Many of the characteristics of a free society are now in place in China; but there is as yet nothing approaching a real culture of freedom. As I have pointed out before, the numbers directly affected by state oppression are mercifully small. But, as the latest show-trial of veteran dissident Liu Xiaobo demonstrates, the State can still be very nasty when it wants. And the Chinese are well aware of the function of these examples of tyranny; they quote the ancient phrase “killing the monkey to frighten the chickens”. There remains a pervasive culture of fear. They don’t understand our Western confidence that, so long as we keep within clearly defined laws, we can do as we like without fear. The Chinese are permanently haunted by the fear of offending someone important. If they come up against problems in the workplace, they are most reluctant to to raise them with colleagues or management, for fear that someone might mark them down for rocking the boat.
Freedom of speech is vitiated not so much by actual oppression as by private paranoia. When blogging about China, I will often try out ideas on my wife, but I no longer show her my posts before submitting them. I got sick of “Are you sure you ought to say that?” and “They’ll never give you a visa again, you know”. Ultra-cautious is the default setting; no thought is given to the real probability of getting into trouble.
A painful example of this occurred last week. On 9 December I posted a piece about resurgent prostitution in Beijing. I was given the idea by a girl who worked as a waitress in a notorious haunt of the demi-monde. When I told her I was planning to write an article based on our conversation, she was thrilled. As a courtesy, I showed her the text before posting, just in case she was worried. Again, she was very pleased and flattered. So I sent her the URL so she could read it. But when she saw it in cold print, so to speak, on an international website, she panicked. Suddenly it occurred to her that it could cause all sorts of trouble, and she spent two hours berating me by phone and text message. (Well, as a long-serving heterosexual, I’m well aware that any dealings with what is oddly called the “gentler sex” are likely to lead to a handbagging somewhere down the line.) In vain I tried to convince her that the content was perfectly harmless, that my readership among the cadres of the Beijing Public Security Bureau is statistically insignificant, that the Chinese authorities are far too preoccupied with their own people to care what foreigners write in foreign languages on foreign websites. It cut no ice. I do hope that the Chinese will grow out of this paranoia.
Thursday 17 December 2009
Tuesday 15 December 2009
Contemporary China: the upside
So, farewell then, Beijing. It’s been fun as usual, but it’s beginning to take on the wearily familiar characteristics of a great economic metropolis: rising prices, overburdened transport infrastructure, and everyone too busy to enjoy life. Might as well have stayed in London, you may think.
The enterprise society, certainly, continues to burgeon, within the tight constraints of a corrupt and sclerotic political system. Maybe one shouldn’t be so surprised. It’s just occurred to me that the rigidity of the political structure here has perhaps contributed more than we think to China’s irrepressible growth. If you grow up in a system where nothing works and nothing can be formally changed, but you still need to get things done, you develop an innovative, and sometimes an unscrupulous, approach to ways and means. China is a society in which one is constantly coming up against the mantra “nothing can be done” – “mei ban fa” is the virtual state motto – but where almost everything can be worked with patience and imagination. There are some lovely stories of unofficial enterprises springing up on the very margins of the law in the seventies, before Deng Xiaoping came along with his black and white cats and conferred official blessing.
And this sclerosis may well be the real foundation of China’s coming economic triumphs. My dear friend Katy, who, despite being quite well-connected, has never bothered with a conventional “job” in her life, and who has just taken seven years out following the birth of her son, is now doing the groundwork for her seventh or eighth business start-up, and she is considerably younger than I am. When one compares that to my contemporaries in the UK, whose idea of the way to prosperity has been to land a “job” in someone else’s organisation, and then spend 40 years sitting around wearing suits, one sees why China is looking like a winner. Maybe the “ghastly old waxworks” (©HRH The Prince of Wales) of the Politburo are China’s best bet for continued economic expansion. Of course, 20 years down the road, when the leaders of society all belong to the spoilt, privileged and over-educated single-child generation, it may all be very different.
