September 18, 2007 10:45

Asian Weeklies Rise Again

Interesting to see that the folks over at Asia Weekly are celebrating their first six months of publication by announcing they have secured a publication agreement in Singapore. The magazine, based in Beijing and helmed by veteran journalist and respected China specialist Jasper Becker, is bucking the current online trend and the fact that both the Far Eastern Economic Review and Asiaweek, for decades the two main weekly Asian news magazines, were closed years ago by giant media companies (Dow Jones and, ahem, Time Inc.) that saw them as terminally unprofitable. Circulation, the press release from the magazine says, has hit 20,000 and is expected to reach 50,000 within two years. Amidst a lemming-like clamor for more web-based material, the magazine is defiantly old school. "While many media companies in Asia are focusing resources on web-based offerings," Becker writes, "including podcasts and downloads, the founders of Asia Weekly are targeting a public that still enjoys keeping up to date on Asia by reading a well designed and informative magazine." Another magazine by the name of Review Asia, a monthly published out of Manila and featuring a number of well know names as columnists, has also thrown its hat into the ring, apparently sharing Becker's view that many of the 210,000 readers FEER and Asiaweek boasted when they folded are still out there and eager for more.

Elsewhere, a group of somewhat grizzled but equally respected journalists are behind a completely different vision: Asia Sentinel, an exclusively online magazine. Not only does it eschew an actual printed edition, Asia Sentinel also differs from Asia Weekly in content. The latter is largely a filtering service for those interested in the region but too busy to wade through the tons of information flooding at them each day, featuring clippings from other publications and roundups, Asia Sentinel in contrast has a very definite, sharp and often entertaining point of view. (I have to declare an interest here: yes, some of those grizzled guys are my friends). Anyway, the more the better when it comes to media, old new or just middle aged. I wish all three sweet breezes, fair sailing and growing readerships.

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September 18, 2007 4:32

Scalping the Olympics

Our new colleague in Beijing Lin Yang writes:

In China having connections can make all the difference. But when the first-stage ticket sales plan for the 2008 Olympics was announced earlier this year, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympics --or the vaguely sinister-sounding BOCOG-- vowed to give everyone an equal chance: tickets would be sold by public lottery, and there would be no free tickets, staff tickets, discounted tickets or any of the other euphemisms for funneling the best seats to the rich and powerful.

But even in the case of the hallowed Olympics, such good intentions have apparently run afoul of the country's "to get rich is glorious" mentality. Half a million people applied for twenty-six thousand tickets to the opening ceremony, but one man got twenty. According to the Yangzhou Times, the lucky Mr. Chen repeatedly won the lottery, and has made a fortune selling the tickets at double or triple their face price. Mr. Chen reportedly says he has no use for "luck;" instead he has guanxi, Chinese for special connections with the people in charge.

But don't despair. If you have neither luck nor guanxi, the internet is full of those who do. Olympic scalpers have been advertising "abundant tickets for various games, as well as opening and closing ceremonies" obtained through "internal sources." A journalist reporting on the Olympics for NetEase, a web-based newspaper, called a scalper in Shandong Province to express his interest, and was told it was too late for the 1500 renminbi ($200) opening ceremony ticket. But, good news, there are still six or seven 3000 RMB tickets if he's interested-and if he's willing to pay 6000 RMB each.

The journalist was cautious. How could anyone win so many tickets through the lottery, he asked? "You don't really think I was that lucky do you? There are millions of people trying to get 20,000 tickets.But I have friends in the BOCOG," the Shandong man said impatiently, "You want tickets? Move fast!"

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September 17, 2007 10:34

On the Road in Sichuan

Evan Osnos of the Chicago Tribune, who normally works in the same building as Time's Beijing crew, is off on a five-week trek across Sichuan. At first I was a bit jealous of his escape from capital city desk jockeying, but Evan's trip doesn't look easy. You can read his blog posts and stories as well as photos and video from Tribune photographers Wes Pope and Zbigniew Bzdak here at The Sichuan Diaries: A China Journey.

