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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘India’
29.11.2021

My Meizu M6 Note has had to be retired, due to an expanding battery, something which I probably shouldnāt have tolerated for so long (it began happening months ago). I only made the call to stop using it last week after the volume buttons could no longer function, and I probably should have stopped earlier still* as it would have been easier to get the SIM and micro SD cards out!
My original plan was to go slightly newer and opt for a Note 9, and I had located a vendor on Aliexpress who was prepared to send it to me with the Chinese Flyme OS installed. But my sense is that Meizu is now past its prime, and everything seems to be shutting down.
I had been logging into the app store daily for over a year to earn points, but Meizu informed us that it would cease to record log-ins, and we had to redeem what we could by January. Its now-useless default music app Iāve already blogged about. No one answers international queries any more and from what I can tell, official Meizu reps seldom frequent the Chinese forumsāwhile the international forums consist of frustrated users talking among themselves.
And this is coming from a self-confessed Meizu fan. I chose the M2 Note back in 2015ā16 and if it werenāt for the damaged screen, I might never have bought the M6 Note. For now, Iām back to using the M2, which is slower, and the battery doesnāt hold its charge quite as well any more, but at least everything from the M6 Note has synced to it. With my app usage lower than it was in 2012, I donāt notice any real lags in performance within the programs I do use, something that I couldnāt say even two years ago when I was still popping into Instagram daily. Only the camera gets annoying with its slowness. I have gone away from the Swype keyboard though, as Swype no longer sends verification codes to your email to sync your custom word dictionary. Iām muddling my way through Microsoftās Swiftkey, which has proved a tolerable successor (the chief gains are the ability to access en and em dashes and ellipses from the keyboard without switching languages). It seems to forget that youāve pressed shift in order to write a proper noun (you have to do this twice for it to stick!) but it is learning words like Lucire and Autocade as well as my email address.
Readers may recall that after I had the M2 Noteās screen repaired, it would no longer charge, except at the store in Johnsonville (Repair Plus) that fixed it! The lads there would never tell me why they could charge it and I couldnāt and just grinned, while I told them how patently ridiculous the situation was, that even a new charging cable could not work; in fact none of my chargers did. They didnāt seem to care that this was the predicament they put me in. The issueāand I donāt know if they are to blameāis that the charging port is looser than it was, and it needs a very decent micro USB connector. That was thanks to PB Tech for telling me the truthāand a thumbs-down to Repair Plus for not even trying to sell me a better cable! Moral of the story: use people for the one thing that can do, but donāt expect much more from them, not even basic after-sales service.
With its āfaultā remedied about a year and a half ago, I had a phone to use once I put the micro SD and SIM cards back in, though Amanda isnāt able to hear me that clearly on it when Iām at the office, and Iām sure Iāve missed calls and SMSs probably due to limits with the frequencies it uses (though I had checked six years ago it would handle the Vodafone 3G and 4G frequencies).
So a new phone is needed because the “phone” function of the M2 isn’t up to par. I donāt need the latest and greatest, and thanks to the pace of development, a phone launched in 2020 is already obsolete in China. It seems that if Meizu is on the way down that I should go to its arch-rival, Xiaomi, and get the Note 9ās competitor, which roughly has the same name: the Redmi Note 9.
The Xiaomi names are all confusing and the Indian market has different phones with the same names, to add to the confusion already out there. I donāt profess to know where the S, T, Note, Pro, and the rest fit, but letās just say Iāve been led to get a Redmi Note 9.
PB had first dibs but as the salesā rep could not tell me whether I could easily put the Chinese version of MIUI on it, in order to rid myself of the Google bloatware, then I couldnāt safely buy one. I wasted enough time on the M6 Note on that front, and my installation of its Chinese OS could well have been down to a fluke. He also refused to tell me the price difference between the sale units and the shop-soiled demo ones other than it was small, and, āYou may as well buy a new one.ā
Thereās no irony here with privacy: Chinese apps at least tell you what legislation covers their usage, unlike western apps which donāt mention US Government snooping yet Google passes on stuff anyway. In all the years Iāve used the Meizus there has been nothing dodgy in terms of the data received and sent, as far as I know, and thereās nothing questionable constantly running such as Google Services that transmits and drains your battery.
There are some great sites, a number of which are in India, that teach you how to turn off some of Xiaomiās bloatwareās notifications, but they seldom annoyed me on the Meizu. Iāll soon find out first-hand how good they are.
Why the Redmi Note 9? It was one of the few on Aliexpress that I could find with the Chinese ROM installed, saving me a lot of effort. I wonāt have to root it, for a start. When your choice is down to about half a dozen phonesāAliexpress and Ebay vendors are so keen to get export sales they make it a point not to sell Chineseāyouāre guided on price and your daily usage. Iām a firm believer that a phone should not cost the same as a used car. Bonuses: the big battery and the fact it isnāt too bright (thatās just me); detriments: 199 g in weight and a humongous screen.
The vendor (YouGeek) was conscientious enough to send me a message (along the lines of āAre you absolutely sure you want the Chinese version?ā) which cost me a couple of days since I donāt always pop back to the site (and you canāt read messages on the phone browser version anyway). Now weāre on the same page, theyāve dispatched the phone. Weāll see how things look in a couple of weeks. Thereās no turning back now.