The enterprise society, certainly, continues to burgeon, within the tight constraints of a corrupt and sclerotic political system. Maybe one shouldn’t be so surprised. It’s just occurred to me that the rigidity of the political structure here has perhaps contributed more than we think to China’s irrepressible growth. If you grow up in a system where nothing works and nothing can be formally changed, but you still need to get things done, you develop an innovative, and sometimes an unscrupulous, approach to ways and means. China is a society in which one is constantly coming up against the mantra “nothing can be done” – “mei ban fa” is the virtual state motto – but where almost everything can be worked with patience and imagination. There are some lovely stories of unofficial enterprises springing up on the very margins of the law in the seventies, before Deng Xiaoping came along with his black and white cats and conferred official blessing.
And this sclerosis may well be the real foundation of China’s coming economic triumphs. My dear friend Katy, who, despite being quite well-connected, has never bothered with a conventional “job” in her life, and who has just taken seven years out following the birth of her son, is now doing the groundwork for her seventh or eighth business start-up, and she is considerably younger than I am. When one compares that to my contemporaries in the UK, whose idea of the way to prosperity has been to land a “job” in someone else’s organisation, and then spend 40 years sitting around wearing suits, one sees why China is looking like a winner. Maybe the “ghastly old waxworks” (©HRH The Prince of Wales) of the Politburo are China’s best bet for continued economic expansion. Of course, 20 years down the road, when the leaders of society all belong to the spoilt, privileged and over-educated single-child generation, it may all be very different.
Wednesday 9 December 2009
China: the demi-monde flourishes
I got talking the other day to a young lady who spoke the most admirably fluent English. I normally insist on speaking Chinese to people here in Beijing – if only to show off – but she insisted harder. She assured me that she was entirely self-taught.
Somehow she seemed reluctant to mention what she did for a living. She began with a long spiel about hailing from a small village in Shanxi province, an unprepossessing dustbowl in what might be called the Chinese mid-West. She had already obtained a degree or diploma in sociology, her chief interest, and now, aged 23, was saving up for further study in business or economics, as people from poor families have to sacrifice their interests to their futures. In the meantime she had to make some money, so…
No, not quite what you’re thinking. She works as a waitress in Beijing’s best-known knocking-shop, a set-up that has existed at one location or another for 20 years. (A very pretty girl, she is not herself for sale.) This place presumably has a watertight arrangement with Jingcha Plod, or more likely his bosses. It’s not strictly a brothel, as nothing happens on the premises, but girls are allowed to come there (subject to permission from the plods on the door, who don’t stop any males) to tout for business. There’s a bar, and a dance floor, and goodish music, and it’s perfectly possibly to spend an enjoyable and innocent evening there, if you like a slightly sleazy backdrop. (And I do.)
The Beijing demi-monde, like everything else here, changes its form constantly. Right now the Mongolians are back in town. For a few years now, Beijing has been a lucrative target for the enterprising and broad-minded beauties of Ulan Bator. The Mongolian ethnic type is well suited to the business, with Oriental looks on generous quasi-Russian figures.
But last time I was here there were none in sight; the visa tap had been turned off. Now it is dripping again; the girls can have two-week visas, whereas it used to be three months. (Trying to curtail prostitution is the world’s second oldest profession, and one is reminded of the little Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dyke.) The stories are all the same; no work, large families, fatherless babies, feckless male relatives.
Whether or not one regards the work itself as unpleasant, the attendant circumstances certainly have been. The girls are foreigners working illegally, and thus have no rights. A Mongolian girl I knew a few years back told me that she had known four colleagues who died in Beijing; two drunken accidents, one murdered by a client, one picked up in a police round-up and made to stand in waist-deep cold water for hours, from which she picked up a fatal infection.
“May I ask you a personal question?” my young friend asked as we finished our caramel lattes. “What do you think of the business that goes on in our bar?” I told her what I think and always have; that this is something that has always gone on and always will; that, if the poor are to be always with us, then so will prostitution. I am glad to say that she agreed wholeheartedly.
