There are mountains and rivers crossing ,strange mountains and valleys in the territory of Lijiang.There are totally1033 square kilometers cover the spot.and 104 places are of value to exploit.And the most important scenic area are “two mountains,one river,one city,one lake”,that are Laojun mountain,Yulong mountain,Changjiang first river,Lijiang old city and Hugu lake.
News that the wife of Yao Ming (姚明), the Houston Rockets’ All-Star center, is pregnant has sent netizens rushing to predict Baby Yao’s height and gender in the hopes that the child will someday lead the national basketball team.
Zhang Chi, spokesman of the Shanghai Sharks, confirmed that Yao and Ye Li (simp叶莉trad葉莉), a former player on the Chinese women’s national basketball team, are expecting their first child. The Sharks were recently purchased by Yao.
“The couple appreciate the public’s concerns (about the expected baby),” said Zhang. “But to give Ye some space and peace of mind, the couple thinks it’s inconvenient to provide any further information.”
A report on Sina.com said Ye, who is 1.90 m in height, is expected to give birth sometime around May or June. But whether Ye will deliver the baby in the United States or in Shanghai is unknown.
“It is up to (the couple) to decide,” said Zhang.
In a Sina.com poll, over 74.2 percent of 46,000 participants said Yao’s child is likely to grow taller than 2.05 meters, while 33.2 percent said the baby will grow to more than 2.20 meters.
In a telephone interview with China Daily yesterday, Cong Xuedi, head coach of the Shanghai women’s basketball team, said she is so glad to hear about the news.
“Earlier I’ve asked Ye about this and she confirmed with me happily. I can tell that she is peacefully awaiting to become a mother,” Cong said yesterday.
The coach said that right now it is too early to predict how tall Baby Yao will grow.
“Usually you will have to wait for a baby to grow up until the age of 10 before you can know for sure how tall the child will be, using the calculation of the bone-age measurement,” said Cong, who used to coach Ye when Ye played for the women’s basketball team in Shanghai.
Both the 2.26-m-tall Yao and Ye, who tied the knot in August 2007, were children of professional athletes. Yao’s father, Yao Zuyuan, also a former Shanghai basketball team player, stands 2.08 meters tall. Yao’s 1.88-m-high mother, Fang Fengdi, was a former member of China’s national women’s basketball team.
The news that Yao will soon become a father was a hot story over the Internet yesterday, with netizens conveying best wishes to the 29-year-old center and hoping him an early recovery from a foot injury.
It is reported that Yao, who was in the US last week to attend a promotional campaign for the Shanghai Expo, has returned to Shanghai. As the owner of the Shanghai Sharks, he is expected to come to the stadium to support his club in the following weeks.
Wang Jieyu contributed to the story.
bron: www.chinadaily.com.cn
好園賓館是一間位於東城區胡同内的四合院式賓館。賓館很大，差不多一條街那麽長。可以步行到東方廣場和王府井。在清朝時，這是太監李連英的外宅。之後, 張自忠，世界第二次大戰抗日大將軍也住過這裡。鄧穎超曾在這裡辦公。1984年成爲賓館。前港督偉奕訊來過這賓館參觀，英國首相布菜爾訪華時，他 夫人在這裡舉辦過酒會。
Hao Yuan Hotel is a siheyuan (courtyard) style hotel located in the hutongs of Dongcheng District. The hotel is huge and basically comprises the whole hutong. The exterior walls are dull and gray but once you step inside the courtyard it is cozy and welcoming. It is within walking distance to Oriental Plaza and Wangfujing shopping district.
During the Qing Dynasty, this used to be Empress Dowager Cixi’s eunuch Li Lianying’s house. Thereafter, Zhang Zizhong, a general who fought in the second Sino-Japanese War lived here. It was also Madame Deng Xiaoping’s house and office for a period of time and became a hotel in 1984. Today, it is a beautiful courtyard style hotel offering visitors a taste of living in a traditional courtyard style home.
