Routledge

If you want to understand China’s reform-era growing pains you can do a lot worse than dig into the coal industry. Coal powers China’s industry, pollutes its environment, and is the site of conflict for the state and private entrepreneurs – each eager to monopolize control of a precious resource.

Tim Wright of the University of Sheffield has made the Chinese coal industry the focus for research stretching over the last few decades. Much of that research appears in his new book “The Political Economy of the Chinese Coal Industry: Black Gold and Blood Stained Coal.”

China Real Time recent caught up with Mr. Wright to discuss the challenges facing China’s coal industry — from safety to corruption to power shortages — and how long the country can count on its stores of coal to fuel its fast-burning economy. Edited excerpts:

Why is coal mining so important in China?

Coal provides around 70% of China’s energy supplies. So it has been central to China’s rapid – and energy intensive – economic growth. Coal is also one of the major causes of pollution and environmental degradation in China, as well as a large contributor to the country’s increasing carbon emissions. Finally, the industry provides employment for well over five million workers.

Coal mining is an area where there’s been a struggle between the state and the private sector?

Since the middle of the last decade, many commentators inside and outside China have seen a trend towards “the advance of the state and the retreat of the people” (or the private sector). The attempts by central and provincial governments to control myriad small mines, especially in Shanxi, has been a major example of this and, from late 2008, the Shanxi government began a policy where the large mines owned by the province took over the small private mines. This was strongly resisted by the mine owners, many of whom were inter-provincial investors particularly from Wenzhou in Zhejiang.

The attempt to control the private sector is also about controlling the social and environmental costs of mining?

Yes, it is not simply a struggle for control. There are real safety and environmental issues involved. Small private mines certainly tend to be less safe than the large mines, and also lack the resources to tackle environmental pollution – for example by washing the coal. These factors form at least the pretext for the government’s policy.

Corruption seems to be a big part of the story?

Two factors – the high profits to be made from coal, and local governments’ control over most of the licenses necessary to mine it – make corruption both inevitable and widespread. The phenomenon is known as “official-coalmine collusion” and is often exposed in the aftermath of disasters in mines operating illegally under the protection of local governments or individual officials.

But the moralistic tone used by the Chinese press to address the issue doesn’t tell the whole story. First, corruption apart, the small mines play an important part in income and employment generation for many inland areas with few other opportunities; so there is resistance to their closure beyond that just from the owners. Second, the chronic underfunding of local government in China forces local authorities to look for other sources of revenue, so it is in their institutional – as well as personal – interest to support the local mines, even against the wishes of central government.

How have workers fared in the reform process?

Coal mine workers went through a difficult period in the 1990s. They had been the aristocrats of the working class under the planned economy but the low price of coal and the mines’ economic difficulties meant that their incomes rose less than those of other workers. The boom in coal prices and coal profits in the 2000s has, however, provided the resources to increase wages, and there has been a big improvement over the past few years, even if miners still grumble that they lag behind other workers, for example in the electric power industry.

Premier Wen Jiabao spent new year 2005 underground with some miners. Has the central government been able to get to grips with safety?

There has been a spectacular improvement in China’s coal safety record over the last decade – the number of deaths has fallen by about two-thirds during a period when output has more than doubled. Although one has to remain skeptical about the details of the official statistics, at least a major part of the decline in fatalities does reflect a real improvement. This improvement has been due to a number of factors: high profits creating the resources to invest in safety; the beginnings of labor shortages allowing workers to demand better conditions; the higher priority put on social and safety issues by the Wen Jiabao – Hu Jintao government; and collaboration with foreign safety experts.

China’s economy seems to suffer from regular power shortages, what’s the reason for that?

Partly it is just the phenomenal rate of growth of the Chinese economy (which has mostly been concentrated in high energy using sectors) putting pressure on energy supplies. But beyond that it reflects a struggle between the coal and electric power industries over the price of coal supplied to the power stations. The power stations, who have to accept electricity prices fixed by the state, have argued that they cannot afford the ever-increasing price of their main fuel, coal. The state has attempted to pressure the mines to supply coal at cheaper prices, but of course this has reduced the mines’ incentive to produce, resulting in occasional shortages and power cuts.

How much coal has China got left? Any chance of a switch toward significant imports?