* PS.: From How to Geek: ‘Once you notice the battery is swollen or compromised in any way, you should immediately stop using the device. Turn the power off, and above all else, do not charge the device. Once the battery has reached such a point of failure that the battery is swollen, you must assume that all safety mechanisms in the battery are offline. Charging a swollen battery is literally asking for it to turn into an exploding ball of noxious flammable gas right in your living room.’ I wish I was told this when I first went to PB months ago when the battery began expanding and I enquired about phones.
Tags: 2020, 2021, Aliexpress, cellphone, cellphones, China, India, Meizu, Microsoft, PB Technologies, retail, software, Xiaomi Posted in business, China, India, New Zealand, technology, Wellington | 1 Comment »
29.06.2021
I havenāt done one of these since February, where I look at the COVID-19 positivity rates of selected countries. The arrows indicate the direction of change since that post. Happily, I imagine with the vaccine roll-outs, we are seeing drops, though there is a new wave in Taiwan, contributing to a rise; other territories showing rises are Brazil, India, Germany, and South Korea.
Brazil 34Ā·67% ā
Sweden 10Ā·06% ā
India 7Ā·43% ā
Spain 7Ā·20% ā
USA 6Ā·84% ā
France 6Ā·21% ā
Italy 5Ā·98% ā
Germany 5Ā·85% ā
Russia 3Ā·68% ā
UK 2Ā·26% ā
KSA 2Ā·23% ā
South Korea 1Ā·48% ā
Taiwan 0Ā·67% ā
Singapore 0Ā·47% ā
Australia 0Ā·15% ā
New Zealand 0Ā·12% ā
Hong Kong 0Ā·07% ā
This is also a good time to remind people of a Toot that was liked and shared quite a few times on Mastodon. For me, itās a record.
As Umair Haque put it (original emphases):
Its creators ā researchers ā pledged to make it open source, available to manufacture and develop anywhere. After all, this was a global pandemic. And yet ā with some helpful intervention from Bill Gates ā the Oxford vaccine was privatized. Given exclusively to AstraZeneca, Britainās key pharmaceutical corporation.
So instead of vaccinating the world ā or at least helping the world get vaccinated ā Britain engaged in the stupid, selfish game of vaccine nationalism. It kept its newly privatised vaccine for itself. It prevented even Europe from having the Oxford vaccine. What was being selfish about a vaccine going to do? Breed vaccine resistance.
In India, meanwhile, there werenāt enough vaccines available. So Covid mutated and mutated, until new mutations could āescapeā the vaccine, by altering the shape of the āspike protein.ā If all that sounds like gibberish to you, donāt worry ā the point is simple. By keeping its vaccine to itself, all Britain did was ensure that variants resistant to it would breed at light speed, in the worldās worst hit countries ā like India.
You can read the rest of his post here. Donāt point the blame for delta at India. Itās been British policy since day one to use the UK as a COVID-19 mutation petri dish. And now it wants to export this tactic to other places. Their friends are getting rich off this. Reminds me a bit of what happened in Zimbabwe when Mugabe and his cronies took everything while tanking the country.
Tags: 2021, Bill Gates, COVID-19, England, health, India, Oxford University, politics, UK, Umair Haque Posted in India, politics, UK | No Comments »
01.05.2021
Here are May 2021ās imagesāaides-mĆ©moires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Sources
Viki Odintcova, via Instagram.
Alexa Breit, photographed by Weniamin Schmidt, via Instagram.
Vickery Electrical advertisement: something I asked my Dad to photocopy for me in the 1980s. Briefly we had one of those Apple II portables, on loan from a colleague of Dad. I can’t recall if it had one disk drive or two, but it was a fun little unit to have in my bedroom for that period. Dad was prepared to buy it if I wanted to keep it, but I didn’t have much software to run, plus I already had the Commodore 64 for schoolwork.
Lucire issue 43 cover, photographed by Damien Carney, creative direction and fashion styling by Nikko Kefalas, make-up by Joanne Gair, hair by Kirsten Brooke Anderson, and assisted by Rachel Bell, and modelled by Elena Sartison. Find out more here.
Drew Barrymore quotation from Elephant Journal on Twitter.
I still have plenty of old stamps, which I tend to save for family (though I’m less discerning about those discounted Christmas ones, which I always used to buy in bulk). This is going to my cousin’s daughter and her husband, and their family.
Comments after an article on Buzzfeed News. Business as usual for Facebook.
Happy birthday to our niece Esme!
Tania Dawson promotes Rabbit Borrows, from Instagram.
Bizarre that the only car with a manual transmission on sale at Archibalds is from the 1950s. Iām sure New Zealand was majority-manual into the first decade of this century.
More on the 1982ā94 Chevrolet Cavalier at Autocade.
Citroƫn C5 X, as covered in Lucire.
Amira Aly (Mrs Oliver Pocher) photographed by Christoph Gellert, reposted from Instagram.
Gaza statistics, sourced from Twitter.
Even after 44½ years of living in the occident, I find certain western customs very strange. From Twitter.
Number crunching from Private Eye, reposted from Twitter.
Evaporated milk, reposted from Twitter.
Triumph Herald advertisement from the Car Factoids on Twitter.
Cadillac tailfins, reposted from Tumblr.
This photo of Sophia Loren was captioned ‘Ā© David Hurn | Sophia Loren, Inglaterra, 1965ā on Tumblr. I wonder if she is on the set of Stanley Donen’s Arabesque. Reposted from Tumblr.