旅遊資料/ If you go: (2007 年資料/ info from 2007)
門票/ Admission: free to walk around
地址/ Address: 北京市东城区史家胡同53号 (53 Shi Jia Hutong, Dongcheng District, Beijing)
交通路线/ Transportation: 地鐵5號綫，燈市口站/ subway line 5, Deng Shi Kou station
網站: http://www.haoyuanhotel.com/index.htm
Website: http://www.haoyuanhotel.com/engs.asp?Title=Beijing%20Haoyuan%20Hotel
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist” (1).
As US president Barack Obama became the latest in a long line of former US president’s in denial, by blaming China for the Copenhagen climate change talks fiasco (2) (3), many in the informed world looked on incredulously at the audicity of the man (4).
It was clear that no government in the world would have ceded to the unreasonable demands the US put on the table, particularly as they was offering nothing tangible in return (5).
But one would have had difficulty in arriving at this conclusion from reading the the vast majority of a compliant corporate media’s parroting of Obama who was clearly trying to convince the rest of the world of his innocence whilst deflecting blame on to China.
Obama’s attempt at shifting the blame was therefore a conjuring trick - a deception.
The historical reality is the US’s role post WW2 has been one of imperialist overseer that characterizes and demonises all of its potential competitors and “enemies” as “dictatorships” (or derivations thereof) as the basis for its propaganda of control (6).
This has, for example, involved the US characterizing the Vietnamese nationalist struggle for self-determination and independence as “communist” (7).
Similarly, more recently, the US has characterized the resistance in Afghanistan under the umbrella term “Taliban”, and routinely attempts to undermine the legitimate results of democratic elections throughout the world if they happen not to coincide with global US geopolitical and economic strategic interests (8).
The Western media was up to its usual tricks in reproducing US government propaganda in their attempts to undermine China during the 2008 Olympic Games. During this time, the Western media sensationalized stories about pollution and the murder of a US citizen in Beijing (9), and then accused the Chinese of attempting to censor them (10).
The media also focused a disproportionate amount of attention on Obama’s predecessors’ comments emphasizing China’s alleged human rights record whilst ignoring the US’s. Bush was widely reported as saying the following shortly before he arrived in Beijing for the Games:
“America stands in firm opposition to China’s detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists. We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly, and labour rights not to antagonise China’s leaders, but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential” (11).
But what the media rarely highlights is the US’s close ties to the regime in Egypt, whose respect for “freedom of assembly and labour rights” is shown by its internal repression, and to the Saudi royal family, who ruthlessly crush the slightest flickering of democratic sentiment (12).
They also ignore, with the odd exception, the continuing scandal of the US gulag at Guatanamo Bay which remains intact under Obama with at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice (13). 
Also unmentionable in the media is the fact that since coming to power, Obama has opposed habeas corpus, demanded more secret government and excused torture. One of his senior US intelligence officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala in 1989; another is a Pinochet apologist (14). ibid.
In Pakistan, the number of civilians killed by US missiles called drones has more than doubled since Obama took office, and all over the world America’s violent assault on innocent people, directly or by agents, has been stepped up. (15).
In Afghanistan, the US “strategy” of killing Pashtun tribespeople (the “Taliban”) has been extended by Obama to give the Pentagon time to build a series of permanent bases right across the devastated country where, says Secretary Gates, the US military will remain indefinitely (16). ibid.
In Iraq, the country that has been reduced to a river of blood, as many as 70,000 troops will remain “for the next 15 to 20 years” (17).
US criticisms of China are therefore hypocritical.
What the media hides from the public, is the fact that the world’s imperial power, albeit a rapidly declining one, is representative of brutal form of dictatorship that US author Naomi Wolf argues is characteristic of fascism (18).