Somehow she seemed reluctant to mention what she did for a living. She began with a long spiel about hailing from a small village in Shanxi province, an unprepossessing dustbowl in what might be called the Chinese mid-West. She had already obtained a degree or diploma in sociology, her chief interest, and now, aged 23, was saving up for further study in business or economics, as people from poor families have to sacrifice their interests to their futures. In the meantime she had to make some money, so…
No, not quite what you’re thinking. She works as a waitress in Beijing’s best-known knocking-shop, a set-up that has existed at one location or another for 20 years. (A very pretty girl, she is not herself for sale.) This place presumably has a watertight arrangement with Jingcha Plod, or more likely his bosses. It’s not strictly a brothel, as nothing happens on the premises, but girls are allowed to come there (subject to permission from the plods on the door, who don’t stop any males) to tout for business. There’s a bar, and a dance floor, and goodish music, and it’s perfectly possibly to spend an enjoyable and innocent evening there, if you like a slightly sleazy backdrop. (And I do.)
The Beijing demi-monde, like everything else here, changes its form constantly. Right now the Mongolians are back in town. For a few years now, Beijing has been a lucrative target for the enterprising and broad-minded beauties of Ulan Bator. The Mongolian ethnic type is well suited to the business, with Oriental looks on generous quasi-Russian figures.
But last time I was here there were none in sight; the visa tap had been turned off. Now it is dripping again; the girls can have two-week visas, whereas it used to be three months. (Trying to curtail prostitution is the world’s second oldest profession, and one is reminded of the little Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dyke.) The stories are all the same; no work, large families, fatherless babies, feckless male relatives.
Whether or not one regards the work itself as unpleasant, the attendant circumstances certainly have been. The girls are foreigners working illegally, and thus have no rights. A Mongolian girl I knew a few years back told me that she had known four colleagues who died in Beijing; two drunken accidents, one murdered by a client, one picked up in a police round-up and made to stand in waist-deep cold water for hours, from which she picked up a fatal infection.
“May I ask you a personal question?” my young friend asked as we finished our caramel lattes. “What do you think of the business that goes on in our bar?” I told her what I think and always have; that this is something that has always gone on and always will; that, if the poor are to be always with us, then so will prostitution. I am glad to say that she agreed wholeheartedly.
Monday 7 December 2009
BBC newsreader Susan Osman will do well in China as a token 'big-nose'
I was interested to hear that Susan Osman, a newsreader with the BBC, has got fed up with Britain’s incorrigible ageism and is now planning to seek a new career in China. As a chap of a certain age who is also “between careers”, I wish her well. But I wonder whether her hopes may not be misplaced. She may indeed do well here; it’s quite a land of opportunity these days. But if so, she is quite likely to owe part of her success to the tokenism so heartily disapproved of in the West. Not as a token oldie, of course; the Politburo are on telly all the time and they make Gordon Brown look like a carefree teenager. Nor as a token woman; I think it could be maintained that, politics apart, China leads the world on equal opportunities in the workplace. No – she’ll always be in demand as a token big-nose. (I wish to make it clear that I have never knowingly seen Ms Osman and intend no comment on her personal appearance – that’s just what the Chinese call us in their less polite moods.)
She may indeed find China less ageist than Britain, though I’m not sure. Aside from the Party, civil society is very youthful. The over-fifties grew up entirely under the great Chairman, and few of them have found themselves able to adjust to the incredibly swift changes which followed his demise. The old receive respect and an outward show of deference, but they’re not running the show any more. Most of my friends in their thirties and forties are running their parents’ lives as well as their own.
And, ageist or not, they’re certainly lookist. Remember the little girl who sang at the Olympic opening ceremony? Her voice was beautiful, but it was decided that her teeth were a mess (hardly surprising at age seven), so she had to sing off-stage while a more conventionally pretty girl lip-synched. This elicited outrage in the West, which my wife failed to understand; in China, she said, this was perfectly normal behaviour. Maybe this won’t be a problem for Ms Osman. In any case Chinese are notoriously incapable of guessing the ages of Westerners. For genetic reasons my hair went white in my early thirties; but even I was not prepared for an old josser in the far north-east estimating my age at 75 when in fact it was just under half that. And in any case tokenism will come to Ms Osman’s rescue; foreigners are known to be a law unto themselves, and nothing we do surprises the Chinese.
