Ever since I opened this blog the problem of credibility has been in the back of my mind. These days, the comments of a tenacious part-time troll, as well as some recent events that shook the Chinosphere have brought back the subject to the top of my agenda.

It is well known that Chinablogs* (defined as blogs about China in English) are only a tiny part of the Chinese internet, and their readership is insignificant compared to their Chinese counterparts. But it would be a mistake to dismiss them as irrelevant. For some time already, especially after last year’s  events – Tibet revolts and the Olympic torch saga were a turning point -  readers from all sides have questioned the media’s impartiality regarding Chinese politics. Just or not, the fact is that these accusations have cast a doubt, and many have turned to blogs to try to find an independent point of view.

Some things make me suspect that the influence of Chinablogs in shaping the World opinion about China is more significant than their size might suggest. The famous #cde affair, where a well known entrepreneur and blogger in China caused the RMB/dollar exchange to move after a post on his blog, forcing the Chinese government to issue an official notice, confirmed this idea. Also, the world media are sending some of their best writers to China, not to become correspondents as used to be the case, but to open a blog and speak about what they  see outside their window – among other things.  Blog sceptics might want to look at this Boston Globe article to see just how influential blogs can become.

And here is where my question comes in: what legitimates  Chinabloggers to give opinions about this country, its politics, economy and other fields that affect the well being of billions of people?  Where does our credibility lie? Are we misrepresenting ourselves as experts in China without any serious basis? Click to continue »

Today I am starting my review section with one of the books on Chinese economy that has impressed me most in the last year, “Capitalism with Chinese characteristics”, by MIT professor Huang Yasheng. It is a book that clearly stands out from the recent China books, and it might be destined to become one of the big references in the field.

There is no shortage of good China books in the last years. Many are written from a business perspective, by people with first hand experience who will tell you exactly how things are done here. Others look at the available economic data and build interesting theories to explain them. Few go deeper than this, to look into the heart of the matter: the politics behind the Chinese economy.

The problem is:  it is so difficult to obtain reliable information on Chinese policy that most efforts in this field turn into circular arguments over the same limited data. Professor Huang breaks the circle by going back to the sources and questioning directly all the mainstream assumptions, leaving many of them upside down. The situation in China requires this approach, as he says in the preface:

In studies of American economy, scholars may debate about the effects of, say, “Reagan tax cuts”. In studies of the Chinese economy, the more relevant question would be, “Did the government cut taxes in the first place?

By going back to the archives of what, in his own words is “some of the world’s most medieval record keeping”, Huang Yasheng is able to come up with a whole new picture of Chinese economic policy in the last three decades. This book is the result of painstaking archival research into rarely examined files, such as a “22 volumes compilation of internal bank documents” or the archives of the Ministry of Agriculture.

A qualitative leap from the classic tea leave reading, and one that deserves some careful consideration, even if the conclusions drawn will not be to the taste of every reader. Click to continue »

Today is the last of the Rat days. Happy 牛 Year to all! And byebye too, I won’t be around for the next few days: I’m off to where the weather suits my clothes, down to the charming shores of Southern Fujian.

I will take the chance before I pack up to write my little roundup of the Rat year, as today is also exactly the 3 month Anniversary of CHINAYOUREN. I want to write what these 3 months have meant for this blogger.  We are on holidays and the time is to relax, so I’ll do it in easy bullet points:

• Hailing from the primitive highlands of Western Europe, Uln is a very recent blogger, with an experience of 3 months writing blogs, and just 6 months reading or even knowing what a blog is.

• In these 3 Rat months I have discovered that blogging is not just weird psychotherapy. It is also a way to speak of ideas too brainy to be allowed in the pub, and actually get people listening. More suprisingly for me, you actually make friends.

• One of my main discoveries is that China bloggers are cool. Even the big ones that I thought inaccessible and Holy. All of them answer my emails and sometimes even share readers by linking to this my humble site. For the moment I haven’t encountered a single exception, thanks to all.

