All posts by David Feng

DF Zhangzhou
Media, Media Appearances

Entertainment + Info + Care =

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There are a few things I still look up to when it comes to Switzerland, in spite of its vote of near self-destruction on 9 February 2014, when it slammed the doors on what was hyped as “over-immigration”. (In this case you were probably a little “less smart” to have signed the agreement in the first place, right?)

But one thing I look up to Switzerland is its national air carrier, Swiss International Air Lines, a company I still at times refer to as “Swissair” (which was what it was pre-2002). Swiss is famous for its quality of service, and this was “reinforced” during my recent passport renewal visit at the Swiss embassy (so in actual fact both the airline and the embassy were great). The biometrics machine did fail — it took nearly an hour for it to be done — but staff offered me a glass of water and some Swiss chocolate!

The Swiss doing Swiss (pardon the pun) are addicted to quality to extents you simply cannot imagine. Standard on all Swiss flights are the “good bye” chocolates, popularised by its new safety video. The font they have chosen is totally unique and was made in Switzerland — its use is refined, and it is one of the most legible fonts ever. Most importantly, the announcements are one of the very best in the world, from the safety video to those broadcast by living, breathing human beings. There are occasional announcements full of humour (“Ladies and gentlemen, in case you would still like to fly with us, here are the connections at Zurich airport”) and arrival information (and transfers) are standard with all flights (certainly those to Zurich). There are no political propaganda or long-winded, useless, repetitive announcements.

Recently, I hosted (and am still hosting now, as of this post) 200 media professionals (including nearly 30 top-calibre UK media pros) in Zhangzhou, right off Xiamen, in southeastern China. Every day gave me microphone access. I loved the competition from the local host, as it showed exactly what the Swiss advantage was. Never mind the local, at times, might have asked a question better; or might have shown more grace in the choice of words; the Swiss learnt from Swiss, and as I told one of the chief executives of the UK delegation, I had wanted to do what Swiss crew members do: complete addiction to quality and details (and I do this because I was treated right by Swiss crew, and they inspired me on how quality services was done). Whereas a local might simply read off a rather generic cue card, the Swiss plan their future cue cards as “design + art”; whereas a local has a few firm lines to stick by, flexibility is seen both on Swiss flights (and certainly customisability with higher classes of travel), and I take my cue from there. (Here, I was more inspired by the Mac OS’s context-sensitive menus; the keyword here is: “relevance”.)

The Swiss obviously tick along perfect with Macs. Where PCs would have a problem playing embedded video, Macs did it all. There was probably one 2 second clip which did not play, but nobody had a major issue. Instead of “pushing presenters around”, I made the extra effort to pay full attention to their presentations, make supportive comments right after the show (maybe even crack a joke if possible), and to shake their hands in public — at least once. In the event of tech glitches, I was standing just inches away, so I’d immediately fix the problems. I really kind of wished the local presenter did the same, as there is such a narrow (but deep) gap between holding a microphone and shooting down cold words down it, and using the same but in a much more refined manner.

Deep in the night, sometimes I lose full nights wondering just what is the next thing I could do just to beat Swiss Business Class, or Jony Ive and the Apple operating systems. The quest for perfection simply cannot be slowed down; you cannot shift down, you can only shift up. I remain very honoured to be part of the crew that pulled off the China-UK media summit in Xiamen off so well, and I was happy to be given a chance to mix the sauces (so to speak) of entertainment, information and care into one tasty paste.

Which ideally would taste better than my favourite French dressing of childhood legend…

China, Commentary, Culture, Society

The Sorry State of Beliefs and Morals in China

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I have never been a believer in any religion — but that’s because I’m happily neutral, religion-wise. Chez moi, I don’t approve of, oppose, support, or otherwise get involved with religion.

But I have this thing about people who start abusing a religion trying to make money. As of late I have been keeping my 101 kilometres away from two Starbucks in town: that at Tower III, World Trade Centre, and, beginning today, the one at Shin Kong Plaza. (The latter one is a riot: My wife and I nearly fell over when they started testing a new type of “outdoor sofa”, if we’re to put it this way.)

