A Nation of Agnostics

“So generally speaking, what would you say Chinese people believe in?”

“Umm, well Chinese people don’t really believe in anything.”

“Really? Nothing? What about Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism? I’ve heard those belief systems are quite influential over here.”

“Well first of all, those aren’t really belief systems in the sense that they are religions. The ideas contained in those three perspectives still do influence Chinese thought, but any real religious establishment was wiped out during the sixties and seventies—“

“—during the Cultural Revolution?”

“That’s right. During that time, we could only believe in the Party. That’s it. Today, some older people hang on to religious beliefs; for example, I’ve been to a Buddhist temple with my aunt before. But most young people don’t believe in anything.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t know if it’s good. I think it is good to have something to believe in.”

This is a rough representation/summary (translated from Chinglish) of the several conversations that followed me posing that first question to different Chinese college students. As a result of these discussions, the overall impression I flew back home with is that China is indeed a nation of agnostics, if not atheists. Maybe this shouldn’t have surprised me—after all, atheism was the law of the land from 1949 onwards, and only recently has the central government allowed more freedom of religion.

But this impression does fly directly in the face of polls that I had heard about before going, and even those that I looked up just now. For example, a few years ago a statistician by the name of Phil Zuckerman reported that only 14 percent of the Chinese population was “irreligious.” Around the same time though, another study by Shanghai university professors found that just over thirty percent of the 16+ population considered themselves “religious.” Now I recognize that those results are not necessarily contradictory (on what side of the fence does a “seeker" fall?), but I think it may be fair to say that the most important insight they represent is simply the difficulty of measuring religious demographics.

It very much does seem like the Chinese people, especially the younger generations, are generally without a faith in any kind of higher power. It does look like this may be changing rapidly, however. I’ll try and find time to write another post pretty soon about why that may be …

"Understanding the Rise of China"

Our native Chinese biz/econ professor told us a few weeks ago that she wanted to show us a video about the Chinese mindset; that seemed fine, but as soon as I heard that all-to-familiar TED intro—something I didn’t realize was a common sound over here—I of course became very interested. And I was not disappointed; this twenty-minute TED Talk by a Martin Jacques gives a very good survey of the increasing influence China will have in the years to come.

His main theme seems to be that China is not like the West, nor will it ever become so; it is a completely different civilization and has been for millennia, and we can’t expect that kind of inertia to succumb to mere decades (well, ok centuries) of Western pressure. Before you take a look at the video, I do feel like I should tell you that the projections Jacques cites at the very beginning are almost certainly wrong—there is a wide spectrum of projections about China’s growth, and he (or the organization he cites) is at the far end of optimistic. It seems that most economists think it will be at least thirty or forty years before China’s GDP matches that of America (and their growth may very well slow because of problems such as these). However even if that is the case, they are still in second place today, and thus of course still incredibly important economically. Enjoy!

Flipping the Switch

In 1991, Pudong, a large part of my former host city of Shanghai, was officially established by the central government as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), one of now fifty-eight within the country. The general idea of an SEZ is that within its borders, rules and regulations tend to be relatively favorable to foreign businesses. For example, a typical tax policy within an SEZ may not require a foreign business to pay a dime of taxes until two years after their first profits are realized, and then for the three years thereafter only pay taxes at half the domestic rate. Shanghai was actually quite late to the game in this sense, arguably because of political disputes between them and leadership in Beijing; for whatever the reason though, the first two SEZ’s of Guangdong and Fujian (near HK) were established eleven years before Pudong was finally granted that status.

Take a look at these two pictures of Pudong; the first one was taken in 1990, shortly after Bradley Andrew Kiley was born. The second one was taken from the exact same spot last year (just before I turned twenty-one).

I think Lucas and I looked at these pictures for like five minutes straight when I first found it, and I kept glancing at them in disbelief intermittently throughout that day. It is amazing how fast the Chinese government can develop someplace when they decide they feel like it, and once the floodgates of foreign investment are opened. Now was subsidizing the construction of these huge, fancy towers really the best use of public funds for the area? That is debatable, and I've heard that subject is the source of more than a little tension between the central authorities in Beijing and those running Shanghai. Either way though, there is no denying that the fantastic light-show that is the Pudong financial district certainly gives this city an aura very unique to the rest of the mainland.

Chengdooin' It

One thing that Lucas and I both wanted to experience before returning to good ol’ Meiguo is a “real” Chinese city out west. This and other reasons led us to the within-China-famous city of Chengdu, located inside the within-China-famous province of Sichuan (you may actually recognize that name from the devastating earthquake that happened here in 2008).

This city has quite a reputation; I think the best way I’ve heard it described is as “a big city with a small city feel.” One thing everyone knows about Chengdu is that the people there are sooo chill. One of the many things it is famous for is its plentiful tea houses, where natives can be seen sipping wonderful flower tea all day long, playing Mazhang or a number of other Chinese games. They also can be seen in the ubiquitous hot pot restaurants, taking upwards of three hours for a single meal. In short, it seemed like Chengdu was the opposite of Shanghai, where the pace of life is perhaps the fasted in the mainland.

Our experiences here during the past week have very much served to confirm that reputation. Walking through People’s Park during our first day was especially cool; we sat for a while outside one of the teahouses, got our ears cleaned (probably won’t repeat that experience!), watched people dance, and saw a master calligrapher at work brushing giant, beautiful characters on the ground with only water.

The rest of the week was a lot of fun as well. In addition to being an interesting city in and of itself, Chengdu also serves as a springboard to all kinds of other hotspots in Sichuan. As we only had a week, we just stuck to the day-trip locations. I think my favorite spot had to be the world-famous pandas—they certainly lived up to the hype. Towards the end of the day we found a 5x5 ft pen containing eight of the babies; some were crawling around, some were wrestling, some were sleeping in awkward positions—all of them though were absolutely adorable. I think I may agree with Lucas’s claim that this was perhaps the cutest thing ever seen anywhere in the history of the universe.

