Another area in which Europe has definitely fallen behind

Blood and Treasure brings our attention to the formidable talents of Peng Liyuan, China's new 'first lady'.

She can, indeed, belt out a jaunty tune:




(Note: the visuals really get going at about 1:25.)

The B&T comment:

Yes, it’s a bit militaristic. But it still beats the hell out of Samantha Cameron and her mimsy little boutique jewellery business type thing.

It is, definitely, more...stirring.

And it's made me aware of how vast the massed-ranks-scary-patriotic-musical gap between Europe and China has become.

Someone may have to look into this.

I mean: this is something we used to do well.

A bridge: too far?

My first reaction to these images (via Spiegel Online) of the new, enormously long sea-spanning bridge in China was amazement.

My second was to wonder what J. G. Ballard might have made of it. And part of me is now sad to think that a water-borne sequel to Concrete Island will never be written. 

Vorhut durch Technik

The sociology of the Chinese elite, read through German automobiles at the Wall Street Journal:

According to Yang Jian, managing editor of Automotive News China, a trade magazine based in Shanghai, BMW consumers are “typically young business people — entrepreneurs who have made a lot of money.”

Sounds obvious, until you compare to the brand’s competition: BMW is the No. 2 luxury-car brand in China — it sold 102,916 units in the first 10 months of the year, according to data from market-research firm J.D. Power & Associates. The top brand is Audi, with 172,180 units sold through October. The Audi demographic consists mostly of government officials, the leading consumers of luxury cars in China. The third most-popular brand in China? Mercedes-Benz, which sold 90,306 units from January to October — its models are the preferred choice of older businessmen and government officials in higher positions.

Fascinating.

(Via and comment)

"The togetherness of modern technology"

As if summoned from a novel by J.G. Ballard: "China traffic jam stretches 'nine days, 100km'"

The title of this post comes from a 1979 Penthouse interview with Ballard on the prescience of science fiction in which he observed:

I suspect it will also turn out to have been extremely accurate in the way in which it is now predicting or anticipating the peculiar affectless quality of life in the 1980s and 90s.

Penthouse: What kind of things?

Ballard: Well, for example the way in which the traditional togetherness of the village is giving way to the inbuilt loneliness of the new high rises, or the peculiar fact that people nowadays like to be together not in the old-fashioned way of, say, mingling on the piazza of an Italian Renaissance city, but, instead, huddled together in traffic jams, bus queues, on escalators and so on. It's a new kind of togetherness which may seem totally alien, but it's the togetherness of modern technology, and the science fiction writers of the 40s, 50s and 60s picked it out unerringly as being a dominant feature of the future - often without realising what they were doing.

Not that that togetherness is all that cozy, at least going by the Chinese example:

The drivers have complained that locals are over-charging them for food and drink while they are stuck.

Clearly, our Chinese friends have that capitalism thing down pat. Yet, the real traffic jam seems to nevertheless lack, how shall we say, the rampant psychosexual perversion of the Ballardian original.

You can't have everything. 

In praise of lost causes

I would like to think I'd have this sort of courage.

But, to be honest, I'm doubtful.

Twenty years ago, tomorrow:

Background to the photo. (Worth reading.)

Background to the event. (Worth watching.)

Tales from the Middle (-class?) Kingdom

I'm a bit preoccupied with work-related writing and data-entry (as I have embarked on my first ever foray into quantitative history...fortunately, I'm working with someone who knows his stuff...) as well as fighting off an illness that seems to have encased my neurons in some kind of dense, wool-like substance.

Hence the lack of my accustomed level of verbiage on this humble blog.

Not to worry, that will no doubt change soon.

Till then, I can recommend this interesting essay by John Lee (via) on the potential (or lack thereof) for democratic change in China in the wake of its economic reforms over the last few decades.

Lee observes:

To be sure, we have no choice but to continue to engage with China in the hope that continued economic reforms and rising prosperity there will eventually lead to political reform. But we should reject the blind and deterministic logic that a rising China will inevitably become a democratic one. Even if we believe that authoritarian China is on the wrong side of history, so far it is doing a good job of defying it.

