Another Monday, another edition of links. Maybe we’ll see some of you at the Anthill’s literary rum night at Cu Ju on Wednesday.

2.4 million people affected. “A crude oil leak from a pipeline owned by a unit of China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) is to blame for water contamination that has affected more than 2.4 million people in the Chinese city of Lanzhou, media reported on Saturday. // The official Xinhua news agency cited Yan Zijiang, Lanzhou’s environmental protection chief, as saying that a leak in a pipeline owned by Lanzhou Petrochemical Co., a unit of CNPC, was to blame for the water contamination.” (Reuters)

Political intrigue. “Ever since Communist Party chief Xi Jinping took office, some of his predecessors in China haven’t been shy about making abrupt appearances to send political messages. // Former Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to Hunan earlier this week is no exception, and it demonstrates that there’s not universal support among Xi’s predecessors for his current strategy of Party reform.” (WSJ)

Huge win for Wong Kar Wai. “‘The Grandmaster’ has swept 12 wins at the 33rd Hong Kong Film Awards, including best film, best director, best leading actress and best supporting actor. // The film has broken the record for most wins awarded to a single film at the Awards.” (CRI)

China and Ukraine. “China said on Saturday it backed IMF financial support for Ukraine, but expressed concern about the global lender’s funding capacity given the failure of the U.S. Congress to ratify a program of reforms for the institution. // Chinese Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao told a small group of Western journalists on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank spring meetings in Washington it was a ‘worry’ that more than 85 percent of IMF lending was currently focused on Europe.” (Reuters)

A way to go. “An old man in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, has died after being hit by a model airplane, Zhengzhou Evening News reported on Monday.” (China Daily)

Heck of a crackdown on illegal guns. “China has seized more than 10,000 illegal guns in the southwestern province of Guizhou, state television reported on Sunday, marking its largest haul of illegal firearms as it steps up efforts to crack down on violent crime. // Police in the city of Guiyang seized 10,500 guns and 120,000 forbidden knives, China Central Television said.” (Reuters)

Tragedy on the roads. “Eight children on a school outing were killed when their bus overturned yesterday morning on southern island province Hainan. // Thirty-two other people, including students, a teacher and the driver, were injured.” (Shanghai Daily)

Another environmental protest in China, over building a crematorium in Huazhou, Guangdong: http://t.co/rO7WU9brlu pic.twitter.com/DETFMjJw3n

— Chris Buckley 储百亮 (@ChuBailiang) April 13, 2014

Hong Kong looks pretty awesome from the sky pic.twitter.com/orIUOcvNI4

— Tanya Nagar (@tanya_n) April 7, 2014

Oh man. Lanzhou gov waited nine days to notify citizens that tap water was polluted with benzene, state media reports http://t.co/HWMLNJ8jPK

— Tom Hancock (@hancocktom) April 14, 2014

Zhou Wei’s marvellous images of the people of Nu River, which is being turned to hydro-dams: http://t.co/2OvPIIMGPX pic.twitter.com/VtdPXQD7nl

— Chris Buckley 储百亮 (@ChuBailiang) April 13, 2014

What if @JLin7 was on the Houston Chinamen? Wack. So why Native-Am athletes? #NotYourMascot http://t.co/jhhfav95U4 pic.twitter.com/AELYrEqwLr

— Dat Winning (@DatWinning) April 11, 2014

Mosaic building in Shenyang interlude:

Finally…

“From Savile Row to skinheads, Brit style is the thing for the cool young Chinese.” (The Sunday Times)

“Nightclub act in which a Japanese soldier tries to spear a Chinese girl with his bayonet.” (Reddit)

“Interview with Leta Hong Fincher.” (Shanghaiist)

A song about Dongguan. (The Nanfang)

“Chinese Police Officer Stabbed After Stopping Line Cutting.” (chinaSMACK)

“Burger King’s Poo Poo Smoothie Sounds Disgusting, Is Delicious.” (Kotaku)

Mr. Hyphen 2014. (Angry Asian Man)

A picture of a small child peeing into a bucket inside an Apple Store in Hong Kong has gone viral, hashtagged — what else? — iPee5.

This being the Internet, people are angry, and wildly speculating that the mother probably didn’t wash her hands before, you know, swiping the screens on a bunch of Apple products.

Of course, it’s not just in Hong Kong where this kind of thing happens. It happens in Beijing — and everywhere. In March, a Redditor exposed urine stains on the seats next to the kids table in American Apple outlets. “Pee balls,” they were called.

