PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

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ashi
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by ashi »

Acharya wrote:
zlin wrote:
Man, you are so desperate to defame China, you don't know what you are talking about.
But this forum is meant for that
I am glad one of you can acknowledge that this time.
Theo_Fidel

Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by Theo_Fidel »

Not even the same bridge ding dong. Not only that, Kobe WTF. Do you even know what the PGA difference was between the two. idiots.

Ding dongs from internet cafe with supervisor in background. pooh!

Observation of reality is now defamation. :rotfl: :rotfl: If I wanted to defame Panda wonderland I would have posted something like this. Even though this too is reality and technically not defamation. There are images of what happens after too but are too gruesome for this thread. I suspect the ding dongs lack understanding of inglis!

Image
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by ashi »

Theo_Fidel wrote:Not even the same bridge ding dong. Not only that, Kobe WTF. Do you even know what the PGA difference was between the two. idiots.

Ding dongs from internet cafe with supervisor in background. pooh!

Observation of reality is now defamation. :rotfl: :rotfl: If I wanted to defame Panda wonderland I would have posted something like this. Even though this too is reality and technically not defamation. There are images of what happens after too but are too gruesome for this thread. I suspect the ding dongs lack understanding of inglis!

Image
Are you trolling again? Calling people idiots, ding dongs and putting up out of topic pictures.
Theo_Fidel

Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by Theo_Fidel »

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/24 ... _analysis/
Cybercrooks and patriotic state-backed hackers in China are collaborating to create an even more potent security threat, according to researchers.
The hacking the US Embassy and the White House over the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade back in 1999 brought many flag-waving Chinese hackers together to, as they saw it, defend the honour of the motherland and fight imperialism in cyberspace.

This role was taken over by the Honker Union of China (HUC) after 2000, and the HUC later became the mainstay of the Red Hacker Alliance. China’s so-called “red hackers” attack critics of the state and infiltrate foreign government and corporate sites – among other activities.
Patrick Connolly of AWD Chase de Vere said: "It is important that investors don't get suckered into any hype regarding China and invest too heavily in the region. There is undoubtedly strong potential for stock market growth but this is likely to be coupled with huge levels of risk and volatility."

In common with many advisers, Mr Connolly suggests that China should make up only a relatively small proportion of your portfolio.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by VikramS »

sha wrote:
VikramS wrote: sha: just because the police arrests people does not mean they are sent to a Gulag or a concentration camp. What it typically means is that the strikers were physically removed from the area they were protesting, their name/addresses noted in the address record and then they are let go after a few hours. It is typically done to restore order, after protests have been going on for some time, and if there is a chance of violence, or violence getting out of hand. It is a time honored tradition of political protest; very often the assembly, arrest and release are a pre-planned effort often called "jail-bharo" (fill up the jail)
Thanks for the lecture. Read below or go check the link above.
Three hundred Foxconn workers were arrested and imprisoned during the strike. A few workers remain suspended. At the time of writing, Foxconn held 'hearings' with suspended workers individually on the company's premises. Workers were not allowed to bring a lawyer, a co-worker or any other representative in support.
sha: READ before you make a fool of yourself.

Here are more details from a blog run by supporter of labor rights.

http://revolutionaryfrontlines.wordpres ... omm-plant/
International Metals Federation, October 18, 2010

Twelve Foxconn workers and union leaders remain in prison on October 13 in Chennai, India after hundreds of workers striking the plant were arrested on October 9.

More than 1,200 permanent workers belonging to the Foxconn India Thozhilalar Sangam (FITS) union, which is affiliated to Center For Indian Trade Unions (CITU), at the plant have been involved in weeks of struggle to have their union recognized by management so as to negotiate wage rises and other demands.

On October 9 police arrested hundreds of workers who had been picketing and striking the plant for several days. Around 319 workers including the trade union leaders were remanded into judicial custody and transferred to Vellore central jail. Remaining workers were let off and around 200 women workers were taken to a bus stop and asked to leave. When the women refused and demanded to be arrested also, they were abused and forced off the police vehicle.

On October 13, the court granted bail to 307 workers. The remaining 12 workers and union leaders remain in jail, including A. Soundhirarajan, CITU State General Secretary and E. Muthu Kumar, CITU District Secretary, Kanchipuram and FITS President.

So 95% of the workers were out of lockup within 4 days. Women were not even put in lock-up, even though wanted to be arrested. Does that open your eyes; getting arrested during a protest is part and parcel of how the system works.

And the arrests happened after the strikes and picketing (preventing others from entering the plant) was going on for a few days.

Note that there is some form of union gamesmanship involved. There are supposedly two unions, one which supports the party in power and was supposed to represent the plant workers. The plant workers themselves wanted to join the competing union. The people who were not released within the few days were the main leaders of the opposing unions.
sha wrote: More lecture on democratic India, please.
VikramS wrote: I do not know what exactly transpired in Foxconn India, but the bottom line is that the plant is working, the productivity of workers is high and attracting attention within Foxconn, and the working conditions are better for the workers than similar plants in PRC.

The whole point of the discussion (and the general discussion on this thread) is to get a better understanding of what happens in China. This particular case made highlighted the difference between the two countries, and how the same multinational company operates with different rules and structures in two different countries.
1.The productivity of workers is high ;
2.The workers are less than half payed comprared to their "exploited" peers in China;
3.You guys paint a rosy picture of Foxconn in great democratic India.
You got your point!
Have you even bothered to read about the length of hours which the workers have to put in Foxconn China? There is entire article from NY Times linked above. And where does it say that workers are paid half of what they are paid in China?

Another news based on the same report.
http://causebecause.com/news-detail.php?NewsID=424
while Foxconn employs nearly 6,000 people in its two locations. The report’s damning observation: ‘In sum, most workers of the studied companies were employed in precarious positions and earn very low salaries even in the Indian context.’

One of the points made by the report is that most of the workers who were on the direct payroll of Nokia, Salcomp, and Foxconn started as ‘trainees’ and were kept in this status for 15 months or more, even though their training lasted only for a month.
Did you even bother to read what you cut and paste?

The salaries being paid by Foxconn are LOW even by Indian standards. Indian standards of salary are higher. That is why Foxconn is in trouble.

They tried to follow their Chinese model and it did not work, leading to strikes, plant shutdown, arrests and what not.

Now contrast this with giant factories being run in China. Foxconn is considered one of the better if not among the best employers in China. There are consistent reports of suicides, regular series of industrial accidents etc.

What has been done? Were the workers allowed to strike? What happened when they striked?

In the Chennai case, everything from working conditions, the salary structure was reviewed and negotiated by the unions. The workers had a right to strike (which they did), they had a right to protest (which they did), the local authorities also have to maintain order (so they made arrests AFTER a few days), the arrested people were released after a few days, and the workers had representation from unions during the negotiations. All the elements which describe a democratic process were in action.
Three hundred Foxconn workers were arrested and imprisoned during the strike. A few workers remain suspended. At the time of writing, Foxconn held 'hearings' with suspended workers individually on the company's premises. Workers were not allowed to bring a lawyer, a co-worker or any other representative in support.

That snippet about hearings is not about court hearings, but the company's own internal hearings. These are not union negotiations but cases of individual workers who may have been insubordinate or been involved in incidents leading up to the strike. The author of the article expressed displeasure that "no lawyer, or fellow workers" were present to support the employees.

