News from The Nanfang

Screenshot The Nanfang

The news and community portal The Nanfang has been around for quite some time, from the year 2011 onward, to be precise.

Incorporated in Hong Kong, the publication has provided useful and fresh China news (including translations from the Chinese media) with a special focus on developments in the southern Pearl River Delta (hence the name The Nanfang or The Southerner, in English), and particularly in the thriving metropolises of Shenzhen, Dongguan and Guangzhou.

This month, the informative web page has undergone a complete makeover. As always, it is a matter of personal taste and preferences if you appreciate the sweeping changes coming along with a relaunch or not. To me, the site looks very clearly structured now, even if the chosen design might not be a winner for all of its readers.

In addition to comprehensive optical renovation, the team around co-founder and editor-in-chief Cam MacMurchy (Hong Kong) has managed to recruit a whole bunch of new authors from different parts of China and abroad who will write or have their content syndicated with The Nanfang.

Among them are actual household names, such as esteemed old China hand Bill Bishop (Beijing) who publishes the widely read Sinocism China Newsletter.

You also might have heard of Josh Summers and his long-standing blog Far West China where he fully indulges in his passion for so often negatively portrayed western Xinjiang region.

Author Mary Ann O'Donnell, who is behind the very interesting urbanization blog Shenzhen Noted, isn't exactly a newcomer either.

The roster of recruited writers also includes Aris Teon (Taipei), long-time expatriate Michael Turton (Taipei), Kevin McGeary (Foshan), Big Lychee (Hong Kong) and Amanda Roberts (Shenzhen).

And there are still a lot of others: Blogger China Curmudgeon is located in Beijing, entrepreneur Larry Salibra in Hong Kong, Danielle Sumitra in Beijing, consultant and author of the China Politics Weekly newsletter, Trey McArver, in London, Suzanne Pepper in Hong Kong, Oliver Wessely in Glasgow and James Tan (Guo Du blog) in Hong Kong. Last but surely not least, well-known historian Jeremiah Jenne (Beijing), creator of Jottings from the Granite Studio, completes the list of regular contributors.

According to editor-in-chief MacMurchy (for his own account of the recent relaunch, see here), news stories will be at the centre of the wholly renovated media outfit from now on, while the sections of listings, events, jobs or classifieds had to be closed down due to limited resources.

The team also plans to extend coverage across the whole country in the near future, without neglecting relevant information about their much-beloved Pearl River Delta, however.

china beats presents :: Fifi Rong

Originating from Beijing, Fifi Rong moved to London as a teenager. Currently still based in the British capital, the extravagant diva has made a name for herself in the city's competitive music scene for mesmerizing live performances and a very distinctive style in the last few years.

Experimenting effortlessly with a wide range of genres from dub, garage, jazz and soul to trip hop, post dubstep, electronica and soundscapes, the artist manages to create tracks that are refined and rather ethereal musical hybrids.

However, she also highly treasures her cultural heritage and thus incorporates Chinese elements in both sound and visuals.

After being invited to contribute to elder statesman Tricky's album 'False Idols', featuring 'If Only I Knew' and 'Chinese Interlude', the singer, songwriter and producer released her first single 'Over You' and the album 'Wrong' in 2013.

In the spring of 2014, her latest EP 'Next Pursuit' came out and was instantly met with a lot of fanfare by music critics and fans alike.

Presently, Fifi Rong is much better known abroad than in her country of birth, but that may quickly change as she completed her first tour of China and Hong Kong in late 2014 (for a feature on forward-thinking Chinese musicians, Rong being one of them, see this piece).

Lean back and watch the extremely stylish official video by film-maker Paris Seawell below. You should also have a look at Rong's very fancy, elegantly designed web site, where you can get the 'Next Pursuit' remix album for free if you subscribe.

And if you want to explore more of 'Next Pursuit', check out eclectic beats.

Wow :: China is on the move again

Yes, it is this time of year - many hundreds of millions of people have set out on a more or less exhausting journey by train, plane, bus, car, motorcycle or even foot to celebrate Chinese New Year with their families.

To visualize the spectacular traffic inferno, Chinese search giant Baidu has posted this interactive, updating map of the largest annual migration online.

The graphic traces the trips of individual travellers by using the internet portal's smartphone app and other apps that allow for location positioning. The company's migration graph also contains data for individual cities, airports and train stations and thus can support transportation authorities in making plans for the next year.

On Tuesday, Baidu representative Kaiser Kuo told AP:

'You're basically looking at the serious intensity of travel in this holiday. It's not just the world's biggest human migration, it's the biggest mammalian migration. It's a sight to behold. It's quite miraculous that nothing goes terribly wrong.'

Isn't it an incredible sight indeed?

Screenshot Baidu

Oh, and not to forget:

A very happy New Year of the Sheep or the Goat or whatever to all of you!!!

China's gender trouble revisited

© Henrik Berger Jørgensen :: Flickr :: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

There have been really heated debates about the current status of Chinese women in relation to their male counterparts in the last couple of years.

