The HK media hasn't really been fair with Richard Li. Although I do not think he is a likeable person, he really does not deserve all the criticism he has attracted.
1) selling STAR to Murdoch - HK did not lose much, it is a satellite license which has no real cost and he made billion by selling to an Australian/American
2) Acquiring HKT - it was a very smart and responsible deal for the original PCCW shareholders (like what Steve Case did for the original AOL shareholders). Yes the original HKT shareholders suffered, but they had the choice to take cash when the deal was sealed
3) Privatisation of PCCW this year - as Cheung argued, $4.5 was a good price and well over the market value.
Yes, his wealth came from government favour such as the satellite license (how was it granted?) and the Cyber Port real estate project which became Bel Air, but more fault was with the AOs and Tung Cheehwa (or ICAC for that matter).
(via Big Picture) WaPo has a chart showing how Japan has fallen behind in the past 2 decades. viz, it was #4 in GDP/cap (nominal) in 1992 and "now" only #20. Unfortunately there are two problems, (1) it used nominal currency which depends on the very volatile exchange rate figure; (2) it used 2007 figure.
I made a simple estimate, using the 2007 number given by WaPo (i.e. assuming the same GDP/cap growth in the past 14 months, which could vary by a few percentage points ), and applied the difference in exchange rate taken from charts in yahoo. Now Japan climbed back to #3 as a result of the recent exchange rate hike. (ignoring those behind #10 in 2007 ranking, which seems reasonable as no other country has seen such significant appreciation in exchange)
For developed countries it is always more "stable" to use PPP, for which Japan is still around #20 in 2008 (17 in World bank rank, which excludes non-sovereign entities such as HK, consistent with the charts WaPo has been using, which excluded HK). So I do not challenge WaPo's assertion, but its reasoning and choice of data is questionable.
p.s. I do not have the GDP/cap ranking for Japan in PPP in 1992, but I believe it is in the teens, so Japan's rank in GDP/cap(PPP), i.e. living standard, did not change that much. (it was 20520, vs 24700 of USA)
p.s.2 PPP is not as reliable when comparing the economy of developing countries, though in longer time span it is more stable -- which I had chosen when I studied China's growth a few years ago
Charles Darwin is perhaps one of the most influential scientists in the past 300 years. The others include Newton and Einstein. The reasoning behind Darwin's theory can explain phenomena observed in many fields in this world, including even modern business and finance.
For example, the evolution of the players in an industry mimics the various species in a habitat where new species are evolved and the fittest survives. Each thriving company would have mastered its own niche, like a thriving species does. As the environment shifts,
The only key difference, as strategist Bruce Henderson noted, is that evolutionary path in the natural world "happen", more or less by chance of the re-shuffling of the double helix. While companies can actively pursue its strategy to chose its own path (and hence niche/competitive advantage).
In finance, one simple analogy is the stock market indices such as DJIA, where successful company phases in and the less successful one phases out, creates an illusion to us that stock price always grow (with the indices). While in reality many companies failed and many investments disappeared, but they are not reflected in your DJIA or Hang Seng.
People are often under the impression that it is possible to win against the casinos, as we often hear (directly or indirectly) people bragging how much they got from a trip to Macau or Vegas, or their friends or friend of friends, if not themselves. One often fails to notice the fact that people usually won't tell you if they lost. So you got only a biased sample of gamblers. Those who vanished after losing their lives' saving won't have the opportunity to tell you their stories, just like the out-competed species who will not live to tell you theirs.
-- the simple fact is, casino is a very profitable business. Casinos make a lot of money despite the high operating cost and heavy tax.
I can go on and on, which is why Darwin is so great, in my view.
There are many evidence supporting Darwin's theory, which you may all have read. The most important (to some, 'controversial') idea of Darwin is that Species are not stationary, they evolve, and new species will appear as a result of 'evolution'.
Here I want to lay out a simple argument, simply based on two pieces of facts
1) There are only finite number of species in history
2) Species extinct in the past, present, and also likely in future
They we can reason as below
3) If there is no new species coming into this world, the total number of species will decrease (monotonically -- to borrow a high school mathematice term)
4) When such trend continues, and unless the rate of decrease of the disappearing (extinct) species falls at certain rate (mathematically, the sum over time converges to a finite number) -- which is certain untrue at present time as we witness the lost of species much faster than any other time in human history, mostly due to the impact of human themselves -- there will be very few (or no) species left within a finite number of years.