China has large amounts of coal left – certainly well over 100 billion tons. But at its very high level of production – not far behind the rest of the world put together – there has already been talk of the resources running out, or at least becoming increasingly expensive to mine. Already imports have increased sharply – from only around 10 million tons a year in the early 2000s to well over 150 million tons by 2010. However, because of China’s massive use of coal, it is almost inconceivable that a major part of its demand could be fulfilled by imports – 150 million tons accounts only for 2 per cent of China’s coal consumption, but close to 20 per cent of global coal trade. For the same reason, China cannot fill the gap with oil imports. So if it is to reduce its reliance on domestically-produced coal, China will have to look for other sources of energy – optimistically renewables but perhaps more likely nuclear power.

– Tom Orlik

Reuters

Villagers write ballots at voting booths inside a classroom at a school, turned into a polling station, at Wukan village in Lufeng, Guangdong province February 1, 2012.

In late December, Chinese Internet users searching the country’s Twitter-like microblogging services for information about Wukan, the southern fishing village then in midst of a rebellion against local officials over land grabs, turned up little more than censorship notices. Six weeks later, Wukan has become the subject of an unusually open–and borderline euphoric–online discussion about the prospects for democracy in China.

“This is a model,” Chinese real-estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang said Wednesday via the popular microblogging service Sina Weibo, where searches for Wukan were producing nearly a million posts.

“The start of something new,” observed another user of the service.

The reason for the outpouring: An election–-the first of two-–to select Wukan’s new leaders. Elections at the village level are common in China, but this one was unique for coming on the heels of December’s protests and for appearing to be free of the Communist Party meddling that typically mars Chinese election results. While the process still has a ways to go, images of Wukan’s villagers filling out ballots in voting booths made of pressboard boxes and sheets of garish pink cloth have sent waves of giddiness rippling through the mostly cynical confines of Chinese cyberspace.

For many, the election brought to mind one of Mao Zedong’s favorite revolutionary slogans: “If you want freedom and democracy, you have to fight for it yourself,” wrote one Internet user in the popular discussion forum Maoyan Kanren. “A single spark can start a prairie fire.”

Others saw in the elections a rebuke of people, like martial-arts star Jackie Chan, who’ve questioned whether Chinese culture is compatible with democratic government.

“After this, whoever says Chinese people aren’t good enough for democracy, I’ll sue the bastard,” one particularly excited blogger promised on Sina Weibo.

The enthusiasm around the topic of Wukan on Sina Weibo appears to be due in part to Sina Corp. executive and top editor Chen Tong, who gave his implicit blessing to the discussion by forwarding a photo from the village with a note: “Broadcasting the Wukan village committee elections.”

Not everyone saw the election as the harbinger of a democratic China. Some dismissed it as a show, saying Wukan’s election, like elections in other villages, would be bought. Others tried to temper expectations.

“This is an election supported by detailed regulations in the constitution of the People’s Republic of China,” Yang Hua, a fire control engineer from Shandong province, wrote on his Weibo feed. “It’s not new and it doesn’t count as reform, but it is a symbol of the implementation of the constitution.”

Still others found time to poke fun at makeshift quality of the vote. “That’s unique,” one Weibo user wrote in response to a photo of several people crammed into a single pink voting booth. “Are they a family?”

Still, the mood among those who took the time to comment was overwhelmingly optimistic.

“History always moves forward. This is something no one can change,” read one post in the Maoyan Kanren forum. “Congratulations to the people of Wukan!”

– Josh Chin. Follow him on Twitter @joshchin

- Chinese government has great monetary and fiscal resources to achieve a soft-landing
- Property market and its potential downturn is not a threat to China’s overall economy
- Chinese stock market may swing upward along with loosening monetary policy
- In five years and beyond, the Renminbi will become fully convertible
- Great investment opportunities exist in energy efficiency and environmental technologies, health care and the financial services

“China needs to grow at somewhere between 7 to 9 percent (annually) to have an economy to absorb all of the new workers every year…so we are quite optimistic that china will continue on that growth path.”
– Jack Perkowski

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Our Guest Today
Jack Perkowski is the founder and managing partner at China-focused merchant bank JFP Holdings. Acclaimed as Mr. China, Mr. Perkowski came to China in the early 1990s and founded ASIMCO, one of the largest auto components companies in China. That journey is captured in his book: Managing the Dragon: How I’m Building a Billion Dollar Business in China.

