London-based political consultancy firm Portland Communications released a ranking of 30 countries that compares their soft power resources through six different categories: government, culture, education, global engagement, enterprise and digital. As part of the study, over 7,000 people in 20 countries were polled throughout the world.

Despite its good intentions, China ranked last, with the report saying much of the success China has been able to achieve has been undone by its policies on censorship, restrictions of personal rights and freedoms, and its foreign policy.

It’s not for lack of trying, though. China has set up thousands of Confucius Institutes, established the Xinhua news agency throughout the world, and held international events like the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. For China, the price of soft power is not cheap. According to Chinese foreign policy expert David Shambaugh, China spends around $10 billion annually on “external propaganda”.China spends around $10 billion annually on “external propaganda”. And when including economic policies and investments like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or the “Belt and Road” initiative, this sum jumps to $1.41 trillion.

So with all the money being spent, why is China still so sorely lacking in soft power?

Shambaugh describes the inability of China to launch an international charm offensive: “While China’s economic prowess impresses much of the world, its repressive political system and mercantilist business practices tarnish its reputation.”

Portland Communications said China’s political system “has not kept pace with the nation’s economic dynamism”, to which public polls show a lack of trust in China to “do the right thing in global affairs”. These opinions are reflected in China ranking last in the “government” and “digital” categories.

And yet, China looks to improve its soft power in other ways. In a New Year’s speech last year, President Xi Jinping said China “needs to build its capacity in international communication, construct a communication system, better use new media and increase the creativity, appeal and credibility of China’s publicity” in order to strengthen its soft power.

A 2010 People’s Daily Online op-ed also looked at soft power, saying that it can be achieved by “preventing giant foreign media agencies from monopolizing the right of voice, enabling foreign people to hear the voice of China and popularizing actual and outstanding Chinese culture”.

That sounds like it will cost a lot of money. However, as pointed out by Portland Communications, one country is making huge advances in soft power this year, and they’re not spending a dime to achieve it. India wasn’t on the Soft Power 30 yet, but was praised by Portland Communications for its advancements in soft power that were mostly due to its new leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi was lauded for his use of digital tools as he has launched several initiatives on social media. In fact, Modi’s Facebook page is cited as having the most engagement out of any world leader.

It may seem strange for China to spend so much money on something just to get such little return. But the People’s Daily Online suggests, the reason why soft power is so expensive is because you have to pay for it:

China needs to take all kinds of measures to educate the world about China so they can love it.

Maybe the problem isn’t the amount being spent, but the message.

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Presumably a plain everyday pro-Beijing angle isn’t good enough over the border; only malice will do. Maybe the paper will translate ‘HK government ranked world’s fourth most efficient’ as ‘HK ranked useless pile of crap compared with other places’…

It has to be said that this is a decidedly strange story. The World Economic Forum is, like FIFA or the International Olympic Scamsters Federation, one of those murky-underbelly-of-Switzerland oligarchies that strut around importantly while the rest of us are supposed to grovel in deep admiration. It has come up with that space-filling curse of the modern media – a grand list of things ranked in order of wonderfulness according to our very own wacko secret-family-recipe objective criteria. The WEF are listing countries/territories in order of efficient government.

To much of the world, the ‘lede’ (as we media jargon experts call it) is that Qatar, oil-rich autocracy, is number one. The feeling seems to be that, if some despotic Wahhabi-financing sheikdom that must have bribed the aforementioned FIFA to host the World Cup and lets hundreds of Nepalese workers die on construction sites can be number-one, what diabolical savagery are places not even in the top 10, say Denmark or Canada, up to?

To us in Hong Kong, we take high rankings in our stride and in a spirit of good humour. If being World’s Freest Economy, for example, means having the planet’s most over-priced housing/wealthiest property tycoons, we can only laugh and say that if this your idea of freedom, you can shove it.

We would note that of the WEF’s top 10, six are essentially city-state money-laundering tax-havens, which I have helpfully marked with a red spot on the SCMP’s table. (I’m including oil-shiekdoms Qatar and UAE in this category, because they are up to their ears in that sort of thing, plus Switzerland, which is more ‘Alps and cuckoo-clocks’ than ‘city-state’ but otherwise fits the bill.) Another two, Finland and New Zealand, are inoffensive, healthy, clean, outdoorsy, blond, heavily wooded, underpopulated, meat-eating democracies famed, we have no doubt, for highly efficient government, marked with helpful green spots.