I wish Ms Osman every success, but she mustn’t complain if she finds herself rather short of colleagues of her own age. In China, as in Britain, public employees (which most of the media are) retire five years earlier than everyone else. The normal retirement age is 60 for men and 55 for women. Therefore, in the public sector, women usually retire at 50 (Ms Osman is 51). As one who retired with great glee at 46, I think this is splendid. Others may find it a touch, well, ageist.
So if Ms Osman finds herself treated with great deference, her every word treasured as a gem of immemorial wisdom, but is always politely circumvented when executive decisions are being made, I hope she won’t be offended.
She may indeed find China less ageist than Britain, though I’m not sure. Aside from the Party, civil society is very youthful. The over-fifties grew up entirely under the great Chairman, and few of them have found themselves able to adjust to the incredibly swift changes which followed his demise. The old receive respect and an outward show of deference, but they’re not running the show any more. Most of my friends in their thirties and forties are running their parents’ lives as well as their own.
And, ageist or not, they’re certainly lookist. Remember the little girl who sang at the Olympic opening ceremony? Her voice was beautiful, but it was decided that her teeth were a mess (hardly surprising at age seven), so she had to sing off-stage while a more conventionally pretty girl lip-synched. This elicited outrage in the West, which my wife failed to understand; in China, she said, this was perfectly normal behaviour. Maybe this won’t be a problem for Ms Osman. In any case Chinese are notoriously incapable of guessing the ages of Westerners. For genetic reasons my hair went white in my early thirties; but even I was not prepared for an old josser in the far north-east estimating my age at 75 when in fact it was just under half that. And in any case tokenism will come to Ms Osman’s rescue; foreigners are known to be a law unto themselves, and nothing we do surprises the Chinese.
I wish Ms Osman every success, but she mustn’t complain if she finds herself rather short of colleagues of her own age. In China, as in Britain, public employees (which most of the media are) retire five years earlier than everyone else. The normal retirement age is 60 for men and 55 for women. Therefore, in the public sector, women usually retire at 50 (Ms Osman is 51). As one who retired with great glee at 46, I think this is splendid. Others may find it a touch, well, ageist.
So if Ms Osman finds herself treated with great deference, her every word treasured as a gem of immemorial wisdom, but is always politely circumvented when executive decisions are being made, I hope she won’t be offended.
Thursday 3 December 2009
The atrocious taxi-drivers of Beijing. 'Tiananmen Square? Never 'eard of it, guv'
I normally like taxi drivers. Some of my best friends, etc. But Beijing is a new and terrible world.
Driving a taxi here has never enjoyed a lot of cachet. Back in the 1980s, driving was itself considered an honourable profession; there was no such thing as a private car, and thus the only driving licences belonged to those who did it for a living. Driving taxis was what you did when you had more or less fallen through the cracks of the official system, just as many civilian aircraft were piloted by Air Force throwouts, with predictable results. The cars were not exactly of the highest quality; the cheapest and most popular were cuboid yellow vans, built out of the waste material at the Harbin No 1 Aircraft Factory, and known as “bread wagons”. These were driven by grizzled, chain-smoking provincials, dispensing the usual cabbies’ salty wisdom in impenetrable accents.
Qualifications have never been hard to obtain. Ten years ago – I don’t know how much has changed since, but I suspect not a lot – the Chinese driving test consisted of driving to and fro across a piece of waste ground, usually in groups of eight or ten, so one didn’t have a lot of personal scope to disqualify oneself. The alternative method of obtaining a licence was a small brown envelope, possibly accompanied by a bottle of Black Label, handed to the director of the driving school. Either way, not exactly a recipe for high standards. And there is certainly no established procedure for would-be cab-drivers comparable to our “doing the knowledge”. In fact, I’ve always fantasised about Beijing drivers sitting an exam called “doing the ignorance:
“Do you know the way to Tiananmen Square?”
“Never ‘eard of it, guv.”
“Main Railway Station?”