Some dictatorships are overt and others less so. Some, like the ex-Stalinist USSR, was totalitarian in nature, whilst others rely on a compliant media as a way to convince the populace that they are free and therefore not living in a dictatorship (19).
In this way, the idea is that the powerful within society who control what Karl Marx termed the “means of production”, convince people within “democracies” that they are free, worthy and deserving, by virtue of the fact that they have the right to vote for either Tweedledee or Tweedledum once every five years, whilst simultaneously reinforcing the idea that other people who live in what the democratic world deem as “dictatorships” are not free, not worthy and are thus undeserving (20).
This illustrates that populations can be, and indeed are, controlled and manipulated to act on behalf of the rulers whose interests they ultimately serve.
Within the unspoken US dictatorship, vast armies of wage slaves toil for giant Western corporations who profit from the cheap labour that the other major dictatorship, China, delivers.
In this way, the US benefits from its relationship with China.
So why all the fuss?
The answer is that China isn’t just any old dictatorship, it is now an imperial rival to the US (21).
China’s rapid economic growth is destabilising the existing global balance of power. Measured by market exchange rates, China’s share of global national income has risen from 2.6 percent in 1980 to around 6 percent today (22).
On another measure that is better at capturing the absolute size of national economies, China’s share is more like 11 percent (23). ibid.
This is still way below that of the US which, on the same two measures, accounts for 25 and 21 percent of global economic output. Nevertheless, China’s economic rise is reshuffling the relations between states. For example, Third World states producing raw materials needed by China no longer need to go cap-in-hand to the US-dominated World Bank for loans and accept intrusive “conditionalities” that require them to reshape their economy and policies along neoliberal lines (24).
This doesn’t mean that Chinese investment in Africa or Latin America is benevolent or disinterested. It is a highly state-controlled capitalist country securing its supplies of natural resources (25). ibid.
But the fact remains that a lot of the hullaballoo about China is motivated less by concern for human rights, or Tibet or the environment for example, but by fear of Chinese power (26). ibid.
Obama’s stance in relation to China, as evidenced by his attitude at Copenhagen, appears to be one of engagement, but the real hidden message seems to be also – remember who’s boss and don’t throw your weight around (27).
In all this, it seems to be that Western powers are in denial. They behave as if things are still as they were immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the US and its allies could do what they liked.
But things have changed. US power is now in decline. The West faces challengers increasingly confident of their own strength. If they’re pushed too hard, then, as the fighting in the Caucasus showed, they’ll bite back (28). ibid.
Vast swathes of central and South America are doing just that.
The days when the US could dismissively refer to central America as their back-yard to be exploited, are over.
A few years ago Donald Rumsfeld when describing Venezuela with all of the self-appointed arrogance of an imperial overseer, said: ” Why did God put our oil in other people’s countries?” No US politician will dare repeat such words.
Venezuela’s crime in the eyes of the US was that the people of that country democratically elected somebody who was prepared to stand up to US power and the economic imperatives and ideology that underpin it. The fact that the president of the country, Hugo Chavez, has been recalled for election on numerous separate ocassions and won every one of them, is largely unmentionable in the western corporate media.
Chavez, perceived by the US as a dictator, achieved his successive election victories despite a campaign of vilification within a privatized media largely controlled by oligarch’s sympathetic to US imperialism who openly backed a coup attempt against him in 2002 (29).
At the recent Summit of the America’s, Chavez, briefly came face-to-face with the devil who attempted to pursuade the rest of the world of his non-existence. During his brief meeting with Obama, Chavez proposed that the two men ”work for peace” suggesting that they “get a team together to analyze the problem of the planned construction of US military bases in Colombia” (30).
The result of the meeting?
Obama plans to install seven military bases in that country (31). ibid.
In Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan, Obama continues Bush’s policies of war, domination and subjugation. Meanwhile, poverty, unemployment and inequality that grow daily in the land of the free, are unmentionables. But despite this, a compliant media continue to feed the myth that it is only the official enemies of the US which are the dictatorships.
