Chinese Box

The European Chamber says everything I want to hear

I was at the big release of the European Chamber's 2009 "Position Paper," a 500-page document talking about all the things Europe really hopes China will do over the next year. An event that to my surprise had pretty much every major journalist I could think of there.

 Though I plan on delving into the 500 page document over the next few days (half of it is just a translation of the other half), what really was the most important aspect of the meeting for me was the constant regurgitation of the word "transparency." They took the very correct position, that the Chinese government can do pretty much whatever it wants, as long as its open about it, and discusses it with the business community first. I.e. Green Dam Mandate - they didn't announce it early enough to work out all the bugs. Or the Rio Tinto case - no one has any clue what information is protected by national security laws, so no one knows if they are breaking any laws.

Joerg Wuttke, the president of the chamber, made the simple statement that "corruption is a cancer in any economy," but it can only be fought bey transparency.

There was some other rather fun stuff relating to protectionism in the greentech sector. Particularly the highly publicized wind turbine case. I've noted previously that government intervention in this sector is already an issue, and the chamber implied that having a bunch of people jumping for handouts is seriously distorting the market (the term they used was that the market was "price driven," which is why the State Council said it would cut down on overcapacity soon.

Last thing on the someone saying something I wanted to hear list. Is that Wuttke argued that "SOEs (state-owned enterprises) are the big winners of the financial crisis." Which is what I've been saying all along.

My international reading habits are getting the best of me

I'm sure self criticism on blogs doesn't make for the most appealing reading, but in the few weeks I've run this blog I've hit the problem that I read far more US and EU news than I do China news. My publisher, in a fit of existential angst, actually claims that makes me among the norm in China, as, according to him at least, no one cares about what's going on on the ground in China, only their small corner of the Chinese market. (for the record though, our magazine has been doing surprisingly well despite the downturn).

Anyways, the point is, I've been reading a lot about what's going on in the EU for the past week, with the bad mixture of French protectionism (Sarkozy is a tool) and bad things going on in Hungary and Latvia. While with most US news I can tie it back into China, with this I really can't. I used to work in the Czech Republic though, and try to fashion myself as an emerging markets guy, so I keep reading it.

That's my bit of existential angst - I'm beginning to wonder if I should turn this into an emerging markets blog. I hesitate because loss of focus is generally a bad thing. But if any commentators have insight please send it along.

And for those interested in EU issues, I've discovered this interesting blog. And my most recent favorite blog post on the EU issues is here (it's about Sarkozy being a tool).