Ryan Pyle Blog: Shanghai Electric Exiting Solar Power

Hello.

It was reported a while back that Shanghai Electric, China's largest power generating equipment maker, is getting out of the solar power business. Shanghai Electric seems almost desperate to sell of its 35% stake in solar equipment maker Shanghai Topsolar Green Energy. The reason for the fire sale, it's just not a profitable business at this stage in the game says the company.

Getting rid of its investment in a solar energy equipment maker made headlines around China, and the reason given by the company was that they just couldn't find a way to incorporate the solar business in to its future development plans. But I thought solar power was the future?

I'm confused.

Even though Beijing is telling everyone that solar and wind are the future, it seems very odd that a state run company, that is this large and influential, would step out of the business so publicly. Is there turmoil brewing in the energy sector?

Shanghai Electric makes its hay (70% of its business) from making coal fire power plants, a business that is said to have peaked in 2004. Since that peak, the company's revenue and market share have fallen. To counterbalance this they have, since 2004, made a strong commitment to wind power and nuclear power, which both generate next to no carbon emissions and are said to be much better business models than solar. In fact, Shanghai Electric has 50% of the nuclear power plant market in China and says that nuclear power plants will replace the coal fired power plant business in the coming years.

So is Shanghai Electric a company that's going green; but couldn't find a way to benefit from solar power? Or are they just a big state run machine that will slowly opt out of more renewable energy initiatives in the future? My guess is that Shanghai Electric is committed to renewable energy, or at least nuclear energy; but just couldn't find a way to make expensive solar panels pay for themselves in a heavily subsidized electricity markets. Maybe if all of us living in China paid the real price for electricity more clean initiatives might be viable. Even with Beijing promoting renewable energy, and dishing out massive amounts of "incentives", I am amazed that such a large player in the industry couldn't make the business work. Will others follow this similar exit strategy? What's the future for solar power in China?

China is actually the world's leading maker of solar panels, but most of this production is exported to countries like Germany that have offered massive subsidies to go green. But the business has yet to show it can be sustainable on its own. Shanghai Electric might just be too big to deal with renewable energy. Nuclear power generates a huge amount of power and costs a massive amount of money to produce. As a company, if you had to choose between making nuclear power plants and laying solar panels in the desert, most would most likely choose nuclear; if at least because it generates about 1000 times more in fee's for the equipment companies involved.

On a side note, I've actually had the chance to photograph a nuclear power plant under construction in Guangdong province, and I can tell you by talking with the people down there - nuclear is the future in China, they just haven't admitted it to everyone, the global press, yet. The nuclear power plants of today are said to be much safer than those in the past and generate massive amounts of electricity which coastal and central China is disparately thirsty for. Can anyone blame Shanghai Electric for following the money? Not really. For once a state owned enterprise is acting like a privately owned company that is responsible for shareholder value. They got out of a business that wasn't making money to focus on businesses that does make money.

But does solar have a future in China if the big players don't buy in? My guess is no. Solar seems to be on the verge of being bypassed for wind (cheaper) and nuclear (more efficient).

ps. Sorry for putting a wind turbine picture up. I don't have a compelling solar panel photo at the moment.

--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Censorship Blowback

Hello.

I try not to publish other people's work on my blog too often, striving more for original content; but the recent actions of the Chinese government towards companies like Google has livened up the debate about just what the hell is the government thinking.

I spoke with my friend the other day and we both agreed that in such an important year, the 60th Anniversary of founding of the People's Republic of China, the folks in Beijing are behaving a little odd. In fact, my friend and I concluded that Beijing was acting like a government in fear. In fear of what? Rampant corruption? An middle class that is more savvy and educated than the governing elite? It's hard to say exactly, but Beijing is afraid; and they are taking it out on the internet.

Below is a blog written by Rebecca MacKinnon. (Copywrite Rebecca MackInnon)

Rebecca's Blog: http://rconversation.blogs.com
_____________________________________________________________________________________
June 25, 2009
China's censorship blowback
By: Rebecca MacKinnon

I'm not sure what the Chinese government is thinking, or whether certain parts of certain ministries and party apparatus have gotten completely out of control.

