This is China! blog

A British neighbor sent me a text this morning that read: “Suicide at our courtyard .. Girl jumped from the building.”

My wife sketched in some of the details for me when I returned home today from work: a young man and young woman argued ferociously on the patio of an apartment owned by the woman’s parents. They were boyfriend and girlfriend. The woman jumped from the 18th floor to her death. From our building.

The tragedy reminds me of an instance a couple years before when I called the police in Suzhou to adjudicate a dispute I was having with a taxi driver who was supposed to drive me from Shanghai to Suzhou without a one-hour detour into the Kunshan countryside the near-side of midnight. I was refusing to pay the full fare because of the detour. The police officer said, “Is that all this is? I’ve got a girl who’s slit her wrists and is threatening to jump off a high-rise.” He jumped in his car and sped off as another cruiser rolled up.

This happens all too often in China. Young people threatening or following through with suicides. Yes, it’s a difficult, confusing time for Chinese society. But there’s also a sense that many of the young people in the cities have not been equipped to deal with the disappointments and disagreements that are a part of life no matter where in the world one lives.

Unfortunately, the  25-year old woman who jumped to her death from my apartment building will never know more of this world and all it has to offer. And her parents now know only grief.

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image credit: thechive.com

Of course, being a new parent makes one sensitive to the issues confronting other parents of infants: who’s child is bigger; who’s is showing some glimmer of intelligence; who’s are droolers? My wife told me last evening while we were comparing children in the courtyard in which we live she had seen reports on local Suzhou and national (CCTV) news shows that the number of fetuses diagnosed and infants born with disabilities in China had increased dramatically in the last five years. She reminded me that during visits to children’s hospitals in both Suzhou and Shanghai that doctors she had talked with had been astonished by the number of disabilities related to disfigured limbs this year compared to the year before. The reports and the doctors attribute the rapid increase in cases of disfigurement, malformation and retardation to increased pollution rates in the environment overall, as well as the chemicals used in the decoration of the interior of new flats: owners buy empty concrete shells that need to be finished with electricals, plumbing, sealings, painting and rest, usually with highly toxic chemicals.

The news items put me in mind of a BBC report from three years ago about how the World Bank cut from its own report on the economic impact of China’s pollution on its citizens its estimates of pollution-related death-rates:

High levels of air pollution in China’s cities leads to 350,000-400,000 premature deaths, it said. Another 300,000 die because of poor-quality air indoors.

Given our child was conceived and birthed here in China, we consider ourselves one of the lucky ones. Sadly, as we are increasingly witnessing in China’s hospitals, not every family is as fortunate.

Technorati Tags: china, expat life, social trends, urban development trends

Image Credit: zimbio.com

An American neighbor in my apartment complex recently told me how she has removed her daughter from the Suzhou Singapore International School (SSIS) because a large swathe of the student body has become militantly insular. “Only two Korean mothers showed up at a PTA [Parent Teacher Association] meeting. One of the topics under discussion was how to get the Korean students more involved with the rest of the student body. One of the Korean mothers offered,

‘Koreans don’t want to get involved with the other students.’” Koreans now make up about half the student body at SSIS, up from 30% in pre-economic downturn times. Most if not all the Korean students have followed their fathers to Suzhou, where the fathers work for large Korean companies.South Korea’s economy, like China’s own, suffered a downturn of only a few months during the global economic downturn of 2008-2009. Korean companies returned to the Yangtze Delta region with a vengeance. Nevertheless, the Korean students apparently prefer remaining in their tight clique, and don’t seem to have much use for the richness the international setting at the school offers. Also, the American neighbor offered, the children will inevitably return to South Korean schools, where they may well meet bullying if they are too different from the children who did not travel outside the country. The mother felt the education at SSIS was less and less “international” and was catering more and more to Korean predilections.

