I’ll be watching the inauguration, which starts at midnight here, over the internet. Even though I’d rather be watching it with others in the States, or better yet, in the multimillion-person crowd on the Mall, it’s novel to be one of the viewers participating in the first presidential inauguration widely broadcast over the internet. And I’ll no longer take the event for granted after living in a country where the transition of power is an opaque process conducted amongst a small group of unelected leaders.
Such a symbolic historical precedent – the inauguration of the first black president – couldn’t have come at a more crucial moment. A day after celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Americans are given another chance to come together to commemorate a milestone that many people, benefiting from the opportunities found in a diverse and free society, have struggled to achieve. Americans fought for desegregation and voting rights to ensure equal opportunity for every citizen and the swearing in of our 44th president strongly validates the system we created.
I’m afraid we can’t rejoice for long because we’re facing a lot of urgent problems. I’ve read a few books on modern American history (on the presidency in the 21st century, on the Cold War, and on the CIA) in recent weeks and they’ve tempered my expectations. Nothing can prepare one for the unexpected challenges the country and the president will face. I think being more removed from the events of the past year in the States has shaped my perspective so while I’m immensely proud of President Obama’s inauguration, I also expect a lot of stumbles and letdowns from his new administration. So, best of luck, but on the 21st let’s put our heads down and get to work.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Turning points in history
Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger traveled to Beijing to speak with Chinese government leaders and commemorate the first visits that Carter and Deng Xiaoping made to each others countries in 1979.
“There is no more important diplomatic relationship in the world than the one that has grown between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America,” said Jimmy Carter
The two countries are undoubtedly closely linked. Two and a half million Chinese people live in the United States, Wal-Mart buys over $22 billion worth of goods from China each year, and China holds nearly $600 billion of our debt (over a fifth of our foreign debt holdings).
Chinese is becoming a popular foreign language for students at many private colleges in the U.S. The article cites that 10 percent of undergraduates at Yale University study Chinese (though it's probably true that 100% of students at Beijing University have studied English since grade school). And from my anecdotal evidence, a good number of Harvard and Princeton students are also studying the language. Harvard has a summer language program at Beijing Language and Culture University and they were an impressive group as they took a pledge to speak only Chinese so they stood out being a close group of foreign students who were always talking in Chinese. Same for Princeton, I ran into their group in the Longqing Gorge – they were bungee jumping the same time when I went – and only spoke English when a European tourist asked them where they were from.
The history of China in the last 30 years and how it got to where it is today is a fascinating story and a sharp contrast to the decades of civil war, famine and repression from the 1930s through the middle of the 1970s. I knew little about China’s path of development until reading a few books recently. In “China Shakes the World,” James Kynge describes a common misperception about the way economic reforms were implemented, “In the popular imagination, the launch of China’s economic reforms in 1978 was a planned, top-down affair managed by a man who is often called the ‘architect’ of the country’s emergence, Deng Xiaoping.” But, planned economy or not, history tends to run its own course. As Kynge explains, “the reality has not been so neat. Many of the key events and occurrences that propelled progress towards capitalism were, in fact, either unplanned, unintended or completely accidental.”
The initial reforms–ending collective agriculture and allowing free enterprise–led to a period of the fastest growth and greatest reduction in poverty the country has ever seen. According to the World Bank,
Not only were much of the reforms unplanned, much of the initiative was taken on my local officials and individual entrepreneurs (for better or worse–Beijing now has stricter environmental policies but often there is little compliance at the local level).
Another example of consequential changes that subverted the central party are the events that kicked off the second burst of reform and growth in the 1990s. Tim Clissold wrote the book “Mr. China” about his two years as a language student in Beijing in the early nineties, followed by several years working for an American firm investing in the Chinese auto industry. The Chinese economy stumbled after Tiananmen Square and the Communist Party reached a nadir as their hold on power seemed untenable unless they could counter the swell of social unrest with economic prosperity. As Clissold describes,
To get around the political stalemate, Deng, who was 88 years old at the time, went on a holiday trip to southern China with his family during the Chinese New Year in 1992. He planted a tree in Shenzhen and proclaimed, “To get rich is glorious,”, followed by a tour of cities and factories up the coast and a visit to the Pudong Special Economic Zone in Shanghai.
