Not Leaving

One of the more interesting memes I'm picking up over here is that the young people do not want to move to America. 

Back in the day, if you heard that, you'd think that they are just being patriotic, or careful, or resigned to the difficulty of getting a visa.  And there was plenty of evidence that if they really had a shot to go, they'd go in a heatbeat.

But now - I will admit this is mostly second- and third-hand, - the indifference to emigration to the USA sounds pretty genuine.  Why move to America?  Asia, they'd say, is now the land of opportunity.  America has great schools but sad infrastructure and too much unemployment, and hopes at best for three percent growth when China would panic if theirs dropped to six.  The best of America - films and Starbucks, say - is here.  The Internet (a restricted one, although my hunch is not very much in practice) is everwhere.

It could well be talk only.  I think you could look at some statistics to check it - like, how are visa applications running.  You could talk to the graduate students in the USA.   You could poll it - maybe someone has.  But there sure seems to be a shift taking place.

The young people I meet here - and it's mostly young people I see - are friendly, well turned out, and seem... poised.  As if they are not worried about their future.  That's good, right?

Soft Landing

A great old friend asked me if I thought China would have a soft landing.

I am about as far from macroeconomics as an educated person can be, but I am forming a view.  It's through a tiny keyhole - or, maybe a better metaphor, I'm determining what's an elephant by feeling a couple of whiskers on his rear left foot.  But it's my view, after three days on the ground.  For what it's worth.

I'm seeing large, well-run companies that did not exist in 2000 that sell products solely to the China and Asia market.  Old rebuilt and brand new cities - with infrastructures that match ours in the USA - that are filled with polite, friendly people who appear to be working very hard.  An economic system that is guided by a government that seems to know, when it comes to economics, what it is doing.

So I don't know that we are looking at a landing, soft or hard, any time soon.  Unless you call a growth rate that drops to seven percent a year a landing.

I know a little of the history, how China has always followed periods of prosperity with violent turns against the emperor in power.  The weight of its huge population and its limited arable land.  And I'm not naive about its lack of American-style freedom and the toxic byproducts of its development.

But the whiskers are telling me that that there is no landing to come in this generation.

Still Breathing

Well I'm in China.  Bundles to say, but hard to do it.  Blogger is blocked.  This is being posted by going in through my office portal; threading a needle through an Internet buttonhole... or something.  It's late, I'm 14 hours ahead, way late on my sleep, and back into a transformational world.

As a shortcut I'm going to lift from a couple of emails I sent earlier, thinking the blog would have to wait until my return.

China is as I remembered, same smells, same food - but more international, more English language signs and ads, a lot more commercial. Tons of malls with high-end shops.
The flight from Shanghai to Shenzhen was on China Southern, which used to be kind of scary. Now it carries the third-most passengers of any airline in the world, and it was a very respectable flight. The flight was packed, 97 percent Chinese, a decent meal even in coach. The people are well-dressed, polite, and seem comfortable with an American in their midst. They say "excuse me" and "thank you" in English, all of them. Only one other grey-hair on the flight - everyone else, black hair and pretty young. Funny what you notice. On the sidewalks in Shenzhen, lots of people walking dogs.  The dogs seem doggy, unafraid.  Downstairs at my apartment, a Corgi.
 
Shenzhen looks a lot like Hong Kong did in the '90's, only flatter and with no history.  It's huge, 14 million people, lots of very tall buildings, ill-designed roads, clutter.   Not garish, which is how I remember it from before.  A city of migrants - mostly speaking Mandarin, not Cantonese, in the middle of Cantonese-speaking Guangdong province.  About 25 years ago this was a village.

Graphic

Nope, not China.  Mexico, San Miguel de Allende, a couple of years ago.  But it looks kinda Chinese, yes?  What is that?

Shenzhen 3

So I guess the Times is on the hunt, or it's just that I'm noticing their China coverage (more, and especially here) because I'm about to go back.

What I think we need to get to is the ambiguity - the mix of massively good and massively bad.  Brand new and ancient.  International and intensely domestic.  Plural, and the Han people.

Over 90 percent of China, and one in five people on Planet Earth, is Han Chinese.  Not very ambiguous, and maybe not very important.  But it does catch the eye.

Shenzhen 2

There is more to the dark story of Shenzhen than the massive workplaces and the lives of their workers.  There is the fact, persuasively argued in a recent article in the Times, that the system responds at a level that America simply cannot match.

Margin Call Calling

All my stuff about the movie had moved over to my Facebook page, but this one - well, got to scream it out wherever I can.

JC Chandor, our wonderful son-in-law, was just nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

It's all him, and it couldn't happen to a better man.