Until recently, it had seemed to me that the Chinese government was managing its censorship system with surprising success: censoring enough (combined with strategic arrests) to keep people from using the Internet to organize a successful nation-wide political opposition movement; but at the same time allowing enough space for online discourse and citizen-muckraking that people have felt freer and more empowered than ever before, which actually seemed to work in favor of the central government's legitimacy - despite being very bad news for corrupt local officials. But this month, something shifted. It's unclear whether the shift is long-lasting or just temporary madness until the PRC's 60th anniversary on October 1st.

Most of China's educated, largely apolitical, internet-connected urbanites have until now been generally willing to accept the political status quo - and with it a certain amount of censorship, thuggishness and injustice, political paranoia and occasional bizarreness - in exchange for overall social stability (compared to any other time in living Chinese memory), economic growth, plus an impressive increase in China's global power and status. But whoever is driving the latest Internet crackdown and the accompanying moralistic propaganda drive may have done substantial damage to the government's credibility.

June began with the expected tightening of Internet censorship around the 20th anniversary of the June 4th crackdown, including the temporary blocking of Twitter and various other websites. That in itself was not a huge surprise. It followed the usual logic of Chinese Internet censorship: tighten up the bottleneck between the Chinese Internet and the outside Internet during politically sensitive periods. Chinese Internet users who tend to be concerned with politics know to expect this kind of thing. However a simultaneous suspension in service for "technical maintenance" on many domestic websites impacted a much larger number of Chinese Internet users who don't visit overseas-hosted news or social networking sites very much. It would likely not have occurred to many million Internet users that June 4th was a politically sensitive date if China's "net nanny" hadn't made it so blatantly obvious, prompting many teenagers who weren't even born in 1989 to ask each other and their parents what happened on June 4th. But that was June 4th. People expect a certain amount of government paranoia around that time.

Little did we know, that was just the beginning of The Month The Censors Stopped Taking Their Medication.

The next week the government's Green Dam censorware mandate became publicly known. Authorities insist on implementing the mandate despite the fact that it doesn't work as intended or advertised, is a security risk and has been subject to widespread domestic criticism (by bloggers as well as state-controlled media and respected public figures like Caijing editor Hu Shuli). Now the U.S. government warns it could be a violation of the WTO. It seems the government is having trouble finding a face-saving way to climb down. Rather than admit they made a mistake and work out a sensible solution with domestic and foreign industry, they have chosen instead to escalate in an increasingly irrational manner that serves only to increase Chinese Internet users' scorn and irritation.

Last week the propaganda department turned it sights on Google China, and continues to blame Google for smut on the Internet. Horror of horrors, when you type smutty words and phrases into the Google search box, you get smutty content coming back in your search results! Many people including this blogger (via Roland Soong) and this blogger have pointed out that plenty of smut remains available via Google's Chinese competitor Baidu. How commercially convenient for Baidu... though some bloggers point out that the whole fracas - aided by outrage and ridicule over a staged anti-Google interview on CCTV - is actually making Google more popular among netizens, who were already annoyed with the government for dispensing commercial favoritism on the makers of Green Dam.

So far this week we've seen the temporary blocking of Google.com and related services hosted outside of China including GMail. As if that wasn't bad enough for one week, we're now told that sexual health websites are a no-go for ordinary Internet users.

Meanwhile, the increased discussion of censorship all over the Chinese Internet is prompting China's netizens to educate themselves about the various technical methods to "jump over" the "great firewall." There are no hard and fast statistics on how many people in China are now using proxy servers, Tor, Psiphon, Freegate/Dynaweb, or OpenDNS as compared to a month ago. But based on the frequent mentions of these tools I've been seeing every day on blogs, in Twitter, and on other social networking sites, it seems that the latest Net Nanny follies have helped raise awareness of circumvention tools to a whole new level. If you plug the term 翻墙 (which means "scale the wall" - the most common Chinese euphemism for censorship circumvention) into Google's search insights and restrict it to searches coming from China, you see a big spike in early June and a bigger spkie in the past few days.

Searches for Tor (a nonprofit tool for anonymizing and circumvention) are also substantially up this month, and Chinese-language searches originating in China for Freegate (a tool developed and operated by a FLG-affiliated organization) spiked dramatically over the weekend.

Aggravation is certainly mounting. After finding Google.com and GMail blocked on Wednesday night Beijing time, Jeremy Goldkorn, who runs Danwei.org wrote a letter to China's "net nanny," in which he pointed out: "You are making Chinese people look like children on the world stage. You are bringing shame to the People's Republic of China, and the Chinese Communist Party."

