James Zhuo 卓宇翔: Thoughts

China and Tibet from a Chinese Australian perspective ...

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:40:49 GMT

Before I start my rant, here's a more balanced perspective about China and Tibet from my friend George who has a passion for East Asian cultures, and who understands China and Chinese more than most westerners because he has studied and lived in China and Korea. After reading my post below, another friend has sent me a post on a public forum by M.A.Jones who presents some empirical evidence on the subject matter. His view is consistent with mine below but he goes into much more details.

Let me start by revealing the true face of western media as the author of this video puts it.

BBC, CNN, Washington Post, N-TV, Bild Zeitung, RTL, Berliner Mogenpost, Der Spiegel, the list goes on ... If you are reasonable about it, you would agree with me this is shameful stuff. It is no wonder why people in the west think the way they do about China.

This is from Time Magazine, March 2008 "Playing the Games" by Joshua Kurlantzick - "the unrest in Tibet stems from years of brutal Chinese religious, economic and political repression". Let me dissect each one of those 3 repressions for you since Time Magazine is unwilling or unable to do so.

"Economic repression" - China has pumped billions of dollars into Tibet since its economic revival. Tibetan region enjoys tax exemptions and a large capital inflow for its infrastructures and tourism-based economy. Tibetan has been treated in the same consistent way that 54 other minorities have been treated in China, i.e. being given special privileges and economic support. People must also understand that China's rise is a step by step process, The 3 special economic regions in China have been given priorities to kick start the Chinese economic engine. The rest of the country will prosper along side as investments spread in-land for lower costs over time. The Tibetan Automous Region already enjoys a lot of benefits from the Chinese government. Chinese Han and Muslim entrepreneurs are doing great businesses in Tibet, why don't Tibetan people do something for themselves instead of rioting and looting from those who have?

"Political repression" is rubbish. Tibet is an Automous Region in China which means they get to govern themselves with funding provided by the Chinese government (not to mention the tax exemptions). But of course Tibet must still be governed in line with the Chinese constitution because it's part of China. It's no different to how states in Australia are governed by local state governments, but each state must still be governed in line with the Australian constitution while the central government overlooks everything.

"Religious repression" may have occurred in the era of communist ideals (pre 1980), but this applied across all of China, and it is in the past. Tibetan are free to practice their religion today, only political dissidents are suppressed in light of social unrest, some of them being monks. If you ask Tibetan monks whether they like the Chinese government, of course they will say no because their authority and power has been stripped by the Chinese government when the slavery system was overthrown in Tibet (where the monastery, monks and the upper class enjoyed privileges and power over the ordinary people and slaves). If you ask descendants of Tibetan slaves whether they like the Chinese government, of course they would say yes. This is about interests of particular groups, not about religious repression.

But most westerners would never understand these because they hardly understand a thing about China and Tibet. Yet they are happy to stand along side those exiled Tibetans and protest for Tibetan independence, claiming cultural genocide and human rights abuse. Sure, the Chinese cultural revolution was wrong, the Tian An Men Square event was wrong. But the west can be less hypocritical by not talking about China like the west haven't done worst. Europeans have done far worst things than what China has ever done to people of other cultures, you name it, ethnic cleansing, cultural genocide, the list doesn't end. But the world has largely put this past behind and wants to move onto a better future, so why don't the west do the same when looking at China instead of nitpicking on every little thing. Why not stop looking at China with prejudice and stereotype and learn more about China if you so wish to talk about China.

I've brought this topic to the open table with my business partner and friend Michael who is a white Australian, and his view is that surely I would understand why Tibetans wants independence, and sure I do. If I was a Tibetan I would probably do the same, well maybe not the rioting and looting and killing but I would certainly have joined the independence movement. Having said that, the west must surely also understand that Tibet is situated at a very strategic location in China and for this reason alone China would never allow Tibet to become independent. Same story goes with Taiwan but that's another story all together.

Some people like to talk about the legitimacy of Chinese claim to Tibetan land. Tibet has been occupied and controlled by China since the 13th century, i.e centuries before the founding of European colonies in America and Australia. Ask why Britain won't allow independence of Northern Ireland, ask Canada why Quebec is not allowed to become an independent nation, Ask Germany why Bavaria is not an independent nation, Ask Belgium why Flanders is not an independent nation. I don't think I have to make my point any more explicit.

IMHO, if Tibetans are smart, they can take advantage of Chinese investments, take advantage of the tax exemptions, take advantage of special privilege that the Chinese Government has given every ethnic minority cultures in China, all 55 of them including Tibet and make a better Tibet. Independence is only for the idealist.

