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December 28, 2007
Observations of China
I am in Shanghai on Christmas vacation with my family. So far we have visited Beijing and Xian and I was particularly struck by:
1) The playgrounds are used more by adults, especially senior citizens, than by children. It is exactly the opposite of the US, where swing sets, jungle gyms and sandboxes abound. In China, there are cross-country exercise devices, ping pong tables and chin up bars, all in use by avid seniors. There are junior sections of equal size in the playgrounds as well.
2) Planning is on a long time horizon, and city ambition is boundless. For example, the Xian airport, built about three years ago, is about an hour outside of the center city (think of Dulles Airport from center of Washington DC). There is literally no development along the highway for much of the ride. However, it is expected that the city will grow in that direction. Given the quite empty retail space adjoining the museum housing the Terracotta Warriors, this is no certainty.
3) Nationalistic feelings are quite evident in the displays of historical artifacts. For example, the skin on the large drum in the Xian Drum Tower that was badly damaged by the Japanese Army in World War II or the scars on the large bronze in the Forbidden City from Allied forces during the Boxer Rebellion are duly noted by signs and by tour guides.
4) The use of technology is impressive and intelligent. The Shanghai Museum employs a lighting system that illuminates ancient scrolls only when you stand in front of the artifact; this has the dual benefit of saving electricity and reducing the wear on the painting. The maglev train from the Shanghai airport reaches a maximum speed of 430 kilometers per hour; the journey to central Pudong from the airport takes under eight minutes.
5) Modern art reflects the nostalgia for the older China that is rapidly being replaced by a newer, more global version. Photos at Factory 798 in Beijing, a renovated industrial facility now home to several galleries, often show the contrast of large office complex against a small, traditional style house, a bit down at the heels but charming and human scale.
6) Current price incentives are not sufficiently restraining the demand for automobiles. New auto registrations are auctioned in Shanghai, with market level now around $6,000, certainly in excess of the low-end cost of a car, with little evidence of diminished demand. Our guide in Beijing, a newlywed, lives on Ring #5, well outside of the center; she commutes with her husband by car because mass transit takes even longer. Beijing will impose an odd/even license plate system for driving during the Olympic Games while Shanghai is considering a congestion charge similar to that imposed in London.
7) The State Council Information Office (SCIO) held a press conference on Thursday that committed the Chinese Government to continued progress on supporting the media. According to China Daily, the English language newspaper, Minister Cai Wu said at the event, “If practices show that it will help the international community know China better, it is a good policy (referring to a new policy enacted for the Beijing Olympics which commits the country to more transparency, such as granting overseas reporters the right to conduct an interview with only the interviewee’s permission).” The SCIO organized 72 press conferences for central government agencies. Central departments also held 547 press conferences and provincial governments held 789 press conferences in 2007, about 33% more than in 2006. The SCIO is training spokespeople at a national and provincial level to write press releases, write white papers and hold media briefings.
This has been a bit of a sentimental voyage for me and my bride of 21 years. We celebrated our first weeks as a married couple on a honeymoon in China, including a night of dodging mosquitoes in the Peace Hotel in Shanghai because there were no screens on the windows (guaranteed to enhance romantic pursuits, let me tell you!). I wish each of you a fun-filled and prosperous New Year. See you in the blogosphere in 2008.
Richard Edelman at The Great Wall
Posted by Edelman at 10:31 AM |
Comments
Having grown up in the DC area, and seeing the corridor out to Dulles go from woods to endless rows of buildings and housing developments, I assure you that the same exact thing will happen in Xian. In terms of urban planning, whoever decided to stick Dulles way out there made the right decision. It's is a much more efficient airport for it.
Enjoy the rest of your travels.
Posted by: Steve Shannon at December 28, 2007 11:13 AM
My uncle told me that playgrounds are being used by adults more often than the youngsters do. Well, China has always been different; the Chinese do not always “conform” to what is usual and ordinary. I think it’s sort of cute that the adults are the ones who use the playgrounds more often. After all, age is not a hindrance to having fun.
Posted by: jen_chan, writer surefirewealth.com at December 29, 2007 2:11 AM
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| TrackBackDecember 19, 2007
Bicycle for a Day
I went to a party last night in New York City hosted by actor Matthew Modine. He spoke eloquently about the great challenge of the environment, urging each of the guests to do his/her part to reduce carbon emissions, from turning out lights to disconnecting fully charged electrical appliances avoiding the “vampire” effect.
He then laid out an interesting plan for Bicycle for a Day (BFAD) which will be held in fall, 2008 in New York City, Chicago and San Francisco, hopefully on the same weekend. His concept is to organize a full day of community based activities at a prominent city park, including entertainment, speeches by politicians and environmental groups. Attendees would use their bikes to travel to and from the event.