To protest the mounting ridiculousness, Ai Weiwei is calling for an Internet boycott on July 1st. Others like lawyer-blogger Liu Xiaoyuan believe a boycott is not the best way to protest Internet restrictions. He writes (translated by Roland): "We have nothing against the Internet. We should not boycott the Internet. We should be using the Internet to promote democracy, rule of law, people's livelihood and progressiveness." Roland suggests some other kind of protest that is more measurable, as the success or failure of an Internet boycott is very hard to measure. Meanwhile a group of anonymous Chinese Netizens have issued an open letter, vowing to take collective action on July 1st. It's not clear exactly what they will do, other than to say: "we are going to acquaint your censorship machine with systematic sabotage and show you just how weak the claws of your censorship really are. We are going to mark you as the First Enemy of the Internet."

The following paragraph is particularly interesting. They claim they're not interested in overthrowing the government; but the government is bringing on its own punishment for behaving in such a stupid manner:

NOBODY wants to topple your regime. We take no interest whatsoever in your archaic view of state power and your stale ideological teachings. You do not understand how your grand narrative dissipated in the face of Internetization. You do not understand why appealing to statism and nationalism no longer works. You cannot break free from your own ignorance of the Internet. Your regime is not our enemy. We are not affiliated in any way with any country or organization, and we are not waging this war on any country or organization, not even on you. YOU are waging this war on yourself. YOU are digging your own grave through corruption and antagonization. We are not interested in you, destined for the sewage of history. You cannot stop the Internetization of the human race. In fact, we won't bat an eyelid even if you decide to sever the transpacific information cables in order to obtain the total control you wanted. The harder you try to roll back history, the more you strain the already taut strings, and the more destructive their final release. You are accelerating your own fall. The sun of tomorrow does not shine on those who are fearing tomorrow itself.

June has been pretty wild. I wonder what July has in store...


--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Missing Pages (Economist)

Hello.

After spending several exhausting days in rural Tibet I managed to get home in one piece, albeit very sore from the nine days I spent combing through remote river valleys on foot.

Upon my return to Shanghai I was craving news, newspapers and news magazines. I love to know what's going on and I was mostly craving my Economist. I reckon I would have a backlog of two or three issues waiting for me at home and I was more than ready to put my feet up and dive right in.

To my astonishment my Economist magazines were not waiting for me at home. They had failed to show up. This often happens when sensitive China articles are published, but to be honest it hasn't happened in months and I was pretty pissed off by the fact that the post office just decides to put a hold on my magazines when ever it feels like it.

So in a huff I made my way to the grocery store, that I frequent, and managed to get a week old copy, the May 28th to June 4th version that has (in Asia) "Kim's Bombshell" on the cover. Feeling happy after my purchase I brought it home and pushed through the opening sections and devoured each article at a record pace (as you do after a long absence away from any form of reading/writing). I was so quick in fact that I read from Page 30 to Page 33 almost without noticing that Page 31/32 was missing. It had been torn out.

Now, it had been torn out very neatly and in a fashion that didn't disrupt the other articles. But the act itself lead to several questions: Like, how many people in China are employed to rip out magazine articles that are deemed sensitive? No wonder China Post is losing money hand over fist; so much so that DHL and FedEx have now been banned from operating domestically in China - a very protectionist move. Also, who decides what articles are deemed offensive or not? Is this why sometimes my other magazines don't show up? Who is this magazine editing actually targeting, foreigners or Chinese? If it is targeting foreigners, might the effort be seen as futile? If this behavior is directed at Chinese, I would be curious to know how many locals are reading the Economist that are not web savvy enough to know that the week of June 4th was the anniversary of Tiananmen. Is this the behavior of a global power? Is this the behavior of a regional power? Does the United States censor and rip out pages of Chinese language magazines and periodicals? Food for thought.

Now, the page in question "Banyan: The Party Goes On" deals specifically with Tiananmen and the party's survival skills, and it is copied below. Is this article really so piercing and critical that it requires the embarrassment involved in being torn out of the magazine by hand several thousand times? Me thinks not. I would expect behavior like this from Burma, but not China. It's a weak effort from a seemingly strong country. Imagine how the country will progress when we, locals and foreigners, begin being treated like adults; who can actually handle the truth. Could be a magical era, think of all the prison space that could be freed up.

