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China Watch: It's All Different Again
It's 7.30 am. There's a 3 mile traffic jam outside my apartment. That means an hour and a half to get downtown. Your eyes are tearing and you already have the itchy smog throat. Wanna call in sick?
This might be New York, LA or Atlanta. But we're in Beijing, where the red digital countdown clocks at the main intersections spell out the days, hours and minutes before the Summer Games begin on August 8, 2008. Squint through the grey mist and you'll see a woven steel apparition arising from nowhere. It's the 91,000 seat Olympic stadium, the Birds Nest. Eighteen months ago I couldn't find a single shovel of overturned Olympic dirt. Now I'm told about 90% of the facilities are done.
That's China. One day nothing. Then everything. It's a movie set with a billion extras. I'm a new and old guy here. I arrived Septtember 13 as a visiting professor of journalism at Tsinghua University. But as a BusinessWeek writer and editor I'd been hoofing it to China for two decades, making pit stops in all the main cities and sitting through more smoke-filled interviews with top officials than I want to remember. I'd edited at least 50 cover stories on China, the first in 1984. I'd watched olive drab turn into pressed chinos, Pradas replace black work shoes, lipstick and mascara become universal in all the big cities. I'd seen small cars replace bicycles and Audis and Buicks replace small cars and more ring roads and new subways stops that I could count. I thought I had at least a half grip on the place. But I didn't. Each time I'd come home from a trip and my wife would ask, what's China like and I'd say, "I can't describe it, it's all different again"
It's even more so now. Change this unrelenting erases perspective so you go with the flow. Today, Beijing is an Olympic Village. The final cutting, fitting and pasting -- completing a subway line, building two new access highways, finishing the Marathon route through my campus and training up to 4 million English speaking greeters for the tourist crush will be the easy part.
Air quality is trickier. The government is experimenting with ionized cloud seeding rockets to keep a low ceiling smog layer away from the city. The last charcoal burning hutong -- a worker neighborhood of squat grey brick dwellings next to Tianammen Square is under the final wrecking ball. Odd and even license plate driving days to cut pollution are getting a tryout. Most furnaces at China's thrd largest steelmaker, the Capital Iron and Steel plant near the city proper, will be banked during the Games. With this level of command and control managing even the air could be doable.
But what to do about the international press? NBC Sports is not the problem. With a $1 billion Olympic contract, the GE network guys are here to show great games and have 3.000 folks on the ground to make it happen. The news division will bring in another team to do Olympics-related stories for the Nightly News with Brian Williams. They're probably not looking for trouble.
But then there is everyone else, from print to online to blogs.
Beijing's leaders want the Olympics to showcase a new nation to the world. So the government has Western academics and PR consultants addressing seminars across China to explain the "foreign media". But in a nation where all press is government controlled and reporters get cash envelopes for showing up at news conferences, it may be that no amount of seminar schmoozing can overcome what is still called an understanding rather than a values gap. The students get it. They call it soft power. But I'm not sure anyone with rank does.
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the most important issue surrounding the 2008 olympics is whether the event is a debutante ball or a proclamation by the chinese that they are the new champions of the world. the 99% of the world, including the 99.99999% of USAians, who are incredibly ignorant of how china has transformed will be shocked. china reminds me of 1960s japan multiplied by 10 or 20 times. every student of business, economics, and the other social studies should spend a year there to see the economic, social, political event of the century happen. its astounding.
The Olympics, we'll be watching. My homeschooled kids will be impressed by the fact that it's taking place in China. We'd like to learn more about their culture, but it's also important to me to see the history of the Olympics tied throughout. I don't want to see the political vision of China I want to see how China is connected with the rest of the world, why they honor the Greeks too.
Looking forward to your commentary on this.
"It's the 91,000 seat Olympic stadium, the Birds Nest."
It's more like the Berlin Olympics of 1936 and the Eagle's Nest.
Next time you want to see something not-so-different when it comes to China Dowling, take a tour through Darfur or Burma.
There's too much money involved with GE etc for them to support a boycott of the Olympics and Bush won't do it but individual Amercians can and should.
At least China didn't invade Sudan and Burma, and it is not responsible for setting up or throwing out goverments in other countries. As predatory as its money-resource-driven foreign policy goes, it is not much different from America's own over much of our 231 years of history.
Hi kyeblue - I'm guessing maybe you momentarily forgot about China's invasion, take-over, and continual genocide in Tibet and thought it prudent to add to any conversation about China. And yes, I agree with you that their current and historical predatory money driven foreign and domestic policy is not much different from America's.
For a comprehensive overview of this subject, I'd highly recommend James Mann's recent book "The China Fantasy." There is a complete chapter analyzing the 2008 Olympics.
Things to watch out for, sweeping reform, or guestures toward sweeping reform, made in the build up to these Olympics. The CCP can curry a lot of favor by hitting the right progressive notes and then soon after clamp back down when the world's attention has shifted from the pomp and pagentry.
western capitalism...early stages...child labor...monopolies...robber barons...no safety...etc... early capitalism vs. early communism
little difference mature capitalism vs. mature communism
little difference
China will eat the planet...