I am interested in what your think.
twitter me: jamesz
email me: james.zhuo [@] gmail.com
MSN me: yuxiangzhuo [@] hotmail.com

You can get to know a bit more about the cast system that was in place in Tibet from the video below.

Greenspan does this when making hard decisons ...

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 12:53:13 GMT

From "The Age of Turbulence", Greenspan shed some light on how he goes about making up his mind when reviewing economic policies.

"In reviewing a policy, I always asked myself the question, What are the costs to the economy if we are wrong? If there is no downside risk, you can try any policy you want. If the cost of the failure is potentially very large, you should avoid the policy even if the probability of success is better than fifty-fifty, because you cannot accept the cost of failure."

I think this applies for all of us in our every day life.

JZ :)

the Secret ....

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:09:33 GMT

Some people thinks this is a scam, but hear me out.

This short video talks about The Law of Attraction, which basically says "the more you think of something the more you get it". This principle resonates with every single personal development book or programs I've ever read or heard. The thing to take away is "focus on what you want, not what you don't want". It reminds me of the many great quotes we all know:

"there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" - Wiliam Shakespear

"give, and it shall be given unto you" - Luke 6:38

"for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction" - Newton's Third Law of Motion

"you must be the change you want to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi

"the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer"

All these well known quotes resonates and substantiates the law of attraction talked about in this Video. Dale Carnegie in his best-selling book preached "don't complain, condemn or complain" as one of the principles for dealing with other people, for if you do, you shall get it in return. Anthony Robbins' personal development program talked about "focusing on the things you want, not the things you don't want", for most people focus on the things that they don't want and wonder why it keeps coming to them over and over again in life.

The law of attraction is not bias, what ever you think of, you will get more of.

Ever been angry? Notice the more you think about it, the angrier you get?
Ever been worried? Notice the more you think about it, the more anxious you get?

You can begin to feel wealth.
You can begin to feel love.
You can begin to feel happiness.
You can begin to have feelings of gratitude.

For those are the feelings you want and desire, focus on them and have a wonderful life :)

It's not a matter of if, but when ...

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 02:21:30 GMT

Of course, I was talking about Asia's booming economy, but no I was also talking about Asia's scientific and technological progress.

"Could Asia challenge the dominance of the US and Europe in science and technology?"

It's no longer a question of if it will happen, but rather a question of when it would happen. At the end of the day, it's a numbers game and with the right policies and political will, Asia's rise in science and technology is inevitable. Scientific research in Asia is currently lead by Japan, Korea and Taiwan, but the rise of China and India is the new propopulsion behind the movement, further fueling innovations in virgin sciences such as bio-tech and nano-tech. The extent of this movement is demonstrative in the following, quoted from a Time article on Asia's science revolution:

"The scientific breakthroughs have been so plentiful that the U.S. National Science Foundation set up a Beijing branch in May to monitor Chinese progress. "

It's no longer just the Chinese's reputation of being the World's factory churning out consumer products for the world's needs. It's no longer just the chinese achieving the feat of sending a man into space. It's no longer just Japan and Korea's advances and development in Electronics and Robotics. It is now the rapid development and innovations in bio and nano-technologies, the 2 fields with the greatest potential and no doubt ones which will fuel the next human revolution. Today, China has the first ever corporation in the world to be granted a license for a gene-therapy treatment, Shenzhen SiBiono GeneTech Co, a company founded just 5 years ago with merely $6.25 mil in government seed money, more ..

Here's some statistics indicative of the reality of the situation.

I am ecstatic to be witnessing Asia's rise today (2006), but I am still worried about the social conditions in Asia. The political situation in China, Vietnam and in particular North Korea. The inherent restrictiveness and conservatism of Asian cultures. The still very much socially entrenched problem of gender inequility in India. And last but not least, the devastating effect of corruption at every level in every Asian nation.

Web 2.0

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 05:28:51 GMT

Here's my take on what Web 2.0 really is. Hopefully I can convince you that Web 2.0 is really just signalling that the web is moving into a new phase with a new focus. But to give a bit of perspective, let's back track in time a little and see how the web has evolved and changed individuals and businesses.

For the pass 10 years, the web for many individuals and businesses was about "presence". Everyone wanted to be part of it. It created the tech bubble in 2000 but at the same time turned the internet into a huge repository of information and created a huge online community. From this came search engines and online advertising driving a ridiculous sum of revenue previously non-existent.