Did it strike you that normally, even in an internal hearing within a company, the Indian employee typically has the support of other employees, union members/lawyers. And these are the lowest level workers in India, getting paid less than what an Indian worker in other companies

I am curious how Chinese workers represented in their internal hearings :rotfl:
sha wrote: Please read the India guys's talks above and the article below.

Beware the 'gush-up gospel' enriching India's billionaires
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001042846/en
2012-01-28
Do you expect anyone to take "Arundhati Roy" seriously? You have been coming long enough to the forums to know who she is. Or is there a quota of posts you have to fulfill?

BTW, I am not surprised that the "FT China" had to chose A Roy as the author to write about India. She seems to have found a new patron in the CPC.
Last edited by VikramS on 29 Jan 2012 05:01, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by zlin »

Theo_Fidel wrote:Not even the same bridge ding dong. Not only that, Kobe WTF. Do you even know what the PGA difference was between the two. idiots.
Dumb dumb likes to call other idiots. Besides you are just too chicken to face the truth. You brought a picture but has no clue when and when the picture was taken. They are same bridge. The difference is your picture showed that bridge almost 3 years before the earthquake, while it was still underconstruction. Here is a much larger version of it.

http://v7.cache8.c.bigcache.googleapis. ... 693941.jpg

Look it clearly, most of its surface having not been put there yet. The EXIF data of this photo shows it was shot at 07/24/2005 10:24PM by a Canon Powershot S50 camera.

My picture showed the aftermath of that same bridge right after the earthquake and one-year later it was opened to traffic. Face it, it is a well-designed well-built bridge which stands after a magnitude 8 earthquake, you chicken.
Theo_Fidel

Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by Theo_Fidel »

Meet the wu-mao.......

http://www.news.com.au/technology/chine ... 6056659550

China pays internet users to flood web forums with pro-government propaganda

50 cents per post. :rotfl:
"Wu mao" is a Chinese slang term for web commenters. It literally means "50 cents" — the term is used to describe people who can be easily paid-off to support the government’s agenda.

Check!
"There is a subliminal effect — the message gets into people's heads, even the dissidents, especially the arguments that make sense," De Spens said.

Check! We even have Indians defending.. :roll:
Some of those students are trying to improve their chances of gaining a coveted party membership.

But the group of web spin doctors also includes civil servants and employees of state-owned firms — and even retirees and housewives keen to support the party line.
Check! Check Check!
"On the main hot topics, three days into the debate, only the propaganda remains online," creating a "false general opinion" which the great majority of web users will blindly follow, De Spens said.

Check!
Web commentators "are paid based on the number of comments they post, and they can also get a bonus if one of their posts is named one of the most popular on the site," Li explained.
Check. Ka-Ching!
"When there are large numbers of comments that are toeing a government line, it certainly makes it more difficult for people who disagree to have their voice heard above the noise," he nevertheless acknowledged.

Check!
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by sha »

chandrat wrote:
sha wrote:"Please read the India guys's talks above and the article below"
Beware the 'gush-up gospel' enriching India's billionaires
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001042846/en
2012-01-28
Since the cross-ownership of businesses is not restricted by the “gush-up gospel” rules, the more you have, the more you can have. Meanwhile, scandal after scandal has exposed, in painful detail, how corporations buy politicians, judges, bureaucrats and media houses, hollowing out democracy, retaining only its rituals. Huge reserves of bauxite, iron ore, oil and natural gas worth trillions of dollars were sold to corporations for a pittance, defying even the twisted logic of the free market. Cartels of corrupt politicians and corporations have colluded to underestimate the quantity of reserves, and the actual market value of public assets, leading to the siphoning off of billions of dollars of public money. Then there’s the land grab – the forced displacement of communities, of millions of people whose lands are being appropriated by the state and handed to private enterprise. (The concept of inviolability of private property rarely applies to the property of the poor.) Mass revolts have broken out, many of them armed. The government has indicated that it will deploy the army to quell them.
...
After two decades of these “reforms” and of phenomenal but jobless growth, India has more malnourished children than anywhere else in the world, and more poor people in eight of its states than 26 countries of sub-Saharan Africa put together. And now the international financial crisis is closing in. The growth rate has plummeted to 6.9 per cent. Foreign investment is pulling out.
sha, have you tired to check the "facts" in that article. Per world bank estimate 41.6% of the total Indian population falls below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25 a day ( not 800 million with less than 0.50 cents per day) and per UN Millennium Development Goals Report, India's poverty rate is projected to drop to 22% in 2015. ( A sure effect of gush up gospel).
I can link the sources but since you have the freedom to surf the web and read all about India, i hope you will not disappoint.
I was raised in a poor rural family, so my heart always goes out to the poor. I'm very happy the great progress for poverty alliviation made in India. If there is something did dispoint me, it is the fact that 1.25 $ is at ppp price(=0.50$ nominal) aftrer surfing the web.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by VikramS »

Folks: Shall we lower the temperature a bit. There is no point in finger pointing.

zlin: The good and the bad stay side by side.
There is difference between what the building standards were when much of Japan was built up, and the standards of the 21st century. The Loma Perieta and Kobe earthquakes happened in the last century, and the infrastructure affected was built many decades prior to that.

Some spans of the Bay Bridge are being imported pre-fab from China because the China price could not be beat. It was a saving of $400 million.

When it comes PGA which is the measure relevant to earthquake engineering, the Kobe earthquake was one of the worst. The 2008 Chinese earthquake did not make it to the top list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_groun ... arthquakes

But before going overboard on how "China building is superior", remind yourself of this.
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009 ... ly-intact/

Or the tragedy in the 2008 earthquakes when tens of thousand of children died due to shoddy construction in schools.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_sc ... d_opinions


Image
Last edited by VikramS on 29 Jan 2012 06:10, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by VikramS »

sha wrote: I was raised in a poor rural family, so my heart always goes out to the poor.
Good to know you have come so far. I am sure you are proud of what the CPC has achieved.

But there are two sides to every story. Here is some perspective
India can not find anyone to execute; the traditional method of execution by hanging requires a hangman and they are no available since there have been just two executions in the last 15 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/world ... wanted=all

It is not that people have not been sentenced to death; just that there is an appeal process and in general no one is keen on getting on with the execution.

On the other hand, China executed about 5000 people last year; no official statistics are released. This is after efforts were made to reduce the number of executions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_pu ... c_of_China

India and China have very similar problems but are very different in many ways. Both can learn from each other. But what works for China is unlikely to work here, and what works in India is unlikely to work in China.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by member_20810 »

I was raised in a poor rural family, so my heart always goes out to the poor. I'm very happy the great progress for poverty alliviation made in India. If there is something did dispoint me, it is the fact that 1.25 $ is at ppp price(=0.50$ nominal) aftrer surfing the web.
I am sure it does and your heart must be aching for the additional 100m people who qualify as poor.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/world/2011/1 ... 00-million
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by sha »

chandrat wrote:
I was raised in a poor rural family, so my heart always goes out to the poor. I'm very happy the great progress for poverty alliviation made in India. If there is something did dispoint me, it is the fact that 1.25 $ is at ppp price(=0.50$ nominal) aftrer surfing the web.
I am sure it does and your heart must be aching for the additional 100m people who qualify as poor.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/world/2011/1 ... 00-million
You got it this time. I never and ever deny the fact that China is still a very poor country.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by member_20810 »

You got it this time. I never and ever deny the fact that China is still a very poor country.
I am glad you agree and perhaps in future you might think for a while before posting a hack job of an article.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by sha »

VikramS wrote: sha wrote:
More lecture on democratic India, please.
sha wrote: 1.The productivity of workers is high ;
2.The workers are less than half payed comprared to their "exploited" peers in China;
3.You guys paint a rosy picture of Foxconn in great democratic India.
You got your point!
Have you even bothered to read about the length of hours which the workers have to put in Foxconn China? There is entire article from NY Times linked above. And where does it say that workers are paid half of what they are paid in China?