Another pretty remarkable attraction we checked out was the biggest Buddha in the world at Leshan, a couple hours away from Chengdu. Carved over a thousand years ago over the course of a hundred years, this guy clocks in at some 240 ft, with each pinkie toe being about the size of Shaquille O’Neal. Ridiculous.

Overall, it was a great way to end our four-month China adventure. Our host for the week, Karla, treated us waay too well and it was super fun hanging out with the Chengdu study abroad students and getting a feel for their lifestyle. It definitely does seem to be a different world than Shanghai; not better or worse necessarily, but certainly different, and I’m very glad we had the chance to experience it.

Shanghai Isn't "Real China"

Living in Shanghai for three months and some change has been as amazing an experience as I could have asked for. One thing you often hear about this city though is that it’s not “real China.” While this is usually said with a somewhat negative connotation, the accuracy of that observation is actually one of the reasons I love Shanghai so much. I certainly wanted to hang out with the natives as much as I could while here, and I’ve had the opportunity to meet some awesome new Chinese friends (by the way, 992 out of every 1000 Shanghai residents are Chinese citizens). But I love that Shanghai is also an international city; when you go to the expat church, or to the bars and clubs, you never know where in the world the next foreigner you meet will be from.

 In addition to this, the native Chinese population here is actually quite diverse. As far as race goes, umm, of course not at all; but as far as city of origin Chinese college kids and young professionals come from all over the country to this promised land of opportunity. As a foreigner, this created a unique opportunity for me to taste a sampling of the variety of cultures throughout this giant civilization. I’ve had the opportunity to meet students hailing from the area where Green Tea supposedly originated, as well as some who came from Sichuan, whose food is the envy of all other provinces. At Starbucks, I met a pair of brothers who grew up near where Confucius lived, and at a cool bar we met a couple skater girls from Guangdong, an especially prosperous city close to HK.

 There are still plenty of native Shanghainese around too, and they are quite fun as well—one dinner in particular with Colby, myself, and the two sets of parents of the kids Colby and I separately tutor will be impossible to forget. But the spectrum of cultures that collide in this fantastic city make life here a uniquely exciting and dynamic experience.

One Table, Four Languages

This was kinda fun.

A few nights ago, our suitemate Omar invited us to dinner in celebration of his twenty-third birthday. There were a total of ten of us there enjoying all different kinds of delicious Chinese food with, naturally, some tasty watered-down Budweiser. It was pretty cool just sitting back from the conversation for a few moments and looking around the table.

First, there was our friend Omar the birthday boy; he is from Benin (W. Africa), his native tongue is French, and he is proficient in English and Mandarin.

Seated to his right were two girls from Thailand. They didn’t say a whole lot, so I believe they only spoke Thai, and a bit of French.

Next to him was my friend Lucas, haling from San Diego and speaking a little English and Mandarin, and two spots over from him was myself, with similar language capabilities.

Between Lucas and me was Omar’s roommate Hussainu, a Malian dude (W. Africa) who also speaks French as his native tongue, but very little English and Mandarin.

To my right were three of Omar’s Chinese classmates from various parts of China, all who supplemented their Mandarin with a bit of English.

And finally, between them and Omar was a Japanese girl, who could speak conversational English and pretty good Mandarin.

So throughout the meal, there were four different languages being spoken at various points in time at this single ten-person table, and there would have been five had another Japanese person joined us. This is something I absolutely love about being part of the expat community here.

"The English of China"

At a birthday dinner for my suitemate Omar that Lucas and I attended, I was seated to the immediate left of three of his Chinese classmates. It was both fun and humbling trying to hold a conversation in Chinese with the three of them, who were all from different parts of China; thankfully they knew some English, which kept the dialogue from coming to an abrupt halt on several occasions.

Anyways, at some point during the meal, all ten of us fell silent as one of the Chinese waitresses was loudly and angrily communicating something to one of her co-workers. I didn’t understand a word of what she was saying, and chalked it up to the fact that my Chinese still kinda sucks; but before I could ask my new friend what was going on, he leaned in and said, “Wo-men dou ting bu dong ta—We all have no idea what she’s saying!”

The reason none of us could understand her was because she was not speaking Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) at all, but Shanghainese, the language native to the area; it is actually one of the 292 languages and dialects that are currently being spoken in the nation of China (ethnologue.com).

It was a little while ago that I learned the somewhat disappointing fact that when I had been told, “Oh everyone speaks Mandarin in China,” that was really only half true; I know now that that is kind of like saying, “Everyone speaks English in the West”—I guess it’s true that most do, especially the young people, but it certainly is not everyone’s first language. As a percentage of the total population, not very many people speak Putonghua as their first language, but most—especially the young people—have learned it as a second language to communicate with those outside their small region.

By the way, here’s a related fun fact: despite there being just short of 300 spoken languages, there is only one writing system. Well, two I guess: Traditional and Simplified—but simplified directly comes from traditional so I don’t think that counts. I think that’s crazy though, that two Chinese people who may not be able to verbally communicate with each other at all, can both look at the same written sentence and understand it perfectly. 

If You Could Go Anywhere ...

As we were exploring different places on a globe, I asked the three eight-year old kids I tutor, “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?”

They excitedly, simultaneously cried out, “America! America!”

I’m not exactly sure why they want to go to America so much, but I reckon it has something to do with the fact that many of their elders, from college students to their parents, would have answered that question with the same word.

The most obvious reason for this is the mountain of difference in average wages between the two nations: in 2010, the average wage in Meiguo was about $47,000 per year, whereas in China it was about $7,600 after you adjust for differences in purchasing power (World Bank). Although income per capita has been steadily improving, China still has way too much labor and not enough demand. 

Besides financial concerns, there is also the fact that in America there are, well, a lot of Chinese people—more than triple the amount in all of Europe; the trend of immigrating from the “Middle Kingdom” to the  “Beautiful Kingdom” has already been fairly well established (Wikipedia). It also seems like a fairly large percentage of the American expats here are ethnically Chinese. When native Chinese students meet these individuals, I think it serves as evidence that immigration to a particular developed country is definitely within reach, which makes that country look comparatively more attractive.