This leaves two other places. One that rather jumps out is plucky little Rwanda, in Africa, known especially for its gorillas. We are vaguely aware that it has attracted praise for bouncing back from its unspeakable time of genocide. It vaccinates more kids than Seattle, for what that’s worth. Among other reforms, it has scrapped French in favour of English – which alone surely qualifies as efficient.Among other reforms, it has scrapped French in favour of English – which alone surely qualifies as efficient.

The other is Malaysia. This is where we in Hong Kong and the rest of Asia have to ask WEF – WTF? We all like Malaysia for its scenery, for its architecture and – well, mostly, if we’re to be honest – its food. In culinary terms, Malaysia is paradise, the pinnacle of its cuisine perhaps being the hybrid Nonya cooking of the Peranakan, or Straits Chinese. Some of the most amazing eating I have ever had has been piled up on a banana leaf at a plastic table in an open-air street-side tent, for a few bucks.

But this is a ranking about efficient government, not nasi lemak. Let’s leave aside some Malaysian people’s insistence that NASA’s New Horizons probe cannot have reached Pluto because the sky is made of seven layers guarded by angels who do not eat (tragic!) or sleep. Let’s overlook some Malaysian people’s mouth-frothing over a wombat as an offence to Islam during Ramadan. We’ll assume that a partly cretinous populace and highly efficient government are not mutually exclusive. Let’s not even get too bogged down in unanswered questions about the 1MDB fund. Just check out Asia Sentinel and peruse one of the best recent surveys of Malaysia’s development over the decades, which could be titled ‘How to Screw Up a Potentially Great Country’, but is in fact called ‘How Malaysia Became a Kleptocracy’. Maybe the WEF is open minded about the many ways a government can be ‘efficient’.

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According to an anonymous baijiu industry insider, the Shandong government to looking to introduce new regulations when official banquets are held that would see baijiu replaced by wine.  The source goes on to say that this new policy is already in place in Weifang, an area in Shandong.

Despite being as yet unverified, the source says the new rule is coming: “We have somebody who has seen this Shandong government document that says wine – and not baijiu – is to be used for greeting guests. I personally haven’t seen it, but it’s real.”

China’s baijiu industry has fallen on hard times over the past two years. Austerity measures designed to fight against corruption have led to declining sales, sending the industry into a readjustment. On the other hand, the wine industry is enjoying a boom in China. Last year, China became the largest consumer of wine in the world by sheer numbers, surpassing France. In 2013, Chinese wine drinkers consumed 1.86 billion bottles of wine.

Baijiu remains entrenched in Chinese culture from its association to festivals and holidays, like Chinese New Year. However, as the baijiu industry itself admits, a purchase once a year is not enough to sustain the slumping industry.

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An investigative committee for Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress is recommending raises for civil service workers because they’ve seen no pay increase in eight years, reported the People’s Daily Online.

The report mentioned that public servant salaries haven’t increased along with economic growth or inflation during that period, and have actually fallen compared to other job sectors.

Photo: yantai

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A boat cruises past European-style castles in the Venice replica in Dalian.

Dalian, the capital of Liaoning Province in northern China, has unveiled an RMB 5 billion replica of Venice, with 200 European-style castles, Gondolas and four kilometre-long canals, Xinhua reported.

The colossal construction project, dubbed the “Venice of the East” by local media, is the city’s ambitious move to boost tourism in the area. Boasting that it was the closest thing China had to Venice, Xinhua said the look and the amount of water in the canals were equal to the Italian city.

The announcement of China’s Venice came just days after President Xi Jinping criticized foreign-looking architecture at a Beijing symposium on the arts. Most online comments regarding the Venetian replica asked, “Why does domestic Chinese architecture always copy their foreign counterparts and lack unique, Asian characteristics?”

Judging by the photos of the site shown in the Xinhua report, the Venetian copy looks deserted just two days after its opening, with one, lone Gondola cruising the middle of the shallow canal.

Photos: CFP

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Beijing is looking to improve its relations with the outside world by launching a new version of its English website for the State Council amid global attention on how the government is handling unrest in Hong Kong.

The new website arrived this morning, reports China Daily. The meticulously-designed official website, at english.gov.cn, offers a number of services to foreigners. For instance, the top-ranked service on the website allows users to learn guidelines and download forms so that they can start investing in the country.

Visitors can also learn more about the Party Secretary of the State Council, Premier Li Keqiang, and what he thinks on specific topics.

The site currently has a story called “Hopes high for Premier’s visit”, which outlines all the nice things German dignitaries have to say about Li.