“Isn’t that sort of out West somewhere?” (It isn’t.)
“Forbidden City?”
“Not a clue, guv. Is that one of those new developments that’ve just gone up?”
On Saturday night I had dinner with friends in the far west of town. I left early enough to get the last tube home, as the line closes around 11 p.m. Well, so I thought. The station was a mile or so away, so I took a cab. I was a bit bemused at the way he was taking me, but I thought (why?) he presumably knew what was what. Finally, after ten minutes or so, he stopped the car and told me he hadn’t the faintest idea where the station was, and that I’d better find someone else. (An underground station a mile away from his rank!) I didn’t have a clue where I was either, except that it seemed a distinctly unprepossessing place to pick up taxis: what I did know what that I had now indisputably missed the last tube.
And there are no greater experts on missing the right exit, suddenly finding they can’t turn left when intended, getting the one-way system wrong, etc etc. They will also make a bee-line for any Gordian traffic snarl-up (this isn’t hard) and embroil you in it for hours. Take a good book, because you won’t be going ahywhere any time soon. But don’t get too engrossed, because you’ll have to be alert when the traffic clears to ensure you don’t end up in Mongolia. If there is one area in which a great big Maoist purge is called for…
Driving a taxi here has never enjoyed a lot of cachet. Back in the 1980s, driving was itself considered an honourable profession; there was no such thing as a private car, and thus the only driving licences belonged to those who did it for a living. Driving taxis was what you did when you had more or less fallen through the cracks of the official system, just as many civilian aircraft were piloted by Air Force throwouts, with predictable results. The cars were not exactly of the highest quality; the cheapest and most popular were cuboid yellow vans, built out of the waste material at the Harbin No 1 Aircraft Factory, and known as “bread wagons”. These were driven by grizzled, chain-smoking provincials, dispensing the usual cabbies’ salty wisdom in impenetrable accents.
Qualifications have never been hard to obtain. Ten years ago – I don’t know how much has changed since, but I suspect not a lot – the Chinese driving test consisted of driving to and fro across a piece of waste ground, usually in groups of eight or ten, so one didn’t have a lot of personal scope to disqualify oneself. The alternative method of obtaining a licence was a small brown envelope, possibly accompanied by a bottle of Black Label, handed to the director of the driving school. Either way, not exactly a recipe for high standards. And there is certainly no established procedure for would-be cab-drivers comparable to our “doing the knowledge”. In fact, I’ve always fantasised about Beijing drivers sitting an exam called “doing the ignorance:
“Do you know the way to Tiananmen Square?”
“Never ‘eard of it, guv.”
“Main Railway Station?”
“Isn’t that sort of out West somewhere?” (It isn’t.)
“Forbidden City?”
“Not a clue, guv. Is that one of those new developments that’ve just gone up?”
On Saturday night I had dinner with friends in the far west of town. I left early enough to get the last tube home, as the line closes around 11 p.m. Well, so I thought. The station was a mile or so away, so I took a cab. I was a bit bemused at the way he was taking me, but I thought (why?) he presumably knew what was what. Finally, after ten minutes or so, he stopped the car and told me he hadn’t the faintest idea where the station was, and that I’d better find someone else. (An underground station a mile away from his rank!) I didn’t have a clue where I was either, except that it seemed a distinctly unprepossessing place to pick up taxis: what I did know what that I had now indisputably missed the last tube.
And there are no greater experts on missing the right exit, suddenly finding they can’t turn left when intended, getting the one-way system wrong, etc etc. They will also make a bee-line for any Gordian traffic snarl-up (this isn’t hard) and embroil you in it for hours. Take a good book, because you won’t be going ahywhere any time soon. But don’t get too engrossed, because you’ll have to be alert when the traffic clears to ensure you don’t end up in Mongolia. If there is one area in which a great big Maoist purge is called for…
Wednesday 2 December 2009
The Chinese are betting on infrastructure as Beijing switches to the 'Shanghai model'
There may be nine million bicycles in Beijing, as the song assures us; personally, I think the lady is working with out-of-date figures, as the old velocipede is nowhere near as ubiquitous as formerly. What is certainly true is that there are now four million cars, which presents rather more of a problem.