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Bloomberg News

John Tsang

Hong Kong’s coffers are full again as the city’s government prepares to announce another hefty budget surplus Wednesday, with calls for sweeteners to support the slowing economy and the city’s low-income groups. But any budget plans are likely to be constrained by political reality: a change of government in a few months.

Financial Secretary John Tsang will deliver the speech at 11am, with economists forecasting goodies similar to previous budgets like one-off tax rebates and temporary waivers of public housing rental, but no big surprises.

The government is likely to report about HK$65 billion (US$8.4 billion) budget surplus for the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2012, a person familiar with the situation said Monday, adding that Tsang will also say Hong Kong’s GDP rose about 5% in 2011, but forecasts slower growth, of below 3%, this year due to the weakening global economy.

“Given the imminent change in top government posts, we expect the upcoming budget to be long on one-off concessions and short on new vision,” Standard Chartered economist Kelvin Lau said. “One-off relief measures should prove timely given that growth is set to slow further in 2012.”

For the property market, Citigroup also believes the Hong Kong government is unlikely to announce any new measures in the upcoming budget that may hurt the property market, given prices stopped rising in June.

“Hong Kong government officials have no intention of causing a home price collapse, especially when senior government officials are worried about the European debt crisis,” Citigroup said in a report.

While Mr. Tsang is expected to push forward infrastructure projects that have been widely flagged to create jobs as an economic slowdown starts to bite, Hong Kongers probably can’t count too much on other measures.

– Chester Yung

Imaginechina

By Yiyi Lu

There has been a long and on-going debate between some Chinese and westerners on whether the western media are biased in their China coverage or not. As defenders of western media rightly point out, negative news and critical commentaries may displease the Chinese, but they do not necessarily amount to biased coverage. Besides, there are plenty of positive stories about China in the western media too.

But the accusation of bias does not seem entirely unfounded. A case in point: Western media’s treatment of Zhang Yimou’s Nanjing massacre film “The Flowers of War.”

When news came out that “Flowers” had failed to win a Golden Globe award and was not even shortlisted for an Oscar nomination in the best foreign-language film category, some Chinese said the result was just what they had expected given that the film had been described as an anti-Japanese propaganda in biased western media reports.

On the issue of China’s dispute with Japan over the presentation of World War II history, there is a clear tendency for many western media reports to employ double standards, underplay the sufferings of the Chinese people during Japanese occupation and turn the coverage of the history dispute into attacks on the Chinese government.

In a post entitled “The Flowers of War Brings out the Worst of Western Media,” Cfensi, a general news blog on Chinese entertainment, comments on some examples of tendentious western media reports about the film:

Jonathan Landreth at the AFP skillfully uses the title “Christian Bale denies his Chinese film is propaganda” followed by the statement that the film is one of “a string of films and TV series from China promoting national unity against an evil Japan.” …he’s excellent at making falsehoods true – first make an arbitrary accusation, then make the accusation’s denial the headline, and finally affirm the accusation as fact without any evidence whatsoever.

Laurie Burkitt and Tom Orlik at the WSJ…complain that “nuanced treatment of the Chinese characters is in stark contrast with portrayal of the Japanese as monochrome monsters.” Do these people not realize the immorality that comes from humanizing (aka: finding excuses) for rapists and mass murderers? Maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason why we don’t expect films with good Japanese soldiers during the Nanking massacres, just like how we don’t expect there to be good Nazis in a Holocaust movie.

While the Cfensi post may be too harsh, the comparison of “Flowers” with Holocaust movies is telling. Numerous Holocaust movies have been made that portray Nazis as evil incarnate, but one does not see western media describing them as anti-German propaganda that “lacks subtlety.” Yet, when Chinese films on the Japanese occupation during World War II come out, western media reports are often quick to deplore their portrayal of Japanese soldiers as “one-dimensional savages” and their “demonization of the Japanese army,” despite acknowledging that the Japanese army had committed many atrocities, including during the Nanjing Massacre.

According to Cfensi, a number of western media outlets, including Variety, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and CNN, also erroneously claimed that the Flowers of War was partially funded by the Chinese state, implying that the film was state-backed nationalistic propaganda. In fact, it only received a loan from a private Chinese bank.

