Beyond ‘no comment’: The White House has no response — at all — to many media questions

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders listens to questions from the press outside the White House last month. (Jim Young/Reuters)

By Paul Farhi-December 31, 2018

The New York Times published a powerful story last week about President Trump’s growing isolation in the White House, with colorful details such as Trump’s tendency to interrupt advisers during meetings to call them “freaking idiots” (except he doesn’t use the word “freaking”).
Asked to comment by the Times’s reporters about this, the White House said nothing. It did not respond.

Similarly, it offered no response when The Washington Post asked the White House about Trump’s false claim during a post-Christmas Day visit to U.S. troops in Iraq that he boosted military pay by 10 percent.

Reporters are used to officials who respond to their inquiries with a terse “no comment.” This was typically the practice in prior presidential administrations when officials saw no strategic value in rebutting an unflattering story.

But as in so many things, the Trump administration is different. Instead of “no comment,” Trump’s press representatives often don’t bother saying anything at all.

“This is the least responsive White House press operation I’ve ever dealt with by far,” said Peter Baker, a veteran White House reporter for the New York Times and one of the co-authors of the story about Trump’s isolation. “There are certainly individuals there who are professional and try to be helpful when they can, and I appreciate their efforts, I really do. But as a whole, I’ve learned not to expect answers even to basic questions.”

Adds Baker, “I don’t know why that is. I don’t take it personally. But it’s a lost opportunity on their part to get their side of the story out.”

The White House has had no response to stories large and small in recent days: reports that Trump planned to meet with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell, whom he has criticized (no response to Agence France-Presse); the partial shutdown of the federal government (no response to Reuters or USA Today); a report by an advocacy group that wealthy donors gave $55 million to groups supporting his reelection, despite Trump’s stated opposition to such donations during the 2016 campaign (no response to The Washington Post); Trump’s statement that former secretary of state Rex Tillerson was “dumb as a rock” (no response to CNBC); a piece in the Times reporting that a podiatrist may have helped Trump dodge the draft when Trump was a young man at the height of the Vietnam War.

At the same time, the White House seems to have all but stopped explaining Trump’s bizarre tweets.
After Trump tweeted on Christmas Eve that the border wall “will be built with the Shutdown money plus funds already in hand,” the New York Times sought comment from the White House about what “shutdown money’’ was. It got no response.

There was also no response to reporters’ inquiries about what Trump meant when he tweeted a few hours later that he “just gave out a 115 mile long contract for another large section of the Wall in Texas.”

Reporters say White House press secretary Sarah Sanders and her deputies don’t always give them the silent treatment. But getting a response often depends — on the news outlet, on the reporter, on the nature of the story. Favored outlets, such as Fox News, tend to get a better hearing. Others, not so much.

“I would say they can be responsive but not always helpful,” said Jonathn Karl, ABC News’s chief White House correspondent. “We can usually get some kind of acknowledgment of a request, but the answer is likely to be ‘no comment.’”

Another prominent correspondent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing company policy, said the nonresponsiveness was a result of understaffing and a boss — Trump — who believes he’s his own best spokesman. The press office reportedly has lost about half its staff since its peak last year, this correspondent said.

As for working under Trump: The press staff “doesn’t have a natural message to drive every day,” as other presidents tried to do, the reporter said. “He [Trump] makes it up every few seconds, so they’re afraid to do anything. . . . It’s not a place where being a freewheeling thinker is valued and rewarded. It’s all about the whims of one man.”

As a practical matter, the White House’s silence violates one of the core tenets of public relations — that is, always get a word in edgewise, no matter how damaging a story may be.

But Trump may be playing a different game, said Larry Parnell, who directs the strategic public relations program at George Washington University’s graduate school of political management.

By being nonresponsive, he said, the White House and Trump get to have it both ways: It “proves” to his base that the mainstream media is ignoring his views while enabling him to complain about press bias and “fake news.”

Trump’s predecessors tried to engage “more than the hardcore base” to broaden the president’s support, Parnell said. “Not him. What matters are those who already agree with him.”

What does the White House think of this? It’s hard to know.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment about its tendency not to respond to requests for comment.

2019 — The Year of Managing Artificial Intelligence

by Dr Ruwantissa Abeyratne-Jan 1, 2019

Dec 31, 2018

The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I’m not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast. Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast—it is growing at a pace close to exponential. The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five-year timeframe. 10 years at most. ~Elon Musk

The way things are going, there is no room for doubt that there will be plenty of political upheavals and surprises in 2019.  No one has a clue as to where Brexit is headed or, for that matter, where the entire Western world is going, let alone the prevailing uncertainty in the United States and the onward march of China.  Both the pundits and the jury are out on these issues and only a retrospective look at the end of the year will clear the fog of rhetoric that is going on at present. 

