CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

06/11/2012

* China leaders consider internal democratic reform

Even if it seems to be somewhat internal, such a move would be the first step towards openness and transparency. And who knows where that might lead.

Reuters: “China’s outgoing leader and his likely successor are pushing the ruling Communist Party to adopt a more democratic process this month for choosing a new leadership, sources said, in an attempt to boost its flagging legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

A man walks past a logo of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at a media center for the upcoming18th National Congress of the CPC, which starts Thursday, in Beijing November 5, 2012. REUTERS-Jason Lee

The extent of the reform would be unprecedented in communist China where elections for the highest tiers of the party, held every five years, have been mainly exercises in rubber-stamping candidates already agreed upon by party power-brokers.

The Communist Party, which has held unbroken power since 1949, is struggling to maintain its popular legitimacy in the face of rising inequality, corruption and environmental degradation, even as the economy continues to bound ahead.

President Hu Jintao and his heir, Xi Jinping, have proposed that the party’s 18th Congress, which opens on Thursday, should hold elections for the elite Politburo where for the first time there would be more candidates than available seats, said three sources with ties to the party leadership.

The Politburo, currently 24 members, is the second-highest level of power in China from which the highest decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, is chosen.

They are chosen by the roughly 200 full members of the Central Committee which is in turn chosen by the more than 2,000 delegates at this week’s Congress.

Under their proposal, there would be up to 20 percent more candidates than seats in the new Politburo in an election to be held next week, the sources said. It was unclear if competitive voting would also be extended to the Standing Committee.

“Hu wants expanding intra-party democracy to be one of his legacies,” one source said, requesting anonymity to avoid repercussions for discussing secretive elite politics.

“It would also be good for Xi’s image,” the source added.

Xi is considered certain to replace Hu as party chief at the congress, with Li Keqiang, currently a vice premier, tipped to become his deputy in the once-in-a-decade transition to a new administration. Xi would then take over as president, and Li as premier, at the annual full session of parliament in March.

China experts said a more competitive election for the Politburo would mark a historic reform that could lead to surprises in the formation of Xi’s administration, with wider implications for further political reform.

“This is a very, very important development,” said Cheng Li, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“It would provide a new source of legitimacy. It would not just be dark-box manipulation … The party’s legitimacy is so low that they must do something to uplift the public’s confidence.”

However, Li and other experts remained skeptical that the proposal would be adopted, given that it could still be vetoed by party elders or conservatives.

via Exclusive: China leaders consider internal democratic reform | Reuters.

Posted in 10 year leadership change, China alert, Democracy, Good news, Politics, Reform, Transparency | 1 Comment »

Tags: Central Committee, China, Hu Jintao, Li Keqiang, Politburo, Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, politics, president hu jintao, Xi JinPing

05/11/2012

* ‘Looted’ Chinese antiques pulled from UK auction

SCMP: “Two Chinese antiques have been withdrawn from auction in Britain, the auctioneer said, after the proposed sale sparked fury in China amid claims they were looted from Beijing in the 19th century.

Bonhams issued an apology as it confirmed the two jade carvings would not be sold after the owner withdrew them from a planned auction on Thursday to “avoid any possible offence”.

Picture: Looting of Old Summer Palace by British & French troops.

The planned sale had sparked a furious reaction from Tan Ping, an official at China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage, who labelled it “against the spirit of international conventions”.

“Bonhams is very sorry to read reports in the Chinese press that offence has been caused in China by the proposed sale of two jade carvings,” Bonhams said in a statement received by AFP on Monday.

“There was never in any way an intention to cause offence, and Bonhams regrets that this interpretation has been published.”

Ping previously told state media: “Cultural relics should be returned to their country of origin. We’ll keep a close eye on the matter.”

In its online description of the Qing dynasty jade disc and jade hanging vase, Bonhams said they were “retrieved from the abandoned Summer Palace in Beijing” in 1860.

The Old Summer Palace, or Yuanmingyuan, was pillaged by British and French military forces in 1860, when Beijing says 1.5 million relics were looted, though it is likely some antiques were sold off by local dealers.

