CHINA!

I just spent some time in China and wanted to write up some observations for the curious. I've appreciate what many of you all have sent from your travels.

HONG KONG

Hong Kong is a bustling city that is too big for its geography. The original city, built up from the start by British imperialists, is now crammed between Victoria Harbor and some abrupt, steep hills thick with green shrubs. Some impossible buildings come out diagonally from these sharp slopes; other impossible buildings come out of places that used to be underwater; and almost every building in Hong Kong is over twenty stories high. Three of the top ten tallest buildings in the world are there, and the entire skyline at night is colorful, not with flashing neon, but undulating peacock colors. There's a mix between a laser and firework show every evening at about 8, which is especially striking because it reflects onto the harbor water.

The streets are crowded crowded crowded, and most of the people are clearly of the same ethnicity: Han Chinese. Despite being under complete British control from 1840 to 1997, only a few people in a thousand are white. The remaining minorities look southeast Asian, and Indian, occasionally African; and on Sundays a big crowd of Filipino housekeeper women blanket over an unexciting paved square as if it were a beach. White people are very noticeable and usually seemed British, but, as one of these strange-looking people, I barely felt noticed, and not even other whites gave each other special acknowledgement.

As we millions (6.5 to be precise) packed together onto the narrow streets, brushing by tiny bright white drug stores selling packaged snacks I didn't understand and thick glossy fashion magazines, small restaurants serving noodle soup, and fruit stands selling grapes, white pears, and several different types of bananas, we pedestrians were carefully guided. Fences kept us crossing the road at just the right places and wide walkways guided us over the heaviest traffic. In a city of such tall buildings, built on such steep hills, there are numerous escalators, including the longest continuous moving sidewalk ever built, which goes up several city blocks.

With so many people so concentrated, it doesn't make much sense to own a car. There are public transit buses, trains, subways, and ferries operating frequently. Bicyclists would have a hard time getting around, facing either dense crowds and stairs or fast and chaotic car traffic. So most of the street traffic is red Toyota cabs, delivery trucks, and extremely luxurious cars.

Among the owners of this surprising number of luxury cars are the big bankers, investors, and traders profiting from the biggest container port in the world. The owners of the so-called "gate to Asia" can live up on the Peak, which by contrast to sea-level is a refuge of calm and tropical green, where the British Governors lived, where the Japanese ran their occupation, and where the tourists can come to shop and eat today.

I expected Hong Kong to be overcrowded with poor people living in unsafe apartment towers. Instead I found great wealth, urban gentrification (but for the occasional dirty-looking old apartment building) and only several homeless people—one man sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk right next to a running concrete truck; one person completely concealed behind their umbrella at the turn of an outdoor staircase.

But this was only in the central city area; the suburbs are poorer, and far enough into the suburbs is mainland China. The non-porosity of the border with the mainland (non-porous for people at least) helped make Hong Kong comparably much richer, meaning that the opening with the mainland is now causing social and real estate problems as the places equalize.

SOUTHEASTERN CHINA

Looking out the window of a crowded but smooth 24-hour train from Hong Kong to Shanghai, almost every patch of land I saw revealed evidence of intensive human management. Most of Southeastern China seems to be millions of smallish fields for crops, closely crowded next to crops of other species—rice everywhere, vegetables, fish farms, and occasional rows of fruit trees, like bananas or persimmons.

Along the gracefully curving paths within and between these fields, there are Chinese men and women working with their hands. Hoeing, cutting down, and quietly inspecting, they often wore the flat conical hats you'd think of as Chinese. Over hundreds of miles, I saw only two beasts of burden and no tractors, but I did see people working as soon as the sun appeared and, apparently patiently, all day. They looked still and peaceful as the train rushed by, but I know that life in the country is generally much more difficult than the life in the cities. Some country farmers survive with about $70 in cash each year and some children are unable to
afford clothing during the summer.

In-between, amongst, and adjoining these seemingly ancient fields, there was also the kind of ugly infrastructure that underlies a "developed" society—power plants and lines (including one nuclear plant), dams, piles of mined rocks, piles of trash, and floating garbage in the gray waterways.

