1500 new cars a day in Beijing

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Continuing the pollution in China thread, here’s a short opinion piece by Stephen Cass in Technology Review which claims that 1500 new cars are added to the streets of Beijing each day (the excellent photo from that article is below). I don’t know where he got that number, but I’m going to assume that he’s right. A few of thoughts before I call it a night:

  1. Heck yeah! Buicks are popular in China and since I am now an unwilling shareholder in the second-worst run American car company, we need to sell some Lacrosses ASAP!
  2. Thank God I (a) telecommute and (b) don’t live in Beijing. I can’t stand the traffic in Roanoke, VA.
  3. Yes, there will need to be a alternative to the dominance of petrol, and the Chinese have as much of a vested interest as anyone in finding it. Their motivation will be more economic and national security than pollution, though they will certainly pay lip service.

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I look forward to reading Turning Oil Into Salt. When I read Salt some years ago, I was amazed at the currency value of that now basic commodity in ancient times. The book’s thesis is that we can break the back of the oil cartel by just introducing engines that run on a variety of combustible fuels. Let’s hope they are right.

Transport costs are one of those variables that PassageMaker will not quote. Our Logistics Department can give estimates, or we can help you get a quote from the shipper of your choice, but even with freight near all-time lows, it fluctuates daily.

A world in which transport energy is like salt is a world that will deliver prosperity to the masses of desperately poor people around the world who are trying to improve their lives. I hope I live to see it, and I have a feeling I will. Human ingenuity is a powerful thing.

Stupid ads solving non-existent problems and other bad sales pitches

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I’ve been cogitating recently on some of the marketing campaigns out there that seem almost designed to not sell the product or otherwise turn off customers. What the **** were they thinking?

The creepy plastic faced Burger King ad campaign has won awards in the ad industry, but resulted in a declining market share for the client. I refuse to take my kids there. The food is nasty anyway.

Microsoft’s TV ads for their new “decision engine” Bing show people experiencing “search overload syndrome“. Apparently, people using those other plain old search engines get too many random results and become confused. It’s never happened to me, or anyone I know, but let’s do a little test.

Google “china assembly and inspection“. PassageMaker is #1 and #2 on the natural results.

Yahoo “china assembly and inspection“. PassageMaker is #1 and #2 on the natural results.

Ask “china assembly and inspection“. PassageMaker is #1, #2 and #3 on the natural results.

Now Bing “china assembly and inspection“. PassageMaker is #1 and #2 on the natural results.

Wow. Do you think they can ask the advertising agency for their money back?

Although Bing is prettier and it is nice to see our friends at China Quality Focus at #4 in their natural results, their ad campaign turns me off. If you have to tear down your competition to sell your product, you don’t have much of a product. To the folks in Redmond, how about making amends for the twin travesties of Vista and Office 2007 by givingaway the upgrade to Windows 7 instead of charging $200, before everyone calls it quits and switches to Mac?

What’s next? Ads warning everyone away from that horrible Firefox 3.5, now that it has taken 25% market share? Not bad for a free browser developed by an not-for-profit foundation. Oh, and it’s the best product on the market. That’s got to hurt.

I switched to Firefox after buying a new HP laptop earlier this year with Vista (yes, I know). I had no choice as the old XP machine was nearly dead and wasn’t ready to make the running transition to Mac (though after 6 months of Vista, I am now). The default security settings made Internet Explorer 7 completely unusable – after 3 or 4 days of trying to figure out how to configure the security settings to allow normal browsing without constant warnings, blocked pages, etc., I installed Firefox and I will never go back to IE. They lost me for good.

US Cellular is aggressively promoting their new “battery swap” program with radio ads in my area. The idea is you forget to charge your battery, so you drive to the store to swap your perfectly good but temporarily depleted battery for a fully charged one. I guess they figure if you are in the store anyway for such a reason, you might just be dumb enough to renew your contract ahead of schedule, buy a new phone when the old one still works, etc. The first thought I had when I heard this campaign was “boy, business must really stink”. Are uncharged batteries a problem requiring a multi-million dollar as campaign? I have a charger in my car, in my office and a spare in my brief case. Methinks poor phone sales are the problem, so how about reducing the prices on the plans or offering better phones?