I had the pleasure of watching Peggy Sue Got Married again a few weeks ago. This was a nice scene at the end, that seemed to suggest that Peggy Sue had travelled back in time. John Barry’s score is sublime.
The Murdoch method: reposted from my old NewTumbl account.
Alexa Breit photographed by Sagaj, reposted from Instagram.
Tags: 1940s, 1950s, 1955, 1960s, 1965, 1967, 1980s, 1985, 1986, 1990s, 2021, actress, advertisement, advertising, Aotearoa, Apple, Autocade, business, Cadillac, car, celebrity, Channel 4, Chevrolet, Christchurch, CitroĆ«n, computing, COVID-19, Damien Carney, design, England, Facebook, family, fashion, fashion magazine, film, France, Germany, GM, humour, India, Instagram, Joanne Gair, John Barry, JY&A Media, Kƶln, Leyland, London, Lucire, magazine, Matt Lucas, media, MG, modelling, New York, New Zealand, New Zealand Post, NewTumbl, Nikko Kefalas, NY, Palestine, Peugeot, philately, photography, PSA, publishing, retro, Russia, social media, Stanley Donen, statistics, Stellantis, Tania Dawson, technology, trend, Triumph, UK, USA, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in business, cars, design, France, gallery, humour, India, interests, internet, marketing, media, New Zealand, politics, publishing, TV, UK, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
04.04.2021
While I saw Vodafoneās Super Wifi commercials, I never thought to act on them, since (mistakenly) I thought it was something to do with cellphones. Might have been the gadgets they used in the commercial.
But, after talking to Raghu, their salesā rep in Pune, a city outside of Mumbai that I know well, he convinced me to upgrade not just my cellular plan (which was from 2012 when a gig of data were a lot) but the home internet to Super Wifi.
This is really a laypersonās post as there isnāt much online about it, at least not from a New Zealand perspective.
The set-up consists of the Vodafone Ultra Hub (a modem that I was already familiar with, since I had mine since 2018), and two TP-Link Deco X20 units, which are for all-home wifi. The idea is that they transmit the wifi signal over the house. Theyāre equipped for wifi 6, which really just tells you the speedāand not 6G was I was told on the phone (a minor slip).
I knew about mesh wifi units since a friend had already told me how she and her partner used them in their home.
Weāre in a 290 m² home so I had a suspicion that the two units would be insufficient, but Vodafoneās protocol is to begin with two.
The Ultra Hub is identical to the old oneāthe copyright notice on the box says 2017āso Iāll be returning it. The two Deco units plug in, one to the Ultra Hub, the other in another part of the house. The theory is that they communicate between each other.
I downloaded the TP-Link app first before plugging in the Deco unitsāin fact I had them the day beforeāand I was fortunate that it could be found at a public APK site, since I do not have Google, and, God willing, never will, on any cellphone of mine.
Itās a remarkably easy to use app, fortunately, with a Speedtest built in.
Iāve always had problems at one end of the house where I have a desktop PC thatās not wifi-enabled, and putting in a PCI-E adapter wouldnāt work due to space restrictions inside the case. My only option to pick up wifi would be a USB 3 adapter, which coincidentally was also made by TP-Link (itās the Archer T9UH).
I disliked the D-Link Powerlink units, which, despite the manufacturerās claims, lost 90 per cent of their speed between the two points. The signal at the modem end would come in at speeds of between 700 and 1,000 Mbit/s, but 40 to 90 Mbit/s at the other end was commonplace. The 1 Gbyte promised by all the marketing was a fantasy.
The previous owner of this house also used Powerlink units, but at different points.
Computer geeks still tell me these are good and I suspect they could work well in smaller homes or ones with newer wiring.
For context, using the old Saturn fibre cable that I had installed in 1999 at the old house, I would easily see over 300 Mbit/s via a cat 5 ethernet cable. Having to live with speeds between a ninth and a third of that in a house with Chorus fibre was tough going, and life proved too busy to get an extra internal cable installed.
I was glad to see the tail end of those powerline units as I was promised that 600 Mbit/s was going to be possible at the end of the house with the mesh.
It wasnāt. In fact, the second unit failed to pick up the first, and I was forced to bring it closer to the first in another room.
Speedtestās first result was 106 Mbit/s down and 58 Mbit/s up, which was an improvement, but not a good one, and far short of the promised levels.
The TP-Link app had a Speedtest result of over 916 Mbit/s no matter where I went. I didnāt realize that it was giving me the results at the point of entry on the first Deco unit.

Therefore, it should show a higher number. When I realized this, I began running Speedtests via speedtest.net, and was disappointed to see, even at the first unit via wifi, results in the 120 Mbit/s region.
I called tech support. The first person didnāt know much, but I explained that Raghu had promised two additional mesh units should my experience not be up to expectation. She said she was only authorized to send one. I decided to take it. She was also authorized to give me unlimited phone data for seven days in case I needed to use the cell as a hotspot.
I called again later and got to speak with a tech, Paul, who had the units at his home, and could tell me more.
First, the X20s have two LAN ports on the back. I had read somewhere that these were for the modem-to-unit link exclusively. It turns out that was wrong. You can plug in an ethernet cable and run it straight into your computerārendering my purchase of the TP-Link Archer adapter redundant. Secondly, I should employ a wifi test if I really wanted to see what was going on: I should plug in a device via ethernet into the Deco unit.
