I blogrolled these guys two weeks ago and have meant to call them out. This post on racism in China (if, of course, it exists at all) and how it compares with that elsewhere gives me special reason to do so. Note especially the delicious update and the excellent comments.

This is a consistently excellent blog that impressed me from day one.

Update: Interesting link from the comments thread. I’d mentioned on this site before an anecdote about my first coming to China in 2002 to take a course at Fudan Daxue. There, a California-born Chinese-American student who could barely speak a word of Chinese was in despair that no Chinese students would accept him as an ESL teacher because he “didn’t look like an American.” They couldn’t deal with the idea of being taught English by a Chinese person, even if what made him “Chinese” was purely superficial. Hearing him that day asking our Chinese teacher how to convince students he was a native English speaker, and hearing the teacher tell him there was nothing he could do — well, that’ll stay with me forever. Mandatory disclaimer: Americans have a long and ongoing history of racism, and often, as the China Geeks story and comments indicate, it manifests itself in uglier ways than it does here. Now that we’ve got that out of the way…

After several months of freelancing and studying and recovering from last August, I’ll be trying my hand at a new job in 12 hours or so. It’s still media-related, though more journalism than PR. We’ll see how it goes. I’m actually quite excited; finding this job underscored my sense that there are still plenty of opportunities for expats here in China, at least for those who look hard enough. (And in this case, I hardly even needed to look. I basically came upon it by happenstance.)

Of course, this will mean I can’t sit at home and blog. Or use Facebook or Twitter or other time-wasters. There’s still lunch hour and after work. I’ll do the best I can.

And thus begins yet another new phase in my life.

Update: Looks like blogspot blogs are blocked in China yet again. That would be an infuriating nuisance.

Update 2: For those working on their Chinese like me, please check out this post on the integration of Chinese Pod and the newest version of the Pleco dictionary. Pleco founder Mike Love explains how it works. I am a big fan of both, and I’ve discovered that Pleco flashcards really do work. I use them everyday when stuck in traffic and on the subway.

Scene from John Adams’ 1987 opera

As friends of mine in Beijing know (to the annoyance of some of them, I’m sure), one of my latest obsessions has been John Adam’s incredibly beautiful opera, Nixon in China. It is not new to me; I was channel surfing back in the late 1980s when I came across a performance of the masterpiece on PBS. At the time, I wasn’t interested in any composer other than Wagner, but the soaring vocal line and dazzling orchestration made me put down the remote and listen. And watch.

I absolutely loved it. It was a strange thing; who would have thought Nixon’s trip to China in 1972 would be material for a full-blown opera? Who would think of either Richard or Pat Nixon as sympathetic characters? Yet it works, capturing musically and dramatically a remarkable cast of characters, not to mention the grandiosity of the occasion, the making of history.

I only re-discovered the opera a few months ago, when I decided to buy it on iTunes. The music is essentially minimalist, but with a healthy infusion of romanticism and lyricism. The score is tonal, the vocal line melodic and immediately memorable (unlike a lot of other minimalist music, which can be more about effect than melody). If China is one of your interests, there’s no excuse not to be familiar with Nixon in China.

One aria in particular, “I am the wife of Mao Tse Tung,” captured my attention, and it’s now the No. 1 most-played number on my iPod. It takes some getting used to the odd vocal leaps and repetitive melody. But if you can stick with it, I think you’ll agree that “chilling” is the best way to describe it. You can watch the entire scene here, and the performance is first rate.

And it’s not just the music. It’s a pretty perfect synthesis of music, singing, drama, and staging. Take a look at the singer playing Pat Nixon, at first puzzled, then fearful, for a moment positively terrified, then compassionate to the victim of Madam Mao’s wrath. Look at the clash of cultures as she (Pat) walks around the stage watching the unfolding drama with a look of complete disbelief. Look at the hysteria as Jiang Qing holds up Mao’s Little Red Book, her unctuous embrace of the Chinese performer, her haughtiness, her fanatical ideology and the echoing of her words by her automatons, a microcosm of the CR insanity, all unfolding under the serene gaze of a floor-to-ceiling portrait of the Great Helmsman himself.

