“Development is the only hard truth,” Deng claimed. “If we do not develop, then we will be bullied.” Speaking of the “China Dream,” the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, upholds the same imperatives of national unity, strength and pride against the need for broad democratic reforms.

And he may be right to think he has a receptive audience. Soothsayers have been predicting the collapse of the Chinese regime for decades. In recent years, they have transferred their hopes onto the main beneficiaries of China’s economic growth: the middle classes. Last year’s leadership transition generated much wild talk about imminent revolution.

But China’s middle classes seem too fragmented to mount an effective political movement, let alone spark a revolution. And to many Chinese left behind by economic growth, the remote apparatchiks in Beijing may appear more committed to their welfare than an affluent minority devoted to further self-enrichment. [Source]

While Mishra addresses the link between economic growth and political liberalization, Martin King Whyte recently questioned the relationship between economic equality and political stability, arguing that the uneven distribution of power, not wealth, is the most likely source of unrest in China.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese Dream, democracy, Deng Xiaoping, development, economic growth, liberalism, liberals, middle class, political reform, Xi Jinping
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Who are China’s environmentalists? How would you characterize today’s green advocates?

Journalists and broadcasters founded many of China’s most prominent green NGOs—after all, they witnessed the scale of the unfolding environmental crisis. China actually has a long history of civil society, which was suppressed during the Mao era. But the past 20 years have seen a flourishing of green NGOs. Now there are thousands registered, and many more unregistered. Today all sorts of people get involved in China’s environmental campaigns, from university students and middle-class urban residents protesting against the construction of polluting petrochemical factories or incinerators, to villagers in the countryside angry about pollution ruining their crops and their health.

[…] Why is public participation in environmental issues so important for China?

Without the public pressure to act responsibly, local officials will continue to chase short-term economic gains and disregard environmental concerns. A greener society needs journalists who can expose environmental problems, NGOs who can lobby for conservation measures, and lawyers who can represent communities that have been affected by pollution. That’s why citizens have been at the forefront of China’s environmental movement.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinadialogue, civil society, economic growth, environmental activism, incinerators, journalists, lawyers, local officials, middle class, NGOs, pollution, university students, villagers
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

With their matching hats and bullhorn-equipped tour guides, Chinese tour groups may not win many style points, but according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization they’re doing more than anyone else prop up the global tourism industry.

China’s spending on outbound travel swelled to $102 billion last year, a 40% jump from 2011. That surge sent China screaming past Germany and the U.S. — the former No. 1 and No. 2 spenders, respectively — which both saw tourist outlays increase 6% year-on-year to around $84 billion in 2012, the UNWTO said in a statement on its website.

Thanks in part to growing disposable incomes and an easing of travel restrictions, 83 million Chinese citizens left their country in 2012, up from 10 million a decade ago, the UNWTO said.

Reuters notes that countries with similarly swelling middle classes have also seen massive growth in outbound tourism, while countries hit hardest by recession are experiencing the opposite:

Tourists from other fast-growing economies with swelling middle classes, like Russia and Brazil, also increased spending in 2012. In recession-hit Europe, however, French and Italian tourists reined in their holiday budgets.

“The impressive growth of tourism expenditure from China and Russia reflects the entry into the tourism market of a growing middle class from these countries,” said UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai.

Also see prior CDT coverage of Chinese tourists and China’s growing middle class.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese tourists, Mainland tourists, middle class, tourism
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

“I felt lost in the big city because I didn’t know what was the purpose of life and I felt confused and I felt depression sometimes,” Jia says. “It felt so boring. The job was boring. Life was boring. Everything was boring.”

[…] These days, geese and ducks splashing in a frigid mountain lake wake Jia up each morning. She has breakfast, then she hikes for half an hour along a Himalayan mountain trail to work. She passes by crimson-robed monks chanting morning prayers at the local Buddhist monastery before arriving to the boutique hotel she manages here in a Tibetan part of Western China.

