Mutual Suspicion Mars Tech Trade With China

BEIJING — At an elegant guesthouse here recently, China’s top Internet regulator entertained ambassadors and diplomats with platters of tempura and roast on a spit, unusual lavishness in an era of official austerity in China, to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

But the graciousness came with a warning: Foreign companies had to behave if they wanted to stay in China’s $450 billion technology market.

In Washington on the same day, more than two dozen American tech industry executives and trade association officials gathered at an emergency meeting at the pre-Civil War building of the Office of the United States Trade Representative. They told the deputy trade representative it was time for the United States to get tough with Beijing.

The stern words at the dueling gatherings underscored how a routine trade disagreement had quickly escalated into a complex political fight. On Friday, the battle lines became even clearer when a top United States official criticized China for the new regulations on American tech companies.

The conflict has escalated sharply for months. Now, it pits a confident Chinese leadership, alarmed by evidence of online espionage by the United States, against an awkward alliance between the Obama administration and Silicon Valley — which itself is wary of Washington but is also salivating over the huge Chinese market.

What makes this trade dispute different from others is that traditional concerns of market share and protectionism have become intertwined with the thornier issues of national security and espionage.

“We are at a bad point in a triangular drama,” said Peter F. Cowhey, dean of the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego. “The Chinese government is suspicious of American spying, and it wants to advance Chinese leadership in digital markets,” said Mr. Cowhey, who is a former director of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and a former counselor for the United States trade representative. “Washington suspects the worst of Chinese commercial policy and is equally suspicious of Chinese digital espionage.”

The latest chapter in the dispute began when China said American tech companies had to submit to invasive audits and create back doors into hardware and software. The Chinese say the rules are a matter of national security, necessary to protect state and business secrets.

The rules, which will go into effect in coming weeks, apply only to banking technology for now but are expected to spread to other sectors. Other proposed regulations in China, like an antiterror law still in draft form, go even further and could force tech companies to hand over encryption keys — the passcodes that help protect data from prying eyes — to the Chinese government.

The tech companies say the new rules and the proposals are untenable. But their hands are somewhat tied.

The companies have called on the Obama administration for help, a move made with hesitation. Silicon Valley companies are also leery of the Obama administration’s using their technology for espionage, particularly after the spying revelations made public by Edward J. Snowden, the former American intelligence contractor.

Those same revelations may also be limiting the administration’s options — hobbling its ability to tell China to stop taking the same liberties with technology that the United States has taken.

The companies, and some in the American government, argue that China’s moves are not primarily about national security. Instead, executives and trade groups say, China is mostly trying to strengthen its domestic tech industry by blocking competitors.

The Obama administration has used that argument to pressure Beijing. This month, four cabinet officials, including Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and Secretary of State John Kerry, sent a letter to their counterparts in Beijing, requesting the immediate suspension of the banking measures, according to an official who has seen the letter but would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

Michael Froman, the United States trade representative and also a signatory of the letter, said on Friday that the new rules violated China’s trade commitments.

“The rules aren’t about security — they are about protectionism and favoring Chinese companies,” he wrote in a statement. “The administration is aggressively working to have China walk back from these troubling regulations.”

Still, in many ways, China seems to hold all the cards. China has twice as many Internet users as the United States, a market expected to account for half of all information technology spending globally in 2015. Its industrial policy gives the government strong control over the economy. And its own tech companies are growing in size and capability.

American companies — eager to do business in the expanding market — are divided on how to deal with the Chinese, a weakness China has cannily exploited over the last decade.

Just a few years ago, the companies had a tacit agreement not to give in to demands that they store data in China. In 2012, Microsoft capitulated, cooperating with a local company to store data in China and help its customers meet local legal requirements. Soon after, IBM, Amazon and Apple followed suit.

A similar pattern played out in other areas, too. In each case one foreign firm accedes to a new, stricter regulation — at times providing technical expertise to Chinese partners. Soon, foreign rivals, worried about missing out, do the same. And in the long term, the local Chinese companies become competitors to their former foreign partners.