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September 16, 2007 10:37

Numbers, Statistics and avoiding "Total Havoc"

Statistics are pretty fungible in most countries but China's numbers (as I have remarked in the past) always seem particularly squishy. As well as getting your numbers right, releasing them at the right moment is also critical, it seems. Hot on the heels (or trotters) of the scary news late last week that meat prices vaulted 50 per cent year on year last month (see below) comes the news that, hey presto, pork prices (which were the main component of the rise) have suddenly fallen 11 per cent "early this month," according the venerable South China Morning Post. In a confusing piece (It's behind a paywall but try anyway), the Post gives out this good news as well as a raft of other numbers. The dreaded Blue Ear disease, which had been ravaging some herds though not nearly the numbers people thought, is now going down, kind of. Numbers of live pigs in stock rose 3.9 per cent on the month, meanwhile. Pigs ready for sale rose 9.9 per cent from the year-ago level and the number of sows in stock rose 3.8 per cent in August from a month earlier.

But wait. Just when you thought it was ok to eat bacon again, comes the news, hot from the World Pork Convention in Nanjing, that rural pork consumption (20 kilos a head) is going to go up, up, up, up and may someday hit the piggy levels achieved by the Taiwanese (70 kilos a head). Thoroughly muddled? In a state of "total havoc'? Fear not. This brilliant spot by the gentleman at the beijingnewspeak blog (though he seems to have been "harmonized, so if you are in China, time to get on your proxy and ride), in the venerable South China Morning Post will clarify everything and l;eave you in a state of peace and, of course, harmony that passeth all understanding. Literally.

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September 14, 2007 6:34

Waiting For Shane

Anyone who doubts the longevity of British culture in Hong Kong need only have turned up at the recent launch of the 2007 Hong Kong Cricket Sixes to see that British culture isn’t merely alive and well—it’s bursting out of its navy blue suit and spraying your face with pastry crumbs.
My colleague Ishaan and I had been lured to a function room of the Hong Kong Cricket Club, perched high in the Wong Nei Chung Gap, on the PR guy’s promise of meeting “the biggest [cricket] name of all in recent times.” One can lapse into tedious scholasticism on the topic of who that is, but after vibing the word on the, er, “streets,” I’d brought along a copy of Shane Warne: My Illustrated Career for autographing, feeling reasonably certain it would be he.
But, of course, it wasn’t the stallion of spin bowling. It wasn’t Sachin Tendulkar or Brian Lara. It was even Ian Botham. There was no cricketer, because of some nonsense to do with visas. Instead, there was a disdainful-looking English chick at reception, who told us that she didn’t really “do” reception or business cards. There were paternalistic officials and sponsors, disreputable-looking members of the Fourth Estate, plus a group of alarmingly young girls modeling this year’s team shirts and lots of barely legal leg. They stood opposite the suits and the salivating press corps in a ghastly juxtaposition of vitality and corruption. On this side, fairness and clear skin; on the other, bad backs and man-boobs, bald patches and bad ties. In fact, it sent me into existentialist despair, and over to a table bearing the kind of spread—finger sandwiches, spring rolls, sausage rolls—that you really only ever see at members’ clubs.
Having gorged the existentialism away, I was free to look around the room and notice that the only Chinese faces in the place belonged to the waiters, the guys operating the A/V, and a faintly baffled sports official, who had come to give the Sixes his OK. I point this out not because Hong Kong’s cricket establishment hasn’t made efforts to bring the game to Chinese people. It has—strenuous ones. It’s just that Chinese people don’t seem to be into it (well, it does seem sort of ridiculous to be into a game that is known in Cantonese by the beautifully patronizing name of “wood ball.”). But I love cricket and I want my peeps to love it too. With its calculation and duplicity and patient strategies, cricket is such a Chinese game. If only some PRC sports tsar would set a five-year plan—if only some Hong Kong official would.
There is a great cricketing connection to capitalize on. The Hong Kong Sixes is the richest cricket tournament in the world (in terms of prize money per game). And the Hong Kong XI, has the honor, I believe, of making the second highest one-day score ever: 422 against Myanmar in the 2006 ACC trophy—a score made all the more delicious by the fact that we bowled Myanmar all out for 20 (for more like this, see Peter Hall’s triumphant 150 Years of Cricket in Hong Kong). But the chance of fielding a Chinese, or mostly Chinese team, is about as remote as running into Shane Warne in the Cricket Club bar. A pity.

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