Yesterday my wife told me about a phone book salesman (I still can’t stop laughing at that one) who came into the boutique where she works and tried to renew the ad for this year’s yellow pages. This was the second salesman from the same company that day to visit with the shop owner trying to get this ad. The owner says no, she’s launching her website this month, she’s well established, premium location, and she doesn’t need the print ad anymore. The salesman responds with “everyone who cancelled their ads last year went out of business”. What?! That is the worst line I’ve ever heard, even if true! How about encouraging her to buy the ad to promote the new website? Keeping the ad for her older clientele or new students at the local colleges? There apparently is a rung lower than used car salesman.

Now Apple is trying to charge $1000 in China for an iPhone that is Made in China when in the USA it costs $600? My first impression was maybe I need to reconsider that Mac purchase. How is charging nearly twice the price not trying to alienate the PRC market? There are many other options for smartphones in PRC than the USA. I mean, why not just post the “ no dogs or Chinese” signs (supposedly an urban myth, but you get my point)! Dan Welygan, one of our sales reps and formerly a project manager in our Shenzhen office tells me this is common practice, to charge outlandish prices to capture the cream of the market. I am sure he is correct, but considering it lacks wi-fi, and the Hong Kong versions have been available on the gray market for 2 years, this is not exactly a new device. I’ll be watching to see what happens with Droid or some other iPhone killer when it hits the China market. My gut tells me this is a mis-step for Apple.

The primary reason why I joined PassageMaker was because it was a positive environment and a positive message. We sell Trust & Transparency – the services themselves are almost incidental. Sourcing Feasibility Studies, Vendor Coordination, Assembly-Inspection-Packaging, Logistics, VAT Planning, Factory Formation , etc., all provide solid value to the client, and are so flexible and fungible that we can do pretty much whatever the client needs.

I tell all our sales reps that they don’t need to talk down our competition. There are other good companies doing business in China. It is foolish to pretend otherwise. We don’t need gimmicks or mascots or incentives. We are selling exceptional service, fair pricing and peace of mind. What more do we need?

The truth shall set you free.

How I survived China

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Great article sent by a friend in DC on the health hazards of living in China. A few things that stuck out:

1 – Micro-particulate pollution – in terms of the human cost, this is more concerning than CO2:

Another way to know this is via a clandestine air-quality station that the U.S. Embassy has built in Beijing. The Chinese government does not report, and may not even measure, what other countries consider the most dangerous form of air pollution: PM2.5, the smallest particulate matter, tiny enough to work its way deep into the alveoli. Instead, Chinese reports cover only the grosser PM10 particulates, which are less dangerous but more unsightly, because they make the air dark and turn your handkerchief black if you blow your nose. (Spitting on the street: routine in China. Blowing your nose into a handkerchief: something no cultured person would do.) These unauthorized PM2.5 readings, sent out on a Twitter stream (BeijingAir), show the pollution in Beijing routinely to be in the “Very Unhealthy” or “Hazardous” range, not seen in U.S. cities in decades.

2 – Despite the pollution, it is a exciting and energizing place to be:

The positive aspect is, there’s a lot to take your mind off your health. “I am amazed at how well people do here, considering,” another Western-trained doctor said. “It is an exciting place. It’s a historic time. People seem to feel alive.” That made sense when I heard it—in China I had felt terrible, but alive—and makes me say that foreigners who want to go should not be deterred.

3 – Drink beer:

…I naively drank bottled water in a Buddhist-run vegetarian restaurant—and on the way out saw a waiter filling the “Evian” bottles from a hose.

Point 1 is dead on – the air is toxic – but the trade off (for expats anyway) is Point 2. The minute I landed in Singapore in 1994 I knew I had found my path. Asia, and Chinese Asia in particular, became my focus. It is still exciting today. I imagine London in the Victorian era, NYC in the 1920’s, LA in the 1950’s, etc., were also as exciting (and polluted). Can China fix this? Of course, and they will as their economy develops. As I’ve said before, modern environmentalism is a luxury good.