The results were then markedly different: between 600 and 700 Mbit/s from the first unit, but still low numbers with the second.
The third unit arrived and this helped somewhat, with 300-plus Mbit/s in a ground floor room when connected via ethernet.
In the meantime, I had got back in touch with Raghu and suggested that a fourth unit might do the trick, and get me at least back to the speeds I had in the late 2010s. Interestingly, he was only authorized to send two, which meant I would be in possession of five such units, all of which I had to pay the courier charges for.
Units four and five arrived. The fourth unit went into the upstairs office and I had a 3 m ethernet cable running from it, on the floor, to the PC. The speeds were still poor: 178 Mbit/s down, 175 Mbit/s up.
One thing TP-Linkās app does not tell you, at least not in diagrammatic form, is how the Deco units are all connected. I discovered through the web interface (tplinkdeco.net in a browser, using the password that you signed up to the app with) that the office one was stretching to get its signal from the first oneāand not the other two in the house.
This Reddit page told me what I needed to know: you reboot the unit that you want reconnecting elsewhere. I did that, and it found the third unit in the ādenā (as we call it) and speeds went up to between 200 and 270 Mbit/s both down and up.

Iām still dealing with speeds lower than what I had in 2018 using a 1999 cable but getting into the 200s is a far sight better than being in the double digits. If I have any serious downloading to do, thereās always the option of the laptop and a direct connection from the Ultra Hub, where I can work away at 700ā900 Mbit/s.
Iāll continue to tinker since the laptop managed to get over 300 Mbit/s during the tests, and I believe that that was down to the location of the office Deco unit. However, Iām hampered by the 3 m ethernet cable and Iām going to need 5 m, possibly (no one sells a 4 m). Possibly going to a cat 7 cable might do the trick there, too.
So there you have it, a real-world trial of Vodafone New Zealandās Super Wifi. Not as great as promised but less of a let-down than what powerline modems do in real life. And yes, you can hook ethernet cables from the units to your computer.
Tags: 1999, 2010s, 2018, 2021, Aotearoa, India, internet, Maharashtra, New Zealand, office, Pune, Speedtest, technology, TelstraClear, TP-Link, virtual office, Vodafone, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara, wifi Posted in business, internet, New Zealand, technology, Wellington | No Comments »
15.06.2020
I hadn’t done one of these for a long time: take the number of COVID-19 cases and divide them by tests done. For most countries, the percentage is trending down, though there has been little movement in Sweden. I hadn’t included Brazil, Russia and India before, but as they are in the top part of the table, I’ve included them for the first time for context. That does leave the C of the BRIC countries out, but as China does not disclose its testing numbers, I can’t work out a figure for them. Given the news, it is no surprise that Brazil has the worst percentage I have seen since I began crunching these numbers: more than half of the tests done result in a positive. The source is Worldometers.
Brazil 867,882 of 1,604,784 = 54Ā·08%
Sweden 51,614 of 325,000 = 15Ā·88%
France 157,220 of 1,384,633 = 11Ā·35%
KSA 127,541 of 1,106,398 = 10Ā·99%
USA 2,162,261 of 24,795,407 = 8Ā·72%
Singapore 40,818 of 488,695 = 8Ā·35%
Switzerland 31,131 of 461,128 = 6Ā·75%
Spain 291,008 of 4,826,516 = 6Ā·03%
India 333,255 of 5,774,133 = 5Ā·77%
Italy 236,989 of 4,620,718 = 5Ā·13%
UK 295,889 of 6,772,602 = 4Ā·37%
Germany 187,671 of 4,694,147 = 4Ā·00%
Russia 537,210 of 15,161,152 = 3Ā·54%
South Korea 12,121 of 1,105,719 = 1Ā·10%
Taiwan 445 of 74,409 = 0Ā·60%
New Zealand 1,504 of 311,121 = 0Ā·48%
Australia 7,335 of 1,830,665 = 0Ā·40%
Hong Kong 1,113 of 275,293 = 0Ā·40%
It shows that COVID-19 is far from over, something that we here in New Zealand need to be reminded of as we begin to rebuild. Still, nearby Fiji is also COVID-19-free, so perhaps we can begin having some travel with them?
Tags: 2020, Aotearoa, Brazil, China, COVID-19, health, India, New Zealand, Russia, statistics Posted in China, India, New Zealand, Sweden | No Comments »
18.10.2018
Some visiting Australian friends have said that they are finding New Zealand politics as interesting as their own, although I donāt think this was meant as a compliment.
Those of us in New Zealand had a few days of House of Cards-lite intrigue, in that it was stirred up by a conservative whip, in an attempt to take down his party leader. Except it was so much more condensed than the machinations of Francis Urquhart, and, if you were Chinese, Indian or Filipino, in the words of Taika Waititi, it was āracist AFā.
Two of my Tweets garnered hundreds of likes each, which generally doesnāt happen to me, but I am taking that as reinforcing something I truly believe: that most New Zealanders arenāt racist, and that we despise injustices and treating someone differently because of their ethnicity.