Tragically, I don’t know the exact story of what’s going on in this scene and the libretto is under copyright so I can’t read the story scene-by-scene. (You can read the words to the aria here, but it doesn’t explain the context.) I want to know why Jiang Qing is so incensed, and what’s up with the guy with the gun. Still, these questions don’t diminish the effect of this clip. Watch it now. Overwhelming. Goose-bump-inducing. Sublime. As I said, it may take some getting used to, especially the cosmic high notes and leaps. But so worth the effort…

There are many other scenes you can find online. This clip of Nixon’s arrival in China is also one of my favorites. To see what I mean about the vocal line, listen to Zhou Enlai’s response when Nixon says he, Zhou, must be a constant traveler. Listen to how, after Nixon’s meaningless banter, the music captures the Chinese modesty reflected in the words, and how the vocal line suddenly soars as Zhou formally welcomes his guest:

No, not I. But as a traveller come home
For good to China, one for whom
All travel is a penance now,
I am most proud to welcome you.

That is vocal writing Mozart would have admired. And the intensity is sustained through every scene. Simply amazing. I used to think opera died at the turn of the century before last. I was wrong. Nixon in China deserves to be remembered as a seminal work, one of the great classical achievements of the 20th century. There’s nothing quite like experiencing the work of a genius.

[Update Note: Danwei had the photos and some great commentary hours before the article cited below. Good work, and sorry I didn’t see it until now! Great comment thread over there, too.]

This story totally blew me away. I’m not saying I swallowed it hook, line and sinker, just that it made my jaw drop as I wondered how much of this is actually true? The writer is famous and hard to pin down politically (adores Ayn Rand, worked for Ralph Nader, etc.), and he’s obviously no dummy. (Strange, but not necessarily stupid.)

The article has to be seen, because the photos are essential. I do want to quote one section, however, that echoes my immediate reaction upon hearing of China’s “harassment” of the US Navy’s Impeccable.

Imagine if Chinese military vessels appeared 75 miles off the coast of, say, southern California, for the quite obvious purpose of tracking our submarine defenses and conducting surveillance of our San Diego naval base. It would be bombs away, pronto, and no questions asked. However, the Chinese penumbra of sovereignty is apparently more restricted.

Beijing claims U.S. actions violate the UN Law of the Sea, a treaty to which they are signatory and the U.S. is not. However, in contesting this assertion – which came up in the aftermath of the last Hainan incident – U.S. officials routinely note that the UN law, while granting China sovereignty over its “exclusive economic zone,” would have been violated only if the Impeccable was on a commercial expedition, and yet the clear concern on the part of the Chinese is that this was a military mission.

We have our Monroe Doctrine, which was specifically aimed at the crowned heads of Europe, who, in our nation’s youth, posed a threat on our very borders. (This same doctrine, ironically, was later tweaked and twisted into a rationale for our own imperial ambitions in South and Central America, as well as Mexico.) Other nations, however, are not entitled to a Monroe Doctrine of their own: China, Russia, and Iran have no corresponding prerogative to their own spheres of influence, as granted by geography, tradition, and the military necessities of a credible defense.

This made me think of an incident n the 90s when Cuba shot down two cuban exile-owned aircraft dropping anti-government leaflets on the streets of Havana. The planes had taken off from Florida. What would happen, I kept asking myself, if Cuba allowed aircraft to take off to fly over downtown Manhattan dropping anti-US-government leaflets on the sidewalk and all over Central Park?

For the past five years, the group’s volunteer pilots have patrolled the Florida Strait seeking refugees fleeing Cuba on makeshift rafts. In the past, the group’s aircraft reportedly have buzzed the Cuban capital, Havana, to drop leaflets attacking President Fidel Castro.

Castro replied with a warning that any aircraft violating the country’s airspace would be shot down. In Seattle, President Clinton “condemned this action in the strongest possible terms.”

The group, Brothers to the Rescue, had been praised in the US as heroes. And yet if the tables were turned the Monroe Doctrine would be put into play in seconds. We would never stand for it.

Okay, back to China. I realize this could be jumping the gun because I can’t fact-check Raimondo’s article. But looking at his track record I have to say I admire his original thinking and refusal to be slotted. His closing words on China make sense, at least until he gets to that one sentence about the Falun Gong:

There is plenty of anti-Chinese political sentiment in this country, and it’s a constituency that is bipartisan. Among the Democrats, you have organized labor, which is instinctively Sinophobic in this country and always has been, as the history of the oppression of Chinese coolies in California amply demonstrates. The protectionist unions are in a lather about the fact that Chinese workers produce cheaper and better products that American consumers want to buy. In tandem with international do-gooders of every sort, the anti-China popular front also consists of Republicans of the sort who will welcome any fresh enemy, as long as it means more subsidies for the military-industrial-congressional complex. Throw in the wacko cultists of Falun Gong, and what you have is the reincarnation of the old, bipartisan anti-Communist alliance of yesteryear, which brought us wars in Korea and Vietnam – and may yet succeed in provoking a third war on the Asian landmass, one just as futile and unwinnable as its predecessors.