Finally, there is the whole getting-to-say-whatever-you-want thing; as it turns out, most people don’t like having their speech limited. I think a wonderful contrast can be found in the song American Idiot by Green Day, where Billie Joe Armstrong expresses in no uncertain terms his disdain for our country’s leader at the time. It’s funny to think what would happen if a Chinese artist released a comparable song over here; they would be behind bars before the first record sold.

And of course, there is the fact that many of their favorite TV shows and movies were produced and take place in America. I mean who wouldn’t want to live in the Californian paradise you so often see in theaters??

Disclaimer: I picked all of this up from conversations with various Chinese people in Shanghai-- it may not be representative of China as a whole. I know there are also many natives here who like their home country just fine, and don't want to go anywhere!

Finance Hotshots

A supremely important concept in the Chinese business and political world goes by the name of guanxi (关系). A close English translation may be “professional network.”—from everything I’ve learned about guanxi, though, that phrase doesn’t come close to capturing the reverence Chinese businessman and women have for the concept; I guess in the current economic environment if you want to get anything done here, you gotta have awesome guanxi—you need to be connected.


Something I have been wanting to do even before arriving in Shanghai is get to know some fellow foreigners involved in the vibrant finance world here. I wanted to hear from someone with first-hand experience how to get involved myself, and what it was really like being, say, an investment banker in this dynamic city. Last week, I had the opportunity to do just that.

It was maybe a couple months ago that I met a guy in his mid-twenties named Rob at a club called Sky Bar. We got talking somehow, and after asking the requisite, “why the hell are you in China?” I learned that he is an investment banker for a nearby boutique investment firm. After getting his card and sporadically staying in contact, we had the opportunity to grab burgers and Tiger beers at a cool Western restaurant last Monday, where I got to hear all about his experience here; from how he got started, to the challenging subtleties of the Chinese financial sector. Towards the end, he invited me to a semi-monthly get together he was in the process of establishing for young expats in finance, so the next evening, my friend Eric and I found ourselves sipping Guiness at the same table as five Shanghai finance hotshots in their mid-twenties to early-thirties, who were having an invigorating back-and-forth about the latest in the Shanghai finance world.

Most of the time, I sort of felt like I was listening to Chinese—catching maybe 60-80 percent of what they were saying; but from what I did understand, it really is a much different world than back home (not that I have had any experience in the finance world back home; some of these guys had though).

If I record my favorite quote of the night, I may run the risk of the Man kicking me out of the country (yes, I’ve heard of foreigners receiving that penalty for lesser petty speech-related crimes). But in a similar, though milder, spirit, I think my biggest takeaway was how prevalent coruption still is in the highest levels of the Chinese government and finance world. In my opinion, it seems like that is only the natural consequence of such a strong emphasis on guanxi, but for whatever reason, strong-arming, bribry, and under-the-table dealings are very much alive and well. I suppose you could make the argument that similar shenanigans probably happens at the highest levels of most governments and companies, so it's just a matter of degree. And I'm sure it's not as bad now as it was. But still, it's a bit unnerving hearing stories to this effect.

Another interesting thing I learned is there is a cap on the number of foreigners a given firm in China can hire; it varies by sector, but for almost everyone it is well under ten percent. Although this is no doubt hurting China’s productivity in the here and now, I suppose this kind of law serves to provide many more training opportunities for otherwise professionally inexperienced young Chinese people. So I guess it makes economic sense from a future-oriented, nationalist perspective.

It was cool hearing lots of other tidbits, as well as interesting anecdotes about some foreign companies that have succeeded over here, and others that haven’t. As for my overall impression, it seems that doing finance in Shanghai is a crazy, exciting, and challenging endeavor, and I was certainly inspired to step up my efforts to find a way to get my feet wet.

Anyone Have A Turkey??

An interesting thing about Chinese cuisine is that it is completely devoid of turkey of any kind. Nowadays in Shanghai there are plenty of restaurants that specifically cater to the foreign palate, so turkey isn’t all that hard to come by. This was not always the case, however.

The youth leader at our church told a pretty funny story that happened a little while back in Shanghai. Some missionaries were coming through around Thanksgiving time, and they really wanted to have a traditional American turkey dinner. The family that was hosting them, however, hadn’t the first idea where they could track down the desired main dish.

They thought long and hard about where they might find some turkey meat, considering all the foreign pockets and markets they knew of. Finally, they were struck with a brilliant idea.

They headed over to the zoo.

They found the turkeys.

They bought them.

They had an amazing, traditional American Thanksgiving dinner. Now that is dedication!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! It was of course a bummer not eating delicious sweet potatoes and turkey with my amazing family this year; but that considered, Thanksgiving in Shanghai was actually super fun. Some 20+ of us threw on our freshly made, fitted (and incredibly cheap) shirts and suit coats/dresses, then headed over to the Big Bamboo sports bar and grill where we had a whole room reserved for our group. After some fantastic Western food, passable Carlsbergs, nice cigars, a McFlurry for dessert, and overall great times and conversation we finally took the sixty-cent subway ride back to our dorm just in time to cram for our quiz this morning.

At some point last night, Vince asked me the requisite “what are you thankful for?” question, adding that he was looking for an unusual answer. I immediately thought of my awesome family, and how great it would be to be home with them for this meal. But then I thought I would answer differently: I told him I’m thankful for the opportunity to miss my family. For one, because it signifies their value to me, but also because my inability to join them this week means that I am somewhere far from home; I had been blessed with the opportunity to explore new places, meet new people, and allow my perspective to be molded and influenced by a new section of the Almighty God’s beautiful creation. As the conclusion of this trip draws nearer, I am recognizing more and more just how priceless of an experience it has been; and for that, I am extraordinarily thankful. Happy thanksgiving!

Oxford Christianity

One of my favorite aspects of living as an expat in Shanghai is that you experience not only Chinese culture, but also the full spectrum of cultures from around the world.