Botany MP Jami-Lee Ross and opposition leader Simon Bridgesā phone call, where the former stated that two Chinese MPs were worth more than two Indian ones, drew plenty of thoughts from both communities, where we felt we were treated as numbers, or a political funding source, with none of us actually getting into a National Cabinet (or the Shadow Cabinet) since Pansy Wong was ousted last decadeāmaking you feel that had other Cabinet ministers been held to the same standard, they would have been gone as well. Here was my first Tweet on the subject:
While Bridges was quick to apologize to Maureen Pugh MP, whom he insulted in the leaked phone call:
Thereās the inevitable look back through the history of Chinese New Zealanders, who have largely been humiliated since the gold-mining days by earlier generations, and the Poll Tax, for which an apology came decades after during the previous Labour government.
And the scandal also inspired Tze Ming Mok to write an excellent op-ed for The New Zealand Herald, which I highly recommend here. Itās one of the most intelligent ones on the subject.

Sheās absolutely right: those of us with few connections to the Peopleās Republic of China donāt like being grouped in among them, or treated as though weāre part of the Chinese Communist Party apparatus.
Her research showed that roughly half of Chinese New Zealanders were born on the mainland, and that the group itself is incredibly diverse. My fatherās family fled in 1949 and I was raised in a fairly staunch anti-communist household, images of Sun Yat Sen and the ROC flag emblazoned on my paternal grandfatherās drinking glasses. My mother, despite being born in Hong Kong, grew up behind the Bamboo Curtain and survived the famine, and didnāt have an awful lot of positive things to say about her experiences there, eventually making her way out to her birthplace during her tertiary studies.
Tze Ming writes:
This chilling effect is harming Chinese people in New Zealand. Many people cannot differentiate Chinese people from the actions of the CCP (I mean hey, many people canāt tell a Chinese from a Korean), but this is made worse when hardly any authorities on the topic will address the issue openly. Concerns can only erupt as xenophobia against the Chinese and āAsianā population ā¦
CCP-linked politicians parroting Xi Jinping and promoting Beijingās Belt & Road priorities don’t speak for at least half of us.
āAt leastā is right. My father was born in the mainland where åå
± was a catch-cry in his young adult life. Iām willing to bet thereās an entire, older Chinese-born generation that thinks the same.
She continues:
It’s endlessly irritating and insulting that both Labour and National have lazily assigned Chinese communities as the fiefdoms of politicians openly backed by the Chinese government.
Thatās true, too. In 2014 I was approached by the National Party asking how best to target the Chinese community. My response was to treat us the same as any other New Zealanders. Iām not sure whether the advice was taken on board, as within months I was invited to a Chinese restaurant for a $100-a-head dinner to be in the presence of the Rt Hon John Key, a fund-raiser that was aimed at ethnic Chinese people resident here. It certainly didnāt feel that I was being treated like my white or brown neighbours.
The other point Tze Ming touches on, and one which I have written about myself, is the use of the term Asian in New Zealand.
Let me sum it up from my time here, beginning in 1976, and how I saw the terms being used by others:
1970s: āChineseā meant those people running the groceries and takeaways. Hard working. Good at maths. Not good at politics or being noticed, and Petone borough mayor George Gee was just an anomaly.
1990s: āAsianā became a point of negativity, fuelled by Winston āTwo Wongs donāt make a whiteā Peters. He basically meant Chinese. Itās not a term we claimed at the time, and while some have since tried to reclaim it for themselves to represent the oriental communities (and some, like super-lawyer Mai Chen, have claimed it and rightly extended it to all of Asia), itās used when non-Chinese people whine about us. Itās why āMy best friend is Asianā is racist in more than one way.
2010s: āChineseā means not just the United Front and the Confucius Institute (which has little to do with Confucius, incidentally), but that all Chinese New Zealanders are part of a diaspora with ties to the PRC. And weāre moneyed, apparently, so much that weāve been accused of buying up properties based on a list of āChinese-sounding namesā by Labour in a xenophobic mood. Iāve been asked plenty of times this decade whether I have contacts in Beijing or Shanghai. If youāre born in Hong Kong before July 1, 1997, you were British (well, in a post-Windrush apartheid sense anyway), and unlikely to have any connections behind the Bamboo Curtain, but youāve already been singled out by race.
Now, I donāt want to put a dampener on any Chinese New Zealander who does have ties back to the mainland and the CCP. We share a history and a heritage, and since I wasnāt the one who had any experience of the hardships my parents and grandparents suffered, I donāt have any deep-seated hatred festering away. My father visited the old country in 2003 and put all that behind him, too. A republic is better than the imperial families that had been in charge before, and if I’ve any historical power to dislike, I’d be better off focusing on them. So in some respects, there is āunityā insofar as Iāll stick up for someone of my own race if theyāre the subject of a racist attack. Iāll write about Chinese people and businesses without the derision that others do (e.g. here’s an article on the MG GS SUV that doesn’t go down the Yellow Peril route). But weāre not automatons doing Beijingās bidding.
Iāll lazily take Tze Mingās conclusion in the Herald:
We deserve better than to be trapped between knee-jerk racists and Xi Jinping Thought. Abandoning us to this fate is racism too.
I havenāt even begun to address the blatant sexual harassment that has since emerged as a result of the scandal, but others are far better placed to speak on that.
Tags: 2014, 2018, Aotearoa, China, culture, history, India, language, New Zealand, politics, racism, social media, social networking, Twitter, Xi Jinping Posted in China, culture, Hong Kong, India, media, New Zealand, politics | 1 Comment »
09.11.2016

Above: When I refer to Hillary in the below blog post, I mean the self-professed ‘ordinary chap’ on our $5 note.
