Short March: Consulate Guangzhou Drives Deep into

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 GUANGZHOU 010337 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS STATE FOR EB, R, EAP/CM, EAP/PD, DRL STATE PASS USTR USDOC FOR 4420/ITA/MAC/MCQUEEN, CELICO, DAS LEVINE USPACOM FOR FPA E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ECON KIPR EINV PHUM KPAO PINR AMGT CMGT CH SUBJECT: Short March: Consulate Guangzhou Drives Deep into Eastern Guangdong's "Chao-Shan" Heartland REF: A) Guangzhou 5995 and previous, B) Guangzhou 3992 (both notal) (U) This document is sensitive but unclassified. Please protect accordingly. Not for release outside U.S. Government Channels. Not for internet publication. ¶1. (SBU) Summary: Continuing its efforts to get especially its Entry Level Officers (ELOs) on full two-year consular tours out of the office and onto the roads, cities, and villages of south China to do policy advocacy and public diplomacy work, Consulate Guangzhou embarked on its "short march" to eastern Guangdong, particularly the so-called Chao-Shan area centering on ancient, faded but gradually reviving Chaozhou and upstart, pushy, and bumpily and swervingly developing Shantou. Shantou especially is the "heart of the heart of darkness" of intellectual property rights (IPR) malfeasance, and some of the trip's emphasis was on reviewing the role of local Market Order Rectification Offices (MOROs) in IPR enforcement and on using university presentations to tie together the themes of respect for IPR and the innovative society that students profess to want to build in south China. End Summary. "Journey to the West" Concept Heads East -------------- ¶2. (SBU) In line with the same operational and management philosophy behind Consulate Guangzhou's January 2006 "Journey to the West" to Guangxi (reftels),we embarked in the second week of March on the "short march" to eastern Guangdong by Consulate van. On the "march," the Consulate party rotated in and out three ELOs, two of whom are on full two-year consular tours. As with the "Journey to the West," the ELO leadership development aim is to provide opportunities for the consular ELOs to get literally ground's eye and face-to-face views of places and people of the consular district to improve the officers' visa adjudication capabilities, provide them policy advocacy and public speaking opportunities, and to allow for direct mentoring from the Consul General and the Economic/Political Section chief on interviewing and interaction techniques, policy advocacy, and public speaking presence. Destinations, Way Stops, and "No Way" Stops -------------- ¶3. (SBU) The area we traveled to is known as the "Chao- Shan" area, with its populace predominantly speaking a branch of the Minnan dialect most commonly known as Chaozhou or Teochow. Renowned for being tough and resilient at home, the area is also the origin point of many Overseas Chinese, particularly in Thailand and Indonesia but with not an inconsiderable number in North America as well. The specific destinations were: Shanwei -- the site of Guangdong province's attempts to create energy farms using various technologies and the scene of a recent fatal suppression by authorities of civil unrest (ref B) and where it was "inconvenient" for any official to meet anybody from the Consulate; Shantou -- the least successful of the four original Special Economic Zones set up by Deng Xiaoping and which actually experienced negative growth several years ago; Jieyang -- thousands of people flee every year from overcrowding and over used land; Chaozhou -- the traditional rival of Guangzhou within Guangdong Province until recent times when its wonderful culture was ravished by war and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and its influence eclipsed by the despised "low class" Shantou; and Huizhou -- we stopped for a quick visit to television and phone manufacturer TCL to give our driver a break in an otherwise very arduously long leg back to Guangzhou. IPR Heart of Darkness -- and Areas of Light, Too -------------- -------------- ¶4. (SBU) In line with suggestions from U.S. business sector partners to improve IPR protection and enforcement in south China, we sought out meetings with local Market Order Rectification Offices (MOROs),interagency offices designed to deal with problems such as IPR that cross GUANGZHOU 00010337 002 OF 002 boundaries in China's densely stove-piped bureaucracy. Our experiences in Shantou suggest that while helpful, cooperation with MOROs is just one more avenue to pursue in the otherwise fractured IPR protection and enforcement environment of the "heart of darkness" of IPR violations. Also with a view to IPR, our college student outreaches at Shantou University and Huizhou University focused on the relationship between innovation, highly valued by the very patriotic Chinese student body as a means for China's march to modernity, and IPR protection, a connection which our student audience understood intellectually but which did not stop them from watching pirated movies. ¶5. (SBU) Septel recounts our "cold-shouldered" experience in Shanwei while the first substative report in our "short march" series is on Shantou -- which has seen its share of economic development rough patches but which is seemingly climbing out of them and embarking on some comparatively impressive economic growth. Dong