The road-building programme has been quite impressive – six concentric ring roads as against three in 1989 – but it is nowhere near keeping pace with the growth in traffic volumes. Accordingly, the eight-lane boulevards criss-crossing the city resemble faintly undulating car parks during the two-hour morning rush hour, the three-hour afternoon rush hour, and most of the weekend. I rather suspect that many people are driving their cars as a status symbol – bicycles are so Third World, and public transport so proletarian – rather than because the car gets them to their destination more quickly, because it almost certainly doesn’t.
Fortunately, the city fathers have got something right. Stimulated by the approach of last year’s Olympics, they put in place a huge extension programme for the Beijing Underground. Ten years ago there were only two lines, which meant that for most parts of the city the tube wasn’t much help. Now there are half a dozen, giving pretty decent coverage all over the city and out to the burgeoning suburbs. And it’s a delight to use, if you can stand the crowding; lovely clean stations with working escalators, trains running like clockwork at proper intervals, no breakdowns, functioning doors and ticket machines – all the advantages of a system which is two or three years old instead of 150. And a ticket to anywhere on the system costs 18p. Public transport looks like coming into its own just before the roads seize up altogether.
The Chinese are betting heavily on infrastructure as the foundation for long-term economic growth. This follows an intense debate within the post-Mao leadership about the way forward. The father of reform, Deng Xiaoping, set up the “Guangdong model”, based on the special economic zones on the border with Hong Kong. Broadly speaking, it consisted of removing government interference and government controls, giving the private sector its head, and letting infrastructure look after itself – if private industry needed it, private industry could buy it. Deng’s death left the leadership to Jiang Zemin and his friends, most of whom hailed from around Shanghai. The “Shanghai model” was different; much more government-influenced, much more planned and controlled, grounded on the provision of an infrastructure on which industry could thrive. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the backing for the development of this region came from Singapore.
Now Beijing, which as the political capital was always more staid than swashbuckling Shanghai, has gone for an extreme version of the Shanghai model. It will be interesting to see how well it prospers. It couldn’t, of course, be more different to the principles by which the USA operates; as the two giants of the 21st century face up to one another, we will see how the two systems compare.
The road-building programme has been quite impressive – six concentric ring roads as against three in 1989 – but it is nowhere near keeping pace with the growth in traffic volumes. Accordingly, the eight-lane boulevards criss-crossing the city resemble faintly undulating car parks during the two-hour morning rush hour, the three-hour afternoon rush hour, and most of the weekend. I rather suspect that many people are driving their cars as a status symbol – bicycles are so Third World, and public transport so proletarian – rather than because the car gets them to their destination more quickly, because it almost certainly doesn’t.
Fortunately, the city fathers have got something right. Stimulated by the approach of last year’s Olympics, they put in place a huge extension programme for the Beijing Underground. Ten years ago there were only two lines, which meant that for most parts of the city the tube wasn’t much help. Now there are half a dozen, giving pretty decent coverage all over the city and out to the burgeoning suburbs. And it’s a delight to use, if you can stand the crowding; lovely clean stations with working escalators, trains running like clockwork at proper intervals, no breakdowns, functioning doors and ticket machines – all the advantages of a system which is two or three years old instead of 150. And a ticket to anywhere on the system costs 18p. Public transport looks like coming into its own just before the roads seize up altogether.
The Chinese are betting heavily on infrastructure as the foundation for long-term economic growth. This follows an intense debate within the post-Mao leadership about the way forward. The father of reform, Deng Xiaoping, set up the “Guangdong model”, based on the special economic zones on the border with Hong Kong. Broadly speaking, it consisted of removing government interference and government controls, giving the private sector its head, and letting infrastructure look after itself – if private industry needed it, private industry could buy it. Deng’s death left the leadership to Jiang Zemin and his friends, most of whom hailed from around Shanghai. The “Shanghai model” was different; much more government-influenced, much more planned and controlled, grounded on the provision of an infrastructure on which industry could thrive. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the backing for the development of this region came from Singapore.