One of my new friends that I met through SCF, the expat church we’ve been going to, is an awesome British dude (Chinese word: Ying-guo-ren) in his mid-twenties who works at the British Consulate here in Shanghai. He is quite the stereotypical Englishman in speech, mannerisms, and also in his level of intelligence (This was confirmed a few weeks after meeting him when I learned from someone else that he studied Politics, Economics, and Philosophy at Oxford.)

We had the chance to grab some coffee not too long ago, and during the course of the conversation I learned that while at Oxford, he had the opportunity to lead the Christian fellowship there for some time. I was curious about the Christian presence at elite universities in Britain, so I asked how many students typically participated in this fellowship. He told me that it was probably quite a small amount by American standards: for the 15,000 strong university there were approximately 200 students participating in the fellowship’s activities at any given time.

This number was much larger than I was expecting, especially considering the somewhat bleak state of the Church in Europe as a whole; also as far as I know, the Christian presence at elite universities in the States are not nearly this size. For example, one of my buddies at Stanford was involved in a Christian fellowship there for a bit, and it couldn’t have had much more than twenty or thirty students.

My British friend explained that back home the more elite the university you find yourself in, the larger the Christian influence tends to be (In jest, he said something along the lines of, “we figure that if you’re smart enough, you just tend to work it out somehow!”). I wondered why this was, and why this doesn’t seem at all to be the pattern back in the US.  I suppose it may just come down to the apparent fact that God works in different people in different ways; when this point-of-view is broadened, it makes sense that he would also work within different cultures in unique ways. But I recognize that's a very general statement ... what do you think about this?

Red Light Revolution

So yesterday, my buddy Eric proposed that we attend a screening of the independent film “Red Light Revolution;” It was supposedly a comedy about a Chinese sex-shop startup in Beijing.  Myself, about twelve of the kids in our program, and our program director (awesome Chinese lady in her thirties) couldn’t say no to that tagline, so tonight we headed over to the hosting restaurant/venue and checked it out.


Trailer (warning: just a bit on the risque side ...)


The film will not be winning any Grammies anytime soon, but it was a very enjoyable watch. The silly, clever humor was consistent throughout the ninety minutes, and the cinematography was (as far as I can tell) quite well done. Also, it was not nearly as crude as one might expect when first hearing about it; the humor is mostly based off the protagonist’s previous innocence to the world of the sex shop. So besides a somewhat abrupt ending and the absence of a definable climax, the movie, as well as the complimentary gift bag (!), were certainly worth the $9 entry fee.

Those Freaking Tones ...

So one of the most foreign—some might say most annoying—features of the Chinese language from the perspective of a Western learner is the importance of tones; the meaning of a certain sound completely changes depending on the inflection you say it with. For example, take the sound “yo.” If you say it with an upward tone it means oil, as said when describing food or something with petroleum; a downward tone means the direction “right”; and a short downward, then immediate upward inflection means “to have.” Remembering not only the sound, but also the specific tone for each word can be maddening.

I had assumed this was something that people who learn Chinese as their first language just pick up naturally, but I found out recently that they sometimes get this wrong as well. While in Xi’an, we had some extra time at one of the tourist spots so we were able to converse with some of the native Xi’anese. During the course of the conversation, I asked them what their favorite place in China was; one answered that he liked a particular town, which he gave us the name of (I forget it now, let’s say it was Guangzhou). Almost as soon as he told us though, his friend jumped in and corrected him; the name wasn’t Guangzhou, it was Guangzhou. This man was probably in his thirties and had likely spoken nothing but Mandarin Chinese his whole life, but he made a mistake with the tones. I laughed out loud and instantly felt a connection with the guy.  It is a huge relief to know that I’ll never have to know these tricky inflections absolutely perfectly!

As difficult as learning the tones is, however, I do have to say that I actually really enjoy that aspect of the language. I think this could possibly be because I have a somewhat extensive musical background. Now I can’t quite say that the use of specific tones makes Chinese sound more beautifully musical, but it does add a sort of melodic element to conversations. Normal, mundane sentences became much more dynamic and can be quite fun to say once you have them down. And, like memorizing characters, the more words you learn the easier it becomes. So while the existence of tonal differences certainly puts the brakes on the process of learning Mandarin, I can’t say I mind too much.

Waiguoren Drink Free

For Halloween a few weeks ago, a bunch of us in our program dressed up and headed to a club that was right on the river that cuts through Shanghai.  It was supposedly inside a huge warehouse-type setting and there were going to be a few well know DJ’s there. This sounded cool, so despite the $15 entry fee, we thought we would check it out.

While we were waiting outside for the rest of our group, however, the hosts at the competing club next-door kept telling us that if we came inside—for free—they would give us unlimited free drinks. Why? Because we were foreigners (Chinese word: Wai-guo-ren). At first we laughed it off, but as we waited there longer we eventually decided it couldn’t hurt to check it out, so we headed in.

And sure enough the free drinks came—but not for everyone in our group. Whites, Blacks, Middle Easterners, Mexicans—everyone heralding from one of these races was taken care of by the house, but the bartender refused to give anything to the Chinese-Americans in our group. It was really one of the most blatant instances of racism I have ever seen. But this was the strange thing: every single person working in that club was Chinese; the hosts, the bartender, we even talked to the manger for a bit—they were all Chinese. But they would only give free alcohol to those of us who were visibly not from around here.

It seems the truth is that if you are an ethically Chinese person living in China, you may or may not have money; but if you are a wai-guo-ren, you almost definitely do. This means that some managers of the clubs, bars, restaurants, etc. will bend over backwards to attract foreigners to there establishments, as in their minds that will automatically add an air of sophistication to the environment. In Shanghai, we benefit from this from time to time, but in other cities in China the wai-guo-ren benefit is just ridiculous.

For example, we recently reunited with some of the Chengdu (huge city in Western China) study abroad students while touring Xi’an for a couple days. One girl in particular told me that over the course of their almost-two months in the city, she and a certain group have been going out and drinking liberally three or four times a week (they're animals!). In that time, she has spent about $30 on alcohol. When they enter clubs, bars, and karaoke bars, either the management or their fellow customers invariably cannot wait to shower them with drinks. (Also, in Chengdu, they generally behave the same way towards the Chinese-Americans in their group; they just have to open their mouths, making it instantly plain they are culturally American!)

