Silicon Hutong

E-Waste: Some Interesting Processes

In the Hutong
Seeking quiet
1105 hrs.

One of the areas I see undergoing major changes because of technology is the recycling industry. I have some strong opinions on the topic, but at the moment, that's all I have, so I'm reading about it rather than writing.

Lori Yalem, and old friend in Los Angeles and a recycling/waste management consultant, pointed me toward two companies who are doing some interesting work in the area - admittedly in North America - who are developing some interesting process for handling e-waste, turning old computers into their component materials to ease recycling and cut down on the material wasted in the process.

One of them is MaSeR (Material Separation and Recovery), based in Ontario, Canada. The other is Cascade Asset Management in Wisconsin.

I'm still digesting a lot of this, but one of the things that strikes me is how so many of these environmental industries are popping up in parts of the North America largely bypassed by the economic boom of the last decade and a half. Yet another sign that China's rust belt northeast would be a logical place to seed China's own recycling/demanufacturing/remanufacturing and other environment-related sectors.

Maybe the difference is Star Trek

In the Hutong
Damn if winter isn't finally here
2104 hrs.

In June of this year, Wil Wheaton, who played the teenage nerd-cum-Starfleet officer Wesley Crusher in the science-fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, spoke at a ceremony to induct the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry into the Science Fiction hall of fame.

Whatever your personal feelings about Wil, Wesley, Star Trek, or the citizens of Trek Nation, you have to give credit to Wheaton for hitting what made Star Trek the single most successful science fiction franchise ever (40 years, 11 motion pictures, 5 separate TV shows, and so many books, magazines, stories, conventions, clubs, and fans that they defy counting).

Ensign Crusher Speaks

What struck me was how he captured both the lure and the powerful socio-political value of science fiction as a genre:

"There are countless examples here of the real power that science fiction has to address current events in a way that's safe and acceptable for most audiences, while speaking very seriously about them to those who look beyond the spaceships and rayguns to the ideas behind the stories. Whether it was written one hundred years ago or just published last month, science fiction can give us warnings about the future, hope for the future, or just blissful escape into the future, visiting fantastic worlds that are light-years away – and as close as our bookshelves and televisions."

He then put the 1966 premiere of the original show into its historical context - a nation falling deeper into a war it didn't understand, locked with another rival in a staredown contest with civilization at stake, while the country tore itself apart at home. He then explained what the show did - something the suits at NBC did not expect:

It wasn't a particularly optimistic period for our nation, and there wasn't all that much going on to feel good about. Then, on September 8, 1966, a new show debuted. The network thought they were buying ‘Wagon Train to the stars,' but just two commercial breaks into the show, it was clear that this was something new and different. As episodes aired over the following weeks and months, it was undeniable that this show, set in the future but reflecting so much of the contemporary world, was breaking new ground each week. Like all great science fiction, it held up a mirror and showed us our failings and triumphs – not by beating us over the head with a message, but by making that message easy enough to discover for those who cared to see it. Star Trek dared to do this during an incredibly turbulent time, when it was risky to even acknowledge that the mirror existed, much less hold it up on network television.

Popular science fiction in America found its birth during the nation's most desperate hour - the Great Depression - and has seemed to be most robust when the times have been the most confusing. The genre is infused not so much by powerful optimism as it is a literary haven allowing us to ponder our fears without wallowing in them. What comes out is a belief that the future is ours to create.

Boldly Going

As an avid fan of science fiction and China, it has been a lot of fun watching the growth of Chinese science fiction. There are a half-dozen magazines, probably a half-million hardcore fans, and a growing interest in the genre.

But political overtones are tough to avoid, and a lot of science fiction is a allegorical social critique. In "Sci-Fi Ascendant" in the September 2006 edition of Seed magazine, Mara Hvistendahl wrote:

But this tendency to propose new ways of living—what James Gunn, director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, calls an "inherent critique of society"—means that the genre's position could still be somewhat tenuous in China. Certain subject matter is off-limits; one of Gunn's novels was translated into Chinese but couldn't be published because it dealt with student protests. The censors have reason to be wary: Much of Chinese science fiction has been inspired by political events, from the Cultural Revolution to the 1978 Democracy Wall to the Tiananmen Square protests.

None of which means that the growth of science fiction in China will slow - on the contrary, I suspect writers will simply use more care in their words. If the Science Fiction World website and the links from it are any indication, there is a lot going on.