The most substantial changes start with ordinary people. China’s (and America’s) most successful leaders were those who were able to sway public opinion and convince people that they had a stake in improving the country. The expansion of civil society, the internet and media, and the growing numbers of university graduates and foreign students and workers in China bode well for further reforms and prosperity.
“There is no more important diplomatic relationship in the world than the one that has grown between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America,” said Jimmy Carter
The two countries are undoubtedly closely linked. Two and a half million Chinese people live in the United States, Wal-Mart buys over $22 billion worth of goods from China each year, and China holds nearly $600 billion of our debt (over a fifth of our foreign debt holdings).
Chinese is becoming a popular foreign language for students at many private colleges in the U.S. The article cites that 10 percent of undergraduates at Yale University study Chinese (though it's probably true that 100% of students at Beijing University have studied English since grade school). And from my anecdotal evidence, a good number of Harvard and Princeton students are also studying the language. Harvard has a summer language program at Beijing Language and Culture University and they were an impressive group as they took a pledge to speak only Chinese so they stood out being a close group of foreign students who were always talking in Chinese. Same for Princeton, I ran into their group in the Longqing Gorge – they were bungee jumping the same time when I went – and only spoke English when a European tourist asked them where they were from.
The history of China in the last 30 years and how it got to where it is today is a fascinating story and a sharp contrast to the decades of civil war, famine and repression from the 1930s through the middle of the 1970s. I knew little about China’s path of development until reading a few books recently. In “China Shakes the World,” James Kynge describes a common misperception about the way economic reforms were implemented, “In the popular imagination, the launch of China’s economic reforms in 1978 was a planned, top-down affair managed by a man who is often called the ‘architect’ of the country’s emergence, Deng Xiaoping.” But, planned economy or not, history tends to run its own course. As Kynge explains, “the reality has not been so neat. Many of the key events and occurrences that propelled progress towards capitalism were, in fact, either unplanned, unintended or completely accidental.”
The initial reforms–ending collective agriculture and allowing free enterprise–led to a period of the fastest growth and greatest reduction in poverty the country has ever seen. According to the World Bank,
“China’s poverty reduction in the past 25 years is unprecedented. Poverty fell from 53 percent in 1981 to eight percent in 2001, pulling about 500 million people out of poverty. Rural poverty fell from 76 percent in 1980 to 12 percent in 2001. The sharpest reduction was in the early 1980s, spurred by agricultural reforms that started in 1978. The household responsibility system, which assigned strong user rights for individual plots of land to rural households, the increase in government procurement prices, and a partial farm price liberalization all had strong positive effects on incentives for individual farmers. In the first years of the reforms, agricultural production and productivity increased dramatically, in part through farmers’ adoption of high-yielding hybrid rice varieties. Rural incomes rose by 15 percent a year between 1978 and 1984."
Not only were much of the reforms unplanned, much of the initiative was taken on my local officials and individual entrepreneurs (for better or worse–Beijing now has stricter environmental policies but often there is little compliance at the local level).
Another example of consequential changes that subverted the central party are the events that kicked off the second burst of reform and growth in the 1990s. Tim Clissold wrote the book “Mr. China” about his two years as a language student in Beijing in the early nineties, followed by several years working for an American firm investing in the Chinese auto industry. The Chinese economy stumbled after Tiananmen Square and the Communist Party reached a nadir as their hold on power seemed untenable unless they could counter the swell of social unrest with economic prosperity. As Clissold describes,
“While Deng was no liberal, he was a pragmatist and realized years before his Russian counterparts that if the Chinese Communist Party was to survive, it had to deliver the economic goods. Tiananmen Square has shown that he would not shrink from using force, but he knew that in the longer term power grew from rising living standards rather than from the barrel of a gun… Even though he had won the battle for the top place in the Chinese hierarchy, Deng could not just set policy as he pleased, and when he tried to recharge the economy he faced serious opposition from the conservatives.”