Accusing “Flowers” of being anti-Japanese propaganda or “one-dimensional” is but the latest manifestation of mainstream western media’s propensity to criticize China when covering the history of China’s fraught relations with Japan. Often, reports on Chinese protests over perceived Japanese attempts to whitewash its militaristic past are turned into warnings about rising Chinese nationalism deliberately fostered and manipulated by the Chinese government. Stories about new Japanese history textbooks that gloss over Japan’s wartime aggression become discussions of problems with China’s own history textbooks.

For example, in April 2005, after protests broke out in China following the approval of new Japanese textbooks that whitewashed Japan’s wartime atrocities, AFP’s coverage contained the following:

While learning materials in [Chinese] mainland high schools take special pains to outline Japanese aggression beginning with the 1874 invasion of Taiwan, China’s involvement in the 1950-53 Korean war is dismissed in one sentence.

The Los Angeles Times said:

China has criticized Japan in recent weeks for whitewashing its militarist history, focusing in particular on a junior high school textbook recently approved by Tokyo.

“Yes, what Japan did in World War II is horrible,” said Sam Crane, Asian studies professor at Williams College in Massachusetts. “But the embarrassing fact for the Communist Party, and one that is not taught in Chinese schools, is that the party itself is responsible for many more deaths of Chinese people than those caused by Japanese militarism.”

And the Financial Times offered its readers the following:

For those seeking graphic if not necessarily balanced accounts of Japanese infamy, there is no better place to look than China…

But China’s schoolbooks, carefully edited to ensure they do not contradict the official historical verdicts of the ruling Communist party, have their own conspicuous absences. Texts for middle and upper school students give great detail about the party’s resistance against Japanese oppression, but gloss over or ignore most of its less glorious moments. The brutal 1989 suppression of pro-democracy protests centred on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square is ignored.

It is not that Chinese history textbooks do not have their own problems, or that western media do not have the right to discuss those problems. But there is an appropriate time and place for such discussions. To attack Chinese schoolbooks in the middle of reports about Japanese attempts to whitewash its history of invasion and occupation of other countries is morally dubious to say the least.

Suppose, when discussing Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews, western media reports were to say: “Yes, the Jewish people suffered a great deal during World War II, but Israel has also occupied Palestinian territories and killed innocent Palestinian civilians.” They would cause public outrage and may even be accused of trying to make excuses for the Holocaust. Yet, it has been perfectly acceptable for western media to effectively say “Yes, Japan did horrible things to the Chinese, but the Chinese government did horrible things to its own people too.”

Do we take this to mean Japan’s wartime atrocities in China are insignificant? Do the Chinese have no right to criticize Japanese textbooks?

It is one thing for western media to be critical of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party. It’s quite another to let their views of the CCP color their reports on the history row between China and Japan. Using criticisms of the CCP to divert attention away from the suffering of the Chinese people at the hands of Japanese militarists during World War II — and the refusal of some Japanese to fully acknowledge the past — and to do so consistently, this is what I would call biased media coverage.

Yiyi Lu, an expert on Chinese civil society, is currently working on a project to promote open government information in China. She is the author of “Non-Governmental Organisations in China: The Rise of Dependent Autonomy” (Routledge 2008).

A group of Chinese speakers warned in stringent tones on Friday morning in Davos that the country’s free-market reform is stalled, and China is sliding backwards towards greater state control of the economy.

Hu Shuli, editor of Caixin Magazine and a widely recognized leader of China’s “reform faction,” launched a breakfast forum by identifying delayed economic reform as one of two key risks for the Chinese economy going forward, alongside weakening exports in the wake the of the euro-zone crisis.

Several panelists agreed emphatically. “What we need is reform-minded leaders and grassroots entrepreneurs, not a loose monetary policy and low interest rates,” said Zhang Weiying, a professor of economics at Peking University.

The last few years have been a difficult period for the reform faction — a group of intellectuals and policy makers that have constantly pushed the envelope for further opening up of the Chinese economy over the last 30 years.

The global financial crisis in 2008 halted much progress on reform, as China’s top leaders came to see the western liberal model that the reformers upheld as seriously discredited. Key reforms that would open up the country’s financial sector such as the liberalization of interest rates and the opening of the capital account have been put on the back-burner, and the timeline for their realization is uncertain.