• Speaking of Links: I have to give special thanks to those that helped me get some readers: First, to China Law BLog and Global Voices, who linked me from my very first post. Then the Wall Street Journal blog, for bringing me record readership by linking me 3 times in a single week. And, third but not least, the Fool’s Mountain, who not only inspire me with their ever lively discussion, but also let me publish 2 articles and shamelessly promote my blog on their site.

• To be completely fair, I have to mention that Google are good to me, and in spite of my pointing my finger at them, I continue getting amazing results in their search engine. For SEO reasons that I’ll never understand I am Number One on strings such as Update President Obama. And what is fair is fair: I owe the same credit to the Chinese authorities who, in spite of my finger-pointing and irreverent writing, have yet to censor my content in any way.

• The most important of all: I seriously enjoy blogging. It is amazing that 200 people from the most diverse origins come into my website in a single day. I even enjoy it more when someone leaves a comment, so please make my day and leave yours below.

• Finally, my Bloggy Resolutions for the 牛 Year:  Write shorter posts, write better English and speak better Chinese, enjoy China online and offline.

So let’s go one more time say with me: Happy 牛 Year to all !

Some strange things happening in this blog:

Post unpunned?

It is hard to resist when you are writing a post and you see the chance to put in one of your puns, but lately I’ve been pretty good at it. It’s been more than a month, for example, that I don’t refer to the Leadership of the PRC with the sentence: “Who and when attended the conference?”.

I say this because I just noticed the opposite case in yesterday’s post: a good gag appeared unnoticed and now risks to seriously embarrass me, as it involves – again- a leader of the People’s Republic. If you remember, I was telling you about Wen Jiabao’s predictions getting a good kick in the family jewels. Only now I realize that Wen’s first name actually, literally, means: Family jewels. Man, I love this Premier more every day.

I don’t believe in self-censoring, so I won’t have it unpunned. For now.

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Meet the activist Uln Win

I don’t hide that I was pleased when my trackback indicator told me I had been linked by no less than the Telegraph – well, OK, from one of its blogs.  When I went to look at the article, I found this:

The Chinese blogger Uln Win has reprinted the core principles, together with some analysis, on her site.   [...]  Uln Win makes the point that while the charter originated within mainland China and its signatories are all from within the country, she remains concerned that the vast majority of people in the country remain wholly unaware of it…

Extraordinary! Not only I am a girl now, but I am also Chinese and I am called Uln Win. Let’s go by parts:

1- The change of sex: I kind of fancied I had a virile writing style, obviously I was wrong. I can’t blame him  on this one though, it is true that my profile is not clear in this respect.

2- The Chinese nationality: Funny. The first sentence in my profile famously is: “This blog is written by ULN, a foreigner happily living in Shanghai”.

3- The code name “Uln Win”: This has to get the top prize. I just can’t imagine where he got it from, there is not an instance on the internet of such a name. My guess is he wanted a powerful name for his female Chinese hero, and he added the “Win” as a sure winner! I can’t wait to read his next post, will Uln Win rescue Liu Xiaobo from the claws of the regime?

Well, this explains why my statistics give so many visits of less than one minute, that’s what I call skimming a blog. I suppose it is the excess of information we all bloggers suffer. To be fair, it looks like at least he read the post, which, I suppose, is what matters.

You will excuse me for writing two serious posts in a row. It’s been ages we don’t do anything on the Crisis, and these days there’s been a series of articles on the subject that I couldn’t just let pass.

Two of them have to do with the growth projections for 2009. Yawn. We’ve been seeing new projections and discussions thereof almost every week, and after the holidays break it looks like here it is all over again. It is mostly fruitless, because there’s not enough new information between one projection and the next, and so most of the times the changes reflect the mood of the expert more than anything else.

It was however interesting to read this PD article Sunday where one CPC “renowned economist” worried that “China is likely to lose 3.9 million jobs in 2009″ if GDP growth slows to 8 percent. Well, he need not worry anymore, according to other top CPC officials quoted here the very next day, “China Risks Missing 8% Growth Target”, which will be “extremely arduous” to achieve. They are starting to change their tune, again.

And this brings us to a more interesting subject which, although it is as difficult to predict, at least it is more telling than the empty statistical artifice of GDP. I am speaking of Unemployment.