Speaking of pundits, The Economist, in it’s The World in 2019 opines that “Red lights are flashing – not everywhere and not all at once, but enough to signal economic trouble in 2019…emerging markets will be particularly unsettled…the underlying weakness as ever, is debt…a global downturn in 2019 is not inevitable…banks are better capitalized than in 2007 and companies are better at managing risks”.

It is the last bit of the prognosis that warrants particular focus in 2019.  Are companies better at managing risks, especially in the context of their use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)?  Tom Standage, in the same journal says of AI: “as it is applied in a growing number of areas, there are legitimate concerns about possible unintended consequences…the immediate concern is that the scramble to amass the data needed to train AI systems is infringing on people’s privacy”.  He cites the General Data Protection Regulation of The European Union as a positive step in handing back control of personal data to the owner of the data, and the right of the owner to demand of user companies relevant information of usage.  However, Standage argues that the answer to regulating AI is not to introduce new legislation to manage AI but rather to adapt existing privacy and discrimination legislation to take AI into account and address the issues that might emerge.

Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion who defeated the AI computer Deep Blue in 1996 but was later defeated by the computer writes in Encyclopaedia Britannica Yearbook of 2018: “Humans will still set the goals and establish the priorities. We must ensure that our agnostic machines represent the best of our human morality.  If we succeed, our new tools will make us smarter, enabling us to better understand our world and ourselves.  Our real challenge is to avoid complacency, to keep thinking up new directions for AI to explore.  And that’s one job that can never be done by a machine”. 

Thomas H. Davenport and Ranjeev Ronanki, writing in the Definitive Management Ideas of the Year From the Harvard Business Review 2019 recommend that companies shift their focus from AI “moonshots” such as AI systems that could diagnose and recommend treatment for cancer using such machines as IBM’s Watson to concentrating on less ambitious projects such as staff IT problems and hotel reservations and in particular in three main areas: automating business processes; gaining insight through data analysis; and engaging with customers and employees.  Furthermore, the authors suggest that companies use AI to:  enhance products; make better decisions; create new products; optimize internal business operations; pursue new markets (in other words, engage in disruptive innovation); capture and apply scarce knowledge as the need arises; optimize external processes such as marketing and sales; and reduce head count through automation.

Managing AI would be a critical issue in 2019 if only so  companies  keep a check on AI.  Harvard Business Review cites three possible concerns where humans would not comprehend how a machine reached a conclusion.  They are: hidden biases cultivated by the machine through the learning process; since machines are mostly neural networks that work with statistical data, it would be difficult to think that the solutions given by a machine would work in every case, particularly where there are variables and random circumstances; and when a machine error occurs, it would be difficult to correct the error for the first concern cited – that humans may not understand how the machine came to its conclusion.

Sutapa Amornvivat, who runs an AI driven company in Thailand, cautions that AI has to be managed well as: “with the right tools and technology, crucial insights can be unlocked from data.  At the same time, we should be aware that the blind spots and biases within can lead us to the wrong conclusions.  Real limitations to data-driven approaches exist and necessitate human oversight to ensure that they are utilized correctly and to their fullest protection”.

Eleonore Pauwels, Research Fellow on Emerging Cybertechnologies at United Nations University (UNU), says about AI: “AI is already ubiquitous, but will affect people differently, depending on where they live, how much they earn, and what they do for a living. Scholars from civil society have started raising concerns about how algorithmic tools could increasingly profile, police, and even punish the poor. On the global and political stage, where corporations and states interact, AI will influence how these actors set the rules of the game. It will shape how they administer and exert power on our societies’ collective body. These new forms of control raise urgent policy challenges for the international community”.

At a United Nations conference on AI in 2017, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said: “Artificial Intelligence has the potential to accelerate progress towards a dignified life, in peace and prosperity, for all people…the time has arrived for all of us – governments, industry and civil society – to consider how artificial intelligence will affect our future.”

2019 may be a good start to commence composing a new “civilizational story line” as suggested by Julie Friedman Steele, Board Chair and CEO of The World Future Society. She says: “We must be socially, psychologically and existentially prepared.  We must consciously evolve and be able to see outside of ourselves.  We must, in other words, cultivate a futurist mind set and become futurist citizens. This will be our greatest achievement”.

There is no better time than the present to think about this.

India cuts tax on palm oil imports; Malaysia to gain most

Indonesian worker carries oil palm fruits at Felda Bukit Cerakah in district of Klang outside Kuala Lumpur April 16, 2014. REUTERS/Samsul Said/File Photo

DECEMBER 31, 2018

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India has cut import taxes on crude and refined palm oil from Southeast Asian (ASEAN) countries after a request from suppliers, a government notification said.