The same American mother told me the final straw that forced her to move her child to another international school in Suzhou came when her twelve year old daughter bought an attractive file folder from one of the male Korean students. He had assured her the folder could only be found in South Korea, and was worth two hundred yuan. The young girl bargained the fellow down to one hundred yuan. The next day they made the exchange, whereupon the Korean boy extracted several more of the file folders from his back pack and told her he had bought them at a local hyper-market in Suzhou for a fraction of the price he had just charged her. He then used the 100 yuan to buy sweets for his Korean buddies, which all of them ate in front of the girl while laughing at her. “The experience turned all her expectations for working toward a win-win agreement with people on its head. She was really upset,” her mother explained.

But then again, they didn’t used to call Korea before its schism “The Hermit Kingdom” for no reason.

Image Credit: Dante's Purgatorio

A couple of weeks ago at a dinner party with Chinese and expat friends talk turned to the difficulties expats seem to be having renewing their work permits. The topic came up after I’d asked how the visa process was going for a German friend moving to Suzhou from Nanjing. She believed renewal would be easier if she moved to another city in China than if she stayed in Nanjing to pursue another job offer: Nanjing authorities were asking for an unprecedented level of detail about her past working record in Nanjing than she had ever recalled. She’s lived in Nanjing nearly eight years.

A local American small business owner based in Suzhou seconded my Nanjing friend’s observation: he was having more difficulty than ever before in the four years he’s been in business in Suzhou in bringing onboard three other Americans in business support positions. His feeling was that it was not just foreign workers the central and local governments were targeting, but foreign employers, as well. Though he was no Microsoft or GE or Siemens, he definitely felt his business was being treated in ways it hadn’t been before the Great Recessison.

The consensus at the end of the meal was that foreigners increasingly needed to present themselves as not only indispensable to a China business, but also have a title that reflected a relatively high position in the organization. And that despite the central government’s assurances to the contrary, foreign companies in particular were in regulatory purgatory.

Further reading: FT, Bloomberg

A few days ago I was pushing my son in his stroller with my wife alongside in the courtyard of the apartment complex in which we live. A group of middle-aged Chinese women sat on the round cement walls embracing trees a meter half a meter from the ground. They all had small children gathered round them; or rather, infants, for none of the children seemed to be more than a few months old. The women were either mothers-in-law charged with caring for their grandchildren or aiyi’s (service staff) families had hired to help out around their homes. One of the women called out to my wife and I in Chinese, “Oh, there’s Little Mixed-Blood.” (xiao hun xue) It was one of the mothers-in-law, smiling back beatifically. The other women cooed and gathered round the carriage.

“Did she just call my son Little Mixed-Blood?” I asked my wife. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to be offended. It sounded to my ears so, well, racist.

“Yes,” my wife answered matter-of-factly. She looked at my face, which I knew I had scrunched up like foam ball in a puppy’s mouth.”It’s actually a term of endearment,” she said sweetly. My wife, Chinese herself, basked in the attention her our son was receiving from the neighbors.

I suppose it makes sense in a society in which the gene pool is extraordinarily deep and simultaneously narrow that little boy should already be tagged as different. Difference, of course, can be both a badge of honor and a curse. In this instance, it seems rather more an honor. For the most part mixed-blood children are considered of above intelligence and ability and even good looks. Chinese who find out the partners of Chinese marriage couples are from separate parts of China become quite excited about mixing the gene pool. For instance, if a Beijinger marries someone from Sichuan, that’s a good thing, as the differences will make for a brighter child, goes the thinking.

Oddly, most Chinese parents seem against their child getting together with someone from another region or, especially, another country; however, nine times out of ten, they seem overjoyed at the living, breathing result: a child that is a true bridge between cultures.

Maybe despite their pride in their homogeneity, Chinese are actually deep down know they should shake up the gene pool now and then.

Every so often I host a guest blogger with experiences and observations of his or her own in China. From time to time I’ll be hosting the writings of a friend of mine, an American General Manager (GM) who manages businesses in the Shanghai and Suzhou municipalities.

I’ll call him GM X…

The Inmates are Running the Asylum

Or so it would seem to be the case here in China these days. It’s well known that the recent increase in demand from the micro-recovery of the economy and the nationwide labor shortage have cause prices to skyrocket and leads times to lengthen but this stops short of explaining the changes that I am seeing throughout China. There is a general lack of willingness that I have not previously experienced.