The web site for BFAD, bicycleforaday.com, asks for songs and video of urban cycling experiences. It will also offer a bracelet that will benefit two national charities, American Forests www.americanforests.org and Waterkeepers, www.waterkeeper.org plus local non-profits Transportation Alternatives (NYC), San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and Chicagoland Bicycle Federation.
I then spoke to Dani Simons, who works at the New York City Department of Transportation, about the role of bicycles in future planning on transport in the city. At present there are 270 miles of bike lanes along city streets and 200 miles in parks and along greenways. Another 200 miles of bike lanes are to be added by 2010, with a long term goal of 1,800 miles by 2030.
The key question is how to complete a city-wide cycling network that makes bicycling a fun and safe option. One interesting idea is to make the bike lane closest to the curb and move the parking spaces outward toward the traffic flow. This will happen on Ninth Avenue between 14th and 23rd streets next summer. There is also a proposal to close major streets on the weekends next summer; major thoroughfares such as 42nd street. This replicates a program in Bogota, Colombia known as CYCLOVIA (photo below), linking population centers to recreational areas such as parks or waterfront on Sundays.
The New York Times ran an article on September 4 that related an anecdote, most likely urban legend but it got around the city’s bicycling devotees. A young guy buys a bike and rides it towards his home in the East Village, with the price tag still attached. He is mugged by two teens, who steal the bike and glide away. The aggrieved citizen complains to policeman, who soothes him by saying, “It’s ok, son. You would have killed yourself on that thing anyway.” Having been sideswiped by an SUV on a road in Long Island, with attendant bruises and cuts, I can relate. Given the limited space available to all in an urban environment, the hope is that we can work out a plan that makes cycling to work a real option. I am off to China on Friday with my family for a bit of first hand education on how bikes can be part of the tapestry. I will be posting regularly on my trip to Beijing, Shanghai, Xian and Hong Kong.
Photo source: www.streetsblog.org
Posted by Edelman at 4:29 PM |
Comments
I like the concept and in my third world country it’s even worst. The bicycle riders are commercial and the worst traffic menace. And yet, the public believe owning a car no matter how old it is, is in style and preferable. How do you get the message across on how to start today to be mindful on environment in a country like Uganda, where poverty bites so hard and yet we still privilege have the grace period not to make the same mistake the West did?
Posted by: grace achire at January 24, 2008 1:58 PM
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| TrackBackDecember 13, 2007
Forty Years in the UK
I went over to London this week to celebrate the 40th birthday of Edelman in the UK. My father, Dan Edelman, persuaded Michael Morley to set up our first non-US office in a non-descript space on Dover Street near Piccadilly, to serve our then largest client, Gillette. Morley reminisced that British Telecom was slow to provide service to new companies so he had to use the red phone booth down the street outside the Ritz Hotel to call clients in the early days. He quickly built a superb client base, including Mars, Roche, World Wildlife Fund and the Government of Spain. Many of the Edelman UK stalwarts, including David Davis, Rosemary Brook, Abel Hadden and Nigel Whittaker returned to pay tribute to Morley and to relive past glories. I would like to thank Michael and David Davis in particular for their loyal service and patience with me as I learned the business.
During the course of the three days, our firm hosted events attended by important political and business leaders, including Lord Mark Malloch Brown of the Foreign Office, top Tory Lord Michael Heseltine owner of Haymarket Publications, Richard Sambrook, news editor of the BBC, Adam Leyland editor of the Grocer, and Chris Rycroft-Davis, former executive editor of the Sun. Here are some observations from these events:
1. The Rising Debate on Immigration—Tory politicians, including party leader David Cameron, are now beginning to question the “melting pot” thesis that has been basis of policy for the last decade. There are now 600,000 Poles in the country, mostly in London. The population of the UK has swelled by four million in the last decade to 60 million. As the economy slows, there will be ever louder cries for restricting immigration to those of means or strong educational credentials. The other school, propounded by London Mayor Ken Livingstone (disclosure: Edelman client), believes that mobility of labor goes with liberalized financial markets and provides a higher quality of life for all (note that Polish plumbers are considered the best in class in the UK)
2) The Special Relationship with the US, Frayed not Fractured—The Brown Government is seeking a different sort of marriage than its predecessor, still close but not sleeping in the same bed. Troop strength in Iraq will be down shortly to 2,500. Common policy is pursued on Darfur and Afghanistan. This ambivalence is not new; I had a fascinating chat with Lord Heseltine about his resignation from the Cabinet over Prime Minister Thatcher’s decision to select an American helicopter over a European consortium product for the British Army, not on the merits. There are periods of closeness, such as Roosevelt and Churchill; Thatcher and Reagan; Blair and Bush. Now Britain is turning toward the Continent.
