The Chinese government and private companies must end gender discrimination in job advertisements, said Human Rights Watch as it launched a new report such behaviour on the mainland.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, unveils a report on gender discrimination in job ads in China. Photo: Sarah Graham/FCC

Kenneth Roth, executive director, revealed that well-known companies including tech giant Alibaba were guilty of gender discrimination in their recruitment practices, adding that this facilitated the creation of workplace environment conducive to sexual harassment.

The 99-page report, Only Men Need Apply, analysed more than 36,000 job advertisements posted between 2013 and 2018 on Chinese recruitment websites and social media. It found that in many cases, ads specified a preference for men. Other ads required women to look a certain way even though it was irrelevant to the job. One posting sought ‘fashionable and beautiful high-speed train conductors. Other companies used the physical attributes of female employees to attract applicants.

“In a moment of #MeToo, I want to say I too am worried about gender discrimination,” said Roth as he called on the Chinese government to enforce laws preventing gender discrimination, rather than wait to act – inadequately, he added – on complaints about it.

Roth said gender discrimination was ‘rampant’ among China’s private companies, where some ads called for a ‘trim figure’, or for the applicant to be ‘aesthetically pleasing’. He said China was falling behind the rest of the world when it came to gender discrimination, particularly in its attitude towards enforcing the ‘very vague’ law. In some cases, companies would be told to remove the offending material, and in rare cases a firm would be fined.

More worryingly, the report found that in the 2017 Chinese national civil service job list, 13 per cent of the postings specified ‘men only’, ‘men preferred’, or ‘suitable for men’.

Roth said the findings of the report were sent to the government and all companies highlighted. However, only one company had responded.

Shanghai in the lead-up to World War Two was a hotbed of writers and journalists covering an infinitely bigger China story than is being covered today, according to the author of a new book about the city during that time.

Acclaimed writer Paul French recounts tales from old Shanghai at the FCC. Photo: Sarah Graham/FCC

With more trade coming out of Shanghai before the Japanese invasion of 1937 than comes from the entire country today (depending on how you calculate it), it was not only the big global story of the day, but it was being read around the world by those watching the build-up to World War Two, said Paul French.

Award-winning author French shed light on a lawless city, partitioned into various international settlements, that was a haven for outlaws from all over the world – larger-than-life characters who, due to the lack of immigration control at the time, were able to reinvent themselves and make their fortunes. Some ran casinos in the Shanghai Badlands, others brothels.

And there to capture it all was the foreign press corps, itself leading a fascinating existence in the so-called Paris Of The Orient, many being freelancers reporting for major international newspapers including the New York Times, Reuters and the Times of London. And in contrast to freelancers today, they made a significant amount of money that afforded them a lavish lifestyle in the city.

Broadway Mansions, home to the Shanghai FCC during World war Two. The club later became the Hong Kong FCC. Photo: Sarah Graham/FCC

French told of writers Edgar and Helen Snow’s sumptuous hutong courtyard home where they had seven servants and a racehorse; The New Yorker’s Emily Hahn and her stylish Shanghai apartment; and the city’s largest private library, owned by Times of London correspondent George Morrison, aka Morrison of Peking.

When asked how journalists of the time could afford such lavish lifestyles, French said: “There were so many journalist jobs – everybody had two or three jobs.”

He said writers were often stringers for international newspapers but would also get jobs on local English-language newspapers in Shanghai. The world was fascinated by what was happening in the cosmopolitan city pre-1937, particularly as the Battle of Shanghai kicked off fighting between China’s National Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

“China was such a bigger story then that it is now,” said French, adding that far more column inches were given to coverage, whereas now China’s economy is the only story being covered by the international media.

The colourful characters of the time are brought together by French in his soon-to-be published book, City Of Devils: A Shanghai Noir, a painstakingly researched novel about a now vanished old China.

French’s talk on April 19 included photos of the old Shanghai FCC building in Shanghai’s Broadway Mansions, which would later become to the FCC Hong Kong when, in 1949, its president, Clyde Farnsworth, moved the club to the city after the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan and Mao’s Communists created the PRC.

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A tendency towards skirting around the real issues in China rather than talking about the problems the country suffers is the reason China watchers get it so wrong, says the author of a new book pointing out what he sees as the deep flaws in Chinese culture.