The event is seen in China as a national humiliation at the hands of Western armies. Sales of antiques looted from the palace are widely resented in China.”

via ‘Looted’ Chinese antiques pulled from UK auction | South China Morning Post.

Tags: Beijing, Bonhams, China, cultural relics, national humiliation, Old Summer Palace, south china morning post

05/11/2012

* China authorities pushing happiness amid rising discontent

It was the tiny mountain kingdom of Bhutan that started the notion of a Gross Happiness Index. UK’s Premier Cameron had a brief stab at tit. And now the world’s most populous country is having ago. Maybe it will be taken seriously in due course!

SCMP: “With dissatisfaction growing over corruption, inequality, food safety and numerous other social problems, mainland authorities are shifting their focus from economics to emotions.

Simply put, they want everyone to be happy.

From Beijing to Ningxia, local, provincial and regional leaders have been setting up “happiness indexes” or otherwise tailoring programmes, projects and policies to increase people’s satisfaction with their lives, as well as, of course, with the government.

Eighteen provinces and more than 100 cities have jumped on the happiness bandwagon in recent years, according to a report in Beijing News last week.

The campaign has helped the Communist Party set the stage for its 18th national congress, which opens this week amid increased incidents of social unrest.

While most analysts welcome the increased focus on people’s welfare, some caution that happiness is hard to measure and suggest the party would be better off advancing concrete policies for social change.

The public has been less forgiving, mercilessly ridiculing the policy on the internet.

“Without a constitutional government and democracy, a ‘Happy China’ will only be a fable,” said Professor Hu Xingdou, who is a commentator at the Beijing University of Technology.

“There are so many things that the authorities could do to improve the public’s satisfaction, such as protecting civil rights, building a democratic country, fighting corruption, stopping illegal land grabs and cutting taxes.”

Reform-minded Guangdong party secretary Wang Yang became perhaps the most prominent – and widely mocked – proponent of the public satisfaction drive last year when he outlined his proposal for a “Happy Guangdong” province.

As part of the plan, Wang allocated 423 billion yuan (HK$521 billion) for projects to improve people’s livelihood. He said he would attempt to reduce the province’s gross domestic product growth from a breakneck 12.5 per cent to a more manageable level of 8 per cent.

To measure his success, Wang set up an index of individual economic indicators, including employment, income, education, health care, crime, housing, infrastructure, social security and the environment.

But Wang was hardly the first to try out such a scheme. His now-disgraced rival, former Chongqing boss Bo Xilai, also pledged to slow the local growth rate after his city was named the mainland’s happiest in 2010.

In Beijing, local propaganda authorities even aired a seven-episode television series in August offering advice to those who are unhappy.

In it, a professor with a psychology degree from Harvard University instructed people on how to find their inner peace, rather than find fault with the government.

Jiangyin city, Jiangsu province, had one of the earliest satisfaction drives. The local government set up its happiness index in 2007, promising to improve the city’s employment, income, public safety and heath care, as well as reducing pollution.

The programme has been a rousing success, if you believe the government’s survey. Within three years, Jiangyin found that 95.87 per cent of its residents felt happy.

Professor Xu Guangjian, of Renmin University’s School of Public Administration and Policy, said he had not seen a single regional government that had been able to convincingly survey the public’s level of happiness. “The factors behind unhappiness are obvious,” he said.

Surveys conducted by Guangdong’s newspapers and government think tanks suggest the main source of most people’s gripes is the government, with many pointing to failures in job creation, social welfare, medical services, housing, pollution, food safety and soaring prices.

And there may be a new source of public dissatisfaction: satisfaction drives.

“It’s very difficult to measure happiness and there’s a subtle growing dislike of the authorities’ overwhelming happiness campaigns,” said Professor Xing Zhanjun, of the Centre for Quality of Life and Public Policy at Shandong University. “The public is starting to mock the word these days.”

Nonetheless, central government authorities have been eager to extend the policy. Many local governments picked up the satisfaction agenda after Premier Wen Jiabao made happiness and human dignity central elements of his 2010 work report.

In the run-up to the party congress, China Central Television (CCTV) has been running a series of segments for it which it conducted 3,500 man-on-the-street interviews in an attempt to measure the mainland’s “gross national happiness”.