“The Chinese go to each company and say, ‘Look, don’t oppose this and we’ll give you special treatment,’ ” said James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Uncertain when a rival might cave to China’s demands, most American tech companies have engaged in a delicate high-wire act, working hard to stay in Beijing’s favor while pushing the United States government to voice their grievances.

During a November visit to China, Obama raised concerns about an antimonopoly investigation into Qualcomm, the large semiconductor company. But when Qualcomm was fined nearly a billion dollars by Beijing under the antimonopoly law this month, the company’s president practically thanked China, saying “we appreciate” the Chinese regulator’s “acknowledgment of the value and importance of Qualcomm’s technology and many contributions to China.”

In previous disputes, China has tempered policies after the tech industry made enough noise. But analysts say this time is different. President Xi Jinping is tougher than his predecessors, they say, and he has taken a personal interest in the country’s tech security.

“People have to realize there is a new sheriff,” said Christopher Johnson, senior China analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The documents released by Mr. Snowden, including some indicating that the American government planted surveillance code in some telecommunications exports, have also emboldened Chinese leaders. An American tech industry official said China’s top Internet regulator, Lu Wei, has often claimed the moral high ground in feisty encounters with Americans.

Mr. Lu perhaps gained more ammunition this month, when a Russian security firm reported that the United States had found a way to permanently embed surveillance and sabotage tools in the computers and networks it targets.

China also argues that the United States has engaged in restrictions similar to those pursued by the Chinese. The American tech official said that Mr. Lu cites the instructions by Gary Locke, then secretary of commerce, to Sprint Nextel in 2010 to not buy equipment from Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications equipment maker, because of security concerns.

One potential option to help defuse the situation, said Jon M. Huntsman Jr., a former American ambassador to China, is trying to tie the technology trade issues to broader trade talks between the countries. The Obama administration is in the middle of negotiating a bilateral investment treaty with China that covers industries like financial services and energy but not technology.

“There needs to be a pathway to develop rules of the road,” Mr. Huntsman said. “These are complicated issues.”

Source link

- http://bit.ly/1N5rYCX

Arts | New Jersey: Women Take the Mike

The jazz business was once known as a man’s game. That may, in some ways, still be true. But this March, as Women’s History Month unfolds, jazz clubs throughout New Jersey will come alive with groups led by women.

“It’s a great time for women in jazz,” said Roseanna Vitro, 63, a de facto dean of jazz singers in the Garden State.

Even though offerings won’t represent the full range of the genre — avant-garde groups, big bands and ensembles helmed by instrumentalists will be less than plentiful — female vocalists will be abundant.

Trumpets, in Montclair, for example, is devoting most of its March schedule to groups led by women, among them the singer Sarah Partridge.

Ms. Partridge, a resident of Boonton, said she feels at home at the club, which has a solid track record of supporting women in jazz. Since its founding in 1988 by Emily Wingert, and under the current co-owner, Kristine Massari, Trumpets has featured marquee names like Etta Jones, Angela Bofill and Marlene VerPlanck. 

Ms. Partridge, an actress who has worked in television and film, appearing with Tom Cruise in the 1983 romantic comedy “Risky Business,” has a bit of a cabaret background. She performed at the Oak Room at the Algonquin, which closed in 2012, but she received mixed reviews, which Ms. Partridge attributed to mismatched sensibilities.

“There is a line between cabaret and jazz artists vocally,” she said. “Coming from the theater, you’d think I’d have gone the other way. But I found something insincere in the whole cabaret presentation.”

Nonetheless, she said, her Trumpets booking, on March 27, may offer a chance to “build a bridge” between the cabaret and jazz camps. While her jazz chops will be on display — Ms. Partridge is likely to be encouraged in that regard by her pianist, who will be either Allen Farnham or his wife, Tomoko Ohno — she will depart from her typical reliance on standards and draw on originals that reveal her dramatic side.

Her set will include material from her new CD, “I Never Thought I’d Be Here,” which was recorded in Warren by the engineer Paul Wicliffe, who is married to Ms. Vitro.

Ms. Vitro will perform on March 18 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in New Brunswick.