But unlike the US, what I suspect will drive interest in science fiction in China will not be film or television, but games.

If you've ever played a game - I mean, really played it to the point where it begins to intrude on the edges of your reality - you find that it begs to be explored in other ways. Books, stories, fan fiction, illustrations, manga, and even the funky new art of machinima (stories told in the context of a game, and recorded as animated shorts - check out Red vs. Blue) grow from such immersion, and have this remarkable tendency to lead one off to explore other areas of "speculative fiction."

Watch what happens when Blizzard drops World of Starcraft II into the gaming world in the coming months. I suspect that will bump Chinese science fiction up another notch.

I don't see the next Star Trek movie making it into China, though. Here in China, the underlying messages of Trek, Star Wars, and much of the western science fiction canon would likely be considered borderline subversive.

Cupertino Dreamin'

Xiao Yun Road, Inbound
Is this fog, or did someone flock the smog?
1607 hrs.

Sitting here in Beijing and placating my inner frustrated geek as I will yet again miss both the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and MacWorld in San Francisco, I take consolation that I am not among those thousands of marketers spending the end of December prepping for those early January Techfests.

For us Apple fanboys, this is the time of year we all speculate about what Apple CEO Steve Jobs will unveil at MacWorld. I will resist the temptation to speculate. What I will do, however, is frame out the device that I want Apple to deliver. (Attention Apple attorneys: this is not a formal suggestion, merely wishful thinking, so do not send me any letters telling me that you don't want any unsolicited product ideas.)

I will call it "iPad."

The iPad would be a tablet Macintosh, running OS X Leopard and all of my critical software. It will not only have superior pen input options, it will also have the multi-touch interface from the iPhone. Mouse? What mouse? Use the pointing device G-d gave you. Want to type? Click an icon and a touchscreen keyboard pops up on the lower half of the screen, allowing you to type away directly.

The device would be no more than 1" thick, and probably thiner - maybe 25mm - so it would be comfortable to tuck under our arm. iPad would have a 40gb solid-state hard drive (no moving parts, low power drain, fast startups) for the operating system and your applications, a standard 120gb hard drive (usually spun-down) for saving files, and a DVD-ROM drive. Write on it. Draw on it. Watch movies on it. And count on 4-5 hours of battery life. Carry it all with you into a meeting, use it the same way you would use a legal pad.

iPad would be a communications monster, with bluetooth, wi-fi, and a 3G mobile phone built in so you are connected by every conceivable means, and the device will serve as a voice communicator as well. Underneath the long-life battery would be a spot to slide in a SIM card so you can use the operator of your choice when you travel. A built-in camera and all of the usual connection ports would be there as well, of course.

iPad would naturally come with a few new applications, like FingerPaint, which would allow you to do just as it says.

Naturally, the key Apple software developers - including Microsoft - would announce updates of their products that would take full advantage of the iPad's capabilities. Microsoft Office 2008 with settings that will allow finger and pen input should be no problem - Redmond has had tablet-focused features for a few years now.

At the show, Apple would also introduce a whole new line of large screen displays based on the multi-touch technology, all designed for the MacPro workstations and built into their all-in-one iMacs. These new Apple CinemaTouch Displays - at 23", 27" and 30" - would bring that cool iPhone touch technology to desktop Macs. Ideally, you could set the displays down like a drafting table, adjusting the angle so you could comfortably and ergonomically use the screen as the input device.

Finally, of course, Steve would announce the opening of Apple Stores in Beijing and Shanghai.

My other MacWorld wishes:

• Microsoft and Bungee would announce Halo 3 Mac.
• Microsoft would announce Flight Simulator OSX for Mac.
• Belkin would announce a new MacBook Pro car charger, and either Belkin, Apple, or both would announce a full line of solar-power chargers for iPods, iPhones, MacBooks, and MacBook Pros.
• Kensington would announce a wheeled computer travel case for the MacBookPro to replace my thrashed Samsonite model.

Naturally, I expect none of this to happen. But a guy can dream.

Cross-post: Erudite site

The Lido Office Building, Beijing 
Eavesdropping in Korean 
1505 hrs.

In an Internet filled with fluff and flame, there are still a few websites that speak cogently to the highest parts of your frontal cortex.

One that I enjoy immensely - especially when I virulently disagree with it - is Arts & Letters Daily, a site owned and operated by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The links on their front page would make for weeks of brain tickling reading.

