Looking for ways to spend

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

THE Ensen Care old-age home, which is soon to open, knows its target market. A mah-jong table takes pride of place in its recreation room. Space has been made outside for tai chi practice in the morning and line dancing, much loved by Chinese pensioners, at dusk. Photos in glass cabinets depict the imagined lives of its prospective residents: grainy pictures of youths in Red Guard uniforms next to studio portraits with grandchildren in more prosperous later years.

Few homes for Chinese senior citizens have the pedigree of Ensen Care, a subsidiary of Legend Holdings, owner of Lenovo, one of the world’s biggest computer manufacturers. The old-age home in Changzhou, a city of 4.7m west of Shanghai, is a pilot project designed to demonstrate what can be achieved when private investors provide public services. In exchange for a subsidised parcel of land, Ensen is building a hospital and a community centre, which it will transfer to the municipal authorities. The hope is that this model of public-private partnership (PPP) will help local governments bring projects to fruition without adding to their already sizeable debts.

If that is the idea, the...Continue reading

Animal spirits

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

The Huangpu: hardly loach heaven

EVERY Saturday morning hundreds of devotees gather by Shanghai’s Huangpu river to liberate fish. Over three hours some 2,000 loach are tipped into the murky waters to the sound of chants.

This is fang sheng, or “animal release”, an East Asian Buddhist ritual in which captive creatures are freed. The point is to demonstrate compassion and earn merit. The practice is ancient, though along with everything else, it was condemned as so much superstition under Mao Zedong. Today fang sheng is making a comeback, especially among the young and well-off. Officials estimate around 200m fish, snakes, turtles, birds and even ants are released each year—though no one really has a clue.

Fang sheng associations can rake in around 1m yuan ($157,000) in annual donations. For some monks it has become a racket. The greatest price, however, is paid by the animals themselves and the ecosystems from which they come and into which they go.

A vast and mainly illegal wildlife trade caters to the demand for animals. Figures...Continue reading

Unnatural aristocrats

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

CLOSELY tracking the Shanghai Composite Index in its downward slide in August was the reputation of China’s government for consistency, competence and even common sense. Worse, its hapless response to the bursting of a stockmarket bubble, which its own propaganda had helped to inflate, was only one of a number of bungles. It mismanaged a modest devaluation of its currency, the yuan. And a catastrophic explosion in the northern port city of Tianjin revealed appalling lapses in the enforcement of regulations. All governments make mistakes. But China’s bases its legitimacy on its performance rather than a popular mandate. Now foreigners and citizens alike are asking whether the Chinese authorities have lost the plot.

Despite the rash of bad news, the Chinese Communist Party can still boast more than three decades of success in fostering spectacular economic growth and in raising China’s global standing. A few rough weeks do not give the lie to “the China model”—in which authoritarian one-party rule is said to be justified because it produces the social order and wise leadership that beget economic growth. Supporters of this idea like to point to...Continue reading

Parade’s end

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

AFTER weeks of market mayhem, it must have made a nice change for Xi Jinping, China’s president, to be reviewing ranks of smartly-dressed people who move in perfect synchronicity and do exactly what he tells them. Vast military parades may have gone out of fashion elsewhere, but Asian countries still like to strut their stuff. After displays of hardware and prowess in India, Pakistan, Russia and Taiwan this year, China held the most vainglorious march-past yet under clear blue skies (especially seeded for the purpose) in Tiananmen Square on September 3rd.

The event marked Victory Day, which was invented as a holiday only in 2014 to mark the end of the People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, as the years leading up to and during the second world war are known in China. It was China’s first large-scale military parade since 2009, the first to celebrate anything other than the Communist Party’s rule and the first involving foreign troops. But Mr Xi (pictured above) did not have to hold it. Such parades had always been reserved for the decennial anniversaries of the founding of the People’s Republic on October 1st 1949. This one came...Continue reading

Tanks a lot

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

Greetings, now go home

EVERY city suffers some inconvenience for the sake of pageantry. The authorities in Beijing show little restraint in inflicting it. Residents are used to coping with road closures, car-use bans and the suspension of subway and bus services before large events. But aggravation related to the staging of a military parade through the city centre on September 3rd—the first in six years—went much further. Occupants of buildings overlooking the procession were told not to open windows or take photos, much less line the streets. Some hospitals stopped admitting new patients for the day, lest the movement of the sick disrupt that of the thousands of troops. Offices along the main route were told to shut for most of August. Flights to Beijing were subject to delays for an entire month while military aircraft trained for their flypast.