SHANGHAI

On the train I was able to read and talk quite a bit, and in Shanghai I stayed with an American English teacher who had been living in China for two years. So my observations were more informed.

A few striking things about Shanghai. First of all, there are many bikes; but as of the last ten years, also many cars, and also many advertisements (90% of these are for, in order of frequency: cell phones, fashion designers, and chocolate or dairy treats.). Secondly, there is a large number of tall people. Only rarely did I tower over an entire crowd of people; about as often as a truly giant man walked by. Thirdly, Shanghai is like Hong Kong, with a couple buildings in the top ten tallest (or soon to be), bright showy colors, construction sites everywhere (mostly for big apartment complexes), a more modern, cleaner subway than in U.S. cities, and shopping everywhere. But in Shanghai over time, there is a gradually apparent darkness underneath the "face" (China's world of apparent social status).

It is very true that neither Hong Kong nor Shanghai were cities before they were built up as trading posts for (mostly) the British. Especially in Shanghai I sensed clearly a desire to mimic and then outdo the foreign powers that once dominated them.

Two guys on the train and a couple of city planners in Shanghai told me what many foreigners have told me: they would like to live in the United States, and they would like their country to be like the United States. So there is a wage premium for those who speak English or understand how the West does business. Regular Joes with a college degree from the U.S. can come to Shanghai, and even if they speak no Mandarin, can earn as much as the highest paid Chinese professionals. Native English speakers who also know some business jargon can make more than Chinese professionals with just a few hours' work a week. Ex-pat employees regularly make over $100,000, which is nearly equivalent to $1,000,000 living in Shanghai (because the median wage is about one-tenth the U.S.'s). I'm told Westerners can get away with almost anything, ranging from using the women's bathroom to actually urinating onto and into a police car right in front of the officers. This is exactly what a New Zealander I met claimed to have done, and I believed him, because it seemed consistent with his personality. In the U.S. the police would almost certainly beat him; if he were Chinese, he'd go to jail, perhaps, whimsically, for a while. But because he might be an investor, I'm told, the police looked away and did nothing. At the same time, foreigners are often charged twice, four times as much, because they can pay, and the inflated price nonetheless still seems reasonable compared to European or American prices. There is so much entrepreneurial buzz in China, I sometimes thought my name was "Rolex."

There's an interesting combination between eager welcoming of Westerners and a longer-term plan to kick them out. For the most part foreigners can only live in China if they are doing work to advance its economy: teaching English, sharing business know-how, directly investing, or working with a company that is. When this work is finished, the visa runs out. And every company, even if it is entirely the idea, or entirely funded by foreign money, must be at least 50% owned by a native Chinese man. This formula seems to be working. China's GDP has been compounding at a rate of about 10% a year for more than twenty years now, and it is already close to the size of the GDP of France, or the UK (or California). From the two older ex-pats I talked with most, my sense was that China is kind of like a new American west, unpredictable and full of opportunity for those willing to leave home for a very foreign place. The difference is that the main opportunities to be found in China are an oversupply of cheap labor and the freedom to pollute.

My birth year—1980—was also the year the one-child policy was implemented (and I'm a second child). As the first one-childers now have their one child, there is a new kind of demographic: single children doted over during richer times by six people (their parents and their grandparents). On the Shanghai subway I saw one such girl (slightly older), attended to by her mother and father, who stood attentively by as she sat down. When she finished her slurpee, she literally turned up her nose and handed her empty drink container to her father, summoned her new poster and shopping bag into her hands, and then used the poster like a wand to direct her father into a particular open seat. I was stunned by the whole scene. Whatever they want, I've heard these "Little Emperors" are used to getting it. Sometimes what they want is an entire bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken (the biggest fast-food chain in China); and childhood obesity is becoming more prevalent among kids whose grandparents survived the starvation of the Great Leap Forward. This generation is largely what marketers are referrring to when they speak of China's "untapped demand" for products.

