My local paper, The Arizona Republic, has just published a profile of China Media Strategies. Funny comments, somewhat “artistic” photo of me.

Forbes’ Beijing bureau chief Gady Epstein today posts on his blog a story of how some Chinese companies use public relations unethically. Not a little bit unethically, but blatantly, over the top unethically, in a way that would be literally inconceivable in the US. Here’s the gist of it:

Police are investigating whether the dairy industry leader, China Mengniu Dairy, was involved in spreading false rumors that certain milk products for children and infants, at the number two industry player, Yili Group, and a lesser-known competitor, Synutra International, caused premature sexual development, including the growth of breasts.

The story went viral this summer in China in a particularly damaging way for Synutra, whose stock took a beating. Now the head of Mengniu’s child dairy department and staffers of a Chinese PR firm that has long worked with Mengniu have been detained in the investigation into the made-up claims.

Trying to capitalize on negative news that comes out about your client is fair game. Companies in the West do it all the time. But making up the bad news out of thin air and then actively promoting the false information via fake consumers and fake blogs to ruin your competitors’ brands – well, that’s serious stuff, and I’m glad to see that many in China find it reprehensible. However, as Epstein says, this isn’t nearly as shocking a story as it deserves to be:

Disturbing, but not shocking: With the aid of some pliant members of the state media, these kinds of dirty tricks are still practiced and effective in China, part of the arsenal companies are prepared to use to bludgeon their competitors.

There’s often an anything goes, Wild Wild East sort of mentality in the China marketplace when it comes to taking on the competition. I’m happy to say that I’ve never had to deal with such a company, but I know they’re out there.

China’s media are slowly beginning to adopt best practices we take for granted in the West, and they still have a long way to go. The same with China’s PR industry, which, we need to remember, is still in its infancy. Thirty years ago there was no PR industry there. That’s no excuse for their participation in acts of slander, but it helps put into perspective how and why this sort of thing can happen.

A dog-eat-dog mentality continues to permeate the world of domestic competition in China. If you plan to compete head-on with Chinese companies, know in advance how vicious things can get.

Last week I arrived in Beijing after a few days in Hangzhou and met up with some old colleagues, at our old office. It was a Saturday, but they were all working – the price they had to pay for the three-day Mid-Autumn Festival holiday. Get three weekdays off, but pay back one of those days by working on the weekend. One Chinese colleague lashed out at the government for what she called the world’s most irrational holiday system.

I was delighted to see a piece in yesterday’s NY Times that captures just how strange a system it is.

Beyond the frustration of overloaded transportation and jam-packed tourist attractions, there is the problem of figuring out what has become a decidedly confusing rubric of work and vacation days.

According to a government-mandated holiday schedule that took effect in 2008, workers were given three consecutive days off last week for the Mid-Autumn Festival, but they were required to make up two of those by working the Saturday and Sunday on either end of the holiday.

This give-and-take arrangement is then repeated for the National Day holiday, with employees enjoying seven straight days off — Friday through Oct. 7 — except only three of those are official free days. (The four “gifted days” will be made up over the weekends before and after.)

If you have trouble with the math, you are in good company…. A cheat sheet that has been making the rounds on the Internet sums up the pattern as such, beginning Sept. 18: One day off, three days on, three days off, six days on, seven days off, two days on, one day off.

Confusion aside, many Chinese resent having to pay back some of their vacation days.

The article does a good job of explaining how China’s “Golden Weeks” got started and how they’re being changed, and why so many Chinese feel exasperated with such a complicated mess.

I first experienced Golden Week-induced culture shock back in October 2002, and it never really went away. Being forced to work on weekends to make up for mandatory holidays was something I’d never fully get used to.

If you’re planning events in China, always be sure to take these holidays into account. During the Golden Weeks China essentially shuts down and there’s no point in even thinking about holding a media event during or even near to these holidays.

I’m in the gorgeous city of Hangzhou, a candidate for most beautiful place on the entire planet. The vast West Lake surrounded by sloping hills and, further back, mountain ranges, is something you can just sit and stare at for hours and feel you’re as close to heaven as it gets. There’s a Chinese saying, Above there’s heaven, below there’s Hangzhou. That’s about right.

I haven’t been active on Facebook or Twitter for two weeks now, mainly because both are blocked by the Chinese government, and even using Viscosity, an industrial strength VPN, I was having trouble getting access.

A censored Internet is a source of culture shock that you never really get used to. Entire blog hosting domains such as blogspot are blocked, as are Facebook, Twitter, countless news sites and many popular blogs, whether written in Chinese or English. Some refer to this phenomenon as the Great Firewall of China, others as the Net Nanny, determined to handpick what the Chinese people can read and where they can congregate to socialize. Once you give the Chinese an open forum that the government can’t control, like Facebook, the Chinese Communist Party seems to get antsy.

The Nanny is fickle and inscrutable; one never knows exactly why a site is available one day and blocked the next. And often sites that were blocked for years, like the BBC News and Wikipedia, suddenly become available again.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of content on China’s Internet that is provocative and critical of the government. But they can only go so far. Criticizing local officials is okay. When you turn the guns on the central government in Beijing, you are waving a red flag at the Net Nanny.

For Westerners, this is an aberration and something to denounce unequivocally. But it’s important that we see the censorship through the eyes of the Chinese people. To us, the glass appears half-empty – the Internet’s very purpose is destroyed by censorship, and it’s unfair that the Chinese are deprived of so much information. The Chinese, on the other hand, see the glass as more than half full. Much more. To them, more information than ever before is at their fingertips and they are grateful for what they have. Most brush off the blockages as a nuisance. So don’t feel sory for the Chinese people suffering under the oppression of censorship. Most Chinese simply don’t see it that way. And that’s not to excuse the censorship; it is abhorrent, but we hve to see it from all sides.

If you’re coming to China for the first time and you want full access to the Internet go here and pay the $69 or so for Viscosity. There are free VPNs out there but none seem to be as dependable and secure. But as I said, I’ve still had problems getting onto certain sites, and some hotels in China seem to be VPN-resistant. So don’t be surprised by the frustration of not being able to go exactly where you want to on China’s Internet. You’re not in Kansas anymore.