The biggest disruption resulted from efforts to ensure that Beijing’s ever-present smog gave way to what state media call yuebing lan, or “parade blue” skies. Outdoor barbecues (a popular Beijing cuisine) were shut down. Road transport fell by...Continue reading

Young, single and what about it?

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

IN HER tiny flat, which she shares with two cats and a flock of porcelain owls, Chi Yingying describes her parents as wanting to be the controlling shareholders in her life. Even when she was in her early 20s, her mother raged at her for being unmarried. At 28 Ms Chi took “the most courageous decision of my life” and moved into her own home. Now 33, she relishes the privacy—at a price: her monthly rent of 4,000 yuan ($625) swallows nearly half her salary. 

In many countries leaving the family home well before marriage is a rite of passage. But in China choosing to live alone and unmarried as Ms Chi has done is eccentric verging on taboo. Chinese culture attaches a particularly high value to the idea that families should live together. Yet ever more people are living alone.

In the decade to 2010 the number of single-person households doubled. Today over 58m Chinese live by themselves, according to census data, a bigger number of one-person homes than in America, Britain and France combined. Solo dwellers make up 14% of all households. That is still low compared with rates found in Japan or Taiwan (see chart), but the proportion will...Continue reading

The kin and I

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

LIU CAIPING is a former maths teacher, now 71, who has lived alone in the western city of Xi’an since her husband died last year. The radio is her steadfast companion. Her eyesight is failing and she rarely goes out. Like many city residents, her former neighbours have scattered, and her two daughters are far away. When she can no longer cope on her own she will go to a nursing home, she says. That option remains extremely rare for old Chinese. And that highlights the problem: China is struggling to cope with a rapidly ageing society and a rising number of elderly people living by themselves.

For most of the past two millennia the family has been central to how Chinese have seen themselves—and the state has been seen as a family writ large. Filial piety was somewhere near the heart of a Confucian order regulating society, and the family was an extended, stable unit of several generations under one roof. A very common saying encapsulated it all: yang er fang lao—“raise children for your old age”.

Today multi-generation families are still the norm. Almost three-fifths of people over 65 live with their...Continue reading

The stockmarket's collapse kicks up political fallout for Xi Jinping

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

THE stockmarket rout, together with the devaluation of the currency and a mishandled disaster in Tianjin, comes at a time when the government of Xi Jinping was already under pressure for other reasons. China’s economic woes will increase the political strains upon the president.

On August 19th the website of CCTV, the state-run television system, carried an article signed by “Guoping” which claims that “the scale of the difficulties [in implementing reform], the extent of opposition, the stubbornness, ferocity, complexity and even weirdness of those who haven’t adapted to reform or even oppose it go far beyond what most people imagine.” This unusual language enjoyed the government’s stamp of approval. Guoping is a pseudonym that has been used for articles that are widely thought to reflect the president’s political views. According to the government’s website, it is the nom de plume of a group of the state-run media’s top commentators and propagandists.

The so-called opposition, as described in the article, may be exaggerated for effect. But the difficulties and dissent are real. Senior government and party...Continue reading

Why Chinese economic worries look overdone

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

WITH investors already in a febrile state of mind about China’s slowdown, the latest bits of gloomy news only seemed to confirm their worst fears. A survey showed that its manufacturing sector is on track in August for its weakest month since the dark days of the global financial crisis more than six years ago. Adding to the sense of panic, Chinese stocks plunged another 4% on Friday, closing off one of their worst weeks in years. The sell-off, which has already scorched emerging markets, enveloped developed markets as well; European, Japanese and Australian stocks all fell. Investors, though, are hardly known for taking measured views when markets get topsy-turvy. There is good reason to be anxious about China, but the pessimism is almost certainly overdone.