Copywrite: The Economist
Banyan
The party goes on
May 28th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Who, 20 years ago, would have thought that the Communist Party could come to this?

WHEN the tanks departed Beijing after the crackdown of June 1989, no one with an interest in China thought the matter ended. The Chinese Communist Party had won its battle for survival, but the war seemed unwinnable. All the more so after communism collapsed in Eastern Europe later that year, followed by the Soviet Union. Even China’s lunge for breakneck growth from 1992 looked set to accelerate forces the party might not control. As the party’s ideological and moral foundations crumbled, it was no longer clear what on earth it stood for.

China-watchers’ scenarios ran from party collapse to a democratising path. As late as 1998 Bill Clinton was able to tell his Chinese host, President Jiang Zemin, that suppressing dissent put China “on the wrong side of history”. Banyan was in the audience that day, his Flying Pigeon (state-made bicycle) outside. Mr Clinton’s words seemed self-evident. But with hindsight, much of where the West said China was going was wishful thinking.

What nearly no one predicted has transpired. Today, the party is as strong at home as at any time since it seized power in 1949. Though still authoritarian, it rules largely by consent, preferring persuasion to violence and intimidation—though these remain handy, as during the crushing of Tibetan riots last year.

Abroad, its prestige is as high: some believe China’s economy is about to save the world. Mr Jiang’s successor, Hu Jintao, has been welcomed at the top table of world leaders. On her first trip to Beijing as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was as blunt as her husband had been a decade earlier, but with a different message: the United States would not let China’s human-rights abuses obstruct the history being made between these two great states.

It is a commonplace that the party’s legitimacy is built on economic growth. Yet China’s leaders have long considered that to be merely the (simplistic) half of it. After the massacre, the Communist Party set about transforming itself. It launched a vast historical investigation into how political parties fall, and how they stay in power. Everyone was scrutinised, from Saddam Hussein to Scandinavian social democrats. The conclusion: adapt or die.

The outcome is a wholesale reinvention of the party, a process accelerated after Mr Hu stepped up as paramount leader in 2004. Shortcomings that were identified included corruption (a chief complaint of the Tiananmen students), lack of accountability in decision-making, no convincing ideology, and an ossified structure. In a recent book (“China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation”), David Shambaugh describes how the 74m-strong party has fired whole armies of time-servers. Bright technocrats and entrepreneurs have been recruited. Retirement rules have been revamped (the Soviet Union’s gerontocracy was noted). Party members have gone back to school: three weeks a year and three months for every three years of mid-career training. More appointments are open to peer scrutiny before they are filled. The Communist Party is vastly more able to govern.

Some in the wishful West will see this as a proto-democratisation of a Leninist state. The opposite is the case. Staying in power is the party’s only credo now that revolution has been jettisoned. It is the sole reason for revamping the mechanisms of power.

China’s other manufacturing industry
A case in point is the Communists’ approach since 1989 to the crucial field of propaganda. With the end of Maoist mobilisation, the party turned to Western techniques of public relations and mass media, manufacturing consent by guiding public opinion in certain directions while barring it from others. In “Marketing Dictatorship”, Anne-Marie Brady sums up the party’s approach as emphasising achievements, not allowing bad news during holiday periods or around sensitive dates (including June 4th), and not raising problems that can’t be solved (unemployment, inequality). It talks up the economy, regularly demonises the United States and uses Orwellian newspeak to shape the debate about certain subjects (“party-state” is banned in public discourse in favour of “the political party in power”). It presents stories in ways that encourage people to take sides. It turns natural disasters into quasi-religious occasions of national solidarity. And always, always repeat after me: “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.”

With this approach, the proliferation of channels for media, information and entertainment offers unbounded scope for the party to get its messages across, abetted by commercial operators. The internet has proven a particular boon, since its users are predominantly young, educated males from the cities—just the kind of groups, the party has noted, behind the colour revolutions in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. Shaping the online debate while using controls and surveillance to block most of what it does not want surfers to see, the internet is an example of how the party has corralled mainland Chinese into what Ms Brady calls “a virtual mind prison”—though one with plenty of fun and games to keep people entertained. In 2000 Mr Clinton said that trying to control the internet in China was “like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall”. The Communist Party seems to have managed it.

