Walter Hutchens’ Blog

Jiang Yanyong—the heroic Chinese doctor who reported China’s SARS cover-up in 2003 (probably saving untold lives) and later called for reexamination of the PRC “verdict” on the protests that lead to violent suppression on June 4, 1989—has been denied permission to leave China to receive a human rights award, according to this AP story which cites a report from the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. The upcoming 17th Chinese Communist Party Congress made made PRC officials deem it too “sensitive” a time for Jiang to leave according the cited report.

The U.S. needs legal reforms to maintain and improve its “ecology of innovation” says the former president of the National Academy of Engineering William A. Wulf. In this New York Times story Wulf inveighs that innovation is not just a product of education and R&D spending but that:

An innovation economy depends on intellectual property law, tax codes, patent procedures, export controls, immigration regulations and factors making up what he calls “the ecology of innovation.”

Amen to that. Note that the items listed are legal matters. I would add securities regulation and of course contract law to the list.

In my business law courses I constantly try to show how the legal environment makes possible modern business practices, not just burdens and constrains business, as some students (and many business people) initially perceive.

Sometimes people think innovation is about “culture.” Well, yeah. But you have to include legal infrastructure in your definition of culture for this explanation to be sufficient. Otherwise, how do you explain the wild success of immigrant entrepreneurs from risk-averse, less innovative “cultures” becoming leaders in Silicon Valley?

Immediately after the bit quoted above, the Times notes:

Unfortunately, [Wulf] argues, in the United States too many of these components are unworkable, irrelevant, inadequate, outdated or “fundamentally broken.”

Wulf has it right—law matters, and reform is needed. However, I might put it as, “in the United States these legal components have worked brilliantly to produce the world’s leading innovation-driven economy, but now as always we must reevaluate things in light of changing circumstances in order to keep our lead and make things even better.”

Wulf has been a leader on that front. Bravo.

A partner at the law firm Milberg, Weiss—long the nemesis of publicly listed corporations—has pled guilty to charges related to the paying of illegal kickbacks to plaintiffs in shareholder lawsuits.

As I noted some time ago, this is quite ugly disclosure about the private “disclosure police.”

More cases are pending; others are likely to be filed, with this cooperating partner providing damning evidence.

Alas, since Milberg, Weiss is not a publicly traded firm, it cannot be sued by an entreprenurial lawyer on the exact claims that it has so long used to cludgeon defendants, but perhaps some of its former clients, or shareholders not in on these kickbacks, will still bring a deliciously ironic class action fraud suit against the firm’s current and former partners.

The New York Times reports on the guilty plea here.

Edward Cody writes about Chinese novelist Yan Lianke in yesterday’s Washington Post.

The focus of the story is PRC censorship. Cody correctly points out that despite the dramatic changes China has undergone during its reform era, the Party’s fundamental policy on art has not dramatically changed—writers still can run afoul of official government censors when they write about things deemed “sensitive.”

Author Yan Lianke notes progress, though. Previously he had to write self-criticism for six months when he wrote things the government didn’t permit. Now he just self-censors and stops getting royalty checks when that’s not been enough. At earlier times in the history of China and its Communist Party in particular, he would have simply been killed or thrown in jail for decades.

Yes, that’s progress. Like everything in China—better than it used to be, but still there is a long way to go, at least by liberal standards common in the democratic, developed world.

Politics and economics are often posited as two realms, but China can’t of course separate them completely. Commercialization has caused even government-affiliated presses to want to publish titillating stuff; thus, even “the government” can be ambivalent about media controls in China.

This summer I visited Yan’an in Shaanxi Province, the area to which the Chinese Communist Party retreated after the Long March. I visited the place where the Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature was held, where Mao gave an infamous speech about the role of literature and art in his world-view. The Party has plaques there commemorating the significance of the spot, but of course there are no memorials for the thousands upon thousands of Chinese who suffered because of the Party’s adoption of a policy that “art must serve politics.”

This summer I helped orchestrate a five-week summer program in China for US law students. The program was organized by the law school of the University of Minnesota.

It was a lot of fun helping 34 law students, three US law professors, two Chinese language instructors and an assortment of other guests experience China, many for the first time. They learned a lot and I think had a great overall experience.

The group took classes four days a week. On Thursdays and on some weekends we organized field trips. These excursions afforded the participants some outstanding experiences.

We visited the Great Hall of the People where they heard from senior staff members of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee.

We went to the Supreme People’s Court and met with four sitting judges.

By happenstance, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was in Beijing this summer, and participants in the summer program had front-row seats to hear her speak. Dean Stephen Hsu of the School of American and Comparative Law at the China University of Political Science and Law made that possible. CUPL partners with the University of Minnesota Law School for programs in China. Coincidentally, Dean Hsu and I worked together at the same law firm earlier in our careers, and it was nice to interact with him again.

