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Shanghai Buys Itself a Makeover Before a Fair

From the New York Times:

Although the World Expo may have lost much of the luster it had when it was better known as the World’s Fair, and though the global financial crisis drags on, apparently no one has told Shanghai: the city is planning to spend $45 billion, more than was spent on the Beijing Olympics, to upgrade Shanghai’s infrastructure, build new transportation links and create what organizers promise will be the biggest and most extravagant Expo ever.

Architects and city planners say Shanghai is using the Expo as an excuse to go on a huge spending spree that will help stimulate a weakening local economy but also push forward an already breathtaking transformation in this city of 18 million.
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- May 30, 2009 11:12 PM
Bang! Bang! Shots in Shanghai

Gun violence is on the rise in Shanghai in spite of China’s total ban on guns. James T. Areddy blogs for the Wall Street Journal in China Journal:

At midday Friday in Shanghai, a quarrel among five youths sitting at an outdoor café turned rough, according to local reports. Shots rang out and two people were left wounded, one of them falling in a pool of blood and the other clutching his neck as he fled in a getaway car with out-of-town plates.

[...The] shooting was also a loud reminder for many in this giant city that suggests guns are increasingly prevalent in China’s fast-changing society. It’s not a trend as obvious as the rise of other cultural changes, like coffee-sipping in French cafés such as the one where the crime occurred. While guns don’t circulate in China anywhere near as much as in places like the U.S. and Mexico, there are holes in the government’s blanket ban. (See a story on the subject here.)

In the official version, by Xinhua News Agency, one man had a handgun and fired twice after an argument. But a local media report, complete with photos of a bloodstained sidewalk in front of the Lohas Cafe, quoted a witness who suggested an actual gunfight took place, with more of the five men firing shots. (in Chinese here).

The crime scene in front of the outdoor cafe where the shooting occurred. (Photo from xinmin.cn)

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- May 23, 2009 3:17 PM
Shanghai Rising

A number of recent articles look at the future of Shanghai, with a particular focus on the World Expo, to be held there in 2010. From the Wall Street Journal:

The two-day Lujiazui Forum, which ended Saturday, drew more than 700 top Chinese policy makers and financial-industry professionals to discuss how the city might transform itself into a peer of Hong Kong, New York and London. In March, China’s central government green-lighted Shanghai’s efforts to add fresh impetus to the development of financial services amid the city’s worst slowdown in decades.
[Shanghai's financial district] Associated Press

Skyscrapers and high-rise office buildings tower over Shanghai’s financial district in March. Chinese policy makers are exploring what regulatory changes are needed to make Shanghai a global financial center.

The Shanghai effort is a sign of China’s ambition as a global power. Sustained economic growth in China and its position as the U.S.’s largest creditor during a ferocious world-wide economic downturn have given Beijing new influence in determining global financial-system policy.

A higher-profile role for China is important, People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said at the conference Friday. He said the current financial and economic crisis “can’t be solved under the traditional G7 structure” — a reference to the Group of Seven leading nations, all of which are developed Western nations except for Japan.

An article in the Washington Post takes readers on a tour through Shanghai’s past, and onto the present World Expo fever:

Expo clock-watching would be a sport here, if Shanghai knew how to kill time. But the city, an economic renegade in the communist country, is dialed to high speed, trying to be the first to reach some undefined finish line. Drivers disregard speed limits and red lights; pedestrians move with the force of an undertow; futuristic-looking buildings materialize nearly overnight. Even the steamed dumplings are ready before you’ve had a chance to unfold your napkin.

While Shanghai fixated on the next horizon, I wanted to take a few steps back, to return to the past before catapulting toward the city’s future. But first, I had to drag myself away from that clock.

In the Christian Science Monitor, Jeffrey Wasserstrom argues that despite the lack of attention paid to the World Expo by Western countries in recent years, Shanghai’s show may be different:

…it’s not surprising that the 2010 expo hasn’t gotten much attention in the West. That’s too bad, because this one, in Shanghai, is unusually ambitious.