Anyway, but that’s over there. Here’s a larger picture of the Hong Kong iPeer, via @BadCanto:

And one more… the start of a photoshopping contest?

iPee:

Trying a phone at the Beijing Sanlitun Apple Store, March 28, 2013 (image by Kim Kyung-Hoon for Reuters)

The customer is always right — even in China, Apple CEO Tim Cook has realized that this business mantra is true. The customer is always right, even if they insist on double standards — one for domestic companies, another for foreign — and even if they’re whiny and can’t be trusted.

The customer is always right — so on Monday, Cook, on behalf of Apple, issued an apology to Chinese consumers on its website, after “deep reflection.” “We express our sincerest apologies for any concerns or misunderstandings,” he wrote (translated into Chinese).

“Chinese consumers are always are foremost priority,” he concluded.

It’s because Chinese consumers make Apple a lot of money, of course. But let’s set the cynism aside for a moment. If the apology wasn’t strictly necessary, tweaking the policy is the right thing to do. Specifically, Apple will clarify warranty plans, improve repair services, train service providers and authorized resellers, and open a line of communication with customers.

CCTV may not have delivered its message most elegantly — certainly it could have done without its sloppy and juvenile astroturfing campaign — but it was correct to point out flaws in the world’s most valuable company. If you claim to be the best, you have to maintain best practices; perhaps CCTV only wanted Apple to live up to its reputation.

Cook’s apology is also the best rebuttal he could have given to People’s Daily, which attacked Apple recently for possessing “unparalled arrogance.” Arrogance? Not this company, which has apologized. If Apple didn’t have enough fans in China, it probably gained some more with this display of humility.

Check out the bottom message, posted on Sina Weibo just after 8:30 pm, according to SCMP. Pay especially close attention to the final sentence, bolded for emphasis:

“Apple plays so many tricks with their customer service? I feel hurt as an Apple fan. Have you done right by [Steve] Jobs? Have you done right by boys who sell their kidneys [to buy iphones], he asked, adding: “this is an example of big-name shops bullying customers. To publish around 8.20pm.”

We wonder how much CCTV paid him to do this. He has more than 5.4 million Sina Weibo followers, which means he’s particularly adept at spreading messages — even if they aren’t his.

Unsurprisingly, Ho (@herundong) has claimed he was hacked:

Now it’s me in person. Someone stole my Weibo account and posted the previous Weibo. Will someone tell me what’s going on? This is ridiculous!”

But that absolutely is stupid. He’s claiming that a third party hacked his Sina Weibo account and the best thing they thought of doing was ripping on Apple products while planting a clue that CCTV might have been involved?

Why didn’t Ho just say he wrote a reminder-to-self?

(Also, will someone tell him what’s going on?)

This is relevant because CCTV recently published an expose on consumer rights, and took the bold step of criticizing Apple. Met only lukewarmly, CCTV apparently has begun its own viral campaign to make it seem like the public is on their side. But netizens have sniffed it out. Ho’s claim to being hacked has been forwarded more than 100,000 times since he posted it on Friday night, and most of the 17,000 comments are critical of him.

Apple, for its part, hasn’t fashioned much of a response.

On Saturday morning, Apple also posted on Weibo, using the now famous #8.20# hashtag, a comparison of the different return policies of Apple, Samsung, Nokia and Lenovo phones. 

“You can tell the good from the bad easily,” its Weibo post said.

Attacking Apple backfires for CCTV (SCMP, h/t Steven W. )

(Qilai Shen/Bloomberg)

Foxconn workers who make the iPhone and other hi-tech products have been in a great number of headlines over the past few years without eliciting change. But when fights between workers and management broke out and paralyzed assembly lines in Zhengzhou last year, Chinese authorities started looking for solutions to the constant disputes. According to the Financial Times:

 “[The government is] likely worried about industrial unrest. It’s clear they want to get workers [away from protesting in] the courtyard and to the negotiating table,” says Auret van Heerden, chief executive of the Fair Labor Association, the US-based group working with Apple and assessing working conditions at Foxconn. “It appears the Chinese government is more and more concerned that [official] unions have been asleep at the switch.”

One idea now being floated is to allow Foxconn workers democratically elect their own union leaders. The FT article continues:

Foxconn is paving the way for the first-ever competitive union elections among its 1.2m workers, alongside the Chinese government’s push for collective bargaining and wider worker representation.

