Beijing

Beijing

I visited China for the first time in 2008, the year of the Beijing Olympics, with a chip on my shoulder and a frown on my face. I had been working and living in New York and Chicago for the past five years offering management consulting to banks with their offices on the Wall Street or downtown Chicago – thus explaining the “chip” on the shoulder. As a person of Indian origin, I was biased with the Aksai Chin border issue from the India-China war in 1962, albeit that was before I was born. Besides, I didn't know any Mandarin and no one had turned up to pick me up at the arrival lounge of the Beijing airport – thus explaining the “frown” on my face.

At the phone booth, my frown turned into a grimace, as I realized I couldn't even read the Chinese instructions to make a phone call! Fortunately my blackberry picked up the local network and I could call Jason Huang, the organizer of the conference who had assured me that he had arranged for the pickup. He apologized and said he would send someone right away. As I waited for my ride, I was looking around. The first thing I noticed was the crowd as a whole was very wealthy. The second was that everyone was in an overcoat or a winter jacket. I glanced outside. It was snowing.

I had obviously not done my homework. If you draw a straight line through Beijing all the way to the West, it would pass through Rome. However, Beijing is usually a lot colder than the Mediterranean weather, because Rome doesn't quite get those cold Siberian winds blowing south from Russia. In Mandarin, “Bei” means North and “Jing” means city. Beijing is the city in the North. “Nan” means South so Nanjing is the big city in the south.

"Sorry we are late." Two Chinese students were standing smiling at me, bowing slightly. They were shorter, fairer and skinnier than me. One of them introduced herself as Maggie and the other as Tess. I learned then that every Chinese has an English name bearing no resemblance to their Chinese name. Maggie was actually Ling Hong Mien. She was a student volunteer helping to orchestrate the conference; making sure that all the international guests were received, checked in at the hotel and were looked after. Naturally, she spoke English. I learnt through my conversations with Maggie, that Mandarin isn’t easy to learn. One of the reasons for that is Mandarin is highly context and tone sensitive. For example “xie xie” meaning thank you, if mispronounced can mean something completely different!

As we got on the bus to our hotel, I was trying to impress Maggie by telling her that most Indians are multi-lingual, as in my case I could speak English (as a business language), Hindi (as the national language of India), and Marathi (my mother-tongue). Therefore, Indians naturally find it easier to learn new languages. She was grinning. I asked her to teach me something in Mandarin. As I learnt to say “xie xie”, Maggie was not impressed. She said one of the mistakes you foreigners always do, is you try to adjust your pitch rather than the tone. It doesn’t matter what pitch you use. It’s important to get the tone right. The first “xie” is to be pronounced as the 4^th tone and the second “xie” as the 1^st tone. This makes the first "xie" quick, sharp and a downward sound while the second "xie" is a monotone drawn out sound. If I couldn’t even get a simple “thank you” right after fifteen minutes of practice I had no hope of learning Mandarin any time soon…

I tried to find out what Ling Mien knew about India and was disappointed. She told me that most Chinese know very little about India. They do not love or hate India. Most in Beijing have never seen any Indians and don't think about them. In our geography at school, she said we study more about Russia, the Koreas, Japan, Mongolia, Taiwan and the Asian countries of Tajikistan, Ukraine, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Of course, she was talking about the countries bordering China, so that made sense. The one thing they like about India, she said, was the freedom Indians have as the world’s largest democracy. She wanted to know if Indians also married the same way most Chinese did – i.e. family arranged marriages.

Both the girls were not natives of Beijing but from Dalian, a city north east of Beijing. It's a lot colder there, Tess said. Dalian is near the border with North Korea and is the closest part of China to Japan. So there is a lot of import-export business with the Koreas and Japan. She confirmed that Chinese haven't forgotten about the 1937 war with Japan. 

After about an hour, we arrived at the Jiu Hua Spa and Resort. The resort was massive with twelve identical buildings each fourteen storeyed, a shopping mall, several warm swimming pools, a fully equipped gymnasium and sports center, a spa and massage center and a monorail that connected all of these. I was participating in an industry seminar about designing anything with the objective of improving the user experience using the principles of User Centric Design. Seven hundred people attended the seminar; among them five hundred Chinese students. Later that afternoon, I was pampered for two hours in the hot springs, followed by foot massage and a full body massage.

The inaugural ceremony and the first keynote speech were in Mandarin. Fortunately, they had electronic translators plugged into our ears so we roughly knew what was going on. I had attended some big conferences in my life but the scale of this central hall was intimidating! There were 90 tables each with 10 chairs and the hall was half empty.
 

Several communist party leaders were on the stage and one of them was talking about the current 5 year development plan of China. "We are the world's factory", he said. "We've conquered the world in demonstrating our ability to manufacture just about anything consistently, repeatably and reliably on a massive scale. China now turns it’s focus to services, innovation and internationalization." 

"In our last 5 year plan", he continued. "95% of our infrastructure projects completed on time" I felt an impulse to clap, but stopped short realizing no one was clapping. For someone who had lived in India, USA and the UK, 95% infrastructure projects completing on time was an amazing statistic that needed applauding. May be they clap only at the end of a speech in China, I thought to myself. The party leader continued. "I am deeply embarrassed that 5% of our infrastructure projects did not finish on time and within budget. So in this 5 year plan, we have revised our target to 98%."

I was flabbergasted. I knew that in the 60 years of sovereign India's history since 1947, if ever there had been a 5 year plan where even 60% of our projects completed – forget timeliness and budget overruns – the government of India would blow their trumpet and her citizens would applaud.

I couldn't focus on the words any more…There was determination in the eyes of the party leader. There was a certain discipline with which the five hundred Chinese students were listening and making copious notes. Notes! Of a politician’s speech!

The entire speech was focused about China's financial, technological, industrial and infrastructure growth. There were no religious issues, no cast based reservations, no character allegations about other parties or leaders. The speech was full of pie charts and histograms of every imaginable statistic around every parameter slide after slide after slide….

"Let us emulate the model of India and the UK when it comes to services." The mention of India and UK got my attention back. "We went to Bangalore and Hyderabad last year" He said. "and saw that Indian Government is offering free land, subsidized infrastructure and utilities, special economic zones and no taxes for IT companies for 10 years. We will do better. China declares today that if any multinational IT company comes to the cities of Nanjing, Xi’an, Wuhan, Chengdu, Guangzhou or Shenzhen, we will match what India offers plus we will pay for your workforce salary for a year from the Government treasury to promote employment. Over the next 9 months, nearly 3,500 English teachers will be joining us from the UK and USA." 

As the speech progressed, my admiration for China slowly changed into awe. The leader continued. "For Innovation, we will follow the South Korea and Japanese model…For Internationalization, we are encouraging our State owned Enterprises (equivalent to the  Public Sector Units in India) to go and acquire major international corporations throughout the world. We need to leverage the dollar surplus China has since it has started to put lot of pressure on the Yuan. If Yuan goes up, our exports will be negatively affected." The second keynote speech was about how China produced 3 times the number of Engineering graduates per year compared to India and how their salaries are from 50 to 80% less than their Indian counterparts.” By now, my awe was getting replaced with insecurity and fear. 

During the next week of my stay, China continued to surprise me in many ways. Beijing was very traditional Chinese, while Shanghai which I visited next, was a lot more Westernised. The infrastructure in both cities was truly amazing. On the second day, we went to see the infamous Tiananmen Square in downtown Beijing. All taxi drivers in Beijing were required to take a daily mandatory class in English. Each taxi had a picture of an American man and a Chinese lady with their hands tied by a rope, and the picture said "English First". If the taxi driver could not submit proof that he took the English class that day, he would be off the street the following day. Imagine implementing something like that in any democratic set up. China wanted their taxi drivers to be able speak at least one hundred English sentences by the time Olympics began.

On the third day in Beijing, we sneaked out of the conference for a couple of hours to visit the Great Wall of China. I had read it was first built around 800 B.C. and it is 6,400 Kilometers long; apparently the only man made construction visible from the outer space. Most of the wall was repaired and rebuilt in the 16^th century. The wall is about 50 feet tall and 40 feet wide. But the discipline to execute a project of this scale 2,800 years ago, tells you something about the organization, perseverance and determination of the people of China. I bought a souvenir tee-shirt and a hand painting of the great wall. The asking price was 200 Yuan. I bargained and bought for 30. 

I made more Chinese student friends during the course of the seminar. They told me about the the ‘Donghai bridge project’. East China sea outside Shanghai is too shallow for big ships to dock. Realizing this, the Shanghainese government built a port 31 Kilometers outside Shanghai in the sea where large ships of four hundred meters long could dock. The only problem was, how do you get the cargo to and from Shanghai? So they built the world's longest sea bridge – the Donghai bridge. By 2005, Shanghai seaport transported half a billion tonnes of cargo, thus becoming the world's busiest port!

The students also told me about the ‘Three Gorges dam’ project on the Yangtse river. When complete, it would be the world's biggest hydro-electric plant giving China 22,500 MW of clean power. Some 1.4 million villagers were impacted by this project because its catchment area was nearly 600 Kilometers long. So the government quietly built an entire city with new homes, schools, hospitals and then one day gave notice to the villagers with the address of their new home. The story is, they were given 'weeks' to relocate. The notice said, you're strongly advised to move well within the time-frame, because the government will bulldoze your houses exactly at the date specified, hopefully without you in them! Most of the relocation was completed in record time and the dam now provides water to three provinces of China. 

As I heard the story, I was reflecting about a very similar ‘Narmada river dam’ project in India, which languished for over 25 years. A famous leader called Medha Patkar from India and environmentalist lobbies protested for years against that project!

I am not endorsing the communist model. I would be completely out of my depth to even comment about the social, political and economic comparisons with any degree of authority. But seeing the infrastructure and the positive impact the communist party was making on the lives of common citizens of China, I was no longer sure that the chaos of a multi party coalition government leading the world's largest electorate of India, bogged down by the weight of its own constitution – was actually a better model. The communist party of China may not be exactly seeking “consensus” of the Chinese people. But it sure is transforming their quality of life and with a great sense of urgency!

Of course there is the other side of China. They say there are the “3 forbidden Ts”. Chinese don’t wish to talk about them. They are - Tiananmen Square, Tibet and Taiwan. These are sticky and sore issues. I had heard that if you surfed the web that had any discussion about Tibet or Taiwan, those websites would be banned. So I made an experiment. Sitting in my hotel room, I surfed five sites which contained discussions on the 3Ts. By the following morning, all of them were no longer accessible to me. Every other site I could get to, but not these five. That was pretty scary!

I couldn’t visit Wikipedia either. When I discussed with the students during one of the breaks, they laughed. They confirmed it was true, but they said there are ways. Most Chinese companies have their network servers in Hong Kong or Taiwan they said, where the internet is open and the local laws cannot apply. I gently probed into the issue of Chinese government crushing Tibetan rights to worship Buddhism, the ideology to become a nation that is anti religious and atheist, rather than secular. I saw the students were deeply divided on these topics. Of course I was very sensitive to the local context and didn’t really feel polite to engage in the debate much further. 

Denying the entire population of a country to believe in anything other than the communist philosophies, can only create larger problems for China, I thought. But then that was my view, and Hu Jintao wasn’t exactly asking for my opinion…

By Sachin Kulkarni, London, 22^nd February 2014.