ASIABIZBLOG

Archived posts are available at this address.

The new address of the Asia Business Intelligence weblog is www.asiabizblog.com, which supercedes the former blogspot.com domain, due to inconsistent access to the blog in China.

After a summer of comment spammers, we've upgraded the blogging software and, we hope, to greater protection. Comments have been re-enabled. You're welcome to comment, as long as you sign in through the Typekey authentication system. Register for Typekey here.

欢迎任何在中国商业界法律界人士或在学研究员，若有兴趣将您的文章刊载此网站，请直接把文稿或摘要email给总编辑。文章内容必须有助于让美国商人了解中国商业环境且要适合网站的题材。

Do you have an article, in either Chinese or English, that would help Americans understand the way business is done in China? If you are a Chinese national, currently working or studying in the PRC, we'd like to hear from you. Send us an email with the text of your essay, or with an idea for an essay, and， if we think it's suitable for this website, we'll publish it.

As part of his series on international business, Wayne Turmel, host of The Cranky Middle Manager Show, interviewed me recently on the state of Chinese business management. It was an honor to have been asked and a pleasure to have been interviewed. We hope you find it worthwhile as well. Here it is at Wayne's site on The Podcast Network. Alternatively, click this link to listen to an mp3 of the show. After Wayne's preface, we begin conversing at around the 5 minutes and 40 seconds (05:40) into his show.

May I also say that, during the lengthy hiatus from blogging, I was amazed and grateful to many readers for their kind email asking where I had gone to. It was only the rush of pressing projects that kept me away from this site, and I will be back writing within the next few days.

Our podcasts are downloaded nearly 1,500 times each day. We get especially heavy usage through iTunes. A heartfelt thanks to all of our podcast listeners! To listen to the podcast archive, click this link.

[Thanks to a number of readers who have asked about podcasts. Technical problems, as well as projects at hand, have delayed the recording of new podcasts. Apologies! We should have new podcasts available shortly. Past podcasts remain available for listening here].

UPDATE (Dec. 28): The earthquake that disrupted internet access in Korea, Taiwan and parts of China may have caused the block reported below. This article describes the damage to undersea cables in detail, stating that "China Telecom, one of the mainland's main telecommunication and broadband service providers, said that at least six of its cables in the sea area 15 kilometers south of Taiwan had been cut, affecting telecommunications between the mainland and Taiwan, U.S. and Europe."

***

Reports from Chinese subscribers confirm that this weblog is no longer accessible in several of China's largest cities. Well over a thousand readers visit this site from China daily. Is the block uniform throughout the country?

Readers in China who receive this post in their e-mail are kindly asked to email in reply their physical location and whether the weblog or an error message displays.

We are now among the list of sites considered too sensitive or offensive for viewing within the Golden Shield (金盾), including the Voice of America, the BBC and several thousand others.

Tools for circumventing blocked access include:

* Freenet

* Psiphon

* The Google Mirror, here or here.

Other methods may work -- please comment directly to this post if you know of any.

Over the years, those who have added their comments directly underneath a post have been in the large part agreeable and positive.

On the other hand, readers with ideas contrary to my own, seem to send email directly to me. Sadly, they do not, for some reason, choose to post directly on the weblog. Without your permission, I will not take the comment you've sent me personally, and tack it onto the blog. The readership in general loses the opportunity to learn from you.

Any comment, whether in agreement or not, made in the positive spirit of debate, is valid. You are encouraged to disagree.

Asiabizblog is honored to have been selected by the United States Library of Congress for inclusion in its historic collections of Internet materials related to Legal Blawgs.

I'm pleased to announce my availability for speaking engagements and my inclusion in the China Speakers Bureau, run by Fons Tuinstra, editor of the China Herald. Speakers Fons currently represents include Bill Overholt, Howard French, Shaun Rein, Tom Doctoroff and others. I'm happy to speak at your venue in English or Mandarin.

Recent engagements of mine have included the American Bar Association, International Law Conference; World Trade Week New York; and the Chinese American Library Association. To hear what I sound like, listen to any podcast on this site.

Asiabizblog wishes all of our readers the merriest of holidays and best wishes for the New Year.

Hope springs eternal and Spring is just around the corner. In that spirit, I thought I'd share with you a poem a friend in Beijing sent me this morning. [Thank you, dear Audrey!]

一張紙

出生一張紙，開始一輩子；
畢業一張紙，奮鬥一輩子；
婚姻一張紙，折磨一輩子；
做官一張紙，鬥爭一輩子；
金錢一張紙，辛苦一輩子；
榮譽一張紙，虛名一輩子；
看病一張紙，痛苦一輩子；
悼詞一張紙，了結一輩子；
淡化這些紙，明白一輩子；
忘了這些紙，快樂一輩子!

My (hastily considered) translation:

A Sheet of Paper

At birth, a sheet of paper, a lifetime begins;
At graduation, a sheet of paper, a lifetime of strife;
Upon marriage, a sheet of paper, torment for life;
Become a bureaucrat, a sheet of paper, a lifetime of political struggle;
Money, a sheet of paper, a lifetime of hardship;
Win an award, a sheet of paper, a vanity for life;
A doctor's diagnosis, a sheet of paper, a sorrow for life;
An obituary, a sheet of paper, the sum of one's life
When these papers recede in importance, we truly understand
These papers forgotten, a lifetime of happiness!

I don't usually toot my own horn, but I recently discovered that 49,080 high quality backlinks reference this website. This makes this weblog, IMHO, one of the best-known dealing with the topic of Chinese business and law.