The most alarmist commentary on Friday morning came from Xu Xiaonian, a professor at the China-Europe International Business School.

“State capitalism is not something new. When Bismarck invented this idea in 1870 it gave Germany impressive performance over the main superpower of the time, Great Britain,” he said. “But 20 years later, it was the First World War.”

Otto von Bismarck’s model was replicated by other Asian nations before China, including Singapore and Japan, Mr. Xu said. While it can deliver dramatic results in GDP growth over the short–term, he identified three major flaws: inefficiency, as resources are misallocated; inequality, as state champions earn ‘monopoly rents’ and squeeze out independent competitors; and instability in the long-run.

“Even Nazism was a form of state capitalism, and what the Third Reich brought to the world we all know,” Mr. Xu said.

Despite those catastrophic long-term risks, in the near term, Mr. Xu said he isn’t very worried about the state of the Chinese economy. But even while expressing confidence, he couldn’t resist a jibe at China’s econometric authorities. “The National Bureau of Statistics won’t let growth go below 8%, we know that.”

John Zhao, chief executive of Chinese private-equity fund Hony Capital, said he believes China’s leaders still share a consensus on the need for continued reform.

“The only question is will they have the political will and courage to pay the price on their own watch,” he said. He likened the situation to the euro-zone debt crisis, where “the solution is obvious but the political system is screwed up.”

– Aaron Back. Follow him on Twitter @AaronBack.

At a panel discussion in Davos on how China should invest its massive foreign exchange reserves, moderator Rui Chenggang, a famous Chinese television personality, kicked off the discussion by complaining that he was overcharged on a restaurant bill in Belgium because he is Chinese and was therefore perceived to be rich.

John Zhao, chief executive of Chinese private equity fund Hony Capital, said that China remains a poor country, and it is only a wealthy minority that travels abroad and spends money. At the same time, there’s no denying that China in the aggregate is wealthy. “As a society China can unite resources,” Mr. Zhao added. “Look at the Olympic games. How can a poor country afford a luxury like that?”

Besides Mr. Zhao, the panel included Robert Greifeld, Chief Executive Officer of Nasdaq OMX Group, Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, and Richard Levin, President of Yale University. In short, a group of people that have very little if any connection to how China invests its reserves.

“If you were in charge of China’s foreign exchange management what would you do?” moderator Mr. Rui asked Yale’s Mr. Levin. “That would be fun,” he replied, before going on to say that China should spend the reserves domestically to build up its social safety net.

That suggestion is a popular one within China, but many analysts and even top officials at the country’s central have dismissed it as unworkable, because it would be difficult to convert the reserves to domestic currency without igniting inflation.

The panelists were unanimous that China can’t use its reserves to bail out Europe. “The scale of western problems dwarf the dollars we are talking about,” said Greifeld.  He noted that Italy’s national debt alone is at 1.9 trillion euros ($2.5 trillion), which itself is over half China’s reserves at $3.18 trillion.  “China can’t solve the problem even if they wanted to,” he said.

Mr. Lamy dismissed speculation that China would invest in European debt in return for some political or trade concessions by the European side, saying it is “media fluff-fluff” and that he doesn’t believe it “for one second.”

He added: “They don’t even do that with the U.S., they buy the U.S. debt without any condition.”

– Aaron Back. Follow him on Twitter @AaronBack.

Europe’s decision to embargo Iranian oil exports is strategically sound, since a nuclear-armed Iran is in no one’s interest. Yet, policymakers are overlooking how an embargo may strategically reshape the global oil trade in China’s favor. Major Chinese oil traders are building businesses that are world class in terms of volumes traded. The latest oil embargo will help them further their ambitions.

The first Iranian oil embargo beginning in 1979 effectively handed Marc Rich, whose company ultimately became Glencore (one of the world’s largest physical oil and commodities traders), the keys to a multibillion dollar oil-trading kingdom. Now China’s increasingly global oil trading companies are in the catbird seat. Chinese firms can be confident that Beijing values stable and secure oil supplies much more than cooperation with the U.S. on the Iranian nuclear issue.

