across the border

Paula recently discovered that, as Hong Kong residents, we could apply for a card that would give us unlimited access to mainland China without having to carry any other form of identification, including a passport. Of course, we still need our Hong Kong ID cards to exit and re-enter Hong Kong.

A few days ago, we visited Shenzhen for the second time under this system. On both occasions, we’ve caught a bus on Sha Tau Kok Road, a five-minute walk from our house, which terminates at Heung Yuen Wai Port. On our first visit, we simply took the Shenzhen Metro to Lo Wu, the northern terminus of the MTR’s East Rail Line, which is just two stops from Fanling. However, on our second visit we wanted to start exploring, which is what we did. While there, I took quite a few photos, which I present here, with occasional comments.

I couldn’t resist taking the first photo, which shows Burger King and McDonald’s next door to each other, immediately upon exiting the Heung Yuen Wai immigration centre:

I was surprised to see two competing brands set up so close to each other.

We then took the Metro, just four stops to Grand Theater, one of the few stations on what is now an extensive network with an English name. Incidentally, because we are both over 65, we get to travel free on the Shenzhen Metro. All we need to do is show our Hong Kong Octopus cards, which include a photo ID, to a member of staff who is manning a separate entrance gate for seniors.

We didn’t see any signs of a theatre when we reached street level, but I was immediately impressed by this pointy skyscraper behind what appears to be a residential block:

I took the next photo partly because of the cotton tree (these trees have been flowering profusely in Hong Kong this year), although the building immediately behind does look interesting:

I took this photo because of the red projection on the side nearest the camera of what appears to be an office building:

I can’t help wondering what lies behind the blue windows.

And this is a hotel:

Quite a posh one too, I would guess.

Another odd-looking building, with the projecting bits near the top:

The main buiding in the next photo appears to be an upmarket residential block, but I took the photo because of the building closer to the camera, which appears to have had one of its upper corners broken off:

The next photo shows what I conjecture is a high-speed train, given the obvious streamlining:

I didn’t do a good job when taking the next photo. The object in the foreground appears to be some kind of avian creature, but I would like to have captured more of the building in the background (I cropped off quite a large area of featureless concrete at the bottom, and I would like to have captured more of the building in the background, the face of which is much more extensive than you can see here):

I’ve no idea what this artwork represents, but I had to take a photo:

By this time, we’d reached another Metro station, but before we headed home we thought we might as well walk around a little more. We’d spotted what appeared to be a traditional Chinese building in the distance:

As you can see, there appears to be quite a lot of construction taking place here, and what we’d thought was a traditional building is probably a modern shopping mall, judging by the McDonald’s sign on the roof.

This is a view of the same building from a different side:

The intended subject of the next photo is the tradional Chinese bell, but I had to include the building in the background because of the unusual shape of its windows:

And then we boarded a Metro train to Lo Wu. However, we needed something to eat before heading home, and we opted for a Chinese restaurant in a nearby hotel. This is the view from the restaurant that we enjoyed while eating:

After we had enjoyed our lunch, we went through immigration again and caught a train to Fanling. I’ve no idea where we will go the next time we cross the border, but the general plan is to take the Metro to a random station and simply walk around, much as we did on this occasion.

an echo of farming

When the ‘closed area’ status of the area northwest of Fanling was rescinded at the beginning of 2013, it was easy for Paula and I to check out the cycling potential, because we were already aware of warning signs on the Drainage Services Department’s access roads that run north alongside the Shek Sheung River from the last bridge before the river flows across the border into China. There is also a road that branches off Ho Sheung Heung Road about 20 metres from the bridge, and in earlier exploration of the area, I’d come across the same warning sign on this road 100–150 metres from the junction.

What we found was a quiet road with almost no traffic. It doesn’t go anywhere near the actual frontier—there is a wide area of fish ponds between it and the border—but we always refer to it as ‘the frontier road’ nevertheless. From a cycling perspective, there was only one drawback: the western end of the road joins Lok Ma Chau Road, which leads to a major crossing point into China and carried a lot of fast-moving traffic, so a ride along the frontier road was an out-and-back excursion that, at less than 30km, was unsatisfactory.

Things began to change in the area about two years ago, when work started on a science park, a joint venture between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, around the Lok Ma Chau Loop, an incised meander in the local river at the western end of the road. This location had been a long-running bone of contention between China and Britain since the signing of the 1898 lease for the New Territories—the British had insisted on including the area inside the meander as part of the leased territory, and now that China is calling all the shots, I suspect that the Hong Kong government has been strongarmed into accepting the joint venture even though the territory already has a large science park between Shatin and Taipo, which is a far more convenient location for such a facility.

This development has meant that large numbers of fully laden eight- and ten-wheeler tipper trucks have been using the frontier road, which was never built to handle such behemoths. The inevitable result has been extensive damage to the road surface, with huge numbers of potholes, which led me to decide last year that the frontier road was ‘off limits’. However, the frontier road has always been one of Paula’s favourite rides, and she cycled along it by herself when I was otherwise occupied; she reported that most of the road had been resurfaced, so it’s now back on the itinerary.

And Lok Ma Chau Road is currently a viable option because the border crossing point that I referred to above has been closed since the start of the pandemic, so the traffic is currently quite light. Consequently, the frontier road has become our preferred option whenever we cycle ‘out west’. Even though there is a new cycle track connecting Sheung Shui and Yuen Long, it is extremely disjointed along the section that the frontier road replaces, and construction of the Kwu Tung New Development Area, which is similar in concept to the disruptive construction in my own neighbourhood, has made matters far worse.