To get around the political stalemate, Deng, who was 88 years old at the time, went on a holiday trip to southern China with his family during the Chinese New Year in 1992. He planted a tree in Shenzhen and proclaimed, “To get rich is glorious,”, followed by a tour of cities and factories up the coast and a visit to the Pudong Special Economic Zone in Shanghai.
“He talked directly to local officials about the need to ‘guard against the left,’ and pushed his agenda for greater reform…[party conservatives] knew that Deng had deliberately bypassed all the normal party structures and had reached out directly to local officials. They also quickly realized that they were fighting a losing battle; the rank and file liked what Deng had to say and the tide was against them.”
The most substantial changes start with ordinary people. China’s (and America’s) most successful leaders were those who were able to sway public opinion and convince people that they had a stake in improving the country. The expansion of civil society, the internet and media, and the growing numbers of university graduates and foreign students and workers in China bode well for further reforms and prosperity.
Friday, January 09, 2009
A look back at 2008
2008 was the first time I’ve spent a full calendar year outside of the United States. I spent the entire year within greater China, including several short stays in the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
My Chinese level accelerated considerably, once I got over the steep learning curve due to a handful of extremely difficult sounds in Chinese (the ‘e’ and ‘u’ vowels and the ‘zh,’ ‘q,’ and ‘x’ consonants are unlike any sound in English) and the intimidating characters (there’s thousands of them!). Joining the beginner classes high school in the spring and taking classes during the summer helped a great deal.
I had one of the worst travelling experiences of my life during the winter storm in late January and early February. Unprepared for so much snow and cold weather, I spent a week in several cities frozen and miserable. Then the train that was to get me deep in southern China was delayed over 20 hours, and the trip took 28 hours instead of the scheduled 13 hours. And it was cold and rainy in the first southern city I reached, in addition there were frequent power outages. Then I got the flu and then took a sleeper bus that broke down in the middle of the night and arrived about 14 hours late. So during this winter break I’m staying put and not going anywhere.
A lot happened in the United States during 2008 and several events will have a long-lasting impact. The American model of capitalism – aggressive lending and subprime mortgages, banks taking huge risks and awarding huge bonuses, immense personal debt from credit cards and home equity loans, over-consuming and under-saving – was challenged by the credit crisis that it helped bring about. Trillions of dollars of wealth in equities and real estate disappeared. The fundamentals of our economic system were threatened and some things will likely never be the same.
A 47 year-old man with a white mother from Kansas and black father from Kenya was elected the 44th president of the United States. And I voted for him.
The Olympic Games were held in the world’s most populous country for the first time. And I was there.
I learned roughly one thousand Chinese characters, spent countless hours in class, with tutors, and on my own reading, writing, speaking, and listening to Chinese. I traveled to several Chinese provinces and dozens of cities.
My resolutions for the new year are not so different from last year. One was to study Chinese for at least one hour each day. I missed a few days but simply by living in China I’m learning a little every day. I’ll keep that resolution for 2009 and add a few more topics to study: history, cooking, calligraphy, and brushing up on math and statistics (for graduate school and simply for general knowledge).
My second resolution for 2008 was to run a marathon. Done. In 2009 I want to run another. And this time at least 30 minutes faster.
I guess a new resolution or two for 2009 would be to find some volunteer work here, meet more people, and eat healthier.
Best wishes in 2009 to everyone.
My Chinese level accelerated considerably, once I got over the steep learning curve due to a handful of extremely difficult sounds in Chinese (the ‘e’ and ‘u’ vowels and the ‘zh,’ ‘q,’ and ‘x’ consonants are unlike any sound in English) and the intimidating characters (there’s thousands of them!). Joining the beginner classes high school in the spring and taking classes during the summer helped a great deal.
I had one of the worst travelling experiences of my life during the winter storm in late January and early February. Unprepared for so much snow and cold weather, I spent a week in several cities frozen and miserable. Then the train that was to get me deep in southern China was delayed over 20 hours, and the trip took 28 hours instead of the scheduled 13 hours. And it was cold and rainy in the first southern city I reached, in addition there were frequent power outages. Then I got the flu and then took a sleeper bus that broke down in the middle of the night and arrived about 14 hours late. So during this winter break I’m staying put and not going anywhere.