No one doubts that China’s factories are struggling. Industrial growth was 6% year-on-year in July, well below the double-digit rates of the not-too-distant past. The manufacturing survey published on Friday suggests that it is likely to slow yet further. New orders, exports and production are all down in August. One-off factors might have added to the troubles: last week’s deadly...Continue reading

Uncivil society

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

RECENTLY the Communist Party has put forward a raft of proposals aimed at preventing perceived challenges to its monopoly of power. On July 1st a national-security law was passed that authorised “all measures necessary” to protect the country from hostile elements. Now a draft of China’s first law for regulating foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is expected to pass in the coming weeks. The law is deemed necessary because of the threats NGOs are presumed to pose.

The draft law represents a mixture of limited progress and major party retrenchment in a sensitive area. Under Mao Zedong, China had no space for NGOs. But they have multiplied in the past decade to fill the gaps left by the party’s retreat from people’s daily lives. Officials say the law will help NGOs by giving them legal status, a valid claim. But it will also force strict constraints on foreign or foreign-supported groups. No funding from abroad will be allowed. And all NGOs will have to find an official sponsoring organisation. They will then have to register with China’s feared public security apparatus, which will now oversee the entire foreign-backed...Continue reading

Poisonous connections

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

What the blast laid bare

RESIDENTS who had their homes destroyed by the huge explosions that rocked the northern city of Tianjin on August 12th are being offered 2,000 yuan ($312) a month for three months. “The government says it is taking care of people who lost their homes,” says one resident, Chang Zaixing. “But they’re lying and cheating. Everyone in Tianjin knows it, but we should let the rest of China and the rest of the world know it.”

After one of China’s biggest industrial accidents, the government’s emergency response is being met with open contempt. Residents with banners, loudhailers and face masks dog officials’ footsteps, demanding full compensation for their homes. Others want to know what has happened to their relatives—65 people remain unaccounted for. It took almost a week for the mayor, Huang Xingguo, to appear before a press conference. When he did, on August 19th, the city’s claim that air-quality readings were acceptable met with incredulity. “Are the data really true?” asked a reporter from the Communist party mouthpiece, the People’s...Continue reading

A blast in Tianjin sets off an explosion online

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

THE most remarkable feature of the aftermath of the explosions in Tianjin, in northern China, has been the extraordinary contrast between the official reaction to the crisis, which has been profoundly flawed, and the online reaction, which has entirely dominated the agenda.

The prime minister, Li Keqiang (pictured), visited the scene of the destruction on Sunday, August 16th. Government officials, he said, had to have a “strong sense of responsibility” towards people’s lives and must act “without withholding information”. Fine words. The trouble was that Mr Li was accompanied by Yang Dongliang, the head of the state administration of work safety, a national body. Mr Yang was in charge of the investigation team in Tianjin and had spent 16 years working in the Tianjin government before being promoted. But today, August 18th, he was in disgrace and placed under investigation by the government’s anti-corruption body. It was a huge embarrassment to the government’s efforts to clean up the city. And it was...Continue reading

Packing up the suitcase trade

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

A FERRIS wheel visible from the Russian bank turns alluringly on the low island of Daheihe on the Chinese side of the Amur river. But the main attraction is the Daheihe Island International Trading City, with its bright ferry terminal and multi-level trading hall. Russian traders used to flock across the border to stuff their suitcases with cheap Chinese goods. Yet that trade, which long sustained the nearby Chinese city of Heihe, has hit a rough patch. Inside the vast trading hall stall-keepers spend more time knitting, napping and playing cards than they do making deals.

Shi Ying, a purveyor of medicines, tea, cosmetics and knick-knacks, blames the drop in value of Russia’s currency. Just over a year ago 100 roubles bought more than 18 yuan (about $3), but today they buy fewer than ten. The Russian economy has been hit by slumping prices for oil and gas, and by Western sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 and meddling in Ukraine. Russians, Ms Shi says, “have no money, it’s that simple.”

The stalls cover a huge space and offer wigs, watches, wheel rims, studded leather belts, fake Jim Beam bourbon, high-powered...Continue reading

Mapping the invisible scourge

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

THE capital’s “airpocalypse”, the choking smog that descended on Beijing in the winter of 2012-13, galvanised public opinion and spooked the government. The strange thing is, though, that information about air pollution—how extensive it is, how much damage it does—has long been sketchy, based mostly on satellite data or computer models. Until now.