The reduction will lead to higher imports of palm oil by the world’s biggest edible oil buyer in coming months as it would narrow the difference between the tropical vegetable oil and competitors such as soyoil and sunflower oil.

The duty on crude palm oil was lowered to 40 percent from 44 percent, while a tax on the refined variety was cut to 50 percent from 54 percent, according to the notification issued late on Monday. The cuts took effect on Tuesday.

Malaysian shipments of refined palm oil will be taxed at 45 percent compared with 54 percent earlier, the government said in a separate notice.

In March 2018, India raised the import tax on crude palm oil to 44 percent from 30 percent and lifted the tax on refined palm oil to 54 percent from 40 percent.

Palm oil has being more competitive due to the duty reduction and this will lead to higher imports from January onwards, said Sandeep Bajoria, chief executive of the Sunvin Group, a Mumbai-based vegetable oil importer.

India primarily imports palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia and soyoil from Argentina and Brazil. It also buys small volumes of sunflower oil from Ukraine and canola oil from Canada.

Its palm oil imports dropped 6.4 percent from a year ago to 8.7 million tonnes in the 2017/18 marketing year ended in October, according to Solvent Extractors’ Association (SEA), a Mumbai-based trade body.

Indonesia and Malaysia, the top two palm oil producers, were seeking a reduction in the import tax by New Delhi as inventories were rising in both countries due to higher output.

India’s palm oil imports could have fallen in December but will jump this month as some importers had delayed shipments in anticipation of tax cuts, said B.V. Mehta, executive director of the SEA.

The effective duty difference between crude and refined palm oil has narrowed to 5.5 percent from 11 percent for shipments from Malaysia, which could lead to higher imports of refined palm oil, Mehta said.

“This is a death knell for the domestic refining industry and will halt expansion of palm plantations in the country,” he said.

India relies on imports for 70 percent of its edible oil consumption, up from 44 percent in 2001/02.

“Traditionally, Indonesia corners the bulk of India’s palm oil market. The duty reduction will now allow Malaysia to raise its share,” said a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trading firm.

Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Neil Fullick & Kim Coghill

In China, Yiwu commodity index hailed as oracle of global affairs

A protestor dances in front of French riot police during a demonstration called by the yellow vests (gilets jaunes) movement in France. Source: Jean-Francois Monier/AFP

By Oiwan Lam | 1st January 2019

A RUMOUR about the spread of French “yellow vest” protests to other European countries went viral on Chinese social media before Christmas last week.

The story emerged after French president Emmanuel Macron announced a number of concessions to address protesters’ grievances over economic policies. While Macron expected calm and order be restored, the Chinese-fabricated rumour predicted the opposite.

Multiple versions of the story were spread via a number of micro-blogging accounts on Weibo and Wechat, quoting sources from a commodity wholesaler in Yiwu—a city well known as a wholesaling center—who stated that their entire stock of yellow vests in stock was sold out and more orders had been coming in from European nations such as Sweden, Prague, Switzerland, etc.

SEE ALSO: Space: The new frontier of the US-China rivalry

The story implied that the “yellow vest” protests were spreading throughout the continent.

Here is one version of the story that circulated on Weibo and WeChat:

“【义乌指数】中国义乌的服装调研报告指出,现在来自欧洲的“黄背心”订单继续暴涨,现在黄背心制作工作已经在加班加点地进行,更有不少跨境电商卖家将此视为一次绝佳的销售机会。不少网友说,根据义乌商品市场的大数据,可以预测,未来黄背心运动的的浪潮还有可能蔓延到瑞典、捷克、瑞士、西班牙等国。早前就有外媒发文指出,义乌具有一股神秘力量,可以通过市场行情来预测国际政治大事件的走向。在义乌,接受的海外订单数量更被视为民意的风向标,可以惊人地对将要发生的事件做出准确预测。早在2016年美国大选的时候,义乌制造商就通过美国订购的旗帜和衣衫的数量提前5个月预测出特朗普将会成为总统。据了解,目前义乌的一些纺织厂已经开始陆续接受到美国订单,开始生产特朗普2020年竞选时的旗帜和支持者所穿的衬衫,由于订单量已经比民主党竞选所开出的需求高出数倍,因此也有人通过这点来预测特朗普很有可能连任美国总统。这是中国制造的大数据威力.”

[Translation: (Yiwu Index) Yiwu’s research report on clothing showed that orders of ‘yellow vests’ from Europe has continued to surge. Manufacturers worked overtime to meet the demand and many traders from overseas e-commerce platforms see the movement as an excellent sales opportunity.

“Chinese netizens believed that based on the Yiwu commodity index and its big data, the yellow vest movement would spread to Sweden, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Spain. Foreign media outlets pointed out that the Yiwu Index could accurately predict international political trends.