As the results of the US presidential election came in, I didnāt sense a panic. I actually sensed a great opportunity for New Zealand.
Iāve been critical of the obsession many of our politicians have had with the US, when they were in an excellent position to carve our own, unique path as a country. Aotearoa, with its bicultural roots and multicultural awareness, has the advantage, in theory at least, of appreciating traditional notions of Māori and what had been imported via pÄkehÄ; and on an international scale, our country has sought trading partners outside the Anglosphere, having been pushed into it by factors outside our control. The loss of the UK as an export market and the damage to New ZealandāUS relations in the 1980s might have seemed anathema at the time, but they pushed this country into new relationships, which now looks prudential.
New Zealanders are welcomed wherever we go, our passports arenāt looked down upon, and we still largely enjoy a freedom of movement and safe passage without much hindrance. And itās a reality that the centre of the global economy has been shifting eastward over the last decade.
We donāt need something like TPPA in order to form trading relationships with China, and when I went to India on two occasions, there was a great acceptance of the potential of a trade deal with another cricketing country. In fact, my audiences, whenever I gave a speech, were rather miffed that we hadnāt gone to them first. But we only make good negotiators when we deal with our own cultural issues successfully, for how else can we claim to understand others and then do a deal? Deal-making, regardless of what certain American politicians might tell you, comes from understanding the other side, and at our best New Zealanders are good at this. It’s why we need to confront our own racism head-on and to say: this shit needs to stop. In fact, this shit needn’t even be an issue. We’re too small a country not to be working together, and we need knowledge of all the cultures that make up Aotearoa now more than ever.
We are frequently confronted with the need to look at our national character. Perhaps an early sign of it was in the 1970s with the Commonwealth Games in 1974; certainly Iāve noticed New Zealanders begin to find our own identity as a Pacific nation, not a post-colonial Anglosphere satellite. Weāre beginning to discover our national brand. And wherever you were on the flag debate, at least that, too, forced us to consider who we are. The sense I got was that we want change, but we didnāt like the designābut certainly thereās no real fondness to be tied to Empah. Anti-Americanism over the years suggests that thereās no real desire, either, to keep importing economic ideas, corrupt governmental practices, and failed health care policies, even if certain political and economic Ć©lites seem drawn to them.
We know where they will lead: greater divisions between rich and poor, educated and uneducated, urban and rural. Those tendencies exist but here is an ideal opportunity to nip them in the bud. History has taught us sensible solutions, more humane solutions, that at least recognize human actors, social responsibility, and kaitiaki. The younger generations have accepted these as they have grown up in a globalized world, and we can see that in their own consumer choices, where they favour responsible companies, those that have a cause. They believe in a form of global citizenship, and want to be treated as suchāand those ideas are present in their politics, too. It is right for people like my friend Simon Anholt to run global polls on matters that influence us all, including the US elections, and realistically it will be our technology and the free sharing of ideas that will help with our progress as a planet. If we seek our own destiny, we at least will be able to show some leadership againāand then weāll really have something to talk about.
When I was in Reefton last month, the first place in New Zealand to get electricity, I noted that it was up to a bunch of mavericks who brought this newfangled technology in. New Zealand suffragettes won their battle first to secure women the vote. And another person called Hillary succeeded where no other had done so before when ‘We knocked the bastard off.’ Kiwi leadership isnāt new to us, but in recent years I held a great fear that we had lost our mettle. That did indeed spur me to run for office, among other factors, to say to people: stop listening to foreign companies and foreign-owned media who donāt have New Zealand interests at heart. New Zealand has been filled with people who call themselves ordinary but it’s always been thoseālike Sir Edāwho have shown real leadership, not some political lobbying group in another hemisphere. But you can only be great without following, and itās high time we stopped following divided nations and recognized that we already have the right stuffāand by that I mean our smarts, our innovation, and our independently minded way of thinking.
Tags: 2016, Aotearoa, business, China, commerce, corruption, CSR, culture, economics, economy, India, innovation, leadership, MÄori, multiculturalism, nation branding, New Zealand, politics, racism, Simon Anholt, Sir Edmund Hillary, social responsibility, trade, USA Posted in branding, business, China, culture, globalization, leadership, New Zealand, politics, social responsibility, USA | No Comments »
21.04.2015

The stunning original: the Range Rover Evoque.
There has been a lot of ongoing press about Landwindās copy of the Range Rover Evoque (a road test of the Evoque comes next week in Lucire, incidentally), one of my favourite Sloane Ranger SUVs. Thereās no way Landwind would have come up with the design independently, and, if put before most occidental courts, there would be a finding in favour of the Indian firm.
People are right to be upset, even in China, which has plenty of firms these days that spend millions on developing a new car and hiring the right talent. The days of SEAT Ibiza and Daihatsu Charade rip-offs are not completely gone, but if you read the Chinese motoring press, the journalists there are as condemning of copies as their colleagues everywhere else.
The impression one gets in the west is that this is par for the course in China in 2015, even though it isn’t. While there have been firms that have gone from legitimate licensing to copying (Iām looking at you, Zotye and Yema), the reverse has tended to be the case in the Middle Kingdom.