In the story “Premier welcomes experts”, Li talks to foreigners about some of their visa issues:

I know that it takes quite a long time for foreign experts to get a permanent permit to live in China. The Chinese government has decided to cut that government power, and give more power to the market and society … You won’t need to worry, if you want to live in the country for a long time, so that you will be able to focus more on helping China’s modernization.

And yet, no details or specifics are given to clarify why expats shouldn’t need to worry in procuring a green card. Of the 633,000 expats living in China in 2012, only 1,202 were awarded a permanent residence card — that’s 0.19 percent of the total expat population.

But hey, now that it’s easier than ever to access government information, do you have something you want to tell the Premier of China? Maybe you want to share your difficult experience in getting a green card, or give some friendly advice on political reform? Now you can send the Premier an e-mail.

Related:

• Getting a Chinese Green Card Will Now Be Easier Than Ever
• New Visa Policies for Foreigners Now in Effect—What You Need to Know
• New Visa Laws to Make Life Harder for Illegal Expats, Easier for Highly-Skilled Ones

Photos: China Daily, screenshots from english.gov.cn

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Newly appointed judges in China’s northern Shenyang took an oath facing China’s national flag to strictly enforce the law, serve the people, and be honest and upright.

Picking an official who has zero knowledge of the law to be a top judge is like choosing Kim Kardashian to lead the next Martin Scorsese movie. It’s just a completely bad idea.

But that didn’t stop Pingyang County in Zhejiang Province from giving it go. The county has boldly nominated its Party chief Wang Zhongyi to be the top judge of the Taizhou Municipal Intermediate Court despite the fact that Wang doesn’t have any legal background or work experience in the judicial system, Nandu reported on September 24.

The Zhejiang Provincial Government made the announcement online on September 22, and it has since drawn a huge backlash online from commentators and even a fellow court in Beijing.

The Fangzhuang court in Fengtai District in Beijing responded to the news with three pressing questions regarding the credibility of a judge, namely: “Can the judge really have his own informed opinions during case deliberation if he doesn’t have a legal background or work experience in the justice system? Can he even hear court cases? Is he capable of handling cases?” But the Beijing court’s Weibo post was quickly deleted on Tuesday after it was widely reposted.

Most of the online comments took the news as a proof of China’s lack of judicial independence. One user wrote, “Without judicial independence, the legal system becomes a laughingstock.” Others simply were confused by the country’s official appointment standards, with one user saying, “Didn’t the head of animal husbandry recently become an education chief? Officials in the Middle Kingdom are almighty.”

Another user said this story pales in comparison to that of Zhou Yongkang, a man who went from being an oil worker to China’s security tsar overseeing the country’s legal and judicial affairs from 2007 to 2012. He wrote, “A person who used to run the oil industry can become China’s head of Politics and Law Committee. This is nothing.” As a side note, Zhou is also currently being investigated for graft, the most senior official targeted for corruption in decades.

According to a law professor interviewed in the article, one has to at least pass judicial tests before even being considered for a post like this. However, judges do not necessarily need a legal background. Allegiance to the communist party and understanding the country’s policies and situations take precedence over any professional knowledge, he said, a practice loathed by legal experts and lawyers.

The story came at a time when Xi Jinping, the country’s president, is expected to underline the role of constitution at next month’s fourth plenum. More liberals are asking for greater checks and balances on the government’s powers to bolster the Party’s credibility, SCMP reported. But in a small county in Zhejiang, that message has fallen on deaf ears.

Photos: CFP, Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

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Panlong Monastery, east of Tien Lake in Yunnan Province, shut its doors on August 15, 2014, defying the local government’s push for the Buddhist monastery to become more commercialized, reported local Chinese newspaper, Spring City Evening Post.

The monastery’s vocal protest is extraordinary, given that a number of monasteries have embraced the flashy lifestyle of the “Mundane World”.

Visitors to the monastery were met with a notice, reading, “Dear visitors and Buddhist followers, the local government’s plan to upgrade Panlong Monastery for commercial purposes and introduce a corporate management model has disrupted the normal orders in Panlong Monastery. Therefore, we decided to shut our doors for quiet meditation. Hope you can understand.”

The monastery did not indicate when it would reopen to the public.

The monastery’s protest came one day after local governments in Jingning and Jingcheng held a conference at the monastery, without any warning, on its “future development and regulation”.

One of the proposals involved refurbishing one of its buildings, which was ideal for viewing the scenic views of Tien Lake and Jingcheng city, fuelling speculation of a possible ticket price increase.