This is little comfort to Westerners projecting their hopes for democratic change on to China. Nor is there any sign that Chinese intellectuals identify with the myriad grievances of their poor countrymen, as they did during the Tiananmen protests. And the growing middle class appears more fearful of the great unwashed than of the depredations of a party that once was at war with the bourgeoisie. So no national movement challenges the party’s monopoly. The state might yet prove unable to meet growing demands for health care and schooling. Leadership splits might threaten the party, as they did in 1989, with China now facing its biggest economic test since then. But for now, the Communist Party glides smoothly upon the tide of history.


--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Aravind Hospitals in India

Hello,

In January 2008 I made contact, through a close friend, at the Aravind Hospital in Maduri, Tamil Nadu in southern India. I think it important to stop here and say that I had never been interested in working in India until this point, because I felt like it was so well covered and so well traveled that I might not have much more to offer on the subject. But I was wrong, and it took the Aravind hospitals to inspire me to think differently.

Aravind hospitals originated in 1976 with the mission of "eliminating needless blindness", what a mission statement!

The Aravind hospital in Maduri is the largest eye care center in the world. Located amongst the rural Indians who need eye care services most, Aravind is committed to fighting the barriers of distance, poverty and ignorance to provide compassionate eye care to some of the world's poorest people. In a banner 12 month people over 2.3 million out patients were treated and some 270,444 surgeries were performed.

The hospital itself is a massive operation of eye care, in the few days I spent there the hospitals were teaming, the crowds were well managed and the care people recieved was incredible. Perhaps even more incredible is the fact that Aravind runs two hospitals in Madui, one pay hospital and one free hospital; and they are side by side. Patients can essentially choose which hospital they would like to visit and pay accordingly, the care received is exactly the same. It's a far cry from the Chinese health care system where the moment you enter the hospital a nurse asks you if you would like to the "expensive" doctor or the "cheap" doctor.

So Aravind does about two thirds of its surgeries for free and one third for a fee, and on this business model they are profitable as well as serving the public, and creating one of the most efficient eye surgeon training programs which has a waiting list from doctors around the world.

Case studies by Havard Business school have made Aravind a low cost, high volume, high quality model for health care around the world. Above is a slide show of my work from my few days in wonderful Maduri. I'm planning on returning to India often in the coming years as I am fascinated by the differences in growth, development and religion between India and China.

LINKS:
Aravind Hospital

If you google Aravind Hospital you'll get a bunch of hits you can search through.

--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: My 100th Blog

Hello.

Well, it might not mean much beyond beyond my office, in the spare bedroom of my apartment, but this is my 100th blog. And that excites me deeply. In the first year or so of my blog the rhythm was sporadic at best, only finding the time or having the nerve to blog when my blood was boiling about something or another. In the second half of last year I finally put that to rest and found that blogging became therapeutic and for the few readers or followers out there, I really appreciate your comments and personal emails; very motivating.

I started blogging in September 2006, while I was sitting in a Paris hotel room on my way back from a photo festival in the south of France. The festival was interesting but it wasn't exactly my cup of tea. While I appreciated seeing all the work and the exhibitions the general atmosphere was a bit too much for me. I haven't been back since. But although my absence from the festival is noted, the lessons I learned from that festival have traveled with me and been implemented throughout my career and life.

It was just after this photo festival that I worked out a new game plan for myself, and I designed a much more refined focus for my work. It was a real growth experience. I think prior to that Perpignan festival I was just happy to be taking pictures and making my rent payments on time, but after that I really decided how I wanted my career to play out. I mentally turned a corner that helped me decide what I needed to do, and how I needed to approach my work, to have the possibility to work with some element of freedom to pursue topics that I felt were important.

When I stop and think about it, I have a very unique roll. I have committed myself to documenting China in the long term and I've been lucky enough, and developed to an acceptable level, to work for some of the leading magazines around the world. That means that I have a real responsibility to maintain strong ethics and high journalism standards in my work. And equally important is to not waste any time, because the country is really rolling along and it takes a huge effort to play catch up trying to document it all.

It was after that trip that I began investing more and more of my income in to personal projects. I also began began pursuing competitions / awards, grants and sponsorship more aggressively; although to this end my results have been only mildly successful. More work is clearly needed.

