2008-02-29

"曲径通幽之戴套"

介绍几个贴,給被关在防火_长城内13亿可怜网民难友.

1) 曲径通幽之戴套
  • 回国之后才发现,获取充分而全面的、公开而透明的信息有多难。维基访问不了,Google网页快照访问不了,Google博客访问不了,BBC之类的网站更是访问不了。自己不说,也不让别人说;别人说了,就千方百计地要给自己人民的耳朵塞上棉花。搞得俺们仿佛是在文革期间收听“敌台”一般。难道这就是政府在多次地、多重地向我们征收名目繁多的各种税费(如个人所得税、房产税、契税、印花税、利息税等等)之后给我们的提供的“服务”?据说,很多税费被用来搞了一个所谓的“金盾工程”,其中一个子项目称之为“中国防火长城”(Great Firewall of China,GFW)。据说,这个系统禁止的词汇多达1000多条,但却弱智得不分青红皂白,以至于一度闹出“南京大屠杀”无法搜索到而色情网站随便上的笑话。真是很强,很黄,很暴力。这个系统当然也少不了中国封建王朝几千年来的避讳传统,具体的也就不多说了。我想很多人都有发帖子被禁却不知道是哪个词莫明其妙犯了天条的体验。有这样一个系统,我真的看不出这被官方媒体誉为最亲民的政府到底怎么个亲民的。与其不断上演亲民秀不如实实在在做点事。比如,废掉或者至少要好好改进一下GFW,让我们能自由地上网。最黄最暴力的明代长城阻挡不了满清的铁骑,中国防火长城能吗?当局者应该深思,而不是掩耳盗铃。
  • "这个系统当然也少不了中国封建王朝几千年来的避讳传统,具体的也就不多说了。" 我猜他指的是那著名"最大公约数"团体吧.初看到那三个英文字母时,我怎么都没想到这也要封.原来是要'避忌' :)

2) 如何访问维基百科

3) 访问被封的Blogger

p.s. it seems like blogspot was re-opened just now (perhaps very briefly again). wiki remains behind the wall.

2008-02-28

Boom times for Chinese film?

Danwei / Sanlian Life Week : Boom times for Chinese film, but what comes next?

  • 3,527 screens worth 5.1 billion RMB
  • Of the 5.1bn: 1.801bn from box office of domestic made movies, 1.379bn on movie channel shown on TV (i.e. older movies), and 2.02bn export (revenue from overseas) -- in the calculation there is no derivative product income such as DVD (though small due to piracy, should still be something)
  • For box office: 2007 total was 3.327bn (compared with 2.62bn in 2006 and 2.046bn in 2005 -- a growth of over 20% p.a.), for 5 consecutive years domestic films have surpassed import in box office - i.e. over 50% (1.801/3.327), but I don't know whether "Lust, Caution" is counted as domestic or 'foreign/HK/Taiwan" in the above stats
  • 18.01亿元,这是2007年国产电影全年票房收入。如果加上国产电影海外收入20.2亿元以及电影频道播出收入13.79亿元,2007年国产电影的总产值应该是51.82亿元(不含音像制品)。去年,电影总票房是33.27亿元,国产电影已经连续5年在总票房上超过进口大片。2006年电影票房 26.2亿元,2005年是20.46亿元,电影票房平均每年以20%的速度递增。
  • 目前城市主流院线一共有34条,2006年只有“上海联”这一条院线年票房达到3亿元,2007年有5条院线年票房超过了3亿元,过亿元的院线一共8条。去年影院建设方面,新增银幕493块,新增影院102家,目前一共有 1527家影院,3527块银幕。去年国产电影的产量是402部(全部是故事片),这还不包括专门为电影频道拍摄的100多部数字电影,如果加在一起,一共有500多部故事片。从这几年国产电影的增长趋势和占有的市场份额可以得出一个结论:国产电影市场形势一片大好,这些数字无疑让从事电影的业内人士感到踏实。由于国产电影市场化起步晚、底子薄,它的上升空间巨大。中国电影发行放映协会副秘书长耿西林女士预计,未来5年内,中国的电影票房将突破100亿元,成为继电视剧之后又一个获得市场成功的娱乐产业。

What does this mean?

