Toluu : Imagethief

Imagethief

Public relations, communication and interesting times in China.

Helping to create a great impression of Westerners in ChinaNovember 20

At what point does possibly legitimate advice becomes an abusive harangue? Discuss.

In a country where piracy is a way of life and the circumscription of art by government muddies its social value, the Chinese Ministry of Culture has demonstrated crackerjack legislative priorities by, wait for it, banning lip synching. This follows the well known lip-synch scandal at the opening ceremony of the Olympics, and various other complaints about lip-synched performances. The Register reports:

China's ministry of culture has announced a clampdown on miming professional musos, marking an end to lip-synching and fake guitar strumming, the Guardian reports.

The ministry's Sun Qiuxia said it would first "consult with the public over the next few weeks, before agreeing final details of new rules on commercial performances". Said rules are a "two strikes and you're out" attack - those who "pretend to play their instruments twice or more in a two-year period" face a possible revocation of their business licences.

Note that "amateur performances", which includes such things as the Olympic performance, are exempt. So it's hard luck for club-crawling third raters fighting a case of the nodes, but just fine for the government to arrange full lip-synched state extravaganzas.

In fact, Imagethief, who spent many years playing in bands himself, is opposed to the lip-synch ban because, let's

Wouldn't a pearl chicken have been more modest?November 17

Look at the expression on the pearl ox and then ask yourself, where is the girl's right hand?

Because an ox figurine made with 130,000 pearls that conspicuously invokes the Wall Street "bull" statue doesn't seem, you know, vulgar or anything on the eve of a walloping recession. (By the way, the recession will be a real test of China's recently promulgated employment law.) In case you're wondering, the Wall Street bull statue is not gelded, although judging from the photo above the pearl one might not be so lucky.

The bug-eyes actually seem like something of an afterthought. Some poor jewelry craftsman laboriously applied 130,000 pearls to an ox maquette for a year in a plywood shed full of lead fumes and then took it to his boss, who said, "FanTAStic. But can we make the eyes look a little bit more like Cookie Monster from Sesame Street if he had terminal liver failure?" N

Microsoft slips back down the China rabbit holeNovember 17

This is one of those unusual occasions on which I feel genuine sympathy for Microsoft, which has a hard time catching a break in China. It's true there was, during the Tim Chen era, a brief flowering during which Microsoft's government relations improved and the company appeared to make real progress licensing Windows to Chinese OEMs. Remember when Hu Jintao visited Bill Gates? But Tim is in NBA land now (much more glamorous, and with cheerleaders!) and another Moto veteran, Simon Leung, is new in the Microsoft China job. He took over from China R&D head and caretaker chief Zhang Ya-Qin as of last Thursday.

Which was just in time to inherit the latest bit of PR trouble, in the form of an ongoing outcry over Microsoft's anti-piracy measures in China. Welcome to Microsoft, Simon. Kathrin Hille and Mure Dickie report in the Financial Times (subscription):

When Microsoft rolled out its latest anti-piracy initiative this year, it was not aimed at any particular country. Windows Genuine Advantage, a tool that identifies users of counterfeit software and pushes them to buy the real thing,

Heaven help YouTube...November 17

Singapore's PAP has discovered its value as a political marketing tool:

Said PM Lee [Hsien Loong]: “(This) is how this generation communicates — through YouTube, through images, through sounds — and we have to get our message across in a serious way, but in a way which people can accept, and we’ll resonate with them on our website and on many other places in cyberspace.”

Uh oh. Dontcha hate it when you're parents try to be cool? For an example of the Singapore government getting its message out in a serious way that people can accept, have another look at this, from almost exactly a year ago.

Well, there's always Vidoosh, the Iranian video sharing site. Say what you will about Ahmadinejad, I reckon he's better value for money online. Remember his blog?