Whatever the results of personal projects, and or grants and awards the key factor at the end of the day is still freedom. If you take in to account that there are only 365 days a year and each person only has so many days they can work, so many hours they can stare through a view finder on a camera it is really important to maximize those rare moments when we can just simply work; without distraction or delay.


--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Moving Up the Value Chain

Hello.

According to the Economist, a few weeks back, China is moving up the Intellectual Property value chain. The article in question discussed patents and how Chinese companies have been rapidly increasing their applications for patents both in China and in western countries where they operate.

There were a few high profile cases of late where foreign companies had to pay out significant sums to Chinese companies for patent violations in China. It is a relatively new and novel idea in China that if you create something, and then someone copies or uses it for their own profit, that they'll need to pay you. In a country where everything is copied instantly, there has been little incentive for people to create anything unique; especially when a quick and comparatively easy profit can be made by copying someone else's work.

This stage we are in at the moment is, by all means, an education process for China. Patents were not officially allowed in China until the mid-1980s and even then they weren't ever enforced until 2006. And they still have a long way to go. But if there is a corner out there, they are beginning to turn it.

For years us China watching folks have talked about China's need to beef up IP law to save the domestic music, movie and software industries; the three industries that suffer the most from IP infringement. Stricter IP laws will add value to the production of higher end products; so that China can move away from the low-tech manufacturing that migrates from poor country to poor country in search of low production costs; today it's China. Tomorrow it's Vietnam and Bangladesh.

Does that mean that China will completely move away from low end jobs, such as the image above of a young man working in a toy factory in Dongguan, China? Absolutely not. There are still millions of people in China willing to work for next to nothing, and that will never change. In a country of 1.3 billion people there will always be people to do low paying jobs. In saying that, China will slowly over time become known for not only the label "Made in China" on your sneakers or tee shirts, but also for that same label on your computers, servers, routers, telecom equipment, mobile phones and electric cars; and the companies making these products will not just be western firms exploiting low production costs in China, they will be Chinese companies producing domestically and exporting to global markets. Mark my words, I am an optimist, China will go up market in a very big way. Companies like Lenovo (Computers) and Huawei (Telecom Equipment) are setting the pace already. And with more IP law the future could look very bright indeed for innovative and creative individuals and firms in China.

As an aside, one question that hasn't really been answered is how much as the lack of IP protection cost China? Well, that is a riddle I would love to see someone, much smarter than me, solve. The government always stands by the official line that you have to copy before you can learn. But it is clear that this prolonged period of copying has stunted intellectual, artistic and innovative development inside the country. Why write a book, that is widely read and enjoyed, if you can't feed your family from the sales because it's been copied and widely distributed? Why write a song, if it will be enjoyed by millions, and you still can't afford to pay your children's school fee's? I'm not saying that we create only for profit, but creation needs to, in this modern day and age, cover our basic costs; especially if you have a family or other dependants to provide for. This is simply a fact of life.

China's laid back attitude towards IP has annoyed the more mature economies in Europe and North America. But as the Economist article points out, in the 18th century a very young United States of America copied just about everything they could get their hands on, mainly machines from England and Germany, in an effort to industrialize and become a manufacturing powerhouse. Everyone has to start somewhere, it's just rough luck for China that we live in a world of instant information and communication; it makes these growing pains much more public, painful and embarrassing.

--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Automatic Blogging

Hello.

I've become a bit of a fan of the automatic blog post. And actually this blog was written on May 28th, just the day before I left for my epic journey around the Tibetan holy mountain of Meili Snow Mountain; a gorgeous peak that lies along the borders of Burma, Tibet and China. The pilgrimage trek that I'll be following, or that I am currently on, takes about 10 days and covers roughly 250km; exact numbers are difficult to come by but it's pretty easy to guess that we are walking roughly 25km per day at altitudes of 3500-4500m, with 6 high passes listed as being 4500m-5000m.

So as this blog is being published (automatically scheduled) I should be, without incident, well in to my morning walk somewhere between the 3rd and 4th high pass around 4500m above sea level.