Despite my pessimism about where materialistic capitalism leads, I should say that it seems many people are experiencing big improvements in their lives. Especially in the several main cities, I'm told food supplies are more secure, new buildings are safer, information is more available, and consumer choices are more varied. I could have bought any of a variety of Nike's (for the amazing price of: $100!) And I was able to look at ~some~ of the results after searching Google for "human rights violations China" at a public internet café. Perhaps most importantly, there is an optimism that the future will be better.

But underneath the smiling glitz of Shanghai there is the lingering dark side I mentioned. While there are many new apartment buildings going up in Shanghai—giving the appearance of success—what I didn't see is that the previous residents were forcibly removed to make way for these buildings. The government owns all the land in China, and people just lease its use. This allows for rapid gentrification. When a group of tenants got together to argue their case legally (a new kind of privilege), they actually, stunningly, won in court. But, quickly, the lead lawyers were sent away (without trial) for ten years' hard labor, and the court decision was overturned.

A few other examples of the darkness:
--The streets of Shanghai have fewer homeless people than the inner-cities of most American cities. But many of the children vending things on the street have been sold by their parents. Outside a night-club in Shanghai at 3 AM, it's hard to feel content knowing that the little girl selling flowers was probably ordered here by her
"boss."

--There is a state law that says all workers must go home when the temperature exceeds 38 C, but the state-controlled weather broadcasts seem never to report temperatures higher than 36 C.

--Anti-pollution laws are neither very strong (a "comparative advantage") nor well enforced (because of bribes), and dirty coal is the almost sole source for the electrical and manufacturing energy driving all this industrialization. Looking at the sky, I could very quickly draw a connection between the glitzy new shopping centers and the smoggy, hazy air above them. The skies aren't exactly cloudy, and the air isn't accurately called "brown" (when I was there at least), it was just never quite "blue" and always a little foggy or something. Twenty years ago, autumn skies used to be azul. Now, three-fourths of the days are smoggy like this, and all of Guangdong province is an acid rain region.

--Throughout my trip, I was told not to eat raw vegetables like lettuce (because of dirty water) and to ~peel~ my grapes (because of the pesticides), and I'm pretty sure the meat contains concentrated heavy metals (coal again). The paper even reported that 70% of the residents in Beijing and Shanghai experience hard-to-explain fatigue and respiratory irritation. I think China's aspirations for world power will be hampered by all the health problems caused by their own pollution.

--Local officials have for centuries been expected to take advantage of their power to grow rich, today routinely exacting bribes for business permits, for example. The result is a whole population of frustrated people used to enduring. For example, in the U.S. out-of-state drivers can occasionally expect to be targeted by local sheriffs for a speeding ticket; in China out-of-province drivers may have to pay hundreds of dollars just to stop a local police officer from acquiring their car.

Most disturbing of all, I confirmed from three sources a horror story about HIV and AIDs. Because China has faced a shortage of blood for medical transfusions, poor people have been compelled to give their blood, and local officials have been making money selling it. In a couple of regions, HIV got into the blood supply, leading to huge proportions of infected people. The officials have by now learned of their terrible error, but they have not stopped their practices--because adequate blood screens would cost too much. The Chinese government has also been under reporting its AIDs problem and has been reluctant to let the Red Cross in. (There are obviously more than 2 million AIDs cases in China.).

--Even in Hong Kong, many stores are selling statues of Mao and the once-mandatory little red books of his sayings, without much acknowledgement that he was arguably the worst dictator of the 20th century. He murdered hundreds of thousands of dissidents, including previously close advisors, starved millions (30+ million) by arrogantly and then stubbornly insisting on his poorly conceived central plan, persecuted and concentrated millions of other innocents onto hard labor camps, and practiced psychological warfare, like persuading children to turn in their parents, on his own people for decades. Mao has died, and China is experiencing "progress," but only to the point of admitting he was "30% wrong," or "50% wrong." I heard a NY Times journalist describe continuing horrors in China before suggesting that one sign of progress is that people are no longer compelled to publicly cannibalize enemies of the state. Surreal.

By the end of my trip I began to agree with one older ex-pat, who said: "take everything you think you know about China, flip it around, and multiply it by a million."