Anyway, when we started using the frontier road option again, I couldn’t help but notice a gaily painted building next to the only junction with another road (Ma Tso Lung Road) along the entire frontier road:

It was also thronged with people, and when I checked Google Maps, I discovered not only that it was identified as an ‘ecological park’ but also that it had attracted more than 100 reviews. There is nothing remotely ‘ecological’ about this site, but I concluded long ago that most people think that the word is somehow synonymous with ‘environmental’, which it isn’t. It apparently functioned as a café, and it had an area where people could pitch tents. I wasn’t interested in either option.

However, I did notice the paintings on the wall, and I resolved to stop sometime to take a few photos. And in recent weeks, the site has been closed, presumably because of the pandemic restrictions, so I did stop last week, when cycling by myself, to do just that. This is a closer view of the wall you can see in the previous photo:

The Chinese script reads ‘Ma Tso Lung’, which is the name of the village a short distance up the side road from this location. And I don’t think that this site qualifies as part of the village! The characters in coloured boxes read ‘nam uk tsai’ (tsai is a diminutive, and uk means ‘house’, but taken together they probably mean ‘hut’; nam simply means ‘south’, which puzzles me, because this hut is north of Ma Tso Lung).

This is a closer view of the panel on the right:

I did wonder what this site was like in the past, and it so happens that I shot a video of the frontier road three years ago, and this is a still from that video:

A lot of trees appear to have been cut down here, which isn’t exactly environmentally friendly!

This is a view of the side of the hut facing the road:

I couldn’t get far enough away to capture the entire wall in a single shot.

It’s worth taking a closer look at these images. This rather plaintive ox always caught my attention whenever I cycled past:

The job of this beast will have been to pull a plough.

The bench is real, but the backrest is part of the painting:

The wall of high-rise buildings in the background is Shenzhen, which is an impressive sight as you cycle along the frontier road. Mind you, this isn’t a particularly realistic representation; there are actually quite a few buildings that I would describe as futuristic, even from a distance.

The next photo is particularly interesting because it includes a poetic lament. Farmers are contemplating another disastrous flood and hoping that kind people from outside the area will help them:

This image makes me wonder whether the area was once extensively farmed, and the conversion to fish ponds was a sensible option given the unreliability of the weather. Nowadays, the only place under conventional cultivation is around the village of Lok Ma Chau, at the western end of the frontier road. Incidentally, I’ve never seen geese anywhere in Hong Kong, so whether this wall is an accurate representation of what the area was once like or merely the artist’s imagination running wild I cannot say.

Here are two photos of the far side of the hut:

This is altogether more fanciful, which I surmise is because it is the work of a different artist.

There is a small pond on the opposite (south) side of the road just before it reaches the painted hut, and this is another still from the video I referenced above:

You will notice that there is nothing substantial between the road and the pond, but since I shot the video, a low wall has appeared here:

Two things to note: all the buildings around the pond that you can see in the video have been demolished; and the wall has been painted in what I would describe as a frieze that changes every 3–4 metres. The following photos show the frieze in more detail:

I think it unlikely that any more artwork will be added to the main building, but the remainder of the concrete wall surrounding the pond may be painted in due course. If you want to see this site, the best way to reach it is by bicycle. I don’t advise driving there, especially if you’re not used to driving on single-track roads—and parking in the area is very limited. However, there is a minibus service to Ma Tso Lung and another to the village of Liu Pok, both of which involve just a short walk (downhill) along Ma Tso Lung Road. Unfortunately, I’ve no idea where in Sheung Shui they start—presumably close to the MTR station—or how frequently the service runs.

boom! boom!

When I heard news, a few days ago, of the explosions in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, I was immediately reminded of a similar incident that took place in West, Texas, a little more than two years ago, in April 2013. Both involved residential areas being located far too close to facilities where dangerous chemicals were being stored, and in both cases a disproportionate number of those killed were firefighters. In neither case did these men have any idea what they were up against.

In the US incident, more than 245,000 kilograms of ammonium nitrate exploded while the fire crews were responding to a small fire that had broken out at the storage facility, yet nobody had thought to warn them in advance that this highly explosive material was there. Nobody—other than the company that owned the facility—knew it was there.

The identity of the chemicals that exploded in Tianjin is much less certain, although it almost certainly included an accelerant (oxidizing agent) like ammonium nitrate. The purported presence of sodium cyanide may just have been the kind of scare story that inevitably spreads around whenever there is a shortage of hard information, although a British chemical expert who appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today program did suggest that sodium metal was present. I think we can discount this hypothesis, because sodium does not occur as a metal in nature, and as far as I can tell the only use for this element is to have tiny slivers dropped into large tanks of water by chemistry teachers to demonstrate to their pupils the violent reaction that occurs. This would not justify storing enough of the metal to cause the explosions.

Perhaps the most realistic assessment of the chemicals involved that I’ve seen is a combination of calcium carbide, potassium nitrate (saltpetre) and ammonium nitrate. Calcium carbide, when mixed with water, produces the highly flammable gas acetylene, while the other two are both powerful accelerants (saltpetre was used in the original Chinese recipe for gunpowder) as well as being used as fertilizers. A ready supply of oxygen to feed an incipient fire is obviously a recipe for disaster.

However, the most striking similarity between the two incidents is not the presence of accelerants but the secrecy involved. Nobody but the employees of the West Fertilizer Company knew that a huge quantity of ammonium nitrate was being stored on the firm’s premises, while nobody will admit to knowing precisely what was being stored in the warehouse in Tianjin. The juxtaposition is striking: defenders of the American company would probably cite commercial confidentiality, while the Chinese Communist Party will probably invoke state secrecy laws if anyone has the temerity to probe too deeply. In other words, despite the ideological competition between the ‘land of the free’ and the ‘middle kingdom’, politicians in both countries couldn’t care less about ordinary citizens.

democracy, chinese style

Last Sunday, a new chief executive was elected who will be in charge of running the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) for the next five years. Note that I did not write ‘Hong Kong elected a new chief executive’: the choice was made by a 1,200-strong committee in what local critics described as a ‘small-circle election’.

