Highlights

Destiny of the Big Vs and the Prospect of China's Politics

YAO Zhongqiu (Qiufeng)

A hunting-down of Big-Vs is gaining momentum. (Big V-a “verified” online account with a big following.) There is a sense of depressing silence on Weibo, a China based microblogging service, which is similar to Twitter. However, I believe this can't last long as it is not in the interest of the majority of the Chinese people and it is against the essence of the forth-coming Third Plenary Session of the 18 th Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Unlike in the West, the Internet has been playing a very significant role since its introduction to China. It contributes to the diversity of media as China practices a tight grip on the press. Free press is beyond reach, and common citizens are discouraged to engage with the media. The already existing media fails to provide a platform for all walks of the society to freely express themselves. As China is going through great changes, there are many social problems and the discrepancy between interest groups is huge, which results in the urgent need to express different opinions.

The Internet filled the big gap between the supply and demand, providing a platform for society to express opinions. From the earlier BBS services, to new portals and blogs, and later to Weibo and even more recent developments like Wechat, China sees various forms of Internet platforms evolving into news media. Besides, maybe because of the government's purposeful intention, Internet news media is not faced with tight control, which enables it to substitute traditional media and become the new center for expression of opinion. For the last decade, the Internet has been the source of and breeding ground for many public discussions. Even the traditional media has to rely on the Internet to attract the attention of the society.

It is under this peculiar circumstance that generations of opinion leaders spring up. BBS services and blogs brought about controversial “public intellectuals”, and many public intellectuals stood out by publishing on the Internet. The opinion leaders cultivated by Weibo are those “Big Vs”.

Unlike former Internet-based public intellectuals, the constitution of the “Big Vs” is far more complicated. Most of the “Big Vs” with a large following are those in the entertainment industry. Following up are those entrepreneurs and intellectuals with a big following, such as Mr. REN Zhiqiang, Professor HE Weifang, Mr. YU Jianrong, and Mr. XUE Manzi. Many of these “Big Vs” run their Weibo accounts as self-owned media to publish and reblog news and comments on all kinds of public affairs. With the particular mechanism of Weibo, opinions can be spread within seconds to a large audience, which further influences and forms public opinion. More interestingly, Weibo enables many “Big Vs” in the entertainment industry to be involved with public affairs at a very low cost. Therefore, the influence of Mr. FENG Xiaogang, Ms. YAO Chen, and Ms. YI Nengjing has already surpassed their fans, becoming active commentators on public affairs.

It is in this way that Weibo has become a highly public platform for opinions in the last two years. It has fundamentally changed the environment for China's public opinion: the impact of the Internet o n the whole public opinion mechanism has reached an unprecedented level compared to that of BBS services and blogs.

Public opinion serves as a key mechanism of politics, and in certain moments, a cornerstone of politics. In the political domain, the big number of people means power. Weibo mobilizes large numbers of common citizens to care about public affairs and reblog them at a sum of thousands and hundreds of thousands, which forms great political power. Therefore, it is fair to say that Weibo has, to some extent, changed the environment of China's politics. A certain kind of interaction is established between the government and citizens: the government has to respond to criticisms on Weibo; it has to deal with the problems posed by Weibo with care; and the government can't ignore the disposed corrupted officials, such as “Biaoge” (brother with expensive wrist watches) and “Fangshu” (uncle with many apartments). It is Weibo that enhances the government's “responsiveness” to the public. China's political mechanism is going through a very significant change. And this change, in nature, is the change towards constitutionalization.

Not all have a keen heart on this new game. Many, from a theoretical point of view, hate the independence of this new space for public opinion and the enormous pressure posed on the government by the overwhelming impact of public opinion. But more base their disgust on the peculiar interests they already have. Therefore, in this temporary upheaval against constitutionalization, “Big Vs” are targeted by certain media. Mr. XUE Manzi is merely an artificially erected target. The reason for Mr. XUE's imprisonment is prostitution, but some media has been running their stories by constantly referring to “Big Vs” and Weibo. The discreet intention, as my friend RONG Jian puts it, is to “scandalize Mr. XUE by disclosing his wrongful conduct of prostitution, to smear the Big Vs by scandalizing Mr. XUE, to control Weibo by scandalizing the Big Vs, and to take hold of public opinion by controlling Weibo”. The concentrated sacking and legal measures taken against Internet rumors and the implementation of the so-called ”net-cleaning” all over China serves as another evidence. The act by many local governments to suppress rumors disclosed on Weibo is ridiculous.