Many have dismissed the series as superficial. CCTV reporters simply ask people whether they are happy and an overwhelming majority answer “yes”.

But the segments have not been without their enlightening moments, such as when a reporter pulled one interviewee out of a queue. “I am unhappy because when I answered your question, I lost my place in the queue,” the person said.

Professor Steve Tsang Yui-sang, director of the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute, said Beijing, if it were truly serious about reform, would appoint independent research institutes to survey main obstacles to happiness.

“It can cost as little as several hundred thousand yuan and would be much cheaper than CCTV’s street survey with some 70 camera crews,” Tsang said.”

via China authorities pushing happiness amid rising discontent | South China Morning Post.

Posted in China alert, Economics, Happiness, Social & cultural | 3 Comments »

Tags: Beijing, Bo Xilai, China, China Policy Institute, Wen Jiabao

05/11/2012

* Is English or Mandarin the language of the future?

BBC: “English has been the dominant global language for a century, but is it the language of the future? If Mandarin Chinese is to challenge English globally, then it first has to conquer its own backyard, South East Asia.

In Malaysia’s southernmost city of Johor Bahru, the desire to speak good English has driven some children to make a remarkable two-hour journey to school every day.

Nine-year-old Aw Yee Han hops on a yellow mini van at 04:30. His passport is tucked inside a small pouch hung around his neck.

This makes it easier for him to show it to immigration officials when he reaches the Malaysian border.

His school is located on the other side, in Singapore, where unlike in Malaysia, English is the main language.

It’s not your typical school run, but his mother, Shirley Chua thinks it’s worth it.

“Science and maths are all written in English so it’s essential for my son to be fluent in the language,” she says.

Continue reading the main story

Robert Lane Greene

Author of You Are What You Speak

The assumption that Mandarin will grow with China’s economic rise may be flawed. Consider Japan which, after spectacular post-war economic growth, became the world’s second-biggest economy. The Japanese language saw no comparable rise in power and prestige.

The same may prove true of Mandarin. The character-based writing system requires years of hard work for even native speakers to learn, and poses a formidable obstacle to foreigners. In Asia, where China’s influence is thousands of years old, this may pose less of a problem. But in the West, even dedicated students labour for years before they can confidently read a text of normal difficulty on a random topic.

Finally, many languages in Asia, Africa and the Amazon use “tones” (rising, falling, flat or dipping pitch contours) to distinguish different words. For speakers of tonal languages (like Vietnamese) learning the tones of Mandarin poses no particular difficulty. But speakers of non-tonal languages struggle to learn tones in adulthood – just ask any adult Mandarin-learner for their funniest story about using a word with the wrong tone.

An estimated 15,000 students from southern Johor state make the same bus journey across the border every day. It may seem like a drastic measure, but some parents don’t trust the education system in Malaysia – they worry that the value of English is declining in the country.

Since independence from the British in 1957, the country has phased out schools that teach in English. By the early 1980s, most students were learning in the national language of Malay.

As a result, analysts say Malaysian graduates became less employable in the IT sector.

“We’ve seen a drastic reduction in the standard of English in our country, not just among the students but I think among the teachers as well,” says political commentator Ong Kian Ming.

Those who believe that English is important for their children’s future either send their kids to expensive private schools or to Singapore, where the government has been credited as being far-sighted for adopting the language of its former colonial master.

Nearly three-quarters of the population in Singapore are ethnic Chinese but English is one of the national languages and very widely-spoken.

Many believe that this has helped the city state earn the title of being the easiest place to do business, by the World Bank.

Continue reading the main story

Lost in translation

Up to 7,000 different languages are estimated to be spoken around the world

Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German and French are world’s most widely spoken languages, according to UNESCO

Languages are grouped into families that share a common ancestry

English is related to German and Dutch, and all are part of Indo-European family of languages

Also includes French, Spanish and Italian, which come from Latin

2,200 of the world’s languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has 260

Source: BBC Languages

* Premier Wen Jiabao calls for party probe into claims of family’s ‘hidden fortune’

Premier Wen is showing his true colours as a reformist and someone who believes that he is ‘clean’. Let’s hope the results of the investigation are made public so that we can all see how his family grew their fortune however vast or meagre. This act also shows that he would dearly love to have the long-overdue “sunshine law” – which would require a public declaration of family assets by senior leaders – be finally put into effect.