Responding to the outcry, the government set up a national air-reporting system which now has almost 1,000 monitoring stations, pumping out hourly reports on six pollutants, including sulphur dioxide, ozone and (the main culprit) particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter, or PM2.5. These are tiny particles which lodge in the lungs and cause respiratory disease. The six are the main cause of local pollution but have little to do with climate change, since they do not include carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Scientists from Berkeley Earth, a not-for-profit foundation in America, have trawled through this recent cloud of data for the four months to early August 2014, sieved out the bits that are manifestly wrong (readings where the dial seems to be stuck, for instance)...Continue reading

Inferno in Tianjin

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

"IT sounded," said Guo Jianfu, who was asleep in a workers' dormitory at the time, "like the start of a war. I thought maybe Japan was bombing our port." Just before midnight on August 12th a pair of huge explosions in an industrial warehouse tore through Tianjin, a major city in north-east China, killing at least 44 people and injuring over 400. A swathe of the industrial zone was devastated, with shipping containers strewn about like toys. Residential areas also suffered extensive damage. On the China Earthquake Administration's seismograph, the biggest blast registered a magnitude of 2.9.

Disasters, man-made or natural, are dangerous to authoritarian governments since public distress can turn to public anger. Social media add to the problems since they make it harder for governments to hush up the scale of damage or the inadequacies of the response.

The Tianjin explosions showed new rules of disaster management in action. With a few exceptions, the authorities allowed reporters access and have so far done little to censor coverage. Tweets were not blocked, even those criticising the response: why, asked one, were firemen allowed into a burning warehouse full of...Continue reading

Silent waves

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

IN THE dog days of August, Beidaihe is a sea resort unlike any other. Swimmers, waddling through the streets with flotation rings around their waists, pause at road crossings as paramilitary police, in tight single-file with ramrod straight backs, march past. Visitors entering town are stopped at checkpoints. Cars require special certification. And tourists know their fun can only go so far: just beyond the westernmost public beach, guards stop anyone approaching a tree-lined boulevard leading to villas where very important people are, apparently, discussing very important matters.

Exactly who these people are is a secret. China’s leaders—President Xi Jinping; the prime minister, Li Keqiang; ministers, provincial bosses and retired senior officials—are probably all now at the resort on Bohai Bay, two hours from Beijing by high-speed train. But ordinary citizens will not find out. Since the earliest years of Mao’s rule, the government has never published a list of attendees at these annual conclaves.

Warm breezes and shaded gardens are thought conducive to debates about policy. “Top leaders have the luxury of time to discuss serious...Continue reading

At sea in the city

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

City rapids

MANY Chinese cities offer “sea views”, but of a kind that arouse fear and anger rather than raise spirits. The term is often used scornfully by Chinese media to describe the floods that render roads impassable and sometimes kill people during heavy downpours. They are largely the product of woefully inadequate drains. Urban areas have more than doubled in size since 1998, but officials have scrimped on arrangements for keeping them dry.

During the summer rainy season, the complaints of urban residents swell as fast as the foul water in the streets. They are targeted at the government. Even the state-controlled press joins in. On July 28th China Youth Daily said it was “beyond understanding” that city planners should give priority to high-profile “vanity projects” while ignoring the need for storm drains and the like. “Money doesn’t seem to be a problem,” it said. Residents of Beijing still harbour bitter memories of flooding in 2012 that killed 79 people (mostly outside the urban core) and caused 12 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) in damage. Much of the mayhem was caused by the...Continue reading

China gets the 2022 winter Olympics

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

IN 2022 the Winter Olympics will be held in a place with no snow. On July 31st the International Olympic Committee awarded the games to Beijing, to be held in the city of Zhiangjiakou, 250km (150 miles) north of the capital. The resort beat Almaty in Kazakhstan, the only other remaining city left in the bid. China has a lot of work to do in the next seven years to ready itself. Among them is to make some snow.

When any city is awarded the Olympics, questions quickly follow about the country’s ability to build the appropriate infrastructure in time—and how much it will cost. These cause less anxiety in China. In its bid the country highlighted its prowess at building fancy stadia, zippy high-speed rail and other transport links on time. Beijing has already hosted a successful summer Olympics—making it the first city ever to host both. In terms of the cost, the government deems no price tag too high for the prestige of staging the Olympics, yet another symbol of China’s growing pre-eminence in the world.