Obviously this is unusual in China, which already has an official nationwide labor union. But the All-China Federation of Trade Union is a top-down organization run by the government without the independence needed to be effective. According to NPR:

Labor unions technically do exist in Chinese factories, but they’re typically controlled by management and the government. So a union run by democratic vote of the workers would be a huge shift.

Why would the Chinese government be behind such a surprising move? FT:

The trigger was a strike at Honda’s plants in southern China in the summer of 2010 that highlighted the problem of having a union allied with management. During the strike, young workers jeered at and scuffled with ACFTU leaders, saying they had never seen them before. Since then, local governments in southern China have been pushing companies to hold genuine union elections. The Shenzhen municipal government was first in early 2012, followed last month [January] by Guangzhou.

Foxconn wouldn’t be the first company in Shenzhen to elect their own leaders.

At Ohms Electronics (Shenzhen), a small affiliate of Panasonic, workers directly elected their union leadership for the first time last May. “Their vote deserved being called democratic, but that’s really the only example we know of,” says Cheng Yiyi from Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, a Hong Kong-based labor rights group.

These are extraordinary developments in a country without a democratic tradition, so progress will likely be uneven and gradual, if not altogether slow.

People involved in the preparations say that simply educating staff about how the vote will work, what their rights are and what the responsibilities of the resulting union committees are will be a huge challenge. Reaching all its employees may take longer than the 13 months the average production worker stays at the company.

Nevertheless, the hope is that the restless workers at Foxconn are beginning to make their voices heard and are leveraging their position as makers of the world’s most popular product into real social change.

China wary amid push for workers’ union poll (Financial Times)

MacRumors (via Bloomberg) is reporting that Apple has introduced a payment plan allowing buyers to purchase Apple products on three-month to two-year plans on products that cost between 300 and 30,000 RMB (basically everything).

At this point, looking at the plan, it seems that one must have a Merchants Bank credit card to take advantage of the credit system, but I get the impression that the option will eventually open to customers of other banks. Also, if you start the payment plan before January 23, there will be no service fee on contracts between 3 and 12 months.

This a very interesting development, seeing as how reports last year all highlighted Apple’s sliding market share, especially against Samsung. Under Steve Jobs, Apple was never about being No. 1 in market share, so these figures from were not ground-shaking. That being said, this recent move is Apple’s obvious attempt to expand presence in the Chinese smartphone market by making its products easier to purchase for anyone and everyone.

Apple has never been afraid of cannibalizing its products, but I do have to wonder if it will be shooting themselves in the foot with a wider consumer base. Apple products remain a luxury item (and thus give status to those who own them) based on their price. As we saw with the cheaper iPhone rumors, Chinese people were hoping that version would look different, so that “real” iPhones would retain their status symbol and prevent scalpers from taking advantage of the price difference.

Personally speaking, as a guy with two kids, a healthy love of technology, and no pretensions of keeping up appearances, this finally means we can get that Mac without breaking the bank. For image-conscious Chinese consumers, the verdict is still out on whether this is a good thing.

John Artman has been China watching and covering tech since 2010. Follow him @KnowsNothing.

“Customer response to iPhone 5 in China has been incredible, setting a new record with the best first weekend sales ever in China,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “China is a very important market for us and customers there cannot wait to get their hands on Apple products.”

And yet, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt probably isn’t taking back his words from a Bloomberg interview last week:

“This is a huge platform change; this is of the scale of 20 years ago — Microsoft versus Apple,” he said. “We’re winning that war pretty clearly now.”

That reason: China. It sure helps, anyway. In second- and third-tier cities here, Apple devices are overwhelmingly outnumbered by smartphones running android. Reports Android Central:

We saw the 33-percent of all Android devices sold in 2012 we in China, but — and this is a big but — only 59-percent of those were using an “authentic” build of Android and use Google’s services. That means that a full 41-percent of the zillions of Android phones sold in China aren’t getting counted in activation numbers or that monthly OS chart we see from Google. They are phones running customized version, from the likes of Baidu or Alibaba. Let’s get out our wizard hats and do a little math.

• There are approximately 1.5 million Android devices activated every single day.
• A full third of that would be 500,000 phones and tablets.
• 59-percent of that total would be 295,000.

We’re guessing Apple isn’t crying over lost profit. It has a very successful line of other products, notably the tablet, and, well, it is the most valuable company in the world by some metrics.

Still — Android has reason to be feeling pretty good.

A Chinese national trying to buy iPhones in Nashua, New Hampshire was tasered outside an Apple Store last Friday. A cell phone video shows 44-year-old Li Xiaojie being held to the ground before police knocked her unconscious with tasers.