“Commodity orders from overseas market could serve as indicators of public opinion and hence could accurately predict the results of political events. Back in 2016, based on the orders of election-related t-shirts and flags, manufacturers from Yiwu had predicted Donald Trump would win the US presidency five months in advance.

“Observers say that textile factories in Yiwu have started receiving orders from the US and have begun manufacturing flags and T-shirts for Trump supporters for the 2020 presidential election.

“The demand is now several times larger than orders from supporters of the Democratic Party. Some have started to predict that Trump would be re-elected. This shows the power of China’s big data.”

Protesters wearing yellow vests (gilets jaunes) demonstrate against rising costs of living they blame on high taxes, on December 29, 2018, in Toulouse, southern France. Source: Pascal PAVANI / AFP

The myth of the Yiwu index

Located in Zhejiang Province, Yiwu is the world’s biggest small commodities trading hub, and one of the most popular small commodities wholesale markets in China.

Yiwu’s international trade city has an index called the Yiwu China commodity index that reflects market trends.

During the US election in 2016, the Yiwu Index became a hot topic on Chinese social media, as discussions about election-related merchandise order records in Yiwu seemed to indicate that Donald Trump was more popular than Hillary Clinton.

After the election, even state-affiliated media reported that commodity order records from Yiwu and Alibaba had predictive power, and many Chinese netizens believed that the Yiwu Index was more accurate than the US election polls.

SEE ALSO: China insists it does not seek global domination

Some media observers were quick to point out that this interpretation was problematic, as Clinton, in fact, received more votes than Trump, but this analysis was ignored.

This time, state-affiliated media outlet Global Times fact-checked the online story and reported that yellow vests were not out of stock in the trading city and that the sales volume in recent months was not higher than last year’s.

The Global Times report, however, has done nothing to stop the spread of the Yiwu Index myth.

In fact, new commentary emerged after Christmas reasserting the predictive power of Yiwu Index.

Panorama of Yiwu International Trade City in Yiwu of Zhejiang Province, China. Source: Shutterstock

The story, republished on various online media platforms, did acknowledge the erroneous sales figures for yellow vests, but continued to insist that the Yiwu Index had successfully predicted the results of both the 2016 US presidential election and the 2018 World Cup.

The writer echoed Chinese president Xi Jinping’s Dec 18 speech on the 40th anniversary of the country’s “reform and opening-up”, which cited Yiwu as a successful example of that shift.

SEE ALSO: Chinese province pledges $17b investment to drive tech, innovation

The commentary concluded that the predictive power of the Yiwu Index reflects the glorious history of the country’s transformation:

“实际上，义乌之所以能够一次次“精准预测“国际重大事件的走向，究其原因是义乌人通过几十年的奋力拼搏，将小商品产业在世界范围内做的了独树一帜、傲视群雄，成为世界多国所依赖的小商品产地。

在改革开放的历史浪潮中，就是无数个义乌这样曾经名不见经传的无名小城，在国家政策的鼓励扶持下，刻苦攻坚、努力拼搏、敢为天下先，使中国在短短40年里，实现了史无前例的惊天巨变。”

[Translation: “The reason Yiwu can ‘accurately predict’ the trend of global affairs again and again is due to the Yiwu people’s contributions in the past few decades.

“They have walked a distinctive path in the world’s commodity markets and established the city’s leading status as the manufacturing hub of world’s daily necessities.

“Open door and reform policy has helped numerous cities like Yiwu to take courageous steps and strike out for success. Their efforts have brought about the great transformation of China in just 40 years.”

This intertwining of the predictive power of the Yiwu Index with China’s economic transformation has made the myth even more difficult to debunk.

This article first appeared on Global Voices.

Russia explosion: baby pulled alive from tower block rubble

Eleven-month-old child found in ruins of building where 37 people are still missing

Baby found alive in rubble after Russian building collapse – video

Oliver Holmes-Tue 1 Jan 2019

Russian emergency services have found an 11-month-old baby boy alive in the rubble of an apartment block that collapsed in a gas explosion, after a bitterly cold night in which temperatures dropped to -26C.

“Rescuers heard crying. The baby was saved by being in a cradle and warmly wrapped up,” the Chelyabinsk region’s governor, Boris Dubrovsky, said.

The infant was pulled carefully from the wreckage and driven to hospital.

The health ministry said in a statement that the child was in a dangerous condition with serious frostbite, a head injury and leg fractures. He was due to be taken to Moscow for treatment.

The recovery – about 35 hours after the block collapsed – provided some hope for rescuers, even as the search for other survivors looked increasingly futile.

At least seven people were killed and 37 more remain missing after the explosion tore through the residential building in central Russia,leaving hundreds without a home on New Year’s Eve. Only six survivors have been found, including a 13-year-old boy.