Obviously, it won’t match the Beijing Games as a symbol of China’s rising importance. But just as the Olympic opening ceremonies gave the world a glitzy tour of China’s past, the expo will offer an important glimpse into its future.

Five story lines are emerging.
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- May 17, 2009 9:03 PM
Funeral jobs Hot among Shanghai Graduates

Desperate graduates apply for funeral jobs in Shanghai, via China Daily:

It is the one business that is never short of clients, and 366 college graduates will this week find out if the city’s funeral industry is the answer to their desperate job search.

The students have all applied for more than 300 vacancies at 18 funeral homes and cemeteries, with pre-interview training to find out if any have what it takes to survive in the trade starting yesterday.

But despite being a business that has had little to fear from the global financial crisis, dealing with the dead is not everyone’s cup of cha. “Working in the industry is considered morbid and I hope you are fully prepared and make a sensible choice,” said Wang Hongjie, of the civil affairs bureau’s funeral and crematory division, as he addressed the hopefuls.
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- April 12, 2009 7:07 PM
City of Dreams

The Economist gives an update on the supposed eco-city Dongtan, being built on an island outside Shanghai. After the downfall of corrupt former Shanghai party chief Chen Liangyu, one of the main backers of the project, construction has largely stalled:

A noticeable loser is Dongtan. Arup’s original plan had 50,000 residents moving in by 2010, when Shanghai hosts the World Expo. That has now been quietly dropped. Arup’s Roger Wood says SIIC has opted to put construction on hold, pending further permits. He denies, however, that the project has been cancelled. On a recent visit to the site, your correspondent found an SIIC business centre and a shuttered hotel, neither of which appear in the master plan. Local residents say the hotel, outside the site proper, was a private villa owned by Mr Chen, who presumably enjoyed his excursions to Chongming.

A new bridge and tunnel spanning the estuary is already completed and will open to traffic later this year. That should boost land prices on Chongming, and may give SIIC a nudge to develop—or sell—the Dongtan site. It also raises the question, however, of what constitutes an eco-city. Arup had envisaged a compact, mostly car-free community. Residents would live and work in green research centres and other such industries, buy local produce and use renewable energy. The new road link, however, puts Shanghai within commuting distance.
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- March 20, 2009 9:05 PM
China’s Middle Class Derails New Link

Following protests by residents concerned over its environmental impact, Shanghai has canceled plans to extend the maglev train line to Hangzhou. The Australian looks at the impact of the new NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) movement in China:

The magazine said the reason for the suspension was not only manoeuvring by the powerful Ministry of Railways, which began work a fortnight ago on a rival Shanghai-Hangzhou express railway using high-speed but conventional technology.

Unusually for China, whose capacity to build infrastructure rapidly has become a hallmark, Caijing said protests by citizens living alongside the maglev route was also a major factor in its suspension. They demonstrated frequently, voicing their concerns about the likely resulting downward push of property prices, and their fears about electromagnetic radiation.

[...] The thousands of “mass incidents” that China’s authorities have become adept at handling, have in recent years comprised almost entirely farmers and sometimes migrant workers. Security agencies are not used to dealing with large numbers of middle-class demonstrators, most of them home owners.
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- March 16, 2009 10:02 AM
Shanghai’s Four Hot Tables

The Wall Street Journal profiles a restaurant in Shanghai that is the hottest meal ticket in town with only four tables:

The dinner I had there recently began with a visit from Ms. Qu, whose smooth, round face and pixie haircut make her look younger than her 50 years. She came out of the kitchen and sat at our table with a notepad in hand. But the notepad was a stage prop; there’s no menu, and the fixed-priced dinner consists solely of what looked good in the market that day. The only question she asked was, “How hungry are you?”

Woe unto those who answer, as we did, that we were very hungry. For the six of us, 11 courses came out in short order — and not little tastes, but heaping platters. We had crab with sticky rice rolls and stir-fried shrimp in their shells, and the chicken — salted, cold chunks as an appetizer — was of the free-range variety that never spent a day cooped up in a factory cage. The whole fish couldn’t have tasted fresher, with a thick black sauce that should have been leaden but somehow sparkled. Everyone marveled at a purée of broad beans with Chinese pickles, but the portion was so big that six of us hardly made a dent in it.