I’m a bit annoyed as a Science Fiction fan the film “Inception” has not yet appeared on local theater screens here in China. I write in The Diplomat…

“I haven’t seen Aftershock, nor have I any intention of seeing it since it just seems like a bigger budget version of the kind of thing they show so often on Chinese TV in which earthquake/flood/typhoon (take your pick) demolishes a happy Chinese town (which seems a bit of an oxymoron in these days), after which the People’s Liberation Army marches in and picks up the pieces (literally). Actually, I only have to turn on the nightly news here to see the PLA march in to save the day after a flood/mudslide/drought/typhoon/earthquake has decimated a region.”

Read more …

A recent round of banquets with local government officials inspired me to post a blog on The Diplomat:

One of my colleagues refers to the endless rounds of saucy dishes served at government banquets and countless rounds of toasts as ‘speed dating’. The idea at these meetings between government officials who want to entice investors into their region and these potential investors is to bond as quickly as possible by making one’s body as uncomfortable from over-consumption as possible. Hosts call out to banquet guests ‘gan bei!’ (empty glass), with toasts between two people more like races to the bottom of the glass. As one government official in the Shandong Province coastal city of Yantai once put it to me, ‘I am ruining my health for our relationship.’

Check out the rest of the article here.

Image credit: Cultural China

Over at The Diplomat I’ve a post on the innovative ways in which local Suzhou DVD shop owners are honoring China’s national pledges to protect Intellectual and Creative Property Rights.

The sale of domestic DVDs is lightly regulated in mainland China, so illicit copies of films by Zhou Ren Fa (Chow Yun Fat), Anthony Tse, Zhao Wei and the two Bing Bings (Li and Fang) are de rigueur in such shops. So are Japanese and South Korean films, and especially South Korean soap operas, which are hugely popular in China (rich boy meets not-as-rich-girl, tries to catch girl, who demurs for many episodes, eventually feeling great affection for the young man whereupon the girl announces she’s going to die—which she does, slowly and painfully and to a flood of tears. Not mine, of course). Chinese local governments don’t much mind if their neighbours’ stuff gets ripped off.

Read the article here. Always a revelation around nearly every corner!

Image credit: France24.com

The China expat website eChinaCities recently interviewed me on how difficult it was for foreigners to set up and run a business legally in China. I’ve been doing it for years here in China, without having paid graft or taken kickbacks or making shady side deals with government officials. Part of the reason for that is I don’t have the time or patience to mess around with these kind of relationships: the times during which I’ve indulged someone through guanxi, I’ve regretted it. So I now rationalize even that very Chinese way of doing business. Also, though, it helps our business is based in the Suzhou Industrial Park, which has a very strong influence from the Singaporean government. The Singaporean government itself is based on the colonial British model of efficiency in government affairs.

Shanghai has improved greatly in the manner in which it treats foreign investors; however, the brand corporations with deep pockets of course receive much greater assistance in wending through the maze of policies, regulations and bureaus than do tiny companies. Outside the close orbit of Shanghai, though, and setting up and managing companies requires far greater due diligence of the area, its regulations, and the departments that affect the investment. Localities throughout China are notoriously parochial, so new enterprises need to spend extra attention on the relationships that will supposedly facilitate approvals and audits. The relationships can cut both ways, with locals’ expectations for the business way out of wack with the Westerners’. The further away from Shanghai foreign investors venture, the further back in time the enterprise travels, back to where the rule of man is far more important than the rule of law.

And always have an exit strategy. Local governments that believe themselves the only game in town for a foreign investor inevitably become sloppy and demanding. Companies need to be sure they know how they will extricate their project from a location with minimal damage to the image and bottom line of the mother company. Though China has become a more straight-forward environment in which to do business, the shifting tides of domestic interest in foreign adventures in China is on the wane, depending on the industry. Experienced local governments that support “pillar” industries like automotive, renewable and clean energy, and aerospace will facilitate approvals and business transactions for investors; whereas foreign invested companies that want to set up in discouraged industries like textiles and toys will find a gauntlet of unpleasant restrictions with which to deal; in which case, China may not even be the right place for the enterprise.

Read the article.

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