It has been rather feast or famine-like with my Blog in the recent month, but perhaps the colder weather is beginning to fade away and my fingers have thawed out sufficiently to make them active once more. Or maybe it's just because I have come across a couple of more interesting topics (to me anyway) in the last week - and short ones at that (except for the length of the accompanying video clips).
In fact this particular topic first came to my attention a couple of months ago in an excellent review (relatively short and readable) put out by Ben Simpfendorfer of Global Strategic Associates in his 1 February publication China Insider. The piece, entitled Housing For Everyone can be downloaded free (for the time being) if you go to the website by clicking on the link - and if you like it, you can subscribe. Point of disclosure - I have nothing to do with the company, the website, or anything - I just happen to think it's a good one.
And just as an aside Ben, who is an economist and strategist, is one of few Westerners I have met who speaks Mandarin and Arabic fluently (I think Japanese as well - and yes, his English is okay too!!). It certainly gives him a unique perspective of two important regions.
His article dealt with the "problem" of new towns, built at great speed, to house displaced workers and to encourage others to relocate into these new townships. But whole tower blocks in communities stand empty and silent. As he says in his article, it is not often he would risk standing in the middle of a street in China to take a photograph - but he was in no danger of being run over by anything (bigger than a stray cat - my addition)!
Then, while this was still on my mind, I was sent a link a few days ago to a clip that aired on an Australian television programme called Dateline. The piece was entitled "China's Ghost Cities". (Click the link). My finely tuned antenna and deductive brain sent a message around my operating system - could these subjects be linked? Well of course they were! Sherlock would have been proud of me.
The sobering revelation in the TV clip is that there are estimated to be 64 million empty apartments in China. Now, that number would comfortably accommodate the population of Britain - well maybe not entirely comfortably for everyone - but that is the sort of scale we are talking about.
Of course you can skew numbers to fit them into any scenario you want to promote. For example, the man interviewed who was living in a hutong in Beijing because he couldn't afford an apartment was, according to one of my China experts, from Sichuan. The clip did not say whether he had any property there because, if he did, he then had two properties with the second being in one of the most expensive cities (for property) in the world. Impressive.
But that's an aside.
The point I really want to convey is this. In my last Blog I wrote about the citizens of China beginning to speak up - and be heard both inside and outside China - particularly on issues such as pollution and corruption. Now we hear about similar things - although this time it is perhaps a mixture of corruption and just plain greed. And when citizens become restless they start to agitate - as we have seen in the Middle East.
I am sure that while, sadly, there are some who would like to see China fall flat on it's face, I do not believe that it would be the best outcome for the global economy. A stable China - whether you like it or not - will be better for all, but I am sure the Chinese leadership is well aware of that.
Bob Dylan sang in his 1964 release "The Times They Are A Changing" (I wonder if he sang that one two nights ago at his first ever concert in China?). It has some appropriate lyrics, that's for sure!
It is said that Chinese society does not abhor despotic rule. The problem is bad despotic rule. Having said that, China's 3000 years of history seems to be dominated by long periods of despotic misrule, interspersed with comparatively shorter periods of enlightened despotic rule. It takes decades, if not centuries, of oppressive government before popular opinion turns decisively to regime change.
This leads one to conclude that the Chinese people have a remarkably high threshold of pain and/or place a very high premium on social stability. At least, it has been like this in the past.
BTW, doesn't political mandate and political will sit on the other side of the equation when discussing social unrest? Whether you have that will and how you exercise it, seems to be a major difference between a Shevardnadze and a Gadaffi. If Tiananmen happened today, what sort of decisions would the CP make?
Posted by: jeremy | 11 April 2011 at 16:40