SCMP: “The communist party leadership has launched a probe into the alleged family wealth of Wen Jiabao at the premier’s request, according to sources.

scm_news_wjb05.art_1.jpg

In a letter submitted to the Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top decision-making body of which the premier is also a member, Wen asked for a formal inquiry into claims made by The New York Times.

A report on October 26 alleged his family had amassed at least US$2.7 billion of assets during his premiership. The Standing Committee had agreed to his request, the sources said.

It is unclear what the inquiry is likely to dig up, or when the results will be published, if at all.

The probe is expected to focus on the family’s alleged shares in Ping An, one of the mainland’s largest insurance companies.

The Times report, citing regulatory filings and corporate documents, said that in 2007 Wen’s family had a US$2.2 billion stake in Ping An.

It also alleged Wen’s 90-year-old mother had US$120 million of shares in the company.

According to the sources, several conservative party elders known to dislike the premier’s more liberal stance have urged him to provide detailed explanations on all the major allegations in the Times report, especially on the Ping An holdings.

Businesswoman Duan Weihong, whose company Taihong was described by the Times as the investment vehicle for the Wen family, told the newspaper she used the names of Wen’s relatives to register the ownership of the Ping An shares.

The party elders argued that this process, which would require registering their official ID numbers and obtaining their signatures, raised immediate questions about how Duan could obtain such personal details without consent from the Wen family.

Wen’s wife and his son have been plagued by corruption allegations for years.

But the family issued a statement, through two lawyers, for the first time on October 27, hitting back at the Times allegations about their “hidden riches” and threatening legal action.

It is unclear whether the family will publish further clarifications or go to the courts.

It is also understood the party elders were “unhappy” about the fact that major overseas Chinese websites – which usually swoop on negative news about the mainland’s top leaders – have carried a barrage of articles supporting Wen, quoting sources close to his family.

According to their reports, Wen had seized the opportunity to demand that a long-overdue “sunshine law” – which would require a public declaration of family assets by senior leaders – be finally put into effect.

He also said he would be happy to make public his family’s assets.

This would appear to be more than just an attempt by the image-conscious outgoing premier to defend his name, analysts say.

They say it shows he is keen to use the inquiry as one last chance to push forward the long-stalled “sunshine law”. Professor Zhu Lijia, of the Chinese Academy of Governance, said: “It is a ground-breaking step towards greater government openness and transparency.””

via Premier Wen Jiabao calls for party probe into claims of family’s ‘hidden fortune’ | South China Morning Post.

Debate Continues Around New York Times Wen Jiabao Exposé (theepochtimes.com)
In rare response, Wen’s family rejects NYT claims (thehindu.com)
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s Family Has Controlled $2.7 Bln Of Assets, New York Times Says (forbes.com)

Posted in China alert, Nepotism, Politics | 1 Comment »

Tags: China, New York Times, Ping An Insurance, Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, politics, Wen, Wen Jiabao

05/11/2012

* Fear over PLA loyalty before party congress sees propaganda frenzy

One would think that in a country with a single ruling party, loyalty to the party and loyalty to the country means the same thing. But obviously, the CPC is concerned that some soldiers (or more importantly their generals) may see a significant difference between these two loyalties. The mere fact that the PLA is asking the troops to be loyal to the party must mean there is some serious doubt about their loyalties!

SCMP: “A frenzy of military propaganda that started more than six months ago calling for absolute loyalty to the Communist Party stands in stark contrast to the atmosphere before the party congress in 2002, analysts say, adding that it highlights concerns about the army’s stability.

scm_news_plenum03.art_1.jpg

The People’s Liberation Army Daily carried another article on its front page yesterday on the ideological education of the troops, this time written by General Li Jinai, a member of the Central Military Commission and a former chief of the PLA’s General Political Department.

“[We] should strongly oppose the arguments for separation of the army from our party, a politically neutral army or the nationalisation of the PLA and other incorrect political ideas,” Li wrote in the article, first published in the November issue of the party journal Qiushi.