A large section of the 10-storey building in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk, in the Ural mountains, crumbled at about 6am local time on Monday, when many people were still asleep.
Powerful heaters were deployed in the hope of stopping any trapped survivors from freezing to death. Workers had scoured the crushed concrete and mangled steel throughout the night but the search was temporarily halted out of fear other sections of the structure could be unstable.

On Tuesday, the head of Russia’s emergencies ministry, Yevgeny Zinichev, said there was a “real threat of part of the building collapsing … It’s impossible to continue working in such conditions.” Efforts to stabilise the walls could take up to 24 hours.

The Soviet-era apartment block was home to about 1,100 people, and other residents had been evacuated to a nearby school. The blast completely destroyed 35 flats but others were left standing.
Volunteers have offered money and clothing for victims, and some said they were ready to provide temporary shelter to those in need. Magnitogorsk, about 1,000 miles (1,600km) east of Moscow, is home to one of the country’s largest steel producers.

Staff from Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works took part in the rescue operation and the company’s chairman said it would provide financial assistance.

Dubrovsky announced a day of mourning on 2 January, with flags lowered and celebrations cancelled, after the disaster dampened spirits during the new year period, usually the country’s biggest annual festivity.

Vladimir Putin rushed to the scene on Monday, with television broadcasts showing him looking concerned as he met local officials.

“It is in the character of our people, despite new year’s festivities, to remember to think of the dead and wounded at this moment,” the president said.

Witnesses said the explosion was strong enough to shatter the windows of nearby buildings. “I woke up and felt myself falling. The walls were gone. My mother was screaming and my son had been buried,” said one resident.

Investigators have opened a criminal inquiry into the explosion.

The Rise and Fall of China’s Cycling Empires

China’s bike-sharing firms were supposed to be the next big thing. What happened?

More than 100,000 shared bikes are piled up in an open space in Xiamen, China, on Jan. 13. (Wang Dongming/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images) 

BY FRANKIE HUANG-DECEMBER 31, 2018, 9:53 AM

Until the late 1990s, China was a nation of cyclists. Bicycles were such a vital part of everyday life that in the 1970s, owning one was a prerequisite for marriage the way an apartment and a car are for Chinese men today. A massive “bicycle army” rolled through the streets of Beijing every morning like a flowing Great Wall. Then, from 1995 to 2002, the government created bicycle-reduction policies in order to encourage the growth of the auto industry and usage of the mass transit infrastructure. But when the SARS epidemic hit, public transport became associated with disease and danger, sparking an even bigger rush toward cars in cities. Today, Chinese metropolises have some of the worst traffic gridlocks in the world.

Bike-sharing apps seemed poised to be the solution—and millions of bikes were poured into China’s streets by the private sector in the last three years. But today, as the companies fail, unused units pile up in bicycle graveyards, and queues of angry users demand their deposits back, it’s obvious just how doomed the idea was from the start. The rise and fall of the China bike craze played out like a sped-up version of every tech bubble, an unprofitable idea sustained by fantasy, false predictions, and the power of bigger firms.

Local authorities struggling with traffic have been trying to put residents back on two wheels. As early as 2007, docked bike-shares were introduced by municipal governments to alleviate mobility issues in cities such as Beijing, Hangzhou, and Wuhan, but users found accessing bikes via docking stations to be inconvenient, and the services failed to thrive.



The bicycle rental company Ofo was created in 2014 as a Peking University school project, and Mobike was found in the following year, both capitalizing on the shortcoming of all docked bike-sharing services: that the stations limited access and spontaneity, two essential joys of cycling. The “little red bikes,” as Mobikes came to be known, soon appeared on the street corners of Shanghai, ready to be discovered via a GPS-enabled mobile app, and rideable with just a 299 yuan deposit, about $45, via mobile payment. The little yellow Ofo bikes soon followed suit by spreading beyond campuses, eventually joined by around 60 other start-ups.

The image sold by the firms was fresh and upbeat, riding on the same bright-eyed enthusiasm for the potential of mobile technology that helped the mobile payment app Alipay, the e-commerce platform Taobao, and the social media app WeChat become staples of Chinese life. Users wanted both a cheap way to get across town and the freedom of cycling. For the government, the bike-share boom was both an opportunity to become a world leader in climate change and also harkened back to a happier, simpler, and more harmonious time when China was the kingdom of bicycles. Mobike’s slogan, “Bring bicycles back to the city,” captured why the program was appealing to local authorities, who at first were willing to give firms a lot of freedom to experiment and grow. While Mobike and Ofo blazed the trail, dozens of other firms such as Bluegogo and Xiaoming Bike sprung up.

But cars were not going to be banished from the streets, and it wasn’t long before cyclists took mostly to the sidewalks.