The purpose behind the trek, apart from enjoying the stunning mountains, rivers and minority life in China, is to document this Tibetan pilgrimage route. Tibet, and Tibetan culture has taken a real beating the last year and a half or so, since the run up to the Olympics; and even as far back as the riots last March in Lhasa. I think now is a crucial moment to stop and look at the fact that with all the suppression and repression that exists in China, Tibetan buddhism and culture is still alive and well in very remote areas like Meili Snow Mountain. While political centers like Lhasa have been devoid of much color or culture for years, mostly thanks to political education and lengthy jail sentences, places just outside the reach of the government still possess a wild west, cowboy Tibetan, feel. There is something very comforting and authentic about that. So that is what I am out to document, the fact that Tibetan culture is not entirely down and out; at least in the remote areas.

I'll be sure to include a blog about my journey once it's complete; along with images from the trip.

Did I mention that I'm on the trek at this very moment? Love the Auto Blog.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Farmers, their Incomes and their Labels

Hello,

I recently read an article in the Chinese media indicating that rural incomes are set to fall this year for the first time since 1984. My post today deals with some of the difficulties I have with the article and some of the labels used by the reporting journalist. Please take a look at the ARTICLE LINK.

The article, as you can see from the link, opens with the statement that the income of "farmers" will grow by just 6% this year because of a drop in agricultural prices and rising unemployment. It follows by saying that farmers earned an average of US$680 last year, remember that is an AVERAGE - meaning there are just as many below that line than above.

The difficulty I have with the way this article opens is that the piece makes no effort to discuss "real income" which takes in to account inflation; the kind of rapid inflation that has paralyzed rural communities for most of this decade; only easing during the recent financial crisis due to generous government subsides. Without subsides, and including inflation, China's modernization which has supposedly lifted half a billion people from abject poverty is actually putting a lot of those same people back to the bottom of the pyramid due to inflation and increasing costs.

Inflation is a dirty word in China and although reported on widely it's often in relation to urban dwellers. Little is written or discussed about farmers who scrap by month to month and then suddenly face a 40% price increase in pork, the main meat staple in China; or maize, or fertilizer or petrol for their tractors or motorcycles. I can tell you from experience the situation is bleak. The situation gets even bleaker when we bring Health Care in to the fold, but I'll leave that for another blog.

I'm not an economist but I read somewhere that inflation in 2008 topped out around 14%, so if farmers salaries increaded in 2008 by 10% then there is a net 4% loss of real income due to inflation. And if 2009 incomes are set to rise 6% against 4% inflation (don't bet on it with the massive government stimulus package) then they'll barely be back at 2007 numbers, but from 2000 to 2008 inflation in China has been incredible because of rapid urban growth mainly. If rural incomes are set to grow at 6% what happens if inflation balloons again to double digits?

When ask how to boost rural incomes, Li Zhou, the Deputy director of the CASS Institute of Rural Development said that "It is difficult to boost the rural market when farmers cannot get rich quickly." That may sound like a common statement but there are a very painfully obvious signs here. First is that he talks about the rural population of China as a market, and not as a people scrapping by to make a living. Might the only interest of the urban elite to view the rural folks as markets to sell them fridges? How about empowering them with educational and economic opportunities that give them, and their children, more choice in life, might that be an option? The second is that getting rich quickly is all anyone seems to care about anymore, and because the rural population of China can't seem to do this they are cast aside at the expense of urban growth. Painful truths are rarely revealed in a government media full of smoke and mirrors.

To continue on, the article mentions a random note that farmers earn nearly 40% o their incomes from jobs in the city. But if you live and work in the city aren't you considered an urban migrant, or "someone who lives in the city"; not "farmer who works in the city"? China loves labeling people and for the unlucky, once you are a farmer you are always a farmer; even if you live in the city and work in a factory, or as a scooter delivery man for a pizza restaurant. This stigma and labeling severely crushes social mobility in China and contributes to a lot of discrimination and misunderstanding between the rural and urban residents.

I think it's safe to say that by definition you can't be a farmer and work in the city, yet the article makes no distinction in trying to explain the issue. This kind of thinking furthermore contributes to the social safety net crisis in China where by rural migrants in the city are treated as second class citizens not only by locals who look down on them, but by government institutions; meaning they aren't available for healthcare subsides, education for their children or old age pension. In order to receive such benefits rural migrants would have to return back to their rural homeland, at their own costs, where there are no jobs and little opportunity. To their credit the Chinese government is moving towards abolishing this distinction between rural and urban identity cards, but the process is too slow for too many.