It is true that the anonymousness of the Internet may result in some statements based on shaky grounds, and the government is entitled to supervise such statements with enforcement. But the dishonorable behavior to smear the “Big Vs” and the Net-cleaning acts which stepped beyond legal boundaries, are in fact aiming at the Internet as a platform for opinion formation. Weibo has fought back. Even inside the “system”, such behavior is not widely agreed to. In this “movement”, the official Weibo of Guangzhou Police blogged a piece referring to the old constitutional anecdote entitled “Zichan Saves the Village School” in The Spring and Autumn Annals – Commentary of Zuo , stating its disapproval of the rumoring-eradicating movements in China. This piece was deleted shortly after. However, the Guangzhou High Court blogged similar pieces later, along with Xinhua Net, Study Times and other mainstream media, calling for the containment of this movement from spreading.

This situation is similar to that led by the anti-constitutionalism article. The mainstream appeal in China is marketization and legal reforms. The emerging middle class are calling for such changes, and it is echoed by many government officials inside the party and the political system. There are setbacks by certain interest groups who purely object such changes because of their own vested interests. They even bring back oligarchical sayings which have already lost their legitimacy in the party's practice. Because the transition of power in the high authorities has not been completed, these two forces are in conflict and it is hard to predict which one will overwhelm the other. However, to allow the anti-constitutionalism voices to exist on the Internet itself has made clear that the authorities are standing against dictatorship.

With the Third Plenary Session approaching, this situation is about to end. The Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee meeting on August 27 th announced that the Third Plenary Session would be dedicated to research on key issues regarding comprehensively deepening reforms. The word “reform” has specific political meaning, which is a farewell to dictatorship, to Cultural Revolution, and an embrace of a more established and matured protection of private property rights and democratic institutions. The political signals are already very clear.

Public opinion is also an important political mechanism. Reforms have to be undertaken with consideration of public opinion and reforms need the support of the public. If the hunting-down of the “Big Vs” continues and free discussion, including online discussion, is suppressed, reforms will lack the support of the public. As the most important platform for public opinon, Internet services, including Weibo, are among the most significant driving forces of reforms. The authorities have to understand this. It can be anticipated that the fog over Internet public opinion will be dispersed very soon.

(First published in Unirule Comments, The Economic Observer )

Professor YAO Zhongqiu
President of Unirule Institute of Economics

Current Events

The 3 rd Unirule Summer Camp 2013

The 3 rd Unirule Summer Camp 2013 was held from August 23 rd to 28 th in Ordos, Inner Mongolia. The theme of this six-day event was “private finance and the system building”. On the first day of the event, a seminar entitled “ Why Ordos? Influence of Private Finance” was held. This event was gracefully supported by the participation of leading experts and scholars among whom were Honorary President of Unirule Institute of Economics, Professor MAO Yushi; Deputy Director of Unirule, Professor GAO Yan; Researcher of CASS, Professor ZHAO Nong; expert on private finance, Professor FENG Xingyuan; famous lawyer, Mr. CHEN Youxi; historian, Mr. MA Cihe; and independent researcher, Mr. YANG Yongwang. At the forum, all the scholars and experts discussed the baffling situation of private finance in Ordos resulting from institutional causes, and had beneficial interaction with the audience. (For more information)

2013 Education Reform Forum

2013 Unirule Education Reform Forum was held in the new office of Unirule Institute of Economics on September 18 th . The theme of this forum was “Reform from Quantity-Oriented to Quality-Oriented Higher Education in China”. This forum was joined gracefully with Professor CHENG Fangping from Renmin University of China, Professor SHENG Hong, Professor ZHAO Xu, Professor ZHANG Shuguang, and Professor FENG Xingyuan from Unirule Institute of Economics, Professor WANG Huanan and Professor LIU Yejin from Capital Normal University as well as Professor ZHU Junsheng from Capital University of Economics and Business. 50 participants and audiences joined the discussion at the event. (For more information)

The 2013 Economic Liberalism Training-Private Enterprise Development Forum 2013 Was Held in Chengdu

The Private Enterprise Development Forum 2013 was held by Unirule Institute of Economics in cooperation with China Non-Governmental and Winpoint Technology on September 26 th in Chengdu.