The last 3 to 5 years was about integrating the web into our life, changing the way we work, live and play. Email is now (2006) an indispensible part of the office working environment, it's hard to imagine work without the internet. Looking for a job or want to learn about cars? What better place to find it than on the web? Paying bills, why would you bother driving down to the local branch (15min), wait in line for 30min and drive back home (15min)? Total waste of time. You could do it in 5min in front of your computer.

For individuals, the problem 10 years ago was the lack of information for the masses. The accidental solution to this was the internet and its relentless users eager to share and express themselves. Today the problem is about getting the information you want. Information overload, spam emails and the shear number of choices available out there. Consumers have become smarter because of the internet, this has been greatly helped by companies like Ebay and CNet.

For businesses, the web has enabled seamless B2B integration for traditional businesses and has created a direct B2C channel previously hard to obtain using traditional means of advertising. B2B integration and business intelligence system has improved the efficiencies of many businesses and organisations but has also locked them into ongoing expenses associated with these systems. The direct B2C channel gave rise to many new online businesses and huge business opportunies for existing businesses.

That was the pass 10 years, so what's the next ten years? What's this Web 2.0 thing?

In my opinion ....

For the individual, it's about better user experiences. Providers of information and online services need to have a more user-centric focus in order to succeed in the Web 2.0 world. It's about attracting user through creating better user experiences while still giving them the information they look for.

For businesses, it's about SOA and making better use of web-services, hopefully cutting cost by outsourcing different operational area to different service providers, the basic argument for this is why spend millions building the ICT infrastruction yourself if someone is already providing the service and providing it cheaper than you could build it, it's about industrialisation of the internet-based service industry. but whether we succeed or not is up to how we execute it, hopefully adoption of SOA will help drive this area of technology. In addition, emails are great for corporate communication but it doesn't address colloboration within organisations and teams, the new frontier of business-oriented technology will be a focus on colloboration. This should be an interesting space to watch in the next 10 years.

That's all for now from me.

James Zhuo
Application Development Consultant
Phone: 0411 451980
Email: james.zhuo [at] gmail.com

Robots..

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 08:53:41 GMT

This is the latest robot from japan, capable of mimicking female movements. Sexy, don't you think? As someone else noted on NetEase, it's easy to guess what this will eventually develop into, sex industry is huge and if you think people won't have sex with a robot, well ...... you can believe what you like.

All else aside, China!! feel the urgency! it is time to leap frog japan and the rest of the world, this is the best of opportunity and it's pretty much now or never. We need to burst that restrictive/corrupt cultural bubble that is stifling change and innovation, and instill the necessary ethics, principles, disciplines and hardwork that will make China the prosperous nation it once was.

I have made it one of my life-long goal to be one of the many entrepreneurs to help China climb to the top of the world. I believe this problem could only be solved by instilling certain principles and ethics that will truly unite the chinese people for common progress. I am not talking about principles taught by TaoZi or Confuscius, more or less these traditional principles are good on books but could not be followed through unless the population has the necessary psychological conditioning that will allow it to happen.

Look at Hong Kong, it is a prosperous and advanced market economy and to some extent a place to be envious of, many chinese people sees Hong Kong as something to be proud of for the chinese people. Although hong kong has her fair share of successes, I see many classic Chinese failures in a place like hong kong, people living in this somewhat prosperous society don't give a sh*t about other people around them, they look down on fellow chinese people or people with lower social status, they don't care about the quality of life; it's a place of high pressure, limited personal space if any, it's packed and the air is filthy, almost all hong kong people wears a pair of glasses if you haven't notice already, why do you think such a economically prosperous society live in such conditions? don't tell me there are too many people and there's no choice but to live the way they do, that's bullsh*t, how about look for an answer rather than wait for one?

I am not just doing a round of hong kong bashing, I am saying it's time for the chinese people to wake up and start caring about the people around you if you want to become truly prosperous, if caring about each other could become one of the fundamental principles that drives everyone's way of life and every businesses' operation then I am sure China will prosper. I took hong kong as an example because hong kong is China's most prosperous city yet what we find there is not really the kind of prosperity we all hope for, at least I for one would never live permanently in a place like Hong Kong. I hope Hong Kong can prove me wrong in the coming year though.

PS: don't keep culture for what it's worth, cultures are created and recreated, take what's good and throw out what's bad, who said you can't create new cultures.

Modern Dilemma

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 13:59:25 GMT

Scanned from some newspaper (don't remember which).

! Apple(s) growing everywhere ...

