The Old Protestant Cemetery in Macau

Quite beautiful, even in winter, and sad - or maybe wistful.  18th and 19th century British and Americans, many young sailors and missionaries, left behind in a Portuguese/Roman Catholic settlement, in a Chinese world.

There is an agitated, crowded buzz in Macau.  But not here.

Leaving China

In rereading these past few posts I am mostly struck by how unqualified I am to say anything intelligent about China.  Whiskers on the back leg of an elephant seems about right.

It's just too big and I don't speak the language.

What I think I know is that we've all been right for a long time - the 21st century will have a lot more to do with China than the 20th century did.  And now that I'm back, I feel a little more qualified to talk, not about China, but what I hear about China in America.

In particular, what I seem to hear a lot is that China is a threat, or at least a challenge.  That we need to take back what we've lost.  That - if this pathetic-sounding dialogue coming out of the Presidential campaign is any indication - America is still the Greatest Place in the World and those crummy Asian countries will always be second place.

America is a great place and I am really glad to be home.  But I think this We're Number One stuff is pretty tiresome.  Yeah we are - it's a pretty hard thing to argue with that, even now - but so what?  What is the point of self-congratulation?  Me, I'm for staying in the flow, keeping busy, ignoring rank.

There is a sequence to things, and I still like the idea that America is Greece to China's Rome.  Maybe that's the book I will never write.  But to the extent that one followed the other -  or succeeded the other - or beat the other...I hope that's obsolete.  I think, can't prove, that we and China could be partners on the way to a future together, with much of the rest of the world, all of them bringing history and energy to a larger whole.

Leaving Hangzhou

The mechanics of posting are such that I can't stretch out and talk about all this with the usual Strays POV, at least not yet.

But today's nugget starts with the high-speed train.  From an old, China-style station in Hangzhou, with that standard China approach to queuing up  - a huge flock of people trying to squeeze through one portal at once, cutting each other off without mercy - out onto a platform and into a train that is science fiction.  The Beijing-Shanghai Express.  It glides, mostly at 300 km/hr.  Three stops, I'm in Changzhou.

Out the windows... not just office buildings and high-rise apartments and factories, although they are all over the landscape.  But also housing developments, with single houses and duplexes, front and back lawns.

Later, in Changzhou, at a huge shopping mall that opened a month ago.  And among the Tommy Helfingers and Starbucks and Dairy Queens and yet another KFC - a nice Thai restaurant.  Packed with young people.

What happened to America's middle class?  It's here.

Leaving Shenzhen

This was the shank of the trip.  Below, just a glimpse of what downtown Shenzhen looks like.  The photo taken from another office tower in the city - there are scores of them.  Across the river, Hong Kong's New Territories, at the center of why Britain handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997.

Not far away, Hong Kong and Macau, the two ancient Western outposts in Asia, now part of China but very separately administered, even down to their own currencies.

I am leaving here with a lot to think about.  One piece of it is how to help young Chinese and young Americans work together in this still-young century.

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.