There ~are~ some advantages to central planning. I have been impressed to read about the government's large-scale efforts to reforest whole regions, and indeed on the train I saw hills turned into terraces and planted with trees, apparently to stop erosion and desertification. It is very illegal to pave over good farmland, and the government is actually tearing up some poorly located developments. As well, Chinese planners at the top level acknowledge that burning so much coal is polluting their country and the rest of the world; and there are some bold initiatives both to increase renewable energy supplies and also to produce more nuclear energy with a potentially much more stable "pebble" uranium reactor. The Chinese State Environmental Protection Agency is designing a "green GDP" as a more accurate measure of success than the more naive GDP we're stuck with. They're talking about "circular economies": designing things from the start to be recycled, and they have conceptualized "sustainability" into the country's Central Plan (which is a document with much more teeth than similar-sounding statements of intention that come from, say, the UN). Despite occasional clear thinking, however, and the central planners' actual ability to implement an overall environmental agenda, I don't foresee much environmental sanity in China. At the individual level, it seems common for Chinese people to throw trash on the ground, or out their window. I'm told the attitude is: the government will clean it up. And at the governmental level, the most important thing seems to be economic growth and world power: clean up later.

As impenetrable as the Chinese culture remains, I can share some small experiences about life on the (busy) streets. You'd think, for example, that people so familiar with living in crowds, would understand that passengers need to get off the subway before anyone should get on. But no: it's common for people to stand right in front of the door and then push against the tide of de-boarders to get on. Just as in Hong Kong, Shanghai people don't appear take special note of the conspicuous white people on the street. Only occasionally, a kid would smile out, "hello." At the same time, I felt watched. This became obvious after I tried to buy some roasted chestnuts on the street. A passing white guy heard the price and began arguing on my behalf, then a local Chinese woman stormed up to make my case as well, then also a friendly older man. The loud argument went on and on, with no decrease in the fervor after I'd paid (a lower price) and walked away with my nuts. Similarly, when a subway vendor tried to give me change as if I had paid her 10Yuan instead of the 100Yuan I'd given her, a woman emerged from the crowd behind me to help.

Everywhere I was in Shanghai I felt safe. I was ~wary~ around tourist areas, where a bicyclist going the other way tried to grab my bag. But in most places I just didn't feel eyed, even though I knew I represented wealth to many people. Ex-pats who lived there said they'd be comfortable counting wads of money in public.

Though I've heard that possession of even small amounts of drugs is an executable offense, prostitution is everywhere. It happens in the barbershops mostly, but also through escort services, and sometimes there's even soliciting inside clubs. I heard about a business deal held up in Italy because the lead Chinese representative had blackmailed his (Chinese) assistant and refused to sign the deal until she submitted to him.

THIS CENTURY

Over the next twenty years, the Chinese planners in Beijing intend to move 30% of the whole population from the countryside to cities, where they will take new manufacturing jobs, and some may rise above poverty. By this time, China will likely have the second-largest economy in the world and will be burning coal at a rate 50% faster.

The international political consequences will be huge. China is ready to be acknowledged, especially by its former European colonists and Japanese invaders, as a top world power, and it has its eye on several extraterritorial properties including Taiwan, the oil-yielding Spratly Islands, and a couple of strategic islands now considered part of Japan. With the one-child policy, families have sought more males than females, creating a demographic situation that has historically built large, restless armies.

The social changes inside the country may be tumultuous: currently the Chinese big-city people seem giddily, atheistically materialistic, and there are many more to be brought in to this attitude. But there are already clear signs of the kind of decadent despair that prevails in America. Are the self-centered "Little Emperors" prepared to take care of a huge number of elders?

The Chinese economic appetite is quite likely to lead to resource wars, of some kind, somewhere. As the final, biggest reservoirs of oil become more important, Asians are already bigger customers of Middle Eastern oil than Westerners—and China's recent surge helped send the price of oil way up. Less conspicuously but also up are the prices of construction materials and commodities like copper. Most concerningly, the agricultural region of northern China is feeding 200 million people, temporarily, by running down the underground aquifers. The fallout from this unsustainable practice could be enormous.

China is a big bumbling giant getting bigger. It was fascinating to visit, even if only for a tantalizing moment. In any case, wherever you are this century, expect to see more Chinese faces.