My impression here in Beijing is that people are highly dissatisfied with the pollution situation. They don't want lung cancer and they don't want their kids breathing this crap.
That being said, the government is taking steps to address the issue. Specifically, due to an outcry on Weibo last year about having to get PM2.5 numbers from the US embassy's twitter feed and iPhone app (twitter is blocked, but screenshots of the iPhone app were pasted on weibo), the government here has started reporting pollution numbers in major cities around the country. So there's reporting now.
Second, they've forced the state-owned oil companies to retool to start outputting cleaner gasoline, moved big polluting industry out of the cities (steel plants, etc.), closed down barbecue pits, ended the sale of some of the more polluting coal briquettes that used to be common, and are trying to get construction sites to keep the dust down.
All of those steps are helping, but not reversing the trend (so far as I can tell or have heard). There is a push to move from coal-burning power plants to gas-powered power plants, but they need to find the gas (via fracking or other means).
Is there an outcry? There are certainly people posting about the pollution on Weibo, which is China's twitter. There are also plenty of people emigrating to the US, if they can afford it (voting with their feet, even if they can't vote here). But I think for people to do more than that, they'd need to see the government just not giving a damn. So perhaps the attitude is 'wait and see'?
Hope this helps.
By the way, one of my Beijing buddies said of the Shanghai smog: "In Beijing, we call this Tuesday."
I also think I read that more than 50% of the nuclear plants currently being built are in China. That is a big way that they will eventually combat this problem.
> I also think I read that more than 50% of the nuclear plants currently being built are in China. That is a big way that they will eventually combat this problem.
Yes, China has 40 GWe of nuclear power coming on-line in the next 5 years. The United States currently has 97 GWe of nuclear capacity, and China currently has 13 GWe.
But China is also building 40 GWe of coal plants each year.
This is what happens when you take 500 million peasants and turn them into urban factory workers within a period of 30 years. Demand grows so quickly that even the world's largest nuclear plant construction program will only account for a fraction of demand growth.
So, not that that matters for the absolute pollution, but if that >50% is correct, their mix will improve.
Also, they try to build those plants far away from cities. That, hopefully, will spread pollution.
That PDF also states that those plans may not be implemented, as a) coal companies lose money in China because the government fixed electricity prices and b) the public doesn't want their pollution.
On the negative side, their absolute pollution will likely go up, and the gap with the western world will go up even more (elsewhere, new coal plants will often replace older, more polluting ones)
How does that 50% stack up against how much power they use compared to all other countries that have nuclear power available to them? Wikipedia has China's power usage in 2008 as just below the US's, but growing much faster. It also has much more of their power coming from coal in 2011 (46%, to 13%). It makes sense to me that China would be expanding their nuclear power faster than anybody else right now. Of course it would be nice if we would pick up the pace too...
Yes, I guess 'barbecue pit' isn't a good choice of words. I was referring to the street vendors who sell barbecue meat, etc. The ones near my home seem to be shut down.
I think "Communist" is a bit of a loaded word that in the my American mind is more linked to Stalin and Lenin than Mao and Deng, so I try to stay away from it.
It's probably much more accurate to say the Chinese government is authoritarian state-capitalist. Authoritarian: They don't care what you think, but you better do what they way. State-capitalist: there are large state-owned enterprises supported by preferential loans from the banks.
There is also a thriving private sector. The government's involvement in private sector businesses varies between "just please pay some taxes" for some types and sizes of businesses and heavy-handed regulation and interference in some sectors that makes success in those sectors without government friends nearly impossible.
To put this in perspective, do consider that the US government bailed out the banks and GM, and owns Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So it's not as though the US is hands off. GM seems to be better run than large Chinese state-owned enterprises, which is saying a lot.
The farms and all businesses were communized back in the 60's, but no longer are, so far as I'm aware. The state does own land, which you lease for decades at a time (this is the same as Hong Kong, which is quite capitalist, btw).
Relaxing the one-child policy is a big deal. Given that countries have fewer children as they industrialize, I expect it won't lead to a population explosion.
I very much wish they would work on reducing the abortion rate by better educating children about having protected sex. I know a Biology teacher here who said her kids know lots about sex from the Internet, so maybe there's some hope that even the attenuated Chinese Internet can help here.
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are all blocked over here doesn't frustrate the hell out of me.
> The state does own land, which you lease for decades at a time (this is the same as Hong Kong, which is quite capitalist, btw).
In capitalist America, you can "own" land, unless you don't pay property tax or the government needs to build a bypass. A distinction without a difference.
Unless you can sell your lease for a profit, which is the impression I got talking to someone in this situation.
American land ownership is "fee simple", which is derived from English law, where the Crown ultimately owns all the land, but grants the landowner unconditional fiefdom over it. You don't actually own property, but rather certain limited legal rights over it, which is how they can get away with property taxes and eminent domain.
Two assumptions:
1. An encryption system is only as secure as its weakest link
2. The NSA can get the source whether its open or closed.
I imagine the NSA would task a team of researchers to analyze the source code, find a vulnerability, and develop a tool to exploit it. I imagine they'd then hand the tool over to a team to deploy and operate it.
No person from the TOR community would need be involved or made aware. And, assuming the NSA was the only one with the exploit, there would be no reason to stop funding Tor, since it advances American interests without (now, thanks to the exploit) threatening them.