Zhang Lifan , a Beijing-based political analyst, said such unease stemmed from too many “uncertainties” in the leadership reshuffle at this month’s party congress.

“Today’s political uncertainty in the top leadership has never happened since the party came to power in 1949,” he said , referring to the next leadership line-up, which is apparently not finalised even though the congress opens in less than a week.

“And the sense of crisis today over the party’s reign is comparable to the Tiananmen protests in 1989.

“In such a sensitive moment, the loyalty of the army becomes the most important pillar to support the central leadership’s regime.””

via Fear over PLA loyalty before party congress sees propaganda frenzy | South China Morning Post.

China names new Army Chief of Staff (thehindu.com)
Party Leader Strengthens Control of Military Before Exit (theepochtimes.com)
Outspoken China officers a challenge to the party (metronews.ca)

Posted in China alert, Military, Politics | 3 Comments »

Tags: absolute loyalty, Beijing, Central Military Commission, communist party of china, liberation army, military propaganda, party loyalty, People Liberation Army, PLA, politics, tiananmen protests

03/11/2012

* From lawyer to leader, Li Keqiang will be best-educated leader yet

For 20 years, the top Chinese leaders were mostly engineers (or scientists). The president-to-be is Xi Jinping is a chemical engineer by training; and the Premier-to-be Li Keqiang holds postgraduate degrees in law and economics. We shall soon see who are the other members of the central committee of the Politburo and what are their backgrounds. But I am certain engineers will not be in the majority. If I am correct, then as nothing significant in China happens by accident, the shift from engineers to a wider set of backgrounds probably means a shift from concentrating on infrastructure and engineering-oriented enterprises to wider investments and concerns.

South China Morning Post: “The next premier is likely to be the best educated since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, with Vice-Premier Li Keqiang , who holds postgraduate degrees in law and economics from prestigious Peking University, due to succeed Premier Wen Jiabao in March.

At university, Li studied the ideas of leading British judges and mixed with democracy advocates, leading some to hope his premiership will herald significant political change in the world’s last major communist-ruled nation.

Li is the first senior central government leader to hold a PhD in economics and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in law, all earned at a university that was a hotspot of dissent, and his liberal studies background contrasts strongly with the engineering backgrounds of those who have run China recently.

A member of the first group of students admitted to university after late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping ordered the resumption of the university entrance exam in 1977, following the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, Li studied law under Professor Gong Xiangrui , an expert on Western constitutional law who had studied in Britain in the 1930s. Li followed that with a PhD in economics under Li Yining , the mainland’s market reform guru.

Kerry Brown, head of the Asia programme at the Chatham House think tank in London, said Li was the first lawyer to become a member of the party’s supreme Politburo Standing Committee and he would be the first lawyer to become premier.

“He typifies the new leaders inasmuch as he is not a technocrat, has a PhD from Peking University and had a long period of training in the provinces before elevation to executive vice-premier in 2008,” Brown said.

Li is one of the few top leaders fluent in English, surprising observers during a visit to Hong Kong last year when he broke with protocol and addressed an event at the University of Hong Kong in English. His wife, Cheng Hong, is a linguistics professor and an expert on American literature who has translated several modern American works into Chinese.

Brown praised Li for having an engaging public manner, something he said was shown in Li’s visit to Hong Kong last year.

“He is not afraid of using English in public, though the heavy treatment of protesters and journalists at the time caused much criticism,” Brown said.

Most of China’s leaders over the past couple of decades have been engineers-turned-bureaucrats, trained in an education system heavily influenced by the Soviet Union.

But 57-year-old Li, like many of his contemporaries, brings a markedly different mindset to the problems facing the nation.

via From lawyer to leader, Li Keqiang will be best-educated leader yet | South China Morning Post.

* Q&A: China’s new leaders (chindia-alert.org)

Posted in 10 year leadership change, China alert, Governance, Politics, Reform | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, Deng Xiaoping, Li Keqiang, politics, Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China, Wen Jiabao

29/10/2012

* Oh, what a sinking feeling: Toyota misfires with Chinese buyers

Although like other Japanese car makers, Toyota suffered recently due to the anti-Japanese protests and violence (eg burning of Japanese car showrooms), its woes are partly self-inflicted.