I should also mention that while bar-managers may just be seeing walking dollar signs (or RMB signs) when they see a wai-guo-ren, most of the Chinese that I’ve met are also very friendly towards us foreigners but for a different reason. For the most part, they seem to be genuinely curious about the world and lifestyle outside the country they have never had the opportunity to leave; conversing with and getting to know these people has been an opportunity I feel considerably blessed to have.

As Easy As 1, 2, 3

Only two years after Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping’s call for a transition to a “socialist market economy” was met with widespread enthusiasm. Though everyone knew pure communism had failed, everyone also knew they couldn’t embrace the open market overnight—it had to be done slowly and deliberatively. The period from 1978 until the present day can be divided into three phases:

First Phase: 1978-1984

The first important step during this initial period was to allow the managers of the State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) increased, albeit still greatly limited, autonomy. They just had a little more say in the allocation of the SOEs profits, as well as their production targets.

I think that a brilliant innovation by the Chinese government during this time was their dual-pricing system. Here’s an example to illustrate how it basically worked. Lets say we’re running a TV factory; the Man has given us a certain production quota we must meet, and the TVs within that quota must be sold at a certain price. If we produced any TVs above and beyond that quota, however, we were free to sell them at whatever price we wished, or in other words, the market price. This sort of system allowed for a relatively smooth transition from planned prices to market-based prices.

Second Phase: 1985-1993

During this time, further independence was granted to the SOEs—the idea was to transition them into independent economic entities. Additionally, private business flourished; their comparative efficiency revealed the weakness of SOEs.

One problem during this time came as a result of the “contract responsibility system.” Under this system, managers signed 3-5 year contracts with the relevant government agencies, and simply reported to them; this was good because it further separated the actual management of the SOEs from the ownership of the government. However with such short contracts, firms tended to be overly focused on short-term goals rather than long-term.

Other big steps during this time was the expansion of shareholding companies, as well as the listing of large SOEs on the stock market, allowing them access to external sources of funding.

Third Phase: 1993-Present

During this phase, the reform goal became setting up a Modern Enterprises System, or in other words, transforming SOEs into modern corporations. This can be further explained by a series of catch phrases:

“Do some things, leave some things undone,” “Some develop and some recede,” and “Manage large enterprises while easing control over smaller ones.” As can be gathered from these slogans, the general idea was for the government to focus on the large, strategic, industries, while leaving everything else to the market—to put some numbers to it, the government is focusing on the top 1000 SOE’s which account for about 40% of total assets in the economy. For example, currently power and cell service is provided through the state, while clothes and dining are not.

From 1993 on, economic reforms were much more systematic and fundamental. They have also been extensive, including reforms in property rights, SOEs, factor markets, prices, goods distribution, social security, foreign trade, and government functions.

Privatization also commenced on a mass scale during 1995; by the following year, over half of small SOE’s had been privatized.

Result?

Over this time period, from 1978 until this minute, China has averaged a 9.8% annual growth rate. It is absolutely unreal how well these policies have worked.

Moving forward, there has been much speculation that perhaps China’s growth is about to hit a plateau. This is of course more than possible, but in my opinion my current host country has quite a bit of “easy” development left in it, for the following reason: it seems that most of their growth has come from a combination of privatizing SOE’s and liberalizing those that the government retained control over. The privatized companies have been flourishing, while the liberalized SOE’s are doing better. In spite of this however, the SOE’s performance is lackluster compared to their privatized counterparts; The Economist had an article about this recently, how SOE’s overall performance has been unimpressive at best. I think that if they stay the course, if the government stays disciplined in it’s pattern of letting control of their own economy go, then China will continue growing spectacularly for many years yet.

(Source: Professor Mao Zhongming)

Where Did Mao Go Wrong?

As many of us know, it was not all that long ago that China was a fully qualified communist country. It was between the years of 1949 and 1978, under the leadership of the venerable Mao Zedong, that they took a shot at this whole planned-economy thing. Here are some of the salient features of the Chinese industrial world during this time:

-       -State and local governments owned virtually all of the enterprises within the country. The transfer of ownership happened mostly during the ten years following the revolution in 1949; the government bought out private factories in installments, until by the early sixties, they basically owned everything.

-       -Managers were appointed by the government and responsible to the government.

-       -The government only invested in industries as informed by social concerns, not business concerns for a particular SOE (State-Owned Enterprise).

-       -SOE’s assumed two roles: production, and providing welfare for their employees

-       -Production was strictly controlled by the state plan; products did not go to the market directly

-       The state provided grants to enterprises, and enterprises submitted profits to the government

After some years the centrally planned economy brought along the following five general consequences:

-       1. Stagnation of industrial production and a shortage of industrial products

-       2. Waste in resources

-       3. Widespread market failure (planning an economy for a billion people is hard!)

-       4. Broadly speaking, SOE’s were sluggish, ineffective, and inefficient.

-       5. The automotive, machinery, and steel industries in particular could not take full advantage of economies of scale, seeing as their only source of funding was a tightly stretched government. This prevented them from becoming competitive globally.

The decrepit and backwards economy China found itself with after Mao’s death in 1976 set the stage perfectly for Deng Xiaoping, the economic savior of China, to swoop in to the rescue. Reforms implemented on his watch led to the explosion of growth in the Middle Kingdom (Chinese word for China, “Zhong-guo”) that is continuing through today. My next post will touch on what exactly that smart guy did.

(Source: Professor Mao Zhongming)

Massage Time

Our time in Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) was one of many firsts—for me, one of those was enjoying a professional Chinese massage.

Actually “enjoying” really only accurately describes part of the experience. At the time we were fresh off two full days of hiking around the mountain, so we decided that a foot massage sounded fantastic. I’m sure that more experienced massag-ees  would have loved it, but as for me, I was using one hundred percent of my energy trying not to laugh-- it was so ticklish! After awhile the nerves became a little less defensive of the outsider’s fingers, but for the first few minutes on each foot it was all I could do not to instinctively jerk it away.