More worrying is China’s ambition to stage the winter Olympics—and launch a winter sports industry—in an arid desert...Continue reading

Xi Jinping’s fight against corruption in the military continues

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

THERE had been rumours of his downfall since last year. On July 30th, they got him: Guo Boxiong, former vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, which runs China’s armed forces, was expelled from the Communist Party for taking bribes. He is the most senior ranking official in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to be toppled for corruption.

The move is a sign that President Xi Jinping’s campaign against corruption is still running at full tilt. Mr Guo’s son, also a senior officer, was put under investigation in March. But after Zhou Yongkang, China’s former security chief, was sentenced to life imprisonment in June for graft and leaking state secrets, some China-watchers suggested that Mr Xi might now scale back his efforts. The latest expulsion proves that view wrong. “One demon killed, all demons deterred,” ran a line in an article about Mr Guo in People’s Daily, a government mouthpiece.

The arrest is a further assertion of Mr Xi’s control over the military; he has stressed the “absolute...Continue reading

Need a weatherman

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

ROW after giant row of wind turbines marches towards the snowy peaks of the Tian Shan range, harvesting energy from the air. On a blustery July day in Xinjiang in China’s far west, it is hard to stand upright beside the structures, each 90m (nearly 300 feet) high. China is better known as a land of coal and smog, but it is now increasing the generation of electricity from renewable sources faster than any other country, with more than 100 gigawatts a year of installed generating capacity from wind, a third of the world’s total (see chart). In future, wind power will be a vital source of renewable energy. If it can integrate large-scale wind generation into its electricity network, China will be an example for other countries.

By many counts wind generation in China is a success story. Over the past decade generating capacity has increased tenfold, while the cost of building wind farms has fallen. Three of the...Continue reading

Rising penetration rate

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

For galoshes, size does matter

IT USED to be that condoms could be found in China only during business hours, at government family-planning clinics, on production of a marriage certificate. In recent years they have become far more readily available—in vivid and sometimes intimidating variety—alongside the chewing gum, cigarettes and crisps on offer at all-night convenience stores, in hotel rooms and in vending machines. Sales of biyuntao, literally, “pregnancy-avoidance sheaths”, are growing fast.

The name biyuntao, however, suggests why use of them is low in China compared with many other countries. Contraception is widely seen as a woman’s responsibility—indeed, abortion is one of the most common methods.

Open discussion of sex remains taboo in most quarters, making it difficult to raise awareness of how useful condoms are, not only to prevent pregnancy but also the spread of disease. Aditya Sehgal of Durex, a British brand, says about 10% of Chinese who potentially are sexually active are regular condom users. That is about the same proportion as in...Continue reading

Confucius says, Xi does

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

TWO emerging cults are on display in Qufu, a city in eastern China where Confucius was born. One surrounds the ancient sage himself. At a temple in his honour, visitors take turns to bow and prostrate themselves before a large statue of Confucius seated on a throne. For each obeisance, a master of ceremonies chants a wish, such as for “success in exams” or “peace of the country”. On the other side of the city the tomb of Confucius is the scene of similar adoration—flowers adorn it as if he were a loved one recently lost.

The other cult in Qufu surrounds the country’s president, Xi Jinping. People still recall with excitement the trip he made to the city in 2013. It was the first by a Communist Party chief in more than two decades; in fact, though Mr Xi has visited Qufu he has not, since becoming China’s leader, paid respects at the birthplace of Mao Zedong at Shaoshan in Hunan province. Today plates decorated with Mr Xi’s image are for sale in Qufu’s trinket shops. His beaming face is on display on a large billboard outside the Confucius Research Institute, together with a quotation from the modern sage: “In the spread of Confucianism...Continue reading

Render unto Caesar

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

Its cross to bear—for now

THE Communist Party is struggling to manage the only cult in China bigger than itself—the Christian church. All down the country’s eastern seaboard it is hard to find a village that does not boast a spire or tower topped with a cross. To some in the party, this is a provocation, especially in the south-eastern province of Zhejiang around the coastal city of Wenzhou. Over the past 18 months, party leaders have ordered the demolition of such crosses. But this month the provincial branches of the Catholic Patriotic Association and the Protestant Christian Council—two of the government bodies that administer the official churches allowed in China—each issued an open letter to provincial officials condemning the demolitions.