 It took even less time for haphazardly parked bikes in a multitude of colors to begin clogging the sidewalks, already made too narrow by makeshift parking lots and scooter traffic. By 2017, in Beijing and Shanghai, where the bikes were most concentrated, there were parts of the city where streets resembled urban obstacle courses made of bikes that citizens had to clamber over and maneuver around. Trucks were deployed daily to collect improperly parked bikes, and workers to stack bikes neatly. Despite efforts to manage the bikes, they were like a brightly colored rash that increasingly drew the ire of both citizens and local authorities.

But at first users and investors alike assumed that this over-saturation was just a stage in the industry, just like what mobile payments and food delivery had gone through. Consumers were happy at the dirt-cheap prices as companies raced to the bottom to draw numbers. Many start-ups were flat-out giving out free rides in an all-in bid to win users, and consumers only too happily enjoyed all the perks while small companies quickly burned through their modest stockpile of investor money and disappeared. As various players began to bow out, there were instances of people not being able to recover their deposits from bike companies that went bankrupt, ominous foreshadowing for things to come for Ofo in 2018.

Between June and November 2017, Kuqi Bikes, Bluegogo, Dingding Bikes, 3Vbikes, and Wukong Bikes all shut down, unable to pay suppliers, maintain operations, or return deposits.

It was always unclear how the firms were ever supposed to be profitable. According to analysis published by Xinhua, each bike costs just over $200 to manufacture and $10 for each tuneup by a technician, and they made a profit of just 1 yuan, about 15 cents, per 2 hour ride, following a deposit of between $15 and $45. The mainstream view— pushed heavily by investors—was that the user data, rather than the service, was the actual product, and that the harvested user data would lead to more targeted advertising. But as so often occurs, these ambiguously defined long-term returns yielded nothing in the endless interim. There was no short-term return on investment for the companies to stay afloat, and the smaller players began to fall in droves.

Between June and November 2017, Kuqi Bikes, Bluegogo, Dingding Bikes, 3Vbikes, and Wukong Bikes all shut down, unable to pay suppliers, maintain operations, or return deposits. Around the same time, local authorities began to roll back their initial tolerance by imposing new restrictions and fines. This wasn’t the first time that start-ups that had previously relied on government lenience had run afoul of new legislation: Didi, China’s Uber equivalent, lost most of its driver pool after cities began to demand that its workers hold a valid local residence permit.



As governments tightened up, cyclists found themselves being hit with fines for riding on the sidewalk across cities of all sizes. In May, the 15th Beijing Municipal People’s Congress imposed fines on bike-share companies for improperly parked units, and more cities soon followed suit. At a neighborhood level, signs forbidding bike-share cycles went up on apartment complex gates, in commercial districts, and even in public parks.

In these bloody battles for market share and user data sustained by bonfires of money, only those with the deepest pockets can hope to emerge victorious. In the early days of bike-share investment, money poured from a wide range of sources, such as venture capital firm Black Hole Capital and game developer Elex Technology, which both backed Bluegogo, and peer-to-peer investment company Pufa VC (whose CEO backed his son’s bike-share, Dingding Bikes). Throughout 2016 and 2017, barely a week went by without a new announcement on bike-share investments. Mobike began by raising capital from multiple venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital, Sinovation Ventures, and Panda Capital, before Tencent joined the fray. Early Ofo investors include Xiaomi and Didi Chuxing, later joined by Hony Capital, Citic Private Equity, and Alibaba’s Ant Financial, before the Alibaba parent company followed suit.

And yet, at the end of every cycle of life and death for the latest tech bubble, it always seems to come down to Alibaba vs. Tencent, China’s two biggest tech giants. User and user data acquisition has much more strategic value for their ecosystems to come up with increasingly targeted services and platforms. Alibaba staked food delivery and video streaming platforms. Only Alibaba and Tencent have the heft to operate bike-shares at a loss just to acquire geolocation user data.


In April, Mobike was saved from its financial struggles when it was acquired by Tencent-backed Meituan Dianping, an online-to-offline e-commerce and food delivery super-app, itself a product and survivor of the tumultuous tech landscape and the brief fad for coupon services. This abruptly launched the bike-share wars into the endgames. Mobike’s newfound financial stability allowed it to pull the rug out from under its remaining competitors by getting rid of the deposit entirely. Even then, Mobike is now a grizzled survivor that has lost its luster. Today it operates with a greatly reduced fleet, and much of its overseas expansions has petered out.

Meanwhile, Ofo was suffering dire cash flow problems, struggling to pay suppliers and keeping operations afloat, and concentrating all its efforts on putting out fires rather than growing the business. Earlier this year, Ofo halted its costly and overly aggressive expansions abroad to focus on the domestic market—which placed on display the limitations of its own financial reach and its leaders’ utter lack of a plan. After a missed opportunity to merge with Mobike and a failed Didi acquisition, Ofo stands on the brink of financial ruin, its only lifeline an Alibaba buyout that may never come. Sensing the end of the bike wars, disgruntled people lined up outside Ofo’s office in Beijing clamoring for their deposits to be returned while the digital queue for withdrawing one’s deposit reached as long as 13 million users.


