Ryan Pyle Blog: New Work - NYT - GAP in Shanghai

Hello,

I just wanted to direct your attention to some new work. The GAP has opened up a store in Shanghai and I covered the story for the New York Times. It wasn't as exciting as my motorcycle adventure around China, but it's great to be back taking pictures again. Can't wait to get back in to my photography career.

New York Times Story - GAP opens in Shanghai.

A special thanks to all my clients who wished me luck on my motorcycle ride, and thanks for giving me a chance to continue working for you as we move forward.

Cheers,

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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: Honda Workers Strike, and the NYT

Hello.

A few days back there was a workers strike at a Honda car manufacturing plant in southern China. This occurred in late May. Of course thousands of news stories rushed to cover the news, and there was much mis-represented of what was really happening on the ground.

Enter Keith Bradsher and David Barboza. If you don't know who they are, all you need to know is that they are two of the best. Keith and David, both whom I've worked with and have a lot of respect for, are Business correspondents for the New York Times. And they co-wrote an article towards the end of May that I believe cut through and delivered the hard facts about what was happening at the Honda plant in southern China; a story that delivered news and facts that went well beyond that of the other publications.

A few points to keep in mind:

1) Yes, there is a workers union in China. It is considered to be an arm of the Communist Party and is mainly in charge of watching over workers not bargaining with companies for better working conditions. There are no explicit rules about striking.

2) It's true. Nothing in China is allowed to happen without the blessing of The Party. This strike may have first occurred on whim, but it continued because people high up in the food chain thought it was a decent move. Reasons why might include: that it is time for China's manufacturing migrants to earn more income and become part of the consumer economy; that it is time for China's manufacturing class to obtain better working conditions and better workers rights; that China needs to maintain awareness that the gap is growing between the rich and poor; the recent suicides at Foxconn might end up driving home the point that migrant workers in the manufacturing industry are vulnerable and need further employment protection through government regulation; and lastly that Honda is a Japanese company. Had this strike occurred at a GM or VW Joint Venture you can bet it would have been shut down in a matter of moments. There is a still a lot of personal, and government driven, anti-Japanese feelings throughout China.

3) The most interesting point is that this was allowed to carry on for several days. Meaning that there was debate amongst the top leaders about how to address the situation. We are seeing this more often in China; where the leadership is forced to make quick decisions about situations occurring (riots in Tibet / Xinjiang, or workers strikes) and the government goes very quiet, and local officials go in to hiding until they get their directions from higher up the food chain. One of the common mis-conceptions is that the Communist Party is a homogeneous one party entity where people all agree on the same basic plan for country development; well, that couldn't be further from the truth. The "Party" is a mix-mash of people with a mix-mash of ideas and ideals. A friend of mine who has a lot of government dealings told me that for every person in the government leadership who wants China to develop in to a modern economic global powerhouse, there is another person who wants to drive China back in to the Communist dark ages of the 1960s. While I don't know if that's exactly true, it does pose an interesting argument and can be used as a basis for understanding some of the "ying and yang" policy moves that the Chinese leadership continues to pull out of their hat.

The story by Keith and David is below. The link to the original story online is just below. Enjoy the read.

LINK to Original STORY.
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May 28, 2010
Strike in China Highlights Gap in Workers’ Pay

By KEITH BRADSHER and DAVID BARBOZA

FOSHAN, China — After years of being pushed to work 12-hour days, six days a week on monotonous low-wage assembly line tasks, China’s workers are starting to push back.

A strike at an enormous Honda transmission factory here in southeastern China has suddenly and unexpectedly turned into a symbol of this nation’s struggle with income inequality, rising inflation and soaring property prices that have put home ownership beyond the reach of all but the most affluent.

And perhaps most remarkably, Chinese authorities let the strike happen — up to a point.

In the kind of scene that more often plays out at strikes in America than at labor actions in China, print and television reporters from state-controlled media across the country have started covering the walkout here, even waiting outside the nearly deserted front gate on Thursday and Friday in hope of any news. All the Chinese reporters disappeared on Saturday morning, however, as the government, apparently nervous, suddenly imposed without explanation a blanket ban on domestic media coverage of the strike.

A worker at a factory dormitory said on Saturday afternoon that the strike continued, and police were nowhere in sight at the factory or the dormitory. The authorities have been leery of letting the media report on labor disputes, fearing that it could encourage workers elsewhere to rebel. The new permissiveness, however temporary, coincides with growing sentiment among some officials and economists that Chinese workers deserve higher wages for their role in the country’s global export machine.

