My apartment at the university where I am living came with a brand new television on which I can receive approximately 50 channels. Forty-eight of them are Chinese language and the other two are BBC World News and one Australian channel. The Aussie station seems to show mainly travel documentaries about young, blond people having fun in forests, on beaches and in pubs. Australian news reports focus much more on Asian countries and markets than on those in Europe and North America and the financial news ahs lately been depressingly similar throughout the region.
The financial emphasis is much the same on Chinese television news shows, to judge from the plummeting graphics and the occasional camera view of people carrying cardboard boxes on Wall Street. There is certainly no pleasure being taken here in the problems of the West, as would certainly have been the case in years past. It is well understood here that we are all now firmly, happily or not, in the same leaking boat. The effect of collapsing consumer markets in the United States and Europe is already being felt here. Exports are, inevitably, beginning to fall and the economic prosperity the export industries created must as inevitably come under pressure in the years ahead. How far, one wonders, might China and the West “decouple” if we now lose our mutual interest in Wal-Mart, as suppliers or buyers? My bet is, not much. Too much has changed here in the past generation for any imaginary clock to be turned to a different time. “Turning the clock” would in any case be the wrong image to employ. It implies that some sort of “westernization”, or non-evolutionary process, has been occurring here and that reversion is an option, as if the China that exists now has been cobbled together from advertising slogans than will be abandoned when sales begin to flag.
I think we need different terms to describe how China, in particular, has changed. You can pick up indications about that change from television. A few weeks ago, I watched a show, which I think was a comedy, about a schoolteacher who gets reassigned from the city to a rural village. His duties include leading a troop of local Young Pioneers, the Communist Party equivalent of Boy Scouts. The plot revolves around his relationship with the Beetle Bailey of the troop, an overweight twelve year old who is constantly late for drill, marches out of step, and evidently doesn’t like regimentation. The comedy is partly in the physical reluctance of the boy to conform to Young Pioneer norms but mainly in the practical jokes he and his Young Pioneer mates play on the teacher. In the concluding scene, the teacher gets his own back – and restores the proper generational balance - by playing his own joke. The youngster catches a supposedly conciliatory Coke tossed to him by the adult, which promptly drenches him once he opens it.
Noticeable was that, in addition to the Young Pioneer red bandana around his neck, the boy wears a (red) Harry Potter T-shirt throughout. Harry Potter and Karl Marx don’t normally go together so this show was evidently not about ideology. Nor was it about coca cola, communism or traditional China. There is a separate channel for dramas about traditional Ching (Manchu) China. There is also one that shows a continuous loop of People’s Liberation Army soap operas. Also one for 24 hour a day sports, another for financial news, one for international travel documentaries, and another that features classical, Beijing opera. There is even an MTV-type channel that shows Chinese pop stars and variety shows including, on one occasion, lightly clad pole dancers. That was a special surprise for anyone who remembers when the standard dress in this country was the blue boiler suit. Between then and now is a huge distance but “modernization” does not adequately describe the change. China was always different but its cities were never “not modern”. Nor is “Americanization” or “westernization” a useful description. Peoples to whom these processes happen have weak or debilitated cultures and lack self-confidence. Elements of Western technology have been borrowed or adapted, just as we borrowed and adapted Chinese inventions such as gunpowder and toilet paper in the past, but the culture is still very much Chinese. I have seen no western TV shows here, dubbed or subtitled for local consumption, though there are Chinese versions of what we see on our own sets. If I had to pick an English word to describe how China has changed in the last generation, I think the word would be “internationalization”. I would define it as representing the next stage of development of China’s traditional perception of itself as the Middle Kingdom.
The corresponding evolution of the Chinese perception of their fellow global citizens (i.e. us) slightly puzzles me. We have complete freedom to walk around, shop and meet people in Shenyang. This is also a “nation of shopkeepers” and it would be easy to overcharge us but I have found the overwhelming majority of those I have dealt with to be scrupulously honest. The younger generation is usually eager to communicate with us. They appreciate that the English language is presently the global language and that it is necessary to learn it for that reason. They also seem genuinely warm and friendly. Older people are not unfriendly but are also quite reserved. How they may see us was hinted at, at least for me, in a comedic cooking show I occasionally watch called “East and West” (on the food channel). The show’s title refers not to cookery but to its stars: an expatriate American, Max, who is fluent in Chinese, and his Chinese wife, who is fluent in English. It also provides vocabulary lessons through the use of English subtitles, plus an occasional explanatory voice-over, as the pair prepares Chinese meals with local ingredients. The most recent show demonstrated the creation of some sort of chicken dish, starting with Max and his wife actually catching the chicken in their back yard. “Max and his wife demonstrate team work,” explains the narrator, as they emerge from the house with a large butterfly net. The chicken has guessed Max’s intentions but is chased down and eventually caught. The butchering process is thankfully omitted and Max is next shown readying a traditional wood-fed oven. As he stacks the firewood and prepares the cooking surface, the narrator intones: “Max, though a foreigner, is well-organized and methodical”.
I think there’s a clue there.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
China's Year
When corporate managers first learned that the Chinese word for “change” combines two characters meaning “danger” and “opportunity”, their enthusiasm for this new thought was endless. Not since the old Army concept of “zero defects” had an aphorism so captured the limited imagination of the business world. As if from an assembly line, the observation that the Chinese word for change combines characters meaning both danger and opportunity reproduced itself at conferences, pep talks, meetings, training sessions and even in corporations’ annual reports. I remember hearing it several times. There is a complementary Chinese curse, almost equally well known: “May you live in interesting times”. Those times are upon us again and China seems well situated to make something of the opportunities they present.