As a matter of fact, I had made it very clear in my early posters. Since you choose to ignore the fact, I will have to tell it one more time. Let's give it a apple to apple comparation.
The wage for training period is 1750¥/M(14000Rs/M) in Foxconn Shenzhen factory and 5000Rs/M in Foxconn Chennai factory. Then you do the compararition, no nned to bother NY times. Overtime pay is not included. I ever gave rough calculation in my poster how much workers earns if the overtime pay is put into acount.
Again, I have to say you made a very goog point!

Your striking thing talk was nothing other than bla bla bla....
Since you're willing to fool youself, I will leave it at that. Guys, I have to say it's very pathetic and ironic.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by sha »

chandrat wrote:
You got it this time. I never and ever deny the fact that China is still a very poor country.
I am glad you agree and perhaps in future you might think for a while before posting a hack job of an article.
You beat me! :)
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by svinayak »

ashi wrote:
Man, you are so desperate to defame China, you don't know what you are talking about.

I am glad one of you can acknowledge that this time.
What do you mean. We are in India here.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by member_20810 »

You beat me! :)
Ahh, the irony
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by VikramS »

sha wrote: As a matter of fact, I had made it very clear in my early posters. Since you choose to ignore the fact, I will have to tell it one more time. Let's give it a apple to apple comparation.
The wage for training period is 1750¥/M(14000Rs/M) in Foxconn Shenzhen factory and 5000Rs/M in Foxconn Chennai factory. Then you do the compararition, no nned to bother NY times. Overtime pay is not included. I ever gave rough calculation in my poster how much workers earns if the overtime pay is put into acount.
Again, I have to say you made a very goog point!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/chin ... -70pc.html
Following the latest rise, which will take full effect from October 1, the basic salary for production-line workers at Foxconn’s will have risen from 900 renminbi (£91.30) per month two weeks ago to 2,000 renminbi (£203).
Until about 15 months ago, the salary was less than a 1000. And what Foxconn pays in India is lower than local standards; they are supposedly one of the better employers in China.

And this was the base salary for workers; I have no idea what the trainees were paid.

sha wrote: Your striking thing talk was nothing other than bla bla bla....
Right. Do you have *any* idea of how ignorant and brain-washed you sound??

To put it in plain English:
In China, workers have to commit suicide, get burnt in industrial accidents to get better wages and working condition.
VS
In India workers can strike to still get them.

For you that is all blah blah blah.

The interesting thing about autocratic systems is that unless it your ass on the firing line it all feels good. Once it is your head in front of the firing squad all the others will also say "blah blah blah".
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by sha »

VikramS,
Let's give another apple to apple comparation.

Fifteen months ago, workers in Foxconn Chenna were forced to work shifts of 12 hours or more, in complete silence, with extremely limited breaks and having to eat on the go. Workers were roughed up by security staff. At factor dormitories, dozens of people were crammed into single rooms, sleeping in triple bunk beds. Some workers complained of cockroaches in the dormitories and no running water for days to bathe themselves. Workers with four year's expereince were only payed 4800 Rs/M.
http://sacom.hk/archives/778
To sum up:
Worse conditions, worsely payed.

Well, I think we're talking sometning in current sistuation. In this case, I still had a valid point and you made a fool of yourself. And you didn't deny it and I don't think you can.
VikramS wrote: Right. Do you have *any* idea of how ignorant and brain-washed you sound??

To put it in plain English:
In China, workers have to commit suicide, get burnt in industrial accidents to get better wages and working condition.
VS
In India workers can strike to still get them.

For you that is all blah blah blah.
You must understand that it's what you said bla bla not democracy. I strongly believe mainland China will follow democatiac path as wester countries sooner or later. Frankly speaking, India democracy is another story.

Can you enlighten me why 250,000 debt-riddenan farmers have killed themselves intead of fighting for their rights(protest, strike, vote, whatever) in great democratic India? Who heared their voice and why not do something to stop the tradegy so that the numers stop growing? Where were their votes?

BTW: As a matter of fact protests and strikes happen now and then in China. The damned CPC goverment !
Last edited by sha on 29 Jan 2012 10:08, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by VikramS »

zlin wrote:
Theo_Fidel wrote:Not even the same bridge ding dong. Not only that, Kobe WTF. Do you even know what the PGA difference was between the two. idiots.
Dumb dumb likes to call other idiots. Besides you are just too chicken to face the truth. You brought a picture but has no clue when and when the picture was taken. They are same bridge. The difference is your picture showed that bridge almost 3 years before the earthquake, while it was still underconstruction. Here is a much larger version of it.

http://v7.cache8.c.bigcache.googleapis. ... 693941.jpg

Look it clearly, most of its surface having not been put there yet. The EXIF data of this photo shows it was shot at 07/24/2005 10:24PM by a Canon Powershot S50 camera.

My picture showed the aftermath of that same bridge right after the earthquake and one-year later it was opened to traffic. Face it, it is a well-designed well-built bridge which stands after a magnitude 8 earthquake, you chicken.

zlin:

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/re ... 29/003.cfm

This is an official US DOT publication about the effect of the 2008 earthquake on bridges.

This is what it has to say:

China Earthquake Reconnaissance Report: Performance of Transportation Structures During the May 12, 2008, M7.9 Wenchuan Earthquake

LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE POSTEARTHQUAKE RECONNAISSANCE

The bridge damage caused by the May 12, 2008, Wenchuan Earthquake reminded the researchers of damage suffered in California during the February 9, 1971, San Fernando Earthquake. In the early 1970s, the highway network in the United States was expanding in ways similar to current the expansion occurring in China. Before the San Fernando earthquake, Caltrans' maximum seismic coefficient was 0.10 g (0.98 m/s2), the same as China's current maximum seismic coefficient. After the San Fernando earthquake, Caltrans greatly increased the seismic hazard used to design California's bridges, and following the 1995 Kobe earthquake, Japan increased the hazard for its bridges. Hopefully, this earthquake will have the same significance for China's bridge engineers and the seismic hazard for areas near known faults will be increased.


In addition, the bridges studied had few seismic details such as long seats, large shear keys, or tightly spaced transverse reinforcement. These details would greatly reduce bridge damage during earthquakes.
The various fault traces through the region need to be carefully identified, and bridges should be designed for the seismic hazards at the bridge site, based on a low probability of the hazard being exceeded during the life of the bridge. Such efforts would ensure that China could rely on its highway infrastructure during the earthquakes that frequently strike the country.