There were three candidates: until he resigned to run in this election, as he was required to do, Henry Tang was the chief secretary for administration, second in the government hierarchy, while Leung Chun-ying was formerly convenor of non-official members of the territory’s executive council. Both could therefore be regarded as ‘establishment’ figures. Although Tang had the support of leading businessmen, the territory’s media had long been unimpressed by his intellectual ability, hence his sobriquet of ‘the pig’. Leung, on the other hand, was suspected of left-wing sentiments and if elected was expected to initiate measures to reduce the wealth gap between rich and poor. ‘The wolf’, as he was labelled, was even alleged to be a secret member of the Communist Party. Albert Ho, chairman of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party and a legislative councillor, was the third candidate, although he entered the contest with no hope of winning and took part merely to highlight the farcical nature of this so-called ‘election’.

The election committee included property tycoons, business and financial leaders, trade union representatives, politicians, and academics; what it did not include was ordinary members of the public. Given that China has had no experience of democracy throughout its long history, I suspect that the leadership in Beijing imagined that the rest of the world would see this pantomime as democratic and fail to notice that it was little more than an elaborate means of appointing the next man in charge.

If this was the plan, it backfired spectacularly. The election turned out to be more of a contest than the central government had bargained for. Tang was widely regarded as the central government’s choice—his father had been a wealthy Shanghai businessman with connections to former Chinese president Jiang Zemin—but he could not have done a better job of torpedoing his chances if he had actually been trying to do so. First, there was the revelation of an extramarital affair; Tang offered a grovelling public apology but resolutely refused to withdraw his candidacy amid reports that his wife was ‘standing by him’. Tang’s wife was called upon to bail him out again when the local press reported on a 2,000-square-foot basement at his luxury home in an upmarket district of Kowloon that had been constructed without planning permission. This was passed off implausibly as an oversight by Mrs Tang, but the story didn’t go down too well with the Hong Kong public, many of whom live in a small fraction of this space.

Although Leung had the odd skeleton in his own closet—a possible conflict of interest in a design competition ten years ago for which he was a judge being the most striking—it slowly became apparent that he was gaining ground at Tang’s expense. The story about his illegal basement had made it obvious to all but Tang himself that here was someone with no integrity who was desperate to win at all costs. We were therefore treated to the innuendo surrounding a dinner attended by members of Leung’s campaign team and the Heung Yee Kuk, a pressure group representing indigenous New Territories villagers that had votes on the election committee. Allegedly, the dinner was also attended by a businessman with suspected links to a local triad society, but no corroborating evidence was forthcoming.

Finally, in a televised debate, in order to show Leung up ‘for what he is’, Tang claimed that in an executive council meeting, Leung had advocated the deployment of riot police and the use of tear gas to deal with massive demonstrations in July 2003 against Article 23 of the Basic Law, which empowers Hong Kong to pass ‘national security’ legislation. This turned out to be yet another tactical mistake, partly because no one else who was present at the meeting could recall this conversation, and partly because in making this claim Tang was breaching a confidentiality protocol that is in place to encourage council members to speak freely when offering advice.

As election day approached, it was widely believed that Leung had become the central government’s preferred candidate; there were widespread rumours that officials from the central government’s local liaison office were lobbying election committee members on Leung’s behalf, prompting Albert Ho to complain that they were undermining the ‘one country, two systems’ principle. It should be pointed out here that ‘one country, two systems’ is not a principle, merely a catchphrase, something the Chinese government has always been good at coining. I half expected someone to trot out that other 1980s favourite, ‘maintaining the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong’, but this slogan seems to have been superseded by ‘maintaining Hong Kong’s core values’, whatever they are, since the 1997 handover.

In order to stand in this election, a candidate had needed the nominations of at least 150 members of the election committee. Although Tang had attracted the most nominations, in the election itself almost half of those who had endorsed his candidacy subsequently abandoned him. The final result was 689–285 in favour of Leung. More than a hundred electors either abstained or cast a blank ballot. Meanwhile, in an unofficial parallel poll organized by Hong Kong University for members of the public, more than one-third of participants also cast blank ballots, even though they had to stand in line for quite some time for the privilege of doing so.

One should be careful not to read too much into this result, although it probably mirrors the rivalry within the Chinese Communist Party between conservatives and reformers, a contest that the reformers are certain to win eventually. Of more interest is the parallel with politics and politicians in the West. It is difficult to avoid the impression that all three candidates in the recent election are utter mediocrities, which is something that voters in the West have grown accustomed to. One only has to think of the triumvirate of stuffed shirts at the apex of UK politics, David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, to make this point. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, President Barack Obama ought to be a sitting duck in November’s US election, yet the best the Republican Party can offer is a choice between Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Hobson’s choice is no choice at all, but apart from a few vocal activists Hong Kong’s residents won’t mind as long as Leung Chun-ying does nothing that interferes with or disrupts their traditional way of life.

comparative advantage

Ask almost any European about the history of their continent, and they will at the very least be able to tell you about some of the past rivalries between countries. The one between England and France has been ongoing for centuries. However, ask those same Europeans about rivalries, past and present, in Asia, and you are likely to draw a blank. The more knowledgeable will cite the rivalry, which often borders on outright hostility, between India and Pakistan, or that between China and Japan, but few if any will point to the understated rivalry between China and India. The 1962 border war that the two countries fought, over territorial claims with their roots in incompetent British surveying of the region in the nineteenth century, is largely forgotten.

They will be aware that both populations are of a similar size: these are, by a long way, the two most populous countries on Earth. They will know that both nations have rapidly expanding economies; and, if they are really switched on, they will tell you that both are ‘emerging superpowers’. But their powers of comparison will end there.