In Chinese, there’s a proverb that makes you look like you’ve done nothing bad — when you’re the thief yourself. The story goes that this guy was envious of his neighbour, so he nicked 300 taels of silver. Just to “make sure” the neighbour didn’t get suspicious, he erected a sign — “Under this plot of land there are no 300 taels of silver” (此地無銀三百兩).

That’s like the perfect give-away!

In both cases, we’ve seen shanzhai Buddhist monks wearing a standard grey dress with the Zen / Chan character at the back. The kind you see at temples for real believers. Guy comes with this kind of Buddhist ornament and starts peddling his wares.

There’s a city law in Beijing banning unauthorised business practices without a permit. This guy never got himself the permit. Either he is trying to sell us suspect commodities or he is offering suspect services (“May I read your palm? I think you’re rich!”, goes the one at the World Trade Centre).

The worst thing about the whole phenomenon is that fake monks trying to sell you shanzhai goods are the least of your worries. I’ve heard worse horror stories. There are people who go to temples during the day time, then head straight into the nightclubs by midnight, doing all kinds of horrible — and certainly unethical — stuff. These are “devout followers” by day, and “devout abusers” by night.

If Guo Meimei has ruined China’s Red Cross foundation, these sham monks are doing exactly the same to Buddhism. I don’t know what the religion exactly stands for, but I’m sure they can’t stand for evil. If China was trying to “save itself” via Buddhism, these sham monks are doing all they can to make Chinese view Buddhism the same way as they view the Chinese Red Cross. In a country where “alternative cults” are banned, religion is severely limited, and freedoms of conscience come with strings attached, the population is left to worshipping nothing — except for money.

When we get greedy — when 1.3 billion get greedy at the same time, all of a sudden — the end is that a nation of 5,000 years and counting will finally meet its makers. (It’ll also get the rest of the planet in a bit of a worry.)

Socialist indoctrination has not worked in China — there is a very visible and sizeable part of the population of people who have deep-seated doubts about what the 7 PM propaganda news show is trying to convince us “is the truth”. When religion and basic morals give way to nothing but money worship — that’s when we’re in real danger.

Streets of Rural Beijing
Beijing, Travel

Ausländer im eigenen Inland? Why Beijing’s New Traffic Rules Compound Problems

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The city of Beijing is promulgating two new regulations on the roads:—

  • Only cars with Beijing plates, as well as authorised, registered cars from elsewhere, may enter Beijing inside the 6th Ring Road (although they may use the 6th Ring itself, mainly for transit);
  • Long-term licences for cars from outside of Beijing will no longer be issued.

Its rationale: We need to keep the city to ourselves… we need to give Beijing cars priority in Beijing… so there!

And to that new rule I say: #FAIL. This is the typical knee-jerk reaction one expects from .gov.anywhere… EU citizens “overpopulate” Switzerland (are they not afforded “freedom of movement”?), so the Swiss go to the polls and literally votes them out (killer immigrant quotas to come); Beijing’s traffic gets awful, so City Hall goes and starts hurrying non-Beijing cars away from the centre of town.

Never before were you an alien in one’s own country. Or as the German would say, Ausländer im eigenen Inland. This is “logic” that defies logic.

It’s probably no secret much of the planet isn’t having its best days as of late. But rather than to exclude, we can elect to include…

Include Tianjin and Hebei, nearby cities / provinces to Beijing, when you grow. Now the “CCP old guard” way to grow is to chuck the surrounding provinces all heavy industry. Great, so their people are polluted way further. (The next bit, then, is to throw them out to He’nan — a province already badly strangled in China when it comes to the image / inhabitants — He’nan people are on a lot of people’s “s**tlist” just for being He’nan people.) The new way, then, would be to dismantle or redo heavy industry, and spread them to parts near you (but outside of the Jing) so that they can both exist and no-one’s really gonna get hurt in all this.