This has so far been an exceptional year for China’s image and reputation. They “won” their own Beijing Games, depending on whether gold or total medals are counted. But however you count them, who knew that China was so competitive in so many sports? Gymnastics, judo and ping pong for sure but how about gold medals in sailing, weightlifting and kayaking? And Chinese women took the silver and bronze medals in beach volleyball. If they have television wherever Mao is now he must have been stunned at that one.
Last week, on September 27th, a Chinese astronaut took the country’s first “space walk”, in a Chinese-made space suit, five years after China put its first man in orbit. Interestingly, though the Chinese space program might seem recent the base from which they launched in the Gobi desert began construction in 1958, fifty years ago and only 8 years after the Peoples Liberation Army first took power. China was at the time an impoverished, third world, rural economy with a fifty-year history of civil war, invasion and famine. So they evidently think long-term here.
The debt-ridden economies of the West are now contracting and would probably be collapsing but for unprecedented government interventions in North America and Europe. You can sense the panic building as formerly blue chips like AIG dwindle to penny stock status. Will it be a recession (two consecutive quarters of negative growth) or a severe recession (ten point reduction in GDP) or a depression (30 point reduction in GDP)? The choice at the moment seems to be between the last two. All that’s certain is that Western governments are going to incur tremendous debt as they attempt to stall the momentum toward panic. The US national debt – from which the excesses of the past and the emergency of the present are funded – is now $10.1 trillion, heading toward $11.3 trillion, about 70% of GDP. Twenty-five percent of that amount is owed to foreign countries and of those foreign debtors China is the second largest, owning $519 billion of US treasury bonds.
China also has a current surplus of $1.8 trillion, no sub prime problem in its banking system, and no credit problem in its economy. As far as I can tell, there is no credit. This is a cash economy. I haven’t used a credit card since I arrived in China because I can’t find anywhere that takes one. I am told that there are domestic credit cards but I haven’t seen anyone using them. So, if there are really no hidden problems in the Chinese economy and banking system – apart from the fact that the country’s biggest customers are now basket cases - how might they emerge from this global turmoil?
China’s Premier, Wen Binjiao, was quoted yesterday as saying that “what China can do for the world is keep growing”. China’s economy has grown at an average rate of 10% in each of the last 30 years and this year and next the rate is projected at between 8% and 9%. That projection may be wishful thinking since it comes from the CEO of Rio Tinto, a very large mining and metals conglomerate, who admits that his own company’s prospects depend on that growth rate. The panelists at the discussion where this prediction was cited, however, agreed that the role of China in the world economy is about to become substantially more prominent.
This has so far been an exceptional year for China’s image and reputation. They “won” their own Beijing Games, depending on whether gold or total medals are counted. But however you count them, who knew that China was so competitive in so many sports? Gymnastics, judo and ping pong for sure but how about gold medals in sailing, weightlifting and kayaking? And Chinese women took the silver and bronze medals in beach volleyball. If they have television wherever Mao is now he must have been stunned at that one.
Last week, on September 27th, a Chinese astronaut took the country’s first “space walk”, in a Chinese-made space suit, five years after China put its first man in orbit. Interestingly, though the Chinese space program might seem recent the base from which they launched in the Gobi desert began construction in 1958, fifty years ago and only 8 years after the Peoples Liberation Army first took power. China was at the time an impoverished, third world, rural economy with a fifty-year history of civil war, invasion and famine. So they evidently think long-term here.
The debt-ridden economies of the West are now contracting and would probably be collapsing but for unprecedented government interventions in North America and Europe. You can sense the panic building as formerly blue chips like AIG dwindle to penny stock status. Will it be a recession (two consecutive quarters of negative growth) or a severe recession (ten point reduction in GDP) or a depression (30 point reduction in GDP)? The choice at the moment seems to be between the last two. All that’s certain is that Western governments are going to incur tremendous debt as they attempt to stall the momentum toward panic. The US national debt – from which the excesses of the past and the emergency of the present are funded – is now $10.1 trillion, heading toward $11.3 trillion, about 70% of GDP. Twenty-five percent of that amount is owed to foreign countries and of those foreign debtors China is the second largest, owning $519 billion of US treasury bonds.
China also has a current surplus of $1.8 trillion, no sub prime problem in its banking system, and no credit problem in its economy. As far as I can tell, there is no credit. This is a cash economy. I haven’t used a credit card since I arrived in China because I can’t find anywhere that takes one. I am told that there are domestic credit cards but I haven’t seen anyone using them. So, if there are really no hidden problems in the Chinese economy and banking system – apart from the fact that the country’s biggest customers are now basket cases - how might they emerge from this global turmoil?
China’s Premier, Wen Binjiao, was quoted yesterday as saying that “what China can do for the world is keep growing”. China’s economy has grown at an average rate of 10% in each of the last 30 years and this year and next the rate is projected at between 8% and 9%. That projection may be wishful thinking since it comes from the CEO of Rio Tinto, a very large mining and metals conglomerate, who admits that his own company’s prospects depend on that growth rate. The panelists at the discussion where this prediction was cited, however, agreed that the role of China in the world economy is about to become substantially more prominent.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Don’t drink the milk?
As the Paralympics was closing in Beijing, reports began to emerge of a scheme involving the adulteration of milk and milk products with melamine. Chinese and Western television stations reported that increasing numbers of infants were being hospitalized as a result of developing kidney stones after being fed the contaminated product. Melamine is an industrial chemical which, when added to milk and milk products, artificially boosts its protein content thus improving its value to wholesalers. When added to fresh milk it can pass factory quality tests undetected.