[…] Zhang and his wife lived in Beijing when their daughter was born. He says the horrendous water and air pollution there was the final straw.

“We were really worried about the pollution’s impact on our baby,” says Zhang, “Right before we left, we took our daughter to the doctor for tests. Because of all the pollution, she had five times the permissible amount of lead in her blood. We were terrified.”

A report by Christina Larson at Bloomberg Businessweek (via CDT) describes significant health risks to children in urban and otherwise industrialized areas, focusing on increased rates of birth defects.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, cities, middle class, pollution, Sichuan, urbanization, western provinces, Yunnan
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

A widening discontent was evident this month in the anticensorship street protests in the southern city of Guangzhou and in the online outrage that exploded over an extraordinary surge in air pollution in the north. Anger has also reached a boil over fears concerning hazardous tap water and over a factory spill of 39 tons of a toxic chemical in Shanxi Province that has led to panic in nearby cities.

For years, many China observers have asserted that the party’s authoritarian system endures because ordinary Chinese buy into a grand bargain: the party guarantees economic growth, and in exchange the people do not question the way the party rules. Now, many whose lives improved under the boom are reneging on their end of the deal, and in ways more vocal than ever before. Their ranks include billionaires and students, movie stars and homemakers.

Few are advocating an overthrow of the party. Many just want the system to provide a more secure life. But in doing so, they are demanding something that challenges the very nature of the party-controlled state: transparency.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, CCP, censorship, economic growth, freedom of speech, Guangzhou, middle class, new york times, Shanxi, Southern Weekly, southern weekly protest 2013, transparency, water pollution
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Yeoh warns that any sort of direct play requires research, but he has some handy tips. He says investors should look at what the Chinese will want to buy during the next decade. He also prefers established Western companies with a healthy exposure to China’s growth, notably luxury-goods companies.

”Generally, you would think that the corporate governance would be better for Western companies,” he says. ”There’s going to be more disclosure, and it’s a lot easier to understand a luxury-goods company generally than some sort of Chinese internet company.

[...] The downside is that the appeal of luxury brands can be fickle, and the saturation of brands could render them unpopular. ”[Shanghai women] always pride themselves as the most sophisticated and elegant and most open to the West,” Yeoh says. ”When they see the mistresses of the Shanxi coalminers wearing Louis Vuitton … they need to be wearing something else.”

See more on luxury demand in China via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: conspicuous consumption, foreign businesses, foreign investments, luxury, luxury brands, middle class, mistresses, urban life
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

In this contradiction—between Singles Day and illegal tweets, between needing the middle class to sustain the Party’s rule, and punishing the middle class for passing jokes around—lies the Communist Party’s essential problem. For years, the Party, and many observers abroad, believed that the middle class would be the Party’s greatest ally, that it had gained so much during the boom years that it would never risk the trappings of prosperity for fuzzy notions of political freedom. It was an idea that reached all the way back to the ancient sage Mencius, who declared that “Those who have property are also inclined to preserve social stability.” In modern China, that turned into the belief that the middle class would become the xiaofei qianwei, zhengzhi houwei: “the consumer avant-garde and political rear guard.”

[…] The arrest of Zhai Xiaobing, which has inspired a petition calling for his release, stirred a particular kind of dread among China’s self-made liberals because it reached into the privileged domain beyond the Great Firewall, the electronic dinner table where members of China’s new knowledge class were supposed to be able to joke freely, as long as they kept shopping. Day by day, it seems, the Party is confronting the fact that prosperity alone—the politics of goods—is no match for the politics of information.

Yasheng Huang questioned the nature of the link between stability and prosperity in a recent essay at Foreign Policy, featured on CDT earlier this week. “Some analysts believe that the Chinese people tolerate corruption in exchange for fast growth,” he wrote. “This is a bit like saying that New Yorkers tolerated Hurricane Sandy. Fast growth maintains a façade of stability not because it has secured tacit complicity from the Chinese people, but because it has funded the instruments of repression.”