That this rivalry exists I infer from my own observations, two of which I present here. First, Hindu nationalists frequently claim that the whole of Chinese culture derives ultimately from Indian culture and traditions. It is true that Buddhism was a significant cultural export to China, and how it originally arrived in the country is the subject of a major Chinese literary classic, Journey to the West, but overall this claim is too obviously ridiculous to require further comment. And it is worth mentioning that Buddhism is now almost nonexistent in India, while, in typically Chinese fashion, this philosophy masquerading as a religion quickly acquired a local flavour in the form of Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism. And it should not be forgotten that Chinese ships visited India during the Han Dynasty, not vice versa.

Second, a few years ago I edited The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Eastern Philosophy, and I was amused to discover that several Chinese contributors referred to “the Chinese subcontinent”. If India is a subcontinent, the reasoning appeared to be, then surely China is too. An ex-geologist wasn’t going to let them get away with that.

However, the most interesting aspect of this rivalry is the way it pits ‘the world’s largest democracy’, with its fractious cliques vying for power, against a regime that is widely regarded as totalitarian, where dissent is not tolerated. And the question that this begs is which of the two will ascend to global hegemony in the twenty-first century as the United States inevitably declines. Or will each act as a counterbalance to the other?

Anyone who has played the proprietary board game Risk will be able to predict the likely outcome. This game quickly reaches a point where there are only three players, and at this point the two weaker players gang up on the strongest. And the US strategic alliance with India follows this pattern. However, in the game the strongest player quickly loses their superiority, at which point they join the weakest player against the new strongest player. So alliances are fluid and subject to change at very short notice, with each player having as their ultimate objective the utter defeat of the other two. Such cynicism is a factor in the alliance between India and the United States, although ‘defeat’ in the twenty-first century will be measured in economic rather than military terms.

Before moving on to a detailed comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of India and China, it may be instructive to examine how each country dealt with the irritation of a Portuguese enclave on its soil (both had been established in the early sixteenth century). Following demands that Portugal surrender Goa, which were rejected, the Indian army simply marched in and unilaterally annexed the enclave in 1961. Meanwhile, as it had done with Hong Kong, China negotiated a friendly handover of sovereignty regarding Macau.

The way in which China arranged the return of its territory reflects the legalistic Chinese mind and is straight out of the Sun Tzu playbook (The Art of War). By contrast, the way in which India reclaimed Goa probably had much to do with the entire country having been under colonial subjugation until quite recently, and the problem was tackled in the way it was for reasons of national pride. As a postscript, Goa is now the richest Indian state, although this may be a reflection of the reason for its seizure by the Portuguese in the first place. It is unlikely to be based on any legacy bequeathed by these former colonial masters, if Macau is anything to go by. It was allowed to develop as a seedy little town that relied on gambling for almost its entire income. And lax governance before the handover of sovereignty in 1999, in an echo of the control once exerted by the mafia in Las Vegas, allowed the casinos to be run (discreetly) by triad societies, and gang-related violence was commonplace. Unsurprisingly, this is now far less prevalent under Chinese rule.

Another point that suggests a fundamental difference between the two countries can be gleaned from the most recent ‘rich list’ published by Forbes magazine. There are two Indians in the top five, and a further six in the top hundred. There are no mainland Chinese in that hundred, although there are three Hong Kong Chinese. However, Hong Kong has always been a separate economic entity, and this has not changed since the resumption of Chinese sovereignty, so the contrast remains valid. Given that the Chinese economy is more than 2.5 times the size of the Indian, then inequality of wealth distribution is clearly more extreme in the latter. This seems to me to be a serious long-term disadvantage.

A third point of difference is how the two countries have dealt with local foreign invaders in the past. The Mongol and Manchu invaders of China were eventually assimilated, becoming culturally if not ethnically Chinese, but the Mughals, descendants of the Mongol Timur Lang (Tamerlane), brought their own culture with them, and it is usually Mughal architecture such as the Taj Mahal that is thought of as quintessentially Indian. They also brought a new religion (Islam), always a bad move, in this case because it created a tension between indigenous Hindus and the Muslim newcomers that persists to this day. Although tensions have eased in recent decades, there are still sporadic outbreaks of inter-religious violence, the most recent major incident being in Gujarat in 2002.

This introduces the most significant difference between the two countries, which lies not in their systems of governance but in their levels of ethnic homogeneity. While India is a mosaic of different ethnic and religious groups, 98 percent of the Chinese population is Han Chinese. The relevance of this may not be obvious, but it must influence the ease with which it is possible to rouse nationalistic fervour: a large homogeneous population is more easily persuaded of a course of action because there are no competing loyalties; a heterogeneous population requires that compromises be made. However, whether this turns out to be a handicap depends on global events and trends in the next few decades: compromise can be a valuable tool in turbulent times.

India has the added disadvantage of its caste system: I assume that the situation has ameliorated in recent decades, but it cannot be a good idea to stifle talent at the low end of the social scale while promoting those with little or nothing to offer the wider community simply because of the family they were born into. There are echoes of the English class system here, although caste does seem to be a more pernicious discriminator. Of course, China does have its ethnic tensions, notably with its reluctant Tibetan citizens and with the Uighurs of Xinjiang, but these are peripheral areas that are not part of the Chinese heartland, and events in either place are unlikely to have a strategic impact on the rest of the country.

Having mentioned Risk earlier, it is appropriate that I point out two other board games that frame the most intriguing of all the contrasts between the countries: shaturanga and wei ch’i. The ancient Indian game of shaturanga is generally regarded as the forerunner of modern chess, while the Chinese game wei ch’i is now more widely played in Japan and is better known in the West as ‘go’. And while it is accurate to label chess a battle, go is a war and as such requires acute strategic vision in addition to tactical nous. It is in keeping with how the Chinese tackle any situation: they always play a long game, which is important to bear in mind when attempting to predict the aims, ambitions and future behaviour of their country. Chess, on the other hand, is a game with more short-term, limited objectives: as Francisco Pizarro discovered during his brutal conquest of the Inca empire in 1532, capture the leader and the game is won. There are no leaders in wei ch’i, making it impossible to achieve victory with a single stroke.