Within a couple of days of the closing ceremony, two children were reported dead and 13,000 hospitalized. Television news reports showed long lines of anxious parents with small children queuing in front of hospitals. By today - Monday, the 20th - the toll was 4 children dead, more than 100 seriously ill and 50,000 in hospital. The potential total could well be in the hundreds of thousands. The current number is now expanding to include children throughout the Asia Pacific region. The Australian News Network reported today that a child in Singapore fed on contaminated Chinese milk has been hospitalized with kidney damage.
According to current reports, on the China Daily News website, the country's largest dairy - Sanlu - became aware of the contamination about six weeks ago and warned their New Zealand part owner – Fonterra – of the emerging problem. Fonterra in turn alerted the New Zealand government who then communicated the information to the Chinese government. At that point the problem seems to have gone underground. With the Beijing Olympics about to open, whoever in the Chinese government had received the information from New Zealand completely miscalculated the potential seriousness of the problem and apparently referred the problem to local officials. The problem has now come back above ground in a big way. Mothers of children interviewed on the streets this weekend were openly critical of the government for having failed to protect the public. By Sunday, Chinese television news showed Prime Minister Wen Biaojao on the streets of Beijing; apologizing for errors in government safety inspection standards and reassuring the public that action would be taken. The unacceptable face of raw capitalism – a view that increasingly troubles the Chinese people – is again on display.
According to China Daily News, two brothers named Geng in Hebei province were almost immediately arrested and charged with producing and selling toxic and hazardous food products. The elder brother runs a private milk collection center and has admitted having added melamine to his milk since the end of last year. He did so, he is reported to have said, when he incurred a large financial loss after Sanlu rejected his product several times for failing to meet its standards. Asked by police investigators if he knew the consequences of mixing melamine with milk he is reported to have said that his own family never drank the contaminated milk.
Nineteen other people connected to the milk collection business have so far been arrested including one suspected of selling melamine illegally. The Party secretary of Hebei province has promised that the guilty will get “severe” punishment because “we owe the people an explanation”. That punishment is likely to be death, the heaviest penalty for a crime like this under China’s Criminal Law Code.
That will conclude this episode, at least as far as its perpetrators are concerned, but Geng’s reply to the investigators indicates a deeper problem. He evidently knew that he was selling a poisonous product, disguised as milk, to Sanlu and he knew that it would damage and possibly kill their customers. At least nineteen other “businessmen” appear to have colluded with him in this. There is no way that this product could not be traced back to them, as was immediately the case, when the damage reports began to roll in. The penalties for this sort of behavior in China are extreme, public and publicized. And yet they did it anyway. The criminality of the act is mind-boggling but so is the stupidity. Sheer greed for money appears to have overridden this man’s sense of self-preservation. Geng is not typical in any way of the entrepreneurs of China but there are enough like him to discredit and sabotage the Chinese experiment with capitalism. Somehow, they have to figure out a way to get the Gengs out of the system before they can do fatal damageto that experiment.
On a less serious note, I was worried that our local supermarket would strip all milk products from their shelves as soon as Sanlu, their biggest supplier, was identified as a source of the problem. I can’t drink coffee without milk. So I hurried over there to buy what I could but I needn’t have worried. The baby milk products were indeed off the shelves but the rest were piled on skids and on sale, at an irresistible price.
Within a couple of days of the closing ceremony, two children were reported dead and 13,000 hospitalized. Television news reports showed long lines of anxious parents with small children queuing in front of hospitals. By today - Monday, the 20th - the toll was 4 children dead, more than 100 seriously ill and 50,000 in hospital. The potential total could well be in the hundreds of thousands. The current number is now expanding to include children throughout the Asia Pacific region. The Australian News Network reported today that a child in Singapore fed on contaminated Chinese milk has been hospitalized with kidney damage.
According to current reports, on the China Daily News website, the country's largest dairy - Sanlu - became aware of the contamination about six weeks ago and warned their New Zealand part owner – Fonterra – of the emerging problem. Fonterra in turn alerted the New Zealand government who then communicated the information to the Chinese government. At that point the problem seems to have gone underground. With the Beijing Olympics about to open, whoever in the Chinese government had received the information from New Zealand completely miscalculated the potential seriousness of the problem and apparently referred the problem to local officials. The problem has now come back above ground in a big way. Mothers of children interviewed on the streets this weekend were openly critical of the government for having failed to protect the public. By Sunday, Chinese television news showed Prime Minister Wen Biaojao on the streets of Beijing; apologizing for errors in government safety inspection standards and reassuring the public that action would be taken. The unacceptable face of raw capitalism – a view that increasingly troubles the Chinese people – is again on display.
According to China Daily News, two brothers named Geng in Hebei province were almost immediately arrested and charged with producing and selling toxic and hazardous food products. The elder brother runs a private milk collection center and has admitted having added melamine to his milk since the end of last year. He did so, he is reported to have said, when he incurred a large financial loss after Sanlu rejected his product several times for failing to meet its standards. Asked by police investigators if he knew the consequences of mixing melamine with milk he is reported to have said that his own family never drank the contaminated milk.
Nineteen other people connected to the milk collection business have so far been arrested including one suspected of selling melamine illegally. The Party secretary of Hebei province has promised that the guilty will get “severe” punishment because “we owe the people an explanation”. That punishment is likely to be death, the heaviest penalty for a crime like this under China’s Criminal Law Code.