Despite the ongoing Ofo crisis, Hellobike has just raised 4 billion yuan, more than half a billion dollars, from Primavera Capital and Alibaba’s Ant Financial. It seems that there are still some who hasn’t woken up from the bike-share fever dream.

Meanwhile, Shanghai is adding more docking stations, perhaps a return to the boring, but infinitely more manageable, version of the bike-share. There’s always going to be a small audience for cycling—but it turned out to be a bad dream to build giant firms on.

 

Frankie Huang was born in Beijing and raised in New Jersey. Currently, she lives in Shanghai where she works as a strategist at an idea studio.

Saudi Arabia: The worst-performing country on battling climate change

Saudi Arabia has been at the bottom of the world league table on combatting climate change since tables were first compiled

Kieran Cooke

Tuesday 1 January 2019

To be the country at the bottom of the world league table on combatting climate change is a national embarrassment. To have held that position for every year since tables were first compiled is a national humiliation.

Saudi Arabia is once again named as the worst performing country on a number of climate change indicators in the annual Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI). 

The dangers of a warming world

The CCPI is compiled each year by more than 350 climate and energy experts around the world and published by German Watch and the New Climate Institute, both based in Germany, plus the Climate Action Network, headquartered in Lebanon.

The Climate Change Performance Index map showing North Africa and the MIddle East (screenshot)

The index tracks the efforts of more than 60 countries – together responsible for 90 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) - on avoiding the dangers of a warming world. The CCPI also evaluates the progress made by various countries towards implementing the landmark 2015 Paris agreement on climate change. 

The index examines four performance categories – emissions, renewable energy, energy use and climate policy. On most indicators, Saudi Arabia is at the base of the table – and by a substantial margin.

The index examines four performance categories – GHG emissions, renewable energy, energy use and climate policy. On most indicators, Saudi Arabia is at the base of the table – and by a substantial margin

The best performing country in 2018 was Sweden, scoring 76 out of 100 in the combatting climate change league table. It was closely followed by Morocco, which has significantly increased its share of renewable energy capacity in recent years and consequently risen up the ranks of those fighting global warming.

“With the connection of the world’s largest solar plant and multiple new wind farms to the grid, the country is well on track for achieving its target of 42 percent installed renewable energy capacity by 2020 and 52 percent by 2030,” says the CCPI report.

Egypt, with a score of 57, is considered to be part of a group of middle performing countries, while Algeria is in the "poor" category. Otherwise, nations in the MENA region perform badly and are listed in the "very poor" section. Turkey scores 40, Iran 24 and Saudi Arabia, at the very bottom of the pile, only 8.

Scathing criticism

In the case of Iran, the CCPI study says economic and trade sanctions imposed by the US are likely to slow down investments in renewable energy. “Geopolitical tensions, which serve to push climate down the political agenda, are also reflected in the ‘very low’ rating given for the country’s international policy performance.”

Squeezed between Iran and Saudi Arabia at the bottom of the CCPI is the US.

“The refusal of President [Donald] Trump to acknowledge climate change being human-caused and his dismantling of regulation designed to reduce carbon emissions, result in the US being rated ‘very low’ for its national and international climate policy performance.”

A picture shows rose-coloured sandstone in Madain Saleh, a UNESCO World Heritage site, near Saudi Arabia's northwestern town of al-Ula on 31 March (AFP)

The CCPI is scathing in its judgment of Saudi Arabia. “The country continues to be a ‘very low’ performer in all index categories and on every indicator for emissions, energy use and renewable energy.

“On climate policy, experts give Saudi Arabia a ‘very low’ rating. Although the government is taking steps to expand renewable energy, it has not adopted emission reduction targets.

“Experts also continue to criticise the country's ‘very low’ performance in international negotiations.“

A hazardous exercise

At the recent international climate meeting held in Katowice in Poland, Saudi Arabia - along with Kuwait, the US and Russia - was accused of attempting to derail proceedings and of refusing to acknowledge the dangers posed by climate change.

The irony is that the Middle East and North Africa region – in particular the Gulf – are among the areas scientists say will be worst hit by changes in climate. Already, temperatures are rising while rainfall is decreasing.

READ MORE ►

Hot air: Climate denial won't save the Gulf from a carbonated future

Research indicates that due to prolonged droughts and the drying out of soils, dust emissions have increased by up to 70 percent over Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria over the past 20 years. A combination of rising temperatures and increased humidity is likely to make any outside activity an extremely hazardous exercise in summer months in the not too distant future. 