The Forum on Resource Allocation Efficiency by China's Government Agencies was held on September 24 th to release the report bearing the same name in Beijing. This forum was joined with grace by Mr. ZHENG Zhenyuan, former Deputy Director of the Bureau of Planning under Ministry of Land and Resources; Mr. DANG Guoying from CASS; Mr. NIU Zhengqian from CPEMA; Mr. WANG Feng from NCEOR; and Professor ZHANG Shuguang from Unirule. Another 50 participants from various backgrounds and the media joined the discussion along with the press.(For more information)

The Release of the Report on “2013 Public Governance Index of Provincial Capitals”

On September 24 th , Unirule Institute of Economics released the report on “ 2013 Public Governance Index of Provincial Capitals” which aimed to provide support and expertise for the improvement of public governance. Mr. ZHANG Lin, project researcher of Unirule, presented the main report on behalf of the research team. Joined in the conference were Mr. SHENG Guangyao from CASS, Ms. ZHOU Hongyun from the Central Compilation & Translation Bureau, Professor LIU Yejin from Capital University of Economics and Business and Mr. JIANG Jianjian from Horizon Research Consultancy Group. Also present at the conference were Professor SHENG Hong and Professor FENG Xingyuan, who hosted the conference.

Professor SHENG Hong, Director of Unirule, first introduced that the research on public governance by Unirule aimed at providing criteria for the quality of the public goods. This research was carried out in three dimensions, civil rights, governance procedures, and public services on the public governance conditions in provincial capitals. To put it in short, three statements summarize the status quo of public governance in provincial capitals: public services have generally just gotten a pass; protection of civil rights is disturbing; and governance methodologies need improvements. These statements point out the solution: the structure of the society needs to be altered from that with a government monopoly to a civil society with diverse governance subjects. According to the household investigation results of last year, the ranking of the capital cities in terms of public governance performance from the top to the bottom is as follows: Hangzhou, Nanjing, Urumqi, Tianjin, Chengdu, Shanghai, Beijing, Nanchang, Xi'an, Xining, Shijiazhuang, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Yinchuan, Hohhot, Chongqing, Shenyang, Changsha, Jinan, Kunming, Nanning, Haikou, Fuzhou, Guiyang, Harbin, Hefei, Changchun, Zhengzhou, Taiyuan, and Lanzhou.

China's Private Finance and the Living Environment of Entrepreneurs: the ZENG Chengjie Case

The seminar on “China's Private Finance and the Living Environment of Entrepreneurs: the ZENG Chengjie Case” was held by Unirule Institute of Economics jointly with China-Review.com on August 13 th . Economic experts, lawyers, famous entrepreneurs, investigative reporters, and reporters from various media were present.

The seminar was held over several legal cases concerning private funds, especially the case of ZENG Chengjie, who was involved in the July 2013 Xiangxi large private financing case and sentenced to death. Topics such as the institutional environment and the living state of private enterprises after three decades of opening-up and reforms, maturing the legal environment for deeper reforms in private financing, macro policy adjustment in private financing and the direction and consensus over the reforms, improving the legal system for the financial market, and expectations and prospective of the healthy growth of private enterprises were analyzed and discussed.

News

Professor MAO Yushi Meets the Swedish Ambassador to China

On the morning of September 26 th , Professor MAO Yushi was invited to visit Mr. Lars Peter Fredén, Swedish Ambassador to China at the Ambassador's Residence. Mr. Fredén expressed his anticipation to have this meeting on the social, economic, and political development of China and its history, status quo, and prospective. They exchanged insights in the on-going reforms in political and economic areas. In-depth discussion was held with respect to financial reforms, institutional innovation as well as challenges and obstacles in these areas. Mr. Fredén expressed his interest in China's traditional culture, the moral system of contemporary China and the development of the youth. Joining the dialogue were Mr. Jakob Kiefer and Dr. Christer Ljungwall from the Swedish Embassy, and Mr. MA Junjie from Unirule Institute of Economics.

Unirule Wins the “Tiandiren Organizational Award”

Unirule Institute of Economics won the 1 st Tiandiren Organizational Award at the Sixth Chinese Theology Forum which was held at Oxford University, UK.