That will conclude this episode, at least as far as its perpetrators are concerned, but Geng’s reply to the investigators indicates a deeper problem. He evidently knew that he was selling a poisonous product, disguised as milk, to Sanlu and he knew that it would damage and possibly kill their customers. At least nineteen other “businessmen” appear to have colluded with him in this. There is no way that this product could not be traced back to them, as was immediately the case, when the damage reports began to roll in. The penalties for this sort of behavior in China are extreme, public and publicized. And yet they did it anyway. The criminality of the act is mind-boggling but so is the stupidity. Sheer greed for money appears to have overridden this man’s sense of self-preservation. Geng is not typical in any way of the entrepreneurs of China but there are enough like him to discredit and sabotage the Chinese experiment with capitalism. Somehow, they have to figure out a way to get the Gengs out of the system before they can do fatal damageto that experiment.
On a less serious note, I was worried that our local supermarket would strip all milk products from their shelves as soon as Sanlu, their biggest supplier, was identified as a source of the problem. I can’t drink coffee without milk. So I hurried over there to buy what I could but I needn’t have worried. The baby milk products were indeed off the shelves but the rest were piled on skids and on sale, at an irresistible price.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Without haste, without fear, ................
Written, in English, outside the Chinese Space Center in the Gobi Desert is the slogan, “Without haste, without fear, we conquer the world”. Simon Winchester suggested in a recent Australian News interview that the word ‘conquer’ should not be taken in its military definition but means that China intends to export its values to the world in the same manner as the Americans have so successfully exported theirs. Certainly, the inclusion of “without haste, without fear” in the quote suggests a non-violent delivery, a competition rather than a confrontation.
What are Chinese values and which are prominent? Winchester suggests three and that they are essentially Confucian in origin. They include respect for the wisdom and experience of the elderly. A cynic might note that this coincidentally reinforces the power of the gerontocracy that governs China but respect for the elderly is a traditional Chinese value, not a Communist Party one. Another traditional and Confucian value is a deep desire for social orderliness. Social stability is much valued in a country that has swung between extremes of anarchy and dictatorship, several times, in the last hundred years. Prior to the 19th century, the Chinese people had to be pushed – usually by a combination of misgovernment and natural catastrophe – to the edge of their own destruction before they rebelled and overthrew dynasties. A third value is the one of “hard work”, the basis of an orderly economy, which can be interpreted several different ways. Many in the West think of it – as least as typically exhibited by Asian workforces –as the externally disciplined labor of the Industrial Revolution and we consider ourselves well rid of its necessity. Chinese shopkeepers, who appear to live in their shops seven days a week and up to fifteen hours a day, have a different definition. The manual laborers at the “New University City” apartment buildings site, with many more protections than were available to Victorian-era workers in the West, would understand it differently again.
Are Anglo-American and Chinese values necessarily opposed? Perhaps not but it seems obvious to me that they have little in common. Western, liberal democracy has its origin in the violent competition between the English merchant classes and the landed aristocracy in the English civil wars of the 17th century. It assumed its present form in the 20th century, when the parliamentary systems of both Britain and the United States expanded to include representatives of the entire electorate. There has been no comparable development in Chinese history. A nation’s culture is a product of its history and there are thus no ‘attachment points’ in Chinese culture to which this Anglo-American concept of democracy might be grafted. It is simply an alien ideology. Though it can be intellectually dissected and perhaps even appreciated in Chinese universities, it has no root in the country’s culture.
The lack of what we know as democracy does not necessarily mean that there is no personal freedom here. In fact I think there is a great deal. Cynics again might say that it is simply the freedom to make a lot of money - provided you toe the line. But I watched an Australian Network news broadcast yesterday (9/17), in which a journalist attempted to penetrate a village in which the family of a blind, imprisoned legal activist, who is reported to have spoken out against heavy-handed implementation of the country’s “One child per family” policy, is said to be under house arrest. Her initial attempt at entry was turned away at a roadblock by non-uniformed guards but they found another road in, again by car, apparently not guarded. Once in the village, an attempt to reach the house was turned away by villagers – identified by the journalist as ‘plain clothes’ police but who might as easily have been villagers who perhaps didn’t want foreign journalists stirring up trouble for them. They were ‘hustled back into their car’ and drove away. Apart from the non-issue of the right of foreign journalists to roam at will through China there are two interesting points raised by this episode. The first is the right of people to speak against the population control (or any other government) policy in China. The second is the policy itself.
China’s legal system may not compare to our own in its devotion to individual rights of free speech and reproduction but it is the country’s legal system. It should be seen in context if any useful discussion is to ensue. And it would not be true to say that there is no free speech here although outright opposition to the government is clearly prohibited. Foreign teachers here are specifically requested not to discuss politics (or religion) with students though I have heard several students make unprompted critical remarks about local government issues. I think the truth is that individuals are free to criticize anything they wish to unless or until they seek a national or international audience for their opinions.
The circumstances of the activist’s imprisonment were not explained and, within the two minutes allocated to the story, probably could not have been. However, the same journalist had no problem finding, identifying and interviewing for the same story the brother and mother-in-law of the activist, both of whom condemned his imprisonment and the treatment of his family. They were identified by name, on camera, and apparently did not fear or did not anticipate adverse consequences.
The policy itself is one that horrifies some members of societies with no experience of large-scale famine. In the West, we have experienced only man-made famines since the 19th century and we have access to plenty of food. But with four times the population of the United States, China has only one-eighth the arable land per capita, according to the World Watch Institute. Unless more arable land can be created, population clearly has to be kept in some sort of balance. The alternative to not doing so is within living memory. One of my students told me a story she heard from her grandparent about the last great famine in China. People boiled tree bark for food before starving to death.