The letters accuse the party of violating its own commitment to the rule of law. They add that the incidents have damaged the Communist Party’s image at home and abroad. It is, says Yang Fenggang of Purdue University in Indiana, the first time that leaders of official churches have come out openly on the side of ordinary believers against the Communist...Continue reading

Shaft of light

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

Risking life to fuel China

FOR decades China’s coal mines served as tragic showcases of greed, corruption and contempt for life: thousands died in accidents every year and many more after prolonged agony from dust-clogged lungs. In 2003 Wen Jiabao, who was then about to become prime minister, went down a shaft to have dumplings with miners. He told local officials that safety was the Communist Party’s priority. Over the next three years, however, just as many coalworkers died in mines—more than 18,000, by official counts—as in the preceding three years. Mr Wen’s words rang hollow.

Then a striking turnaround began. Chinese coal mines became far safer even as they more than doubled output to fuel the country’s economic boom—they produced 3.9 billion tonnes in 2014, about half the world total. Last year 931 miners were killed in coal-mine accidents. It was the 12th year in a row in which the death toll reportedly fell. By one measure of mining safety—deaths per million tonnes of coal produced—China’s record had improved twenty-fold since 2002, to 0.24 (see chart). That is still about ten times worse than in...Continue reading

Uncivil

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

SOME were taken from their homes in the middle of the night. Others had their offices raided, or were summoned to “take tea” at the local police station—a euphemism for being interrogated. According to Amnesty International, around 120 lawyers, as well as more than 50 support staff, family members and activists, have been rounded up across the country since the pre-dawn hours of July 9th. Many have been released, but as The Economist went to press at least 31 were still missing or were believed to remain in custody.

The round-up has been remarkable for its speed, geographic extent and the number of people targeted. Teng Biao, a Chinese lawyer and activist currently in America, says it includes nearly all of China’s civil-rights lawyers. They are a harassed lot at the best of times, but this is the most concerted police action against them since such lawyers began to emerge in the early 2000s as defenders of the legal rights of ordinary people in cases against the state. In the past few days state media have vilified them, describing them as rabble-rousers seeking “celebrity and money”.

The police have...Continue reading

Tales of the unexpected

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

WEIJIA is a typical Chinese seven-year-old. He loves riding his bike and anything to do with cars; he is a badminton fanatic and has lessons twice a week. In a few months’ time, however, he will become rather less typical. He will have a brother or sister—something most urban Chinese children lack.

His parents are taking advantage of a relaxation in November 2013 of the country’s strict family-planning rules. Couples are now allowed to have a second baby if one parent is an only child. After more than 35 years of often brutal enforcement of the one-child-per-couple policy, some had expected a mini baby-boom to follow. The National Health and Family Planning Commission estimated that the new rules would allow 11m more couples to have a second child (there were already exemptions for some). It thought that 2m of them would try in the first year. But by the end of 2014 fewer than 1.1m people had applied for the necessary permit.

That worries the government, which has tweaked the rules not out of sympathy for lonely only children or for parents who want a spare heir, but because of a population crunch. The country is ageing rapidly. In 2012...Continue reading

Rigging the daddy race

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

Learning to keep tabs on the property market

INSIDE the red-lacquered door of No. 39 Wenhua Lane in central Beijing is an old-style single-storey home built around a small courtyard. Its owner, an elderly man in a vest, sits on an upturned bucket near a jumble of cooking pots; a pile of old cardboard rests atop a nearby shed. Next to the man, two estate agents hover at the entrance to a room just big enough for a bed, a wardrobe and a rickety desk. They say it costs 3.9m yuan ($630,000). At 353,990 yuan per square metre, this makes it pricier than posh digs around New York’s Central Park—and it does not even have its own bathroom and kitchen. It is, however, close to the state-run Beijing No. 2 Experimental Primary School, one of the best in the city.

