MacMillan has announced that it will publish an English translation of Yu Dan’s Confucius from the Heart in May next year.  The author is a professor at Beijing Normal University and is famous for her television lecture series, Yu Dan's Insights into the Analects of Confucius.  In the two years since its publication, the book of the series has sold over 10 million, reportedly including sales of six million pirated copies. 

     But not everyone has been cheering her on.  Some of the “old school” scholars at China’s most prestigious academic institutions quickly joined forces to register their disdain.  Horror of horrors,  the 42 year-old media studies professor has been accused of "dumbing down" (among other things).  Some pundits have suggested, however, that the attacks were provoked by snobbery and jealousy: Not only is Ms Yu from a "lesser" university than her detractors, she has also earned the respect of millions of young people by making Confucius relevant to their daily lives.  Not to mention the matter of the US$1 million in royalties she has reportedly earned.

The Lun Yu (Analects or “sayings”) are no stranger to controversy.  They were most likely compiled after The Master’s death by his disciples and, over the ages, their interpretation has been hotly debated.  Nevertheless, they have been one of Chinese culture’s guiding lights for more than two-thousand years.  During that time, Confucius’s occasional fall from grace has been associated with culturally fallow periods such as the early days of the Yuan dynasty (Genghis wasn’t a big fan apparently); and of course during the Cultural Revolution, when the campaign to smash the Si Jiu (the Four Olds: old customs, old culture, old habits, old ideas) made Confucius – and anything and anyone associated with his doctrine – the Red Guards’ number one enemy.   

 Since China “opened-up” in 1979, The Sage has been working his way back into favour with the establishment.  In the past few years his popularity has sky-rocketed.  The Confucian ideals of peace, balance and harmony are, of course, highly relevant (and useful) to the present administration’s theme of a harmonious society.  The state apparatus is, it seems, going out of its way to dial-up Confucius and his teachings.  As well as the lecture series and best selling book, there have been statues erected, commemorative events, Internet chatroom discussions, and not forgetting the Olympic Games opening ceremony, when 2008 drummers yelled out Confucius’s immortal words: “You pengzi yuanfang lai, buyi yue hu?” (What could be happier than receiving friends from afar?) to the beat of Xia dynasty drums.

A publicity campaign promoting Confucius would not be successful, however, without a large and receptive audience.  There’s no doubt that the doctrine strikes an empathetic chord with a large number of China’s young people – many of whom are finding it very difficult to achieve “spiritual balance” in an increasingly materialistic society.

So, if you find yourself in a Starbucks in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dalian, or wherever, don't be surprised to see a cool-looking twenty-something reading the Analects.  Confucius may have been  2559 years old a few weeks ago, but his thoughts and ideas are being read by more people today than at any time during China's recent history.

The newswires (outside of China) are buzzing this morning with the news that messages sent via Skype in China have been monitored.  

   The Canadian Globe and Mail trumpets what it calls: the “creative-hacking” exploits of Nart Villeneuve, a “Toronto-based researcher”, who “stumbled” onto a “surveillance network…”.  Mr Villeneuve found that messages containing certain “key” words (no prizes for guessing which), were being sent to eight servers that, “on closer inspection”, contained “166,766 censored messages from 44,254 users, as well as their personal information”.

   In case you were wondering, Mr Villeneuve, had not penetrated the Chinese government’s own Great Fire Wall.  But he had traced the routeing to Tom.com – one of the most successful web portals in China.  Tom has a “joint venture” agreement with ebay, Skype’s parent company, that allows it to run its own version of the Skype software.

The Globe and Mail doesn’t mention, though, that Skype acknowledged, as far back as April 2006, that its system in China was subject to censorship.  Back then, Niklas Zennström, Skype’s chief executive, told the Financial Times (FT) that: “Tom had implemented a text filter, which is what everyone else in that market is doing… Those are the regulations.”  (Another FT interview with Mr Zennström, unrelated to this controversy, is being broadcast on FT.com today, and appears below.) 

The real news is that someone has actually proven that messages containing “offending” words were not deleted (as Skype had promised they would be), but were passed on and stored.  This may not be a surprise to some, but it was news to Skype.  Josh Silverman, Skype’s president, was quick to address a Skype news forum: “It was our understanding that it was not TOM's protocol to upload and store chat messages with certain keywords, and we are now inquiring with TOM to find out why the protocol changed.”

The problem with more than a few joint-ventures in China is that “joint” is a misnomer.  As recent controversies have shown, it’s sometimes very difficult for the foreign partner to know what the Chinese partner is really up to.  Nevertheless, ignorance is always a poor defence, so the onus in on the foreign company to go that extra mile to ensure that its partners (as well as its partner’s suppliers and associates) are observing best practices; as well as of course making sure its own operation is squeaky clean.  It’s of course easy to say with hindsight but, if they had put their minds to it, just how difficult would it have been for Mattel (lead paint) or Fonterra (the New Zealand company that has a share in Sanlu, the now-disgraced dairy company) to have installed their own testing and monitoring regime? 

As far as Skype in China is concerned, perhaps they might like to give Mr Villeneuve a call to find out more about how to spot breaches of trust.  When all said and done, if they find out that “storage” (or worse) not “deletion” is indeed the policy (written or otherwise); then at least they should make sure that their subscribers are aware of this before they sign-up.  When it comes to a brand’s relationship with its consumers, honesty is always the best policy. 

If you are fan of animation, comics, cartoon characters – or simply like the idea of dressing up in a pink frilly frock or perhaps a skin-tight black-latex bodice – then Guangzhou is the place to be this “Golden” week.  The city is hosting the inaugural China International Cartoon Festival as well as the second-annual “Guangzhou-Hong Kong-Macao Anime Comics and Games Expo”.

The Guangzhou Daily reports today that the Anime and Games exhibition attracted an enthusiastic crowd of more than 30,000 yesterday, the opening day.  As well as the odd dominatrix (see photo), there were also famous Hong Kong animators in attendance to sign-autographs and entertain the crowds.  Huang Yulang, one of the Hong Kong “masters”, was full of praise for the mainland’s animators.  He told the Guangzhou Daily that they had improved considerably (from the days when Japanese animation-style was copied) and were now producing excellent original work.       

Animation is big business in Guangzhou.  According to Xu Zhibiao, the city’s vice-mayor, annual investment in the sector is 180 million yuan (US$26M).  The city is home to more than a 100 “animation” companies employing 15,000 workers in a thousand workshops; as well as a dozen or so “comics-training” institutes – all of which contribute more than 10 billion yuan to the city’s GDP (more than half of the sector’s contribution to national output).