Weekly Update

Death to the Hummer

Let’s be honest – it’s hard to think of anything more disgusting and offensive in the early twenty first century than the Hummer. On every level it’s a grossly offensive object. It looks (as we go to press) as if the NDRC is likely to reject Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Corp’s bid to acquire GM’s Hummer unit, in part because it’s environmentally unsound, and in part because if GM can’t make any money out of Hummer how will Sichuan Tengzhong? We do hope this happens because it is important that the Hummer and all it stands for is seen as a symbol of backward thinking in 2009.

Environmentally it’s horrible – horrendously non-fuel efficient and so heavy it breaks up the roads.

But the Hummer is horrid on other levels too. The notion of a vehicle designed for military applications parading around our urban streets reveals a deep psychological alienation – the urban landscape as battlefield and threat, rather celebrating cities as potentially points of creativity, human advance and community (The film Robocop made the relevant moral allegory very well more than 20 years ago [and was set in Detroit no less]!). Sadly, in a sense, no two objects go together quite as well as the anti-human Hummer and the new anti-human, anti-community Beijing urban landscape, brought to you courtesy of dictatorial urban planners and vainglorious architects.

Just ask yourself what sort of person actually wants to own a Hummer (in any country)? A car that sums up the greed, aggression, alienation and a general “I’m all right Jack, sod everyone else” sort of attitude that has done so little in the last few decades to create a harmonious world.

So obviously we’re glad that it seems the notion that Hummers will flood China’s streets is dead in the water. It would be impossible to align any idea that China is serious about tackling its immense environmental challenges with acquiring and then churning out Hummers. It’s the auto equivalent of announcing you are going to seriously diet and then heading off to McDonald’s for a Supersize tray of fat, fizz and Styrofoam. The old notion of cars as liberating symbols of freedom is now, of course, hopelessly outdated – as outdated as those who think all that matters is more ring roads in Beijing, or destroying communities and architecture in the name of “road widening” in Shanghai. Hummers neither add to a better city or a better life.

Of course, at the end of the day the government is also aware that Hummer is unlikely to become a viable business in China when it has failed as a business elsewhere. But, of course, it’s a nice chance to get some environmental house points along the way too. The only result would have been cheaper (but still gas guzzling) Hummers for those individuals attracted to the concept. So farewell to the Hummer – the ultimate symbol of selfishness, arrogant individualism and disdain for the future of the planet – and may it never be resurrected.

There is no other conclusion: absolutely disgusting

This week’s compact, low-emission Access Asia Weekly Update includes a new report on Meat in China, as well as scintillating news about the content of the UK’s Tent Teabag, whatever happened to good old fashioned China bashing?, the big questions of whether or not Malaysians are totally useless, the old London taxis in Beijing story reappears for an encore, a few Access Asia good reads and how easy it is to confuse a ‘G’ with an ‘8’ in Suzhou.

New Report from Access Asia
Fresh & Processed Meat in China

We mentioned that we were getting this report under way last week, and we’ve had a lot of interest since then. The China meat market is obviously of great interest from investors looking to push cash into a market where growth is increasingly organic, and isn’t inflated by filibuster. But why the sudden growth in interest?

Well, it’s simple really. Issues such as blue ear disease, melamine, growth hormones, etc., which are all symptoms of the fragmented agriculture model, reliant on individual dirt farmers’ inefficient methods, have forced the food processing industry to stop relying on millions of dirt farmers, and to start sourcing from fewer, bigger, more efficient, more accountable farm groups, especially the emerging cooperative groups. Meanwhile, government money has been pouring into the countryside, and this, combined with land reform, is helping to lift China’s agriculture away from subsistence and into mass production.

Hence the strong interest. There are the beginnings of some valuable big and little companies showing strong positions in new niche sectors and technologies, as well as cornering the supply of key produce to consumers and food processors, whilst also getting their organic certifications in place (however reliable those are, or not). We are seeing this across the food industry, from eggs to vegetables as well as meat.

What this report focuses on in this year’s edition is the rising significance of retailing to the market, and the emergence of the dominant domestic and foreign companies, as well as their influence on the industry as it emerges out of slumber. For more information on this report, or any others, let us know by return.

Also, we are publishing four new company profile reports this week: on Gome, Suning, Gree and Best Buy, as well as an update of our Consumer Electronics and Electrical Appliances Retailing in China report. Oh, and not to forget that the latest edition of the China Retail Quarterly is coming out this week!

EXPO Balls...
What Will be in Tent Teabag

The Brits have been ultra secretive about what will actually be in Tent Teabag at the EXPO – largely we suspect due to the fact that they haven’t got a clue what the hell to put in the taxpayer-funded bag-of-bluster anyway. But then we got an idea on the official EXPO website! Apparently:

“Trees will shade the pavilion and shelter waiting queues (hopefully). Gardens and lawns will offer comfortable places for visitors to rest. They can sit in a typical British garden, sip a cup of English tea and chat with friends, just like a relaxing sunny afternoon in a traditional country garden.”