Wed, 11 Jan 2006 11:26:29 GMT

http://macworld.apple.com.edgesuite.net/mw/index.html

Apple was down but it was definitely not out. In the 90s, microsoft dominated the PC industry with its Windows OS despite Apple's initial innovations in perfecting the mouse & the GUI * It was actually Xerox who first created the GUI. Its downfall was the secrecy of its proprietary technologies. While every other PC hardware manufacturer was making PCs for use with Windows. Apple was churning out both the hardware and the software. The proprietary nature of Apple's computer meant lack of integration with the main stream PC manufacturers and lack of flexiblity for the main stream computer users. The market utlimately determined the price that Apple paid.

Since the start of the 21st century, Apple has made a strong come back. Ironically it wasn't Apple's computer which brought its success. Apple's cash cow was the iPod. Apple tapped an untapped market that nobody else seemingly wanted to drive and it paid off big time. Apple have obviously invested a lot of this money in bringing back its computer line.

A new century and a new start. Apple seem to be going along with industry standards now. Apple has learnt its lesson and seem to be deviating from the practice of making proprietary technologies. Example of which include

1. Apple's move to change its entire product line to use Pentium Core Duo processors (Intel's latest innovation) including MacBook Pro (PowerBook's successor).

2. It seem to also have adopted the PCI Express bus that the PC industry has been using for a number of years now.

3. Steve job even call the iMac the best "Personal Computer" there is.

But what has impressed me most is Apple's move from G5 to Intel Duo Core processor in a mere one-year-timeframe. It's simply unbelievable!! Very impressive!!! it's so tempting to buy one of them MacBook Pro having witness some of the most seamless software integration with its digital media management suite iLife.

Check it out yourself

James

A Perspective on Software Development - 2005

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 16:41:45 GMT

I've been reading a fair bit about Software Development Methodologies lately in my time relaxing at home. I thought I should take you through my investigative journey.

I've started my journey revisiting UML. We've all studied UML in university but how many of us have actually applied this to the real world? My own answer to the question is "none, at least out of the circle that I am in contact with". But I thought I should revisit UML to see what new perspective I might gain by fusing my industry experience with theoretical knowledge. Here is a good tutorial on UML for those interested.

I've somehow stumble upon the "Waterfall" model while revisting UML. This branched my investigative journey into "Software Development Methodologies". The software development methodologies that I refer to here can also be called project management methodologies as these are employed to help manage software projects.

The "Waterfall" model is a software development methodology widely used in practice in its varied forms and it is universally taught in all software engineering courses. It emphasises the distinct phases that should be followed in the development of software solutions, these include "Requirement Gathering", "Functional Specification", "Technical Specification", "Design", "Implement", "Test/Fix" and "Maintainance".

Although the "Waterfall" model makes great deal of sense and is used by many organisations in developing information systems, it has many practical disadvantages. An important disadvantage is its inability to respond to business requirement changes. It may be argued that this can be countered with solid requirements gathering right at the start. But in practice, projects employing the "Waterfall" model usually span years which imply the inevitability of changes during this time. Another detrimental disadvantage is that all the processes introduced by the very methodical approach of the "Waterfall" model often leads to process paralysis.

In a big picture, the "Waterfall" model can be regarded as software development on one extreme end of the scale. The other extreme end of the scale is "Agile Software Development", which is becoming increasingly popular in recent years and is being adopted by leading software development firms such as ThoughWorks. Agile Software Development is most popularly manifested through a form called "XP" or "Extreme Programming".

Before I comment on XP, i thought I should reproduce the Agile Manifesto's core values to set the context.

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

As far as I can see it, the Agile Manifesto has outlined the 2 extremes of software development approaches. But do we really have to settle on one of the extremes? Is it even neccessary to have a one size fits all approach to software development? I see a continum between the 2 extremes. Picture the 4 core values described above as 4 sliding bars. Depending on the scale of the project and the skills available in a given team, these 4 sliding bars can be tailored to suit each project.

Take the first core value of the Agile Manifesto "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" as an example. Say a large team of 200 to 300 developers, how do you manage this team using the Agile approach? How do you treat an individual as an individual in a team of 200+ individuals and yet still achieve efficiency? How do you manage the variability of skill level of 200+ developers using the Agile approach? There may be an answer to all of this. My own answer to all of these question is to "Divide and Conquer" but this still cannot be achieved without relevant processes to manage this division.

Perhaps researchers in area of software development methodology should be looking at ways of identifying appropriate slide bar position based on a set number of parameters rather arguing over which is better.

Lastly, I should say I am definitely not an expert in this area but it's just my thoughts.

James :D

Concise vs Verbose

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 13:18:48 GMT

*Deleted, a pointless blog really.

PS: Kept this here because it's my first ever blog.