It is important to bear in mind that the Chinese have never, in their long history, had a say in the choice of their leader. In fact, it’s possible that, excluding a few much-publicized dissidents, they don’t even want such a choice: I recall a late-night conversation with a group of Chinese friends in which the consensus was that what the Chinese needed was another emperor! Indeed, it is likely that such an arrangement, with its roots in Confucian philosophy, is one reason for the ease with which the Chinese government has been able to secure the acquiescence of its population. They have an emperor, Hu Jintao, complete with his grand vizier, Wen Jiabao. But what sets this pair apart from the emperors of old is that in 2012 they will disappear from the scene. And I really do mean disappear. The era of the ‘paramount leader’ (Deng Xiaoping, who retained this pompous title even on his deathbed) is over. Jiang Zemin was a self-important imitation of his mentor Deng, but the blueprint for future leaders seems far more likely to be ex-prime minister Zhu Rongji, who retired in 2002 and promptly vanished from the radar. The West could learn a thing or two from this philosophy.

Meanwhile, although India is proud of its democratic traditions, this does come with disadvantages: the short-termism that is built into the capitalist system has repercussions, especially with respect to the speed and efficiency with which major infrastructure developments are planned and built. However, India has two significant advantages: it has a large pool of people who are completely fluent in English, which is likely to remain the world’s lingua franca for the foreseeable future; and it is a world leader in information and communications technology (ICT). Unsurprisingly, though, the Chinese are aware that this is the case and are already taking steps to remedy the situation. It is impossible to ride the Beijing subway, as an obvious foreigner, without someone coming up to you to practise their English. And thousands of Indian ICT professionals are currently working in China—teaching the locals the tricks of the trade. I’m irresistibly reminded of Lenin’s famous quote about the capitalist selling you the rope with which you eventually hang him.

In fact, India has earmarked US$3.4 trillion for infrastructure projects over the next five years, but this is dwarfed by what is happening in China, which inter alia is in the process of building a countrywide high-speed rail network at a speed that is little short of astounding. China already has the longest such network in the world, but within the next two or three years its network will be longer than that of the rest of the world combined. Budgets, naturally, are not disclosed, but one can assume that China can afford it, given its massive trade surplus.

Ironically, Hong Kong will be almost the last major Chinese city to be connected to the network. It is scheduled to be online by 2016, part of the delay being the result of widespread nimbyism in the territory and claims for compensation by those affected. Neither is a problem in the rest of China, for obvious reasons.

Short-termism is not a problem in China either. Take a look at the country’s activities in Africa: securing resources, certainly, but also buying influence. Cash in the bank a couple of decades down the line. This is what most alarms the West, because unlike the way European colonists ravaged and plundered the continent in the nineteenth century and gave nothing in return, China is giving something in return for what it takes out, notably in the form of major construction projects. The shadow of colonialism still hovers over Africa, and with this in mind it is not difficult to predict the direction in which most African countries will lean if it ever becomes necessary to take sides.

So, what is China’s global strategy? Its leaders are surely aware that the country will become top dog in the international hierarchy by mid-century, and I’m sure that every one of them has read The Art of War. It should be required reading in every seat of political power from the White House to the Kremlin. However, the one mistake we should not make is to draw global conclusions from its relations with its immediate neighbours. The spat with Japan over the Diaoyu Islands should be seen as a renewal of the age-old hostility between these two countries, dangerous possibly, but not part of a larger plan by China, except perhaps to put pressure on Taiwan (the islands are closer to Taiwan, which has its own claim to these barren rocks, than they are to the mainland).

Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea are more sinister. To make it clear how outrageous these claims are, I’ve included a map:

It can be seen at a glance that these claims are utterly without merit: most of the area claimed by China is closer to at least two other countries, and most of the southern half of the area claimed is closer to no less than five. However, unless you happen to live in the region, there should be no grounds for concern. The frontiers of the Chinese empire have ebbed and flowed over the centuries in time with the strength or weakness of the centre. But Chinese muscle flexing, because that is what it is, begs a wider question: why play the bully? You can be sure that there is a reason, but it’s the long game again. As is the highway that will one day connect India and China. China has already driven a major road through Tibet and into Nepal, which could be interesting: a poor Hindu country, nominally a cultural client of India, may well believe that its future prosperity lies to the east, which will offer more reliable transportation of goods and people to and from the outside world.

And as that highway edges closer to the Indian border, I leave you with one final image: a few years ago, the BBC’s satirical show Have I Got News for You featured an opening animation sequence that included a train à grande vitesse screaming across the French countryside and entering the Channel Tunnel, only to emerge on the English side as a rattling suburban boneshaker that would not have looked out of place in a provincial railway museum.

car culture

The Beijing Motor Show was being held while my wife and I were in Beijing. Of course, we didn’t attend, but I did come across an interesting news item on the subject. Apparently, the top-of-the-range models from Mercedes, Audi and BMW are made six inches longer for the China market than for all other markets. What use is made of this extra length? It turns out that it all goes to providing extra leg room in the back.