Based on the field reconnaissance, the following observations can be made:

The collapse of most arch and girder bridges was associated with surface rupturing of the faults in the Longmen-Shan thrust zone. A significant portion of roadways and bridges were pushed away or buried by overwhelming landslides in the steep slopes of mountainous terrain.
The representative damage types in bridge superstructure included unseating of girders, longitudinal and transverse offset of decks, pounding at expansion joints, and shear key failure.
The bearings of several girder bridges were either crushed or displaced significantly.
The substructure and foundation of bridges were subjected to shear and flexural cracks, concrete spalling, stirrup rupture, excessive displacement, and loss of stability.
More damage occurred in simply supported bridges than in continuous spans. Curved bridges either collapsed or suffered more severe damage.
Evidence of the directivity effects on the bridges near the earthquake epicenter was observed during the earthquake.
There are specific mentions of the following bridge which seems to be the bridge which Theo referred to.
MIAOZHIPING BRIDGE (31.0184 °N, 103.5491 °E)

Miaozhiping Highway from Dujiangyan to Wenchuan was under construction during the earthquake. It consists of a tunnel at Zhipingpu and a bridge over the Ming River, as shown in figure 51 and figure 52. The tunnel, shown in figure 53, experienced little damage during the earthquake. The highway was scheduled to open in October 2008. Near the highway is the Dujiangyan Dam. The bridge of approximately 0.87 mi (1.4 km) consists of three parts: a main span and two approach spans, as shown in figure 54.

The construction of the bridge was near completion at the time of the earthquake, with only the installation of expansion joints remaining. The most severe damage was to the end span of a five-span T girder segment that became unseated at the expansion joint end, fractured in the continuous deck at the other end due to gravity load, and fell off the supporting bent caps.
While the photo which Theo referred to may not have been the right one, it is indeed the bridge which suffered major damage during the earthquake even though it was almost complete. Perhaps there is an element of truth in what Theo said, even if the picture was not the right one. BTW, the EXIF data can be edited :wink:




There is another bridge which was built in 2004 which collapsed. The bridge was demolished after wards.

BAIHUA BRIDGE (31.0443 °N, 103.4749 °E)

Baihua Bridge is part of a Class 2 Highway from Dujiangyan to Wenchuan. It was built in 2004 by the owner of a nearby hydroelectric plant.

...

During the earthquake, one curved section of the bridge completely collapsed, as shown in figure 64. The rest of the bridge suffered varying degrees of damage, including shear cracks and failure at columns and struts, shear key failure, and bearing failure as shown in figure 65 through figure 69 for bents 3, 9, 15, and 18. At bent 3, typical damage occurred between the strut and columns in the form of spalling and cracks. At bent 9, with expansion joints, the superstructure had significant transverse displacement, knocking off the shear key. At bent 15, the bridge section was completely collapsed, probably due to the shear and flexural failure of the columns. At bent 18, significant spalling occurred underneath the bridge deck in addition to cracks between the columns and the strut.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by VikramS »

What is your point sha? That hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers who were being paid 900Yuan and killing themselves before they were heard were in some way better off than most Indian workers in similar environments?

You continue to IGNORE the fact that wages in India are in general higher than what Foxconn was paying. You are comparing the best of China with the worst of Indian organized sector and still have to resort to which date the wage improved etc. (blah blah blah as you would put it).

India and China are different countries with different cultures. While India can definitely learn from the Chinese experience, what helped to alleviate the millions in China out of poverty will not work in India.

The Foxconn case is an example where within a few year of its formation, the plant was in trouble, even though the number of employees was quite small (a few thousand) and NOT tens or hundreds of thousands as employed in the Chinese factory zones. What worked for Foxconn for decades in China did not work for them in India.




Can you enlighten me why 250,000 debt-riddenan farmers have killed themselves intead of fighting for their rights(protest, strike, vote, whatever) in great democratic India? Who heared their voice and why not do something to stop the tradegy so that the numers stop growing? Where were their votes?
Have you heard of NREGA?? It is a scheme where unemployed people in rural areas are guaranteed work for a certain amount of time.

The farmers are not employed by anyone. They are independent working on small plots but got caught up in a vicious cycle of failed crops/drought/and debt.

There are a lot of poor people in India. Most Indians on this forum, are not happy with the current government policies. A large number of URBAN Indians, the well-off middle class, were out in the streets for much of last year, protesting against the government.

Another request to all Chinese posters: Stop going ape-shit whenever something less positive about China is shared here. If you want read posts by heech in this thread, which present a more balanced perspective while defending China. The tone of the posts in the past two days has been very shrill and of the schlong length type. Any comparison of India/China has to be done in an effort to understand more.

All the posts about China rah rah, China best, China superior will just reduce your credibility, and eventually prevent you from earning the 50c/post as you end up getting banned
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by sha »

VikramS wrote: What is your point sha? That hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers who were being paid 900Yuan and killing themselves before they were heard were in some way better off than most Indian workers in similar environments?
Your point is workers in Foxconn India who was underpayed in worse connditions is better off? You must be mousepies of Foxconn India. Image Foxconn Chennai is in the same scale of Foxconn Shenzhen. Maybe more India workers killed themself.

My point is I'm talking about your allegation on the Foxconn in China and India and the ridiculous logic in it. It's you who did the comparation thing and I found inconsistenc in your statement and then challenged it.
VikramS wrote: You continue to IGNORE the fact that wages in India are in general higher than what Foxconn was paying. You are comparing the best of China with the worst of Indian organized sector and still have to resort to which date the wage improved etc. (blah blah blah as you would put it).
Please sue Foxconn in the interest of the workers in Foxconn factory, please. Or complain to orgnazation which drafted the report.

In the contex of Foxconn thing, how can you deny the fact that all I made was an apple to apple comparation? "best of China with the worst of Indian" , goundless bla bla.
Last edited by sha on 29 Jan 2012 13:11, edited 7 times in total.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by Hari Seldon »

Aah. Rinse and repeat happening, I see. Who could've known, I guess.... LOL

This dhaga too goes the way of its predecessors. Jai hu, jai mao.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by ArmenT »

From the BBC:
The world's biggest cities: How do you measure them?
Interestingly, Professor Chan makes the argument that Chongqing is not really a city, but a province and therefore not even the largest city in China, much less the world.
Professor Kam Wing Chan of the University of Washington in the United States, who has made a career out of correcting people's exaggerated claims about Chinese population statistics, explains that what China calls a municipality or city is better understood as a province.

Many of the 30 million people who are said to live in the city of Chongqing are actually agricultural workers living in a rural setting, he says.

In fact, he says, the area is so huge it's about the size of Austria. :eek:

"And if you were to travel from the downtown area to some of the peripheral areas where those 30 million live, it might take a day or two because the road conditions are not that good. So, this cannot be possibly called a city. Because when we call a place a city the general understanding is that we're talking about a commuting zone."

Professor Chan calculates that a more reasonable estimate of the urban population of Chongqing is six or seven million.
He says that if you consider the urbanized area alone, then the largest city in China is Shanghai.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by VikramS »

sha:
It is not even clear what you want to prove. On hand you have been trying your best to find all kind of information about how bad things are in Foxconn India, and then you try to find apples to apples between an organization employing tens of thousands for many years, and a nascent operation employing a few thousand which started in the second half of the 2000s. Here is the way I see it.

1. Foxconn has been a major big time operator in China for many many years. They employ tens, if not hundreds of thousands. They are considered among the better operators in China because of their high profile customers. Till late 2010, the base salary in Foxconn was 900 Yuan.