Include the immigrants in your society and let them become you. If foreigners must be “foreign criminals”, that’s a Swiss fault as much as it is a foreign fault. The new way, then, would be to educate them better. Invest in the education of their home countries, so that they already know how to be better civilised before they move in.

To randomly exclude and to discriminate only makes an already bad situation worse. To be more inclusive towards all would make things much better.

China, IT, Politics

Sincerity and Honesty: The Only Ways for China to Win

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As of late the Internet in China has been severely throttled, and for China watchers this must be nothing new. The things that happened two-and-a-half decades back in the heart of the Chinese capital weren’t “alien invasions”. They were that were destined to happen in China as the country in essence legalised capitalism, despite daily rehashes from Zhongnanhai about its “political brand” of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, and as more officials got rich and corrupt, without caring too much about others. China has a problem.

And the more China cracks down, both offline and online, the more the outside world will look on in astonishment. Turkey and (earlier) Russia tried implementing content controls lately: they bore the brunt of criticism as a result. Even in nations traditionally considered “democratic” — such as Australia — the threat of a “Great Firewall with Australian characteristics” is very real, and it’s not winning Canberra mates both inside the island and in the wider world.

The only way for China to come clean is to be sincere and honest. It also needs a healthy dose of confidence — self-confidence, even — but never that fatal “E” thing (ego). Thankfully, the new leadership selected in late 2012 appear to be comparatively more open than Hu and clan, but even here, we are not seeing enough in the way of sincerity and honesty.

It’s no state secret that the more a country has something to hide, the more efforts are made in covering things up. China apologists might always default to comparing the country with north Korea, where it is said historical literature over three years are locked away (as if there was a problem with official propaganda in the hermit kingdom already!). The way for China to move forward is to improve where it has failed. We do not expect a Xinhua report all of a sudden full of Chinese admissions of shortcomings, but then again, China has done it before: After the death of Mao, Deng managed to “re-evaluate” the dead autocrat and conclude 30% of Mao had “serious errors” (he also negated the whole of the cultural revolution). We aren’t expecting much in the way of groundbreaking announcements, but China can be honest to itself and the wider world, once again, and admit its shortcomings.

No nation on the surface of our planet is perfect. Many people point to Switzerland as the country closest to paradise, but I also see its shortcomings: the hotly-contested and discriminatory minaret ban, and more lately, the imposition of quotas on aliens intending to take up residence in the country. We all make mistakes. More importantly, we all can do better.

I’m waiting for Switzerland to rethink its politically perverted immigration policy.

I’m waiting for China to come clean on what it (“officially”) terms its “historical errors”.

I’m waiting for more egomaniacs on the planet to come out from the cold, admit their shortcomings, and get on with the business — the business of being a better earthling. To oneself, of course, but also to all.

Media (Studio)
Media, Social Media

All-New: Chang’anjie Media Notebook

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If you still thought the media of today here in China was more like this…

MaoTseTung

I’m sorry to say that — you need a software update. For the brain.

My main job here at the Communication University of China, now as an academic, is in scholarly research. My most important project right now is to further research Chinese media. And my “academic portfolio” is full of things very much related to that main involvement — I lectured (and continue to lecture) about both media in general and also media in China, and one of my academic side gigs is Lecturer of Chinese Media Analysis at Hebei University, about 60 miles or so southeast of the Jing.

Whenever I’ve time, I head straight to either the Media Museum or the university’s library. My main involvement right now is chronicling media in China, especially social media. But I can’t really focus solely on “media studies” and “social media in China in the 21st century”. None of you wants to be left out in the dark when it comes to the full story, so I’m taking an interdisciplinary approach in my research. Throughout my hours of research, I’ve discovered more than a few tasty morsels of media history and development in China, and that’s why I’ve dedicated my research a whole new blog on its own — the new Chang’anjie Media Notebook.