And why would that be? Because, in China, when it comes to expensive cars, the man (and they’re invariably men) who owns the car always sits in the back. You may not notice immediately that this is not ostentation; China has relatively few cars compared with the size of its population, so learning to drive is not a teenage rite of passage there. Overwhelmingly, those people who do learn to drive do so in order to earn a living, driving a taxi, say, or a truck. And it is certainly easier on the nerves to employ someone else to do the driving when that driving is done on the streets and highways of Beijing. I’d prefer to sit in the back too.

wonderful

When you approach the Great Wall of China at Badaling, near Beijing, you cannot fail to notice a number of very large plaques set into a retaining wall. One informs the visitor that the Great Wall is a UNESCO world heritage site, while another proclaims this spectacular piece of peripatetic architecture to be one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

Few people can name all seven of the original seven wonders, and many believe that the Great Wall is on that list. It isn’t. How could it be, given that the original list was compiled by Greeks, and in any case the Great Wall hadn’t been built at the time of that list’s compilation.

However, it is important to note the difference between the old and the new lists. The original was based on aesthetic judgement, although it appears that few of the writers who described the original wonders had seen all seven. Nevertheless, these seven were talked about in aesthetic terms, as ‘sights that must be seen’.

Contrast this with the new list of seven wonders, which was chosen by the votes of 100 million people. I have no doubt that the Great Wall of China belongs on the list, but it is difficult to justify the inclusion of at least one of the others. And what elevates Chichén Itzá and Machu Picchu above Angkor in Cambodia, given that only a tiny fraction of those 100 million voters will have visited all three? It is clear that nationalist politics have played a part, with governments urging their citizens to vote for candidate sites in their own country. The Colosseum probably drew a lot of votes from Christians, and I would be interested to learn how many non-Brazilians voted for the statue of Christ Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.

In other words, the new list of seven wonders is not a definitive list of the seven most culturally significant or architecturally unique ‘sights that must be seen’ but a list that is based on votes by people for whom cultural significance or aesthetic merit would not have been considerations when casting their votes. On the other hand, I do not begrudge the election of the Great Wall of China to this exclusive list. There can be few finer monuments to the folly and vainglory of man than this historic security barrier, which, we shouldn’t forget, didn’t actually work.

keep off the grass

When I was young, I can remember my local park featuring several small signs bearing the legend “keep off the grass”, but when I went to a big city for the first time I found that open expanses of grass were somewhere to sit and bask in the sun, on the rare occasions when that busy old fool bothered to put in a reluctant appearance. In Beijing, things are rather different.

In the small park that I mentioned in my previous post, we had noticed a number of discreet signs, an approximate translation of which was “this is a beautiful area of grass; do you really want to spoil it by stepping on it?” Fair enough; this is no more than a subtle change of emphasis and not worth further comment. Until, that is, I stepped on the grass to take the following photograph:

I was subjected to a prolonged harangue by a metallic, disembodied voice: however, as this was in Putonghua, I cannot offer a full translation, although it was along the lines of “get off the grass”, and the tone was peremptory and distinctly unfriendly. We quickly discovered that a small speaker was embedded in the warning sign, and I wondered whether I had triggered some kind of hidden motion sensor. Naturally, I tested this hypothesis by stepping on the grass close to other signs, but nothing happened each time. I therefore reached the conclusion that I’d been subject to video surveillance by someone whose job it was to ensure that nobody walked on the grass.

I was not perturbed by any of this, but the incident did bring into sharp focus the difference between the Chinese view of neatly mown grass in a city park and how this same grass is viewed in a park in the West. In the latter case, it is a practical facility, to be enjoyed by being walked or sat on; in China, the grass is a purely visual amenity, to be appreciated only from a safe distance.

social contract

As someone from a semi-rural background, I’m a big fan of urban parks. Some, like Hyde Park in London and Central Park in New York, have an international reputation, but the really interesting ones are those that are unknown outside their immediate neighbourhood and are there simply as an amenity for the local population. We came across one such local park on our recent trip to Beijing, directly across the road from our hotel.

Side Park is a small oasis of calm amid the bustling chaos of the surrounding streets, with a huge wrought iron gate that appears to be permanently closed. Entry and egress are through a much smaller gate on the side. I half wondered if this was a throwback to the days of imperial China, when the largest and most magnificent gate or door was reserved for the exclusive use of the emperor, but the last Qing emperor is unlikely to have lived long enough to have seen this park, let alone this splendid gateway, so I dismissed the thought.

Just inside the gate, my attention was drawn to a large notice board to which was pinned an oddly intriguing poster with text in English and simplified Chinese. I reproduce it here in full so that you can judge for yourself whether my description is appropriate:

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT OF BEIJING
Love China, love Beijing.
Live in harmony with all.
Maintain public order.
Work well and hard.
Be honest and trustworthy.
Be industrious and thrifty.
Obey the laws and safeguard public order.
Be ready to support the just cause.
Encourage healthy trends.
Plant trees and flowers.
Protect the environment.
Care for one another.
Protect public property.
Safeguard national cultural relics.
Advocate science.
Respect teachers and education.
Always seek self-improvement.
Cherish the young and show respect to the elderly and each other.
Show mutual respect to soldiers and other public servants.
Assist the disabled and the poor.
Strive to improve social conditions.
Maintain your health, observe birth control practices.
Work for the good of society.
Be gentle and polite to all others.
Be broad-minded and open-minded.
Take pleasure in helping others.

The first thing to note is that this is not a contract but a set of rules, exhortations to behave in a manner that will be beneficial to the collective and a total denial of individuality. A contract is a two-way process, yet nowhere on this notice is there anything that could be construed as telling the citizen what they will get in return. Perhaps this personal benefit is implicitly understood by the expected readership.

However, my comments here should not be understood as an implied criticism of China or its social and political policies, because there are few if any rules on this list against which one could make a serious case. On the other hand, were Boris Johnson in London or Michael Bloomberg in New York to attempt to introduce such a ‘social contract’ in their respective cities, they would probably be laughed out of office. But that is because we in the West are accustomed to thinking that liberal democracy is the optimum form of government, and that the Chinese system, which in any case is poorly understood, is still evolving and is not nearly as monolithic as it is usually perceived to be, is altogether too authoritarian.