There has been two contradicting articles over the weekend, by Wang Tao from UBS and by Victor Shih. They hold different positions as to what will be the unemployment figures in 2009 and what will be their social impact. In any case, it is worth noting that both of them, with their 15 Million (Tao) and 35-50 Million (Victor) figures, are way above any calculation by the “renowned economist” of the People’s Daily, who gives 1 Million for every % of GDP lost.

Needless to say, I am with the relatively pessimistic predictions of Victor on this issue. Partly because I deeply distrust socio-economic projections issued by banks (you can hardly blame me on that). But mostly because the arguments that Victor puts forward are more solid than Tao’s. Based on his deeper knowledge of Chinese politics,  Victor goes on to analyze the possible consequences of his prediction in a worse-case scenario.

Noting that, even if the government has the capacity (as he calculated here) to subsidize the unemployed families for an extended period,

the current wave of layoffs affects a young and vibrant cohort most capable of carrying violent collective action against the state. Without any systematic triggers, we at least will see a spike in localized riots which necessitate the mobilization of People’s Armed Police (PAP) units all over China. The central government would also be compelled to (and they are doing so already) roll out generous unemployment benefits for migrant workers and college graduates (to the tune of 300-400 billion RMB). If a systematic trigger occurs and instability spreads to a sizable city, we will see the large scale mobilization of both PAP and army units and possibly substantial bloodshed. In most scenarios, the CCP regime would still survive a large scale, cross regional rebellion. However, “overall investor confidence” will be lost.

What is the “systematic trigger” which I refer to? I don’t know exactly what it would be. However, if we look back in history, it can be a wide range of events, including the death of a popular leader, a serious natural disaster, the spread of a deathly infectious disease, a small student demonstration turned violent, religious groups…

This idea of the “trigger” (I called it the “Spark” on my previous post) is right on. It is exactly the element that is missing and the one that will make all the difference: when we have social tension to get the people in action, and intellectuals to draft the road map, the mix is an unstable equilibrium waiting to get in contact with a spark. Of course, Victor doesn’t know what exactly this spark would be, and neither do I because its own nature makes it unpredictable. But I would add to his hypothesis one of my own:

The emergence of a massive wave of protest on the internet that extends to all the forums and BBS simultaneously, with new sites being created faster than the government can block the old, which could create a cascade effect that would force the government to commit its worst mistake: close down the internet altogether. This would add to the protesters millions of online game addicts released from their cybercafes, constituting a serious army of instability.

Check out today’s post by Imagethief on the subject, showing with 2 nice graphs that we have an unprecedented situation in China. Also,  yesterday Jeremiah of the Granite Studio did an interesting comparison of the present situation and the one in 1919 during the May 4th movement. In those times, there was a clear “trigger”: the humiliating treatment of China by the Western powers in the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War, including the unforgivable transfer of territories to Japan.

One last note for the optimists: this weekend I learnt of a reputable economics professor living in Shanghai who recently bought 3 months advance of canned food to store in case the situation gets rapidly unmanageable. In a city like Shanghai, if the logistic networks are disrupted we can run out of food in a matter of days. I am still not quite there myself, but I must admit that, since I heard this, the idea hasn’t quite left my head and I tend to go more generous on every visit to Lawson’s.

UPDATE: Oops, I completely missed this one. All Roads has been doing the same comparison and drawing his own conclusions. You can see it here.

After what I wrote last week in my sensationalistic post of the Tower of Babel, I have continued to follow as promised my Path to Enlightment. The results are modest for the moment, but I’ve found already five good links to get me closer to smelling Chinese politics. And I have added these 5 links on a separate section of the sidebar called “Intelligence”. This is not to say that the links in the Normal Blogroll are any less intelligent, I continue to read them and respect them as much as ever.

Now, the difficult part. In my quest to knowledge I have been lucky enough to speak (through email and blog comments) with some of the best specialists in Chinese politics and media. One of them who I am not allowed to quote has confirmed to me that the China Daily editorial was probably just that: an article by an editor in the paper looking for controversy to get the sales up. This is not so unusual nowadays in Chinese newspapers, neither is this article considered particularly risky, as it is not attacking any of the CCP holy principles.  So yeah, my thesis is limping a bit after this.