3) Trends in Food—Leyland noted that the Food Standards Agency (FSA), a quasi-governmental organization, tasked with reversing the sharp upsurge in obesity (now highest rate in Europe) has become sharply critical of the food industry and is driving for its agenda on advertising to children to be adopted in Brussels. There are two systems are used to inform consumers about ingredients and percentage of fat: the FSA’s Traffic Light (red, amber, green) and Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) based on typical FSA system portion size. The food companies prefer GDA, but food NGOs point out that 47% of British consumers cannot understand the percentage consumption concept. There is a new trend toward natural and wholesome products, even at higher price points. Not all British moms agree—there is a group of “meat pie moms” organized to defend their traditional foods against healthy, good for you, natural food chefs such as Jamie Oliver.
4) Trends in Media—Sambrook said that BBC will shortly be including non-traditional media content as part of coverage of breaking stories (note at present only traditional media such as Washington Post is aggregated around a topic). He sees increasing overlap between broadcast and newspaper content on line, with both doing text and video. He added that BBC will be investing in a better, more specific offering for mobile phones, which will allow users to take content and repurpose it, to seed conversations away from the BBC site. He believes in advertising supported, not subscription supported content for a mass audience.
5) Super Rich versus Middle Class and Poor—London certainly is prosperous, the Christmas decorations on Jermyn Street a royal purple hue, the stores full. One begins to hear some muttering about the hedge fund managers and foreign billionaires who drive up property prices while sub-prime mortgages go into default at the other end of the economic scale. The number of rich and scale of wealth is unprecedented – new, wealth from all over Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and South Asia, plus the city of London’s mavens. The gap between have and have nots calls into question the concept of a fair society.
London has become the home of global public relations. As the most open capital market, with proximity to centers of new wealth, multinational work force and tradition of creative excellence, it has a size of PR industry far disproportionate to its economic rank and the number of global company headquarters. The Olympic Games in 2012 will further solidify its position. It will be interesting to observe the upcoming clash of ideology between those who believe that the country’s destiny is as capital of the world versus those who give priority to preservation of a national identity, centered around the economic debate of free market versus fair society. As always, I would appreciate your views.
Posted by Edelman at 1:30 PM |
Comments
As ever the debate on national identity is limited to the S.E. of England and the English. Every debate I have seen never considers, for instance, how the Welsh view English incomers - who are increasingly pushing up property prices in rural Wales and who consistently refuse to recognise the fact that in many rural areas the language spoken is Welsh. Should the Welsh-speaking Welsh demand that monoglot English speakers learn Welsh before they move to a Welsh speaking part of Wales? In a way the attitude reflects the arrogance of sections of English society - personally I am not in favour of any restrictions for people moving around the world.
Posted by: Dafydd Ladd at December 17, 2007 7:59 AM
Sir,
Hi, its lovely reading your thoughts on issues..and as the chief executive I wish to form an alliance with your community, on behalf of Garunar, at www.garunar.wordpress.com.
May we hear from you indeed.
Happy holidays and best wishes to you,
Regards,
Kyaw S.Win, Commissioner
Posted by: KYAW at December 18, 2007 6:29 AM
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| TrackBackDecember 3, 2007
License to Operate Online
Last week in TechCrunch a co-founder of a viral video marketing company purports to disclose the recipe for breaking through the clutter on YouTube. Tip #6 in the post by Dan Ackerman Greenberg of The Comotion Group, suggests that his firm creates controversy in the comments section below the video. “We get a few people in our office to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth…we aren't afraid to delete comments if someone is saying our video sucks…"
The post discussed at TechCrunch concerns me and highlights what's wrong with how some practitioners are behaving on the Web. As Rick Murray, who runs our Me2Revolution unit, said of this tactic, "what he is suggesting as best practice is entirely unethical…Viral is an outcome, not a strategy."
Let's start from the premise that we want to do the right thing, not to minimize the risk of getting caught. We can add real value to the continuing discussion by providing depth of materials, access to third party experts, and continuing updates as a situation unfolds. We undermine our credibility if we guarantee results, game the system and fail to disclose our interest/identity. As we evolve from middleman to conversation starter or enhancer, let us aspire to create Public Relationships based on trust, thereby keeping our word to the community.
As media continue to evolve into multiple platforms we can only succeed in building PR business if we recognize our obligation to play by the rules. The Public Relations profession is self-regulated and we have an obligation to police our own behavior.
Here’s Edelman's Online Behavior Policies and Procedures for your comment and possible use. Note in particular the requirement for those engaging with social media to disclose their affiliation with Edelman and the client being served, plus the need to assure accuracy of material before posting.
Posted by Edelman at 2:40 PM |