3.327bn/3527 = 943k/screen = 2584 /screen/night

In Beijing, e.g., the movie ticket cost 50-70 Yuan (!!! yes, that is right, almost as much as that in HK). But it is cheaper in other cities and other cinemas (eg, 20-30 for Kunming). Therefore 2584/day means 100 people/screen per day (assuming 25/ticket), which is very small considering there are more than one show per day on average.

My personal experience:
1) Had been to a 1030pm movie on Sunday night in Oriental Mall in Beijing, we are the only audience there and had the whole screen for ourselves. The movie title was "CJ-7"
2) It seems the cinema was only clos to sold out during prime hours (600-830) on Tuesdays (when there is 50% discount promo)

Therefore, my observation and inference has been that something is wrong in the pricing. When you price a goods so high that the mass market cannot afford, there will be significant growth at income rises. Therefore, the 20%+ growth in the past 3 years, I venture to speculate, is largely due to more people crossed the income thresold and the ticket begin to become affordable to them, rather than "the movies were better made", as the reporter suggested.

I also dare to speculate, if the price has been cut by, e.g. 30%, the box office could have a growth much faster than the 20%+ p.a. However, price elasticity is a very tricky game. One really needs to try it out to find out the answer. The Tuesday sales boost could mean the inflexion point if somewhere under 50% but this may not be true, because the Tuesday audience could come from those who would otherwise go on Monday/Wednesday.

What the movie industry in China could do is to experiment a 'promotion' in a medium size city, to test the impact of different discount rates to the total box office income. (Here I assume that (non-pirate) DVD income is minimal such that there is no significant impact due to larger box office audience). An alternative is to experience with an "auction" to certain movie, but this is hard to implement technically.

2008-02-12

Roach's Canaries in Beijing

Subprime: Canary in a Coal Mine?
January 31, 2008

Stephen Roach

"Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach and Mary Meeker both recently presented at the Caijing Magazine Annual Conference in Beijing.

The conference - a leading forum on the Chinese economy - addressed the major challenges and opportunities for China in 2008.

Roach kicked off his remarks by providing a comparision between the dotcom bubble burst of 1999 and the recent subprime mortgage crisis; he then focused on trends in global consumerism and the myth of Asia decoupling. He explored the challenges facing a growing China, as well as the increase in protectionism and currency risks that are playing out with Asia economic expansion."


right click to download - a very insightful set of charts.

2008-02-07

拯救替死鬼,剃庸官眼眉

Please donate to articles23.net

"中大學生報送來第一份新年禮物
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Our goal is not just to give "that guy" 替死鬼 a fair chance to defend. Our further goal is to "shave the eyebrows" of the incompetent bureaucrats, i.e., the police and that stupid judge. Only by defeating the "reactionaries", only by bringing them to acknowledge what they have done wrongly, could HK be restored with the glitters of the past.

拯救替死鬼,剃庸官眼眉。我們憤怒了!

p.s. To the managers in Apple Daily and Jimmy Lai, to be fair you should also donate your share, by taking these ads at 'cost' or a deep discount, or put it to the front page while charging the lowest inner page price.

2008-02-04

2008-02-02

Les Misérables - 2008 Hong Kong

This is a sad day for the Fragrant Harbour, and the darkest day.

This city has degenerated into one that serves the rich and famous. This is no longer the free city that we loved and enjoyed. There is no rule of law any more. The police went nut. The judges became pig. Hong Kong is dead, dead, dead! Whatever kind of education system, what kind of legal mason/society, whatever kind of pseudo-moral pressure, produced these types of legal pigs, we thuck you very much!

Let's fight back. Let set up an organisation, a fund, to support the Jean Valjean's who may have committed minor crimes, but were prosecuted unfairly. This is not about moral or ethic, this about naked justice.

8 weeks with no bail. This is JUST...NOT....RIGHT!

Without justice, without rationality, one day the rule of tyrant will fall upon us.



Related:
1) 有人敢企出來報警嗎?
2) article23.net
3) I have no far refrained from expressing my personal view on the "scandal" itself. Perhaps Monk Yankong has now said what I wanted to say about this incidence.