The petition for @stariver can be found here.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, CCP, consumer class, consumerism, Evan Osnos, Great Firewall, mencius, middle class, singles day, social stability, stability, Twitter, Yasheng Huang
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The numbers show that the Internet user base is still dominated by younger, urban, highly-educated Chinese who reside in the more highly-developed eastern provinces. It is very likely that this characterization is applicable to the Weibo user base as well, which leads me to make the next simple point: Weibo-sourced reportage is useful insofar as it provides a glimpse into the conversation among a certain segment of the Chinese population. There are still millions of Chinese people who have yet to join this “national conversation.” And yet these unheard voices are often those of the people most affected by the social and political issues netizens discuss. They are the rural citizens, ethnic minorities, the elderly, and the economically disadvantaged. There is no question that the emergence of Weibo platforms and the Internet more generally has amplified the voices of the laobaixing—the ordinary people. But in order to know what the Chinese people are really talking about, it is not enough to just follow the viral videos and microblogs on Weibo.

A Weibo post translated by The Atlantic’s Yuxin Gao during Saturday’s anti-Japanese protests summed up the problem:

Weibo user: “Get onto Weibo you think China is not far from democracy. Go onto the streets you realize the Cultural Revolution is not over.”

— Helen Gao (@Yuxin_Gao) September 15, 2012

The Diaoyu protests may demonstrate the social divide that Qin warns about. Tea Leaf Nation noted on Saturday that Weibo users, though generally supporting China’s claim to the disputed islands, “for the most part condemned the vandalism and the violence against Japanese nationals“. At The Financial Times, Jamil Anderlini suggests that social class accounts for much of this online/offline divide:

A superficial observation of the crowds of mostly young people that have turned out in Beijing and Chengdu over the last week left me with the impression that the majority of them were not the upwardly mobile young folk who make up the country’s new middle classes.

Those people, with their spending power, Japanese-made cars, Nikon cameras and possibly even a few years of education in the west were at home tweeting on their microblogs about what a loss of face it was for China to have citizens burning and looting in the name of patriotism.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-Japan protests, diaoyu islands, microblogs, middle class, weibo
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

What ails China’s lending environment, and why won’t an RRR cut fix it? MarketWatch’s Craig Stephens thinks banks might have a supply-side problem, battling higher funding costs as their expanding suite of wealth management products – and the higher returns they offer investors – squeezes their margins. But Bob Davis and Tom Orlik write in The Wall Street Journal that the problem lies on the demand side, that the government can no longer “turbocharge the economy as they have in the past” by pushing state-owned banks to churn out new loans because the system lacks an ample supply of borrowers willing to take them:

The hesitation to borrow runs across the Chinese economy, from massive state-owned steelmakers struggling with overcapacity to small exporters trying to figure out when the European crisis might abate.

“We don’t need any expansion of credit because we are playing it safe,” said Stanley Lau, managing director of Renley Watch Manufacturing Co., a Hong Kong watch exporter that manufactures in southern China.

“Because of growing uncertainty over the economy, a lot of businesses are reluctant to borrow and, instead, they have decided to put their project or expansion plans on hold,” a senior executive at one of China’s largest banks said.

Even beyond the steelmakers and manufacturers, the troubles plaguing China’s cooling property market don’t help banks’ lending prospects either. Average home prices in 70 Chinese cities fell again in April, as the government continues to demonstrate a commitment to a price correction that it began in 2010. And while property prices may rebound in the 4th quarter as supply begins to ease, one research analyst told China Daily, housing ministry official Zhang Xiaohong told local media on Friday that Beijing won’t reverse its course and that “There is still room for property developers to continue to adjust prices to boost sales volume, but there is no more room for property speculation.” For now, reports Robin Kwong in The Financial Times, developers can only continue to push their large inventories of unoccupied properties:

This dynamic is reflected in the plight of Number 8 Royal Park, a super-luxurious development in Beijing where liveried footmen have been chaperoning potential buyers to assay opulently decorated 520 sq m apartments. The developer is still holding firm on its price tag of over $10m, but sales appear to have stagnated. Staff are still urging clients to buy flats in the same two towers that were on offer a year ago.

The Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon points out that the Chinese government’s handling of the housing market reflects not just an attempt at a market correction, but also a play for political preservation:

That bubble is now deflating, although some economists say the market is still overvalued and that falling property prices will not constitute the main drag on GDP this year.

“You can make a pretty strong case that it’s overvalued, the property market, so I personally don’t think there will be any reversal…I think they’ll hold the line,” said Alaistair Chan, China economist with Moody’s Analytics, who said this year’s forecast for GDP growth may end up around 8 per cent from their previous prediction of 8.2 per cent.

Just as important for China’s government, though, is that restricting property prices to try to keep them within reach of the rising middle class is seen as key to preserving political stability. For an authoritarian regime obsessed with maintaining a “harmonious society,” this has been a relatively dramatic year, with labour protests, self-immolations by Tibetan activists, continuing food inflation and a rare and colourful political scandal involving the murder of a British businessman that felled one of China’s most popular politicians – all ahead of an expected transfer of power at the top that is supposed to begin with the Communist Party’s national congress in October.

As a result, some property developers are settling in with what they have, and downgrading any ambitions of big acquisitions.

Wen Calls for Growth

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao took time during his weekend trip to Wuhan to reiterate the government’s aim of fine-tuning the economy to support growth, according to The China Daily:

“The relationship between maintaining growth, adjusting economic structures and managing inflation, must be properly handled,” Wen said in comments reported by Xinhua News Agency. “We should continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy while giving more priority to maintaining growth.”

The government, he said, will continue to carry out anticipatory adjustments and fine-tuning, boost domestic consumption and promote steady and relatively fast economic growth.

Even if he was only repeating the same long-deployed talking points, Chinese stocks rose today and Bloomberg News reports that Wen’s comments led analysts to speculate that the fine-tuning may become a little more heavy:

The shift in language suggests authorities are “seriously concerned about growth” and “ready to introduce further measures,” Bank of America Corp. said in a research note today. The government on May 12 cut banks’ required reserves for the third time in six months following data that showed trade, industrial production and lending were below forecasts in April.

“The April data has been a wake-up call for China,” said Alaistair Chan, a Sydney-based economist at Moody’s Analytics. “There will probably be some stimulus measures through monetary policy, more bank lending and infrastructure projects being brought forward.”

The Battle For Securities Reform 

Caixin catches up with Guo Shuqing, who took over the helm at the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) last October and has already begun to put his stamp on the job with a flurry of recent regulatory changes. The CSRC’s top priority, and “core challenge” of reform, Guo says, is in the arena of public listing:

Guo has said that a registration system for public listings is in fact not so different in nature from China’s current approval system. In the United States where a registration system is used, regulatory agencies conduct even stricter checks on companies than do their Chinese counterparts. The key is how to define the roles and responsibilities of the regulators, the exchanges and other intermediaries.

In this light, the recently released guidelines on share issue reform tackle the technical details but fail to address the underlying problems of the system. Rent-seeking can’t be eradicated without changing the vetting system. Take the newly appointed officers of the CSRC. As they become familiar with the job, and the temptations for corruption that come with it, won’t they also become less inclined to change the system? Based on the historic lessons at home and abroad, support of the top leadership is vital for a reformer.

Reforms are easier when the stock market is at a low ebb, but they will only get harder and harder. It will be a long-drawn-out war.

Is China Deleveraging?

The Wall Street Journal’s Tom Orlik writes that while China’s credit-fueled growth (which saw the ratio of credit to GDP rise to 173% by the end of 2011) may have saved China’s economy from the global financial crisis, the trend has begun to reverse amid an environment ripe with inflation, an overheated property market, among other things. It’s good for the ratio to come down and it should continue to come down, but this comes with consequences that Beijing can temper in a number of ways:

The government has options for responding. It could further lower the reserve requirement ratio, which would encourage firms to take on more loans as it lowers the cost of capital and signals that the government intends to keep demand on track—buoying confidence about future orders and profitability.

