Existential Shanghai

Opinion
Existential Shanghai
Akhil Sharma, 05.06.10, 01:30 PM EDT
Coming to grips with China's constant change requires looking beyond economic statistics.

The World Expo started in Shanghai on May 1. Seventy million people are expected to visit during the six months that the Expo lasts. This will be Shanghai's coming-out party, the way that the Olympics were for Beijing. Of course, this is leading to the same sort of questions that were asked about Beijing and China during the Olympics. What is the occupancy rate of the office towers in Pudong, the financial district of Shanghai, and to what extent is the economic flourishing of Shanghai mostly smoke and mirrors? Also, even if one were to accept most of the economic statistics about the city, to what extent is its growth based on environmental degradation and financial inequality that makes the growth unsustainable?

These questions are important. They are necessary aspects of judging whether a government is meeting its promises. These are not the questions that interest me. These questions are primarily concerned with what things exist instead of how the things that exist are experienced.

First things first: It is important to acknowledge that Shanghai, contemporary Shanghai, the Jetsons Shanghai that one sees on television today, came about as a result of the Tiananmen Square massacre. After Tiananmen Square there were massive marches and protests in Hong Kong. When these protests occurred the Chinese government in Beijing suddenly realized that it had been encouraging growth primarily in the south, setting up Special Economic Zones just across the border from Hong Kong. Even today, when we think of China's factory towns, this is the region that we are thinking of.

Once the government realized that democracy could spill over from Hong Kong into these factory towns, it started encouraging economic development elsewhere. Shanghai began receiving special loans and grants. Shanghai was going to be what the Chinese government called "the dragon's head." In less poetic terms this meant that Shanghai was going to be a domesticated Hong Kong.

I was in Hong Kong recently. I had just been to Shanghai to see some of the World Expo sites and was spending a few days in Hong Kong, and questions of what economic development means were much in my head. I was staying at the Peninsula Hotel, which is one of the great dowager hotels of Asia. Among the things that the Peninsula Hotel is famous for is its high tea. Much of a very large lobby is given over to tables for people wanting to have high tea. And yet, every time I walked through the lobby in the afternoon, there was a long winding line of people waiting for tables. I asked someone who worked at the Peninsula what portion of the high-tea guests were from mainland China. "Probably a majority," he said.

I then talked to a young man waiting with his wife for a table. I asked him why he was there. He told me that all tourists come to the Peninsula, that having high tea there is glamorous, that the glamour comes from belonging to history, doing what other people have done before.

This desire to belong to history, to belong to something greater, is something that I have often noticed in China. Nationalism, and the Chinese are not short on this, is, after all, just one aspect of the desire to belong to something greater than oneself.

Later I met an acquaintance, a Chinese national, at a bar in the Mandarin Oriental. My acquaintance is gimlet-eyed, a broker, someone who makes his money in very unsentimental ways. He likes to spend as much time as possible in Hong Kong, and when I asked why, he waxed sentimental. "China has many shameful things happening. We who get to travel are aware of this. We want to be part of a place that is not as shameful. It makes us feel better." It was night, my gray-haired friend was drinking his scotch slowly as Kowloon Bay lay over his shoulder. "I want to think that some part of the world values good things. If good things are valued, then the best parts of me are also valued."

The thing to remember while considering Shanghai and China is that while there is an economic reality, there is also an existential one. In the same way that to look at economic statistics and not ask existential questions is a mistake, it is also possible to look at China's impact on its neighbors in existential terms instead of merely economic ones.

Until recently Hong Kong did not have much of an architecture conservation movement. A building goes up, a building comes down. Change, along with money, defined Hong Kong's identity. Hong Kong residents said: Money requires change. They said: We have to be practical.

Now that the Chinese government is trying to make Shanghai China's financial center, opportunities to get wealthy in Hong Kong are diminishing. This is causing Hong Kong residents to revalue certain things they had ignored.

Lately, there has been a burgeoning architectural conservation movement in Hong Kong. When two colonial-era piers were being torn down, protesters chained themselves to the piers and displayed posters painted in their own blood. A recent tunnel project that would lead to the demolishing of a village has caused young people who have never cared about conservation to join in the protests.

Taking note of the existential impact of things is not just a way of seeing the world in a more complicated way. It is also a way of feeling more deeply and taking greater pleasure in life.

When I flew out of Hong Kong to my home in New York, I spent about half an hour in the Cathay Pacific corporate museum while waiting for my flight. The museum is next to the Hong Kong International Airport. Cathay was founded in Hong Kong, and there were photos of the rickety plane that had been the first Cathay Pacific airplane. There were replicas of the different types of seats that the various Cathay planes have had. What was lovely, though, was seeing how Cathay's planes got larger as Hong Kong became larger. To see a photo of a small airplane flying over palm trees and then a much larger one over apartment buildings was to see history unfolding. Seeing these photos made bland buildings meaningful and gave the planes a purpose greater than that of ferrying people around.

Change comes. Of course it comes. To focus on statistics, though, is to choose to read music instead of listening to it.

To: bruinbirdman
what extent is the economic flourishing of Shanghai mostly smoke and mirrors?

I live in Shanghai half my life (one month there, one month in the Seattle, WA area), and from what I've seen over the last 5 years, not a whole heck of a lot of smoke and mirrors. This city runs on cash. You buy your house or apartment with cash. You buy your car with cash. You buy everything with cash. And if you do use a credit card (probably Peony or UnionPay; MasterCard and Visa are rarely taken) you pay it off at the end of the month.

There's a lot of growth here, but 90% of it is paid for up-front with cash. It's not a bubble like we saw in the 2000s in the US. You have strict requirements to even qualify for a mortgage if you choose to go that route (like 40% or more down payments required).

What IS interesting is the taxation. NO ONE pays income tax, if you're smart. You just don't pay. Why? There is no functional IRS or even a functional system to report and pay. Your employer pays the employee tax (social security and medical plan), and that's it. NO ONE pays income tax except paranoid foreigners (ben dan lao wai). As a result, income that is earned is kept with the person.

China's not like the China we often think, especially Shanghai. Get rid of the 40 million Chinese who live in and around Shanghai, change the words from Chinese to French or German, and you'd think you were in some European city, not China.
2 posted on Wednesday, May 12, 2010 9:06:41 AM by PugetSoundSoldier (Indignation over the Sting of Truth is the defense of the indefensible)
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To: PugetSoundSoldier
RE :”China's not like the China we often think, especially Shanghai. Get rid of the 40 million Chinese who live in and around Shanghai, change the words from Chinese to French or German, and you'd think you were in some European city, not China.”

Thanks for the info. I dated a girl from China and the Chinese are very conservative, two opposite sex parent families(like our grandparents) , savings, take care of parents, hard work, education...

Shanghai once was a European City as shown in the 1980s classic movie Empire in the Sun. I also saw a documentary showing how many European Jews fleeing Hitler settled there. They all had to leave there ~ 1948 with Mao and the communist revolution but apparently left a business culture.
3 posted on Wednesday, May 12, 2010 9:46:18 AM by sickoflibs ( "It's not the taxes, the redistribution is the federal spending=tax delayed")