Truer words were never spoken.
Sure if they consume as we americans do.
Ummmm, remember when America was condemned for consuming too much of the world's resoures?
That you're now issuing the same charge against China probably means the US has entered third world status.
I hate the Olympics. Peter Uberroth gets most of the credit. I hate the professional athletes, I hate the cheating and the coverage always sucks...hooray for the USA!! seems to be the theme of NBC coverage. There are no stories about the real amateurs who work to put themselves in. THere is much, too much commercial sponsorship, little of the competition is live, which makes it worthless. In general it is weeks of uninteresting crap.
Which brings us to this...the athletes dying of emphysema after competing in Bejing may mean the end of the damn thing.
China will be a showcase to the world during the Olympics. To contrast the political systems in theory, and then again on a factual basis is something else. In the past six years, the US has seen how the destiny of this country can be steered in a self-destuctive direction by a handful of people. Most would trade Bush for nearly any other credible or tolerable world leader out there.
Dr black?
You ever been to China?
I saw a survey a global couple of years ago about how well people liked their government. China came in first. The US faired quite poorly.
While China is a clear one party system, it maintains its power not by abusing its people, but by giving them much of what they want - a rapidly improving quality of life, economic prosperity, and a safe environment. Most Chinese have not gotten to the stage where "free speech" and a democratic vote is that big of a deal to them. That will come.
I live in China, and relayed your comment to some local friends that they are allowed to stay alive only as a privilege granted by the communist party. They had a good laugh over that. They said Dick Cheney is not in the Communist Party.
Dear drblack:
The many Chinese you work with in America??
For people who are allowed to live as a privilege,they sure got far.Did they take a slow boat from China.
Don't believe everything you hear.
Observer - don't believe everything you hear. For instance - freedom in America - what a crock. More prisoners than anywhere in the history of the world. Privacy from government spying. What a crock that is. Wealth - America is the biggest debtor nation in the world. Trade - huge trade imbalance and also loss of jobs. Freedom- free to what die beccause you can't afford a doctor or the medication he might prescribe. Freedom of association - where the president can't see you protesting his corrupt and inhumane and destructive decisions. China looks good to me. In less than sixty years China went from zero to sixty. America has gone from sixty to ten. Why don't you go to China. See for yourself.
Maddog:
You misread my comment.
And just so you know, I have been all over China more times than I can remember
I'm not getting much good news about China. When I was in Korea recently there was a lot of talk of the pollution in China. So bad in fact that it affects Los Angeles.The attitude was, "Its our turn to get rich and if that means pollution, so be it". You seem to be confirming that. Sounds a bit like our Republican party. In the US, when you hear of China, its all about product recalls; lead paint and all. The Chinese government seems to lack vision. The influx of foreigners may be positive exposure for the Human Rights issues over there.
3. The potential for political demonstrations is huge and the government will tolerate none of it. I have no idea how this will play out but the government arrested a group of Tian'Anmen Square mothers three months before the most recent anniversary, just in case. You don't need to connect the dots to know potential problems will be shunted aside.
China is definitely up and coming. Personally I have nothing against a strong central government. Such a thing might be the best way to handle and manage the rapid pace of change, who knows. Still, China's leadership would do well to give more voice to its people.
You can't make things better if you don't let anyone tell you what is wrong.
See you at the games.
I have been living in China for just over four years. It is an interesting place.
As to getting thing done I was once looking at an empty piece of ground upon which a university campus for 25,000 students was planned.
We were six months from the start of the semester and I bet one of the university leaders that the job could not be done in time. Actually I told him I would kiss his behind on any street corner in Beijing if the job got done.
He told me he would not take the bet. I gave him my best victory smile but he replied, "We are going to hire a lot of workers and you will lose."
They did hire a lot of workers and I would have lost. The comment above about working 24/7 is accurate. Construction workers live in temporary quarters right on the site. Once things get started they never stop. It is amazing. The worker's conditions are miserable but most of them are untrained farm workers who have come to the city looking for work, any work, and the contractors use them like cannon fodder.
The problems with the Beijing Olympics as I see them are three fold.
1. Beijing has been remodeled, repainted, and repaired beyond conception. It will look like a new city by this time next year. However, the rest of the country will look the same, mostly polluted, dirty, and in need of repair. People traveling to China for the games will see a great looking Beijing but if they travel to other cities not on the Olympic venue they will realize the games are a stage show and little more.
2. The increased nationalism is reaching unheard of heights. Chinese athletics will be under unbelievable pressure to win. It is very possible that missing a medal by one hundredth of a second will result is a suicide.
Continued
Every country and every people has their own idiosyncracies. Fear of " losing face " is an idiosyncracy of Northern Chinese, especially Beijingese and Shanghainese. The government wouldn't mind spending billions to showcase the Olympic in hope of boosting their international standing. If people in the West won't attend because of pollution or what-have-you, the stadiums will be filled with Chinese and other Asians for sure.