The editors have some very clear ideas about a lot of their subjects and choose their links accordingly. On some topics their selections tend to skew toward a clear viewpoint (they are moderately anti-religion, to put it generously), and quick survey of their recent links about China suggest a fairly skeptical view among editors about China and its prospects:

China's Valley of Tears: Is Authoritarian Capitalism the Future by Slavoj Zizek

China's Syndrome of Lawless Growth by John Lee, the author of Will China Fail?, in The Australian

The Great Leap Backward? by Elizabeth Economy in Foreign Affairs

 
A Nation of Outlaws by Stephen Mihm, author of the recent superb historical perspective A Nation of Counterfeiters, from The Boston Globe.

My Short March Through China by Gary Rosen from Commentary

Big Red Checkbook by John Feffer in The Nation 

So enjoy, but be aware that despite its pedigree as a publication catering to intellectuals, there is a clear - possibly unintentional - editorial bent at work.

Cross-post: Outsourcing Insight

In the Hutong 
Culling the herd 
1657 hrs.

It is perilously easy to plunge into one's navel here in China, to be absorbed by all things Chinese and to lose sight both of the global context in which we all operate, and the way China is seen in other parts of the world. While I'm a vocal advocate of immersion as a way to understand the way things work here, I've also learned that understanding China demands currency in global business, economic, political, and security affairs.

I tend to read for insight as much as information, and by trial and error I'm gradually honing my reading list to ensure that I've got a good balance of both.

Each year, as a habit, I go through a culling process to ensure I'm getting the most for my time - and my cash.

Stuff I'll be paying for in 2008:

1. The Economist - Still the best - if not the only - truly global news weekly, The Economist should be creating tremendous pressure on Time and Newsweek to improve their level of their coverage. Given that the latter two publications are perfectly happy to remain middlebrow (and thus likely doomed to meld into the deepening grey goo that is print media), their often-brilliant and always-engaging British rival looks to dominate its niche (and our attention) for some time to come. I mean, come on - any magazine that would run a cover photo of Kim Jong-Il with the caption "Greetings, earthlings" is the kind of publication we all should be reading.

2. BusinessWeek - What I appreciate about this publication is that, unlike Forbes and Fortune, BW rarely plays the role of business fanboy, and so delivers stories that ask discomfiting questions and that catch trends ahead of the curve. What I typically do is first listen to editor John Byrne's weekly podcast on the cover story, then I dive into the magazine (which lands in my laptop courtesy of Zinio even before it lands on US newsstands.)

3. The Atlantic - I like to have one monthly that runs thoughtful stories in my media mix. Esquire runs a close second and Vanity Fair third, but I find that they spend too much time covering matters of parochial interest. That bums me because Dr. Tom Barnett, the grand strategist who wrote The Pentagon's New Mapand A Blueprint for Action is a regular Esquire contributor. The Atlantic also offers access to over a decade of back issues online, which is one of my must-haves when subscribing to a publication.

4. IEEE Spectrum - Thirty-two pages of condensed innovation once a month, Spectrum gets pigeonholed as an engineer's magazine, and that's unfair. If you want a clear, unhyped view of the direction of electronic and computer innovation, this is the publication for you. I used to love reading Wired in the old days before Conde Nast got hold of the thing. Every year when I get back to the U.S. I'll pick up the latest copy at the newsstand and decide if I want to subscribe. I only wish they'd produce a downloadable electronic version. Ah, well.

You'll notice there are no dailies on the list. I have to admit to being conflicted. On a day-to-day basis I really focus on the China-related stuff, and my RSS reader tends to serve very well for that. I didn't renew either my WSJ or my FT subscriptions when my credit card company issued me a new card number following a security breach. I have no desire to send money to the News Corp publications, especially as it looks like WSJ.com is going to be free in a few months, anyway. I do, however, sorely miss the writing of the WSJ's and FT's China reporters - they all deserve to be in newsweeklies that would appreciate their long-form stories.

Why is this man suddenly talking?

Starbucks Guomao 2
Discovering foreigners are a rare species
1144 hrs.

From atop Ogilvy's digital watchtower, Kaiser Kuo points us to a highly readable Clay Chandler story in Fortune introducing China Mobile's Wang Jianzhou as "China's Mobile Maestro."