All over China, owners of restaurants with far less reputation than Chun’s have transformed themselves from little storefront eateries into glitzy palaces, with branches near and far. One example is Zhang Sen Ji, a tiny restaurant that started out years ago in Hangzhou and now has several branches there and in upscale settings in Shanghai and Beijing. But in a country that prizes financial success, Ms. Qu may be unique among entrepreneurs: She values her leisure time and the integrity of her food far more than money.
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- March 15, 2009 9:23 PM
If a Bomb Explodes During Chinese New Year, Does Anyone Hear It?

The Wall Street Journal’s China Journal is reporting that amidst the deafening fireworks in Shanghai during the Chinese New Year, another explosion went off with little notice:

But whatever went off there that day, it wasn’t part of normal celebrating. The address is the headquarters of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau-– the police. And the explosions were triggered by a man dressed in camouflage clothes and carrying crude weaponry. He died at the scene, possibly in a suicide raid.

That was the word Thursday from Xiaoxiang Morning Post, the government mouthpiece newspaper in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province (in Chinese here). The report says that China’s Ministry of Public Security has circulated an urgent nationwide notice on behalf of Shanghai authorities offering a 100,000 yuan (about $13,000) reward for information about the man - including any information about his possible motive. It says the dead man is believe to have been about 25 years old, 169 centimeters tall, with short hair, moles on his left shoulder and thick calloused hands that suggested a life of manual labor.

Also included in the new notice were two photos, apparently mug shots. Police identified the man by a pseudonym, “Huang Rong,” and said he had a 2007 arrest record from the city of Shenzhen for carrying illegal knives.

A police source familiar with the notice says the Changsha newspaper report is accurate correct. A spokesman for Shanghai’s Public Security Bureau would only say that no such notice has been made public.
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- February 27, 2009 1:42 PM
Nathan Myhrvold: Is Shanghai Turning Pro or Just Building High?

Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer of Microsoft, writes a guest post for the New York Times’ Freakonomics blog about his first trip to China:

My first stop in China was Shanghai, and I arrived directly from New Delhi; the contrast couldn’t have been greater. Both China and India are developing countries. You can’t escape that in New Delhi; a five-minute drive on any road will remind you where you are, for example, when water buffalo walk by. Shanghai, on the other hand, looks like a 1950’s artist’s rendition of the city of the future. There are millions of people living in China on less than $2 a day, but they aren’t much in evidence in greater Shanghai.

The infrastructure is all new, from the airport to the expressway leading into the city (or you can take an ultra-high-speed maglev train and be there in 12 minutes). The downtown section of Shanghai is called Pudong, and it is full of gleaming new skyscrapers. The other side of the river has the Bund, the center of Shanghai’s 19th-century economic boom. It too is replete with interesting architecture, albeit smaller and older. Amusingly, none of this architecture is Chinese. The closest thing I found to ancient Chinese culture was a fast food-chain called Kung Fu. Maybe that is the point of the place; Shanghai has long prospered by embracing and adopting the foreign.
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- December 10, 2008 10:03 PM
In China, Empty Office Spaces Fill The Sky

“The global credit meltdown and Shanghai’s slowing economy are chasing away big-time renters from the world’s second-tallest building.” Simon Montlake reports for the Christian Science Monitor from Shanghai:

As dusk falls on Shanghai’s futuristic skyline, spotlights blaze on its newest and tallest landmark. Fairy lights dance around the trapezoid opening at the top of the Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC). Depending on where you stand, the Japanese-designed tower, the world’s second tallest, looks like a giant bottle opener or a knife slicing the foggy skies.

But behind the glitter is an awkward truth: The lights are on, but almost nobody is home.

A global credit meltdown and a slowing domestic economy conspired to ruin the coming-out party for this and other newly built skyscrapers, part of a Chinese real-estate boom that has lost its allure. New homes lack buyers and high-rise offices lack renters, depressing prices and forcing developers in Shanghai and other cities to mothball projects as financing dries up.