Therefore, there are only 2 alternatives (with the caveats stated above). (A) New species emerges over time. (B) There will be very few species left in some years.
Now let's start this line of thought from a couple billion years back, when we first observed life on earth (from fossils).
1) the total number of species in our world today is 3-30 million
2) the history of life on earth is about 3.5bn years
3) if no new species emerged since "genesis" (i.e. 3.5bn years ago), then the total number of lives back then would be 3m+(3.5bn)X, where X is the number of species extinct per year. (to be more precise, this should be an integral, as the rate is not a constant. but we can approximate)
We know that many species extinct each year in today's world. Without the human impact this rate of extinction would be much slower, however, we do see many species extinct in the past, such as the dinosaurs, the trilolites. If only on average one species extinct per year, the total number of species existed on earth 3.5bn years ago would have to be 3.5bn+3m! One has to ask, if the earth is large enough to accomodate so many species, given it could only house 30m today.
All was as speculated in my earlier post. Though the police might not have been persistent enough. But the Question remains: who was so powerful that police intervention were rejected? What "title" did he throw at the police officer?
Fire In Nearby Television Culture Center Works Site in New CCTV Tower Site — Caused By Illegal Fireworks
Luo Yuan, the spokesman of the Beijing Municipal Fire Brigade, revealed this morning that causes for the fire last night at the Television Culture Center site have now initially been found out. Luo Yuan stated: “The fire was caused because STAFF OF THE BUILDING OWNER inside the site REFUSED TO listen to police advice AND INSISTED ON setting off fireworks in the site.”
As briefed, the building on fire is the Television Culture Center, which is split into a broadcast hall, a digitization room and the Mandarin Hotel, which are presently not in service and have not underwent fire brigade inspections. Fire brigade authorities investigations initially conclude that the fireworks that caused the fire was a Class A fireworks. DURING THE FIREWORK SHOW, Police were on hand to attempt to obstruct the fireworks from being set off, but attempts at obstruction WAS IN VAIN.
A fire report was received by the fire brigade at 20:27. The Beijing 119 fire brigade instruction center quickly dispatched 27 fire brigade groups, 85 cars and 595 fire fighters to extinguish the fire. The Hongmiao fire brigade was the main responsible group and arrived first on the scene. The instructor, Zhang Jianyong, guided four fire fighters and entered the scene, and at the same time, looked for some security guards and the project manager trapped in the building.
In discovering the fire, fire fighters found the situation extremely complex; hence they went down from the 14th floor. At this time, smoke was all over the place, hampering visibility; movement was extremely encumbered. Upon arriving at the 8th floor, it was almost impossible to move. In the very end, three fire fighters reached the ground floor, but immediately lost contact with the outside world. Fire fighters which arrived subsequently immediately started rescue operations, and rescued fire fighters trapped in floors 1 to 8. Unfortunately, Zhang Jianyong died due to inhaling excess amounts of poisonous gas. During the rescue operations, 6 other fire fighters and one other works site personnel were also injured, apart from Zhang Jianyong.
As briefed by the fire brigade authorities, Zhang Jianyong, born February 26, 1979, was supposed to turn 30 this year. He became a firefighter in 1998 and was promoted in 2002. Prior to his death, his post was a deputy-post instructor. His wife presently works at a hospital. His parents live in Shenyang. This morning, both parents arrived in Beijing.
As briefed, the building on fire had 30 floors above ground and 30 floors underground, with a building area of 103,000 square meters. Investigations are still ongoing in the parts burnt. The fire caused serious damage to the outside of the building, with the western, southern, and eastern parts of the exterior burnt. Thanks to rescue efforts by the fire fighters, the fire did not spread to the northern exterior and did not damage the main structure.
Eyewitnesses stated that the fire first started from the upper parts of the building, which then spread quickly to the outside. Luo Yuan said that the fire was able to spread so quickly due to the material used in renovating the building. “This was a 30-storey building with a lot of wind on the top part of the building, thereby directly impacting the duration of the fire.” In addition, due to the fact that the building was as yet unfinished and had incomplete fire fighting devices, water guns proved to be ineffective even when used with a 98-meter raised ladder.
