and technology is almost same, Lenove can't find its advantages to fight with HP and DELL. The deal with IBM is the best choice to expand its market to overseas.
DELL, definitely, could look down upon Lenovo, just like an adult facing a teenager. But what he can't miss is another adult, or senior citizen, behind that teenager, which is China. Globalization made the deals not simple as the ones in the old days. Product itself will not be the vital factor in the deal. Bilateral realtions is going to be replaced by multilateral ones and the negotiations are more complicated than ever before. Lenovo spends three years to plan today's deal. It can still wait, but the time schedule is just right now. Chinese economy is the hottest in the world, where all investers are eager to enter into it. It is the best time for the national company to extend its warrior.
Problems such as employee, and enterprise culture, might exist for a long time. That is risk that Lenovo should take. A Chinese old prediction is " if you want to win a war, you should have three advantages which are the weather, geography and human." Lenovo takes advantages of the first two, and human will be its last problem to succeed in the war.

What makes Huawei so aggressive in the global market?

On Wednesday, Huawei has signed the UMTS roll-out contract of 400 million euro dollars with Dutch Telfort B.V, which marked the beginning for Chinese network providers to enter into western European markets. Premier Wen jiabao joined the ceremony. Many analysts assumed that Huawei depended on the cheap price, not the techology. But I don't think so. Many of my friends have been working in Huawei, and I know they are quite hard-working, or even crazy-working. They call it "Huawei culture".
There once was a popular saying in the Chinese telecom industry: The common providers sell technology, the second best providers sell service, the best providers sell the standards. I have seen Huawei change itself from the common one to the second one. No question it will become the best one.
The marketing department of Huawei is the most important one in the company. They are in charge of different operators. They visit them frequently and provide customer support at any time. They can bear scold from the customer and still pretent to be very happy. Who can provide such service like that? It can be called as "Human right violating", but it can even be called the better service. Many customer- support engineers from MNCs are proud of their brands and professional products. But all of that can't compare with the "professional service".
As I know, the President of Huawei is low profile and tough character. It affects the company culture of Huawei. Huawei doesn't go public because it doesn't need money. They have enough money and human resource to deal with the globcal market. That's the advantage of Chinese company.
Many Chinese cooperation are studying from the success of Huawei in the overseas market. I think the first priority is to learn how to work hard in overseas markets.
Another hard-working company, also the counterpart of Huawei, ZTE Corp went public on Dec. 9 and its share jumped 10.91 per cent. It has confirmed that investers are confident in this grown-up telecom equipment provider. Good luck.

succeed on the necessary

European is still advanced in the telecom trends. France Orange began to provide 3G this week. But nobody can find the killer application now. Communication is the must-have in the life today. I paid about HKD 300 this month, which makes me really upset. But I have to because I need to communicate with people. Calling people is becoming the necessaries so that nobody can avoid it. But I can live without reading today's news, I can live without watching the basketball game, and I can live without listening to music. I don't know if I am too bold to raise the speculation: When the produce becomes the necessaries in the life, it becomes profitable, like phone, like PC, like Google. The rules is also avaible to technology. VoIP is not a necessary now, so many companies are struggling to make people like it. Skype may become necessary in the future, but not now.

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