The formulation of American foreign policy is all about domestic political pressures. It is the domain of lobbyists and de facto foreign agents, most of them unregistered, who work with targeted American constituencies to further various commercial and foreign interests. A rational foreign policy, i.e., one that serves authentic American interests, is virtually impossible in these circumstances.

Chas Freeman keeps coming to mind as evidence mounts all around us that we want – demand – to remain in a state of denial and delusion about Israel and China and just about everything else. Maybe it makes us feel safe. We want “analysts” who make us feel like were getting into a warm bath, all snug and safe. Ironically, it is precisely this self-delusional state of mind that landed us in the financial crisis that could well wipe out our dreams and our bankbooks.

Again, go see the photos and read the whole thing. And again, read the Wikipedia entry on the author. Too bad he sounds a bit crazy on why we entered WWII, and in his admiration of Charles Lindbergh. If you can put that aside….

James Fallows does it again, with a detailed look at why predictions that China will follow either the Soviet or Japanese paths to economic disaster don’t hold water. There are too many sharp differences between China’s economic situation and theirs.

It’s nearly 1.30am and I don’t have the fortitude to do a detailed analysis of the article now, except to say it makes some points that should be obvious to us all but somehow seem to slip off our radar screens. Like, the USSR’s manufacturing capabilities were a pathetic joke by the time they went under, while China’s are at this moment among the most robust in the world.

And that’s all I have time for. I just want to get word of this piece out there so you can read it for yourselves. One snip from the very end, after the writer has enumerated some rather startling possibilities for creativity (and for profits) the crisis poses for China and dashed the shaky comparisons of China with Japan and the USSR.

CHINA IS DOWN. It is not out. This has important implications for America.

If China were truly like the old Soviet Union, the coming mass unemployment might be the shock that finally turned the people against their rulers. If it were truly like Japan, it might spend a decade or two chugging along but not aligning its systems to new international realities. In either case, Americans might feel sorry for China’s still-impoverished masses—but less worried about its competitive challenge.

I suspect that China will be like neither. Most of its people will still be very poor. Most of the jobs they hold—when they have jobs—will still be near the bottom of the global value chain. But they will not, I believe, be in fundamental revolt against the country’s governing system. And the companies they create, manage, and work for will be constantly trying to improve their position on that value chain. Two years ago, after reporting on factories in Shenzhen, I described an economic symbiosis in which Chinese workers assembled many of the world’s products—while inventors, designers, shareholders, and consumers from America or other rich countries got the lion’s share of the financial returns. It is the announced policy of the Chinese government, and of many Chinese companies, to keep more of the rewards in China.

Outsiders can rightly criticize the Chinese government if it tries to sneak in new export subsidies or push the RMB’s value back down. But no one can criticize its ambition to increase the rewards for its people’s work. Many Chinese companies will fail or make mistakes under today’s intense pressure. But many are using the moment to prepare for their next advance. The question for Americans to think about is how we are using the same moment.

Kind of reminds me of Chas Freeman, willing to challenge sacred cows and acknowledge that whether we like the Chinese government/system or not, there are some things it’s doing that are worthy of our attention. Who know, we may even learn something from them.

Chinese Pod’s Ken Carroll hits the PR jackpot today in a full-length profile with a branded photo in one of the world’s great papers.

Ken Carroll is challenging a basic tenet in the global economy: that we all need to learn Mandarin Chinese to conquer the world’s largest market – but that learning Chinese is boring. Mr Carroll, a Shanghai-based language teacher turned internet entrepreneur, says that does not have to be so: he has pioneered a painless podcast method for learning Mandarin, and nearly a quarter of a million people worldwide are using it on Chinesepod.com, which sends daily Mandarin lessons to iPods and Google phones around the world.

Chinesepod revenues have defied the global economic downturn, too, rising 250 per cent from December 2007 to the same month last year and climbing strongly again in January, according to the company. Study without suffering may sound too good to be true, but there seem to be plenty of people willing to listen to this particular siren song, especially now that more professionals are taking enforced vacations from the workforce, giving them time to learn new skills such as languages.