Hugo Chavez’s respone to the US accusation that he is a dictator?
“I laugh. I laugh. It is the empire calling me a dictator. I’m happy. And I remember Don Quixote, Quixote who was with Sancho, you know, and the dogs start to bark, and Sancho says, “They are going to bite us.” And Quixote wisely answers, “Take it easy, Sancho, because if the dogs are barking, it is because we are galloping.” I will be very sad and worried if the imperialist government was calling me a great democratic man. No, it is them, the empire, who attack those who are truly contributing to the real democracy (32). ibid.
References
1. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114814/quotes
2. http://earthblips.dailyradar.com/story/dismal-outcome-at-copenhagen-fiasco/
3. http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/obama-accord-a-good-thing-amid-copenhagen-fiasco-20091221-l9yj.html
4. http://newsrealblog.com/2009/12/20/germans-blame-obama-for-copenhagen-failure/.
5. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/21/us_led_copenhagen_accord_decried_as
6. http://www.cdi.org/adm/Transcripts/923/
7. http://www.globalissues.org/article/402/media-propaganda-and-vietnam
8. http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=6.
9. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/aug/09/olympics2008.china3
10. http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/columns/story?id=3535638
11. http://www.socialistworker.org.uk/art.php?id=15754
12. ibid.
13. http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=530.
14. ibid.
15. http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=530
16. ibid.
17. http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=530
18. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment
19. http://www.wayneandtamara.com/manufacturingconsent.htm
20. http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/071120_invasion_a_comparison.php
21. http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/7/0/9/5/p70953_index.html.
22. http://www.socialistworker.org.uk/art.php?id=15754
23. ibid.
24. http://www.socialistworker.org.uk/art.php?id=15754
25. ibid.
26. ibid.
27. http://www.socialistworker.org.uk/art.php?id=15754
28. ibid.
29. http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/listeningpost/2009/08/2009814105043427586.html
30. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/21/venezuelan_president_hugo_chavez_on_how
31. ibid.
32. ibid.
Macro
Dealing with China’s Hangover – the sobering reality
I nearly got the date wrong on my comment – my goodness, it’s 2010! Happy New Year, everyone…
By my own-admission, the New Year’s Eve piece (China on Steroids, Japan on Hallucinogens) I wrote was a look at China through rose-tinted glasses. If you have not yet read this piece, I urge you to skim read it before reading today’s comment. Aptly written on the eve of New Year celebrations, it’s comforting to bask in the radiant glow of glorious China when the champagne is flowing and the fireworks are fizzing but, in the cold sobering light of the morning, the rhetoric must face the harsh reality of what lies ahead.
While I championed the tide of reform and investment that will undoubtedly occur in the financial services industry, it is this sector which also faces the most challenges. Firstly, in asset prices we have a huge conundrum in China, largely because we do not know exactly what is going on due to the opacity of data and the effects of government policy, on a central or local level. Bloomberg reported Fitch as implying that China Banks’ Capital Likely More Strained as the rating agency contemplates downgrades to the sector due to lack of transparency in the Chinese bank balance sheets as loan growth seems to be increasingly fueled by “off-balance sheet” transactions… hmmm… funny complicated products and a “growing pool of hidden credit risk” – I think we’ve heard that somewhere before haven’t we? There is no doubt in my mind that Non-Performing Loans (NPL’s) on bank balance sheets will rear their ugly head at some point over the next year or two.
Andrew Xie thinks that asset prices may rise in 2010 and hit new highs before being decimated on the jagged rocks of inflation in 2011. Granted, he’s been singing the same tune for a while now, but when I hear the theme repeating itself over and over again from different corners, it’s time to take a long hard think about it.