Like Ms. Partridge, Ms. Vitro flirted with Hollywood fame, having made the rounds in the 1980s accompanied by the television heavyweight and jazz enthusiast Steve Allen. She worked in nearly every major jazz club and recorded steadily, receiving a Grammy nomination in 2012 for “The Music of Randy Newman.”

For the Hyatt show, Ms. Vitro will pull material from a number of sources, she said, including the album of Mr. Newman’s songs; her latest CD, “Clarity: Music of Clare Fischer”; and a CD also featuring the pianist Kenny Werner, which is scheduled for a summer release.

She will perform with pianist Jason Teborek, a young pianist, and has decided on opening and closing songs for the set: the wry “Laughing at Life,” made famous by Billie Holiday, and the melancholic “Some Other Time,” from the musical “On the Town.”

Amid the abundance of vocalists, a couple of keyboardists stand out. On March 6, Lenore Raphael, a fluid pianist, will offer a tribute to Oscar Peterson at Trumpets. And on March 26, Akiko Tsuruga, a Japanese organist, will bring her rollicking quartet to Hotoke in New Brunswick.

Ms. Tsuruga, a kinetic presence long associated with the saxophonist Lou Donaldson, said she will draw liberally from “Commencement,” her latest CD, a mix of standards and originals.

The singer Carrie Jackson, will be all over New Jersey in March, performing at least 11 dates in nine venues. Among the highlights will be a trip to Trumpets with her vocal collective on March 15 and her debut at Dorthaan’s Place at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in her native Newark on March 22.

On March 27 she will play the Priory, also in Newark, where she said she will commemorate the birthday of Sarah Vaughan. With her 2013 album, “A Tribute to Sarah Vaughan, Newark’s Own,” Ms. Jackson has become identified with the legendary contralto, who died in 1990.

Ms. Jackson is also an entrepreneur. Her consultancy, C-Jay Recording & Productions, helps young artists navigate their careers.

Such sideline gigs are becoming more common among women in jazz. Beyond her longtime associations with New Jersey City University and other institutions, Ms. Vitro also advises promising musicians. She has set up JVOICE, an online forum for vocalists.

“We’re continuing to work for equality on the bandstand and off,” she said.

Source link

- http://bit.ly/1M0lT9l

Arts | Connecticut: Jazz That Spans Generations

Willie Ruff, the French horn player and double bassist, enjoyed a celebrated musical partnership with the pianist Dwike Mitchell that, over more than half a century, took him to stages around the world, from the segregated South to Communist China to Town Hall in Manhattan. It was a long and winding road that ended with Mr. Mitchell’s death in April 2013.

Since then, Mr. Ruff, 83, said, he has been on a hiatus from playing in public. Aside from that, however, he has not slowed down much.

Sitting in his small studio at the Yale School of Music, where as a faculty member he has been a kind of emissary from the jazz world for four decades, Mr. Ruff spoke recently about projects he is pursuing and loose ends he wants to tie up.

On March 6, he hosts the pianist Aaron Diehl at Yale’s Morse Recital Hall as part of the Ellington Jazz Series, which has its roots in a notable gathering of jazz masters organized by Mr. Ruff in 1972. Booking Mr. Diehl for it will, in addition to bringing a new star to the Yale campus, pay homage of sorts to one of Mr. Ruff’s old Army buddies, who happens to be Mr. Diehl’s grandfather.

For Mr. Ruff, nearly all roads lead back to the Army, where, as a post-World War II recruit from Sheffield, Ala., he picked up the French horn, which he learned well enough to be admitted to Yale. After graduating in 1955, he went to California, found work as a musician and developed a jazz history course at U.C.L.A. That course provided something of a model when, in 1971, he presented the idea for the convocation to Yale officials.

“It’s time Yale acknowledged the contribution of African-American music,” he recalled telling the officials, who agreed. What they did not agree to, however, was providing money for the event, which he eventually found in the form of a grant from the grandson of the financier Paul Mellon.