Regions prone to such conditions include the coastal plains on both sides of the Gulf and cities such as Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha and Bandar Abbas. In these locations, say researchers, people working outside - repairing air conditioning systems or water systems or overseeing emergency services - would be at severe risk.

- Kieran Cooke is a former foreign correspondent for the BBC and the Financial Times, and continues to contribute to the BBC as well as international newspapers and radio networks.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Photo: Saudi Arabia is the world's biggest oil producer (AFP)

Why cheese is no longer my friend

By Tim SamuelsPresenter, All Hail Kale podcast-1 January 2019

My name is Tim and I'm a cheese addict. But what I've been discovering recently has shaken me to the core.

I can barely look a Babybel in the face. A half-eaten halloumi squeaklessly lies yellowing in the fridge. My cheese dreams are shattering.

For, after a lifetime of unfettered devotion, could it possibly be that cheese is more foe than friend? That I am addicted to something that is not so good for my body? That cheese should be toast?

These are questions that began surfacing a couple of months ago when I began making an episode for my new podcast for the BBC, All Hail Kale, looking into whether dairy was scary.

For some time, I'd increasingly been questioning the logic of adults drinking milk.

While milk and dairy products, such as cheese and yoghurt, are good sources of protein and calcium and can form part of a healthy, balanced diet, as Dr Michael Greger, from NutritionFacts.org, put it to me: "There's no animal on the planet that drinks milk after weaning - and then to drink milk of another species even doesn't make any sense."

He then reeled off a series of studies showing the life-shortening potential of drinking this "hormonal stew".

I'd always blithely assumed cheese was a more mature - perhaps benign or even more beneficial - form of dairy. It fitted a mental picture of spritely, long-living Greeks and Italians liberally sprinkling around feta and pecorino; yet in reality, only a low to moderate amount of cheese figures in the hallowed Mediterranean Diet.

I'd also unilaterally decided that a childhood diagnosis of lactose-intolerance should in no way impede me from mainlining paneer when in India or, when skiing, spending more time forking bread into fondue than bothering with the slopes.

De-cheese?

Perhaps this sense of denial-cum-delusion stems from an actual addiction. One US doctor controversially (and not supported by any of the professors I spoke to) refers to cheese as "dairy crack" - for apparently containing addictive, opiate-like chemicals - and even suggests a three-step programme to de-cheese.

Step One: know why you want to break away.

Well, I don't know that I do want to break away.

But in the journalistic pursuit of seeing whether cheese is a less scary form of dairy than milk, I took my head out of the sand (under which a special Turkish cheese is apparently fermented) and contacted three heavy-hitters in nutrition. They all agreed the milk secretion of another species is a strange thing for us to have latched onto - and adult humans have no need to drink it. But could a cheese consensus be reached?

Dr Michael Greger took a hard line: cheese, with its combination of sodium and concentrated butterfat, should not be part of our daily diets. "Make it for a special occasion rather than the day-to-day."

Dr Walter Willett, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health - took a more semi-hard view of cheese. "It does not seem to have the same growth-promoting effects as milk does. Have your Brie in moderation and enjoy it." He said we should have only one portion of dairy a day.

Over at Cornell University, its Nutrition professor David Levitsky took a distinctly softer stance on the perils of dairy - and confessed to having a small cheese plate before dinner every night. "I enjoy it, but I don't eat masses of cheese."

The consensus, of sorts, was that cheese should certainly not be at the high end of the spectrum.

In the spirit of de-ostriching, I then went to see a GP, Dr Enam Abood from the Harley Street Health Centre to get my lactose intolerance retested 30 years on.

She confirmed that not only was the intolerance still in force but by ignoring it I might have inflamed my gut.

According to Dr Abood, my ropey gut means I'm probably not absorbing vitamins and minerals, which isn't great for my immune system, energy levels, and even maybe my mood.

The damage is most likely the result of me overdoing dairy for years.

Dr Abood recommended that if I consume cheese, I should pop a lactase pill - giving me the enzyme I, and many people like me, lack to be able to digest dairy properly.

The one silver (gut) lining from my medical travels was an intestinal expert telling me that a nice piece of bacteria-rich, non-processed, unpasteurised cheese will go down a treat with the gut microbiome.

Having also been making an All Hail Kale episode on the crucial role of the gut to your moods, this seemed like an excellent rationale to keep cheese on the table.

I never got as far as Step Two: think about what you can do to change the recipes you have already. Step Three - think about the non-dairy cheeses - seemed too much to even consider stomaching.

Instead, I think about how bewildering it is to get definitive answers around nutrition. I think I should remember to carry around lactase enzyme pills. And I think my gut would want me to have a little slice of Roquefort… tomorrow.

Download BBC Sounds to listen to All Hail Kale.