One hilarious example is a fixer and assistant that I frequently work with in Shanghai. She is from northeastern China and moved to Shanghai because she wanted to work in the media industry. Her ID card indicates she is from a small town in Northeastern China so if she wants to open a bank account, an online investment trading account, or claim hospital insurance she needs to do all of his in her home "county" or "district", even though she's lived in Shanghai for almost 8 years. While she is far from being a farmer, hopefully this example gives you a glimpse at how even well educated, English speaking, media professionals have difficulties; imagine life for a relatively uneducated farmer looking for a manual labor job or low income earning office work. Mission impossible.

If you think I'm just a bitter foreigner living in China, then far enough. But my hope is that this example just sheds light on what the government distinguishes as journalism; being the non-threatening version. Are there great journalists in China? Absolutely. But their hands are tied. One told me recently that he had prepared a legal document indicating that his family had officially "disowned him", so that if there were government repercussions for stories he worked on only he himself could be reprimanded, saving his family from any further vindication. Imagine living and working under those conditions.

I wish I had more time to comment on news stories like this, I read them every day and think about working up a quick blog note, but then it becomes a long blog note and my "to do list" just gets longer and longer.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: 20 Years On

Hello.

Well, it happened twenty years ago today. But according to the official party line, nothing happened at all. Above is a quick selection of some images I've shot in the square over the years.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary there have been a few interesting and controversial books to hit the news stand that deal with many facets of the protest in the square; who the leaders where; what their motivations were; and what the government leaders were thinking about during that time. The problem is that most of these books leave me with more questions than they help answer. Will Tiananmen also remain a great mystery that is never discussed in China? Will the government always stand by it's silence?

Is it the behavior, of an emerging superpower, to completely avoid historical topics that they don't feel comfortable discussing? Or perhaps there is too much guilt or shame for their harsh actions?

China would feel a lot of GLOBAL goodwill but coming out of this "historical closet" by addressing some of these issues in an open and honest manner. Start with the Cultural Revolution, moving through to Tiananmen and finishing off with the school collapsing last year in Sichuan during the earthquake.

If you silence the conversation (ie. throw people in jail, silence the media) the chat will also continue behind your back. If you bring it out in the open and admit guilt or mistakes everyone can now move forward with their lives. But that would make the party look weak, or unsure; and that is simply not allowed. So the silence continues. Will the thirtieth anniversary bring any truth and reconciliation? No. The fortieth? No. Never hold your breath when in a competition with the government; you'll end up blue in the face.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: The Nujiang Valley

Hello,

Well, I finally got my May edition of National Geographic, about a month late, and was very impressed with the story of Finding Shangri-la produced by Mark Jenkins and Fritz Hoffmann; another fine example of what highly skilled writers and image makers can do when given the time and resources to fully develop a story. A wonderful example of dedication to story telling. Did I mention it was a life long dream to work for National Geographic? I know, I'll need to step in line. There must be millions of us out there.

But back to my blog. Mark Jenkins and Fritz Hoffman spend their time in the Three Rivers region of China's south western Yunnan province. Which is, for those unaware, one of China's truly special destinations. The three rivers that run essentially north to south accross this region are the Nu River, the Mekong River and the Yangtze. With all three rivers running paraelle to each other the mountain ranges between them offer some of the most dramatic views and some of the most rich cultures I've ever witnessed.

Which brings me to the purpose of my blog. In 2004, as a young and energetic photographer, I visit the Nujiang Valley. I had read that the Chinese government was planning a multi-stage dam on the Nujiang, to date the only river that is un-damed in China. My goal at the time was to try and document the area to show the unique culture and wonderful nature that existed there. Sadly I was only there for a few days and my pictures were never published, and I didn't have the chance to revisit the region. But the National Geographic story stoked a lot of old memories and reminded me about the untouched beauty of the region. Will a multistage dam ruin the culture and the nature of the region; absolutely. Will the government take notice and leave just one river in China untouched? Absolutely not.

I highly recommend everyone out there to take a peak at the story which is linked above. I've also included some of my less interesting, Fritz really shot an incredible story, images in a slide show above.

Once again, National Geographic comes through with very strong China coverage. What a dream it must be to totally immerse yourself in a project for several weeks, or months, straight. Very envious indeed.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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