A lot happened in the United States during 2008 and several events will have a long-lasting impact. The American model of capitalism – aggressive lending and subprime mortgages, banks taking huge risks and awarding huge bonuses, immense personal debt from credit cards and home equity loans, over-consuming and under-saving – was challenged by the credit crisis that it helped bring about. Trillions of dollars of wealth in equities and real estate disappeared. The fundamentals of our economic system were threatened and some things will likely never be the same.
A 47 year-old man with a white mother from Kansas and black father from Kenya was elected the 44th president of the United States. And I voted for him.
The Olympic Games were held in the world’s most populous country for the first time. And I was there.
I learned roughly one thousand Chinese characters, spent countless hours in class, with tutors, and on my own reading, writing, speaking, and listening to Chinese. I traveled to several Chinese provinces and dozens of cities.
My resolutions for the new year are not so different from last year. One was to study Chinese for at least one hour each day. I missed a few days but simply by living in China I’m learning a little every day. I’ll keep that resolution for 2009 and add a few more topics to study: history, cooking, calligraphy, and brushing up on math and statistics (for graduate school and simply for general knowledge).
My second resolution for 2008 was to run a marathon. Done. In 2009 I want to run another. And this time at least 30 minutes faster.
I guess a new resolution or two for 2009 would be to find some volunteer work here, meet more people, and eat healthier.
Best wishes in 2009 to everyone.
Monday, January 05, 2009
An update on recent news in the new year
An eco-city is going to be built from scratch on an island in the mouth of the Yangtze River, just north of Shanghai.
It’s a promising sign that China’s development (tens of millions more people will move into the cities so urban areas are rapidly expanding) will – at least in some cases – take smart design and environmental impact into consideration.
Who knew that Peking duck is made by filling the duck’s body cavity with water and putting a bamboo plug up its butt to keep it from leaking? The water keeps the meat moist as it slowly roasts (includes pictures from the Dong duck restaurant in Beijing, where I ate Peking duck once this summer).
Chinese, followed by Japanese and Korean spend more of their leisure time on the Internet than anyone else. A lot of that is done on their cell phones now. People are very mobile and cities have lots of wi-fi access. And my students are certainly addicted to their phones and PSPs, which are often used to go online, take videos and pictures (and edit them on the phone), and play games.
One of the first people to fly on a direct commercial flight from China to Taiwan (direct flights and postal services started about three weeks ago) wrote about the brief and uneventful but symbolic flight.
China is spending a lot of money on its military and building up capacity in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, partly because of the modern day pirates on the high seas and the threats they pose to ships bringing oil and other valuable natural resources into China and sending exports out to markets around the world.
BYD, a Chinese car company, recently released China’s first hybrid car. This one can also plug into an electric power source to recharge the battery.
There was a good summary of the economic interdependence of China and the U.S.in the New York Times. People here are closely watching all of the bad news in the financial industry that comes out of New York City and every detail of the government’s reaction in Washington. So much of the world economy – and China’s export led growth – is driven by American consumers that its strange to think about how much our holiday shopping, vacation trips, home remodeling, and car buying decisions affect the lives of workers and savers in countries halfway around the world.
It’s a promising sign that China’s development (tens of millions more people will move into the cities so urban areas are rapidly expanding) will – at least in some cases – take smart design and environmental impact into consideration.
Who knew that Peking duck is made by filling the duck’s body cavity with water and putting a bamboo plug up its butt to keep it from leaking? The water keeps the meat moist as it slowly roasts (includes pictures from the Dong duck restaurant in Beijing, where I ate Peking duck once this summer).
Chinese, followed by Japanese and Korean spend more of their leisure time on the Internet than anyone else. A lot of that is done on their cell phones now. People are very mobile and cities have lots of wi-fi access. And my students are certainly addicted to their phones and PSPs, which are often used to go online, take videos and pictures (and edit them on the phone), and play games.