The story is a bit of a fluff piece (Chandler comes off as a bit of a fanboy), but it is interesting beyond the content. Wang is not normally a talky person with the foreign media. For that reason, one wonders why he's suddenly making himself more accessible to the global media.

You could attribute it to a long-overdue realization that the CEO of such a company needs to have some global visibility, but I wouldn't buy it. For all of their global ambitions, China Mobile's cash-cow - and its best near-term growth prospects - are in China.

There are probably a host of reasons for Wang to raise his profile, but one of them has to be a desire to buy for China Mobile greater independence from the fickle whims of regulators in Beijing. Having a moderately high profile amongst influential audiences overseas, and having a voice among those audiences, is a route to enhanced power and influence here in Beijing. A few pieces like Chandler's, and people will start to see Wang as a cross between Craig McCaw and Jack Welch.

Of course, his old colleagues at the Ministry of Information Industries can't be happy. In the eyes of the regulators, China Mobile responds first and foremost to the direction of the government. Wang's quiet, deliberate creation of a base of influence in China and abroad inveighs against that.

And well it should. If China is serious about creating companies that are both local and global champions, the enterprises that began as the wards of their respective ministries must leave the nest, no matter angst that might cause the aparatchiks. China Mobile will never be a world-class company until its responsiveness to its customers and the capital markets is no less - if not more - than what it gives government officials.

Wang is going to need the support of cool heads, and soon. The worst kept secret in China's mobile industry is how much the country's operators and handset manufacturers hate TD-SCDMA, which was described to me by one insider as "a politician's dream and an engineer's nightmare." Worse, there is growing rumbling about another forced restructuring of the mobile phone industry that would give Wang stronger competition and may even see him compelled to shed some chunks of his own company.

If I were to make a prediction for 2008, I would say we will be seeing many more puff pieces about Chinese CEOs. The importance of China, the business media's need for a stream of stars, and the tsunami of foreign journalists coming to China in the next eight months makes that a sucker bet.

One of the best profiles I've seen so far is James Fallows' profile of Broad CEO Zhang Yue in The Atlantic last March.

Cross-post: Confucian schools and the quest for values

Starbucks Guomao 2 
Turn the Music Down
1121 hrs.

Maureen Fan from the Post did a profile of Luo Yu, a Chinese entrepreneur who has set aside his businesses and is focusing on running courses designed to instill traditional Chinese values into the children of China's newly-prosperous entrepreneurs.

We are going to see more of this kind of thing in the coming years. The Chinese people have had their moral codes stripped from them twice in the past century - once when Confucianism was tossed out the door in 1949, and then again when Maoism gradually fell out of favor in the wake of the Cultural Revolution.

What this has left the Chinese people is a moral code based on two of Deng Xiaoping's most famous utterances:

1. To get rich is glorious.

2. It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.

In other words, do whatever it takes to get rich.

Even a hardcore secular humanist should agree that this is a horribly inadequate moral and ethical basis on which to build a "harmonious society."

I suspect many parents will head in the direction of neo-Confucian schools like Mr. Luo's, and still others will turn to Buddhism and even Christianity, and that the government will be happily complicit in this process. It may not be politically correct for a senior member of the Communist Party to say that China's people need to have a spiritual aspect to their lives, but you can bet they're thinking it.

Something else we can look forward to: a growing national debate on what constitutes "Chinese Values," and an effort to create a secular cannon of Chinese morality cobbled from Confucianism, Daoism, and the more enlightened aspects of Chinese revolutionary thought (from Sun Yat-Sen through Jiang Zemin.)

Cross-post: Causal Marketing

In the Hutong 
Would you like fries with that humbuger? 
1704 hrs.

I regularly get questions from companies, practitioners, and NGOs about best practices for corporate social responsibility in China, mostly because it's an area about which I harbor some fairly strong opinions.

One of my biggest is peeves is this: there is a thin but important line between true corporate social responsibility and community relations tied to marketing goals. There is nothing wrong with either CSR or what is known as "cause marketing;" the problem comes when the thin line disappears, and a company will try to categorize the latter as the former.

Self-serving behavior like that tends to ruin a company's credibility, and to add to the dormant cynicism the general public maintains about the very idea of a company doing anything socially responsible.

That said, I'm a big fan of cause marketing when appropriately labeled, and I think companies in China (both foreign and local) do far too little of it. Given the decline in the effectiveness of TV advertising, I suspect both marketers and agencies are going to do a lot more of it.

