Though she failed to conquer the Universe, Miss China is eager to use her experience in the contest as a springboard to a future career in the America, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Metropolis blog.
Luo Zilin — or Rosaline, as the reigning Miss China prefers to be called in the U.S. — was set to walk in the Sherri Hill fashion show Wednesday, an event where the Kardashian sisters are expected to film an episode of their reality-TV series.
Luo’s mentor, the Chinese beauty mogul and TV personality Yue Sai-Kan, sees the potential TV appearance as a launch pad to bigger and better things in America.
“First she will shoot with the Kardashians, then we will help her break into the U.S. market,” said Kan, the director of the Miss China program. “I would like to try to place her in some television shows, a magazine like Sports Illustrated and maybe something like Victoria’s Secret ….”
As for Luo, her taste of life in the Big Apple has left her wanting more once her year-long obligation to be Miss China in her home country is complete. “I would like to get the chance to work in New York,” she said. “I have no regrets. There is more to come.”
The article also notes the question which may have sunk Luo, whose answer was perhaps “too Chinese“.
Also hoping for a future in the US is a Chinese student who told Phoenix TV (via Danwei) that he was happy about the 9/11 attacks, which he felt were justified by American hegemonism. Nevertheless, he said, he liked America, was about to go there to study, and did not plan not return to China unless he had no choice. His attitude prompted widespread disgust, though Chinese literature professor Michel Hockx pointed out that he “knows many people who dislike Chinese politics yet like living there!”
Though China’s economy is surging while America’s seems becalmed, many wealthy Chinese view the US as an attractive home—or, at least, insurance policy.
It is a bothersome trend for China’s communist leaders who’ve pinned the legitimacy of one-party rule on delivering rapid economic growth and a rising standard of living. They’ve succeeded in lifting tens of millions of ordinary Chinese out of poverty while also creating a new class of super rich. Yet affluence alone seems a poor bargain to those with the means to live elsewhere ….
Getting a foreign passport is like “taking out an insurance policy,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, who compiles the Hurun Rich List, China’s version of the Forbes list.
“If there is political unrest or suddenly things change in China — because it’s a big country, something could go wrong — they already have a passport to go overseas. It’s an additional safety net.”
Among the 20,000 Chinese with at least 100 million yuan ($15 million) in individual investment assets, 27 percent have already emigrated and 47 percent are considering it, according to a report by China Merchants Bank and U.S. consultants Bain & Co. published in April.
Nearly 60 percent of the people surveyed said worries over their children’s education are a reason for wanting to leave.
Forbes’ Panos Mourdoukoutas, though, pointed to American institutions as the root of the country’s allure:
What America possesses is the right cocktail of institutions. Over the course of its history, America has developed and maintained a good (if not ideal) combination of free markets and government, with each institution deployed in areas of society it excels: Free markets in allocating economic resources efficiently and effectively in the production of private goods and services, and government in creating a “general equality of condition among the people,” as graphically described in Alexis De Tocqueville Democracy in America. The government protects civil liberties and economic freedoms, and takes care of the “commons,” sectors of the economy where free markets are inadequate or fail altogether: the provision of public and semi-public goods, and the protection of the public from health, traffic, occupational, and environmental hazards ….
The bottom line: China’s post-1978 economic regime has produced what the country was lacking, economic growth. But it has yet to create the right combination of institutions that will make this growth sustainable, allowing its citizens to enjoy the quantity of life provided by an efficient and effective market system, and the quality of life assured by a fair, efficient, and effective government. Until such a system is created, China’s citizens, rich and poor, will reach to America to find it.
Sources:
A Taste of New York Leaves Miss China Wanting More – Metropolis – WSJ
A Chinese student on 9-11 – Danwei
Top of Chinese wealthy’s wish list? To leave China – Associated Press
Why China’s Rich Want To Immigrate To America – Forbes