And without higher incomes, hundreds of millions of Chinese will be unable to play their part in the domestic consumer spending boom on which this nation hopes to base its next round of economic growth.

“This is all because there is a major political debate going on about how to deal with the nation’s growing income gap, and the need to do something about wages,” said Andreas Lauffs, a lawyer at Baker & McKenzie who specializes in Chinese labor issues.

If wages do rise, that could bring higher prices for Western consumers for goods as diverse as toys at Wal-Mart and iPads from Apple.

The Chinese media may also have found it a little easier, politically, to cover this strike because Honda is a Japanese company, and anti-Japanese sentiment still simmers in China as a legacy of World War II. Certainly, the strike is hitting Honda hard, as the resulting shortage of transmissions and other engine parts has forced the company to halt production at all four of its assembly plants in China.

Honda has an annual capacity of 650,000 cars and minivans in China, like Jazz subcompacts for export to Europe and Accord sedans for the Chinese market. Because Honda’s prices in China are similar to what it charges in the United States, the cars tend to be far out of reach financially for most of the workers who make them.

A Honda spokeswoman declined to discuss specific issues in the strike negotiations.

The intense media coverage may evoke historical memories of the 1980 shipyard strike in Gdansk, Poland, that gave rise to the Solidarity movement and paved the way for the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. But the reality here is much different.

Instead of tens of thousands of grizzled and angry shipyard workers, the Honda strike involves about 1,900 mostly cheerful young people. And the employees interviewed say their goal is more money, not a larger political agenda.

“If they give us 800 renminbi a month, we’ll go back to work right away,” said one young man, describing a pay increase that would add about $117 a month to an average pay that is now around $150 monthly. He said he had read on the Internet of considerably higher wages at other factories in China and expected Honda to match them with an immediate pay increase.

Many workers at other factories in southeastern China already earn $300 a month, but they do so only through considerable overtime. And even that higher income is not enough to embark on the middle-class dream in China of owning a small apartment and subcompact car. Officially, though, the government is discouraging heavy reliance on overtime, and workers here said that Honda was not assigning much.

The strikers said that Honda mainly hired recent graduates of high schools or vocational schools. And so, most are in their late teens or early 20s, representing a new generation of employees, many of whom had not been born when the Chinese authorities suppressed protests by students and workers in Tiananmen Square in 1989 — a watershed event whose 21st anniversary falls next Friday.

The profile of striking workers seems to run more along the lines of slightly bookish would-be engineers — perhaps without the grades or money to attend college — rather than political activists. Besides their low wages, the workers seem focused on issues like the factory’s air-conditioning not being cool enough, and the unfairness of having to rise from their dormitories as early as 5:30 for a 7 a.m. shift.

Workers said that in addition to their pay, they also received free lodging in rooms that slept four to six in bunk beds. They also get free lunches, subsidized breakfasts for the equivalent of 30 cents and dinners for about $1.50.

The striking employees said that some senior workers, known as team leaders, had allied themselves with management. But they insisted that the rank-and-file workers were solidly in favor of walkout — a claim impossible to verify.

Although China is run by the Communist Party and has state-controlled unions, the unions are largely charged with overseeing workers, not bargaining for higher wages or pressing for improved labor conditions. And they are not allowed to strike, although China’s laws do not have explicit prohibitions against doing so.

Workers at the Honda factory dormitory said that the official union at the factory was not representing them but was serving as an intermediary between them and management. Li Jianming, the national spokesman for the All China Federation of Trade Unions, declined to comment.

The workers here have been on strike since May 21, with no resolution in sight. But the strike did not come to broader notice until Thursday and Friday as Japanese media began reporting the shutdown of Honda assembly plants, and as Chinese media and Internet sites were allowed to report extensively on those activities.

The unusually permissive approach of the authorities toward media coverage of the strike follows a decision to tolerate extensive coverage this month of suicides by workers at the Taiwanese-owned Foxconn factory complex in nearby Shenzhen that supplies Apple and Hewlett-Packard.

The official China Daily newspaper ran a lead editorial on Friday that cited the Honda strike as evidence that government inaction on wages might be fueling tensions between workers and employers. The editorial criticized the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security for not moving faster to draft a promised amendment to current wage regulations because of what the newspaper described as opposition from employers.

Zheng Qiao, the associate director of the department of employment relations at the China Institute of Industrial Relations in Beijing, said the strike was a significant development in China’s labor relations history and that “such a large-scale, organized strike will force China’s labor union system to change, to adapt to the market economy.”

