You see China on the television a lot these days, if it’s not in the news daily then there are plenty of documentaries about it, from cities bigger than London being built in five years to a thriving market in peoples organs. One thing is clear though, China has awoken, Napoleon III compared China to a sleeping giant and warned ‘when China awakes she will shake the world’.
Back in 2002 I spent some time in Hong Kong and China, mainly the new territories area and also did a few days in Macau as well as some other Chinese cities. A little bit was work related, well a PR thing briefly and the rest was a holiday. I spent the time there stopping with my friend Gary who has been working out there some years. What Gary did was show me the real place and not just the touristy things, what struck me, especially in China itself was how vast the country is, how rapidly it was growing. Some parts of it reminded me of America, vast roads and tower blocks festooning the horizon. Yet where there is new wealth and economy in China there is also people with very little. There is though a sense of urgency and efficiency about the place, the people are industrious and are embracing the changes there readily.
I was quite awestruck by China, the sheer sense of size it conveys, the alien nature of it as regards culture and language, the quirks of its people. Hong Kong was over powering, exhausting even, it was odd wandering back from bars at 4am and seeing markets in full swing, the place and people never seem to stop. In contrast China is a little more laid back but catching up rapidly, like the west everything seems available even if it is a copy! I recall going into a shop in Zhu Hei which resembled HMV but each and every item, be it music cd or dvd was a copy.
But let’s get to the main point of the blog here as I don’t want to reminisce too much (or I’ll want to go back!).
Once upon a time a quarter of the world lived under the British flag, it was the largest empire the world had ever known. Explorers and missionaries opened up dark continents and if countries challenged us they were invariably invaded and assimilated into the empire. Britain rose to be the workshop of the world, it dominated science, manufacturing and trade. To the Victorians back then it was merely a matter of racial supremacy, to them we were destined to be the rulers of the world.
Now of course the Imperial days have long gone and new industrial behemoths stride forward, China and India’s economy and industry are awakening over night. It’s predicted by 2050 China and India will be the first and second biggest economies over taking America. The Indian car company TATA is buying out western car companies such as Jaguar and Rover whilst China continues to invest in countries and resources in Africa, Congo especially where the Chinese are buying copper mines. Angola recently shunned western business in favour of the Chinese because of the amount of money they are pouring into the country. But its not just in Africa that was once regarded as our back yard for resources, the Chinese are investing world wide, from Russia to South America Chinese businessmen are gobbling up vast quantities of resources.
But the scary thing is how much resources these up and coming rising stars are using to build their new shining cities and transport networks. Economists have even invented a new word for it, instead of things being an economic cycle the shifts are so great they’ve termed it a ‘supercycle’. China is spending 35 times as much on crude oil as it did 8 years ago and 23 times as much on copper. China is also consuming roughly half of the worlds cement and third of its steel. This is though after all a country that is rapidly awaking and her 1.3 billion population are twice the number of America and the EU combined. The Chinese
car market too is growing at an unprecedented rate as they become more westernised, so when you groan about fuel prices, look eastwards to find who is using it all and raising prices.
Of course as China becomes a dominant power in the industrial world it’s the west that is feeling the strain as workers feel threatened as businesses shift production to China where goods can be made cheaply by a massively growing workforce.
My friend Gary works as a fabric buyer over there, he was once needed for his skills and knowledge but he bow fears that because he has trained the Chinese and shared his knowledge he will soon be surplus to requirement as foreigners are needed less and less. He told me how the Chinese work long hours in factories that seemingly has accommodation that resembles WW2 prisoner camps. The Chinese flock from the poorer northern regions to sign up for year long contracts that involve working a 6 day week and often involve being separated from your partner into gender orientated huts. China is now a knowledge hungry nation, it can afford to hire the best scientists and engineers to learn from and in Britain alone 60,000 Chinese students study here, more than from any other country.
China has that kind of no nonsense purpose now, it courts military dictators in countries like Darfur, Burma and Zimbabwe. On the home front there are thousands of internet police, executions of criminals whilst medic teams stand by to pilfer their organs, whole towns displaced to make way for new super cities and people even enslaved in mines. And then of course there is the brutal suppression of Tibet.
China is now a confident nation, even its officials coordinated our police whilst the Olympic torch went through London, they even grappled with protesters. A Global shift is in progress, will people in future see America with its democracy (even if it isn’t always good) as not being so bad as a dictatorial China supersedes it? As the western economies slump the eastern ones grow my worry is what will happen when resources start to get thin, by then of course China will truly be unstoppable. A grim warning came from the national monetary fund last week stating the west now faces the largest financial shock since the great depression, whilst China and eastern economies power ahead.
China fascinates me, I loved my time there, I liked the people there, its cities and culture are amazing but I must confess to shuddering at what China in time will truly be capable of.
Thanks to Anthony Browne of the Daily Mail for some of the facts and figures.
Some photos I took whilst in China in 2002, in the city of Zhuhai (I think)
