PandaPassport.com – China Blog

I don’t talk much about financial news, because – simply put – I just don’t know that shit that well. But here are recent stories that I ran across which will be of interest to anyone investing in Chinese stock.

Warren Buffett warns that Chinese Stock Market is too hot
I’ve noticed a lot of my Chinese friends are turning their attention to buying stock. Warren Buffett reminds us: “We never buy stocks when we see prices soaring,” Mr Buffett said. “We buy stocks because we’re confident of the company’s growth. People should be cautious when they see prices rising.”

Sell China before the Games
And then there’s this dude from Forbes: “I’d recommend that no investor put another dime into high-flying China-based mutual funds, ADRs or ETFs at this time. And if you were smart or lucky enough to invest in China before, you should promptly lock in at least half of your hefty gains.”

And if those two weren’t enough for ya, Techcrunch has a piece simply entitled The China Bubble.

So youtube is banned.

There are gonna be a ton of expats in China looking for alternative ways to waste their time. Fortunately, I consider myself somewhat of an expert in wasting time, and I do have some great recommendations. 5 in total.

Number 1: DailyShow.com

Jon Stewart is great. Until just recently, there was no real decent place to watch him online. Or Stephen Colbert. There’s an ongoing lawsuit between Viacomm and Youtube, due to their videos ending up on where they shouldn’t have. Until now, with the exception of Comedy Central’s site and iFilm.com, there was no place to check them online. Until now. Every Daily Show ever is now archived for your viewing pleasure. DailyShow.com. Gotta love it.

Number 2: 6.cn, Foreign TV shows

If you click on playlist, like so:

And then scroll down to the Overseas Television section, like so:

This will instantly take you to TV heaven. Browse the newest or the hottest laowai TV, depending on the mood you’re in.

Number 3: Real books are for suckers. Try Audio books

Go buy yourself an iPod or some Chinese iPod knockoff, and soak up some edumacation via these audiobook sites – here, here, or here.

Number 4: You prefer radio, do you?

Try iHeard.com, musicovery.com, or Social.fm. Pandora’s a no go for outside the US these days, and you probably know last.fm already.

Number 5: My Silly Tumblr Media Site

You could always try my accumulated tv links, which is good fun as well. When I find stuff, I’ll click a button on my browser and it goes on automatically. I’ll add a few a week. If you’re interested, sign yo’ ass up via RSS.
Update: After much thought, I’ve decided to take this down.

Hope you find at least one of those links useful.

If you know any other neato links, post them in the comments.

Everybody struggles with chopsticks at first. It’s a fact of life. But if you’re one of those people just can’t do it right, no matter how hard you try — well, never fear!

Here are a few tips to help you pimp out your sticks.

How to make Spring Loaded Chopsticks

It’s simple really. And I’m amazed that after 5000 years of history, the Chinese haven’t built this into their design.

Just remove the wooden parts of a clothes-pin, and replace them with two chopsticks. Pure brilliance!

via Howtoons by way of Lifehacker

How to make Spring Loaded Chopsticks, with no dangerous metal parts

But if you’re scared of losing an eye from a possible chopstick kickback, or if you have kids whose eyes are equally valuable, you might want to try this method. It makes use of a rubber band, and a folded-up paper chopstick wrapper acting as a fulcrum.

via Jake Ludington (also by way of Lifehacker)

Need a Case for those Bad Boys?

Try the patented Sinocidal Chopstick Quiver. Now you have a reason to save those old used MacDonalds straws!

If none of that interests you, and you want to go it the old way, go check out:

How to Use Chopsticks in 7 Easy Steps

Or

How many Scooby Doo endings can the Chinese government endure?

Kudos to digg for keeping a story alive that the powers-that-be-in China would like to see dead. This one might have slipped by me otherwise:

All news must be good news, says Chinese government

I’d say that this is shocking news, but well… to be honest, it’s kinda par for the Sino-course.

Here are the highlights from the piece:

• “China has ordered its media to report only positive news.”
• “Media controls have been tightened, Aids activists detained and NGOs shut down.”
• “Chen Shuqing, who is a founder member of the banned China Democracy party, suffered the toughest punishment meted out so far when he was found guilty on Thursday of “inciting people to overthrow the government”. 4 years in the big house. Read more here and here.
• “The domestic media have been banned from conducting independent investigations of food and product safety stories.”
• During the four day Beijing car ban, journalists “can only report on the improvements to the environment and transportation. Interviews with inconvenienced commuters or images of overcrowded buses are forbidden.” More on the car ban here.
• Media is also forbidden to report “on the collapse of a bridge in southern China which killed at least 41 people. Reporters said local officials punched them and chased them from the scene of Monday’s disaster.”

Now if you think all that is somewhat unfair, you may want to consider voting it up further on digg.

I mean, really… The face that China is trying to put on for the world is becoming increasingly transparent, as new media keeps finding innovative ways to circumvent the Chinese censors.

But you gotta admit, these days China’s mask is being torn off a lot more frequently than it used to be.

I think hitting the front page of Digg, as this Guardian article did — well, that certainly counts as an public unmasking in my book.

Just like on Scooby do…

If you thought it was just the toothpaste, think again.

From aptly-named who-sucks.com comes the…

Dangerous Chinese Products Timeline

Some examples:

• Flammable baby clothes
• Razor blades for kids
• Toxic Jesus Fish
• Flaming boomboxes

This list is going to be updated as new Dangerous Chinese Products emerge on the market, so be sure to bookmark it and check back often.

Ryan and Fili have probably done more for the China Blog Scene than anyone else out there. They have similar sites (haohaoreport.com & chinalyst.net), which aggregate the best China-related stories on the net, and allow users to find it all in one stop.

Normally they’d be each others’ most fierce competition. But surprisingly enough these guys have cooperated Bert-and-Ernie style, and have managed to help each other help China Bloggers.

And so it was that they created:

The China Blog Awards

Check out Ryan’s or Fili’s site for an full explanation on how to participate in the nominations and voting.

China Law Blog posted an interesting piece the other day, examining an NBC World Blog article which made this assertion:

China needs to produce businesses that come up with the kind of “path-breaking innovation” that he says begins with technological breakthroughs.

“There isn’t a single innovative Chinese company,” he adds, citing the country’s low rate of patent applications. At last official count, in 2004, China still only filed 2 per cent of the world’s global patent applications. Source

I think to say there’s not even a single innovative Chinese company is going a bit far. But given fact that there are 1.3 billion+ brains out there, and factor in the ammount of money it sinks into research and development — I’m sure China’s not where they want to be right now.

Especially since Japan is sitting at the top of the list of world innovators. And they spent less to get there.

Still, I wouldn’t dare say there’s no innovation in China.

But just when you thought it was safe…

That said, I appear to have become the latest victim of a certain not-so-creative (read: content-stealin’) Chinaman.

• See my Feb 23rd Post: Money Management in China, and in My Country
• Now check this out, from New China, New Chinese: Foreiner (sic) in China? Money Management: in China, and in my Country

Dude, that’s not cool.

Now if I submit my content to an aggregator like Chinalyst, no problem. But I don’t remember giving my consent before this one.

I feel so used and violated!
But oddly enough, there’s a strange sense of post-violation satisfaction as well.

Maybe I should have a smoke…