As many China property optimists cite, a large number of Chinese pay cash for homes or put down large cash deposits, this puts a degree of support to asset prices. But there is only so long markets can ultimately disassociate themselves from the reality seen by the overwhelming majority of the population, we found this out the hard way in the US. A fluidly constructed, Bloomberg article by Dexter Roberts has a few little hidden gems in it:
Millions of Chinese are pursuing property with a zeal once typical of house-happy Americans. Some Chinese are plunking down wads of cash for homes. Others are taking out mortgages at record levels. Developers are snapping up land for luxury high- rises and villas, and the banks are eagerly funding them. Some local officials are even building towns from scratch in the desert, certain that demand won’t flag. And if families can swing it, they buy two apartments: one to live in, one to flip when prices jump further.
Although parallels with other bubble markets, the China bubble is not quite so easy to understand. In some places, demand for upper middle class housing is so hot it can’t be satisfied. In others, speculators keep driving up prices for land, luxury apartments, and villas even though local rents are actually dropping because tenants are scarce. What’s clear is that the bubble is inflating at the rich end, while little low- cost housing gets built for middle and low-income Chinese.
In Beijing’s Chaoyang district, which represents a third of all residential property deals in the capital, homes now sell for an average of almost $300 per square foot. That means a typical 1,000-square-foot apartment costs about 80 times the average annual income of the city’s residents.
Chinese consumers, fearing inflation will return and outstrip the tiny interest they earn on their savings, have pursued property ever more aggressively. Companies in the chemical, steel, textile, and shoe industries have started up property divisions too: The chance of a quick return is much higher than in their primary business.
“When you sit down with a table of businessmen, the story is usually how they got lucky from a piece of land,” says Andy Xie, an independent economist who once worked in Hong Kong as Morgan Stanley’s top Asia analyst. “No one talks about their factories making money these days.”
The government is reluctant to crack down too hard because construction, steel, cement, furniture, and other sectors are directly tied to growth in real estate. In November, for example, retail sales of furniture and construction materials jumped more than 40 percent. At the December Central Economic Work Conference, an annual policy-setting confab, officials said real estate would continue to be a key driver of growth.
Analysts are divided over the probabilities of such a crash, but even real estate executives are getting nervous. Wang Shi, chairman of top developer China Vanke Co., has warned repeatedly in recent weeks about the risk of a bubble. In his most recent comments he expressed fear that the bubble might spread far beyond Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzen.
Does this sound like sustainable asset growth to you – in real (inflation-adjusted) terms? In monetary terms, the demand may be genuine (while few alternatives exist for domestic investors in China), but, just like the fireworks and champagne on New Year’s Eve, it’s not a sustainable pleasure – what goes up must eventually come down, after the party comes the hangover – either in absolute terms or by inflation.
On his boxing day piece (The Pace of Change), Michael Pettis talks about the trade-off between social stability and change and it’s role in post-crisis liquidation. He differentiates between the US-style exit strategy (default and move on) and the Japanese model (zombie companies, slow grind) and the social implications of both. The reality is he’s talking about propensities to the velocity of money – or inflation. How China chooses to face the looming prospect of the deflation / inflation challenge is crucial to understanding the economic interplay in the region and China’s role in the Global Economy.
Macro Data to Watch:
Markets
Whoops, S&P slipped on a banana skin at the end of the day. That was not really supposed to happen was it? Anyway, it’s a new year, “The January Effect” will be in full swing as new asset managers with new money and new mandates look to plug their investors’ money into something promising.
Expect a little volatility going into earnings season, but I was wrong last season – we saw very little volatility for Q3 reporting.
Global Stocks to Watch:
In Riga there is a black box in the middle of city hall square, both ugly and disturbing. Made of concrete, it looks like a parking lot, but in fact it is the Latvian National Museum of Occupation, 1940-1991.
There seems to be an architectural trend for ugly buildings dedicated to grave events. You will find the Monument of Shoah in Berlin a daedalus of tombstones, leaving future generations wondering the purpose of those erected stones like at Stonehenge.