　　　
Professor YAO Zhongqiu and Professor SHENG Hong Attended “The Sixth Chinese Theology Forum”

Professor YAO Zhongqiu, President of Unirule Institute of Economics, and Professor SHENG Hong, Director of Unirule, attended “The Sixth Chinese Theology Forum” at Oxford University from August 21 st to 23 rd . Professor YAO Zhongqiu presented a paper on the development of one cultural cult - Confucianism and several other religions in contemporary China , and Professor SHENG presented a paper on a comparative analysis of constitutionalism from the perspectives of religion and philosophy.

Professor GAO Yan Attends “Lowy Institute's 10th Anniversary China Changing Lecture” in Beijing

On September 18 th , Professor GAO Yan, Deputy Director of Unirule Institute of Economics was invited to attend Lowy Institute's 10th Anniversary China Changing Lecture in Beijing. During the event, Professor GAO Yan met with Ms. Linda Jakobson, East Asia Program Director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. Professor GAO Yan introduced Unirule's role in promoting China's institutional innovation, its mission, expertise, and status quo. Ms. Jakobson introduced the efforts taken by Lowy Institute in the areas of China's foreign policy, international cooperation and researches. They expressed anticipation for further cooperation in multiple areas.

Current Researches/ Consulting

Fairness and Efficiency of Financial Resource Allocation

The first scale problem of the fairness and efficiency of financial resource allocation is whether the overall tax bearing standard falls within the optimal interval, whether the design of tax kinds and the mechanism will harm the development of the economy. The second scale problem is whether the expenditure structure of the existing financial resource allocation, especially transfer payment, obeys the principal of justice, and the efficiency of financial expenditure especially the general administrative costs.

Unirule Institute of Economics is going to undertake research on the fairness and efficiency of financial resource allocation with the emphasis on the second scale problem. In order to fulfill the ideal of justice in a society, the involvement of financial resource allocation is one of the methods, and a universal one. A state can promote justice by implying financial expenditure in two ways: the direct and the indirect way. When applying the direct way of implying financial expenditure measures to promote justice, financial expenditure is directly distributed to individuals to fill the gap of incomes between individuals. Among the financial expenditure items of China are pensions and relief funds for social welfare, rural relief funds as well as social insurance funds. The indirect way is by governments' increase in expenditure used for supporting agriculture and villagers, construction of infrastructure, education and medical treatments. This research is on the justice of financial resource allocation and it deals mainly with whether the transfer payment of financial resources obeys the second rule of Rawls's theory of justice, which states that when violation to the first rule has to be made, resource allocation can be towards the poorest group of people. Besides the justice issue, efficiency is also involved in the financial resource allocation. The administrative costs of China have long been above the average standard of other countries in the world, therefore, a big amount of public financial resources are wasted (trillions of RMB per year as estimated). In regard with the efficiency issue of the financial resource allocation, this research deals mainly with the change of ratio of administrative costs by government agencies (in addition to other costs, such as medical treatments of government officials covered by public budgets, and housing subsidies) of financial income. The reform of the fiscal and taxation system is one of the core issues in China's on-going reforms. This research aims not at a comprehensive examination of the fiscal and taxation system, but a specific aspect which is the “fairness and efficiency of financial resource allocation”, and evaluating the status quo of China's financial resource allocation.

Research on China's Urbanization on the Local Level

Urbanization is one of the most essential economic and social policies of the new administration. The emphasis of this policy is posed on medium and small cities as well as townships. As noticed, there are thousands of industrialized townships in China with their social governance lagging far behind their economic development.