Author Paul Midler aired some grievances about the way the Chinese do business when he appeared at the FCC. Photo: Sarah Graham/FCC

The frustration of doing business in China was a particular area of focus for controversial author Paul Midler, who took aim at the nation’s penchant for long and drawn out negotiations, combined with a frustrating lack of openness, when it came to striking deals. In fact, this procrastination was probably the reason why the Chinese were to blame for the Opium Wars, he said, to the dismay of at least one guest who made it clear she was offended by the comment.

“Part of the trouble is we don’t have a vocabulary to discuss the sort of shenanigans that pass for business-as-usual in China,” said the American.

According to Midler, the over-politeness now employed when talking about social and business issues in China stems from post-World War Two liberalisation. Prior to that, he said, the conversation was inspired by social Darwinism, allowing debates on what made certain populations around the world more successful than others. Midler called the 1920s and 1930s a ‘golden era’ for China watching due to its ‘very frank’ discussions about what was and wasn’t working in China.

But things are improving, he conceded, in that China’s big fails – pollution being one example – are being openly discussed globally and positively responded to by Beijing. But he said the general conversation around China remained largely focused on economics because it relieved us of the burden of having to discuss the real issues that are more painful.

Midler went on to explain that the media-projected image of Chinese people being ‘wholly innocent’ hostages to the Communist Party was ‘fiction’, and in fact 95% of the Chinese population freely supports the government.

“The reality is China watchers walk on egg shells,” Midler, who was promoting his latest book, What’s Wrong With China, said.

However, the era of Donald Trump and his incendiary approach to diplomacy is changing the conversation. “I think we’re getting closer and closer to people expressing what they actually mean,” Midler said.

Watch the video of the talk below.

The international news wire Agence France-Presse is looking for an enterprising Anglophone correspondent to join its team in Beijing, covering a wide range of issues in China for a huge global audience.

The role includes covering daily breaking news and writing longer, more in-depth analyses and features, involving some travel around China. The bureau also covers Mongolia.

This is an opportunity for a journalist who wants to develop his or her own story ideas and play a significant part in reporting developments in Chinese politics, sports, society, economics and culture for a major news agency.

AFP is looking for a native English speaker with the ability to speak and read Chinese.

The ideal candidate must have strong knowledge of China and have shown an ability to develop sources, break news and produce original stories. Compensation package commensurate with abilities and experience.

Please apply with CV and cuttings to Asia Regional Director Philippe Massonnet at [email protected], Chief Asia Editor Giles Hewitt at [email protected], Beijing Bureau Chief Patrick Baert at [email protected] and Deputy Bureau Chief Laurent Thomet at [email protected]

By the time you finish reading this sentence, a fellow human being somewhere in the world would have been forced into modern slavery.

Matt Friedman, CEO of The Mekong Club, recounted shocking stories from the victims of modern slavery when he spoke at the FCC. Photo: Sarah Graham/FCC

One every four seconds, 9.2 million new slaves every year, 45.8 million in the world today. In fact, there are more slaves today than at any time in history, said Matt Friedman, CEO of The Mekong Club, an NGO working to alleviate the problem through education.

One minute it might be a 13-year old girl who is forced to provide sex to up to 10 men a day, seven days a week; or a teenage boy who is placed on a slave boat in Thailand – working 18 hours a day for four years without proper food or rest, and without any pay at all; or a child who is separated from her family and forced to work in a sweatshop to make the clothes we wear or the electronics we use. Modern slavery comes in many forms, Friedman said, and it is a US$150 billion industry.

The definition of modern slavery is withholding wages; debt and other forms of bondage; retention of identity documents; restricted movement; physical and sexual violence. It often begins with an offer that is too good to be true: sometimes a work offer, or a marriage proposal, Friedman said. In Nepal, teenage girls are sold into a marriage and the young bride then trafficked into prostitution.

Currently there are 29,000 slaves in Hong Kong – half of those are women forced into prostitution; the other half are domestic helpers, he said. In a timely move, the Hong Kong government, which has remained silent over the issue, announced on March 21 it would launch an action plan to stamp out slavery in the city.