A recent Pew Global Attitudes poll found that 86% of the population approves of the direction of their government but I see no evidence of large-scale brainwashing going on. I do see some very positive, intellectually curious students at the two universities where I teach. They are quite capable of making the same connection between population control and the prevention of famine that their government has made and evidently support the policy.
What are Chinese values and which are prominent? Winchester suggests three and that they are essentially Confucian in origin. They include respect for the wisdom and experience of the elderly. A cynic might note that this coincidentally reinforces the power of the gerontocracy that governs China but respect for the elderly is a traditional Chinese value, not a Communist Party one. Another traditional and Confucian value is a deep desire for social orderliness. Social stability is much valued in a country that has swung between extremes of anarchy and dictatorship, several times, in the last hundred years. Prior to the 19th century, the Chinese people had to be pushed – usually by a combination of misgovernment and natural catastrophe – to the edge of their own destruction before they rebelled and overthrew dynasties. A third value is the one of “hard work”, the basis of an orderly economy, which can be interpreted several different ways. Many in the West think of it – as least as typically exhibited by Asian workforces –as the externally disciplined labor of the Industrial Revolution and we consider ourselves well rid of its necessity. Chinese shopkeepers, who appear to live in their shops seven days a week and up to fifteen hours a day, have a different definition. The manual laborers at the “New University City” apartment buildings site, with many more protections than were available to Victorian-era workers in the West, would understand it differently again.
Are Anglo-American and Chinese values necessarily opposed? Perhaps not but it seems obvious to me that they have little in common. Western, liberal democracy has its origin in the violent competition between the English merchant classes and the landed aristocracy in the English civil wars of the 17th century. It assumed its present form in the 20th century, when the parliamentary systems of both Britain and the United States expanded to include representatives of the entire electorate. There has been no comparable development in Chinese history. A nation’s culture is a product of its history and there are thus no ‘attachment points’ in Chinese culture to which this Anglo-American concept of democracy might be grafted. It is simply an alien ideology. Though it can be intellectually dissected and perhaps even appreciated in Chinese universities, it has no root in the country’s culture.
The lack of what we know as democracy does not necessarily mean that there is no personal freedom here. In fact I think there is a great deal. Cynics again might say that it is simply the freedom to make a lot of money - provided you toe the line. But I watched an Australian Network news broadcast yesterday (9/17), in which a journalist attempted to penetrate a village in which the family of a blind, imprisoned legal activist, who is reported to have spoken out against heavy-handed implementation of the country’s “One child per family” policy, is said to be under house arrest. Her initial attempt at entry was turned away at a roadblock by non-uniformed guards but they found another road in, again by car, apparently not guarded. Once in the village, an attempt to reach the house was turned away by villagers – identified by the journalist as ‘plain clothes’ police but who might as easily have been villagers who perhaps didn’t want foreign journalists stirring up trouble for them. They were ‘hustled back into their car’ and drove away. Apart from the non-issue of the right of foreign journalists to roam at will through China there are two interesting points raised by this episode. The first is the right of people to speak against the population control (or any other government) policy in China. The second is the policy itself.
China’s legal system may not compare to our own in its devotion to individual rights of free speech and reproduction but it is the country’s legal system. It should be seen in context if any useful discussion is to ensue. And it would not be true to say that there is no free speech here although outright opposition to the government is clearly prohibited. Foreign teachers here are specifically requested not to discuss politics (or religion) with students though I have heard several students make unprompted critical remarks about local government issues. I think the truth is that individuals are free to criticize anything they wish to unless or until they seek a national or international audience for their opinions.
The circumstances of the activist’s imprisonment were not explained and, within the two minutes allocated to the story, probably could not have been. However, the same journalist had no problem finding, identifying and interviewing for the same story the brother and mother-in-law of the activist, both of whom condemned his imprisonment and the treatment of his family. They were identified by name, on camera, and apparently did not fear or did not anticipate adverse consequences.
The policy itself is one that horrifies some members of societies with no experience of large-scale famine. In the West, we have experienced only man-made famines since the 19th century and we have access to plenty of food. But with four times the population of the United States, China has only one-eighth the arable land per capita, according to the World Watch Institute. Unless more arable land can be created, population clearly has to be kept in some sort of balance. The alternative to not doing so is within living memory. One of my students told me a story she heard from her grandparent about the last great famine in China. People boiled tree bark for food before starving to death.
A recent Pew Global Attitudes poll found that 86% of the population approves of the direction of their government but I see no evidence of large-scale brainwashing going on. I do see some very positive, intellectually curious students at the two universities where I teach. They are quite capable of making the same connection between population control and the prevention of famine that their government has made and evidently support the policy.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Driving in Shenyang City
When I was travelling to Alaska, at the tail-end of the pipeline days, I called on a client in Anchorage one day who gave me a friendly warning. In the event my car collided with another- no matter who was at fault – I should roll out of the driver's side, duck and run. Apparently, an overpopulation of young, male, unemployed roustabouts and a scarcity of insurers willing to insure this money-losing demographic segment had produced a novel method of determining fault. The local newspaper was reporting that drivers without insurance had taken to shooting it out following an accident. That frontier feeling is alive and well on the roads of Shenyang. Anything seems to go.