Why this might be so is helpfully explained by several passages in the piece, such as this one (I have removed the footnotes, which are available in the original essay):

That the middle classes—from the private and public sectors alike—have little appetite for democratic reform is easily explained: they have much to gain from the current political status quo and potentially much to lose should it change.

Eva Bellin observes that state-led development breeds a dependence on the state in capital and labour, and tends to exacerbate inequality. Within one generation, China has gone from being the most equal to the least equal society in Asia. Its Gini coefficient (a measurement of income inequality) is now 0.47, up from 0.16 in the 1970s. There are between fifty million and two hundred million middle-class people (depending on what definition you use), but around one billion people who have missed out on the benefits of economic liberalisation. Much of China’s progress actually occurred from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. Going by the World Bank’s definition of poverty, 80% of people emerging from it in China did so up to the mid-1980s. Since then, of China’s one billion poor, about four hundred million have seen their disposable incomes stagnate or decline.

I was reminded of something that Francis Sedgemore, referring to comments by Slavoj Žižek, recently pointed out:

capitalism doesn’t always bring democracy. Anyone who thinks otherwise is blind to both history and the reality of the world around them today.

Yes indeedy.

Shopping Chinois

I guess I have to revise my recent post about the current facetiousness of French politics. It seems as though supermarkets of the French Carrefour chain in China have had a tough few days, as once docile shoppers happily rehearsing their glorious capitalist future have turned into angry mobsters protesting against what they believe to be France's pro-Tibet politics.

Info via Der Spiegel, though in Hun only.

Conspicuous (-ly stupid) consumption

Some interesting thoughts on the 'smoke and mirrors' of luxury consumerism from Access Asia (via Boing Boing) in a review of Dana Thomas's new book Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Lustre.

From the review:

An increasing number of brands manufacture in China. Those luxury handbags women crave? Mostly now invariably made in China, though manufacturers sign strict confidentiality agreements with the brands never to reveal this fact. Several Guangdong factories make bags for a range of brands you pay fortunes for – hence a nice 15% minimum margin on bags. Access Asia was recently in a Chinese factory where the same workers on the same production line were making US$2,000 bags for an Italian brand, and US$35 bags for JC Penney, at the same time. Ever wondered why Coach has so many stores in China? Easy – they make virtually all their bags here. Prada, LV, Furla – all now largely made in China. And that’s where the cost cutting starts, and then continues, with no linings and cheaper thread, glue rather than stitching, as well as cheap labour. Still feeling classy? And typical mark ups on bags once you move to China? Think roughly under US$100 to make a bag, which then retails for US$1,200 upwards. Still think you’ve bought status? And it’s also the high-end ties and scarves. About US$25 max to make in China, and retailing for somewhat more. Still feel exclusive? Or just conned?

A fabulous new party game...

[UPDATE: a list of participants and a slight relaxation in the rules is provided here.]

OK, The Wife and I have come up with something fun and innovative to do with your spare time.

1. Take one of the Chinese propaganda posters referred to in the previous post.

2. Go to bookshelf and find postmodern feminist tract of your choice (our preferred plaything is Judith Butler)

3. Flick pages and stop at random.

4. Place finger upon open page. Treat the selected sentence as a caption for the chosen Chinese propaganda poster.

This is our first result. We like. We like very much.

'Libidinal dependency and powerlessness is phantasmatically overcome by the installation of a boundary and, hence, a hypostacized center which produces an idealized bodily ego; that integrity and unity is achieved through the ordering of a wayward motility or disaggregated sexuality not yet restrained by the boundaries of individuation.' (Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter, 75)

A perfect match, we think. Now that is gender trouble.

OK, now it's your turn.

Herdspeople love to read books by Marx and Lenin

Via the newsletter of the International Institute of Social History (based in Amsterdam), I discovered a remarkable exhibition on the topic of 'books in Chinese propaganda posters'.

They are...interesting.



And even just the titles are sometimes fascinating. The above, for instance, is called 'Turn philosophy into a sharp weapon in the hands of the masses', a stirring message for any era. And note the philosophically inspiring mushroom cloud to the left. Oh, how it warms the heart.

The exhibition is certainly worth a look.