I also learned that if your legs are sore then it’s probably not the best time for one of these things. Even though we ordered the foot massage, it turned out that pretty much included all of the legs as well. Sometimes it just felt like they were trying to punish us for some unknown wrong, incessantly slapping and punching our legs this way and that; I bet it wouldn’t have been that bad normally, but the muscles they were focusing on were already quite sore, so it was not exactly what we needed.

In spite of this though, most of the hour-long massage was actually quite nice. Plus, at a grand total of eight American dollars, it would have been tough to beat the price back home! 

Universal House Arrest

Yesterday in our Chinese biz/econ class we learned that the gap between the urban rich and the rural poor has been steadily increasing since the beginning of the Chinese growth miracle about thirty years ago. In fact, rural farming communities have more or less completely missed out on this whole development process that has brought so much prosperity to the cities.

Now this would make sense if there were way too many farmers growing way too much food—whenever there is an abundance of a good the price plummets, and with it the income of those who sell it (think oxygen). However this is not the case in China—according to our professor there is barely enough food to go around. This should mean there is about exactly the correct amount of farmers, and their salaries should be about the same as that of city-dwellers (if they were different some farmers would just move to the city, or vica-versa). 

So why is this not the case? Why do farmers on average earn less than a third as much per year as their urban peers? From what I gathered there are basically two reasons:

1. The government currently fixes the price of agricultural goods—so if you are growing rice, you are not allowed to sell it at the market price.  Consequently, you earn much less for each bag of rice than you would in a free market. This is why rural incomes are so low. So why do they stick around? Why don’t they just move to the city?

2. China currently has a fairly unique ID card system by the name of hukou. The purpose of this system is to keep people from moving away from their home area, and it is generally quite successful. Citizens are still free to move wherever they wish-- the hukou system just makes it very expensive. It’s kind of like in the US, how if you want to go to an out-of-state university it is much more expensive, so most people don’t. The difference in China is that many more benefits, like health care and social security, are dependent upon you staying put; what this practically means for the lower classes is that they cannot afford to move out of their area.

It seems like the solution is kind of a no-brainer: just lift the price controls and let people move about as they wish! My professor brought up two problems with this: for one, if the price controls were lifted there is a very good chance farmers would be undercut by subsidized foreign competition, so they wouldn’t benefit anyway. Secondly, if prices were lifted right away, inflation would soar, which would then cause a whole slew of problems.

It seems like the approach the government is using now is to very gradually get rid of the price-controls by raising them a bit every year, so this sector of the economy can be smoothly transitioned into the free market. In other words, they are applying the same policy they seem to be using across the economic and political board: slow, deliberative liberalization. 

We'll Have the Guinea Pig, Please

Warning: This post is quite graphic, true to the memory it records.

As we meandered down Yellow Mountain a few weeks ago, I received a text from Lucas informing me that we would be eating Guinea Pig that evening. The decision had already been made. While the thought immediately made me a bit queasy, I decided to stick with my resolve to try as many crazy exotic foods as I could while over here in China; I texted back: Let’s do it.

The restaurant we decided on later that evening was one of about four in the area where there were cages out in front containing cute, cuddly, very-alive brown guinea pigs. This is actually quite a common practice in China—not eating guinea pigs, but selecting a live animal, then having it delivered to your table on a plate about ten or fifteen minutes later; I guess the attractiveness of this is the food really could not be more fresh.

As soon as we even saw the cages, most of us started freaking out. Are we actually doing this?? Are we really going to deliver a death sentence to one of these furry little animals?? We were acting like complete pansies. We finally decided upon a nice, plump little guy, and then the one girl in our group had the nerve to name it, instantly personalizing the process and making us feel about ten times crueler. He was christened “Mao.”

We then indicated to the woman from the restaurant which one we wanted, and she immediately called over the executioner, a rough-looking guy smoking a cigarette, who was apparently just standing there on-call for this exact purpose. We thought they were going to just take Mao out of his cage and do the deed out back so we didn’t have to see it—how wrong we are.

As soon as he opened the cage, the guinea pigs started squealing and whistling like nothing else; they knew exactly what was going on. Our swearing and sounds of disbelief similarly increased in volume, and then it happened: the executioner gripped Mao, wound up, and slammed him into the ground.

 Crack!!

No more squealing.

We were absolutely freaking out; we had no idea it was going to happen like that. For goodness sake, were on a public walking street! There could have been tons of people nearby, including small children, and I don’t think it would have mattered. Then as soon as he did that, he brought Mao over to a small tub of boiling water and started skinning him before our eyes. It was like watching the wreckage from a recent car crash; it was terrible, but we couldn’t take our eyes away.

Eventually, they took what remained of Mao to the back to prepare him for us to eat. Fifteen or so minutes later, the lady emerged with a bowl of broth with chunks of meat and bone floating in it. The five of us (eventually) each snagged a bit with our chopsticks, counted to three, and then took a big bite. I hate to say it, but it actually wasn’t all that bad; similar to chicken but just a bit chewier. Anyways, taste aside this was easily the most shocking, albeit hilarious, experience over here to date; and you know what’s even worse? My friend Vince, as oblivious as the rest of us as to what was about to happen, accidently recorded the execution with his camera; so each time someone asks if they can watch it, we can hear the high-pitched whistling, and then suddenly can’t. Horrifying. All you can really say is T-I-C: This Is China.

We All Read in Characters

When I started learning Chinese, it was with a resignation that learning to read in this language would be much more difficult than learning to read in, say, Spanish, as the Chinese write in characters. Reading in Western languages seems relatively much easier, as they tend to be written phonetically.

I don’t think this is how we read in English though. Consider the following email-forward sensation:

Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

In short, when reading English we don’t read words in the sense that we are sounding letters out as we process them. We just recognize the general shape of a word we had previously memorized; in other words, we read in characters. 