Until recently, that would have had little bearing on the price of the room. For years it has been officially required that admission to a school be based solely on how close a child lives to it. Schools have paid little attention. Backhanders and connections have counted for much more. So too have entrance tests, designed to exclude the less able (unless they were rich—those...Continue reading

Everything Xi wants

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

SINCE taking over as China’s leader in 2012, President Xi Jinping has shown an unusual preoccupation with challenges to the country’s security. A year later, to handle these, he set up a new national security commission and made himself chief of it. On July 1st the country’s parliament helped him further by adopting a new law on national security. It conveys the remarkable range of Mr Xi’s worries, with potential threats seen to be emanating from sources as diverse as the internet, culture, education and outer space. For its insight into the often opaque psychology of China’s elite, the bill will be welcomed—not so, however, by anyone with grievances against the Communist Party.

The law is a dense 6,900 characters of party-speak, with little in the way of detail (not even any specific punishments), but plenty of obligations such as to “defend the fundamental interests of the people” and take “all measures necessary” to protect the country. Many countries, including America and India, have laws on national security. But the variety of concerns covered in China’s is striking, as is the vagueness of its language (an exception is that...Continue reading

Lifestyles of the rich and infamous

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

Two smartwatches? I’d rather have a bone

NOW decades old, China’s economic boom has brought a better life to hundreds of millions. But it has also created new problems, such as pollution and inequality. And, for the super-rich, a moral conundrum: how, wealthy parents wonder, can they raise children who do not behave like arrogant brats?

China now has an estimated 1.09m people with personal wealth of at least 10m yuan ($1.6m), and 67,000 “super-rich” ones with assets above 100m yuan, including 213 dollar billionaires. Their children, the “second-generation rich”, or fuerdai, are the object of rapt attention in national media and a mixture of envy and revulsion among ordinary folk.

They can be seen driving outrageously posh cars which, thanks to stiff import duties, can cost $1m or more. Some of them post ostentatious pictures and vulgar rants about their exploits on social media. Wang Sicong, the son of one of China’s richest tycoons, recently aroused a storm of criticism for saying that his main criterion when selecting a girlfriend was that she must be “buxom”. He also...Continue reading

Tongue-tied

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

“I CAN speak Chinese, I’m so awesome!” reads a sign on the wall of the Mingde primary school in Shufu, a town near the oasis city of Kashgar in the far western province of Xinjiang. Nearby, children’s artworks hang beneath another banner which proclaims: “The motherland is in my heart.” Though every pupil at the school is Uighur, one of China’s ethnic minority peoples, most lessons here are taught in Mandarin—a very different language from their Turkic one. It is the same at ever more schools across the region. Educating young Uighurs in Mandarin may one day help them find work—but it is also a means by which the government hopes to subdue Xinjiang and its many inhabitants who chafe at rule from Beijing.

Xinjiang began to fall under China’s control in the mid-18th century. It was then mainly populated by ethnic Uighurs, whose culture and Muslim faith set them apart from much of the rest of China; Kashgar is far closer to Kabul and Islamabad than it is to Beijing. Despite the migration into Xinjiang of Hans, China’s ethnic majority, minorities (mainly Uighurs) still make up 60% of its residents, compared with less than 10% in China...Continue reading

The tracks of their tears

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

FOR more than three decades, since well before Hong Kong’s transition from British to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, politics there has split into two camps. On one side have been those now loosely known as “pan-democrats”, who have argued that only a democratic system can safeguard the freedoms Hong Kong enjoyed (without the democracy) under the British, and that China should be coaxed and hectored into granting it. On the other, “pro-Beijing” politicians have argued that fair elections were less important than smooth relations with the new sovereign power, which would then allow a slow but steady expansion of democratic rights. This month has suggested that both sides have been wrong. The long struggle for democracy, which culminated in last autumn’s 79-day camp-out in central Hong Kong by umbrella-wielding campaigners, has suffered a definitive defeat.

A vote in Hong Kong’s legislature (“Legco”) confirmed that voters among the territory’s 7.3m people will not after all elect their next chief executive directly in 2017. This had become the democrats’ central demand, and the issue over which people took to the streets last year. But on...Continue reading

Zen and the art of moneymaking

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

Enlighten your wallets here

THE white steel lady overlooking the South China Sea has three heads, three bodies and toenails bigger than human heads. Guanyin, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, stands atop a temple on a man-made islet, each of her heads facing a different way. Her public-relations staff call the six-year task of putting her there, in the resort town of Sanya on tropical Hainan island, “the number one statue-project in China”. The structure’s height, at 108 metres, was intended to be auspicious: Buddhists consider the number sacred.

