The New Trend in China—Official Non-Enforcement.

It’s happening; the fangs of state sponsored nationalism are starting to come out.  In small, but significant bites, the Chinese Government is showing how powerful indirect control can be.  What am I talking about?  People power—specifically private citizens policing the actions of other private citizens.  In China, it’s the new black.Example number one, the new Employee/labor law.  What’s the scariest thing about it?  Not that it’s complex or that it’s more rules to follow or even that the degree of direct government enforcement is still unknown.  The worst part is that now businesses are scared of their own employees and taking drastic measures to limit the risks they could face.  I’ll bet almost every factory I’ve talked with in the last couple of months has told me of recent or impending layoffs to avoid the law—this, despite the fact that here in Southern China labor is at a premium right now.Example number two, the new online video rules.  Once again, the limitations and degree of government enforcement are both unknown and not the big deal.  The kicker is that foreign and domestic sites operating in China are being asked/forced to police themselves.  Chinese sites are already demanding that users report other users posting objectionable content.Example number three, the domestic ISP’s own self-censoring.  This well document phenomenon is starting to hit home.  For example, I had to change servers because some of my website’s pages were blocked by Top Way (cable internet) but not by ADSL in the same city, Shenzhen!  It forces me to either use a proxy in the office (very slow in China which is already slow; VPN’s are even slower) or head out of the office to Starbucks or over the wall to Hong Kong just to get access to my own website—and we’re a legal Chinese entity with no political motivations!Example number four (OK, this is more of a joke than a threat) the new ads on CCTV for the Olympics are asking Chinese to think about others (share a seat, talk quietly on the phone, don’t spit or litter) in order to change the international image of ‘cultural backwardness” before the world comes to the birth place of all wisdom, culture and history, Beijing.  But this isn’t the end of the story.  In Beijing and Shanghai laws have been passed against activity such as profaning and cursing and arguing in public (yea, I can’t believe that I have issues with these laws either).  Who gets to make the call on what is and is not profane?  At what point is an argument illegal?  Reports out of the capital are also mentioning the groups of “volunteers” that are enforcing the new manners campaigns along the streets.But it’s all politics, right?  It really doesn’t matter to business, does it?  Only if opportunity doesn’t affect economics.  China and the US being the greatest cases in point ever—the US economy built on entrepreneurs and opportunity and the Chinese economy dead to the world until Deng, on his famous Southern Tour, pronounced “To get rich is Glorious” and let people actually work for themselves.  Given the opportunity, Chinese are fantastic business people (just ask them) as their 10% plus for 10 years+ growth would attest.  Limited opportunity means limited entrepreneurialism, limited growth, limited exposure to new ideas/technology and limited on creativity.But there are specific issues of concern here too. Simple resource like various Google searches, the Apple Store, Blogger.com and of course the oft-mentioned Wikipedia are all either blocked, or limited.My business relies heavily on the internet for communications—including VoIP and large FTP file (video and other) transfers.  I’ve already seen the declining quality of Skype within China (it was once reported to be banned in Shenzhen).  A new limit on video transfers, which we use to spec out detailed packaging procedures, could be difficult to work around, to say the least.Further, at what point will confrontations with factories become illegal?  What happens if what I’m manufacturing/reading/watching/discussing via webcam or in video is determined to be “offensive” to anyone that may just happen to pass by?Nationalism is the tool.  The roots of this new MO are in the State’s obsession with harmony.  For 2008 this means that the Olympics are so important that everything (other than Taiwan) will be subordinated for the rest of the year.  It means that the available tech is getting too advanced and so prevalent that the government needs help in keeping surveillance.  It means the possible realization of the fear that a combination of social factors (inflation, Western spiritual pollution, widening rich/poor gap) may case unrest.  It also means that without a rabid case of nationalism to make it palpable to the domestic audience control to this degree would be impossible.  Let’s hope that economics are not the victim, as they have been in the past.Didn’t China see this type of nationalistic self-policing 40 years ago?  Yikes.