Now Beijing, which as the political capital was always more staid than swashbuckling Shanghai, has gone for an extreme version of the Shanghai model. It will be interesting to see how well it prospers. It couldn’t, of course, be more different to the principles by which the USA operates; as the two giants of the 21st century face up to one another, we will see how the two systems compare.
Banks are fuelling a massive property boom in Beijing, the city the credit crunch forgot
Back in Beijing. The swish new airport: the traditional small idiosyncrasies. As well as filling out a landing card, you also have to sign a declaration that you have no infectious diseases, and hand it to an official who is wearing a face mask, just in case you are lying. Then the usual pig’s breakfast at baggage reclaim; this isn’t specific to China, it’s just that these days a two-stage flight gives you a greater than 50 per cent chance of having your baggage mislaid.
I park myself in a part of town where 20 years ago there was nothing but a socking great power station, but where they are now building the latest spiffy new business and shopping area. The new mall is full of Prada, Gucci, Ferragamo, the whole nine yards. Not many actual customers yet, though; just a lot of young female window shoppers, and the only place doing business is Starbucks. But it’s presumed that they will come. There’s a new Marriott and a new Ritz-Carlton too, although I have no information as to occupancy rates.
This city is awash on a tsunami of government money. I don’t think J M Keynes ever envisaged anything on this scale. China is the land the credit crunch forgot. The banks have gone along with the Zeitgeist and are fuelling, with easy lending, the most humungous property boom. I had guessed that the property market would keep rising until the Olympics and then run out of steam. Shows how much I know. Speculators have been making 600-800 per cent profits in the last 5-7 years. Prices are not quite Central London, but they’re certainly the better parts of Zone 2.
However, at the micro level things are not quite keeping up. Arriving at my (perfectly nice) hotel, I find the door-key doesn’t work, and they come back with four or five new ones, preventing me from having a much-needed shower and kip, and it takes an hour and a half to sort it out. Always the smiles, the unfailing politeness; always the complete inability to spot what needs to be done and to Do It.
One sign of modernisation, though: as well as the usual minibar stuff, the minibar offers condoms, both normal and vibrating (no, don’t ask me) and performance-enhancing oils and creams for men and women respectively. (This was a double room; I’ve no idea if the same is on offer in a single.) But it’s interesting that they’ve been forced to admit that sex actually exists, and that a billion and a half people weren’t found under gooseberry bushes. A step forward – or possibly not?
I park myself in a part of town where 20 years ago there was nothing but a socking great power station, but where they are now building the latest spiffy new business and shopping area. The new mall is full of Prada, Gucci, Ferragamo, the whole nine yards. Not many actual customers yet, though; just a lot of young female window shoppers, and the only place doing business is Starbucks. But it’s presumed that they will come. There’s a new Marriott and a new Ritz-Carlton too, although I have no information as to occupancy rates.
This city is awash on a tsunami of government money. I don’t think J M Keynes ever envisaged anything on this scale. China is the land the credit crunch forgot. The banks have gone along with the Zeitgeist and are fuelling, with easy lending, the most humungous property boom. I had guessed that the property market would keep rising until the Olympics and then run out of steam. Shows how much I know. Speculators have been making 600-800 per cent profits in the last 5-7 years. Prices are not quite Central London, but they’re certainly the better parts of Zone 2.
However, at the micro level things are not quite keeping up. Arriving at my (perfectly nice) hotel, I find the door-key doesn’t work, and they come back with four or five new ones, preventing me from having a much-needed shower and kip, and it takes an hour and a half to sort it out. Always the smiles, the unfailing politeness; always the complete inability to spot what needs to be done and to Do It.
One sign of modernisation, though: as well as the usual minibar stuff, the minibar offers condoms, both normal and vibrating (no, don’t ask me) and performance-enhancing oils and creams for men and women respectively. (This was a double room; I’ve no idea if the same is on offer in a single.) But it’s interesting that they’ve been forced to admit that sex actually exists, and that a billion and a half people weren’t found under gooseberry bushes. A step forward – or possibly not?
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