Firstly, a big population is located in between the urban and rural level, which can't transform into citizens. Hundreds of millions of people have left their villages and moved to commercialized and industrialized towns. They are in industrial and commercial occupations and it is highly unlikely that they would go back to their villages. However, they are not entitled to local Hukou registration, which further leads to the deprivation of various rights, for example, the right of education. Secondly, public governance in such industrialized and commercialized towns, in general, is at a rudimentary level. The number of officially budgeted posts is asymmetric with the population governed, which leads to the employment of a large number of unofficially budgeted staff and unjustified power to govern. There is a lack of financial resources for the local government to carry out infrastructure construction or to provide public goods sufficiently. Thirdly, the urbanization results in imbalanced development of the structure of society. Since the industrialized and commercialized townships are unable to complete urbanization, urbanization in China has basically become mega-urbanization which is dominated by administrative power. Local governments centralize periphery resources with administrative power and construct cities artificially, which impedes townships and villages from evolving into cities by spontaneous order. Fourthly, industry upgrading can't be undertaken in those industrialized and commercialized townships and the capacity for future economic development is greatly limited. The industry upgrading is, in essence, the upgrading of people. Enterprises ought to draw and maintain technicians, researchers, and investors, to meet their needs for living standards, which cannot be satisfied by townships. Similarly, the lagging urbanization reversely sets back the cultivation and development of the service industry, especially the medium and high-end services.

Unirule Institute of Economics is going to carry out research on urbanization of China on the local level, aiming at improving public governance of the industrialized townships, optimizing the urbanization methodologies, and improving the “citizenization” of migrant workers, therefore further pushing social governance towards self-governance and democracy.

Research on the Public Governance of China's Provincial Capitals

2007 witnessed social unrests appealing for better civil rights protection in China, which was in fact a statement against injustice and inequity in social classes and prerogatives. Who is violating the basic civil rights? The answer is the privileged, who rise from the discrepancy between injustice and inequity of social status. The most privileged is, without any doubt, the government. And the biggest problem stems from the almost impossible and improbable supervision over the people's government.

That being said, Unirule Institute of Economics as an independent NGO has been undertaking research on public governance of China's provincial capitals since 2008, investigating performance of provincial governments with quantitative measurements. The investigation adopts household surveys and a different method was taken to evaluate data gathered in 2008 than the year before. Three thousand valid questionnaires were collected in 2007 and more than six thousand were collected in 2008. An updated sampling method was adopted in 2008 which covered a bigger sphere. A third investigation was carried out in 2010 and some six thousand questionnaires were collected. We undertook the fourth investigation at the end of 2012 and emphasis would be given to the causes of change in ranking and the fairness of financial payments.

Research on Disclosure of Government Information

Room for reforms is getting narrower as the opening-up and reforms deepen. It also leads to a more stabilized vertical mobilization of the demographic structure with the conflicts in the distribution of interests exacerbating. A collaborative system centering the political and law system and involving close cooperation between the police, courts, petition offices, and the city guards (Chengguan) is developed to deal with social unrest. This system is operated by local governments and finalized as a system of maintaining stability (Weiwen). There have been Internet spats over the amount of Weiwen funds. It is unsustainable to maintain such a Weiwen system, and the disclosure of government information is the most significant approach for this end. The essence of public governance is to dissolute conflicts instead of hiding and neglecting them. And one way to achieve this is by sufficient communication. Public and transparent appraisement and supervision cannot be achieved without transparent government information, otherwise the result will be the exclusion of citizens from public governance.

Unirule Institute of Economics has been undertaking research on the disclosure of government information since 2011. This research is carried out not only from the perspective of the regulations for the disclosure of government information which evaluates whether governments of various levels are obeying the regulations and their performances, but also by examining information disclosure laws in developed countries while looking at the status quo in China. There are seven aspects where government information disclosure can be improved, namely, information disclosure of government officials, transparency of finance, transparency in the decision-making mechanism, transparency in administration, transparency in public services, transparency of enterprises owned by local governments, and transparency in civil rights protection.

Upcoming Events

“2013 China Institutional Economics Annual Meeting”(13th)

Unirule Biweekly Symposiums

Unirule's Biweekly Symposiums are known in China and throughout the world for their long history of open and in-depth discussions and exchanges of ideas in economics and other social sciences. Over 380 sessions have been held and over 15,000 scholars, policy makers, and students, as well as countless readers on the web, have directly and indirectly, and participated in the Biweekly Symposium for close to 20 years.

Biweekly Symposiums begin at 2 p.m. every other Friday and are free and open to the public.