As to the name of the blog — as I put it, Chang’anjie is what many locals refer to as the “combo avenue” that goes from the western suburbs through via Tian’anmen all the way into the Beijing CBD. Literally Chang’an Street or (for its size) Chang’an Avenue, it is both a symbol of political power in China, and is home to many a Chinese media organisation: CCTV (Colour TV Centre), China Radio International, China National Radio, Radio Beijing, Beijing TV, People’s Daily (just a few blocks away from the main avenue), and the new and still-oft controversial new CCTV “Big Pants” building, as well as China’s “number one” media university, the Communication University of China. The national and local media authorities also have set up shop on this avenue. It is as of there was no better name to call this site given its focus.

Updates will pour in on weekdays and, at times, over weekends as well. No money is made or sought in any way from the blog — indeed, it was high time the so-called “public intellectuals” of China actually stopped hiding their secretive lucrative interests in every Weibo tweet they post!

Current Events

Taiwan: A Democracy or a Democrazy?

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I’ve seen Taiwan’s democracy / democrazy through all these years. (What a renegade Chinese mainland resident I am!) During the years of Chen Shui-bian, when (political) lines between Ilha Formosa and its communist rival on the mainland were drawn with every Chen speech, people were far from being 100% in agreement about what Ketangalan Boulevard was all about. Brawls in the legislature were not uncommon: often, these were deals between Mainland China and Taiwan. Water was poured onto legislators, microphones were broken, and what must have been a hundred-page report (unstapled!) were simply thrown onto the floor. Things turned from the rational to the irrational when pro-China legislator Li Ao was thrown a shoe.

We’re having exactly the same in Taiwan these days over a new agreement with Mainland China. Yes, I’ve been lazy these days — I haven’t checked what’s up re: this very issue on the Wikipedia. But the fact is, occupying a legislature is (a) not done “just like that” and (b) is a serious issue indeed. On Facebook I’ve been hearing a lot of views from inside Taiwan and there is one that me and others posted that seems to have struck a chord (loosely translated below):—

If we have a fight with China, the communist army will wipe us out. If we keep fighting with the government, all of Taiwan stands to suffer. Thing is: the Taiwanese are best maximising their own efforts. Just be you and be better in all that you do. Make people look at Taiwan — going away admiring Taiwan. That is the true hidden beauty of Taiwan.

That’s one point that seems to have won a fair bit of hearts. But the question remains: What if you have a government that seems to be going out of control? Throwing shoes and occupying legislatures happens in democracies that have a bit of an identity crisis, for these appear to be acts of democrazy in a democracy. But the people still think the government are going bonkers. And they want to be heard.

We need something, then, that’s called a veto vote. Yes, it’s a David Feng polit term that makes less than no sense. It’s like as if you were told that you had to shift gears to make a car with automatic transmission work (which would technically be OK, but would in reality invalidate the one big benefit of going automatic — saving you from shifting gears all the time!).

But the idea of the veto vote is that the people can come out and propose either a counter-proposal or an outright veto of a government bill. In countries where people aren’t so “vote-savvy” (such as China), one can allow here the system to enable both “open-air” meetings and meetings with “informed voters”.

The two things about a democracy that make it all the more worthwhile (and believe me, I myself am a citizen of such a democracy — Switzerland):—

  • “Mic power”: That you are able to speak on an equal level as that of the government (by airing your free thoughts — of course ideally a la Habermas and his public sphere, without Big Bad Business interfering with you);
  • “Veto power”: That you are able to bang on that Great Big Red Button whenever you see government acting like a bozo, going bonkers.

Of course, you can have other rights as well — but as a citizen of a democracy living in a communist nation, I find that these two “power rights” are what separates a PRC citizen from a Swiss (as an example).

Note: Ever since Switzerland’s political EU-suicide on 09 February 2014, I have stowed away my “Swiss pride” and have become a vocal critic of the Swiss authorities — for a very simple reason that you can’t simply let the crowds tear apart an agreement you let them sign in the first place. It’s like: Oh great, I found my wife liked seafood, and I never liked that crap, so we’re divorcing. Instant knee-jerk reaction: Huh? Switzerland (and the SVP in particular) — you need to grow a few brains. There’s a better way to solve the immigration issues than to force yourself into isolation — that makes you eventually look like some kind of European Pyeongyang…