Investment analysts think education in China could even prove to be a recession-proof business. Bejing’s National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language says 40m foreigners studied Mandarin last year. Chinesepod is riding that wave: with China’s economy expected to grow by 8 per cent this year – compared with a flat global economy – learning Chinese has rapidly begun to look like a clever investment.

Let me just say I renewed my subscription to Chinese Pod about three weeks ago, and rely each week on a steady diet of both their podcasts and those of their competitor – each useful in its own way. Chinese Pod has become an institution, and for good reason. I can criticize them for this and that, but in the end all that matters is this simple truth: they helped me push from the elementary to intermediate level, and provided me with a panoply of practical phrases I use all the time.

Education in general seems to be a smart way to go during the great recession, with many people returning to school due to job scarcity. Teaching Chinese is positively brilliant, because the number of customers willing to spend money on it is growing constantly. These should be good years for language tools that can actually make a difference, and Chinese Pod really made a difference for me. Well done, Mr. Carroll.

I began to smell a rat as I read this post, and was glad to see the commenters did, too. Go take a look.

The great irony is that the pot was totally calling the kettle black – applying stereotypes to slime an entire people. If it’s inexcusable when the French do it to the Chinese, it’s just as bad when the Chinese return the favor.

This was where I lost any sympathy I may have first felt with the writer (who may have simply been making the whole thing up):

[H]e and his companions treated this airplane like a Parisian road-side cafe, chatting and drinking, pressing the stewardess call light, opening the window shades of the passenger cabin and allowing the sun to shine in. I controlled my temper, and used my expression and body language to communicate my displeasure, plugging my ears with earplugs in front of them. I need to rest! I politely said to my neighbor: “Can you please close the window shade?”

I truly did not imagine he would answer me like this: “Sorry, young lady, this window seat is mine, the plane ticket was paid with my money, you have no right to request this of me!”

I was stunned for a long time, not knowing what to say! This is the self-proclaimed friendliness, generosity, pursuit of romance and freedom of the French people? So what they were pursuing was their own freedom!

Please note how only a week earlier, as I traveled by train from XiAn to Beijing, I had to deal with a similar issue, but approached it with a somewhat different frame of mind:

My car-mates, however, were determined to ruin it. The two business partners smoked in the car (not allowed), kept the lights on and talked without a single break for 13 hours, making a mockery of the purpose of the overnight sleeper car, which is to sleep. I emerged in Beijing dazed and jet-lagged.
I strongly endorse the sleeper train from Xian to Beijing. I also would love tips on how to deal with selfish people who seem not to care about anyone else. Never had this problem before on a Chinese train.

My compartment mates kept smoking and talking for more than 12 hours, even after the conductor came in and told them to stop.

I was pissed, but it would be absurd to lash out at Chinese people in general because of two schmucks in my sleeper car. I’ve sat next to selfish people of all nationalities; China doesn’t hold a monopoly on them.

Read the China Smack post just to see how naively the story is accepted by some at face value, and how it pushes all the hot buttons – looting of the Summer Palace, French snobbery toward the Chinese, general French loathsomeness (from bad breath to racism), the Paris torch relay attack by a pro-Tibet activist, etc.

Another red flag popped up here:

Not only this, and perhaps as a result of of smoking, their mouths are very smelly.

Luckily, no one in China smokes, and halitosis is unheard of. Those are fresh roses you’re smelling in that taxi. The point being, throwing around racial/ethnic/national stereotypes usually says more about the accuser than the accused.

I have to give this blog credit for their argument in favor of Obama’s pick to head the National Intelligence Council. Go look at their excerpted text of a leaked memo he wrote. I’ll just repeat a portion here, from a response he wrote in an exchange on China Security Listserv.

(2) The attack on “unarmed students” at Tian’anmen (actually at Muxudi and Fuxingmen and other locations outside Tian’anmen) came after many weeks, even months, in which the Chinese leadership had lost control of security in their own capital. (The troops were, in fact, fired upon at Muxudi, though it is not clear by whom.) The only surprise to me (and other realists, including, I gather, you) was that the Chinese leadership did not act earlier to restore order. We would have done so, judging by the precedents set by MacArthur and our National Guard over the decades from 1920 – 1950. The main lesson those leaders who survived the affair have drawn from it, in fact, is that one should strike hard and strike fast rather than tolerate escalating self-expression by exuberantly rebellious kids. If June 4 tells us anything about the Chinese leadership it is that they are reluctant, often to the point of rashness, to resort to the use of force against their fellow citizens.