The students also got to hear from leading local and expatriate lawyers. A panel of distinguished Minnesota alumni spoke to them the first week, and the last week they heard from an expert panel on Chinese legal reforms.

In addition to their formal classes and law-related field trps, we organized a number of cultural excursions. The group hiked the Great Wall and watched an acrobatics show. Most of them also participated in an optional field trip to Shanghai. They also got to visit the offices of the Beijing city planning bureau where they heard about the venues under construction for next summer’s Olympics.

There are a number of other China-based summer program for US law students, but surely Minnesota’s is one of the best. I was delighted to be involved in it and value the many new friends I made.

Yes, I bought one last week. I just happened to move back to the U.S. from China only two days after the iPhone’s debut. My Treo 650 is pretty beat up but still works and is unlocked (meaning it is carrier independent, unlike most US handsets). I could have just gotten a SIM card from a US carrier and continued to use my old Treo, but I thought I’d take advantage of the coincidence of the iPhone coming out the same week I moved back to America (and consequently was not under any existing cellular contract).

I bought mine at the Apple Store in Birmingham, Alabama (at a shopping center called the Summit). There were lots of people looking at the phones on July 2 around 1-2 pm when I was in the store, but there were no lines. However, I apparently bought the last 8 GB model they had in stock.

The set-up was a breeze. I read about some people having problems, but I wasn’t trying to transfer an existing number and had a credit card whose billing address matched the place for which I wanted a phone number. It was a snap. (How annoying, though, that AT&T imposes a $36 activation fee when I performed the activation at home myself! Surely my fair share of their costs and even generous profits in creating the set-up system was, if spread over the number of people buying iPhones just that first week, tiny! Carrier rapaciousness—makes me cheer for their speedy demise!)

Overall, I like the phone. I am not utterly rhapsodic about it, but I am generally happy with it. I adore the browsing experience and the “multi-touch” interface. Also, it’s really nice to have a WIFI-enabled device. I like the ability to play widescreen videos on its small but vivid little display, and the iTunes integration is nice (though unfortunately it is meditated through a PC, not accomplished directly between an iPhone and iTunes store).

My list of desired iPhone improvements resembles the lists others have produced:

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Today Chinese media report that the CSRC has promulgated three regulations on the transfer of shares in listed companies by state shareholders (guo you gudong). The regulations are effective as of July 1, though they are reported in the news today (July 6).

Potentially, this is another piece of the puzzle for China’s creeping privatization of listed firms. The share reclassification process has now been completed (for all but a few laggards), so all shares in listed firms are now theoretically tradeable, in accordance with the terms of the reclassification agreement particular to each company.

But what approvals must a state actor get to transfer its former legal person or state-owned shares, now that they are theoretically fungible with other listed shares? What does a buyer need to see to know the shares have been legally transferred? These rules let us know.

Today I installed Parallels on my MacBook Pro.

This software will allow me to run Windows “within” (or “in parallel to”) the Mac OS.

Apple’s BootCamp also makes it possible to run Windows on a Mac; however, that approach requires you to reboot the Mac and operate it as a Windows-only machine (until you reboot back into Mac OS X).

Parallels on the other hand leaves you in OS X but creates a Windows “window.” That means you can switch from Windows to OS X without rebooting—just click on what you want.

I am not a platform bigot. Vista has some nice features. Indeed, since XP the differences between Windows and Apple’s OS seem minimal to me. Sometimes people exaggerated the gaps when trying to support their side/denigrate an opponent in the OS holy wars. However, for most people most of the time—for people who mainly email, use a browser, run Office apps and other standard programs—nowadays the differences hardly seem to matter. Both operating systems are fairly intuitive and stable GUIs. Indeed, most applications (or an adequate substitute) are available for both platforms (i.e., Microsoft Office, Adobe’s products, iTunes, etc.)

Moreover, what I love most about using a computer is—or should be—OS-agnostic. As Sun opines, the network is the computer. These days do most people even separate the idea of using a computer from the idea of using the Internet? I don’t think so. The life-changing Internet—particularly email and the web—is platform-independent.

Still, returning to the Mac fold after a decade of using only PCs, I find that I do prefer the Mac OS and the suite of applications that ship with a Mac. I think I am more productive with a Mac. I feel like I have more fun using one. Macs to me are a still a somewhat more transparent tool, meaning that when I use one I find I am better able to focus on a task while the tool becomes “invisible.” But, alas, it’s a PC-centric world. Sometimes you still need to run Windows. In my case, two particular software packages prompted me to install Windows on my Mac.

I installed Parallels because 1) I want to use Google’s Picasa to manage my digital photo library and 2) sometimes, I love using the Tablet PC functionality within Windows itself.
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