Reuters: “The roots of Toyota Motor Corp‘s China troubles run far deeper than the anti-Japan protests that have swept the country, stretching back to the 2008 launch of the Yaris subcompact — a spectacular flop with price-conscious Chinese buyers.

A visitor walks past a Toyota Motor Corp's car displayed behind a sign in both Chinese (L) and Japanese at the company's showroom in Tokyo in this October 18, 2012 file photo. REUTERS-Toru Hanai-Files

The car, a success elsewhere, was meant to help build brand loyalty and send Toyota hurtling towards a still-unattained goal of selling one million vehicles annually in the world’s largest auto market.

However the Yaris missed the mark with China’s traditional higher-end customers as well as its new emerging middle class.

To some company insiders and dealers it epitomizes all that does not appeal to the status-conscious, lacking what the Chinese call ‘daqi’ or ‘road presence’. Next to Nissan Motor Co Ltd’s pricier Tiida, for example, it feels small and lacks oomph.

But for frugal first-time buyers, the Yaris which is priced from 87,000 yuan ($13,900) was a non-starter, costing some 55 percent more than General Motor’s Chevy Sail and putting Toyota at a competitive disadvantage in a must-win market.

via Analysis: Oh, what a sinking feeling: Toyota misfires with Chinese buyers | Reuters.

First Test: 2012 Toyota Yaris SE (motortrend.com)

Posted in China alert, Consumer, Economics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: cars, China, Japan, japanese car makers, nissan motor co, nissan motor co ltd, Toyota, Toyota Yaris, Yaris

29/10/2012

* Under Chinese, a Greek Port Thrives

If only this phenomenon can be replicated across Greece and other Euro PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) countries …

New York Times: “The captain gazed from his elegant office overlooking this port on the Aegean Sea and smiled as towering cranes plucked container after container from a giant ship while robotic transport vehicles fanned out to transfer the cargo to smaller vessels bound for the Mediterranean.

The cargo volume here is three times the level it was two years ago, before the captain, Fu Cheng Qiu, was put in charge by his employer, Cosco, a global shipping giant owned by the Chinese government.

In a 2010 deal that put 500 million euros ($647 million) into the coffers of Greece’s cash-starved government, Cosco leased half of the port of Piraeus and quickly converted a business that had languished as a Greek state-run enterprise into a hotbed of productivity.

The other half of the port is still run by Greece. And the fact that its business lags behind Cosco’s is emblematic of the entrenched labor rules and relatively high wages — for those lucky enough to still have jobs — that have stifled the country’s economic growth.

“Everyone here knows that you must be hard-working,” said Captain Fu, under whose watch the Chinese-run side of the port has lured new clients, high-volume traffic and bigger ships.

In many ways, the top-to-bottom overhaul that Cosco is imposing on Piraeus is what Greece as a whole must aspire to if it is ever to restore competitiveness to its recession-sapped economy, make a dent in its 24 percent unemployment rate and avoid being dependent on its European neighbors for years to come.

As the Greek government contemplates shedding state-owned assets to help pay down staggering debts, it might be tempting to consider leasing or even selling the rest of the port to China. But if the Cosco example is representative, the trade-offs — mainly a sharp reduction in labor costs and job protection rules — might be ones many Greeks would be loath to accept.

“Unionized labor will push back to keep the protection it has enjoyed,” said Vassilis Antoniades, the chief executive of Boston Consulting Group in Greece. But the Cosco investment, he said, “shows that under private management, Greek companies can be globally competitive.”

Captain Fu, for his part, says Greece has much to learn from companies like his.

“The Chinese want to make money with work,” he said. In his view, too many Europeans have pursued a comfortable, protected existence since the end of World War II. “They wanted a good life, more holidays and less work,” he said. “And they spent money before they had it. Now they have many debts.”

Greece’s troika of foreign lenders — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission — has made similar arguments. Among other things, they are urging Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to end blanket protections for workers and unions and to require Greece itself to operate more like a productive modern business.

Besides the $647 million that put half of the port of Piraeus into Chinese hands, the Greek government is receiving more income from taxes as a result of the port’s pickup in business.