A traditional English garden!! What about those of us who grew up in 24 storey council flats with tiny balconies and only a local dog turd-strewn park miles away?? OK, you bring the cheap cans of lager to throw around the hedgerows and we’ll bring the pit-bull terriers to terrify anyone coming near our smoke-fuelled and burnt BBQ sausages. We will then all get drunk, throw up over the grass, smash all the plastic furniture and then beat up the park keeper.

“The six-story structure is a huge gift box from the UK to China, said Ian McCartney, the country's commissioner general for the Expo.”

PS: just in case anyone missed it – McCartney was forced to resign the other week after fraudulently claiming thousands of pounds in bogus expenses from the British taxpayer. Access Asia says Ian McCartney swinging gently at the end of a noose would be an excellent “feature” for the EXPO pavilion as we sip our tea under the shade of the trees.

Professional public purse dipper Ian McCartney in happier times, before he got nabbed, with Huang Jianzhi, deputy director general of the Bureau of Shanghai World Expo Coordination. Shortly after this photo was taken it all went very, very wrong for the venal McCartney.

What Happened to all that China-Bashing
We Used to Hear About?

Remember last year, when we brought you news of a variety of odd organisations that had decided to suddenly start commenting on China and attacking the foreign media? The rather odd bunch around The Institute of Ideas, and then a strange web site called Spiked that started a Stop the China Bashing campaign? And then at a more soft-line level began seeping out of the rather pernicious China Now organisation, backed by a host of corporates with China interests and trying (largely unsuccessfully we think, thankfully) to get the Beijing Myth view of history into Britain’s schools? In the run-up to the Olympics, they all get very hot under the collar, but since then?

Very little it would seem. Fashions in political causes have moved on. We note that the Spiked Challenging the China-bashing portion of their web site has only added one article since the Olympics, a very strange piece about the internet, and still has a poll asking the hot button, up to the date issue ‘Should Athletes Boycott the Beijing Olympics?’

Seems the like of Spiked, the Institute of Ideas and China Now saw a chance for a quick bit of publicity rather than any serious argument, and have now retreated and moved on to other causes to grandstand over. Good riddance.

Are Malaysians Completely Useless?

Apparently some prominent Malaysians think they are! The KL government has proposed giving a mandatory day off for thousands of Indonesian maids working in Malaysia. While, apparently, most Filipino maids are already given a day off, the country’s 370,000 Indonesian maids generally don’t get a day off at all.

Big deal you’d figure – one day out of seven, surely Malaysia will somehow keep going if Indonesians have a lie-in and then relax for a day? Not according to some influential Malaysian business groups who claimed that giving Indonesian maids a day off will lead to household “breakdown” across the country!!

We would suggest that people who cannot cook their own breakfast, do their own washing-up or iron their own newspaper once a week need to reassess their priorities and get things into perspective.

Shock News: London Cab Goes Well South of the River

(With apologies to old China Hands who have heard this story about London cabs in China countless times before over the years)

Access Asia Reads

The New Silk Road: How a Rising Arab World Is Turning Away from the West and Rediscovering China – Ben Simpfendorfer: Despite being an economist with RBS (and if you have/had an account with them, you’ll know exactly why you desperately need luck when it comes to retirement time!!), Simpfendorfer (perhaps one of the most easily misspelt names we’ve come across in a while) has produced a slim but valuable book on the new relationship between the Middle East and China. He may rather overstate the trading relationship, but the new inter-dependence in commodities and oil is for real. Click here to buy.

Corporate Governance and Financial Reform in China's Transition Economy – Leng Jing: As the would-be penny dreadful hacks still line up to write China Boom Boom books, a few of the more intelligent are looking back and asking what we really got, and it has to be said that corporate governance was not a strong point of the last 30 years of reform. This is a highly comprehensive and up-to-date study of China's major corporate governance reform initiatives (or lack of) over the past three decades since economic transition was launched in the late 1970s. This is actually quite readable and thought provoking, though the policy wonks have weighed in with the usual pseudo-academic nonsense on the back cover – do not be put off by the twaddle from the hapless Anthony Neoh, Senior Counsel, former Chief Advisor to the China Securities Regulatory Commission and former Chairman of the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong – ‘a critique of the multi-dimensional forces that have shaped the current normative structure for corporate governance in China.’ Yea, right mate, a simple ‘interesting’ would have done!! Click here to buy.

And Finally...
One Retailer Hopes 8 is Luckier than G

D&8; D&G – aahh who cares! Russian hookers on the Cote D’Azur still favour the flashy-trashy Italian brand D&G perhaps, but nobody in Suzhou does, obviously – they’re sticking with their own D&8.

D&G – purveyors of overpriced flash trash to the Russian Mafia

D&8 in Suzhou – suppliers of cheap threads to the masses of Jiangsu

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