One of the first people to fly on a direct commercial flight from China to Taiwan (direct flights and postal services started about three weeks ago) wrote about the brief and uneventful but symbolic flight.
China is spending a lot of money on its military and building up capacity in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, partly because of the modern day pirates on the high seas and the threats they pose to ships bringing oil and other valuable natural resources into China and sending exports out to markets around the world.
BYD, a Chinese car company, recently released China’s first hybrid car. This one can also plug into an electric power source to recharge the battery.
There was a good summary of the economic interdependence of China and the U.S.in the New York Times. People here are closely watching all of the bad news in the financial industry that comes out of New York City and every detail of the government’s reaction in Washington. So much of the world economy – and China’s export led growth – is driven by American consumers that its strange to think about how much our holiday shopping, vacation trips, home remodeling, and car buying decisions affect the lives of workers and savers in countries halfway around the world.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
This day in history
While riding a stationary bike at the gym I watched a long news piece on Chinese television about the economic opening and reforms 30 years ago. There was an event at the city’s sports stadium marking the event, also. Since Deng Xiaoping led China on the path market capitalism and free trade, the country’s economy has expanded 69-fold, propelling it from one of the most underdeveloped and poorest economies in the world to one that is the third largest, and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
This photo series documents the changes of the past three decades.
Also, exactly 30 years ago (1/1/1979), the United States switched diplomatic recognition of China from The Republic of China (Taiwan) to the People’s Republic of China (Mainland China).
This photo series documents the changes of the past three decades.
Also, exactly 30 years ago (1/1/1979), the United States switched diplomatic recognition of China from The Republic of China (Taiwan) to the People’s Republic of China (Mainland China).
Monday, December 29, 2008
Christmas
Christmas Eve was a regular school day, save for lots of time spent decorating classrooms, a secret Santa gift exchange among the teachers in my office, and student Christmas parties in the evening.
Christmas Day was a day-off. It was kinda slow - I got a haircut, went to the gym, which was nearly empty, studied and worked on my final exams, and then had dinner at someone's apartment, where we made huge amounts of pasta, salad, and some brownies, apple pie, and cupcakes.
I posted some pictures from the Christmas parties at school and a dinner with a bunch of people on Christmas Day.
Christmas Day was a day-off. It was kinda slow - I got a haircut, went to the gym, which was nearly empty, studied and worked on my final exams, and then had dinner at someone's apartment, where we made huge amounts of pasta, salad, and some brownies, apple pie, and cupcakes.
I posted some pictures from the Christmas parties at school and a dinner with a bunch of people on Christmas Day.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Shanghainese and Wu Chinese
Some poking around Wikipedia led me to an interesting discovery that Wu Chinese, the name for the broad family of dialects spoken in Shanghai and its neighboring provinces, has more speakers than Cantonese. (Chinese dialects use the same characters, but the spoken language is mutually unintelligible, as different as German and English, and there can be some grammar and lexical differences. There’s a number of dialects within Wu Chinese, including a Changzhou dialect.) Although it’s far outnumbered by Mandarin speakers, Wu Chinese, with 77 million speakers, ranks second in China and enough to be somewhere around 10-15th among world languages.
It’s puzzling because Cantonese seems so much more widespread and influential, while Shanghainese is little known abroad, is not taught in schools, and has little media such as radio and films. Some further digging revealed why.
The Yangtze River valley is densely populated, so there have always been a lot of native speakers of Wu Chinese, but the language is dying out quickly because of the movement of people within China and the government’s standardization of the Beijing dialect – Mandarin or putonghua. Instruction of local dialects in schools and its use in spoken media is heavily restricted in and around Shanghai, but less so in the Cantonese areas of Guangdong and Hong Kong, which is more or less autonomous, so Cantonese is flourishing there. And the film industry in Hong Kong is extensive – it was in recent decades one of the biggest film centers in the world – and there are millions of overseas Cantonese speakers.
It’s puzzling because Cantonese seems so much more widespread and influential, while Shanghainese is little known abroad, is not taught in schools, and has little media such as radio and films. Some further digging revealed why.