And yet the purpose of this writing is not architecture, but occupation. What does it mean to be occupied, and especially to occupy, as invader, conqueror or persistent guest?
Invasions are like winds. Some endure for days and weeks, and will rewrite maps or destroy armies. Others are brief and have the brutality of unexpected storms. But ultimately a peaceful morning will let us wonder about this urge of invading, and leaving behind some statues, perhaps generations of blond children.
Thinking of Latvia, there have been two winds, one brief and violent, and the latter relentless, which left the country divided over its true future and belonging. Its statue of liberty is indeed holding in her outstretched hands, three stars, and it is an exerting task, as Russians of Latvia are stirring.
German invasions have the quality of their defects. Meaning that unlike the French ones, which leave women dreaming of gallant officers, trees of liberty and civil laws, with the Germans, there is no such a thing. Germans are bad invaders, because they don’t last and have a manic habit of destroying instead of creating.
German invasions are brutal and stupid. They have the violence of today’s youngsters who would knife a man for a smile. Fortunately German eagle is too heavy to fly for a long time, so that armies are routed, leaving local populations wondering what happened. Of course this is only part of the story, as Germans tend to invade again as tourists, in motorised columns of cars and buses.
With Russians, it is altogether different. They invade brutally, but with a romantic quality. Their deep nature has the quality of their opera and dances. Both energetic and wild, Russian culture is about embracing rather than punching, even if some embraces lead to unpleasant places north of the polar circle.
Russians are playing chess, drinking and smoking, all in a dazzling combination of invasion and natural catastrophe. They will leave Soviet architecture buildings behind, which are recycled in European Economic Community business centre, as for example, the Communist Party headquarter of Riga has been renamed World Trade Centre with humor.
But they will leave remarkable achievements of education, knowledge and hygiene. The credo of Communism is indeed education, sport and hygiene. Some can argue that the price is heavy, as Communism has forgotten breakfast, lunch and dinner. But nonetheless only Russians can have that quality of culture and endurance.
Being an invader is not difficult, but Romans have taught us that what makes a great invader is culture and long-term project. Romans invaded brutally, but erected marvelous cities with running water, and assimilation of local population was rapid, but for Egyptians. With time we have lost that quality of invasions.
The last great invasions were perhaps the Crusades, as some went there not only for gold, but for redemption. Spirituality yet played a role. Later invasions, like conquest of Africa by France and England, lacked that subtlety. Industrialised countries conquer territories as potential markets, not for spiritual or romantic reasons.
T.E. Lawrence argued in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom that the French were extremely bad invaders, compared to the elitist British. French are unruly, brutal bastards, but they have Republican values, and armies of devoted leftist teachers. They build great things, and have local elite contribute actively to a kind of foreign French metropolis, for example Saigon or Algiers.
German colonial past is small, but striking. Who but a German would build in Namibian desert a factory of sausage and beer? There is that obstinate typical German need to export a life style, to stamp it with Made in Germany. Today they invade the world with their cars, at least something more useful than pigs in a desert.
What truly makes for a great invader, and a better quality of occupation, is cultural flexibility. Romans did not argue about religions as long as the tax were paid. With the Jews the problem was that for reasons of money and monotheism, Roman laws could not work their magic of integration. And yet apart from the example of Egypt and Judea, Roman laws made citizens out of hundreds of million foreign people.
The European Community is an invader of sorts, with armies of commissioners and lawyers, building a tower of Babel, but with limited success so far. One cannot conquer without a cultural ideal, and the EEC has only the culture of profit.
The American Empire had the potential to invade and last, but alas, since the late 50s its military industrial lobby has grown so powerful, as a state within the state, that instead of exporting only movies, candy and personal computers, there is that urge to export bombs and missiles, and to use them liberally on civil populations. This is really too bad, because American people are so likable, but being invaded by them is like Disneyland, you have to run for shelter which is made difficult by the gross consumption of MacDonalds.