Keith Bradsher reported from Foshan, China, and David Barboza from Shanghai. Bao Beibei contributed research.
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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: Market Defies Fear of Real Estate Bubble in China

Hello,

I just wanted to blog about some new work that I've produced with the New York Times. David Barboza, one of my frequent collaborators wrote a great story about China's property bubble. To say the property market is hot is a vast understatement.

See below for the entire story.

Copywrite: New York Times
Original Link: CLICK HERE
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Market Defies Fear of Real Estate Bubble in China
By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — The spacious duplex comes with crocodile-skin bedposts, hand-carved bronze doors inlaid with Swarovski crystals — and a $45 million price tag.

It is still on the market, but Charles Tong, the developer of Tomson Riviera, a luxury riverfront complex in the heart of the financial district here, says he is having no trouble finding takers for similarly priced units.

“We’re selling three to four apartments every month,” said Mr. Tong, seated in a white Versace easy chair. “Now, people here want something more luxurious; they’d like a new lifestyle.”

Everyone agrees China is in the middle of a spectacular real estate boom. The question is whether it is in the middle of a rapidly growing real estate bubble.

When other recent booms collapsed — in the United States, for instance — they depressed entire economies. In China’s case, a bursting bubble could affect much of the world. China is the fastest-growing large economy and, so far, a main engine pulling the world out of recession.

Beijing is clearly concerned. Authorities have recently moved to rein in the easy credit that has helped finance China’s hyperdevelopment, including making it more difficult for home buyers to take out a second mortgage.

Last year, a record $560 billion of residential property was sold in China, an increase of 80 percent from the year before, according to government statistics that are widely considered reliable. And with prices soaring, developers are scrambling to build more mansions, villas and high-rise apartments with names like Rich Gate, Park Avenue and Palais de Fortune.

Signs of exuberance are everywhere. An investor in Shanghai recently bought 54 apartments in a single day; a villa sold for $30 million last year; and in December a consortium of developers paid more than $3.5 billion for a huge tract of land in Guangzhou, one of the highest prices paid for any property, anywhere. In the city of Tianjin, in north China, developers have created a $3 billion “floating city,” a series of islands built on a natural reservoir, featuring villas, shopping malls, a water amusement park and what they say will be the world’s largest indoor ski resort.

“This is wild,” said Andy Xie, a former Morgan Stanley economist who is now an independent analyst. “By all the traditional measures, like rental yield, this is a bubble.”

Speculators are snapping up properties on the expectation that prices will continue to rise, as prices have nearly every year for more than a decade. And powerful developers are working with local governments to transform old cities into urban dreamscapes.

But Shanghai, China’s wealthiest and most dazzling city, is the epicenter of the boom. Prices here have risen more than 150 percent since 2003, pushing the price of a typical 1,100-square-foot apartment up to $200,000, according to real estate experts. (Shanghai residents typically earn less than $5,000 a year.)

A buying frenzy has gripped the city, leading to billion-dollar land auctions and long waiting lists.

“The speed you buy a house here is faster than you buy vegetables,” said Andy Xiang, an advertising executive who recently put down a large cash down payment to get the right to pay $1.3 million for apartment in the city’s exclusive Xintiandi area.

Few residences, though, are as upscale as Tomson Riviera, which consists of four golden-hued towers overlooking the Huangpu River, with a central garden mapped out in the shape of a dragon. The apartment complex’s entrance has original artworks by Salvador Dalí and well-known Chinese artists. The apartments, a few of which have been decorated by Armani and Fendi, as well as Versace, lease for $7,000 to $17,000 a month — to high-level executives from companies like General Motors.

Those who buy an apartment here tend to be extremely wealthy, like Liu Yiqian, an eccentric Shanghai entrepreneur whom Forbes magazine says is worth about $540 million.

Mr. Liu, 47, got his start driving a taxicab in Shanghai but eventually made a fortune investing in the stock market. In an interview this week, he admitted to owning “hundreds” of apartments in Shanghai (he said he could not remember exactly how many), including a 6,000-square-foot apartment in Tomson Riviera, which he bought in 2008 for about $11.5 million.

“I invest in properties,” Mr. Liu said, noting that he also collects art, antiques and jade. “I think in Shanghai in five to seven years the real estate prices will be even higher.”

As they try to modulate the market, local and central governments here are walking a thin line. Land sales were a major source of government revenue, raising about $234 billion last year, an amount equal to over a third of the cost of China’s half-trillion-dollar stimulus program.

Whether the country is in the middle of a bubble has become the subject of a debate. Some economists, like Nicholas R. Lardy at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, say the housing boom is being fueled by a huge urbanization push that is creating premium-priced houses.