Various commentators in academic publications, newspapers, journals and on social media have lamented a serious backlash against women on all fronts - economic, social, political and cultural.

And correctly so, as there were indeed severe setbacks on the long way to attain greater gender equality.

Curiously, it was the case of highly educated, professional urban women who were still unmarried in their late 20s that dominated much of Chinese discourse. Derogatorily named 'leftover women (sheng nü)', this group was vehemently attacked for being too picky, selfish or overambitious and strongly advised to lower standards.

The infamous campaign targeting successful female urbanites was started as early as 2007 by several state media, and even official agencies, such as the All-China Women's Federation or the Ministry of Education, joined in the rather hysterical chorus of disapproval. In view of a drastically unbalanced sex ratio, financially independent city women were pressured to finally marry and bear 'quality' children.

In foreign media outlets, the extremely controversial topic hit headlines with the release of the book 'Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China' (Zed Books) by noted journalist and PhD candidate at Tsinghua University Leta Hong Fincher in 2014 (for an instructive interview with the author, see here).

Subsequently, the pejorative term 'leftover women' became an actual buzzword quoted in a wide array of articles in the foreign press.

To be clear, I surely don't mean to trivialize the very real hardships many of these women have to bear. But in my opinion, the decidedly urban and middle-class sheng nü phenomenon has been overhyped beyond measure, concealing a much more pressing matter in the field of demographic transition and gender relations - in terms of scale, gravity and long-term repercussions.

Last month, the National Health and Family Planning Commission (Guojia Weisheng he Jihua Shengyu Weiyuanhui) released a statement conceding that the gender imbalance among the newborn in China is 'the most serious' and 'most prolonged' worldwide (the original statement has since been removed from the web site). The skewed sex ratio is so enormous that it is barely a surprise that the Commission maintains a separate division called 'Office of Gender Imbalance Correction' under the 'Department of Family Development'.

According to the latest data by the National Bureau of Statistics, the total sex ratio stood at 105.22 men to 100 women in 2013. In the age brackets 0-4 years, 5-9 years and 10-14 years, the ratio is even more disturbing: 117.30 men to 100 women, 118.68 men to 100 women and 117.86 men to 100 women, respectively.

If you are to believe official estimates, the surplus of men among young adults of marriageable age will reach gigantic 24 to 30 million by the year 2020.

Chinese men who do not marry and thus do not add branches to the family tree are commonly dubbed 'bare branches (guang gun)'.

The term is hardly any more positive than the equivalent used for well-educated, single city women. Overall, the special demographic group of guang gun has not received half the attention the numerically far fewer sheng nü have. As it is so often the case, urban conditions are considered much more newsworthy than circumstances in the vast Chinese countryside. This may be one of the reasons why the plight of the so-called 'bare branches' has been largely absent in recent debates about the future of China's gender relations.

It is well-known by now that the overwhelming majority of these involuntary bachelors live in rural hinterlands. And not surprisingly, guang gun are especially numerous in rather underdeveloped and poverty-ridden corners. Whole communities in different parts of the country have been called 'bachelor villages' due to the high percentage of unmarried male villagers residing there (for a heart-rending report about one of these villages in Hunan province, see here).

Marriage is a prerequisite to be fully accepted as an adult man in Chinese society, and even more so in still traditional rural realms. Sons are expected to care for their parents in old age and to continue the family lineage. Finding an adequate bride for their sons is the most sacred duty of rural parents and failing to do so is considered deeply embarrassing.

The stakes are high, and so are the costs. Bride prices have escalated in the reform period and many young women demand a house of their own along with a whole lot of presents.

Poorer families with several sons surely can't provide all their male offspring with the required sums and items to satisfy prospective wives. The whole family is affected when one or more sons are unable to marry because it means a shortage of family labour and thus economic loss and, equally significant, a serious loss of face vis-à-vis the village community.

The rural bachelors themselves have to cope with a rather shameful existence devoid of the essential social, economic and cultural capital bestowed by the acts of marriage and procreation.

Since the late 1980s, labour migration has presented both male and female villagers with an option to leave their rural homes, but the opportunities to find a suitable marriage partner outside the village seem to stand much better for women than for their male peers. Certainly, marriage has always been a viable strategy for social mobility for women while men are supposed to advance by their own efforts. Particularly for only sons, not even the option of migration does exist when parents are too old or frail to farm the land.

In the last decade, there has been a lot of speculation about the possibly disastrous consequences of an immense pool of underprivileged Chinese men deprived of a wife, children and family life.

The studies that are currently available are mostly small-scale and thus hardly representative of the whole picture (for a recent literature review, see here). Among the multiple negative results that are anticipated, further growth of the already flourishing illegal sex trade, rising rates of sexually transmitted diseases, increased trafficking in women and the creation of new marriage markets across national borders figure prominently. Many scholars also fear a sharp rise in reckless or even criminal behaviour, more violence, gambling, drinking and gang activities.

The Chinese government is perfectly aware of the potential threat millions upon millions of disgruntled unmarried men might pose, but has not found a coherent answer to this pressing matter so far.