Yesterday we took a taxi downtown on the four lane north-south highway that connects the university district to the city. Traffic coming from the south was light, which was fortunate because whenever our driver felt the traffic was moving too slowly, which was often, he simply pulled out across the median into the nearest oncoming lane and used it to overtake. On one occasion, while we were in the oncoming lane, we ourselves were overtaken. Four lanes of traffic were simultaneously going south. Oncoming cars blared their horns and swerved on to the shoulder to avoid us. We blared back at them. Our lead teacher was completely calm during this maneuver. I asked him what happened in a collision, how fault gets assigned. As near as he could figure, he said, fault lies with the driver who actually hits the other car, regardless of traffic regulations.
Drivers similarly use the shoulder, which is one lane wide but also occupied by bicyclists and pedestrians, to undertake on the blind side. This can be exciting when the driver encounters a car trying to force its way into traffic from a side road or parking lot exit. The accepted response to that situation seems to be to swerve back into the nearest lane with horn blaring. Surrounding motorists thus know you are coming. We did this several times during our twenty minute trip.
I asked what happens when a pedestrian is hit as must surely frequently happen. Our leader confirmed that it does. But its not necessarily a bad thing, depending on how you handle it. You lie in the road, he said, until either the police come or the offending driver offers you enough money to leave before things get too complicated. Of course, if you’re dead or seriously injured that option doesn’t apply unless friends are willing to bear you off on a stretcher. The paperwork implications intrigue me. I know they have insurance companies here because I entertained the management team of a Shanghai-based company when we lived in Bermuda. I can’t imagine they could possibly make a profit underwriting auto insurance here unless they simply don’t pay claims. I must see if I can get hold of an English-language copy of a policy.
Strangely enough, considering the anarchy that prevails elsewhere on the roads, all drivers obey the traffic light signals. I saw nobody jump the lights at any of the intersections we went through on our way downtown. There is however little regard for pedestrians whether or not they are crossing on a ‘walk’ signal. Drivers, especially taxi drivers, simply thread their way through pedestrians on the crosswalks when making right hand turns. They do so without slowing down but courteously use their horns to alert crossers to get out of their way. Pedestrians accept this and simply dodge the oncoming cars as they thread their way through traffic while on the cross walk. Crossing the street is an adventure to avoid if possible. My feeling is that there are a finite number of times that you can cross a street safely in Shenyang. Each time you do cross brings you one event closer to your expiration date. So try to do all your shopping on the same side of the street, preferably in the same block.
Yesterday we took a taxi downtown on the four lane north-south highway that connects the university district to the city. Traffic coming from the south was light, which was fortunate because whenever our driver felt the traffic was moving too slowly, which was often, he simply pulled out across the median into the nearest oncoming lane and used it to overtake. On one occasion, while we were in the oncoming lane, we ourselves were overtaken. Four lanes of traffic were simultaneously going south. Oncoming cars blared their horns and swerved on to the shoulder to avoid us. We blared back at them. Our lead teacher was completely calm during this maneuver. I asked him what happened in a collision, how fault gets assigned. As near as he could figure, he said, fault lies with the driver who actually hits the other car, regardless of traffic regulations.
Drivers similarly use the shoulder, which is one lane wide but also occupied by bicyclists and pedestrians, to undertake on the blind side. This can be exciting when the driver encounters a car trying to force its way into traffic from a side road or parking lot exit. The accepted response to that situation seems to be to swerve back into the nearest lane with horn blaring. Surrounding motorists thus know you are coming. We did this several times during our twenty minute trip.
I asked what happens when a pedestrian is hit as must surely frequently happen. Our leader confirmed that it does. But its not necessarily a bad thing, depending on how you handle it. You lie in the road, he said, until either the police come or the offending driver offers you enough money to leave before things get too complicated. Of course, if you’re dead or seriously injured that option doesn’t apply unless friends are willing to bear you off on a stretcher. The paperwork implications intrigue me. I know they have insurance companies here because I entertained the management team of a Shanghai-based company when we lived in Bermuda. I can’t imagine they could possibly make a profit underwriting auto insurance here unless they simply don’t pay claims. I must see if I can get hold of an English-language copy of a policy.
Strangely enough, considering the anarchy that prevails elsewhere on the roads, all drivers obey the traffic light signals. I saw nobody jump the lights at any of the intersections we went through on our way downtown. There is however little regard for pedestrians whether or not they are crossing on a ‘walk’ signal. Drivers, especially taxi drivers, simply thread their way through pedestrians on the crosswalks when making right hand turns. They do so without slowing down but courteously use their horns to alert crossers to get out of their way. Pedestrians accept this and simply dodge the oncoming cars as they thread their way through traffic while on the cross walk. Crossing the street is an adventure to avoid if possible. My feeling is that there are a finite number of times that you can cross a street safely in Shenyang. Each time you do cross brings you one event closer to your expiration date. So try to do all your shopping on the same side of the street, preferably in the same block.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Teaching in China
Travelling is exciting in itself but if you can add in some thing extra, like losing your e-ticket and travel itinerary somewhere on the plane to Beijing, it becomes almost thrilling. How to explain to people with a limited command of English, but a thorough knowledge of the rules of travel, that I need to get Shenyang but I don’t have a ticket? I spent the last hour of the flight worrying about the possibilities, remembering similar travel mishaps in the past. Like the time we arrived in Puerto Vallarta in Mexico and I suddenly realized that I had left all our reservation details for our rental in Bucerias at home. All I could remember of them was the first name of the rental agent I had talked to and the town where the rental was. With that information we took a taxi to Bucerias and arrived at a poverty-stricken fishing village.
The layout of the Beijing airport further complicates the situation of the idiot traveler without a ticket. The baggage recovery area is a ten-minute train ride from the arrivals area. Terminal 2, where in-country flights depart, is a 30-minute bus ride from the baggage area. Fortunately, I found on my suitcase the name of the airline I was booked on, China Southern. Using that, and my passport, I was able to convince the China Southern ticket agent to print out the remainder of my journey.