Xiaomi's founder, Lei Jun, is an experienced Internet entrepreneur, and Xiaomi's management has a number of ex-Google China and ex-Motorola China folks. So, as a tech entrepreneur in Beijing, I see Xiaomi as more international than most Chinese tech companies (and way more of a tech company than any of the Chinese State Owned Enterpriese (SOEs) that operate in the tech sector).
It's interesting to me that they hired Mr. Barra away from Google. Perhaps he already had a working relationship with people at Xiaomi?
Most of the laowai (foreigners) I've known to work for Chinese companies get really good compensation but last only 6 months or so...there is something about a company (Qihoo...) that uses timecards for all their programmers, and expects 6-day work weeks, that is quite dehumanizing. Maybe Xiaomi is different, but just having ex-Google/Moto China talent wouldn't be reassuring to me, especially if management is all Chinese, or worse, he would be the only laowai in the company. The culture issues would just be so huge.
Who knows why he chose to come here? This is quite a personal decision.
When I was at KPMG, back in the early 90s, all the branches I visited had a similar structure - units of about 20 to 40 people, with an operational manager (OM, usually with senior managers as his/her title) who was not a partner. Each OM would report to at least one partner, but sometimes several OMs would report to one partner, or there would be a department with several units and several partners, where decisions would be made through a board of partners and OMs.
I never heard that this was a uniform policy for KPMG, but as far as I saw, it was how they organised audit, tax, and consulting units, and they used it for offices as small as 40 staff and offices as big as 700 staff. KPMG management back then were proud of how there was workplace harmony in the units, efficient communication between management and partners, and their federal structure (i.e., the top partner is not a dictator).
Groups of up to 40 staff would be around a third or a quarter of the optimal group size that Robin Dunbar posited for humans. Cf. http://blog.sitefox.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Hill_Dunb... - it makes sense that the size of work groups in a large company should be below the Dunbar number, since their colleagues should not only be the people in their work group, but they should try to maintain a network throughout the company.
The numbers I've heard here in China are three weeks from the factory door to a warehouse on the West Coast of the USA (don't forget loading/unloading and time clearing customs). Typically, factories require you to complete payment and take possession before the product leaves their factory doors. There is often an inspection of completed goods at the factory before payment is made, and the buyer takes possession.
Perhaps Apple has told their manufacturing partners they will only take possession once the product arrives at their warehouse in the US, moving this time window from Apple's books to their supplier's books.
I love the phrase, "Better done than done better." It's suitable for many situations in life.
In the last few months, I've been running my life off a weekly task list that includes both my personal and business tasks and objectives. I build the task list each Monday morning based on goals I set out at the beginning of the year (such as improve my Chinese, for a personal goal, or get software license signed, as a business goal.) This has definitely pushed me to complete many tasks that could have easily just not gotten done.
That said, I think he paints a binary picture of people who are either go-getters who act now to achieve their goals vs. dreamers who never get anything done. In my experience, these are two ends of a spectrum, where it's important to move back-and-forth between each end to achieve goals and objectives.
By the way, he has a wonderful point about "The Go-Getter loves what he does (and delegates the rest)" I am way too guilty of doing it all myself, when I should instead spend a little bit of money to have other people do things for me that are not key to what I want.
Seems like a very long leap from "Now there is nobody to say 'no' to bad design." to "The new UI is no doubt cleaner, simpler, easier to use, and more in line with the now-popular iPad UI and Lion’s Launchpad." If I weren't wearing such a well-constructed tinfoil hat I'd say that someone got a call from an Apple legal employee who wasn't happy to be working on a Saturday.
Great that Rovio makes the fact that Angry Birds was their 52nd game part of their mythology.
Every time I read a glossy write-up, I find myself wishing they'd dig a bit deeper into the trial-and-error and near failure that went on before companies became successful.
My impression here in Beijing is that people are highly dissatisfied with the pollution situation. They don't want lung cancer and they don't want their kids breathing this crap.
That being said, the government is taking steps to address the issue. Specifically, due to an outcry on Weibo last year about having to get PM2.5 numbers from the US embassy's twitter feed and iPhone app (twitter is blocked, but screenshots of the iPhone app were pasted on weibo), the government here has started reporting pollution numbers in major cities around the country. So there's reporting now.
Second, they've forced the state-owned oil companies to retool to start outputting cleaner gasoline, moved big polluting industry out of the cities (steel plants, etc.), closed down barbecue pits, ended the sale of some of the more polluting coal briquettes that used to be common, and are trying to get construction sites to keep the dust down.
All of those steps are helping, but not reversing the trend (so far as I can tell or have heard). There is a push to move from coal-burning power plants to gas-powered power plants, but they need to find the gas (via fracking or other means).
Is there an outcry? There are certainly people posting about the pollution on Weibo, which is China's twitter. There are also plenty of people emigrating to the US, if they can afford it (voting with their feet, even if they can't vote here). But I think for people to do more than that, they'd need to see the government just not giving a damn. So perhaps the attitude is 'wait and see'?
Hope this helps.
By the way, one of my Beijing buddies said of the Shanghai smog: "In Beijing, we call this Tuesday."