A further step would be to relax the floor on lending interest rates. China’s banks are currently allowed to lend at a discount of up to 10% to the government-set benchmark. People’s Bank of China governor Zhou Xiaochuan said in April that the next step in interest rate reform could be liberalizing the lending rate—suggesting the floor could be lowered.

Beijing also has room to ratchet up its own spending. There are signs that this is already underway. Investment funded from the state budget grew 29% year-on-year in the first four months of this year, partially offsetting a meager 4.2% increase for investment financed by bank lending.

© CDT Money for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China Securities Regulatory Commission, economic growth, fine-tuning, GDP, Guo Shuqing, middle class, property market, reserve requirement ratio, stock market reform, Wen Jiabao
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The company’s China sales came to US$144.3 million last year, well behind the U.S. total of US$359.2 million. But Samsonite, which listed its shares in Hong Kong last June, has been ramping up investment in Asia—already the company’s biggest revenue contributor—and seeks to raise its profile among China’s growing ranks of wealthy consumers.

Sales in Asia rose 42% last year, far outpacing other regions and underscoring the potential in the region’s developing economies, Chairman and Chief Executive Tim Parker said during an interview Thursday. He pointed particularly to China, where sales increased 63%.

“There is a growing affluent middle-class consumer in China who is getting on a plane, getting on a train and getting in a car,” Mr. Parker said. “Travelers are really beginning to take off and that’s what underpins our business.”

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: economic growth, luggage, middle class, Samsonite, travel
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Within a generation, the middle class in China will be roughly four times the size of the American middle class population, according to the UN Population Division and Goldman Sachs. By 2030, China should have approximately 1.4 billion middle class consumers compared to 365 million in the U.S. and 414 million in Western Europe. India is next, with its citizens moving up the income ladder and reaching a sizeable 1.07 billion in a little under 20 years.

Oppenheimer Funds tweeted that reminder to its 7,300-plus followers on Labor Day, an irony considering that U.S. middle class remains the world’s most coveted consumer. And is on the verge of being overshadowed. America’s hold on global middle class society and even culture is eroding, though not at the expense of the U.S. middle class population.

While Oppenheimer may be looking at the rising consumer power of China’s middle class, an article in the Economist looks at people power, and how it is also rising among the middle class in emerging markets:

Rebellion is in the air in China, too. In mid-August one of the largest demonstrations since the Tiananmen Square protests took place on the streets of Dalian, a north-eastern boomtown, which forced the authorities to shut down a chemical factory that had been damaged in a storm. Demonstrations and capitulations on this scale, though not unprecedented, are highly unusual. This one was reminiscent of the outcry that took place in 2007, in the southern city of Xiamen, over plans for a similar project. That event is usually seen as the first big example of a new willingness by China’s middle class to confront the government over environmental abuses. Moreover, the Dalian protest erupted only weeks after an explosion of popular anger, mostly expressed through micro-blogging services such as Sina Weibo, which blamed official neglect for a rail crash between two new high-speed trains that killed 39 people. The criticism was so widespread that even state-supervised media joined in.

The crash was the more sensitive because, in February, China’s parliament had sacked the minister responsible for building the high-speed network. He was accused of skimming off 1 billion yuan ($152m) in bribes and of keeping 18 mistresses. Another top official in the rail ministry was later dismissed for corruption, and state auditors said millions had been embezzled from the high-speed network.

[...] In rich countries the humbling of governments has been largely a result of economic slowdown, combined with problems in controlling public finances. Emerging markets, in contrast, have kept growth going, while public spending is (mostly) under control. The explanation for their political woes must lie elsewhere. The most plausible one is that India and China—and possibly other emerging markets, too—are experiencing the early stirrings of political demands by the growing ranks of their middle classes.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: demographics, middle class, protests
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Doughnut shops, once a rarity here, have proliferated across the city, with a huge number of rivals – including American giants Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme – now battling for supremacy in the race to give Shanghai’s middle-class consumers their morning coffee and sugar fix.