But what is being done globally to eradicate the problem? While legislation is being put in place, such as the UK’s Modern Slavery Act, it didn’t go far enough. Friedman, who interviewed hundreds of freed slaves throughout Southeast Asia for his new book, Where Were You? A Profile of Modern Slavery, gave statistics showing that 66,000 of the more than 40 million currently in slavery had been been helped – a mere 0.2%. And of the half million criminals operating within slavery, 7,000 we jailed – 0.8%.

The Mekong Club was established to unite and mobilise the private sector – namely finance, apparel, hospitality and retail – with the purpose of disrupting and ending modern slavery. Friedman, an international trafficking expert, said 75% of the 45.8 million slaves were in forced labour, and 60% of them associated with manufacturing supply chains. This is why it is important to engage the private sector. “The private sector has extensive human and financial resources that could help eliminate modern slavery conditions,” he said.

“I personally believe the private sector has great potential to be the silver bullet to address these types of issues,” Friedman said.

And The Mekong Club offers some interesting tools to companies in the private sector, designed to help them work more efficiently in addressing modern slavery. A Risk Assessment Matrix (RAM) is an online dashboard that helps brands to assess the risk of forced labour associated with specific products, in a given country or province, in order to prioritise their audits and investigations where modern slavery is more likely to exist within their supply chains.

A Knowledge Hub offers a comprehensive online resource centre on modern slavery. It archives news articles, reports, website addresses, blogs and more, with a focus on modern slavery’s links to the private sector. An End Slavery smartphone app encourages the public to earn care points through learning about slavery, spreading the word, and volunteering.

Its impressive Victim Identity App allows police and NGO workers to approach those they suspect of being slaves and communicate with them using country flags to identify the language they speak, and voice recordings in hundreds of different languages that can ask the victim questions, such as ‘are you being held against your will?’.

Acting on the startling results of a survey The Mekong Club carried out in Bangladesh that found 40% of those helped out of trafficking got retrafficked, Friedman said the NGO was working on vocational training with a work placement element to help victims start a new life.

But on a more personal scale, Friedman encouraged anyone who was touched by the sickening stories of those forced into slavery to take action, whether it be attending lectures, bringing the topic to the attention of their employers, or simply talking about it with others.

The way in which we measure the health of our economies needs to change in order to maximise what actually matters: our welfare, according to a new book by a leading financial writer.

David Pilling, talked about his new book, The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations, at the FCC. Photo: Sarah Graham/FCC

David Pilling, associate editor and former Asia editor of the Financial Times, argues that current gross domestic product (GDP) – the statistic used globally to measure economies – is misleading because it fails to take into account distribution, sustainability or the nature of production.

GDP is the monetary value of a country’s goods and services within a given time period, and it is used as an indicator of national economic well-being. However, in his new book, The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations, Pilling says this economic measurement was created for and shaped around policy objectives.

From its first inception under U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who wanted a measurement in order to justify spending more to boost the flagging economy of the 1930s; to its interpretation by Britain in World War Two to increase spending on armaments; GDP has been manipulated over the years to fit fiscal policy, Pilling said.

Growth as measured by GDP is often a positive thing for developing countries like China and India where it can improve the lives and well-being of many, Pilling said. But once a country boasts prosperity, economic growth and personal well-being can often separate. It is here where the measure can fail as we see a disconnect between the numbers and how happy people are, he said.

During his March 21 club lunch appearance, Pilling used simplified – and often colourful – analogies to explain why the current formula to calculate GDP falls short of the real picture of an economy’s health. For example, America does not measure the cocaine economy in its GDP despite widespread use of the drug; but Colombia does, which of course, gives its economy a significant boost. Similarly, in the United Kingdom a person caring full time for a relative does not factor in the GDP, but putting that relative in a care home where someone else is paid to look after them is. A mother who breast feeds her baby does not contribute to GDP, yet the manufacture of infant formula does.

Pilling, now Africa editor for the FT, said: “GDP only measures things for which money changes hands. we shouldn’t worship it as a number, it doesn’t tell us everything we think it tells us. There should be some measure of wealth.”

He added that GDP needs to better measure the value of public services; it needs to improve median household income; and take into account an economy’s effect on carbon omissions.