Her 12-year-old daughter was with her.

Li was at Pheasant Lane Mall to buy her third and fourth iPhones, after she had purchased two the previous day. She said it was for family in China. The store wouldn’t let her, and when she began filming customers allegedly buying multiple iPhones, the cops were called in. She was carrying more than $16,000 in cash.

As for the aftermath of the attack, New Hampshire’s Union Leader reports:

“Her brain went totally blank,” said [Dave] Chen, [Li's uncle,] who owns Thousand Crane II restaurant in Nashua. “She didn’t understand what happened.”

“She’s never been treated like this,” he said Thursday. “She feels so ashamed. It’s a nightmare for the rest of her life.”

Shoppers at the Pheasant Lane Mall videotaped the incident, in which Officers John Murphy and Joseph Rousseau struggled to arrest Li. According to police, 15 minutes passed from the time she was asked to leave the store and when the taser was used.

A worker at the Invisible Shield Kiosk, which sits directly across from the Apple store, said it’s common for people to purchase large quantities of Apple products in tax-free New Hampshire and resell them at a profit.

“These re-sellers are known to buy out hundreds of thousands, if not millions worth of dollars in Apple merchandise,” the man said. “It is the sole reason as to why they have police details in the Apple store to begin with.”

The family really wanted those iPhones though.

But after picking her up at the police station, he said he drove to the mall with Li and attempted to get the phones himself and was denied.

Was this a case of discrimination — the Apple store singling out the Chinese woman for buying multiple iPhones — or were the police right use force to deal with an unruly civilian?

One thing’s for sure: enforcement officers in China and the US are very different. As Hidden Harmonies notes:

Chinese visitors to the U.S. have no clue how merciless law enforcement can be in this country. It is totally different than in China where citizens often can get away with screaming and yelling at the police!

A week after the incident — today, that is — iPhone 5s were released in mainland China. In Beijing, it was “arguably the least eventful launch of an Apple device in the company’s four-year history in the Chinese capital,” according to Wall Street Journal.

Collage via MIC Gadget

This story made us chuckle. Via Global Times:

According to a report on the Taiwan-based NOWnews website, the man surnamed Luo, 27, is an engineer in Hsinchu, and the woman surnamed Lin, 21, lives in New Taipei City. // Luo and Lin became acquainted in an Internet chat room at the end of last year. // In February, Lin went to Hsinchu to pray, and Luo accompanied her on her visit. // Lin told Luo that her phone was being repaired, and Luo gave her his second-hand iPhone 4 to use. // Lin said she would return the phone after one week, when her phone was returned to her.

But after one week, Lin gave an excuse that she had to go to southern Taiwan and did not return his phone. // The man later sent Lin messages inquiring about his phone.

Lin replied, “Do you ask me to return your apple?” Luo responded, “Yes.”

Three months later, Luo received four apples from Lin.

So funny. Apples… because Apple makes the iPhone! Teehee.

Not so funny if you just lost an iPhone, however. More like infuriating, probably.

(H/T Alicia)

Truth. But it raises a classic question:

Money or sense, which would you rather?

(H/T David B.)

Has unrest again hit Foxconn? New York-based advocacy group China Labor Watch reports that yesterday at about 1 pm in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, “three to four thousand production workers” went on strike after Foxconn demanded they work holidays and “raised overly strict demands on product quality without providing worker training for the corresponding skills.”

The majority of workers who participated in this strike were workers from the OQC (onsite quality control) line. According to workers, multiple iPhone 5 production lines from various factory buildings were in a state of paralysis for the entire day.  It was reported that factory management and Apple, despite design defects, raised strict quality demands on workers, including indentations standards of 0.02mm and demands related to scratches on frames and back covers. With such demands, employees could not even turn out iPhones that met the standard. This led to a tremendous amount of pressure on workers. On top of this, they were not permitted to have a vacation during the holiday. This combination of factors led to the strike.

The story has been picked up by several English-language outlets, because Foxconn is one of the only Chinese factories (the only?) Western readers recognize. But Chinese news sites have reported this as well, notably Sohu Business and Sina (from which the above picture comes), which leads one to believe that if not quite a strike, there was a work stoppage — a rare display of worker solidarity. There’s risk in assuming too much, though, so we’ll stop.

Foxconn, for its part, denies there was any strike:

But Foxconn Technology Group, which has its headquarters in Taiwan, denied the report and said the plant suffered only two brief and small disputes several days earlier.