Schedule

Biweekly Symposium No. 488: 25th October, 2013
Biweekly Symposium No. 489: 1st November, 2013

Previous Biweekly Symposiums

Biweekly Symposium No. 481: Only Constitutional Democracy can Guarantee Long-Term Stability and Prosperity in China
Time: July 19th, 2013
Topic: Only Constitutional Democracy can Guarantee Long-Term Stability and Prosperity in China
Lecturer: CAI Xia
Commentators: LI Dun, MA Yongxiang, DONG Yanbin, HUANG Zhong, LIU Yang

In this session, Professor CAI Xia stated that there was a tendency of social violence in China and she analyzed the danger of this tendency. She believed that only constitutionalism could defuse the danger. But there was misunderstanding with constitutionalism and it was of great significance to focus on the essence of constitutionalism. It was urgent to undertake a peaceful transition to constitutional democracy and to deepen social reforms. She also proposed methods for China to take to wade through this transition from a constitutional perspective.
Professor LI Dun put forward several problems concerning constitutionalism and democracy and he pointed out the critical issues for China to transform into a constitutional system. He also analyzed three tendencies of the society and concluded that severe crisis was taking place, which needed further study.
Professor MA Yongxiang believed that there was little doubt over the values of constitutionalism and what’s essential was the efforts towards an applicable framework and the institutional design. He thought it was more urgent to punish the evil rather than to uphold the benevolent, which might just be a solution to ease the conflicts between interests. He also proposed to invest nationalized assets and therefore create more impetus for reforms domestically.
Professor DONG Yanbin thought a transition from the conception of criminal law to civil law and constitutional law should be undertaken to foster a consensus of constitutionalism. It was important to emphasize division of power, check and balances, limit of powers, and compromises. And what was more critical was the implementation of such concepts to promote and advocate constitutionalism.
Professor HUANG Zhong thought justice was absent in the judicial system. What lay in the center of the problem was whether it was possible to have all the proposals and development modes freely spoken of. In some sense, socialism did not go with constitutional democracy. Multiple methods should be taken to avoid military intervention to social affairs and only in transitional states did military men got involved in politics. To adopt constitutionalism the 1982 constitution of China was not applicable.
Professor LIU Yang agreed that there was a tendency of social violence. He thought constitutionalism was necessary for every state, but he disagreed that constitutionalism was the only workable system. He believed there was a constitutional tradition in China, which was not confronted with theoretical and practical challenges. Local election could lead to mob politics and organized crimes. He thought the ancient patriarchal clan society was a model of civil society.

Biweekly Symposium No. 482: A China without the Demographic Dividend
Time: August 2nd, 2013
Topic: A China without the Demographic Dividend
Lecturer: WANG Feng
Commentators: XU Dianqing, ZHANG Bin, XIONG Bijun, MA Jiujie, Tojima Toshio(田岛俊雄)
In this session, Professor WANG Feng started by introducing the definition, provisions, calculation methods, and misunderstanding of the demographic dividend. He then analyzed that the demographic dividend had disappeared. He closed the lecture with analyzing the impact of the disappearance of the demographic dividend.
Professor XU Dianqing thought it was worth reconsidering to see into the theory of demographic analysis. By calculation, he thought there was a surplus of labor force in cities and rural areas. It was necessary to look at the population structure respectively in this regard. He also proposed different opinion on the evolution of China’s demographic dividend and he appealed to solve the problems concerning the population growth and the pension system.
Professor ZHANG Bin discussed with the lecturer about the calculation of the dependency ratio, and the impact of demographic dividend on capital accumulation. He thought it got more urgent for the reform of industrial structure to reform after the economic crisis.
Professor Tojima Toshio believed that China passed the historic turning point in 2010 and the population aging began in rural areas. A minus growth of labor force began around 2013. He also questioned the Lewisian Turning point and he held that China was very likely to go through a similar phase like Japan.
Professor XIONG Bijun criticized Professor CAI’s opinion on the demographic dividend. He believed the aging of the population was a double-edged sword. Judging from the scientific development concept, he proposed method of promoting the harmonious development between the aging population and the social economy.
Professor MA Jiujie agreed with the lecturer and he thought more studies on the country’s status quo, policy, and institutions should be taken into consideration for a better understanding of China’s demographic conundrums.
Professor ZHANG Shuguang believed that it was essential to define the notion of “demographic dividend” with a clear cut. He thought it was necessary to combine the discussion on the demographic dividend with the discussion on the demographic liabilities. China should have a more flexible demographic policy. He suggested Professor XU to reconsider the statistics and take China’s situation into account for deeper evaluation of the problem.

Editor: MA Junjie
Revisor: Hannah Luftensteiner