Other analysts say prices are being propped up by greedy developers and government policies that are making housing increasingly unaffordable for the masses migrating to big cities.

Despite the fear of a bubble here, Mr. Tong, 38, said his prices were just right, particularly because of so much hidden wealth in China. The publicly listed company is controlled by his family.

“I have a friend,” he said. “She makes maternity clothes. Her company has 20 percent of the world’s market share, and they’re not even a listed company.”

Still, Tomson’s prices are soaring. The most recent apartment sold for about $2,300 a square foot. The average luxury apartment in Manhattan sold for just under $1,900 a square foot in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to Prudential Douglas Elliman real estate.

Indeed, for the price of a Tomson apartment in Shanghai, a buyer could easily purchase a 6,000- square-foot home in Los Angeles built by Frank Lloyd Wright and now for sale ($10.5 million), or a 52-acre site with a 22-room residence in New Canaan, Conn. ($24 million).

But a sales agent at Tomson Riviera says this the future financial capital of the world, not the dying one.

“Look at this bronze door,” said Wang Yaodong. “That costs $50,000! Look at these Gaggenau appliances. They were made in Germany.” The glasses were imported from Belgium, the Jacuzzi from Italy. And don’t worry about losing your key, he said, “This lock can read the palm of your hand.”
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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________

Ryan Pyle Blog: Forced Evictions & Beatings

Hello.

This is an a story that happens entirely too often, but it doesn't always have a chance to make the news. Apparently, according to the New York Times, thugs were sent in to "remove by force" residents, many of which are artists, that were set to be evicted from their homes in northern Beijing. After getting beaten up they were all arrested in an attempt, the following day, to march in to central Beijing in protest. Once again, dignity is stamped on in the face of development. The full article is below, but first a bit of commentary.

In China, money talks. And it never matters which side of the money question you are on. For example, decades ago artists were lured out of the city center to the remote sections of northern Beijing to create "Artist Villages". These villages were the breeding grounds in the 1980s for many of China's most successful and influential artists as the rent was cheap and there was a lot of collective creativity and collaboration. But more importantly the artists were given long term leases (money talking), some up to 30 years, on their properties and some invested huge amounts to create their dream studios and galleries. To anyone that has been out there, and I have been several times to several of the more remote artist districts, the region has been transformed by the artists. Now, however, the money is talking again.

The Government loves to sell land; especially in the midst of insane property valuations. The Government owns the land, and apparently property rights, leases, contract rights and legal rights don't mean a damn thing. So if the government can offload a huge parcel of land to a property developer for a large sum of money, whether people are still living there or not, they'll do it in a heartbeat. Development, and revenue creation, at all costs.

So this artist village has been sold off to a big property developer who wants to raze the whole place and put up more non-desrcript high rise apartments. The problem is the land is inhabited. And instead of paying people compensation to move, the government and their developer buddies often like to use force and intimidation - and why not when you can get away with a media black out and no legal action against you. The problem is, and this is why the foreign media has an important role in China, is that this kind of heavy handed behavior is exactly what many of Beijing's elite officials don't want outsiders to see. They don't want people in the west, who are keen to invest in China, to see that China is still a country of thugs and money hungry developers that don't mind whacking a few skulls to move things along quickly.

In many parts of the country, even in Beijing and Shanghai, business rules are still defined by a system of "village rules". This country has a lot of problems that it doesn't seem to be ready to address; one specifically being that government officials have little or no respect for the rights of the people they are supposed to be working for, that being the average Chinese inhabitant; I wouldn't dare use a term like citizen, as that would imply a certain level of respect and rights. Government leaders need to remember that their sole role in life is not to great wealth for themselves. Holding a position in government is about serving the people, not beating them with pipes so you can get a big bonus from a property developer. China has 1.3 billion people, and they deserve a high level of service. Is that need being met? I'll leave it up to you to decide. But the corruption that exists in China at every level, and this case wreaks of property developer and local official collaboration, is a prime example of how impossible it is to draw the line between where big business stops and the government begins. And the little man will always get stomped out.

I worked on a story about this with TIME magazine back a few years ago where Bamboo farmers lost their land to a bunch of government officials who wanted to build a hotel and karaoke bar on their land. The same thing happened, no notice. No compensation. No settlement. Just sticks, pipes and beatings. The only difference was that the story I worked on was in a remote part of Jiangsu province. Today it is in Beijing. Scary times. Full story is below.

Time Magazine Story: China's Fighting Farmers

Copywrite: New York Times
LINK to Original Story: LINK
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February 24, 2010
Beijing Police Beat Artists Protesting Evictions

By ANDREW JACOBS
BEIJING — Nearly two dozen artists protesting the forced demolition of their homes and studios marched through the ceremonial heart of the capital before the police intervened and prevented them from reaching Tiananmen Square, the artists said Tuesday.