Remedies, such as the campaign to boost acceptance of female progeny or the relaxation of strict family planning rules, have been piecemeal at best. There is still a lot to be done to ease the chilling effects of a dramatically skewed sex ratio and ultimately decrease the inherent risk of large-scale social instability.

Where does all the e-trash wind up?

The PR China is not only the country that produces the vast majority of the world's electronic gadgets, but also a favourite destination of the burgeoning recycling business.

It has been estimated that around 70% of global e-waste ends up in China (other important trade hubs are located in India and Nigeria). The main Chinese region where e-trash is shipped to is southern Guangdong province. On truly immense waste dumps, electrical and electronic devices of all kinds are painstakingly dismantled, valuable metals such as lead, copper, silver or gold extracted and relevant components finally collected for reuse.

Undeniably, there are big bucks to be earned with the recycling of e-trash, but labourers in the thriving niche industry have to contend with low wages, really primitive conditions, physically hard work and a very unhealthy environment.

As it is the case with all the other occupations in the so-called 'three D-jobs' category, namely dirty, dangerous and demanding (zang, lei, ku) jobs, rural migrants hailing from different provinces form the backbone of China's lucrative electronic waste industry.

Guiyu town in Guangdong province, for example, has become notorious for being the very epicentre of e-trash recycling in the PR China. The locality alone dismantles around 1.6 million tons of dumped computers, cell phones and other devices a year and may well be the largest electronic junk site on the planet.

In close proximity to the city and Special Economic Zone of Shantou, the town is home to approximately 5,500 businesses specializing in discarded electronics, predominantly in small, family-run workshops. Tens of thousands of workers are gainfully employed in these processing operations.

Over the years, numerous reports about Guiyu have revealed various grave health hazards, such as high rates of lead poisoning, above-average miscarriage rates and high levels of cancer-causing toxins. Equally serious is the problem of environmental degradation resulting in extreme soil contamination, massive pollution and poisoned wells and groundwater. (For a recent article about Guiyu's predicament, see here.)

To catch a glimpse of the dangerous recycling trade, see the following slide show by Natalie Behring, simply titled 'Etrash', with photos taken in the towns of Nanyang and the above-mentioned Guiyu.

Behring is a freelance photojournalist who has documented the breathtaking transformation of China for more than a decade. According to her web site, she is currently working on a project about urbanization and the building of new cities.

© Etrash - Images by Natalie Behring

Meet the people who assemble your iPhone

In the last decade, lifestyle-cum-hardware-cum-software-cum-entertainment giant Apple has had its share of negative headlines when a string of damning reports about working conditions in the massive Chinese production plants of its contractor, Foxconn Electronics Inc., went public (for the earliest example from 2006, see here).

The Taiwanese-owned company, a subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd, is the largest electronics contract manufacturer worldwide and Apple's chief supplier.

Gradually, the production facilities of Foxconn in the PR China gained notoriety for long working hours, low wages, insufficient overtime pay, frequent workplace accidents, overcrowded dormitories and, not to forget, underage employees. The firm attracted even more international media attention when several workers, most of them employed with the gigantic plant in southern metropolis Shenzhen, committed suicide by jumping off the roof.

To be fair, Apple is just one of the many clients of Foxconn; the customer list reads like the Who is Who of prestigious international technology brands, including Samsung, Sony, HP, Microsoft, Dell or Intel, to name only a few.

And I am also quite sure that living and working conditions in different, especially smaller, Chinese factories aren't that much better either.

Apple management, fearing for its global image, reacted quickly and cancelled at least some contracts with notorious Foxconn. Looking for damage control and an alternative supplier, they settled for another Taiwanese contractor, namely Pegatron Corporation, with production lines on the outskirts of Shanghai.

Unfortunately, the company has repeatedly been accused of even more flagrant violations of local labour laws. I don't know exactly if the contracts between the two sides currently still hold.

Foxconn, at least, has given in to sharp criticism, adjusted wages, consented to new audits and promised improved worker protection lately.

The most expansive production site of Foxconn in the PR China is located in Longhua subdistrict of Shenzhen city, employing hundreds of thousands of workers in 15 factories.

Between the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, Italian film-makers Tommaso Facchin and Ivan Franceschini visited the mammoth factory city in Longhua and interviewed young Foxconn employees from different provinces in their spare time.

The following video is an excerpt of the full-length documentary 'Dreamwork China' (55 min.) that has been screened at several international film festivals. It is part of a larger multimedia project that focuses on the new generation of Chinese migrant workers, their lives, self-perceptions, dreams and hopes for the future.

By the way, Italian blog Cineresie also offers four additional works; these concentrate on Chinese NGOs and activists, such as well-known Liu Kaiming, that are catering to the needs of the immense migrant workforce (all videos in Chinese with Italian subtitles).

It is hard to say if the young labour migrants presented in the video below really opened up in front of a foreigners' camera. At least one of the guys sounds more like Foxconn's press officer than anything else.

Nevertheless, the film succeeds nicely in bringing the much-neglected voices of China's vast army of factory workers to the fore.