The latest article on the Landwind X7 appears in Haymarketās Autocar, a magazine Iāve taken since 1980. I even think Autocar is being overly cautious by putting copy in quotation marks in its headline. Itās a copy, and thatās that.
Landwind has maintained that itās had no complaints from Jaguar Land Rover, while JLR CEO Ralf Speth says he will complain. Considering itās been five years since the Evoque was launched, and news of the copy, and Landwindās patent grant from 2014, has been around for a while, then saying you will complain in 2015 seems a little late.
In fact, itās very late. What surprises me is that this is something already known in China. Iām not the most literate when it comes to reading my first language, but as I understand it, a firm that shows a product in China at a government-sponsored show, if it wishes to maintain its ānoveltyā and prevent this sort of piracy from taking place, must register it within six months, under article 24 of Chinaās patent law:
Within six months before the date of application, an invention for which an application is filed for a patent does not lose its novelty under any of the following circumstances:
(1) It is exhibited for the first time at an international exhibition sponsored or recognized by the Chinese Government;
(2) It is published for the first time at a specified academic or technological conference; and
(3) Its contents are divulged by others without the consent of the applicant.
The Evoque was shown at Guangzhou at a state-sanctioned motor show in December 2010, which meant that Jaguar Land Rover had until June 2011, at the outside, to file this registration. JLR reportedly missed the deadline [edit: with the patent office receiving the application on November 24, 2011].
The consequence of missing the period is that an original design becomes an āexisting designā. While itās not entirely the end of the road for Jaguar Land Rover in terms of legal remedies, it is one of the quirks of Chinese intellectual property law, which, sadly, is not as geared to protecting authors as it is in the west.
The approach one would have in, say, a common law jurisdiction, to prove objective similarity in the cases of copyright (and, as I understand it, a similar approach under patent), does not apply there. (Incidentally, this approach is one reason BMW could not have won against Shuanghuan for its CEO, which is usually mentioned by Top Gear watchers as an X5 copy. Look more closely and the front is far closer to a Toyota Land Cruiser Pradoās, and thereās neither a kidney grille nor a Hofmeister-Knick. Itās a mess, but Shuanghuan could easily argue that it picks up on period SUV trends, like the triangular sixth light found on an Opel Astra is part of a 2000s Ʀsthetic for hatchbacks.)
If you go back to November 2014, the South China Morning Post reported on this matter, again quoting Dr Speth in Autocar.
Heās found it ‘disappointing’ for a while, it seems, but back in 2014 there was no mention of going after Landwind. An A. T. Kearney expert backs him up, saying, ā⦠copying by Chinese original equipment manufacturers is still possible and accepted in China.ā Itās increasingly unacceptable, but, there are loopholes.
Iām not arguing that this is right, nor do I condone the X7, but you do wonder why JLR hasn’t taken action. The above may be why JLR has stayed silent on the whole affair.
This is why I read nothing on any action being taken by JLR when the Landwind was first shown, when a patent was granted (a year ago this month), or when the X7 was last displayed at a Chinese motor show.
The SCMP piece is a much fairer article, noting that Chinese car makers have become more sophisticated and invested in original designs. It also notes that consumers are divided: while some would love to have the copy, another felt āashamed about Landwind,ā points usually ignored in the occidental media.
Land Rover has traditionally been swift in taking on copycats, and it had fought Landwindās EU trade mark registration in 2006. This firm is known to them.
Landwind, meanwhile, has a connection to previous Land Rover owner Ford, through Jiangling, which has a substantial Ford shareholding. Could some pressure be brought through Ford?
For now, Jaguar Land Roverās trouble with its patent registration has yet to make it into the western media. It’s doubtful that state media have ganged up on Jaguar Land Rover, considering it has a partnership with Chery, and invested in a new plant in Changshu. It really needs to be asking its lawyers some serious questions.
Tags: 2010, 2010s, 2011, 2014, 2015, Autocar, automotive industry, BMW, car, cars, Changshu, Chery, China, consumer behaviour, design, Ford, Guangzhou, India, intellectual property, IP, Jaguar Land Rover, Jiangling, Landwind, law, media, Ralf Speth, Range Rover, Shuanghuan, South China Morning Post, Tata, UK Posted in business, cars, China, design, general, India, media, UK | 4 Comments »
26.03.2015
Deloitte has published a report on the increasing corruption in Australia and New Zealand, which Fairfax’s Stuff website reported on today.
Its opening paragraph: ‘An increase in bribery and corruption tarnishing New Zealand’s ethical image may be due to an influx of migrants from countries where such practices are normal.’
The problem: I’m struggling to find any such link in Deloitte’s report.
The article paraphrases Deloitte’s Ian Tuke perhaps to justify that opening paragraph: ‘Tuke said one working theory explaining the rise was the influx of migrants from countries such as China, which are in the red zone on Transparency International’s index of perceived corruption,’ but otherwise, the report makes no such connection.
The real culprit, based on my own reading of the report, is the lack of knowledge by Australians and New Zealanders over what is acceptable under our laws.
Yet again I see the Chinese become a far bigger target of blame than the source suggests, when we should be cleaning our own doorstep first.
The Deloitte report acknowledges that there is indeed a high level of corruption in China, Indonesia, India and other countries, making this a big warning for those of us who choose to extend our businesses there. It’s not migration to New Zealand that’s an issue: it’s our choosing to go into these countries with our own operations.