The protesters said they decided to take to the streets on Monday hours after scores of masked men swinging iron rods swarmed over their community on the northern edge of the city, which has been resisting redevelopment.

Wu Yuren, 39, a photographer and installation artist who was among those who were attacked, said six artists were sent to the hospital with minor injuries. He said the attackers, about 100 men wearing white face masks, had been sent by developers who wanted to clear the area for a large-scale residential project.

“They didn’t say a single word,” Mr. Wu said. “They just started beating us.” The police, he added, did not arrive for an hour and then sat in their patrol car until the attackers fled.

Another of those beaten, Satoshi Iwama, said he received five stitches after a blow to the head.

Although protests against forced evictions have become increasingly common in China, the aggrieved rarely succeed in venting their complaints on Chang’an Avenue, the heavily policed artery that passes in front of the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and Zhongnanhai, the residential compound of China’s top leaders.

Ai Weiwei, an artist and dissident who joined the demonstration, sent out a spate of Twitter messages detailing the march, which he said made it only about 500 yards before the police intervened.

“It was instinctive,” he said of the decision to protest. “We made a lot of noise, and I think we had a big impact.”

It is unclear whether the protest will force any action against the masked attackers or alter the course of development that threatens at least 10 clusters of studios where artists live and work on the fringes of the city. The clusters, called “artist villages,” house as many as 1,000 painters, sculptors and performance artists.

For two adjacent art districts that were the scene of the early morning protest, known as Zheng Yang and 008, it may be too late. In November, the developer cut off electricity and water, and most of the buildings have already been destroyed.

Xiao Ge, a curator who helped organize a roving performance last month to draw attention to the evictions, said the developers gave most tenants a week to move out.

Many artists are furious because they were lured to the villages with long-term leases — some for nearly 20 years — and encouraged to invest their life savings in renovations. Gao Qiang, a furniture designer who moved to Zheng Yang last August, said he spent almost $12,000 to fix up his studio after he was given a three-year lease. Although he is angry that he will lose most of his investment, he and other artists say they are most concerned about bullying from developers and, at best, the apathy from the authorities.

“It is not an issue of money, it is an issue of dignity,” said Mr. Gao, 38. He added that on Tuesday, the police told the artists that they would provide better security and try to reconnect severed utilities.

The police declined to comment.

The fight over the future of Beijing’s artist villages coincides with soaring real estate values and ugly scuffles over land expropriation, several of which have led to the suicides of those facing eviction. Widely publicized in the media, the suicides have helped prompt the government to consider modifying the nation’s urban redevelopment regulations.

Even if the proposed reforms, which would provide market-rate compensation for property owners and outlaw coercive evictions, are adopted, it is unlikely that they will help Beijing’s artists. Many artists live in officially designated rural areas, which are not covered by the measures.

Berenice Angremy, who has been a curator and art consultant in Beijing for the past eight years, said the repeated dislocations had been devastating to artists, both financially and psychologically.

“The government is trying to make Beijing a great cultural city, but without artists, it’s not going to happen,” she said.
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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: Photographer Danny Lyon

Hello.

I feel a bit naive for only having been introduced to Danny Lyon's work about a year ago. But a recent New York Times article (which can be found HERE) sheds light on a photographer who "stubbornly practices his principles". If you read on, he basically comes across as a hard nose photographer who bends for no one; and I love that.

Danny's work, at the time was perceived as "new photojournalism"; the key was he aimed his camera at people and situations people often didn't want to see. He focused on life in prison, motorcycle gangs, the poor, people who lived in the inner city. It was, in his eyes, an attempt to document the real USA, to expose humanity.

Self confessed to being "Pretty uncompromising and not very commercial", I think he is representative of a lot of idealistic photographers who work on non-commercial projects because they feel that these stories are important to tell. I myself have been engaged in a whole series of projects in China, and India, that have never seen the light of day; but even knowing that I would still have done everything the same. Some stories need to be told. Some situations need to be witnessed, exposed, discussed and publicized in order to be better understood.

One of the great quotes to come out of this article is when Danny says: “You put a camera in my hand, I want to get close to people, not just physically close, emotionally close, all of it. It’s part of the process." I really love that, and it's true. There is a real bond between photographer and subject, on that I often strive for in much of my work as well.

Danny doesn't have a website with all this work available but if you do a google search you'll come across enough galleries and educational establishments that have links to his incredible collection of work.

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