READING CHINA
Making sense of China from the news nowadays is not easy. Take just three of today’s news items:
Intellectual property rights and power shortages are problems in both Shanghai and Beijing but the outlook for business in both cities remains overwhelmingly positive, says the White Paper 2005 Business in China. Read more
The private sector in China is now responsible for about three-quarters of economic output and employment, according to a new survey, making the ruling Communist party more dependent than ever on entrepreneurs to sustain the high-speed growth underpinning its rule. Read more
The Chinese government is teaming up with Nasdaq-listed entertainment company Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd. (SNDA) to produce patriotic Internet games, the Financial Times reports on its Web site. Read more
Reading China today requires a nimble if agnostic mind. There is an indefatigable optimism which infects those ensconced in the gilded glass cities like Shanghai. Out in rural China, where most people carry on as they have for forgotten generations and where foreigners and high powered entrepreneurs rarely tread, it is another story. Too, there is a bewildering galaxy of defined meanings that often obscure the Chinese reality. “Private” companies turn out to be quite public when layers of supervision and proprietorship are rolled back. “Morality” becomes a suddenly modern term amid shifting dispensations and political expediencies.
China is a palimpsest, a persuasively apt erasing and reprinting of untold legends and aspirations on a canvas that, despite everything, remains intransigently Red
And that’s the problem with China. Like the four blind men caressing different parts of that elephant, the modern Chinese state defies the easily prescient.
Pass it on.