The opening of so many doughnut shops in so many locations is a testament to Shanghai’s growing affluence and the belief that young Chinese with more disposable income will be hankering for more leisure food. As China has opened its doors to the world, American fast food chains such as KFC, McDonald’s and Starbucks have exploded here, mostly in the wealthier cities and coastal areas, with varying degrees of success ….

Still, the pessimists think the doughnut might have a hard time finding a toehold in China — as evidenced by the largely empty doughnut stores, and the number of leftovers on the shelves at closing time. “It’s one of those food concepts that has singularly failed to set the country alight,” said French, the retail analyst.

French noted the biggest obstacle yet: In Shanghai, he noted, police officers seem to prefer smoking cigarettes to taking a doughnut and coffee break. “They haven’t cracked the cop market,” he said.

Western fast food has enjoyed greater success on other fronts, however. A Caijing article last month compared KFC and McDonalds’ different strategies in China, noting KFC’s menu experimentation along the lines of the dried pork and seaweed and dried Bonito doughnuts mentioned by the Washington Post. Both companies aim to double store numbers in China over the next three years.

KFC is a fried chicken restaurant chain. In America, even though its market shrinks fast, its menu have not drifted away from its core. In order to enhance the competiveness, some of KFC stores bundle with other brands such as A&M and Taco Bell. In a highly competitive and specialized market such as America, KFC has little chance to make drastic changes.

On the contrary, KFC China (so is Pizza Hut China) is rather experimental, especially in its core menu. First, it started add burger and French fries; then, it adds Chinese breakfast and soymilk as a regular offerings; and now it adds Chinese rice dishes.

McDonald’s is the most faithful to its menu, burgers and French fries. History proves that burger and French fries is more universally appealing than other food segments. In order to increase the revenues, McDonald pushes its breakfast menu such as English muffin with sausage and so on. China was not given a special treatment, and its menu is pretty much identical to its American one. It is likely Chinese will soon adopt burger as a regular food simply because of McDonalds. McDonald’s breakfast menu is likely to gain more success in China than in America because China has no chain specialized in breakfast such as Tim Hortons or Dunkin Donuts in North America.

Starbucks last week announced a restructuring of its operations to reflect its growing focus on China. From the Wall Street Journal:

Starbucks Corp. said Monday it will hive off a third regional division, joining a growing list of restaurant companies putting a greater emphasis on China expansion.

The coffee company, which is currently organized as Starbucks U.S. and Starbucks Coffee International, will move to a three-region system: the Americas; China and Asia Pacific; and Europe, the Middle East and Africa. A president in each region will oversee the retail business and work with the joint-venture partners in each market.

Starbucks is preparing for China to become its largest market. Last year, the company set up a coffee farm and processing facilities in China’s southern Yunnan province and announced plans to open 1,000 stores in the country by 2015. As of March, it operated 450 stores in mainland China.

See also: Starbucks Celebrates China’s Morning Coffee Habit, on CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: fast food, kfc, mcdonalds, middle class, obesity, Shanghai, starbucks, Yunnan
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

In 2008, post-election ethnic violence followed by the global recession halved tourism to Kenya, making the wildlife in the parks even harder to protect. Then, in 2009, one of the worst droughts in living memory hit much of the country. More than 400 elephants in Amboseli died. The Maasai lost many of their cows and are still struggling, while the price of ivory is higher than ever, so increasing numbers of them are risking the misfortune that killing an elephant could bring on their families, according to their traditional thinking, and are getting into poaching. There are brokers just across the Tanzania border who are paying cash—around $20 a pound—for raw ivory and selling it to the Chinese. Or perhaps there is a series of transactions, a series of middlemen, but ultimately what is not being picked up by the Kenya Wildlife Service’s sniffing dogs at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, in Nairobi, is making its way by all kinds of circuitous routes to China, where raw ivory is now fetching $700 or more a pound. Ninety percent of the passengers who are being arrested for possession of ivory at Jomo Kenyatta are Chinese nationals, and half the poaching in Kenya is happening within 20 miles of one of the five massive Chinese road-building projects in various stages of completion ….