Since October, China’s government has responded by slashing interest rates, sweetening mortgage terms, and adding low-cost housing to its two-year economic stimulus plan. Authorities are also arm-twisting banks to keep lending to domestic industries.
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- December 10, 2008 12:33 AM
Some Ships Can’t Reach Shanghai’s New Terminal

NPR reports that the new super-sized cruise ships are having trouble reaching a brand-new terminal specially built for them in Shanghai:

As the international cruising companies hold their first conference at the new cruise terminal, finished in August at a cost of $260 million, there’s praise for the terminal’s modernity and its environmental friendliness. But it is clear the bridge is a problem.

Today’s trend is towards bigger and bigger super cruisers, so as time goes on, the problems caused by the low bridge will get worse. Two-thirds of cruise ships currently being built will be too big to get under the bridge. So how did this oversight happen?

“They started building this project without thinking it through carefully,” says Liu Changshou, a retired engineer who has blogged about the botched decision. He says the city government should have known better, and he accuses the lower-level district government of ulterior motives in lobbying hard for the terminal.
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- November 3, 2008 10:11 PM
China’s Peasant Migrant Workers: Tianya Posters Angry With Shanghainese On KDS

Anti-WDR (wai di ren) Image on KDS forum

chinaSMACK has translated a discussion on a Tianya and KDS forums regarding Shanghainese’s xenophobic responses to “wai di ren” (外地人:to refer to migrants from within China), as opposed to “wai guo ren”(外國人:foreigners). The discussion started with a poster responding to the photo on a KDS forum above, and worried about how Shanghainese are discriminating against “wai di ren,” stating they are polluting Shanghai’s image and environment. The post continues with users’ responses with pride to the locality, being “Shanghainese”:

Shanghainese people are only ordinary people, they do not want to be supermen. Maybe Shanghai is an international big city, maybe it is Chinese people’s Shanghai, but Shanghai is firstly Shanghainese people’s Shanghai. Just because she has many titles/names, does not mean the whole country or even the whole world can share Shanghai’s wealth and resources. Shanghai must first satisfy Shanghainese people’s requirements before it can satisfy other places or other place’s people. This is what a place, a place’s government, and a place’s people should safeguard. However, so many “wai di ren” simply have not understood that they are guests, and not Shanghai’s masters.

The posts allude that the general discrimination against “wai di ren” refers to the stigma imposed on the influx of peasant migrant workers from China’s countryside that come to work in the cities. The article continues:

“Wai di” thugs are advancing towards the cities. I think peasants farming, workers going to work, everyone should be peaceful. Maybe there is a difference in living but it should not go as far as mutually attacking/slandering. However the brutal truth is that over 90% of vulgar crimes, such as robbing, stealing, killing people were contributed to by “wai di ren.” After 20 years, from not having to lock the door at night to having to carry 7 sets of keys when going out, I think already makes it clear what the problem is…

In addition to facing alienation in the cities, the Chinese government also seems to be attempting to keep the migrants in the countryside. China is currently hosting its Sixth National Peasant Olympics to put the focus back on farming and agriculture with competitions relating to farmwork, such as rice planting and harvesting rice races. As the article states, the games are there in part to keep the peasants happy about their work, as well as keeping in with the tradition of Mao Zedong thought. From the AFP:

Fresh from hosting the biggest ever Olympics, China also is putting on its largest “Peasant Olympics,” a quadrennial event held this year in Quanzhou city in the southeastern coastal province of Fujian.

This year’s games come as an ongoing exodus of millions of rural peasants into cities and industrial regions in search of work raises growing fears that it could hamper the nation’s ability to feed itself.

The games are meant to teach peasants about sport, partly to keep them content and on the farm, said Kang Wenbing, 18, who competed in the men’s grain collection race.