The luggage itself was the next obstacle. Having packed for six months and weighed it to conform exactly to British Airways limit of 70 lbs I was told that China Southern’s limit was 20 kilos. I was approximately 46 lbs over the limit. The ticket agent was inscrutable. I couldn’t tell if she was going to bounce me off the flight, tell me I could take only 20 kilos, or suggest something more reasonable. Happily, she opted for the last choice. The surcharge for the extra weight was only 121 renminbi, about $10 or 5 pounds. I took the bill to another desk, paid my money, and returned to collect my passport, which she had held as security for payment. The flight left on time, arrived on time, and Crystal Chen was at Shenyang airport to meet me. An hour later I was in my one-bedroom apartment at the University.
One of the other English language teachers here told me that the average Chinese family occupies about 30 square meters. The apartments provided by the University for its foreign staff are approximately 45 square meters and furnished quite comfortably, though the mattress on the double bed feels like it might have iron bars somewhere in it. That’s about the only negative comment I can think of. The kitchen has a new fridge, a ceramic stove, and a microwave. All the furniture in the living room, except for two school desks and chairs, is new as is the television. The cable service provides 50 channels, two of which are English language – BBC World News and the Australian Broadcasting Network. The Aussie channel conforms to my impression of Aussie values and provides almost non-stop Aussie rules football games, rugby league and cricket matches, Australian soccer and news bulletins on the progress of the remaining Aussie players at the US Tennis Open. Last Saturday night they advertised the Wallabies versus Springboks Tri-Nations Rugby Union game. I waited all day for it and at 9 pm it came on but then the screen froze on a picture of a South African supporter waving a banner that said “Wasting Matilda”. This must have blasted all the power out of the Australian end of the feed because that’s where the screen stayed for the next 45 minutes. No sound, no movement, no explanation. I gave up and went to bed. The next morning I asked one of the Australian teachers if he’d seen any of the game and he confirmed that nothing had happened. The score turned out to have been Australia’s worst ever beating by any team, 53 – 8, which I would have enjoyed seeing though I don’t much care for the South Africans and their brutal style of play.
The lead language teacher here, a Canadian named Harry, has been teaching at Shenyang for all five years of its existence and has experienced the kind of local change that must have been occurring throughout China during that time. Five years ago, he says, the Central Government ordered that all Shenyang’s universities be relocated to the same area about 30 minutes north of the city center. One can speculate about the reasons for this but providing employment for the multitudes of rural villagers who have been migrating to the towns and cities of this country may have been one of them. On Sunday night I took a walk around the campus and out on to the street and headed east, beyond what used to be the Shenyang city limits. Harry said there used to be a village out where they are building apartment houses. I am not sure who “they” are, whether private or government contractors, but they certainly are building apartment blocks. And at 6:30 on a Sunday evening, in failing light, they still were. The “weekend” here does not mean, as Westerners think of it, as the end of the workweek. Outside of business and government, whose employees operate officially on a six-day week, Chinese workers work as long as employers will pay them, as long as whatever jobs they have last.
The apartment complexes they are building are collectively called “New University City” and the project is the size of a small city in its scope. The construction goes as far literally as the eye can see in the smoggy Shenyang dusk. Each apartment block is 7 floors high, one apartment wide, and 20 apartments long for a total in each unit of 140 apartments. There is no way of knowing how many people each will house since though each nuclear family numbers no more than 3, or occasionally 4, the extended family members who have been displaced by projects like “New University City” – like the former villagers who lived here – may double or triple that number. In the complex itself, I counted twenty more units under construction to the north of the one I was standing in front of and ten more lines of twenty to the east, for a total of 200 buildings containing 28,000 apartment units. According to the site map at the crossroads where I terminated my walk, this is the first of a four-phase project that is planned to occupy all the remaining bare land one could see in each direction from that point. So during the next 4 to 6 years, some one hundred thousand new apartment units housing perhaps as many as half a million people will appear at the end of this one street in Shenyang. And Shenyang itself is just one of many hundreds, if not thousands, of cities in China where projects like this are occurring. Though they may end up being crowded, at least by Western standards, these apartments are clean and modern and the living conditions represent a huge improvement for the mass of the population. It should not be surprising then that a Pew Foundation poll taken before the 2008 Olympics found that 86% of Chinese were satisfied with the state of their society. But what might happen if this progress suddenly came to a painful halt?
Though some of the money that is paying for employees’ wages and construction materials must be coming from increased Chinese productivity, most of it is certainly coming from China’s export earnings. The bulk of those earnings come from the North American and European economies, all of which seem headed into recessions. As the consumers in those economies spend more of their decreasing income on food, utilities and fuel it will be the kind of goods made in China today – few of which are essential – that will inevitably be dropped from household budgets in the West. This prospect must seriously concern the Chinese leadership, who are managing China’s ongoing Industrial Revolution. The media in the West have long reported the fact of rural Chinese migration from the poverty of the countryside to the relative prosperity, or at least opportunity, of China’s cities. They number in the “millions” we have been told but you can’t really appreciate the reality of the people hidden in that number until you have watched hundreds of laborers pouring from worksites, like this one in Shenyang, at the end of a working day. I noticed that many of them carried their own shovels with them as they walked back to the shantytown of shacks that line the western border of “New University City.