As large photos on the walls of Mr. Ruff’s studio attest, the convocation attracted about 40 leading lights of jazz, among them Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and the bassists Charles Mingus and Slam Stewart, whose weathered bass leaned against a wall of the studio near the photos.

With its deeply researched presentations and personal encounters complementing the musical offerings, the convocation “set a formulation for an exchange of information and probing discussion about issues that relate to the music,” Robert Blocker, dean of the Yale School of Music, said in February.

Ultimately, the event gave rise to the Ellington series, which remains the major jazz offering in the school’s roster of regular concert series. “It established the instrumentality that has allowed me to keep the series going for 42 years,” Mr. Ruff said.

Over the years, Mr. Ruff has known many of the artists he has booked. But the scheduling of Mr. Diehl will lend the proceedings another kind of personal dimension. Mr. Diehl is the grandson of Arthur Baskerville, a trombonist of some renown in Columbus, Ohio, whom Mr. Ruff grew close to as a teenage soldier at Lockbourne Air Force Base (now Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base) near Columbus.

Rising from the chair in his studio, Mr. Ruff became animated as he pointed to a computer screen on which he had loaded a photo of himself, Mr. Baskerville, Mr. Mitchell and the future drumming giant, Elvin Jones, all standing amid hundreds of African-Americans stationed at Lockbourne.

Long after they had been discharged, Mr. Ruff said, Mr. Baskerville kept him apprised of Mr. Diehl’s musical exploits, which took the budding pianist from his native Columbus to New York, where he attended the Juilliard School and forged ties with musicians like Wynton Marsalis. Mr. Baskerville, now in his 90s and still living in Ohio, will be able to see the March 6 performance as it is streamed online.

Mr. Diehl, 29, acknowledged in February that he had long demurred when his grandfather encouraged him to contact Mr. Ruff.

“It’s not until recent years that I’ve been able to appreciate the value of reaching out to older generations,” he said. “It’s important for me to be proactive and reach out to these people even if it’s somewhat daunting.”

Mr. Diehl said he might show his appreciation on March 6 by playing originals from his new album, “Space, Time, Continuum,” which has generational connections as a theme. He might cover tunes by composers from Columbus, like the trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison and the multi-reedist Rahsaan Roland Kirk, or fashion an arrangement of “St. Louis Blues,” by W. C. Handy, who was raised a mile from Mr. Ruff’s childhood home.

In keeping with the evening’s atmosphere of military reminiscences, Mr. Ruff said he planned to include the march version of “St. Louis Blues” in a 10-minute presentation he will make before Mr. Diehl takes the stage.

The performance is scheduled to feature Mr. Diehl with the other members of his trio, Paul Sikivie on bass and Lawrence Leathers on drums. Mr. Diehl, however, said he was hoping to collaborate with Mr. Ruff, even briefly.

For his part, Mr. Ruff, recalling emails in which Mr. Baskerville had likened the urbane Mr. Diehl to “another Mitchell,” appeared to leave the door open, a little at least, to a joint performance. The issue, perhaps, was one of timing.

“Once you’ve had what I had with old Mitchell, I think I’ve pretty much covered the piano,” he said. But, he added, “If I were looking for another collaborator, I would certainly conspire to do some work with Aaron. We might at some point.”

Source link

- http://bit.ly/1FJLD5R

Deal Keeps ‘Kardashians’ Reality Show on E!

E! is paying up to keep up with the Kardashians.

The NBCUniversal cable network has reached a deal with the Kardashian family to extend the run of its reality show, “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” on the network for three more years, according to a person briefed on the deal. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The New York Post reported Thursday that the deal would cover four years and be worth more than $100 million. Cory Shields, a spokesman for NBCUniversal Cable, called that figure “grossly inaccurate.”

Still, the paycheck is likely to be substantial and at the top of the reality genre, TV industry executives said, because the family holds significant bargaining chips.

“Keeping Up With the Kardashians” is one of the bright spots at E!, which like other cable television networks is suffering ratings declines. Prime time ratings at E! for the total year 2014 declined 10 percent for viewers 18 to 49 years old, at an average of 386,000, according to Nielsen data.

“Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” meanwhile, has managed to hold on to its audience, with the eighth and ninth seasons both attracting an average of 3.5 million viewers live and seven days after an episode was televised, Nielsen said. The 10th season is scheduled to start in March.

Kim Kardashian has maintained her presence in the spotlight with her marriage to the rapper Kanye West, a Super Bowl commercial and a huge presence on social media. In addition, the popularity of her sisters has exploded, giving the family another bargaining chip.

Source link

- http://bit.ly/1AJ7A5u

Henry T. Segerstrom, California Developer and Arts Patron, Dies at 91

Henry T. Segerstrom, a California developer and arts patron who transformed his family’s lima bean farm into Orange County’s booming cultural and commercial downtown, died on Feb. 20 at his home in Newport Beach. He was 91.

His death, after what was described as a brief illness resulting from war injuries, was announced by Debra Gunn Downing, a spokeswoman for South Coast Plaza, the shopping center in Costa Mesa, Calif., that his family gambled on building in a sleepy bedroom community in the 1960s and parlayed into what it calls the nation’s highest-grossing planned retail center.

Mr. Segerstrom founded the Orange County Performing Arts Center, which was renamed for his family in 2011, and was a trustee of Carnegie Hall, which awarded him its Medal of Excellence in 2010. In partnership with the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Carnegie Hall delivered its live festival programming to audiences beyond New York City in 2009 for the first time.

Henry Thomas Segerstrom was born on April 5, 1923, in Santa Ana to Anton Segerstrom and the former Nellie Ruth Thomas. His father was a tenant farmer on a 20-acre orange grove that his grandparents, Swedish immigrants, leased in 1898. His mother also worked in the family business.

By the 1940s, the family owned 2,000 acres in what is now Costa Mesa and had become the biggest independent grower of lima beans in the country.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Mr. Segerstrom interrupted his studies at Stanford University to enlist in the Army. Serving with the 103rd Infantry Division near the Rhine, he was wounded, almost mortally, by artillery fire that killed an injured comrade he was carrying. He underwent multiple surgeries, lost a finger and learned to sign his name left-handed. He was discharged as a captain.

After graduating from Stanford with a master’s degree in business, he joined the family-owned agricultural concern when he was 25.

In 1950, he married Yvonne de Chavigny Perry. They had three children, Toren and Anton Segerstrom and Andrea Grant, who survive him. The couple divorced in 1981.

Renee De Troyes, whom he married in 1982, died in 2000. Later that year, he married Elizabeth Swiecicka, a clinical psychologist, who also survives him, along with six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Mr. Segerstrom met his third wife while they were seated at separate tables at a New York restaurant, according to The Los Angeles Times. He said later that he had introduced himself modestly as a farmer. (The company’s headquarters is still the farmhouse built by his grandfather a century ago.) But the former farm boy saw more potential above ground than below it.

C. J. Segerstrom & Sons developed the county’s first air-conditioned office tower and opened South Coast Plaza in 1967. A complex of department stores and luxury retailers embellished with sculptures commissioned from major artists, the shopping center became a tourist destination. It is still family-owned.

In 1976, the family’s gift of five acres to arts organizations was the beginning of an expanding commitment. Now called the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, the complex occupies a 14-acre campus that includes a new concert hall financed by Mr. Segerstrom with $51 million. It is also home to the South Coast Repertory and the future site of the Orange County Museum of Art.

In addition to serving on Carnegie Hall’s board of trustees since 2009, he was also a founder of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and a board member of the White Nights Foundation of America and the American Friends of Versailles.

Source link

- http://bit.ly/1FJKv2d

Sinosphere Blog: Beijing Courts Address the Right to Criticize Public Figures

Two recent court rulings, and Kong Qingdong’s refusal to comply with one of them, have prompted a debate about the extent to which public figures can be held accountable for their statements, and the right of ordinary citizens to criticize such figures.

Source link

- http://bit.ly/1Cc8ucu

Bits Blog: Google Unveils Plan for New Corporate Campus

Source link

- http://bit.ly/18brj28