(3) I am frankly stunned that you would argue that China has not “become more tolerant of dissent” in recent years. No one can have spent any time at all talking to ordinary people in China over the past two decades and have this view. Of course, outright opposition to rule by the Chinese Communist Party continues to draw a sharp response from the authorities. No government, including our own, is or should be asked to be prepared to tolerate efforts to overthrow it and the constitutional order it administers. (Ironically, despite our ideological predilections to believe the contrary, I am aware of no evidence that Chinese currently consider their government less “legitimate” or worthy of support than Americans do ours — but I defer to [name redacted by TWS] and other experts on this.) Certainly, China continues to fall far short of our minimal expectations for human and civil rights in many respects but it has made very significant progress on many levels. To deny this is primarily to raise questions about the extent to which one has been able to observe readily observable reality.

(4) You did not repeat the Rumsfeld / Rice canard that China has yet to make a decision whether to integrate itself into the existing order or to stand outside it. So you cannot be accused of embracing that quaint but hystrionic absurdity about a country that has joined just about every international organization and regulatory regime that exists, while emerging as a strong defender of the status quo in each against attacks on them, primarily from the US.

Like you, I worry that we will get China fundamentally wrong. It is certiain that we will do so if we allow our idées fixes and ideological preconceptions to guide our reasoning about China rather than deriving our conclusions from first-hand and empirically validatable data.

There’s a lot of stuff there. I can take issue with this or that, but I like the way he challenges the dominant paradigm and his willingness to question sacred cows. I also like that he strives to see the good along with the bad, in extreme contrast to the Bush people who would see Hamas and Hezbollah, for example, only as terrorist groups without understanding how they are perceived by the people who elected them and the role they play in those people’s lives. (Note that I am not saying they aren’t supporters of terrorism, only that it’s a bit more complex than that.)

I know the Tiananmen Square item will create a lot of hysteria. But it’s important you look at what Freeman actually said. I can hear the emotional outcry already: “Freeman is in favor of shooting unarmed students in the back!” But look at his words and put your emotions to the side for a moment. He was surprised the government “didn’t act earlier” – which is not to say he wondered why they didn’t start killing students earlier. The way the CCP handled it was clumsy and ultimately catastrophic, allowing the chaos to drag on for months and suddenly crushing it in a way that haunts them to this day. Of course they should have acted earlier and struck hard –to keep the country functional and to avoid a bloodbath.

To “strike hard and strike fast” does not mean to murder. I think its pretty clear Freeman means it in the sense of nipping the escalating crisis at its earliest stages, maybe with more meaningful negotiations and stronger insistence that bringing the capital city to its knees was not the most productive way to effect change. Personally, my pragmatic side wishes they’d used tear gas at an earlier stage to clear the square, while my idealistic side wishes they’d struck hard and fast by thanking the students for raising serious issues, and inviting them to work with them to change things. But the worst strategy was the dithering for months, which led to breakdowns that made the massacre all but inevitable.

Unfortunately the way Freeman worded it, with the words “strike hard and fast,” will no doubt leave him open to unfair criticism. Kennedy struck hard and fast during the Cuban Missile Crisis. If Freeman had said “respond quickly and emphatically” he’d be a lot better off. We Americans can get quite bent out of shape from out-of-context and misinterpreted remarks, which can damn a politician forever. We have to remember this was a note on China Listserv, not a formal policy statement.

To repeat what I’ve said so many times here: I admire what the students, for all their faults and, in some instances self-interest, achieved in 1989. June 4 is a dark cloud over China that will not go away. The government’s approach was horrific, no matter who fired the first shots (and I know all sides of the story and have seen the photos of the soldiers’ bodies on fire). I still get emotional when I think about this image, and I still remember the hope and the thrill I felt watching what seemed like a miracle unfold in the early days of the demonstrations. But it’s not nearly so simple as good versus evil. It never is.

There is too much dynamite-laced content in the memo to go through it line by line; each item could ignite an endless thread of disagreement. And as I said, I don’t agree with all of it. But I like the way Freeman seeks to clear away the clutter of fixed notions, stereotypes and myths, and I admire his willingness to put his neck on the line to challenge conventional thinking and then to back it up with an intelligent argument.

But don’t just take my word for it. Please go and read what the smartest journalist in China has to say about Freeman.

…I don’t know Freeman personally. I don’t know whether the Saudi funding for his organization has been entirely seemly (like that for most Presidential libraries), which is now the subject of inspector-general investigation. If there’s a problem there, there’s a problem.

