China Will Grow -- China Will Fail -- China Must Be Controlled
As some of you know, last month I spent some time in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Admittedly the scope of my visit was narrow and I was there on vacation. But I did observe a ton of stuff; the time I spent there wasn't even really relaxing, as there was so much to see.
Now that I'm a few weeks back in Amerika, a few points that stick out:
1) Pollution is a huge problem in the cities- You've read about it, but it's seriously really fucking bad. When I got to Hong Kong, my nose started running a lot and my throat hurt a bit. I thought I was getting sick from the 16 hour flight. But I met up with an old friend who lives there now and he said, "Oh, that's the air." And he was right.
But the air in Shanghai was much worse. Imagine if every breath you took smelled vaguely like a melting plastic bag or a burning iPod. Plus the water quality is all sorts of terrible. Worse yet, Shanghai gets about 15 days of solid blue sky per year due to the smog. My clothes eventually smelled like it when I left.
I stayed in Shanghai with a friend from home. I remember when he came to New York for a visit he was marveling at the air quality over and over. I didn't get it until I saw Shanghai.
2) The low-level laborers have a pretty Hobsian existence- One of the contributors to pollution are the 24 hour construction sites. I suspect a lot of the building is getting very speculative and bubble-like, though in China they can't blame the Zio-capitalists and the bankers. But you can go to a bar at night and there will still be people working on multiple construction sites at all hours. They tend to live in dorms and make very little money, but some workers and peddlers can really advance commercially.
At one point my friend encouraged me to get a back massage. It was $10 US for a 60 minute massage. The masseuse was decent, but at the end I wanted to tip him because frankly it seemed way too cheap. My friend warned me not too -- tipping is seen as insulting, as if I was explicitly telling the masseuse that I'm better than he is.
Which brings me back to the original point that the masseuse probably made $2 on the massage.
3) I began to kind of understand the one child policy- I nominally oppose the one child policy, as I would any other policy that literally restricts the freedom to create life. But I kind of see where they're coming from on that.
Simply put, there are a lot of issues in China that are a function of sheer volume of people.
EG lots of the parks don't have benches (or have very few). No park could accommodate people just sitting around -- it would just get congested and filled with trash. No, parks are for strolling through. Get in, walk around, get out.
Of course, the demographic imbalance from the one child policy is going to be really bad for China. But it doesn't take spending too much time there to think that they would do just fine environmentally with fewer people.
4) The propaganda is pretty sickening...and I couldn't even understand the Chinese propaganda-
English language newspaper headlines:
+ "Reporters and officials gather to celebrate year of media openness."
+ "FM: China not responsible for climate changes."
Newspaper articles often cite anonymous online commenters on sensitive issues, which basically means someone makes up something and then puts it in the newspaper. This was done to great effect when the US sold weapons to Taiwan, which prompted a spate of articles about "Netizens" running to the ramparts to blast Amerika.
I saw a TV show inexplicably in English. The hosts discussed (not debated, there is no debate) that Haiti was unable to recover from their earthquake because their democratic government couldn't summon the strength and unity to rebuild. And this was in English, I can't imagine what kind of stuff is blasted out in the non-English press. Really sickening.
[B]5) No high level freedoms, but lots of low level freedoms[/B]- So in China you can't say whatever you want or advocate for much political change. But you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't threaten the state and/or you can pay off the right people.
For three days I was repeatedly offered drugs at the same corner, which was about 200 feet away from a police station. The drug dealers just give the cops a cut. You can do almost anything as long as the cops get a cut.
I also met an American guy who lives in Shanghai. While out drinking, he fell into an American-born Chinese guy, who was also drunk and fell, breaking his nose. The American-born Chinese guy got the [white] American arrested, moved to a different prison so his girlfriend couldn't find him and then chained to a chair for 36 hours. The American was told he could either wait 12 months for a trial, or pay $16,000 US to the American-born Chinese guy [and the police].
I was stunned to hear this story, and other people in the group also thought it was intense. But everyone there knew someone or had heard of a similar story before. The corruption is a major issue.
6) The state will bulldoze you, Nessie style- My friend wanted to take me to an art gallery, so we started walking. When we turned the corner, the entire block (galleries, apartments, etc) was demolished. Three homes were left standing; the families refused to move or accept compensation once the developer got/paid for the right permits.
And this is totally legal, as the concept of property in China is pretty tenuous.
*****
Someone in my family used to work a lot in China and told me lots of things about it. He described a really place that was tolerant, diverse and very different from the stereotypes you may get from reading about China in a newspaper. Sadly, I found that a lot of the uncomfortable stories you hear/read are often true.
The state is repressive and obsessed with raw industrial growth, at the expense of sane urban planning or letting new industries develop that the state can't control (see under: Facebook, YouTube being banned in China). What the state can't control/understand will be regulated or outlawed.
In Hong Kong I met people who thought deeply about issues of environmentalism, press freedom and international affairs. Shanghai was more like a mineshaft. Maybe the Hong Kong version of China will take the lead, or maybe not. It's hard to think that China's current path is sustainable, but it's also hard to see what will make China stumble and re-assess.
I came to China expecting to get a new perspective on the place and understand that the "rise" of China would benefit the world. But I left with some really hardcore neo-con views about what it means when an un-democratic, national-chauvinist, repressive state begins to accrue massive current account surpluses. Clearly the US (and to a lesser extent Europe) needs to solve its debt issues before it becomes a debt crisis and the trigger of a loss of influence.
</Rant on China>
PS- Is this the kind of "article" you're looking for, Wraith and Loki? :)