So really, the chasm between reading a phonetic language and reading in characters is not as wide as I initially thought. There still is the problem of coming across unfamiliar characters-- context will often provide the meaning, but characters often give no hints to their pronunciation (with modern technology this isn't as much of an issue, as you can just copy and paste it into an electronic dictionary, or draw it in on the trackpad) Aside from this though, when reading a passage that was written using characters that I have mostly already memorized, I reckon my brain is working in much the same way as when I am reading an English newspaper.

Inside the Hospital

When I asked my suitemate Omar if I could come with him to play soccer with a bunch of Chinese college students, I did not think that decision would result in me spending a couple hours in the hospital down the street, but due to what I think was a torn meniscus in his knee, that is what happened.

First off, I do want to say that I’m sure that most everyone working in the medical field here in Shanghai is very competent and very hard working. Despite the rustic-looking interior and less-than-safe feeling environment one is met with upon entering, I’m sure they do a fine job.

That being said, there were some pretty bizarre aspects to this hospital. First of all, if you want any help from the emergency room, you must pay up front. While this wasn’t a huge inconvenience from Omar (though he did have to hobble across the street to an ATM to pick up cash for an MRI scan), he told me that last time he was there for a checkup, an individual came in carrying one of his hands in a bag, having recently severed it from the rest of his arm; blood was spurting everyone, yet the ER refused to admit him until he paid the fee. Ridiculous.

Second, inside the room where we found the first doctor there was an individual smoking. Now I know China is more liberal about smoking inside in general, but we were in a hospital!! You just wanted to look at him and say, “Are you kidding me??”

Finally, whenever we were told to go to a different location in the building, they wouldn’t tell us how to get there, they would just point in the general direction. So naturally we came to an intersection of halls and we didn’t know which way to go. Turns out we didn’t have to worry though: soon enough, a lady came zooming up on here electric motorcycle-scooter-thing, the kind you see on the road here all the time, and we could ask her for directions. This was inside! In a hospital.

This is certainly another glaring piece of evidence that while China has been growing tremendously these past thirty years, they still have quite a long ways to go. 

A Networking Paradise

It was funny meeting the two high school youth leaders who crashed with Eric and I the first night we were at the youth retreat, before the rest of the kids came. One was from Singapore and one from Hong Kong, though they had lived most of their lives here in Shanghai. I just said hi and left the room soon after they arrived, but my buddy Eric hung out with them for a little awhile. When I came back, he was very excited—over the course of their conversation, he had learned that one of the guys would shortly be joining the Hong Kong national soccer team, and the other had recently scored a cool 2400 on his SAT.

Needless to say I was quite impressed as well, but not altogether surprised. I have to come to understand the Shanghai expat community is sort of a networking paradise; it seems like every other foreigner I meet has an unusually prestigious background. Within my bible study alone, I’ve recently met Oxford, Cambridge, Virginia Tech, and Princeton grads, as well as UC Berkley and Stanford students.  At church and at clubs I’ve had the opportunity to conversate with a few investment bankers and learn about the process of getting involved in the financial world here. When I mentioned this to the youth leader at our church over dinner, that there seemed to be a lot of smarties around here, she gave a very knowing nod. Generally, in order for Westerners to have been enticed enough to up and leave their lives back home and move to China, they must have been offered a pretty amazing opportunity; and usually those kinds of leadership roles are only given to smarties. Consequently, there is a noticeably disproportionate amount of intellectual elites in our church and within the expat community as a whole. Given this, it makes sense that their kids would be pretty talented as well. 

I guess this is another one of those things that I should have anticipated but didn't really. Either way, I know now there will many more opportunities to forge connections while over here, and I'm looking forward to seeking them out. And for my biz and econ friends ... come over! I think you'll like it ;)

Expat Youth Camp

The youth camp we helped out at weekend before last was both exhilarating and exhausting. I believe there were about three hundred expat youth there, from 6^th through 12^th grade. I was there as a counselor for a floor of junior high kids; they were a lot of fun, certainly as immature as preteen and early teenagers should be! A few them actually had a surprisingly mature understanding of the Christian faith though, reflected in some pretty good questions. Our small group times after the main sessions were mostly run by a healthy dose of ADD, but we had a few good discussions in there. It is really cool to see young adolescents be psyched about their faith. These conversations, as well as just noticing them singing out to God passionately during worship, especially considering which nation we were in, was awesome to experience.

While at the camp, we had one of the most powerful worship sessions I have had the chance to be a part of; I’m not sure why God lets us feel his presence in a way that is emotionally overwhelming only from time to time, but I do know that I absolutely love it when it happens. Looking around the auditorium was incredible; youth and staff alike were absolutely abandoned to praising God. Most were singing, some were kneeling, some were praying fervently, by themselves or with friends—the spiritual movement in the atmosphere of the room was palpable.

On a completely different note, the location of this retreat was pretty crazy; the purpose of the campus is to be a training facility for the bank ICBC (huge in Asia), and sort of has the feel of an adult summer camp. It has a restaurant-like dining hall, a good auditorium and large central building, a golf driving range, a bowling alley, tennis courts, and the rooms are all organized into luxurious three story villas, with about four rooms per floor. Each room had a personal living room and bathroom, as well as a balcony, and each floor had a common room and sometimes a small game room; my friend's villa even had it's own karaoke room on the top floor. Through all my experience going to these kinds of retreats, in my youth and on staff, I have come to expect that when I go to a camp, I am going to get dirty, and that’s that. This was quite different. It seemed like this would have to be way too expensive, but given the type of individuals that go this church, it would not surprise me if a high-up executive of ICBC was in the congregation and hooked us up.

Overall it was a great time; certainly another first to check off the bucket list ("Be a counselor at a Christian youth camp for an expat community in China"--it's a very specific list ;) ) and a great opportunity to get more involved with serving in our new church. 

Back from Avatar-Land

I feel like I keep writing something to this effect over and over again, but it is as true this time as it has been before: last week was one of the most fun I’ve had since arriving.