The layout of the Beijing airport further complicates the situation of the idiot traveler without a ticket. The baggage recovery area is a ten-minute train ride from the arrivals area. Terminal 2, where in-country flights depart, is a 30-minute bus ride from the baggage area. Fortunately, I found on my suitcase the name of the airline I was booked on, China Southern. Using that, and my passport, I was able to convince the China Southern ticket agent to print out the remainder of my journey.
The luggage itself was the next obstacle. Having packed for six months and weighed it to conform exactly to British Airways limit of 70 lbs I was told that China Southern’s limit was 20 kilos. I was approximately 46 lbs over the limit. The ticket agent was inscrutable. I couldn’t tell if she was going to bounce me off the flight, tell me I could take only 20 kilos, or suggest something more reasonable. Happily, she opted for the last choice. The surcharge for the extra weight was only 121 renminbi, about $10 or 5 pounds. I took the bill to another desk, paid my money, and returned to collect my passport, which she had held as security for payment. The flight left on time, arrived on time, and Crystal Chen was at Shenyang airport to meet me. An hour later I was in my one-bedroom apartment at the University.
One of the other English language teachers here told me that the average Chinese family occupies about 30 square meters. The apartments provided by the University for its foreign staff are approximately 45 square meters and furnished quite comfortably, though the mattress on the double bed feels like it might have iron bars somewhere in it. That’s about the only negative comment I can think of. The kitchen has a new fridge, a ceramic stove, and a microwave. All the furniture in the living room, except for two school desks and chairs, is new as is the television. The cable service provides 50 channels, two of which are English language – BBC World News and the Australian Broadcasting Network. The Aussie channel conforms to my impression of Aussie values and provides almost non-stop Aussie rules football games, rugby league and cricket matches, Australian soccer and news bulletins on the progress of the remaining Aussie players at the US Tennis Open. Last Saturday night they advertised the Wallabies versus Springboks Tri-Nations Rugby Union game. I waited all day for it and at 9 pm it came on but then the screen froze on a picture of a South African supporter waving a banner that said “Wasting Matilda”. This must have blasted all the power out of the Australian end of the feed because that’s where the screen stayed for the next 45 minutes. No sound, no movement, no explanation. I gave up and went to bed. The next morning I asked one of the Australian teachers if he’d seen any of the game and he confirmed that nothing had happened. The score turned out to have been Australia’s worst ever beating by any team, 53 – 8, which I would have enjoyed seeing though I don’t much care for the South Africans and their brutal style of play.
The lead language teacher here, a Canadian named Harry, has been teaching at Shenyang for all five years of its existence and has experienced the kind of local change that must have been occurring throughout China during that time. Five years ago, he says, the Central Government ordered that all Shenyang’s universities be relocated to the same area about 30 minutes north of the city center. One can speculate about the reasons for this but providing employment for the multitudes of rural villagers who have been migrating to the towns and cities of this country may have been one of them. On Sunday night I took a walk around the campus and out on to the street and headed east, beyond what used to be the Shenyang city limits. Harry said there used to be a village out where they are building apartment houses. I am not sure who “they” are, whether private or government contractors, but they certainly are building apartment blocks. And at 6:30 on a Sunday evening, in failing light, they still were. The “weekend” here does not mean, as Westerners think of it, as the end of the workweek. Outside of business and government, whose employees operate officially on a six-day week, Chinese workers work as long as employers will pay them, as long as whatever jobs they have last.
The apartment complexes they are building are collectively called “New University City” and the project is the size of a small city in its scope. The construction goes as far literally as the eye can see in the smoggy Shenyang dusk. Each apartment block is 7 floors high, one apartment wide, and 20 apartments long for a total in each unit of 140 apartments. There is no way of knowing how many people each will house since though each nuclear family numbers no more than 3, or occasionally 4, the extended family members who have been displaced by projects like “New University City” – like the former villagers who lived here – may double or triple that number. In the complex itself, I counted twenty more units under construction to the north of the one I was standing in front of and ten more lines of twenty to the east, for a total of 200 buildings containing 28,000 apartment units. According to the site map at the crossroads where I terminated my walk, this is the first of a four-phase project that is planned to occupy all the remaining bare land one could see in each direction from that point. So during the next 4 to 6 years, some one hundred thousand new apartment units housing perhaps as many as half a million people will appear at the end of this one street in Shenyang. And Shenyang itself is just one of many hundreds, if not thousands, of cities in China where projects like this are occurring. Though they may end up being crowded, at least by Western standards, these apartments are clean and modern and the living conditions represent a huge improvement for the mass of the population. It should not be surprising then that a Pew Foundation poll taken before the 2008 Olympics found that 86% of Chinese were satisfied with the state of their society. But what might happen if this progress suddenly came to a painful halt?
Though some of the money that is paying for employees’ wages and construction materials must be coming from increased Chinese productivity, most of it is certainly coming from China’s export earnings. The bulk of those earnings come from the North American and European economies, all of which seem headed into recessions. As the consumers in those economies spend more of their decreasing income on food, utilities and fuel it will be the kind of goods made in China today – few of which are essential – that will inevitably be dropped from household budgets in the West. This prospect must seriously concern the Chinese leadership, who are managing China’s ongoing Industrial Revolution. The media in the West have long reported the fact of rural Chinese migration from the poverty of the countryside to the relative prosperity, or at least opportunity, of China’s cities. They number in the “millions” we have been told but you can’t really appreciate the reality of the people hidden in that number until you have watched hundreds of laborers pouring from worksites, like this one in Shenyang, at the end of a working day. I noticed that many of them carried their own shovels with them as they walked back to the shantytown of shacks that line the western border of “New University City.
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