This doesn’t mean that I regret posting that entry. Some of the hypothesis might be wrong, but the core of the message (tensions in Zhongnanhai) still rings very true. In the end, each entry in the blog has a different role, and this one clearly specified its own: propose some wild hypothesis, incite discussion and try to get some commenters to come in the aid of the party. And yes, let’s admit it, I am still quite proud of having quoted the Bible and China Daily in one single post.

Finally, I would like to make a statement: I set a high value on the accuracy of this blog. Yes, I might write some weird stuff sometimes,  post on politics like a paparazzo or draft nonsensical Chinese lessons. But this has nothing to do with me not taking seriously my readers. What CHINAYOUREN will never do is tell you that a word is fact, or a fact is none, unless it has the proof or citations to support it. I feel the need to say this particularly because I know my being (semi)anonymous takes away part of my credibility. And I wouldn’t want to have people mistaken about me.

So, there’s that for today. And now if you excuse me I will continue with my Blog Optimization Routine (BOR):

“Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama … “

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These last years we’ve seen many of the big newspapers scanning and digitizing their historic archives, and sometimes even allowing full access to non-subscriptors. Such is the case of the NYT, Atlantic Monthly, Guardian and many others. These archives constitute great tools for research, and provide irresistible eye candy for history nerds like Uln.

But thanks to Spanish blog Chinochano I found yesterday the new archives of La Vanguardia, the newspaper that was my daily read during my 3 years in Barcelona. The difference with other archives is that the interface looks much better, it shows the scanned articles, AND it comes with a cool graph showing the incidence of the search word over the years since 1881. This is in itself a fantastic tool for bloggy research:

The search for “China” gives the following graph:

Number of entries in paper issues containing "China"

Here we can see the rise of China in the European press. It is interesting to see the sudden lack of interest in some periods, for example when Hitler was invading Poland, or when the dotcoms crisis set all the eyes looking to Silicon Valley around 2000. The sudden peaks also make for a good guessing game. Especially interesting to see is the sharp rise from 2000 to 2008, which matches the observations of many China analysts, like Mark Leonard.

2008 is still not over but I’m betting it will beat 2007 by a fair stretch.

Re La Vanguardia: It is a mainstream catalan newspaper that has in my opinion the best Foreign Affairs section in Spain. If you speak Spanish don’t miss “Diario de Pekin”, the blog of La Vanguardia correspondent Rafael Poch in China. His articles are entertaining and he has an original point of view on Chinese affairs. Unfortunately Rafael is leaving China now after 6 years so we’ll have to wait and see if he gets a worthy successor.

PS: Now I have really earned the title of BRIDGE blogger !

The other day it was too cold to get my Linder started, so I had to go and flag a cab instead. I got one of the green chubby ones.

Green cabs are well known for being stubborn, having a true passion for History and polishing their nails 5 times a day. Remember: never never sit in a green cab during the morning rush hour.

Conversation between me and the GReeN Taxi:

ULN – Hello. Please take me to Yueyanglu.
GRN – Yuyuanlu?
ULN – Of course.

<… flag pull and commercial …>

GRN – Your Chinese is Amazing! <..lah-didah..> hm, what’s your country?
ULN – I’m from Spain.
GRN – Barcelona-Real Madrid-Ronaldinho: Good football!
ULN – <?> And don’t forget bullfighting.
GRN – Ahahaha! Yes, yes, Spain has bulfighting!!!
ULN – You saw it before?
GRN – On television..
ULN – Hm.

<… swerve, honk at cyclist …>

GRN – What else does Spain do?
ULN – What?!?
GRN – In History. What is famous of Spanish history?
ULN – Ah. Er… Spain… discovered America?
GRN – Haha, You mean that Spain WAS discovered by America.
ULN – No, no. I mean Spain discovered America. Sort of…
GRN – Ha! Spain is a very little country.
ULN – It is if you compare it with China.
GRN – You know, you shouldn’t always believe what your government says
ULN – ?

<.. ! ..>

Finally, it looks like the Chinese authorities are going to get serious about internet addiction. My favourite Xinhua reader on the sidebar just brought in the scoop, straight from the medical research labs.