The Yangtze River valley is densely populated, so there have always been a lot of native speakers of Wu Chinese, but the language is dying out quickly because of the movement of people within China and the government’s standardization of the Beijing dialect – Mandarin or putonghua. Instruction of local dialects in schools and its use in spoken media is heavily restricted in and around Shanghai, but less so in the Cantonese areas of Guangdong and Hong Kong, which is more or less autonomous, so Cantonese is flourishing there. And the film industry in Hong Kong is extensive – it was in recent decades one of the biggest film centers in the world – and there are millions of overseas Cantonese speakers.
Stumbling on hard times
China’s exports fell for the first time since 2001. There was a dramatic drop late this year, and that is bad news not only for weakening the argument that China’s growth would be a bright spot in a global recession, but it’s also bad for social stability in China. So much of the government’s support rests on the steady job creation and rising wages of double digit economic growth.
Likewise, the recession in the States not only threatens our job market and wealth, but also erodes our soft power in the form of our leadership and trust among nations in the world. All kinds of people have asked me how the US could have stumbled so hard and so swiftly, with banks that once dominated global finance have going bankrupt, merging, and going abroad to raising capital, Bernard Madoff’s vast fraud that scams investors out of $50 billion dollars, selling the vacant Illinois Senate seat for personal gain. Thomas Friedman gets it right – we became complacent about our ethics and corporate responsibility, we got greedy, and we got stupid.
No wonder people are throwing shoes out our president.
Likewise, the recession in the States not only threatens our job market and wealth, but also erodes our soft power in the form of our leadership and trust among nations in the world. All kinds of people have asked me how the US could have stumbled so hard and so swiftly, with banks that once dominated global finance have going bankrupt, merging, and going abroad to raising capital, Bernard Madoff’s vast fraud that scams investors out of $50 billion dollars, selling the vacant Illinois Senate seat for personal gain. Thomas Friedman gets it right – we became complacent about our ethics and corporate responsibility, we got greedy, and we got stupid.
No wonder people are throwing shoes out our president.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Bonds in the financial turmoil
People used to snicker at Japan’s government bonds when they were offering yields of 0.001% or so during their worst years of deflation and economic contraction.
It’s happening in the U.S. now, too, even negative yields on short-term Treasury bills. You can pay the government to hold your money. At least that’s a good way to finance the trillions of dollars in government bailouts and deposit guarantees.
It’s happening in the U.S. now, too, even negative yields on short-term Treasury bills. You can pay the government to hold your money. At least that’s a good way to finance the trillions of dollars in government bailouts and deposit guarantees.
Gov. Blagojevich gets bagged
Corruption rears its ugly head again in Illinois. Governor Blagojevich tried to leverage his authority to appoint a replacement for Barack Obama’s Senate seat for personal gain. And his brazen conduct was unbelievable.
One offer was $500,000 in return for Illinois’ Senate seat (which is a bargain, given that the average Senate race costs several millions of dollars), or you could provide a cushy job for the Governor and his wife in return for the Senate post.
If those offers weren’t good enough, that's no big deal. “‘If I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself,’ the governor said in recorded conversation.”
He must be in pretty deep denial about the charges. “The governor was woken at 6 a.m. with a telephone call from the F.B.I., telling him that two agents were waiting outside with a warrant for his arrest, and that he should quietly open his door and let them in, to avoid waking his sleeping children. Mr. Blagojevich’s first response was, “Is this a joke?”’
One offer was $500,000 in return for Illinois’ Senate seat (which is a bargain, given that the average Senate race costs several millions of dollars), or you could provide a cushy job for the Governor and his wife in return for the Senate post.
If those offers weren’t good enough, that's no big deal. “‘If I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself,’ the governor said in recorded conversation.”
He must be in pretty deep denial about the charges. “The governor was woken at 6 a.m. with a telephone call from the F.B.I., telling him that two agents were waiting outside with a warrant for his arrest, and that he should quietly open his door and let them in, to avoid waking his sleeping children. Mr. Blagojevich’s first response was, “Is this a joke?”’
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
