Chinese Fan Cools Japanse Summer

Hit by the worst nuclear energy crisis, Japan will now face another natural disaster, sizzling summer and soaring heat stroke patients.

Due to the shutdown of nuclear power generators, the government has imposed a limit on energy use, the directly impacted will be millions of citizens who face a summer that has kicked into a high gear since early May and has not shown mercy. Kumagaya in Saitama recorded 39.8C on June 24, and Japan authorities reported the heat wave is the highest in 50 years.

The number of patients who suffer from heat stroke and had to be delivered to hospitals are increasing by several folds, around 3,000 had been rushed to hospitals nationwide last week.

One relief is electric fans that were made in China. As Japanese makers have shifted the production to China, this May has seen 3.21 million fans cleared Tokyo Customs. Even so, residents in some areas of Japan still find no fans left in their electronic store shelves.

From rare earth ban to toxic frozen gyoza (dumplings), who could have think electronic fan become another hot item on Sino-Japan trade list. However, this time is different: Japanese are eager to embrace for made-in-china goods, either with little or no choice.

(I will soon hit the road, mostly in Ghana for the next one month and half. After that, I will transition to Dhaka, Bangladesh. The posting therefore will be sporadic, if none at all during this transition period. I wish everyone a good summer. Stay cool!)

Chinese to Japanese: No More Cheap MICs

This is something new to me, export of food and foodstuff from China to Japan was down, even before the now notorious dumplings.

For example, peanuts from Shandong Province, a place called by much as "Japanese's food basket", (I contributed partly to that, too, as I was importing meat products from Shandong at a pace of one container per month), has stopped going to Japan even from last summer, at least half year before the pesticide containing dumplings were found.

The reason is that Chinese side has strengthened inspection system, and one victim is the Japanese snakes makers, espcially mid to small ones, who used to rely heavily on cheap Made in Chinas, now they are facing mounting pressure to survive. Turning to domestic peanuts is out of question, because the sky high cost is unbearable for many, and prices kept going higher as more and more demand for domestic ones.

I am not totally surprised, as Chinese economy is now a part of the global economy, with everything goes up and labor costs jump, the Chinese are becoming more aware of the markets outside of Japan.

Getting to the bottom of both the dumplings and the peanuts, is a clash of a fast rising and changing China with a changing as well but not quite catching up Japan, without a comprehensive overhaul of the current dealing, I will not surprised to see that one day more Chinese products look elsewhere for markets.

Chinese Write: Dangerous Chinese Food Industry

TBS has an excellent piece on first Chinese who disclose the dangerous food industry, Zhou Jing, who won a reporting award for his works titled What Can We Eat On? --A Thorough View Into Chinese Food Safety. Like me, Zhou is from Xi'an and has a local flavor, speaking up after witnessing something wrong.

According to Zhou, the problem is not only in food industry, but a censored media, for example, in China, no reports of the dumplings dispute between China and Japan tells much on Japanese side of investigation, while almost every media reports how China is the victim, no fault can be found. Living with such a one sided media coverage, no wonder people are easy to distrust and more towards to emotion.

Take a look of the story here.