Mike Bellamy went to Asia the same time I did, and he’s been there full time since 1998, and the excitement has not worn off. Most of the expats on the PassageMaker team have put down roots. We have real bricks-and-mortar in place. So if you need something done in China, rest assured that we are experienced and motivated to make your project a success.

And Point 3? Beer, especially from the large export breweries (many foreign owned), is safe to drink, because it is bottled, capped, carbonated and alcoholic. Chinese beer is served in large recyclable bottles, but the nature of the brewing and bottling process means that if it makes it to your table, it’s clean. All the water is purified as the first step in brewing, otherwise you foul the fermentation. Were it biologically contaminated, it would result in a burst bottle from the build up of gasses. Also, Chinese beer is relatively low in alcohol, so having a beer with lunch is not going to ruin the rest of your day.

When in doubt, have a beer.

What must the Chinese think of Halloween (to say nothing of Mardi Gras)?

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Well, finally recovered from Halloween. Kids had a great time, as did the adults. And yes, ALL of the store-bought costumes were Made in China. How odd it must be to mass produce accoutrement for another country’s holidays. What would an American printing company think if it were asked to print ghost money or bake moon cakes for China?

One of our sales reps, Allan Tsang, directed me to this film, Mardi Gras: Made in China. I’ve only seen the trailer (and it is NOT SAFE FOR WORK), but I will have to track down the full version pronto. And not for that reason. Get your mind out of the gutter.

How bizarre and fascinating that the currency for drunken debauchery and exhibitionism (which also fuels the Girls Gone Wild DVD empire – and no, I will not provide a link) are plastic beads made by earnest teenaged factory workers half way around the world in Fuzhou Province. What a world.

More thoughts on coal

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Here’s an interesting article from my home town paper, The Roanoke Times, on the new carbon capture technology being tested at a power plant in West (By God) Virginia. The technology is interesting to me, especially since I once considered becoming a geologist, but this is the part of the article I found most interesting:

[Mike] Morris [Chairman of American Electric Power (AEP)] and a host of others stressed Friday that coal will fuel power generation for decades to come, both in this country and many others. He said AEP agrees there is enough evidence to believe there is a link between human activity and climate change. But he said the United States has “the financial and technical wherewithal to address the issue.”

Some environmental groups encourage carbon capture efforts such as the one at Mountaineer. Others ask tough questions.

John Steelman is program manager for the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate Center.

“We support the use of carbon capture,” Steelman said Thursday. “We believe that for the next few decades the United States and other countries, including China, are going to use coal in significant quantities.”

And this is a critical time, he said, to limit emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases.

John Blair is president of Valley Watch, a small environmental group in Indiana whose primary focus is the lower Ohio River Valley. The organization has fought coal-fired power plants since Valley Watch’s founding in 1981.

Blair said he has been following the development of the carbon capture and storage system at Mountaineer.

“The Alstom technique is kind of fascinating, I must say,” Blair said. [ed. – emphasis added]

The first thing that made me pause was the assertion that the USA can afford this. As someone who’s still living with campaign commercials for the Virginia’s Governor’s race, the cost of electricity is a MAJOR issue on people’s minds. As a business owner that gets 100% its power from AEP, the cost of coal fired power has a definite and immediate impact on the bottom line. I am all for energy alternatives, but let’s take off the rose colored glasses about the costs involved.

I am also interested to see somebody finally acknowledging that China (and India) are going to use coal because it is what is available and affordable (front end cost, not a nearly impossible to calculate “environmental cost”). Whether or not carbon sequestration works or is applicable in China on a large scale is something to watch. I would like to see some rational enforcement of safety in the Chinese coal mining industry (which is flat out horrific) and particulate emissions from Chinese power plants, as that is the immediate driver of the human cost of pollution in China. I am genuinely concerned with the smog in Chinese cities, as our team at PassageMaker (some of my closest friends) live and work in it everyday.

So to brighten your weekend, a lovely photo of the air quality in south China!

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