2. Foxconn Chennai is a small time operation in comparison, employing a few thousand. It started 4-5 years ago. The conditions and work environment there were very similar to Chinese standards.

3. Unlike in China where tens of thousands toiled for many years at very poor wages, and working conditions, Foxconn Indian operations ran into trouble within a few years, and with orders of magnitude less number of employees.

4. There have been sweeping changes in Foxconn's China operations. Similar changes have also happened in the Chennai operations. You believe that in the new wage structure Foxconn's Chinese employees is now much better than before; and perhaps even better than the Chennai employees. The published information we have from the Chennai factory is from the time of the strike; what the new wage rates they have will not be known with high certainty.

5. In India typically jobs in the organized multinationals are coveted since they typically have better wages. Foxconn was a glaring exception since the wages there were actually less than what the going rates were and the working conditions were pathetic. Foxconn's working condition in the Indian factory were very similar to what they had been practicing in China for many years. However they soon got in to trouble with them.

Note that it takes time for plant to ramp up production employees etc. The employees also take time to organize in a union etc. The plant was in trouble once the initial euphoria of its launch, and the jobs it created died down; and the reality of the organization sunk in.

6. However unlike India, where they got in to trouble within the first few years, Foxconn China had ignored worker suicides, a larger number of avoidable industrial accidents for many many years. The glaring differences in which the workers protested (suicides vs strikes) should have been an eye opener.

7. There is nothing apples to apples in the course which Foxconn took and practiced successfully in China for many years with tens of thousand workers, and Foxconn's experience when trying the same tactics in India (where they were met with strong protests, strikes, picketing, arrests and what not) on a few thousand.

8. What worked in China, did not work in India. This perhaps is the biggest lesson for any body who wants to copy the Chinese model. There is a certain set of preconditions which the Chinese model requires, which are unlikely to exist in India, and increasingly so, unlikely to survive in China too, as the Chinese workers demand a more fair share for their labor.

While it is great to be proud of PRC's achievements, the blind hero-worshipping which CPC drone's display is really scary.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by member_20810 »

sha
Can you enlighten me why 250,000 debt-riddenan farmers have killed themselves intead of fighting for their rights(protest, strike, vote, whatever) in great democratic India? Who heared their voice and why not do something to stop the tradegy so that the numers stop growing? Where were their votes?
Sure, let me give it a shot

1. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... crops.html

2. (http://www.macroscan.com/anl/mar08/pdf/ ... icides.pdf)

Farmers committing suicide out of desperation is a sad plight and believe me government at various levels is working to address these issues in terms of increasing the minimum prices to crops, offering guidance on crops to plants etc.

It would be easy if all farmers were placed in one big area where they would work and stay in a big dorms with nice cafeteria, swimming pool and safety nets to catch them when the decide to jump off the building, but alas that's not the case, till then we will have to solve one problem at a time. It will be slow at elephant's walk pace but ..

These factors and the workers plight in the great peoples republic are different, but don't let me tell you otherwise, please stick to your doctrine. Waiting for your next salvo of "apple to apple comparison".
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by wrdos »

Marten wrote:
Oh this must have hurt a bit, eh? 7 edits to the post. heh.
Take it as is, Sha - the best of China (Foxconn) is the amongst the worst in India. btw, I've managed two projects at Foxconn for a prestigious brand. Guess what, the workers were trusted so less that we ended up deputing three folks from the US as full-time supervisors to keep an eye on everyone involved in the operation. And even then, there was a clone of our product out within two weeks with the same design (yes, that's how China deals and steals).

Take it easy.
Sir, a typical Foxconn worker is a girl from a norther province peasant family with junior high school education, teenagers or in their early 20s. They become the best of China, and were compared with the Indian elites working in foreign IT companies?

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

You make the day.

And their base salary was 900 yuan in 2010. Please, it is base salary . In 2010 I think the base salary or an Associate Professor in an elite university was also something around 1000 yuan. Sir, in China everybody earns at least 3 times of their base salary, if not 4 times or 5 times, or 10 times. The peasant girls can earn 900 yuan in their home town just by helping in a small restaurant owned by her uncle. She goes all the way to a province 1000km away and works in a factory called Foxconn because she can work over time there. We are a hard working people anyway. Sir, that girl could earn around 2500 yuan averagely within the first year even back to 2010.

You need not to tell me. Just tell your self. A teenager peasant girl from Northern India moved to Chennai, a city 500 or 800km away. Averagely how much she could expect?

Or India, as a county,is still not safe enough for a girl to travel freely, alone or with her girl friends only?
Last edited by wrdos on 29 Jan 2012 20:28, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by member_21708 »

Chinese Workers Are Reported Captured by Sudan Rebels
HONG KONG — More than two dozen Chinese road workers have been captured by a Sudanese rebel group, Chinese and Sudanese officials said on Sunday, underlining the risks for China in sending ever-greater numbers of its workers into some of the world’s most turbulent countries.

The rebels struck a remote camp used by Chinese road builders in South Kordofan province, an oil-rich area that has become a battlefield between the Sudanese government and rebel forces allied to the newly independent state of South Sudan. Sudanese officials said that the rebels had kidnapped more than 70 Chinese and Sudanese workers. It was not clear if anyone was killed in the attack, a Sudan army spokesman said.
However, just last week Western human rights groups accused the Sudanese government of embarking on a road building campaign in Kordofan as a way to bring more troops into the region and crush the rebels there. Intense fighting broke out in Kordofan in June, right before South Sudan split off from Sudan.

The Kordofan rebels fought alongside southern rebels for years against the Arab-dominated government of Sudan and for many of the same reasons, complaining of marginalization and discrimination. Many analysts believe the new Southern Sudanese government is helping arm the Kordofan rebels as a way to destabilize Sudan, while at the same time, the Sudanese government is believed to be arming rebel groups in South Sudan. Since June, Sudanese warplanes have been relentlessly bombing Kordofan, killing many civilians there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/world ... ebels.html
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by sha »

VikramS wrote:sha:
It is not even clear what you want to prove.
Are you a fool or do you pretened to be a fool? I will make my point again.(for third time!!!)
1 You cliamed the the productivity of workers in Chennai is high; ( No no has denied it so far.)
2.The workers are less than half payed comprared to their "exploited" peers in China; ( You never denied it with solid sourse. Cut the bullshit like "It must be goog but I don't know it exactly" off. )
3.You painted a rosy picture of Foxconn in great democratic India.

What do I want to prove?
Here comes my conclusion:
1: you're a fool with no sense of logic;
or 2: you're a mousepiece of Foxconn India;
or 3: you're a pathetic man who are hounted by vanity.
VikramS wrote:1. Foxconn has been a major big time operator in China for many many years. They employ tens, if not hundreds of thousands. They are considered among the better operators in China because of their high profile customers. Till late 2010, the base salary in Foxconn was 900 Yuan.
The minimum wage in Shenzhen in late 2010 is 1100 Y/M。What's the minimum wage in Chennai in late 2010? Tell me and I won't ignore it. You can ignore the minimum wage in Shenzhen as you please.
VikramS wrote: 4. There have been sweeping changes in Foxconn's China operations. Similar changes have also happened in the Chennai operations. You believe that in the new wage structure Foxconn's Chinese employees is now much better than before; and perhaps even better than the Chennai employees. The published information we have from the Chennai factory is from the time of the strike; what the new wage rates they have will not be known with high certainty.
Again,you deliberatlly chose to be blind to the facts I listed.
You must note the fact that the strike happened in september 2010 and the report was released one year later. Thanks to the strike,wage for a permanet worker with three or four year's experience raised from about 5000Rs/M to 9100 Rs/M. Sad for the contract workers and trainees, nothing changed after the strike. It's very clear, and why is it so hard for you to take? Or it's too hard for you to face the reality which touches a raw nerve somewhere. Vanity haunted.