Ren Qing, a monk who has been practicing Buddhism for 17 years at the monastery, was not thrilled about the government’s plans. “The government had a meeting on August 14, and proposed many commercial plans, which were immediately rejected by our abbot and many fellow monks. We buddhist monks cannot lead a commercialized life,” said Ren Qing.

Some buddhist monks, however, have long ignored the stringent Buddhist rules and lived their lives according to their own wants and desires. Earlier this month, a monastery in Xiaogan, Hubei Province, held a Kaiguang, or a consecration ceremony, for none other than a Ferrari vehicle. Consecration is believed to bring good luck to any objects presented in the presence of a Buddha. In May, a monk in Wenzhou was stopped by police for drunk driving.

After the monastery’s protest, the newspaper said local officials in Jingcheng talked with the abbot and stressed “it won’t take over or sell Panlong Monastery in any form”.

Photos: China News

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Yangcheng Evening News on April 10 reported that the Guangdong government has issued a directive banning any department-level (usually mid-ranking) government officials from flying business class or first class on official trips.

In addition to downgrading their plane classes to coach, officials were also ordered to dial back their daily expenses on transportation, accommodation and meals. Provincial officials are only allowed RMB 800 (about $130) a night for accommodation, and department-level officials were allocated RMB 490 (about $79) a night. Other attachés can only spend RMB 340 (about $55) a day, the report said.

Their expenses on food and local transportation also have a fixed limit of RMB 100 ($16.1) and RMB 80 ($13) respectively, for provincial and department-level officials, it added.

To help officials make “economic and convenient choices,” the government introduced a benchmark of some sort saying that the selection should not affect one’s usual work or jeopardize one’s safety, according to the directive.

This comes just a day after Guangdong officials were ordered to disclose their budgets for weddings and funerals, and give a 10-day notice to the government when planning the events.

President Xi Jinping has introduced a series of austerity rules to clamp down government extravagance including expensive liquors like Maotai, fancy mooncakes and number of overseas trips.

But will this lead to any tangible results to eradicate bureaucracy and build a more accountable government, or will it be another directive thrown under a pile of archives? Let’s wait and check the first-class cancellation figures from airline companies on Monday.

Home page photo from China News

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In an interesting recent development that was actually finalized back in July — but one that perhaps only the keenest China-watchers will have read about — Macau is now one square kilometre larger thanks to the University of Macau’s new campus on Hengqin Island, a small area of the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone in south Guangdong.

“[This] is a historical moment and a monumental milestone for the development of both Macau and the Chinese mainland… [and] also bears testimony to the flexibility, innovation and potential of the “One Country, Two Systems” principle. Many people would regard such changes as inconceivable,” China Daily said in an article last week.

As if to signal just the extent to which the Central Government is serious about the area on Hengqin Island becoming a legitimate part of Macau under the “One Country, Two Systems” framework (as with Hong Kong), people there will be able to “practice academic freedom, have unrestricted Internet access, and enjoy social and political rights as they do in Macau [or Hong Kong].”

What is perhaps even more fascinating is the possibilities that this latest cooperation between the mainland and a Special Administrative Region could signal for the future.

“The Hengqin model can also serve as an important reference for the Hong Kong SAR (HKSAR), where development has come to a bottleneck. With the support of the central government, Shenzhen can consider leasing portions of its land to the HKSAR allowing the HKSAR government to exercise jurisdiction over it.”

What we are therefore seeing here may be the beginning of an entirely new and fundamentally different chapter in the story of China’s administration until now. We may begin to see more and more cooperation and “leasing” of highly innovative or developed areas in the mainland to various SAR regions. That is something that could potentially benefit both sides, and could be a step in the right direction in the longer-term goal of uniting the people’s of the “Two Systems.”

“Macau and Hong Kong will be asserting greater influence on the area. In the 1980s, Shenzhen was an economic experiment, and now this is a governance experiment,” Fu Hualing, a constitutional scholar at the University of Hong Kong, told The New York Times in July. For more details and insights into the whole project, I suggest you the a look at the NYT article, which includes research and interviews with experts in the field.

In any case, expect Hong Kong and Macau to have more influence in the Guangdong region as integration between the three areas is further realised — perhaps in unexpected ways. For now, the lease acquired by the Macau government on Hengqin only lasts 40 years, but it’s an interesting experiment and could perhaps be extended indefinitely after that. Tellingly, Macau’s status as a semi-autonomous region also expires in 2049.

Photo credit: University of Macau

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