During the great elephanticide of the 1970s and 1980s, Africa’s elephant population was cut from an estimated 1.3 million to some 600,000, and Kenya’s elephant population went from 120,000 to 15,000. (It is now about twice that.) At the height of the slaughter, it is believed, 70,000 elephants a year were being killed continent-wide. The death toll may be half that now, but there are only half as many elephants left.

The previous slaughter was driven by Japan’s economic boom. This new crisis is driven by China’s nouveaux riches, or bao fa hu (the “suddenly wealthy”), who are as numerous as the entire population of Japan. The main consumers are middle-aged men who have just made it into the middle class and are eager to flaunt their ability to make expensive discretionary purchases. Beautiful ivory carvings are traditional symbols of wealth and status.

See also a related report from The Spectator last year, and other coverage of the ivory trade and China’s part in it, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Africa, elephant poaching, endangered species, ivory trade, kenya, middle class, nouveau riche, Tanzania, wildlife preservation
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

[Connie] Hedegaard cited its latest five-year plan, which envisages major pilot projects to test market-based “cap and trade” emissions control systems.

“I believe China has realised there is a limit to how much it can grow its economy without taking into consideration energy considerations, environmental considerations, air pollution, water quality, things like that,” she said.

“In the end it’s also about social stability, because when China now has had some 400 million citizens entering the middle class, they also demand clean water and air their children can breathe, like others will do.”

Hedegaard said China had for the first time introduced a carbon target “because they can see that it’s necessary, but it’s very much because they can see it benefits their own economy” ….

“We (Europe) really believe that to pursue this green growth strategy is the way to create growth in the 21st century,” she said.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: carbon cap-and-trade, climate change, EU, greenhouse gas emissions, middle class, social stability
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

We settled into coach on an Air China non-stop flight to Frankfurt, and I opened a Chinese packet of “Outbound Group Advice,” which we’d been urged to read carefully. The specificity of the instructions suggested a history of unpleasant surprises: “Don’t travel with knockoffs of European goods, because customs inspectors will seize them and penalize you.” There was an intense focus on staying safe in Europe. “You will see Gypsies begging beside the road, but do not give them any money. If they crowd around and ask to see your purse, yell for the guide.” Conversing with strangers was discouraged. “If someone asks you to help take a photo of him, watch out: this is a prime opportunity for thieves.” I’d been in and out of Europe over the years, but the instructions put it in a new light, and I was oddly reassured to be travelling with three dozen others and a guide. The notes concluded with a piece of Confucius-style advice that framed our trip as a test of character: “He who can bear hardship should carry on.”

We landed in Frankfurt in heavy fog and gathered in the terminal for the first time as a full group. We ranged in age from six-year-old Lü Keyi to his seventy-year-old grandfather, Liu Gongsheng, a retired mining engineer, who was escorting his wife, Huang Xueqing, in her wheelchair. Just about everyone belonged to the sector of Chinese society—numbering between a hundred and fifty million and two hundred million people—that qualifies as the country’s middle class: a high-school science teacher, an interior decorator, a real-estate executive, a set designer for a television station, a gaggle of students. There was nothing of the countryside about my companions—the rare glimpse of a horse grazing in a French pasture the next day sent everyone scrambling for cameras—and yet they had only begun to be at home in the world. With few exceptions, this was everybody’s first trip out of Asia.

Li introduced me, the lone non-Chinese member of the group, and everyone offered a hearty welcome. Ten-year-old Liu Yifeng, who had a bowl cut and wore a black sweatshirt covered in white stars, smiled up at me and asked, “Do all foreigners have noses that big?”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Europe, middle class, tourism, travel
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall