Shanghai Scrap

For a few, brief shining years that bumpered the last and current centuries (1998 – 2001), the Treasury of the United States ran a surplus (detailed statistics can be found here, pp. 21-22). As a modern phenomenon, an American surplus is weird: since the 1930s, the US government has almost always operated at a deficit. So, at some level, it was not so unusual when President Bush and his Republican Congress went on a debt-financed spending spree (a tax cut here, a war there …) that plummeted the US Treasury back into deficit spending.

And it was not so unusual that the new deficits were partly financed with US Treasury bills purchased by private investors and foreign governments. Though low-yielding, US Treasuries are among the world’s safest and most stable investments. So when a foreign government with a whole lot of excess dollars – like China’s – suddenly needs somewhere safe to park greenbacks, US treasuries are the natural depot (I hereby acknowledge – but purposely do not go into – the currency manipulation angle involved in some of those investments). (more…)

I’ve had quite a bit – and maybe too much – to say about Yi Jianlian’s apparent refusal to play for the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks. But I’m pretty sure that nothing that I’ve said or written was as insightful as what Jonathan Ansfield has to say on the topic over at Spot-On (found via the ever-reliable danwei). If you care, Ansfield might make you care even more.

Beijing has given the domestic Chinese media wide latitude in covering the recent crackdown on corrupt officials outside of Beijing (most notably, Chen Liangyu, the former party secretary of Shanghai). Partly, at least, in hopes that public recognition of the problem will quell the public’s very real anger at corrupt officials, particularly those involved in land seizures. Of course, there is always the very real possibility that revealing corruption will not quell anger, but merely serve to stoke it.

With this in mind, the Jane McCartney of the Times Online reports that civil servants in Ningbo have created an interactive video game named “Incorruptible Fighter” in which players gun down corrupt officials as they cavort with bikini-clad mistresses. Here, a screenshot from the Times story: (more…)

Last month, Richard John Neuhaus of First Things took a slap at me for (supposedly) taking a slap at Cardinal Joseph Zen, the Archbishop of Hong Kong, in my profile of Shanghai’s Bishop Jin Luxian in the current issue of the Atlantic (Neuhaus was wrong about this, a point that I make here). In the same column, Neuhaus promised commentary on the Pope’s recent letter to China’s Catholics, and last week the magazine posted an interview of Cardinal Zen himself, conducted by Raphaela Schmid of the the Beckett Institute for Religious Freedom.

It is an interesting dialogue, layered with meanings, and worthy of an annotation (which I have no intention of doing!). For now, I’d like to comment on one passage, in particular.

It is introduced by a quote that Schmid identifies as originating from an “open-Church bishop.” Schmid doesn’t name the source, but I will: it is Jin Luxian of Shanghai, as interviewed and quoted by me in the July/August issue of the Atlantic. I have no idea why Schmid doesn’t identify Jin. Perhaps Schmid, mindful of the fact that Zen and Jin know each other well (dating back to the years that Zen spent teaching at Sheshan while Jin was the seminary rector and bishop), might encourage Zen to speak sympathetically of Jin and his quote when a unsympathetic answer was desired? I raise this unfortunate possibility because – to Schmid’s total discredit – Schmid only supplies half of Jin’s quote, and the half quoted is quoted incorrectly. Here, as printed in the Atlantic, is what Jin said to me: (more…)

Over the weekend I read most of Liam Brockey’s superb “Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724.” Brockey’s book is not only a fast-paced account of one of the greatest adventures ever undertaken by a group of organized Europeans, it is – consciously and unconsciously – one of the better accounts that I’ve read on the difficulties that Westerners face as they interact with, and attempt to become a part of, Chinese civilization.

Though I have by no means mastered the genre, it strikes me that most of the popular literature on the Chinese-Western interaction is focused on the commercial relationships that have developed over the last twenty-five years. Few if any writers have bothered to look back into Chinese history and examine whether lessons learned in, say, the 17th century offer any guidance for today (not that successful commerce should be the only goal of a good history). And this is a shame, because today’s expatriate businesses in China would find much in common with the challenges faced by the Jesuit missions of the 16th and 17th centuries. Language and culture are merely the most obvious examples. Less obvious, but equally important were the “staffing” difficulties faced by the Jesuits as they tried to expand their missions (branch offices, if you will) into China’s interior. Talented Jesuits from abroad (the home office) were in short supply, un-schooled in the language or culture, and suddenly at the mercy of Chinese counterparts – presumably, their subordinates – who not only worked behind their backs, but insisted on indigenizing the branch offices in ways that the foreigners couldn’t understand (and thus, couldn’t approve of). (more…)

Minneapolis has a displaced feeling today. People are talking about the bridge collapse, of course, but those conversations are often paralleled by open surprise that the collapse has become the focus of national and international attention (a friend emailed to say that it was featured on a local Shanghai newscast!). I guess that’s a function of the Scandinavian reserve that still characterizes Minnesota’s indigenous culture: one doesn’t show off successes, and one certainly hides one’s tragedies.

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As I mentioned in yesterday’s 35W post – I once lived two blocks from the bridge, with an unobstructed seventh floor view of the deck and the rush hour traffic that used to crowd it. One of the curious things about my old view – and about the late 35W bridge – is that neither offered a view of the river. This is partly a result of the fact that the Mississippi at St. Anthony Falls (the lock-and-dam that television images show just above the collapsed bridge) is narrow, lined by very steep banks. But I believe that it was also a deliberate outcome of the bridge’s design: even in the right-most lanes of the bridge, the rails were so high that it was mostly impossible to see the water. (more…)

I guess price-fixing isn’t acceptable in China, after all. According to just-published accounts in the South China Morning Post [subscriber only] and China Daily, the National Development and Reform Commission has issued a notice prohibiting the formation of cartels – including restaurant cartels – for the purpose of pushing up commodity prices.

Note to NDRC: where do you stand on the formation of cartels to push down the price of commodities such as iron ore and scrap steel? A topic for another occasion, I’m sure. For now, I’ll merely note that the Chinese federal government has instituted cartel buying of iron ore, and is actively working to form scrap steel purchasing cartels. Consistency, in modern China, is often too much to ask.

[Unfortunately, the NDRC notice is not available in English on its website. If anybody has it, I'd really like to see the section that - according to the South China Morning Post - encourages the media to "expose any business activities connected to such price manipulation." Let's just say that I was very happy to have done my part.]

China Daily is reporting that some 20 “senior officials” representing the nation’s largest Chinese fast food chains met over the weekend and agreed to raise their prices. The reason for the hike is the rising price of food-stuffs and, in particular, pork.

I could go on for pages about summits of Chinese fast food executives (who brought the refreshments?). But what I’d really like to do is point out that this meeting is a textbook example of price-fixing – that anti-competitive, anti-consumer practice criminalized in pretty much every advanced, developed economy in the world.

That an egregious example of price-fixing could be reported sympathetically in a state-owned newspaper should sound a cautionary note for any foreign entrepreneurs or multinationals ready to enter China believing that the rules of international trade are followed (t)here. Not that such examples have stopped anyone in the past – and I won’t belabor the point now.

[On a personal note: am I the only reader of this story who imagined a table of highly overweight food barons snacking on greasy pork dumplings while negotiating their price-fixing agreement? I'm guessing not.]

[UPDATE: The always witty and interesting China Herald comments on this post by suggesting that it is "Time for some re-education of the officials who have to discover that price-fixing is not done in the open, but like in the West in secretive and illegal meetings that will be prosecuted when discovered by the government."]

I am currently in suburban Minneapolis, watching the televised response to the collapse of the 35W bridge over the Mississippi River. What follows are a few spot, shocked reactions to the news.

Earlier this evening, roughly 10-15 minutes before the collapse, I was riding from the Minneapolis airport into downtown Minneapolis, and I passed within three blocks of the bridge. At the time, the neighborhood was filled with Minnesota Twins fans heading into the Metrodome for a game with the Kansas City Royals. Ten minutes later, I was in a downtown restaurant, some ten blocks from the bridge, sharing dinner with a friend, when the televisions, tuned to the Twins pre-game, suddenly flashed to local news and images of a collapsed bridge. It took a couple of minutes before most of the patrons (including me) noticed that the bridge was in Minneapolis – and not somewhere more dramatic – but when they did, there were gasps, expletives, and several “I drive over that every day.” I think everyone in the bar pulled out cell phones to call friends and family. Fairly quickly, local news stations posted crawls asking locals not to use cell phones unless there was an emergency purpose. (more…)

Northwest Flight 1652, scheduled to depart Washington National for Minneapolis at 6:36 AM this morning, left the gate on-time. But just as it turned toward the runway, a loud, hacking sound – kind of like a handsaw cutting through sheet metal – began vibrating through the cabin. From my seat – 14D -it felt like it was emanating from the right wing, and it continued for a solid five minutes before the captain announced that we would be returning to the gate so that a maintenance crew could cool off an overheating hydraulic pump.

Which we did, resulting in a roughly twenty minute delay.

Problem (presumably) fixed, the plane once again departed for the runway. And, once again, that loud, hacking sound coursed through the plane, lasting for roughly five minutes until the captain announced that the hydraulics were overheating again – possibly because they had been overfilled – and we were once again returning to the gate. (more…)