The EU sanctions, which will affect about 450,000 barrels per day of oil imports to Europe (pdf), will likely engender the transfer of billions of dollars in oil earnings from the Iranian government to China’s main oil trading firms: Zhuhai Zhenrong, Unipec, Chinaoil, and Sinochem. These firms have become major players in the global physical crude oil market. In 2010, 3 of the 10 largest global crude oil and products traders hailed from China (see chart).

Unipec, China’s largest oil trader does not publicly report trading volumes past 2006, when it sold 106 million tonnes of crude oil and 14 million tonnes of refined products. Based on the company’s trading more than 3 million barrels per day of crude in 2011, we estimate that Unipec’s trading volumes now exceed 150 million tonnes per year, potentially making it a larger oil trader than even Vitol and Glencore. Unipec’s activities in the global oil tanker market suggest it is moving very large volumes of oil. In 2011, the company was the world’s second-largest tanker charterer, trailing only Royal Dutch Shell, according to Poten & Partners (pdf).

Of the Chinese oil traders, Zhuhai Zhenrong may be the best positioned to profit because it has strong relationships in Iran and also well-insulated from U.S. and European political pressure that will follow once U.S. and European governments realize that this embargo is likely to be just as leaky as any other. The company enjoys Beijing’s blessing, has no exchange traded stock, has no U.S. assets, and offers virtually no leverage that could be exploited by outside interests seeking to pressure it. Sinochem and Unipec have slightly more exposure to external pressure since their parent companies have parts of the company that are publicly traded, but will still enjoy strong political and diplomatic support from Beijing.

All this said, the embargo is likely to trigger significant conflicts within the Chinese government. Once the embargo is in place, Iran will likely need to substantially reduce the price its crude in order to entice Chinese buyers to purchase larger than normal volumes. The question will then be “who enjoys the profits created by the provision of discounted oil?”

There is a range of possibilities. One option is for the traders to simply keep shipping the bulk of their oil to Chinese refineries as they have been doing and let the refineries enjoy the windfall of having lower-cost oil supplies. This might be the simplest outcome in domestic political terms, particularly since Chinese refineries have often lost profits under policy restrictions in recent years. However, it is more likely that the Chinese traders will either sell the oil on the international market for cash, or swap it for oil from other countries that can then be sent to China or other markets.

For example, if the crude oil spot price were $100 per barrel and Iran had to discount its oil to $80 per barrel to entice buyers, a Chinese trader could then swap the Iranian crude to another firm. By swapping its Iranian crude for another oil cargo at market prices (or a higher price than it paid the Iranian sellers), the company can gain “extra” oil relative to what it originally paid in Iran and resell it for a profit.

To make the oil palatable to buyers who want Iranian oil, but do not want to run afoul of U.S. and EU sanctions, traders can blend it with oil from other countries and take other means to disguise the oil’s origin. This is common practice when oil thieves sell oil from Nigeria and one also used by Saddam Hussein’s government, which at points smuggled up to 480,000 barrels per day of oil into the world market despite UN sanctions (pdf). Iran’s heavy crude oil, the country’s largest export stream at present, is similar in weight and sulfur content to the Ural blend that Russia exports, potentially creating swap or trading opportunities. We also anticipate that Iran will trim exports of heavy, higher sulfur crude in favor of more valuable lighter oils that have less sulfur and could be more easily blended and sold into the global market.

China’s refinery operators will not be happy if they have to keep buying crude from the traders at market prices when the traders have been getting discounted Iranian barrels that could have been shipped back to China. Since both sides of the equation have strong political allies, and in some cases are parts of the same corporate constellations (Unipec is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sinopec, China’s largest oil refiner measured by the amount of oil processed), the politics stand to become contentious: Trading bosses may want to maximize their units’ profits, as opposed to transferring crude at below-market prices to the company’s refineries. Alternatively, if China’s domestic market for refined products weakens, firms like Sinopec may sell or swap more of their Iranian crude into the world market and embrace the traders as a profit center.

Policymakers and investors alike must consider how EU sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear program may well help reshape the physical oil trading world in ways that favor China’s rising state-backed oil traders. In today’s globalized, economically dynamic, and resource-hungry world, unintended consequences can matter tremendously.

Andrew Erickson is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and a research associate at Harvard’s Fairbank Center. Co-founder of China SignPost (洞察中国), he blogs at www.andrewerickson.com. Gabe Collins is a co-founder of China SignPost and is a J.D. candidate at the University of Michigan Law School.