 Here is a quick summary: a few hours after our last class on Friday, my friends Eric, Colby, Vince, and I joined about forty other volunteers for an hour bus ride to a resort-like ICBC bank training facility, which our church and a few others in Shanghai had rented out to hold a youth retreat. We stayed there until early evening on Monday, headed back to our dorm for about a half hour to repack, then set off again for the train station. At a little past nine we rolled out, and the following morning at about nine we arrived at Yellow Mountain (Huangshan) train station; one bus trip and one gondola ride later we found ourselves on the famous, majestic Yellow Mountain, where we stayed pretty much until we returned to Shanghai. It seems like the trip was kind of a collection of experiences so I’ll just sort of write a series of fun/cool/memorable anecdotes. Here is the first!

Last Tuesday at around one in the afternoon, Vince, Colby, and I stepped out of a gondola and into the breathtaking world of Pandora. Ok it wasn’t actually the place where Avatar was filmed, but as we had been told, the scenery here bore a remarkable resemblance to the world created by Avatar director James Cameron. He is actually on record as saying this area, Yellow Mountain, inspired his design of the wilderness of Pandora; upon first site of the rugged, mist-bathed peaks it was easy to tell why.

This place was absolutely unreal. We had seen all kinds of pictures before arriving—and they are quite incredible—but experiencing it within the actual vibrant, majestic columns of rock with all the cool, fresh air and mountain smell was nothing short of ridiculous.

The second day we were there was probably the best; it started at about 4:00 in the morning, where we rose well before the sun to join hundreds and hundreds of our closest Chinese friends to watch the famed Yellow Mountain sunrise. It ended up happening behind some solid cloud cover, unfortunately, but it was still quite a fun experience; in the glow of the dawn, you could watch from our vantage point just a sea of Chinese tourists, all wielding cameras pointing in exactly the same direction. It reminded me of the beginning of a sports match or concert—there was sporadic cheering in response to eccentricities of certain crowd members, and you could feel the anticipation in the air. We also made a couple new friends, including a cool Chinese college kid who actually stuck with us the rest of the day (I’ll write more about him later).

Once it was evident we would not be seeing a magnificent sunrise that day, we made our way to the West Grand Canyon Sea of Clouds (or something like that), where we found some of the coolest, most wild scenery I’ve ever seen. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

This place was absolutely incredible, and I certainly hope I have the opportunity to come back!

(By the way, conveniently enough my camera decided to break during this trip, so all of the photo credits go to the honorable, artsy Vincent Nahn)

Communism? Where?

Before hopping over the Pacific about a month ago, I knew China has been liberalizing its economy for a couple decades now. Full on central planning is out, and it seems the nation is on a tenacious march toward becoming a decidedly market economy, practically not much different then our own. It has been over thirty years since Deng Xiaoping’s call for a transition to a “socialist market economy” was met with widespread enthusiasm.

I knew the government was administering this transition in a slow and deliberative fashion, however, so I still expected to see some remnants of the country’s communist past.

I was wrong. Walking down the streets of Beijing, it quickly became quite clear that there is nothing but capitalism here as far as what meets the eye. The grocery stores, massage parlors, and restaurants are seemingly locked in a fierce competition for our tourist dollars. This first impression was affirmed time and time again during our week in Beijing, and has been further solidified during my stay in Shanghai.

I recently learned two interesting things on this subject:

1.     1) Economic communism is very much alive and active in China, it just occurs underneath the surface. As summarized by economist Stephen Jen:

First, the price of money is controlled: China does not yet have a meaningful yield curve. Interest rates are the prices of money and liquidity, and they are still mostly pre-set. Second, the prices of energy input are subsidised. Third, the price of the currency is distorted. In other words, three of the most important macroeconomic prices in China are controlled.

In other words, the state is still playing an active role in attempting to control their economy; it’s just mostly done in the financial and energy sectors, which despite their crucial importance, are not really seen while walking around on the streets.

2.     2) In 1965, 67.5% of industrial enterprises were state-owned, and the rest were partially state-owned. Now, only 15% of the businesses in China are owned by the state. While this reflects a massive decrease in the amount of economic activity that is done through the government, fifteen percent is still quite a lot. It seems though that this would be better described as socialist activity rather than communist; more sectors, like cell coverage, are under state control. The state isn’t telling anyone what jobs they can or cannot do.

It seems that Deng Xiaoping’s vision of a socialist market economy has come into fruition, and is being practicing as we speak. It will be interesting to see how much of a role the government maintains in the Chinese economy in the long run.

Not Allowed In Church

So here is something that never happens out West.

Last Friday I had about a four-hour lunch with my language partners; they are both Chinese college students from different parts of the country, studying at the same university I am. At some point during the conversation, I mentioned I was going to church on Sunday. They were quite curious about this and asked if they could come along, as they had never been to a church service before. I said of course, and told them to meet us at 3:15 on Sunday.

I was pretty psyched about this, so I mentioned it to my friends Colby and Vincent; they were equally enthusiastic, but told me they had heard that only foreign passport holders were allowed to attend the English service. This sounded ridiculous, that they would actually check some people’s ID at the door of a church, so I asked some of the Shanghai veterans in our new small group about this at a BBQ we had on Sunday before church. They confirmed that it was absolutely illegal for a Chinese citizen to attend an English service at an expat church. Had they ever heard of someone actually getting kicked out of a service? No. But if they came, they would run the risk of getting a permanent mark on their record.

The reason for this is that the government doesn’t censor the English services at all; it seems that as long as we don’t try to start an insurrection or something, we pretty much have free reign to talk about whatever we want. This church does offer services in Chinese as well though, which citizens are allowed to attend, as the sermons are looked over by government officials before they are preached. It seems they don’t censor too much out—the one example that a new friend of ours gave is that they must never mention abortion from the pulpit. Interesting, but given the country we’re in, not surprising.

It turned out one of my new friends couldn’t make it, but when I met up with the other just outside our dorms at 3:15, it was pretty awkward and strange trying to explain that he was not allowed to come inside our church because he was a Chinese citizen. This is a conversation I have never had, nor would like to have again soon. We are going to check out a Chinese service tonight though, so that will be cool. It will be weird that my friends and I, the Christians, won’t understand anything, but my new Chinese friend, the non-Christian, will understand perfectly. We’ll see how it goes!