Given that the planet is in a parlous state precisely because of our espousal of the individual as the cornerstone of a successful society, it should be obvious that the paradigm for any future form of social organization that can deal with the mess will be a lot closer to the collectivism of the Chinese model than to the outmoded and discredited capitalist system, which once brought prosperity and important social progress but has now led us by the nose to the brink of ruin.

extramural activities

Before I visit a place for the first time, I usually construct a mental map. This isn’t a conscious process, merely the synthesis of a series of impressions gained from books, magazines, newspapers, television—the usual sources—and information picked up as a result of visits to other places that I have deemed to be similar. I don’t know why I bother, because I’m invariably wrong. When I came to Hong Kong in 1974, I arrived thinking that it was full of seedy bars, that drugs were dealt on every street corner, and that corruption was rampant. It is true that in 1974 Hong Kong still had the air of a third world city, but then I had no previous experience of such places. Tripoli, where I worked in 1968, was little more than a bustling provincial town, despite being a capital city, and any poverty was well out of sight.

However, my mistakes are harmless enough. Most of the time. Before we went to Beijing last Thursday, I looked up a street map and a map of the subway system, on the basis of which I made a mental comparison with London and the famous ‘map’ of its underground system. Unfortunately, the problem with a cartogram, which is what both diagrams are, is that it is not drawn to scale. And the street map didn’t show the subway stations, so there was no way of gauging the distance between adjacent stations on the network. Given that I walked from Tate Modern to Piccadilly Circus the last time I was in London, I assumed that the same would be possible in Beijing, and that all the city’s attractions would be within walking distance of each other. I was disabused of this notion when I discovered that we would need to take a taxi from our hotel, located in what might loosely be termed ‘central’ Beijing, to the nearest subway station.

To tell the truth, we had only a vague idea of how to get to anywhere, but at least we were at a subway station. Solution? Ask a policeman. Works every time. So we were shown which station to go to for the Great Wall, the first destination on our ‘planned’ itinerary. Once there, we were advised to catch the 919 bus, the stop for which was easily located. Too easily. We discovered two 919 buses at different stops. I don’t know whether we asked the wrong questions, but we certainly got on the wrong 919. We had been told that it was quite a long ride (and only six yuan), so we settled down to watch the city go by as we stopped and started along a busy toll road. Eventually, we turned off the main road into a small industrial town north of Beijing, where we were informed that the bus had reached the end of its journey.

There seemed little point in returning to Beijing, partly because we were clearly going in the right direction, so we looked for a railway station. It wasn’t difficult, but we learned that we’d have to wait two hours for the next train. We were also able to learn the town’s name, which was painted in large characters above the station’s shabby portico. I will gloss over our two hours in Nankou, which was worth seeing but not worth going to see, to misappropriate Doctor Johnson’s verdict on the altogether less interesting attraction of the Giant’s Causeway, and move on to the train journey. However, I should note in passing that the first photograph in yesterday's post was taken there.

Looking north from Nankou railway station.

The section of the Great Wall that we were heading for is located behind the ridge of mountains in the preceding photograph, and the railway line sweeps around in a wide curve to enter a steep-sided ravine. The first thing that we noticed was the almost complete absence of greenery on the hillsides. However, many bushes covered with white flowers were scattered across the slopes, which made an eye-catching sight. After a short while, a section of the Wall came into view, and it was indeed spectacular. There was a station about half a mile further on, but the train didn’t stop!

We came to, and passed, another section of the Great Wall, less spectacular, but there was no station. Finally, we stopped in a station that my wife was certain was the right place. Fortunately, the train doors were locked, so we were prevented from making what would have been a serious error of judgement. After a few minutes, the train started to move again, back the way we had come. At least it appeared to be retracing its tracks. In fact, we were now on a different line, and we eventually arrived at another station, where everyone got off. Clearly, it was the end of the line.

A sign proclaimed “800 metres to the Great Wall”. It seemed further, but only about four hours later than we’d originally anticipated, we finally arrived. The only disappointment was that our late arrival meant that we couldn’t walk far enough along the Wall to escape the crowds, because the early departure of the last train back to Beijing left us with little more than two hours to explore. This was sufficient to get a feel for the place, but we weren’t able to venture as far as we would have done had we had more time, and I’ve a feeling we’ll be back. I was especially surprised to see old ladies resolutely climbing up some of the steepest parts of the Wall (I think that those accompanying and helping them hadn’t considered that it is harder to descend than ascend, particularly if you aren’t very agile). Perhaps they wanted to buy a tacky tee-shirt proclaiming “I climbed up the Great Wall” from one of the souvenir shops when they returned to their starting point. As experienced rock climbers (real climbing involves the use of your hands), we didn’t.

There were a couple of interesting observations to make on the return journey. First, we were on the right side of the train to see that at one point the Great Wall ran the full length of the skyline and was hugely impressive with the setting sun behind it. Second, I thought I saw the stationmaster at the first station we came to stand to attention as we passed through. I looked out for this at the next station, and sure enough there he was, resplendent in his green uniform and peaked cap, with his green and red flags in one hand, standing to attention in a little painted square box on the platform. This was repeated at every station, even though we didn’t stop at any of them. Was this an indication that the Chinese are a regimented people? I reserve judgement until my next post, which will appear at this address tomorrow.

Crowds throng the Great Wall.