It sounds that worker's wage in Foxconn Chennai is kept as a secret. Make no sense. Foxconn need to put it in recruitment adversiement. Maybe some one knows but is shy of telling it.
sha wrote: September 15 2011
...
Foxconn's wage settlement with the union raised permanent workers'wages by 75-80%, to Rs. 9,100 (145 euros) per month for those with three or four years of work experience.

Contract workers and trainees are paid in general less than permanent workers and are exempted from wage rises. ... and Foxconn Rs. 5,000 (80 euros) per month.
Theo_Fidel

Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by Theo_Fidel »

Young Pandaling Sha should be gone at this point. Cut him off from his 50 cent allowance. :rotfl: :P

Panda trolls have a long history of bringing zero value to this Dhagha. Their favored tactic is to focus on some random meaningless bauble to challenge a poster and divert the conversation down a foxhole. They are well trained in how to do this. Don't feed 'em.

As Harbans says, Jai Mao.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Comment from a Economic professor.
If investment actually declines — which is hardly unthinkable based on other property booms and busts — the picture is even worse. For instance, if property investment falls 10% (in real terms) in 2012, GDP growth drops to 5.3%. Even if investment grows at 10% (half last year’s growth rate, in real terms), GDP still drops to 7.9% — below the magic 8%. You can plug in any numbers you like, and see what you get. The point is, real estate has been a huge driver of growth, and even a modest real estate slowdown matters — it can’t just be brushed aside as though it were of minimal consequence for the broader Chinese economy.

I also want to emphasize — before we get totally preoccupied with the fate of the property bubble — that the property story is really just one aspect of a much broader investment boom that has been driving the economy. If real estate accounts for 10-13% of GDP, investment in fixed assets accounts for roughly half. The health of the property sector is particularly important in China because of the pervasive role that land values play in underwriting lending, but the risks to China’s economy extend far beyond the market for homes and offices. For China, real estate is just the tip of a much larger iceberg, one that I’ll explore in my next “China data” installment.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by Patni »

The milk of a dairy firm's unkindness
Updated: 2012-01-07 07:54
Play soccer and drink milk for a healthy and strong body. This may be true in many other countries, but not entirely so in China after what has happened over the past few years.
Soccer, however, seems to be undergoing a "purification" process through the ongoing trial of former China Football Association officials. It is even likely that it will be freed of all its toxic factors such as match-fixing, bribery and gambling.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the dairy industry. Just as corruption in soccer has devastated soccer fans time and again, contamination-related scandals in the dairy industry have harmed people, especially children, and caused severe physical and mental strain on the public.
The latest milk food scandal involves dairy industry giant Mengniu, a batch of whose milk tested positive for a cancer-causing toxin. The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine published the results of a random check on Mengniu products on Dec 24, which said excessive aflatoxin, a carcinogen, was found in the company's tested samples. The test found that on average 1 kilogram of Mengniu's product contained 1.2 micrograms of aflatoxin, when the maximum permissible limit is 0.5 micrograms.
This is especially alarming because aflatoxin is virulent in terms of toxicity and the World Health Organization (WHO) has classified it as a first-class carcinogen. WHO listed aflatoxin way back in 1993 as being among the most carcinogenic substances ever known. High-level aflatoxin exposure causes acute hepatic necrosis (death of liver cells and tissues), leading to cirrhosis and/or carcinoma of the liver.
Though adults rarely succumb to acute aflatoxicosis, children are vulnerable to aflatoxin exposure, which leads to stunted growth and delayed development.
Perhaps it was in the fitness of things that Mengniu's website was hacked recently, and the hackers used (rather altered) Mengniu's well-known slogan - drinking half a kg of Mengniu milk every day will make people strong - to ridicule it. Tired of the milk food scandals, the hackers changed the word "strong" to "dead".
Such a major scandal would have destroyed any company's fame and business, but not Mengniu's. In fact, it has been involved in a quite a few food scandals in recent years.
Undeterred by the scandal, Mengniu explained that the carcinogen in its milk came from cattle feed, and it would take time to trace the dairy farmers who used such feed.
True, cattle feed can produce aflatoxin if it is stored for a long time. But individual or small-scale cattle farmers don't have the money to buy feed in huge quantities and store them till they become moldy. It is highly likely, therefore, that companies running large farms, such as Modern Farming, a large cow-breeding company closely related to Mengniu, would do so. Modern Farming farms have the highest cattle density in the world, and hence its need to store huge quantities of feed. And according to Mengniu and Modern Farming's strategic contract, the former gets the priority to purchase 90 percent of the latter's supplies.
It is the obligation of such companies to test for aflatoxin, which is resistant to heat and cannot be eliminated by pasteurizing, in feed and dairy products both. The Food Safety Law says a food producing enterprise should establish a mechanism to check the raw materials, food additives and food-related products it buys, and faithfully record the names, specifications and quantities of the materials, and names and contact details of the suppliers and the purchase dates. But Mengniu has tuned a blind eye to such legal obligations.
To the public's surprise, Mengniu has survived several milk product scandals within a short period when even one of them could have devastated a company in the developed world. Worse, it has not even recalled its products once, something any conscientious company would have done in such situations.
Should we then believe in a company that doesn't follow even the basic ethics of business?
Indignant consumers have given a call online to boycott the brand. Maybe they should learn from the case of an elderly American woman, who filed a suit against McDonald's after she suffered burns from coffee spillage and won hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation, and move a court against Mengniu to demand damages for the contaminated products they have been sold and the harm they have suffered.
And it's time the authorities adhered to stricter quality control supervision and revised the punitive laws to not only deter companies like Mengniu from selling contaminated products, but also to safeguard consumers' health.
The author is a reporter with China Daily.
(China Daily 01/07/2012 page5)
No high aflatoxin levels found in milk
Updated: 2012-01-10 20:25
BEIJING - China's quality watchdog said Tuesday that its latest checks did not find excessive levels of aflatoxin in milk produced by Chinese dairy companies.
The checks, which ended on January 9, covered the country's leading dairy companies, including Mengniu Dairy Group, Yili Industrial Group and Beijing Sanyuan Food Co., the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said in a statement on its website.
The country has intensified its efforts to step up inspections on dairy companies and strengthen the monitoring of their production process to ensure milk safety and quality, after milk products made by Mengniu were found to contain high levels of aflatoxin, a cancer-causing substance, in late December.
The aflatoxin test has been added to the country's fluid milk product monitoring system. Quality watchdogs across the country will destroy all tainted products if high levels of aflatoxin are found, the statement said.
Aflatoxin, which affects grains and other agricultural products, can increase the risk of cancer, including liver cancer, according to experts.
How curious is it that the same site publishes a story and then after 2 days publishes completely opposite and no mention on previous report is made. The truth then comes out...

Carcinogens Found in Chinese Milk
BEIJING—China Mengniu Dairy Co., China's largest dairy company by sales, said it destroyed milk products found to be contaminated with carcinogens, in the latest scare for the country's scandal-hit dairy industry.