We are experiencing a new invasion of Chinese. The Empire of the Middle has become factory of the world. So far, its invasion of African territories and industrialised countries markets has been relentless, but not harmless. Again to be likable, Chinese invasion would have to be more culturally flexible. Instead of manufacturing only goods, China should propose a real alternative to European 19th century industrial values. So far, there is nothing like that.
Invasions are like winds, they can turn you into a fool, or make you dream about vast oceans and green forests.
Sydney – The appointment of five provincial-level Chinese Communist Party chiefs in early December is a reminder that the ascension of China’s next generation of leaders, who will take power in 2012, may be the most significant development in Chinese politics since Deng Xiaoping’s reign begin in 1978. The upcoming generation of leaders will be the first with little or no personal memory of the turmoil and hardship endured during the Mao Zedong years. Forgetting that history might doom China to repeat the mistakes of the past; but, for better or worse, it might also ease constraints and set its leaders free.
All five appointees were born after the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. Two of them, Hu Chunhua and Sun Zhengcai, are only 46 years old. This is in line with the Party’s recently announced policy that the next generation of leaders should have an average age of around 55 years, with up to four top positions filled by leaders not yet in their fifties. The Party’s aim is to ensure that it remains energetic and dynamic as China rises.
This seems a wise decision. Chinese leadership over the past decade and a half has been about fine-tuning and maintaining the momentum of Deng’s state-led development model, launched after the Tiananmen protests of 1989. In this respect, China’s third and fourth generation of leaders, under the technocrats Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, have been competent but unimaginative.
But the viability of Deng’s model is nearing its end, and China is now addicted to inefficient state-led fixed investment and unsustainable export-led growth, rather than domestic consumption, to generate jobs and growth. Progress on further structural reforms – such as currency and capital-account liberalization and weaning state-controlled industries off state capital – has been slow, and new initiatives have been piecemeal rather than comprehensive.
Likewise, since the mid-1990’s, China’s foreign policy has been cautious rather than bold. Both Jiang and Hu have faithfully followed Deng’s dictum to “Hide capacity and nourish obscurity.” Although increasingly assertive in Africa and Latin America, China largely remains a free-rider under the American security umbrella.
The older generations see such caution as prudence, and that conservatism is reflected in China’s current leaders. The lack of big-picture reform attests to the older generations’ collective fear that fundamental structural changes will bring disruption and chaos, threatening the Party’s hold on power. They still remember the suffering of the Mao years, when China headed in the wrong direction – and tried to do too much too quickly – and they vividly recall how the Tiananmen protests brought the regime to its knees, and how urban labor unrest erupted when centrally managed state businesses were merged or closed down in the 1990’s.
Without personal experience of China’s recent traumatic history, the next generation will be more confident and assertive. Schooled in economics, politics, and law, rather than engineering, they will seek to accelerate China’s rise and transformation, viewing caution as paralysis. Even now, emerging leaders argue that China is moving too slowly on economic reform and foreign-policy goals. For better or worse, they will not be restrained by the same fear of unintended consequences when it comes to change and experimentation.
But the foreign-policy consequences could be even greater. Having grown up in a China that is now accepted as a legitimate great power, the new generation of leaders will be more impatient about China resuming its place as the paramount power in Asia. While older statesmen take pride in how far China has come, younger Party figures and elites – especially those who have returned from American and other Western graduate schools – are frustrated by that China’s strategic position in Asia and status within global and regional institutions remain relatively weak, despite the country’s rising economic power.
For example, much of the talk that China should take the lead in regional institutions, and that Chinese ships should have a greater presence in vital sea lanes such as the Malacca Straits and even the Indian Ocean comes from the younger generation. The younger Party leaders are also more impatient when it comes to a timeframe for winning back Taiwan.
China is currently in a holding pattern. But that will end when the next generation of leaders assumes power in 2012. When their time comes, the world will be dealing with a much more unpredictable power than the one we know now.