Right now, associated departments have already taken hold of fireworks which were not set off, and are continuing the investigation leading to the cause.
(via danwei) Now the police acknowledged/confirmed it was the "Class A" firework approved by CCTV itself which started this and CCTV issued an "apology" (and a photo from the East side, which was damaged much worse -- fire on the west side were weakened after 2130 and there was another series of explosion about 3/4 in height to the SE side)
This video showed very clearly how the fire started on the rooftop, you can see how high the firework went up to and how the building was "within range" of all fireworks, when the heart shaped (or elliptical, depending on your POV) fireworks were seen, you can see clearly large pack of smoke started on the rooftop. This was exactly what I witnessed as well, it was perhaps a couple minutes after the fire started. (I watched from a high floor and saw the fire before the smoke got big) -- more video links of how it started via B&W Cat The person who took this video seems to be located on the NNE side of the building (in china - on youku)
(outside china -- on youtube)
The aftermath -- looks like the structure is still there, despite a couple blasts last night. it is hard to see from this picture, but there are clear fire scars on the surface of the structure) Fire started somewhere a bit to the left (north) of the small spire on the rooftop
The CCTV complex -- firework was set on the drive path between the main building and the "annex" (the one that was burnt). the fireworks were shot to about 50-60 stories high and explode into large spheres of smaller fireballs, radii of the spheres are about twice the width of the annex/hotel building -- which can now be seen by the video above)
On a clear day last summer (courtesy of my friend)
taken at 20.58om - started as small fire on the roof top, by 20:45 to 20:50 the roof started to collapse and fire spread to about 10 floors down to the hall (perhaps the hotel lobby). it took only a few minutes for the fire zone to multiply, showing that there are quite some flammable matters on the building
taken at 21:18pm - about the time of the first explosion
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I was at a friend's apartment watching firework. As you probably know, fireworks are uninterrupted form all directions during Yuan Xiao in Beijing. However, those from the CCTV complex trumps all, they are 3 times bigger and 3 times higher! The traffic on East 3rd Ring soon went to a halt as drivers stops by the roadside to watch this spectacular show.
It started as splendid firework, unfortunately the wrong place was chosen for the show. The space between the 2 tower in the CCTV construction site (where the fireworks were set off) was just not open enough and fireballs often bounces on the glass wall of the "lesser tower"/"tower II"/Annex (the full name for that building is actually TVCC - TV Culture Center, which will host the studio, concert hall and the Mandarin Oriental Hotel). I got a bit worried watching that.
About 20 minutes into the show (about 820-825pm), a small fire was seen on the top of the tower, apparently due to one of the fireballs from the firework show. OMG! The firework shot to about 50-60 stories high, about 5 stories higher than the lesser tower but lower than the top of the main tower (the assymmetric boxer tower 大裤衩).
Fire trucks arrived in about 5-10 minutes, but it seems that they were unable to reach the top of the building. Had there been helicopter with water bomb, the fire could have been put out easier at that time. Otherwise, if there was water supply to the roof, things would also be easier.
Unfortunately, it seems the fire at the roof was not (or could not be) taken care of. By about 20:50 the fire lost controls, the roof started to collapse and starts to spread to lower floors. Then I knew it was over for this beautiful building. What a shame.
At some point I wooried that there might be a WTC style collapse, especially when there were at least two major explosion between 2100 and 2200.
There would be very strict rules on fireworks next year -- need to be set on completely open space, not close to any building. This is what it should have been. Instead, many people did it on the roadside, or on the road, or just next to the buildings.
p.s. the fire seems to be under control by 2230pm, about 2 hours after it was started.
p.s.2. the fire was surely started by one of the fireballs from the firework show (see illustration on google satellite photo above). and it was almost certain that it was CCTV internal people who did the firework show, since those were the most expensive type of firework not seen anywhere else in Beijing tonight. I expect someone within CCTV will be punished.
p.s.3. you may have seen some photo with white spots on top of the fire, that was taken around the time the explosions happened.
p.s.4 The TVCC is 44 stories and 159 meter tall, the CCTV main (asymmetric) building is 234 meter tall.the firework shot to around 180-200 meters and it was much closer to TVCC. The whole complex cost 5bn RMB to build, which makes the TVCC perhaps around 1bn RMB, not including equipments inside, which was said to cost in the billions.