Internet addiction in China is a well known problem, and it has been quite present on China blogs these last weeks, following this much commented article by Robert Vance, an English teacher in China.

It is a good thing that the government has decided to address this growing problem, but I have some concerns about how they are going to go about it.

Will we be tested for internet addiction at the mandatory medical test? Will it be added as one of the questions in the immigration form at the airport, right next to “do you have AIDS?” And more seriously: will the Chinese authorities make use of this new disease as an excuse to restrict even more the access to free information on the internet?  Here is the report:

Chinese doctors released the country’s first diagnostic definition of Internet addiction over the weekend, amid efforts to address an increasing number of psychological problems that reportedly result from Internet overuse.

Tao Ran, a medical expert at Beijing’s Military General Hospital, where the definition was developed, said it was also the first time for China to officially designate hospital psychiatric units to treat such cases.

Symptoms of addiction included yearning to get back online, mental or physical distress, irritation and difficulty concentrating or sleeping. The definition, based on a study of more than 1,300 problematic computer users, classifies as addicts those who spend at least six hours online a day and have shown at least one symptom in the past three months.

“Eighty percent of addicts can be cured with treatment, which usually lasts about three months,” said Tao. He did not describe the treatment, however.

One of the main problems with the approach of the Chinese authorities is that it doesn’t seem to differentiate between addiction to the internet and addiction to online games. It is clear to anyone that has ever stepped into a chinese internet cafe that the real addiction problem here is to games, and not to the internet itself.

I always thought that if the government has not yet taken any serious measure against this well known problem, it is for a reason. In a way, the legions of Chinese young men immersed every night in their online games constitute a Harmonious force. How? Well, just imagine what all those idle minds would be doing with their spare time if they weren’t busy shooting aliens. Probably not studying the famous Scientific Development Concept of President Hu.

It remains to be seen if anything serious is going to be done against this real addiction, which affects the productivity of the chinese workforce in these difficult times when it will be most needed. And hopefully, they will leave alone the real internet community, the one that has created over the last few years a whole new world of Chinese free opinion.

One clue: Note that it is a Military Hospital that has developed the special psychiatric units to treat the disease. Who will be the first lucky user to get a ticket for the three months of rehabilitation with doctor Tao? He might be reading this blog right now.

During my travels these last weeks in Europe and Asia, and on my return to China, I have observed some rather striking contrasts. So much that they made me think a lot about the present state of Chinese economy, and here is a word about it.

Two different ways of seeing the world

I was in Europe for the last time the week that Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy – some call it already “Meltdown Monday”. Pretty scary, but the news didn’t seem surprising for anyone there.  Ever since the beginning of the year most people had seen the crisis coming. On the Spanish beaches, there were less tourists to be seen this summer, and the variable rate mortgages were getting stiffer for all. The governments that were not in electoral campaign had profusely announced what was to come.

That same week, during a congress in Lyon, the American guest from the marketing consultancy came out to the stand and presented the prospects of our industry up to 2010. He had a very professional looking PowerPoint with some colourful graphs that vaguely reminded me of the slides in a waterpark. The delegates from the rest of the countries looked bored, and only we – New Delhi, Kuala, Shanghai – were hurriedly taking notes. Nobody had shown us that back home.

The whole atmosphere I encountered in Europe was in stark contrast with what I had seen and what I am living still today in China. The crisis has not yet touched this country. The taxi drivers at the airport, who usually know a good deal of economics, don’t even mention the word crisis. On the corporate side, the contrast is even bigger. Most of my local clients, who take a WSJ for breakfast every morning, are not only not worried, but they actually look at the future with renewed optimism. They know that a big crisis (危机) is also a big opportunity(机会). In an intuitive language like Chinese, the two words share one single character.

The Great Wall of China

The prevailing thought here seems to be that of the Great Wall of China: Confident and proud of their financial system which has resisted the negative western influence, Chinese at all levels are convinced that the crisis will not hit them hard. To reassure them, there is the precedent of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which devastated the Asian tigers’ economies and left China, the only country strong enough to ignore the  western blunderer IMF, mostly unscathed.