Other than a handful of Chinese managers, moreover, Cosco’s operation is providing around 1,000 jobs to Greek workers — compared with the 800 or so who work the dock that is still under Greek management.

On Cosco’s portion of the port, cargo traffic has more than doubled over the last year, to 1.05 million containers. And while profit margins are still razor thin — $6.47 million last year on sales of $94.2 million — that is mainly because the Chinese company is putting a lot of its money back into the port.

Cosco is spending more than $388 million to modernize its dock to handle up to 3.7 million containers in the next year, which would make it one of the world’s 10 largest ports. Beyond that, workers are also laying the foundations for a second Cosco pier.

The Greek-run side of the port, which endured a series of debilitating worker strikes in the three years before Cosco came to town, has been forced by the Chinese competition to seek its own path to modernization. Still, only about a third of its business consists of cargo handling; the rest is made up of more lucrative passenger traffic.

For years, the container terminal was a profitable operation. But Harilaos N. Psaraftis, a professor of maritime transport at the School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering in Athens, said it was inefficient “because worker relations were very cumbersome.”

The salaries of some workers reached $181,000 a year with overtime; Cosco is typically paying less than $23,300. On the Greek side of the port, union rules required that nine people work a gantry crane; Cosco uses a crew of four.

“It was just crazy,” recalled Mr. Psaraftis, who was the chief executive of the port from 1996 to 2002. “I told them, ‘If you keep this up, this thing will be privatized.’ But they didn’t listen.”

Since Cosco arrived, “competition has forced us to take initiatives to find better ways of working,” said Stavros Hatzakos, the general director of Piraeus Port Authority, which runs the Greek operation. “Employees think twice about strikes and labor action now,” he said. And the ones still on the job have taken salary reductions as part of the across-the-board wage cuts of 20 percent or more that the government has placed on public employees.

On the other side of the chain-link fence that separates the Chinese and Greek operations, Captain Fu said he would love for Cosco to run all of Piraeus if the government put it up for sale. That expansion would cement Chinese dominance of one of the most strategic shipping gateways to Southern Europe and the Balkans.

Such a move, though, might meet stiff opposition from Greek unions and officials at the Piraeus Port Authority, who criticize Cosco’s approach to labor.”

Cosco’s Greek unit on target to fulfill Piraeus pier contract (ekathimerini.com)
Piraeus Container Hub Traffic Surges 53 Percent (joc.com)

Posted in China alert, Economics, joint venture, Labour, productivity | 2 Comments »

Tags: China, Chinese, Cosco, European Central Bank, European Commission, Greece, Greek, Piraeus

28/10/2012

* Manmohan expands cabinet with new faces

New brooms sweep clean. Will this new government be any less prone to corruption than previous governments?

The Hindu: “Seven Cabinet ministers, including new faces such as K. Rehman Khan and Chandresh Kumari, and 15 Ministers of State were sworn—in on Sunday as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expanded his Council of Ministers.

President Pranab Mukherjee, Vice President Hamid Ansari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with newly sworn-in ministers at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Sunday. Photo: S. Subramanium

Five Ministers of State —— Dinsha Patel, M.M. Pallam Raju, Harish Rawat, Ajay Maken and Ashwani Kumar —— were promoted to Cabinet rank.

Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari and actor—turned—politician Chiranjeevi were brought in as Ministers of State with independent charge, while Shashi Tharoor made a comeback as Minister of State after over two years.

12 new Ministers of State were sworn—in. They are Tariq Anwar (Maharashtra), K Suresh (Kerala), A H Khan Chowdhry, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhry and Deepa Dasmunshi, (West Bengal), S Satyanarayana, K Jayasuyraprakash Reddy, P Balram Naik, and Killi Kriparani (Andhra Pradesh).

Lalchand Kataria (Rajasthan), Ranee Narah (Assam) and Ninong Ering (Arunachal Pradesh) are the others who were sworn—in as MoS.”

via The Hindu : News / National : Manmohan expands cabinet with new faces.

Posted in India alert, Leadership change, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: manmohan singh, Minister of State, politics, prime minister manmohan singh

CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon