[Cross-posted from FOARP]
Well, not quite. We’ll have to wait until next month to celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall. One group of ‘netizens’ (a term I have only ever heard used seriously in China), however, aren’t waiting, and have hijacked this commemorative site to stage their own protest highlighting the continued division of China from the rest of the world by the Great Fire Wall. Well worth having a look if you have time.
Heh. Great title.
I don’t know what is going to happen in this regard. Shanghai wants to become an Asian hub with tons of foreign workers.
That is not going to happen so long as our cultural lifelines, youtube and blogspot, are blocked. Cue the typical American response:
You mean I can’t read the Sunday Secrets @ Postsecret?? This place sucksss!!!
RZ – It also won’t happen so long as:
1) It takes three days to arrange a simple bank transfer because the Bank of China staff refuse to believe that you are no longer restricted to only sending out as much money as you have paid in tax (something I’m told hasn’t been true for a very long time, if ever), even though you have done the exact same transfer with the exact same teller in the past.
2) People’s idea of interesting conversation is telling you everything your country has done wrong, ever, without prompting or invitation.
3) “Hellllooooo Laowai!” (although at least this no longer happens in central Shanghai, much).
4) Local cultural entertainment consists of Mariah Carey concerts and Song Zuying.
5) Foreigners get hassled by ‘investment managers’ the moment they give their telephone number to anyone (a friend of mine does this for a fairly well-known US investment firm from their Shanghai office, the advice they give is actually pretty worthless).
6) People refuse to believe that, because that strange foreign country you come from doesn’t have an ID or national registration system, you do not actually have a permanent ID number so each time your passport changes, your passport number changes.
7) People will freely argue that “Black people are dirty”and that “Everyone knows that homosexuality comes from the west”.
Seriously though, Tokyo (where I am right now) has a larger population, far larger GDP, much more in the way of culture, far greater legal certainty and is much safer than Shanghai, yet never quite managed to unseat London and New York. Talk of Shanghai doing this is just pure crazy, especially whilst China does not even have a freely convertible currency. The simple-minded argument that “China rocks” and “Shanghai is in China” so therefore “Shanghai will be a world financial centre of the same order as London, New York, or even Hong Kong” is just the pure stupidness. Hell, last I heard (which was way back in 2004, admittedly) those flash new buildings in Pudong were still only at about 30% occupancy.
Tokyo had its run, the economy hasn’t grown substantially in a long, long time. My personal opinion is that they simply refuse to go through the next stage of development, which would mean cashing out the zombie banks first of all, and also getting organized crime under control.
Funny list. The first point is interesting, as I too was not aware how much things have changed from the old days in regards to money exchanging and transfers until fairly recently. Right now China actually needs to get more money out, in order to easy inflation, which is a serious issue. You know, one of the interesting tidbits I picked up due to an earlier 20th anniversary was that apparently inflation was also a big problem back in 88 and thereafter…
I can’t quite figure out how number 6 ever occurs naturally in the wild.
There were a bunch of chuckleheads talking about the RMB as reserve currency for the world some time ago. I guess your reaction to that was similar to mine.