The Inner Mongolia-based dairy producer said on its website Sunday that it destroyed hazardous products at a plant in China's southwestern Sichuan province after government safety inspectors found milk that contained the chemical aflatoxin, a cancer-causing toxin.

"Mengniu would like to express our sincere apologies to consumers," the statement said, adding that the company destroyed contaminated products before they reached shop shelves.

The company's spokeswoman couldn't be reached for comment.

China's dairy industry has been trying to rebuild itself after consumer confidence was shattered in 2008, when milk products containing the industrial chemical melamine caused the deaths of six infants and illnesses in 300,000 others.

Mengniu was among the companies found at fault in the 2008 scandal. Government testers detected traces of the toxic chemical melamine in nearly 10% of the milk samples from Mengniu and rival Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group. The two companies were among 22 producers whose baby formula was found to contain melamine.

Yili wasn't named by authorities in their disclosures over the weekend. But in a sign that a cloud continues to hang over the industry as a whole, Yili's Shanghai-listed shares fell 5.4% to 19.79 yuan (US$3.13) Monday. A company spokeswoman declined to comment.

Mengniu's shares last traded Friday at 26.50 Hong Kong dollars ($3.41). Hong Kong's stock exchange is closed for holidays Monday and Tuesday.

Mengniu has regained faith with Chinese consumers since 2008, according to a recent report from research agency Millward Brown and media company WPP on the 50 most -valuable Chinese brands. Mengniu ranked 18th this year with its brand valued at $3.4 billion, up 66% from 2010.

China's government this year has prioritized cleaning up the country's milk industry in a push to usher in a new era of consumer safety. China ordered half of its dairy producers to close shop earlier this year, pulling operating licenses from 400-plus dairy producers and suspending operations of others, after a nationwide inspection sweep from China's top quality-control body, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by Patni »

AsiaInspection 2011 Q4 Barometer: 1 in Every 2 Food Inspections Failed in China in 2011
Shenzhen, China, January 25, 2012 – AsiaInspection, a leading provider of quality control services for businesses importing from Asia, today announces the AsiaInspection 2011 Q4 Barometer, a quarterly synopsis of Asia-based manufacturing and the quality control services industry.

Inspection Failure Rates Show China Food Danger Critical

AsiaInspection figures show in 2011 51% of food inspections conducted in Mainland China failed. While the majority of these inspections were failed because of minor defects, 10% were for critical defects with an extreme case involving contamination by a large quantity of rodent fecal matter. The fact that over half of all Chinese food inspections fail is even more alarming when compared to an average failure rate for non-food products of about 30%.

Evidence of this overwhelming deficit in food safety is supported by government figures. According to China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce, in 2011 62,000 illegal food cases were reported. Additionally, authorities stopped the operation of 43,000 unlicensed food-producing businesses found to be operating illegally and revoked the business licenses of 576 operators during the same period.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by Dhiman »

VikramS wrote: Another request to all Chinese posters: Stop going ape-shit whenever something less positive about China is shared here. If you want read posts by heech in this thread, which present a more balanced perspective while defending China. The tone of the posts in the past two days has been very shrill and of the schlong length type. Any comparison of India/China has to be done in an effort to understand more.

All the posts about China rah rah, China best, China superior will just reduce your credibility, and eventually prevent you from earning the 50c/post as you end up getting banned
When all is said and done, the fundamental difference STILL is that in China it is the government that keeps people in line; while as, in India it is the people who keep the government in line. On top of this, there is an entire propaganda industry in China specifically setup to force feed the virtues and good deeds of CCP to the Chinese people and also the rest of the world.

The point being, don't expect the Chinese to be "balanced" there are many incentives and punishments in China designed to ensure an "unbalanced view point".
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by VikramS »

Sha, I am sorry but you are going to lose the 50c/post. You have know idea how one-track you are sounding. If you are paid to post here, and I was your supervisor, I would fire you right now.

Face it, Foxconn exploited the labor of your peers for a decade or more, not caring whether they committed suicide or got burnt in aluminium powder accidents. Their response to suicides was to put nets to catch jumpers.

And that was happening on a massive scale; it seems Foxconn does not employ tens of thousands but almost a MILLION people in China.

And you want to compare that to a factory employing 5000 people, which started a few years ago and got into trouble soon enough.

I am actually glad we had this discussion. It forced me to look up numbers. I have lived in India for more than half of my life, and have an idea of how things work there. What I was NOT aware of how things worked in China. Reading more about this issue has opened my eyes, to the degree of use of almost slave labor in PRC.

I am very happy to learn that after 2010, the laws for minimum wage etc. have been put in, the wages have jumped almost 100%, and there are much less suicides. The people of China have deserve more than their $2 share of the $600 iPhone.

You can call it apples to apples, oranges to oranges, or bananas to bananas, the only comparison which is relevant is of David vs Goliath.



It has clearly illustrated what their 80-90% "happy with CPC" rule really mean. You are like a flock of sheep who will follow the shephard off the cliff. If some sheep takes a few steps outside of the flock, you have the sheep-dogs (the PLA/local intimidation apparatus) to get you back. And if you do not then there are the 5000 executions an year to set an example. No wonder your government has to censor everything, pay people to guide people in the direction of what the government wants and what not.

BTW, if you want to learn how to make intelligent comments you should go and read posts by heech in this thread. I think this is what he would have said:

"The conditions of workers in many Chinese factories has come under intense scrutiny over the past few years. As a result of this scrutiny, massive changes are being made. New laws have been put in to ensure a minimum living wage. In October 2010, the base wage in Foxconn went up from an unacceptable 900Yuan to 1700Yuan. Most workers make a lot more since they work overtime.

I am very happy that in spite of the rise in wages, Chinese companies have not lost any business. In fact the business has grown. This is because to attract foreign companies, we not only need low wages, but also an infrastructure, and supply chain integration. Companies which originally came only due to low wages are now expanding because the tightly knit supply chain, the excellent infrastructure and local entrepreneurship allows them to make changes very quickly and get the product to the market in time".



And he would have earned the respect of people here, who would actually believe in what he had said. We would also conclude that just opening factories paying the lowest wages would not work in India, and something extra is needed.

Go tell your bosses to read the post and put up a new training curriculum on how to make posts which defend the actions of the CPC, without making the poster look like an idiot, incapable of independent thinking, and trained to spit out the party line in an inane argument.
================

You can read more about the TN Govt Labor Policy Note here; they specifically mention the Foxconn dispute.
http://www.tn.gov.in/policynotes/pdf/labour.pdf
Minimum Wage http://www.tn.gov.in/gosdb/gorders/labo ... 7_2011.pdf (note the numbers do not include the DA which can often be 50-100% of the wages)
minimum wages including the DA
http://www.paycheck.in/main/officialmin ... tamil-nadu
Most employers pay more than the minimum, and wages can not be reduced just because the minimum wage is lower.
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by Gus »

CPC is the most Orwellian entity...much more than the FSU. As the joke goes..at least the Russians knew their govt was lying. Comeon birathers...this is not about Chinese as a people. Why take it that way. Most here are critical of CPC the entity. I love China..Chinese food, Chinese people, movies, culture etc. But I hate the CPC that occupied Tibet and gave nukes to Pakis (and consequently emboldening Pakis for nurturing terrorism) and is belligerent and hegemonic on Indian NE etc. We would always be critical of CPC because we know the costs of having them in China...apparently you guys don't.
sha
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by sha »

Theo_Fidel
I'm not the right person you should talk with. It's a psychiatrists, Man.