Fine. Let them go but losing face is the same as a humiliation and it's not limited to Northern Chinese but to people all around the world. When we say we stand for democracy (regardless of the horrors of Iraq) and go to an Olympics that only showcases tyranny, we lose face. It makes us hypocrites and shows us devoid of conscience in the face of Chna's support of those who are commiting genocide in Darfur, murder those who speak out for freedom in Burma and in China.
Beijing will be nothing more than a Potempkin Village--a stage set meant to fool those who would be fooled and that includes probably most of the western media.
There are two noteworthy spectacles to watch out for during the distraction of the sports competition of the Beijing Olympic games. The first is the manner by which the US and international media cover the political and economic situation in China or whether they simply swallow Xinhua newsbriefs whole and spit them back out for the American audience, particular, having to watch one emotionally charged athlete's biography after another interspersed between sponsors' ads showing how they support sports programs 'for the kids'.
It will also be more fascinating to see how the 'unofficial' Chinese use the spotlight to bring attention to the causes more important to them than how many medals China wins. Are you listening to me, postTiannanmen students? I hope that some of the aforementioned students who 'get it' in top tier Beijing schools use their soft power during the game and show other students throughout China that they have soft power, too.
To their credit, the Chinese have an extremely active 'blogging community with more than a few dissident journalist 'bloggers but how much voice they have within and outside of the PRC is still difficult to gauge. The issue of air quality in Beijing is one problem that the CPC seems to believe that if it alone could be solved in time, then every other potentially bad press topic will be ignored. But with Olympic venues spread out in other Chinese cities, will the slightly more breathable air in Beijing make up for the undrinkable tap water in all cities or the poor air quality in every other city?
I am hoping the soft power of the internet will be used in a coordinated effort to challenge the 'hard' power of the PRC's single party system. There will certainly be a good show in store. If, however, people in the US really only want to watch the games, it's clear from previous Olympic presentations that it's far better to watch them on Canadian broadcasts.
WOW! What hard-hitting commentary! Don't hold back! Don't want to jeopardize that cushy prestigous visiting professorship! Don't offend anyone! Be polite while in China! Don't criticize too harshly! Be a good journalist! Now this is truly great journalism, worthy of China!!!!!
Webmind - beats journalism in America these days. Invade Iraq - sure. They will love us. Blah blah blah.
You know Robert, I get the feeling that you enjoy China. To see the dynamics in place is really fantastic.
Governing 1.3 billion people is difficult at best, but as an emerging nation, I think the Chinese are trying to showcase the vast changes that have taken place in China since the eighties.Unfortunately, authoritarian rule is the only way they know and that will take a longer time to change.
Corruption is widespread, and China is not as good at hiding it as most western powers,who have much more sophisticated spin and experience.
Their ability to react is astounding. I remember the evacuation of two million people in one day when the floods came last summer in Shanghai.So yes, they will complete a twenty storey building easily in eight months. They work 24/7 and get it done.
In order to catch up with Western society, they have to move at a record pace. That can scare Western countries.
National pride is at an all-time high,especially due to sports.
My big fear is that the Western media will come to Beijing with a biased view and even a mandate to report negatively. BAD NEWS SELLS.
There is a good chance America will boycott the Olympics, and I think that may work in China's favour.
In the meantime,enjoy the rollercoaster ride and please try to visit the real China in the countryside.
Maybe they should showcase the prisons where those who speak out against the governent are ijn the thousands. There's no rationale in making excuses for Chinese tyranny.
Or Maybe we should showcase US prisons where those who the victims of years of racism and judicial system inequities create huge social problems for our schools and families. Two more youth prisons closed in Texas this week alone due to sick buildings, overcrowding, shortage of personnel...
China certainly has problems, but we have more than people are willing to recognize or solve. Takes too much time away from shopping.....
A tyrannical government can do that.
The many Chinese I work with always tell me in China you have no right to life.
You are allowed to stay alive as a privilege granted by the Chinese Communist government.
This is why I try very hard to buy nothing made in China...buy buying Chinese goods you help support a brutal and tyrannical system of government.
The " many Chinese " you worked with are not Chinese, they are Neocons in disguise !
Noecons in power subscribed to free trade and globalization eventhough job loss/displacement and income disparity here seemed inevitable. There is nothing better for them if the disadvantaged in this country blame the Chinese government for their plight. Seriously, any government whether it is communist or otherwise would be silly not to take advantage of free trade to feed their masses of poor people. I don't think the people there are being enslaved by their government. Their salaries come from American corporate investors who buy their goods. The neocons who are making huge profits meanwhile would love to hear we talk like that.
Buying Chinese goods you support a brutal tyrannical international corporate system and put Americans out of work. But the profits for the corporations must stay high so they can't pay the Chinese a good wage or accept any attempt to stop pollution. Long live free trade. Long live corporate America.
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Posted October 18, 2007 | 03:07 PM (EST)