“Any reports that there has been an employee strike are inaccurate,” the company said in an emailed statement, adding that “there has been no workplace stoppage in that facility or any other Foxconn facility and production has continued on schedule.”

Updates as they become available. For now, here’s the entire China Labor Watch press release:

(New York) China Labor Watch (CLW) announced that at 1:00PM on October 5 (Beijing time), a strike occurred at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory that, according to workers, involved three to four thousand production workers. In addition to demanding that workers work during the holiday, Foxconn raised overly strict demands on product quality without providing worker training for the corresponding skills. This led to workers turning out products that did not meet standards and ultimately put a tremendous amount of pressure on workers. Additionally, quality control inspectors fell into to conflicts with workers and were beat up multiple times by workers. Factory management turned a deaf ear to complaints about these conflicts and took no corrective measures. The result of both of these circumstances was a widespread work stoppage on the factory floor among workers and inspectors.

The majority of workers who participated in this strike were workers from the OQC (onsite quality control) line. According to workers, multiple iPhone 5 production lines from various factory buildings were in a state of paralysis for the entire day.  It was reported that factory management and Apple, despite design defects, raised strict quality demands on workers, including indentations standards of 0.02mm and demands related to scratches on frames and back covers. With such demands, employees could not even turn out iPhones that met the standard. This led to a tremendous amount of pressure on workers. On top of this, they were not permitted to have a vacation during the holiday. This combination of factors led to the strike.

That quality control inspectors would also strike is of no surprise. According to workers, there was a fight between workers and quality control inspectors in area K that led to the damage in inspection room CA, the injury of some people, and the hospitalization of others. After this, another similar incident occurred in area K, once again leading to quality control inspectors getting beat up. Yesterday, inspectors in area L received physical threats. When inspectors reported these issues to factory management, the management simply ignored and turned their back on the issue. For these reasons, all day and night shift inspectors carried out a work stoppage today that paralyzed the production lines.

CLW Executive Director Li Qiang said, “This strike is a result of the fact that these workers just have too much pressure.”

(H/T Gizmodo via Alicia)

I know it can be difficult sometimes to click on a 15-minute video, but this TEDTalk is both timely and worth it — timely because Apple held its iPhone 5 unveiling yesterday in San Francisco, and worth it because Leslie T. Chang is awesome. She’s best known for Factory Girls, by far the best book I’ve encountered about the people — the actual people — who live and work in the factories that churn out much of the world’s retail goods. During the peak of the Mike Daisey debacle, I kept waiting for Chang to pop up in an article or an op-ed page to bury Daisey, but now I realize that she never should deign to address such a lesser work. (CORRECTION: She did write something; see also: Daisey’s response in comments.)

Be sure to catch the Q-and-A at the end of this. Here’s a quick excerpt from the early parts: “By focusing so much on ourselves and our gadgets, we have rendered the individuals on the other end into invisibility, as tiny and interchangeable as the parts of a mobile phone. Chinese workers are not forced into factories because of our insatiable desire for iPods. They choose to leave their homes in order to earn money, to learn new skills, and to see the world. In the ongoing debate about globalization, what’s been missing is the voices of the workers themselves. Here are a few…” Youku video for those in China in the morning, when the censors wake up and get around to approving this after the jump.

Alicia saw this on Global Times today, a picture by CFP captioned: “A boy shows his Apple haircut at West Lake in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province on Saturday.”

Must be nice to be that kid: didn’t do a thing, got into Global Times. But that’s how it is with toddlers, isn’t it? They usually don’t need to say the darndest word to get your attention. Just witness:

(Note: some of these may not be strictly Chinese, but most are.)

They said I could be anything, so I became a lotus leaf. (China Daily / Reuters via Buzzfeed)

Via Buzzfeed

Via Buzzfeed`

Via srslycuteasianbabies.tumblr.com

Via tinyurl.com/76c4ws5

Via tinyurl.com/2gkoyd

Via tinyurl.com/776gmv5

Via tinyurl.com/89pwe33

C’mon, guys, that apple is totally not being forced to perform a degrading act on that robot. How could you possibly…

Never mind.

(H/T MIC Gadget)

Alert: If you’re a musician who knows how to play the guzheng, you should make a video, because it’ll have a very good chance of going viral. First there was the Adele cover, followed by the Titanic theme song, then that “cultured Chengdu guard.” Now? Just a traditional Chinese guzheng song… on iPads.

You can buy the App for $2.99.

(H/T MIC Gadget)