But I do know something about the role of contrarians in organizational life. I have hired such people, have worked alongside them, have often been annoyed at them, but ultimately have viewed them as indispensable. Sometimes the annoying people, who will occasionally say “irresponsible” things, are the only ones who will point out problems that everyone else is trying to ignore. A president needs as many such inconvenient boat-rockers as he can find — as long as they’re not in the main operational jobs. Seriously: anyone who has worked in an organization knows how hard it is, but how vital, to find intelligent people who genuinely are willing to say inconvenient things even when everyone around them is getting impatient or annoyed. The truth is, you don’t like them when they do that. You may not like them much at all. But without them, you’re cooked.

So to the extent this argument is shaping up as a banishment of Freeman for rash or unorthodox views, I instinctively take Freeman’s side — even when I disagree with him on specifics. This job calls for originality, and originality brings risks. Chas Freeman is not going to have his finger on any button. He is going to help raise all the questions that the person with his finger on the button should be aware of.

The Bush administration suffered from a dearth of boat-rockers. Those who disagreed were shunted and silenced, labeled as “disloyal.” I’m impressed that Obama chose Freeman for this position, irrespective of whether I disagree with him on all topics related to China. Or the Middle East. He seems to have the kind of mind we need more of, and I hope he survives the inevitable firestorm these seemingly provocative – but actually rather down-to-earth – remarks will generate.

Update: Please be sure to see the new post I wrote about Freeman following his exit from the nomination. So much hoopla over remarks that, when looked at carefully, were well intended, non-provocative and intelligent. Such a loss for America.

Caption: A sculpture of breasts by Chinese artist Shu Yong designed to increase people’s appreciation for natural curves in a country where plastic surgery is booming. Shu’s work is now being showcased to a rural audience.

This is purely a mental health break after posting lots of serious posts.

I was in Dongguan on business several times in late-2007, back when life was fun and good. I wrote about an unforgettable event I saw there, and about the level of energy and excitement I saw. So much opportunity and hope. Limitless possibilities.

Not anymore. If this post is to be believed, and I have no reason to think otherwise (except perhaps that I want to not believe it), Dongguang has become a bit less inviting.

As I was out at a factory in Dongguang today I saw lines of people looking for work outside most of the factories we drove past. This is just one that we happened to stop in front of in traffic long enough for me to snap a quick photo. I counted 25 people or more outside multiple factory gates. I haven’t seen this since 2005.

Second, a security note. Two other people (who shall remain nameless), while in a different part of Dongguang today, saw a group of people on the side of the road hack another person to death (at least they think he died) with a machete. They kept on driving, sped up even, to get out of there as quickly as possible.

If you have money or are alone I would highly recommend that you DO NOT go out at night in any of the industrial areas outside of Shenzhen. This would include Songgang, Dongguang, Longgang, Bao’an, Guanlan, Shiyan, Huizhou and other areas with tons of (unemployed) migrant workers and not a lot of policing or economic development.

I’ve seen fights, I’ve seen people get robbed and beaten, I’ve seen a woman and child get run over by large dump trucks, I’ve even seen a dead body on the street (at least I think it was dead), I’ve had family tell me about kidnappings they’ve seen, I’ve had family robbed at knife point and I’ve been pick-pocketed numerous times myself. I’ve had clients tell me about huge gang fights they’ve see while making side excursions in shopping malls! I even chased down and dragged to the police station two guys who tried to steal my bike once. But I’ve never seen anything like this before.

Desperate people do desperate things. And right now in the manufacturing cities, times are as desperate as they can get. Except it will probably gets worse before it gets better. As many have said, there is no way this crisis will end without blood on the streets. The big question is whether this violence will spread from random acts of murder and robbery committed by hungry, desperate workers to an actual assault on China’s government. I think the government will be stable and will survive, for better or for worse. For some interesting perspectives on this question, see this post and its comments.

It’s going to be along, painful, frightening year. The Chinese people know that, and seem to believe their government is handling it as best they can. There’ll be more and nastier demonstrations, there’ll be more deaths and more despair. There’s won’t be a revolution, at least not from this crisis. People have planned and saved for it, and they are far more frightened of the chaos a revolution would bring than of the continued rule of a dictatorship most of the country credits with vast improvements in their lives. And again, that is not necessarily my personal viewpoint, but it is certainly the viewpoint of the man on in the street, whether in the Central Business District of Beijing or the train station in Kunming.

Silk Road link via Fool’s Mountain