What companies should be doing is defining CSR and cause marketing very clearly clearly and handling them separately.

Jeremy Nedelka at 1:1 Magazine (registration required) did an excellent cause marketing case study, including five rules for successful cause marketing according to David Hessekiel at the Cause Marketing Forum. The two articles are a good introduction to the topic.

What I love about the five rules is that all of them apply in China:

1. Set goals, knowing what you want to achieve going in;

2. Commit resources, because good intentions are no substitute for planning, budgets, and implementation;

3. Find a cause that has a clear, intuitive link to your core business or competency;

4. Search for models in what other companies have done before;

5. Expect results because solid cause marketing builds an emotional tie between customers

I have a few to add, though, because of a few issues I have seen crop up here in the PRC:

6. Cause marketing is no substitute for CSR. You need to do both. Make sure they are handled by separate teams and have clearly defined (and different) goals.

7. Don't be a cause-a-week company. Stick to one cause for a full marketing cycle of 12-18 months at least, and longer if possible.

8. Find a cause that is meaningful to people in China, not just to your CEO.

9. Cause marketing in China is virgin territory, so don't restrict yourself to what other companies in China have done.

10. Olympic sponsorships are not a great example of cause marketing, unless they are executed with a particular challenge in mind.

11. When your relationship with a cause wraps up, leave everyone smiling.

Shave a little of that TV budget, guys, and put it toward cause marketing. CCTV won't miss it, and you could put it to far better use than paying for fancy office towers for public broadcasters.

Innovation: Ferment not Foment

In the Hutong
It's quiet...too quiet
1252 hrs.

In a post entitled "R&D in China" that is old but by no means dated, Enterra Solutions' Steve Angelis (annotating Geoff Dwyer's excellent roundup piece on innovation in China) takes us on a walk through what stands between China and Hu Jintao's goal of "independent innovation."

In so doing, he hones in on what is probably the single most critical - and difficult - challenge: China lacks an academic establishment capable of fostering and driving world-class research.

Both authors note that simply focusing on the research end of the educational process won't work. From kindergarten through graduate school, emphasis has to shift from neo-Confucian rote learning and theory to "problem solving" and "working as a team." Not to mention, of course, rewarding true excellence rather than obsequiousness, and teaching and rewarding academic integrity.

Unfortunately, the suggestion that in order to encourage innovation there must be a complete free flow of ideas is a non-starter. That kind of rhetoric scares the hell out of China's leaders - the minute you suggest educational reform and "free flow of ideas" in the same sentence, you are immediately tuned out. Innovation is nice, they feel, but not at the expense of stability. Return to square one.

Western thinkers are polarizing the issue, and we are doing so for our own selfish reasons. What nobody has suggested is that if free flows of information were allowed - but with some very clear areas where open discussion (i.e., politics, pornography, etc) was restricted - China could build an innovation-fertile culture. There might be, in other words, a middle ground between the Soviet Confucianism that seems to dictate China's current academic philosophy and the "anything goes" approach popular in U.S. and European universities over the last four decades.

That kind of thinking is repugnant to Westerners. The idea of encouraging a wider - but still limited - flow of ideas and information in China smacks most of us like Chamberlain selling out Czechoslovakia.

The result, however, is a nation that is economically vibrant and academically stagnant, a place where you find the great minds of the nation not in its universities, but in the arrival halls of its international airports, returning from abroad with educations and experience they should have received at home.

Perhaps you are not comforted by the thought of an innovative China: there are plenty of people out there who are secretly happy with China doing the grunt work while others hang on to the intellectual property, and would be quite pleased to see things stay that way.

But we must recognize that our own all-or-nothing political orthodoxy about the flow of information and ideas does nothing to help China find a safe way into its future. If we genuinely want to see the Chinese people - and not just a privileged few - continue to prosper with a reasonable expectation of improving lifestyles, we need to find approaches that will bring Chinese education into the 21st century in a way that invigorates the system without rending the very fabric of Chinese society.

Kill the brochure. Dead.

Starbucks, Fortune Plaza, Beijing
Hunkered in a little corner by the plug
0958 hrs.

Geoffrey James over at BNET writes a well-reasoned condemnation of the brochure as a piece of marketing, for B2B at least.

Read it. He's right. We've all evolved beyond that.