Don’t recall if I’ve posted pictures of either of these ubiquitous phenomenon: bottle hunting and illegal documents hawking. Many homeless / retired people will spend their afternoons hunting for plastic bottles (normally involving sifting through trash cans), to take to a place like this, which gives them some money (1毛 for 1L bottles, 5毛 for 2.5L bottles). Presumably, the these people then take it to a larger recycling facility, and obtain some amount of profit simply on volume. Here’s a wider shot, showing the loaded truck.

There are also numerous ‘illegal document’ hawkers. They pass out contact information for people who can get you fake receipts (primarily used to charge more on expense accounts from work - many government jobs have such policies), and fake certificates. One thing that’s unclear is why the hawkers are (99% of the time) middle aged women, often with kids. As near as I can tell, it’s because it’s a fairly simple thing to stand outside, shout, and pass out business cards. At least you don’t need to hire someone to care for the child.

From the Atlantic, ‘the Chinese Are Just Like Us’ (greedy unsophisticated speculators):

… it sounds to me like Chinese investors have the same irrational exuberance that once gripped U.S. markets. No one likes to stand in the way of a runaway train.

On some level, China’s situation could end up being worse than ours: generally our investors bet on bubbles with their own money. In China, that money is coming from government stimulus and loans.

On the optimistic side, the author fails to note that a lot of Chinese are also very similar to us with regards to buying useless, expensive crap. Anyone who rails against conspicuous consumption in the West should take a stroll down one of the more affluent boulevards of a Chinese city. There is also no glory in saving money on something nice - a premium price is worth it’s weight in bragging rights. Credit cards are also becoming a problem. My generation in the U.S. takes materialism as a given, and just as often glorifies potemkin poverty (some of us, anyway). Where is this crassitude-with-Chinese-characteristics coming from? The fact that it’s all very new, for starters - there’s also something about hierarchy in transitional economies… Not quite sure what though. Regardless, there’s still a lot of slack left, at least in terms of what some people are willing to put, and many want to take out.

Considering underutilized ‘consumption capacity’ and the vast amount of underemployment (both skilled and unskilled) the case for ‘dumb investments’ becomes somewhat more complicated. Certain periods of the Industrial Revolution had all the characteristics of a bubble, and the same fundamental factors were at work (large amounts of labor underutilization, and rapid returns to simple investments in infrastructure and mechanization). The context of authoritarian cronyismharmonious socialist society matters, but were we really so different?. Forcing the narrative into a ‘bubble-no-bubble’ lens is going to lead to analytical errors and oversimplification of an extremely complex and interesting process.

So this picture turned out the best. It’s from an amphitheater of all things, put together with discarded equipment, and located in the Three Gorges Dam ‘River Closing Memorial Park’ just across the river from the massive edifice.

I’ve been reading 中国不高兴 (’Unhappy China’). It’s very accessible for someone with my level of language study, and has juicy material. Like this gem:

道德？你西方人甭跟讲道德！就像网上年轻人所说的：你从世界各大洲除了欧洲都卷了铺盖，你就有道德了。

Morality? You Westerners shouldn’t even bother speaking with me about morality! It’s like that netizen said: ‘[if] all of you pack up and leave all of the other continents (except Europe), then you will have morality.

This comes from Wang Xiaodong (albeit in one of the more vitriolic essays) where he refers to a comment made by a Chinese netizen that ‘Westerners should pack up and leave North America, Africa, and Oceania, and all return to their ancestral homes in Europe. Then they can talk with us about leaving T1bet.’ Another essay, 美国不是纸老虎，是“老黄瓜刷绿漆” (America isn’t a Paper Tiger, but rather an old cucumber painted green’) strikes a similar tone.

The book received a lot of attention from Western media, for being ultra-nationalist, and espousing tenants of a new political philosophy - 新爱国主义 (’new patriotism’) that advocates the aggressive use of soft power in foreign policy, and reduced reliance on Westerners (culturally, economically, and technologically). Though I personally mostly agree, I also think it would be very wrong to characterize these opinions as being shared by everyone here - especially those in power. My experiences with party officials is that they are more critical than the average Chinese, though in a much more nuanced way. That’s unsurprising, considering they have to deal with whatever problems exist within the bureaucracy.

This is all anecdotal of course, and risks ignoring the ephemeral (but palpable?) sense of populism / nationalism that you get glimpses of. As of writing, Chinasmack, an amazing website that catalogues popular / controversial stories in China is under a Denial of Service attack. It would not be surprising that this is being done by ‘new patriots’ who feel the website portrays China in a negative light, especially right before the 20th anniversary of 6.4 - the notion that they are probably drawing attention to the very site they are trying to shut down seems not to have occurred.

Many of the essays in the book talk a lot about how Chinese, especially youth, must rise up and be strong, like when ‘young nationalists’ organized boycotts of Carrefour after Olympic Torch protests in Europe last year. This ‘defense of national honor’ is exactly the sort of activity that the authors would approve of, but stinks of the very same [unwarranted] inferiority complex that ‘new patriots’ take issue with. The biggest risk for people like me is misconstruing that such views are homogenous - even within ‘nationalism,’ there’s a large variety of views. Rather than risking polarization, discussion of these issues are an important avenue forward.

Just returned from a trip to the Three Gorges. That dam is big. Pictures soon; maybe commentary on migrant workers if I can spin something coherent from the experience.

From Clusterstock, ‘The Rebound in China Is Real’ and Setser, ‘Green Shoots in China’s April Trade Data’ - both point to a reversal in China’s exports. The interesting question at this point is whether this will be the main factor contributing to China’s growth, or if increases in domestic consumption will start chipping into productive capacity that had previously been geared for exports. It seems unclear at this point. Michael Pettis also has a post regarding ‘Why do Chinese save?’ He lists most of the conventional explanations, plus a few others that aren’t commonly discussed. Yet nowhere is there a discussion of practical barriers that confront most people who live outside of Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou (or, 96% of Chinese). The most obvious barriers would be (reliable) power and electricity to utilize newfangled technologies, but also distribution networks for distributors. Perhaps I’m completely wrong about this, but I’d be interested to read a more rigorous analysis.

‘[Spoken] foreign language capacity comes in waves.’ This mantra, repeated daily, is one of the keys to living and studying abroad. There are times when one feels fluent in Mandarin; and carries on discussions about politics, religion, and reasonably complex economics.

Then there are days where one barely finds oneself able to communicate, and is met with slow, “DO-YOU-UNDERSTAND-WHAT-I’M-SAYING?” as you blurt out, what must sound like (approximate with a thick Russian accent):

“To having the time; help me a little! Horse your rice. Indeed, I am to search for to projected electrics!” when the goal was to simply inquire, “Excuse me, I don’t mean to be a bother - do you know where the movie theater is?”

Perhaps it’s not quite that bad. Still, those of us who would laugh at Ching/Engrish should be aware of how very amusing we probably sound.