The chinaSMACK post also translates Chinese cyberspace lingo that has frequently appears to make reference to other topics, satire, or as a response to Internet censorship:

Dear wife, hurry and come see the earth’s people arguing with each other.
[he is pretending to be a Martian. It is a trend for Chinese netizens to make jokes about being from Mars when they see something they think is funny or something they do not understand.] KDS has created many nicknames for “wai di ren, including WDR, YDR, and VVDR. One of the newer nicknames is 西数人 (xī shù rén) which is a shorter version of 西部数据人 (xī bù shù jù rén), which means “Western Digital” person. The only reason why “Western Digital” [a company that makes hard drives] is used is just because the first letter in the two word is “W’ and “D.” KDS people can be very creative sometime.

See more of Chinese cyberspace lingo and satire that occurs from Internet censorship on CDT

See also China’s recent land reform policy and how it affects farmers.
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- October 30, 2008 11:44 PM
CCTV Investigates Peasant Girl’s BBS Forum Post

In early September, CCTV reported on a bitter Sina.com BBS post by a peasant girl working in Shanghai. On Saturday the state news channel tracked down and interviewed Little Yang, who wrote the post titled ‘Late 70s Peasant Girl’s hopeless survival, would rather be a mistress than marry a poor person’ (Chinese).

See the CCTV interview on Sina.com

ChinaSMACK blog has an English transcript of the interview, as well as translations of comments on Sina.com (Chinese):

What reasons made Peasant Girl post her article? What was her intention? Where is she now? Why did she write such an article? Are there hidden stories behind her story? This reporter contacted the Peasant Girl several times and asked to see her but was refused. After much correspondence, she agreed be interviewed.

Little Yang [...] said that everything that happened was caused by an accident several days ago. That day, she went out to look for a job but wasn’t feeling well. She fainted on the street and was taken to the hospital. When she woke up, she was shocked by the 1300元 bill. The high medical expenses caused Little Yang to become penniless — she had just lost her job before all this had happened.

The interview pays special attention to reactions from netizens who read Yang’s post:

It was a moment of impulse, to let out her frustration and disappointment, but after the article was posted Little Yang was confronted with the impact of her words. She also felt the power of the internet.

[...]After the incident, Little Yang was feeling deserted, betrayed by her friends and relatives. A friend of Little Yang’s, an ordinary working girl, broke off any relations with Little Yang after Little Yang posted her article on the BBS.

She was very frustrated, but there were some things that made Little Yang feel comforted.

A young man called Little Bao, an enthusiastic netizen, was very sympathetic towards Little Yang and her plight. He decided to help Little Yang in any way he could. Faced with Little Bao’s good intentions, Little Yang did not initially accept his help. She felt that they were very similar, both of them had come to Shanghai to work and their income wasn’t very high, she could not bring herself to spend his money. However, because her eye problem was getting worse, and yesterday she finally agreed to accept Little Bao’s help. Little Yang stressed that money for her treatment will definitely be repaid to Little Bao in the future.

Read ChinaSMACK’s English translations of Yang’s post and netizens’ reactions to it here.

Read more about migrant workers here on CDT.
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- October 27, 2008 11:27 PM
China Officials ‘Defect In Paris’

From BBC News:

Two Chinese officials have failed to return from trips to France, prompting speculation that they were seeking to evade possible corruption allegations.

Xin Weiming, a Shanghai district chief, left a note for colleagues saying he was visiting friends in Paris.

Zhejiang province official Yang Xianghong said he was staying in France to receive medical treatment.

Hundreds of Chinese officials are said to have fled abroad in recent years to escape allegations of corruption.
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- October 23, 2008 7:55 PM
Police Killer In China Gets Death Penalty

From AP:

A young man who drew a surprising amount of sympathy in China after being convicted of killing six policemen in Shanghai will get the death penalty after losing his final appeal Monday.

Dozens of angry Chinese massed outside the Shanghai Higher People’s Court during the verdict. “He’s a hero,” one woman shouted. “The Chinese people have no right to speak,” one man declared.

Widespread disgust in China over police behavior led to a wave of support for Yang Jia, who was accused of forcing his way into a Shanghai police station July 1 and killing six officers in a stabbing spree. Such violence is rare in China.
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- October 20, 2008 3:01 AM