VikramS
My english must be so poor that it's so hard for an India man to get my point. Sigh~

Back to my work now. Have a good day, guys.
Theo_Fidel

Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by Theo_Fidel »

The problem Foxconn had in Chennai was they had no experience negotiating with an union. Once they realized that the union wanted to monetize their practices things worked out. Their assumption going in was that unions were unreasonable and an alien entity. Like Vikram pointed out , it didn't help that there were 2 unions and Foxconn did not think it had to include both. Now that management sits down with the unions every day 5:00 AM sharp things go very smoothly. Why workers even line up for morning calisthenics to pray to the Foxconn gods as long as the pay is good.

When Indian workers are respected in the running of the factory they will go through hell and back for management. Many factories have had workers work without pay for 3-4 years till turn around was complete.
VikramS
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by VikramS »

zlin wrote:[

Just after one year in May 2009, after reparing, rebar the bridge and expressway opened to traffic. That is a wonder of engineering
...
The quality of Chinese construction is superior in the world. Just look what happened after big earthquake in some top nations.[/b]
...
I have been pondering about the above comment over the weekend. The context was the effect of the 2008 earthquake. Theo posted a picture of a bridge which suffered damage; the picture he posted was actually from some time before the quake. However, the points he had made regarding the ability to survive earthquakes were valid, and corroborated by the US DOT report, which pointed out the damage to the almost complete bridge. It explicitly mentioned that hopefully the earthquake will force the Chinese authorities to revise their standards, the way the US had done 3-4 decades ago; and that current buildings were not using techniques which are now considered standard in the US in earthquake prone areas.

zlin pointed out the error in Theo's picture, and then went on to claim how Chinese construction is the "superior in the world", by pointing out damage sustained in Kobe (which has a significantly higher PGA) or in California two decades ago, in structures which were many decades old even at the time of the earthquake. He also went on to claim that all Theo was doing was "defaming" China.

What really made me sad was that during the same earthquake tens of thousands of school children died when their poorly constructed school buildings collapsed.

While zlin was all rah-rah about the superiority of Chinese construction, did it not strike him even once to pause about the deaths of those children, and the condition of their parents, many of whom lost their only child?

Is the jingoism, and preventing China from being "defamed", and "saving face" so important to the CPC that they can gloss over the death of tens of thousands of children.

You can read more here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_sc ... on_scandal

A comment here caught me eyes:
"In January 2010, Hong Kong-based English newspaper The Standard reported that writer Tan Zuoren attempted to document shoddy construction that may have led to massive casualties in schools, was sentenced to in prison ostensibly for his writing an article in 2007 in support of the pro-democracy movement in 1989"

I have pondered about what people mean by a "moral compass" or the lack of it. That post about "superiority of Chinese construction" bought the message home. I am sure most Chinese posters who are active here, are decent hard-working people, trying their best to make their lives better. But this utter lack of compassion/concern is so reminiscent of our former cousins in the West; it made me sad, since at a personal level, I like most Indians who have interaction with people of Chinese origin, have strong respect for the individual Chinese.
============================
sha: You still do not get it. It is called missing the forest for the tree.
Last edited by VikramS on 30 Jan 2012 11:44, edited 3 times in total.
Theo_Fidel

Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by Theo_Fidel »

Guys there is no mistake. Time stamps on pictures are often incorrect as camera dates are rarely even bothered with.

http://www.nowpublic.com/environment/im ... pingpu-dam

Vikram, you should know better than to believe Panda Trolleys. Shameless fools everyone of them. You are a lot more patient with that lot than I am. Now will they have shame and apologize. But this is their favored tactic that they are trained for. Even Indians fall for it. An admin fell for it once.

And how about dealing with the reality that Pandaland continues to build such failed designs for the sake of speed. Also not bothering to retrofit existing suspect bridges.

Here is an image as it was being built before earthquake.

Image

The failed shear key identified is nothing more than a glorified dowel the was supposed to hold the bridge and the abutment span together. The problem was that the design had never been properly tested for the effects of an 8.0 in that particular condition. Identical shear keys were found in other spans up and down the roadway despite very different span, column, beam, loading and elevation conditions. Meaning things were put in without taking the time to work things through. BTW movement was estimated to be 19.5" in a system that had a 8.5" expansion joint. Some design.

Panda trolls needed not bother trying to fry their brain cells on this one.

Also PGA is also not everything. Direction of PGA matters as in Horizontal/Vertical split. As does the fact that Kobe was built on landfill not solid rock as in China.
Last edited by Theo_Fidel on 30 Jan 2012 13:40, edited 2 times in total.
amit
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Re: PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

Post by amit »

wrdos wrote:You need not to tell me. Just tell your self. A teenager peasant girl from Northern India moved to Chennai, a city 500 or 800km away. Averagely how much she could expect?

Or India, as a county,is still not safe enough for a girl to travel freely, alone or with her girl friends only?
Wrdos,

Your basic presumption shows how little you know of India and how much you've been taken in by CCP propaganda despite, as you claim, living outside China.

A peasant girl from North India will not travel to Chennai to work because there would not be a major differential in the salary she would get near her home town and what she'd get in any corner of India. That's because Indian growth - while it has been less spectacular than China's in absolute terms - has been more inclusive, meaning that all provinces and regions of India are experiencing growth. Certainly some regions/states are much more developed than others but the difference is not stark enough to induce the spectacular internal migration that we see in China. India has only slightly lesser number of people than China, yet there's nothing comparable to the kind of movement that takes place in China during the Spring Festival, haven't you wondered why?

In China the Pearl River Delta area has virtually become a different country when compared to the impoverished regions of inner China, thanks to the selective modernisation started by Deng. As a result in true Chinese merchantilist tradition that the country follows in its external trade, inner China has become a source of raw materials and cheap labor for the Pearl River Delta cities. It's just one section of the Chinese exploiting another section of Chinese.

And you know what, let's take your hypothetical case of the poor North Indian peasant girl coming to Chennai to work in, say Foxconn forward and see what the likely scenario would be. Within a few years, she'd would have brought her parents, younger siblings etc to Chennai to live with her. And nobody would have prevented her from doing so despite the fact that civil amenities are already stretched in a place like Chennai. We do not have anything equivalent to the Hukuo system in India and every citizen is free to live in any part of the country he or she wishes to. Must be an alien concept to you, but then you what? Life's a biatch! :-)

Will the young girls from northern China ever be able to bring their parents to Shenzhen from some remote village so that they can live with her? What about a boyfriend that she left behind? Would he be able to join her even he doesn't get a job? And more importantly, what happens if she finds a boyfriend in Shenzhen and due to some miscalculation she becomes pregnant? Will she get guaranteed maternity leave? Will she get her job back? Would she be assigned to a new job which would allow her to follow more friendly timings so that she can look after her baby? Would the govt come after, say Foxconn, if it threw her out of job because she was stupid enough to become pregnant?

So many questions! Bottomline please don't try to sell us lemons! Like I said life's a biatch, especially if it's not controlled by the CCP.

Please Sir, don't fly kites here, it's too dangerous.
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