The media here have already been speaking about the crisis for a while, but always as an external problem, and with a generally positive outlook. The official Chinese press is prudent as usual, but the general idea still seems to be that China shall be the word’s bastion of stability against the irresponsible western financial devices. Thus the official discourse goes: Growth to slow down mildy, there will be some  restructuring to boost the domestic markets, and we will come out stronger in the end. And in everyone’s mind is the opportunity for Chinese companies to go out shopping for deals in capital thirsty western counterparts.

Of course, Chinese are aware that international markets are the weak link, as a large part of the GDP is made up of exports to western countries and FDI. But they count on two factors  to ensure the minimum of vital growth required by the system. On one hand, the massive ongoing investments in infrastructure that expand their tentacles day after day to each end of the country. On the other hand, they bet on the development of Asian markets to counter the descent in Western demand.

In view of all this, the new priorities of the technocrats, as they explained last week in our industry briefing in Beijing, are: 1- Develop the markets to find a way out for Chinese production, and 2- Take advantage at the worst of the crisis to go out and acquire foreign companies, and achieve through these means the creation of truly global corporations, with an access to know-how and technology which is much more direct than that obtained from FDI.

The Great Wall of China, the myth that for millennia has defined the Chinese people, is born again in the realm of finance. And, shielded behind it, the sons of the Dragon hope to regain the glory of past times.

A weak point in the Wall

There are however some signs indicating that Beijing’s plans might not work out so cleanly. In the first place, although the Chinese financial system, entirely controlled by the government, has indeed remained more conservative than the western one, this does not make it in itself an efficient system. A series of failed investments in the near past, such as Blackstone or Bear Sterns are good examples. And the opacity typical of the large Chinese banks, heavily influenced by the Communist Party, is not precisely the best guarantee of success.

It should be noted as well that the very foundations of the Great Wall, the massive reserves of foreign-currency held by the Chinese government, may not be the solution for every problem. Most people in China fail to understand that the foreign-exchange reserves are not free assets, and cannot be used freely by the government without seriously affecting its monetary policy, or rather, as professor Michael Pettis calls it, its currency regime. Indeed, until the domestic market is strong enough, China will be forced to keep the RMB as low as possible to keep up with the exports, which will completely condition the freedom of its policies.

Looking at the markets, already several observers have started to note the fall in sales of Chinese companies. It is very doubtful that the Asian Markets can grow sufficiently quickly to absorb the growing Chinese manufacturing output. In the end of the day, Asian markets mean India and Russia, the only two countries with a critical mass to match Chinese needs. They are both strangled by serious structural problems to be able to respond quickly enough to China’s needs. And the hesitating actions taken for land reform to increase the consumption of peasants might be a good idea in the long term, but it sounds very optimistic to bet on domestic consumption in the short term.

Add to this that Chinese economy, in spite of being in the middle of a development miracle, has severe structural problems, partly derived from its political system, as commenter Will Hutton brilliantly puts forward in his book “The Writing on the Wall”.The lack of a “soft” infrastructure, as he calls the ensemble of characteristics of a civil society that are necessary for the proper functioning of a market economy, makes China a very vulnerable system. It is symptomatic, for example, the total lack of internationally recognized brands, or the many cases of mismanagement, such as the recent case of baby milk contamination.

Beijing taken

But there is a much more worrying aspect, which derives precisely from the Great Wall effect. Historically, the Great Wall of China has not been effective to prevent barbarian invasions, and in a way it has often had the opposite effect. The Han people, protected by their Wall, had a tendency to feel invulnerable and live with their back to the North. In 1644, when the Manchus crossed Shanhaiguan, they took the Chinese by surprise. Beijing fell very quickly (to internal rebels in the frst place), and the last of the Han emperors was left with no choice but to hang himself from a Pagoda tree at the Jingshan Hill, right behind his forbidden city. This is History. But it is a story that has too often repeated itself in China, and which can revive under a new shape in the XXI century.

It is well known, and the economic miracle of the last 30 years is a proof of it, that Chinese economy is guided by a corps of well trained technocrats who know very well their subject. And undoubtedly Zhongnanhai must have a Plan B readily prepared for contingencies. But it seems clear that, as much as they might want to prepare, if the crisis hits hard in China, the scope of reaction of the system is very limited by its own structure and its own people.