But some sections were less crowded.

northern capital

This is not a discussion about collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps or other larcenous forms of financial legerdemain. In fact, ‘northern capital’ is the literal translation of Beijing, where my wife and I have spent the last five days, just as ‘southern capital’ is the literal translation of Nanjing, the Chinese capital during several important periods in Chinese history, most recently immediately prior to the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

Over the next few days, I will be explaining why we almost didn’t get to see the Great Wall, reporting on ‘The Social Contract of Beijing’, telling you about the two essential food items that any self-respecting visitor to Beijing should seek out, commenting on the capital’s transport system (including an explanation for the odd fact that versions of the top-of-the-range models from Mercedes, BMW and Audi for the China market are six inches longer than the equivalent models sold elsewhere), noting in passing that you should keep off the grass in Beijing’s parks, and remarking on a few other curious observations that I made along the way.

Meanwhile, here are a few photographs to whet your appetite:

What is happening here? Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

Great Wall.

Another great piece of wall.

The obvious question is this: in terrain this rugged, do you really need to build such a bloody big wall just to keep people out?

Doorway, Forbidden City.

Ceramic wall plaque with dragons about 1.4 metres high, Forbidden City.

confucius he say...

Very little that happens in Hong Kong makes the news internationally. Stories that do invariably have a sensationalist angle to them, such as the case of the phantom acid thrower, which made the BBC’s World News recently probably because in the latest attack tourists were among the injured. Another example is the sordid wranglings over the will of eccentric billionaire Nina Wang, Asia’s richest woman, some details of which can be found on the BBC News website. ‘Little Sweetie’, as she was affectionately known locally, died in 2007, apparently leaving her entire fortune to a local fung shui ‘master’. Given that in Hong Kong fung shui is principally a vehicle for extorting money, and any self-proclaimed ‘master’ is certainly a charlatan, some degree of skullduggery is likely. It could be years before the case is resolved, but don’t watch this space for updates, because you won’t get any.

Meanwhile, one local story that doesn’t appear to have been picked up by the international news media is the campaign to have the birthday of Confucius declared a public holiday. My first reaction was to applaud: Hong Kong is already well provided with public holidays, but one more wouldn’t hurt. Apparently, it would, however: there is a local ordinance restricting the number of public holidays each year to seventeen, and the quota has already been filled. On the other hand, the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Hong Kong is amenable to the idea of scrapping Easter Monday—a hangover from the days of British rule—and replacing it with a holiday on the twenty-seventh day of the eighth lunar month.

So why do I think this would be a bad idea? After all, you might think, not for nothing is Confucius known in China as the ‘Great Sage’. However, a closer examination of Confucian philosophy reveals the damage that this man has inflicted on the country in the past, succinctly summed up in the phrase ‘filial piety’. Without doubt, China was technologically the most advanced civilization in the world 2,000 years ago, at a time when Britons were still painting themselves blue and the Americas were home only to hunter-gatherers and civilizations that never got beyond the Bronze Age or used the wheel, except on children’s toys. A list of Chinese inventions from this period includes the magnetic compass, fore-and-aft sails and the stern-post rudder, which enabled China to develop rapidly as a seafaring nation—Chinese ships sailed as far as India during the Han Dynasty (206 BC–AD 220). By the time of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618–907), widely regarded by scholars as the zenith of Chinese civilization, woodblock printing, gunpowder and silk, together with a sophisticated device for detecting and measuring earthquakes, had been added to the list.

So what went wrong? During the early part of the Tang Dynasty, Buddhism had taken hold in China, but Tang officials regarded it as a disruptive influence and contrary to Confucian harmony, so much so that in AD 845 a massive purge was launched, resulting in the destruction of more than 4,000 Buddhist monasteries and 46,000 temples. Confucianism thereby became the dominant ideology in China. However, this so-called Confucian ‘harmony’ was based on a hierarchical system with the emperor at the top and women right at the bottom, with each individual owing allegiance to those higher up the hierarchy. At the top of the pyramid, the emperor's duty was to attract “all under heaven” to be civilized in Confucian harmony. In practice, this system also meant that sons had a responsibility towards their fathers (‘filial piety’) rather than parents to their children. This backward-looking philosophy, combined with the fact that Chinese civilization developed in relative isolation from the rest of the world, bred an insularity and disdain for other cultures that is reflected in the Chinese name for China: ‘Central country’ (right).

Fast-forward to the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and the seven voyages of Admiral Zheng He (1405–33). With a fleet of the largest ships on Earth at that time under his command, Zheng was dispatched with orders to sail to “the countries beyond the horizon, all the way to the end of the Earth.” His mission was to display the might of Chinese power and exact tribute from the “barbarians from beyond the seas.” During these voyages, Zheng sailed as far as Calicut in India, Ormuz in Persia, Jeddah in Arabia and Mogadishu in present-day Somalia. A Chinese map (see below) purportedly dating from this period suggests that Chinese sailors may have ventured even further afield, although the authenticity of this map has been widely questioned.

Following Zheng’s last voyage and his subsequent retirement, the emperor and his court officials, motivated by Confucian ideals, decided that there was nothing more to learn about the world, so both the ships and Zheng’s logs were wantonly destroyed. Within a hundred years, Portuguese sailors were venturing further and further down the west coast of Africa, eventually reaching the Indian Ocean, and Ferdinand Magellan had led an expedition that successfully circumnavigated the world. Consequently, instead of the Chinese discovering Europe, European sailors discovered China.

By the eighteenth century, the big European colonial powers (the French, the Dutch and above all the British) were in the process of grabbing as much of Asia as they could lay their hands on. And although China remained more or less intact, save for the enclaves of Macau and Hong Kong, it endured systematic humiliation throughout the nineteenth century, culminating in the eight-nation alliance that finally suppressed the anti-foreigner Boxer Rebellion in 1901.

It was not until Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76) that Confucius was finally denounced as a reactionary, but China is now a forward-looking country that is on course to become the hegemonic power of the twenty-first century. However, when the country finally achieves this, the Chinese will discover that, like the British in the nineteenth century and the Americans in the twentieth, everybody hates you when you’re top dog.