It would be foolhardy, however, for an article in the business section to tell Kiwis to stop exporting.
But equally foolhardy is shifting the blame for a problem that New Zealand really needs to tackleāand which we are more than capable of tackling.
The fact is: if we Kiwis were so clean, weād uphold our own standards, regardless of what foreign practices were. Our political leaders also wouldn’t confuse the issue with, say, what happened at Oravida.
When faced with a choice of paying a kickback or not in the mid-2000s when dealing in eastern Europe, our people chose to stay cleanāand we lost a lot of money in the process.
To me they did the right thing, and I credit less my own intervention and more the culture we had instilled.
Hong Kong cleaned up its act in the 1970s with the ICAC, and I have said for decades (since the Labour asset sales of the 1980s) that New Zealand would do well in following such an example. Why havenāt we?
Perhaps if we stopped shifting the blame and followed the recommendations in the Deloitte report, including shifting corporate cultures and instigating more rigorous checks, we can restore our top ranking in those Transparency International reports. But this has to be our choice, not a case where we are blaming migrants, for which there is little support in this very reasonable report.
Tags: 2010s, 2015, Australia, China, corruption, Deloitte, ethics, export, Fairfax Press, Hong Kong, ICAC, India, Indonesia, journalism, media, New Zealand, racism Posted in business, China, culture, Hong Kong, India, leadership, media, New Zealand, publishing | No Comments »
26.06.2014
Has John Cleese become embittered?
He suggests that the Bond films after Die Another Day (his second and final) were humourless because the producers wanted to pursue Asian audiences. Humour, he says, was out.
āAlso the big money was coming from Asia, from the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, where the audiences go to watch the action sequences, and that’s why in my opinion the action sequences go on for too long, and it’s a fundamental flaw.ā And, āThe audiences in Asia are not going for the subtle British humour or the class jokes.ā
I say bollocks.
Itās well known that with Casino Royale, the producers went back to Fleming, and rebooted the series. Quite rightly, too, when the films had drifted into science fiction, with an invisible car and, Lee Tamahoriās nadir, a CGI sequence where Pierce Brosnan kite-surfed a tsunami.



As to Asiaāalways a curious word, since we are talking 3Ā·7 milliard people who cannot be generalizedādoes no one remember the groundswell of interest around the filming of You Only Live Twice? Bond was big in Asia long before 2006.
If Cleese specifically means China, all the Bonds were well received in Chinese-populated places before the Bamboo Curtain came down: Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, etc. So itās a cinch that mainland Chinese would like it, too. And they have embraced Bond and its Britishness.
Or, as most Britons, he meant south Asia. I’ve only been to India, but thereās such a lasting legacy of the colonial days that many in the region get British humour. Again, too, Octopussyās Indian location filming saw a huge love for all things Bond.
The structure of Chinese humour is very similar to that of British humour, though you would have to be bilingual to appreciate this. But even monolinguists should be able to pick up the timing and pacing of Chinese humour to know that British humour would be appreciated.
They may not be marketed as such in the occident, but a lot of the Jackie Chan films are comedies. Police Story is littered, in the original dialogue, with comedic lines.
Class humour? Again present in a lot of Asia.
So heās well off in his estimation. If anything, itās the casting of Americans to appease that market that seems dreadfully forced (Halle Berry, Denise Richards, Teri Hatcher).
Hands up all those who would have preferred to see Monica Bellucci as Paris Carver instead of Teri.
And now we have some in the media, no doubt having forgotten the humorous moments in the three Daniel Craig-era Bonds, writing to agree with, or to appease, Cleese.
After all, who knows more about humour than one of the Monty Python creators? We must agree if we are to show that we, too, understand humour.
Maybe others donāt have that same British sensibility or enjoy the subtlety. Skyfallās quips were more evident than in the earlier Craig outings, though they were still fun lines, āA gun and a radio, not exactly Christmasā; āHealth and safety, carry on.ā Not quite Roger Moore then.
Nevertheless, in the Craig era, M gets frustrated that Bond kills all the leads in Quantum of Solace; Bond takes a hotel patronās Range Rover Sport in the Bahamas, crashes it against a fence, and is recognized later in the bar by the owner in Casino Royale. Good humour is so often between the lines, things where you have to process them briefly, or communicated sometimes through an expression.
British humour need not always be Benny Hill or Carry on.
Humour, particularly in the southern parts of China, tends to give the reaction of: did I just get complimented or insulted?
Yet few seemed to mind that the humour in most of Brosnanās era to be very Americanized, with the exception of Goldeneye. And the stories themselves, where Bond became a caricature, and, frankly, a waste of a decent leading man, were two-dimensional: Brosnan with two machine guns in the finalĆ© of Tomorrow Never Dies! Just like in a John Woo film! And we are to believe that was more āBritishā, in an interminable action sequence? If it werenāt for Jonathan Pryce and Toby Stephens camping up their roles, those outings would be far less Bondian.
Once again, it demonstrates the short memories of the cinemagoing publicāor, for that matter, that of a very remarkable and talented actor and writer.
And having hit their stride now, the Bond producers are laughing all the way to the bank.
Tags: 2014, Asia, China, Daniel Craig, Eon Productions, film, Hong Kong, humour, India, James Bond, Japan, John Cleese, media, Pierce Brosnan Posted in China, culture, humour, India, interests, media, UK | No Comments »
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