Indeed, the great majority of Chinese workers, unlike their western counterparts, are ill prepared to face a crisis, let alone to understand it. Ever since the end of the Cultural Revolution, they have only known 30 years straight of growth. The Chinese people has kept silence since the summer of 89, when Deng and the Red Army made them understand that getting rich comes first. Since then they have accepted injustice, inequality and corruption in exchange for national pride and a notable increase in material conditions. The day the system fails to deliver, due to unemployment, inflation, or other crisis effects, the pact of silence shall be broken.

Unlike our governments, the Chinese Communist Party will be unable to shield itself behind an international economic situation that its own people do not understand. And all its legitimacy,  based on economic development and on the dubious legacy of Mao, can vanish overnight. China needs a minimum annual growth to employ the massive wave of peasants that are migrating to its cities, the biggest migration in the history of humanity, as the topic usually goes in China comment books. The leaders know this very well, and the 7.5% of annual growth that they set as a goal in the 11^th Five Year Plan is probably about the minimum they estimate for the whole formula to add up.

It the Wall falls in these circumstances, as in the Ming period, the psychological effect could be devastating. And when the forces of the hundreds of millions are unleashed, the bureaucrats in Beijing might have no other way left than the one of the (political) Jingshan hill.

Possible outcomes

We might be right now at a turning point in the process of development of modern China, which will seriously impact the course of history in the XXI century. This year 2008, the one of the 30 anniversary of the beginning of Deng’s reform, marked by a series of disasters, and rounded off by the spectacular success of the Olympic Games, might well be the year in which everything changes. In the Chinese tradition, natural disasters, and earthquakes in particular, have long been omen of political change. The last serious earthquake was, precisely, in 1976.

Whatever happens, whether the Chinese Wall resists or not, the international crisis shall precipitate many changes in China, and in the rest of  the world we shall do well to keep a watchful eye on these events, because they shall have a major impact on our own lives.

If the Wall resists, Westerners will be forced to admit the validity of the Chinese economic system. Chinese capital shall go out to the world. Taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the crisis, Chinese economy may take in a very short period of time a decisive leap, and under the solid supervision of a regime legitimized by its success, it can spectacularly accelerate its progression to become a superpower. In a very short period of time, the most optimistic of predictions for China can become true.

If the Wall should collapse, on the other hand, Chinese economy may suffer a rapid decline, with almost immediate social and political consequences that may drag the rest of the world into a crisis that could go beyond the purely economic. The outcome in this case is much less predictable, and only mutual understanding and tolerance among the peoples of the world will avoid disastrous results.

So is the crisis hitting us or not?

The greatest economists have historically failed to predict crises, and are rather better at analyzing the problem “a posteriori”, finding out that it was all very clear after all. Crises are by definition unpredictable, so the point of this blog is not to guess whether or not the Great Wall of China shall resist this time the barbarians.

Instead, the conclusion is that, whatever the outcome, the role of China in the world is going to change radically as a result of this crisis. In the meantime, CHINAYOUREN will be here to inform you and keep a watchful eye on the Crisis and the Wall.

EDIT1: Deleted little rant against Western Media. Added shameless promotion of CHINAYOUREN.

This blog is meant to be an open site for discussion about China and the World. You are welcome to participate, comment,  send me fan mail, press all the buttons and otherwise interact freely with this website without reading the instructions. Don’t worry, it will not break.

But if you are wondering how all this works, or where I’m coming from, you might want to read below:

Political position

I already gave a bit of my background in the Introduction page, but I want to clarify this point so that everyone knows what to expect. I am not an activist, I am not an ideologue and I am not here to tell the Chinese how to rule their country. Most people agree that Western democracies are better systems  for their citizens, and I think so as well. But this does not give us the right to force China to follow our model, nor does it give us any moral standing to judge the Chinese.  In the international scene, Western countries have committed immensely more crimes than China, so whatever ideas you want to express, drop that moralizing tone now. Or else you risk being sent to my Gitmo page for suspects of bigotry.

Freedom of Speech

Any French reader can tell you that I’ve copied my motto from a famous newspaper, but I just couldn’t find a better way to say it than this line by Beaumarchais. This is my a statement of principles:

Sans la liberté de blâmer, il n’y a point d’éloge flatteur

Without the freedom to criticize, any other opinion becomes meaningless. Censoring is a form of lying, because it gives the false impression that what information is available represents the only truth. No matter its achievements, any government that forbids its citizens to speak the truth is a weak government. I am convinced that censorship is bad for China and bad for the World. That is why Freedom of Speech is the only exception to my non-activist rule.  I do what I can from my little corner on the internet to support it, by writing about subjects that have been censored, or by helping other people to unblock their websites in China. If this makes you very angry, I suggest you visit our 劳改 page for Reform through Labour.

The comments policy

Don’t hesitate anymore, stop thinking, press that button. Comments make me happy. Just try to keep it reasonably polite and on topic–if you want to write about something else send me an email to see where we fit it. There is only one kind of comment that I really dislike, and that is ad hominem attacks. Don’t bother with those, they will be erased without notice. You are welcome to disagree, but you have to address directly the points in discussion, not the qualifications of the writer. Your diplomas and medals will not impress me: on the internet you might as well be a dog.  But if you really know what you are talking about and you make the effort to explain it, then I will be convinced.

The new Mini-me

Otherwise called the MiniYouren. This is the absurdly named mini-blogging service that I set up on the top sidebar of my blog. It is connected with GBuzz and GReader, so if you follow me on those sites you can see the same stream. Otherwise, use the Reply and Stream buttons, or Subscribe to the feed. The posts I do here are not included in the main Chinayouren feed. They are often latest news translations or comments, they are short and sloppy but they can be more interesting than the main blog content.

The Content

While this might not be immediately obvious to everyone, content has real value and it is not alright to steal it or copy it elsewhere on the internet without my permission. The CC license of this blog lets you use my content as long as you put a link to me, but you should not copy whole posts to your site, or else Google will penalize both of us. The right way to do it is to quote a few key sections, or even better write your own comment/excerpt with a link to me.

The Mysterious Row of Colourful Indicators

I write this blog completely free of charge and I have never posted adverts nor I intend to do it in the future. Writing a blog  is hard work, and all I ask in exchange is that you come to my site with some sense of humour and an open mind. You will notice that there is a row of colourful buttons below each of the posts: those are sharing services. There is Facebook, Twitter, Google and many other sites that you can use to support my work and spread the word. If you are not a user of any of those services, then you can click on the icon with the shape of a little envelope and send an email to your grandma with my latest post. She will enjoy it, guaranteed!

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I am Julen Madariaga, a European happily living in Shanghai.

Uln was my internet identity and I used to blog under that nickname until I decided to use my real name. If you are curious, here are the reasons for this change, and here is the old intro page where I explained the origin of Uln. For sentimental and phonetic reasons I still use the logo when I comment on the internet:

My Chinese name is Youren, like the seal reads, and this is the Chinayouren blog. Thousands of foreigners live in China today, and a fair part of them seek to extend their contracts and are in no hurry to leave. There are many reasons for us to stay, from the old dream of the billion customers to the tolerant, good-natured local people. But there is one reason that all of us share to some extent: That vague feeling that it matters, that it’s here and now that history of humanity is being written.

Hence the blog’s subtitle: Of China changing the World

In real life I am an engineer working in for industrial investments in China. My job gives me a vantage observation point at the edge of China’s head spinning development; it also effectively bars me from commenting on certain things. I do not publish here any information related to my projects.

Apart from my day job, I am also a passionate student of Chinese language and culture. I have been doing this intensively since I arrived to China, until I got the HSK level 9 last year. Since then I have abandoned formal training to focus on reading books. Part of the writing in this blog is dedicated to document the process, with a particular focus on that blurry line where culture and language meet.

I have been in China for 4 years now, enough to understand that I will never understand this country. But enough also to be completely fascinated by her. I want to share my point of view of what is going on here, and how it is affecting the rest of the World. As a citizen of the World, you are just as qualified as I am to discuss this, so please share your opinion on the comments.