Good fortune was certainly on the minds of local officials when they approved the project, in which the local government has a share. It was intended to be a money-spinner. It costs 60 yuan ($9.66) just to get in the lift that whisks visitors up to pray at those giant feet. That is on top of 126 yuan to enter the Nanshan Cultural Tourism Zone with its Auspicious Garden, Temple of 33 Guanyins and colourful Dharma Door of Non-Duality with its 94,000 portals. Guanyin is clearly not intended as a magnet for the faithful who have given up worldly possessions. Visitors are gouged...Continue reading

After Zhou, who?

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

A tiger caged

THE sight of China’s former security chief, Zhou Yongkang, white-haired and grim-faced as he was sentenced to life imprisonment on June 11th, will surely become an iconic image of the anti-corruption campaign that was launched by Xi Jinping after he became China’s leader in 2012. Mr Zhou is the highest-ranking party member ever indicted for graft. A guilty verdict had been expected since he was put under investigation last July for taking bribes, abusing power and leaking state secrets. What comes next?

Mr Zhou was once a man of awesome power who, until his retirement in 2012, controlled the secret police, the police and the courts. He also held a seat in the Communist Party’s innermost sanctum, the Politburo Standing Committee. By jailing him, Mr Xi has displayed extraordinary political muscle. But he has also rewritten the rules of Chinese politics, making it harder to predict what his next move might be. Views diverge to an unusual degree. Some believe that the anti-corruption campaign may now lose momentum; others that Mr Xi is getting into his stride.

There are reasons to suppose that Mr...Continue reading

Pet food

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

A dog is not just for dinner

“IF FOWLS, pigs, dogs and swine are properly bred without missing their proper seasons, there will be meat for septuagenarians.” So said Mencius, a revered Confucian philosopher who lived more than 2,300 years ago. Since then dog meat—prized both for its earthy flavour and for its purported medicinal benefits—has been a minor but regular part of the diet in many regions of China. But for the second straight year, a dog-meat festival in southern China, timed to coincide with the summer solstice, is coming under attack.

A big concern is that the dogs are not properly bred. Campaigners say many of the animals to be consumed in the city of Yulin in Guangxi region are either strays or stolen pets, and are treated abominably. Those objecting to the festival include Chinese who have learned to love dogs at the end of a leash rather than on a skewer. They belong to a new middle class that has fallen in love with pets. Urban households now own more than 30m dogs and cats.

Animal activists say at least 10,000 dogs will be slaughtered at the Yulin festival (and served with the...Continue reading

A snub to the party

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

POLITICAL bodies in China rarely defy the will of the Communist Party. On July 18th, however, the legislature in Hong Kong (known as Legco) vetoed the party’s plans for what had been touted as momentous political reform in the former colony. Twenty-eight of the body’s 70 members voted against the proposal, calling it a sham. But that leaves Hong Kong no closer to achieving democracy. And as noisy demonstrations by rival groups outside the debating chamber suggested, public opinion is deeply divided.

The outcome of the vote was no surprise: pro-democracy legislators had long denounced the proposal, which called for the introduction of “universal suffrage” in the next elections for the territory’s chief executive, in 2017. Their objection was that the only candidates allowed to stand would be a maximum of three people, all of them nominated and chosen by a 1,200-member committee stacked with supporters of the party drawn from Hong Kong’s business and political elite.

The only surprise was a bizarre walkout staged by pro-establishment lawmakers just before the vote. This meant that the plan was defeated far more soundly than...Continue reading

A territory divided

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

NEARLY a quarter of a century ago, China published a mini-constitution by which Hong Kong would be ruled after the British withdrawal in 1997. The document, known as the Basic Law, set an eventual goal of introducing “universal suffrage” in elections for the territory’s leader. On June 17th Hong Kong’s legislature will begin debating a reform package aimed at fulfilling this aim. The result will probably leave the territory no closer to achieving it, and its 7m citizens bitterly divided.

The proposal to be presented by the government to the Legislative Council, or Legco as it is usually called, would grant ordinary citizens a vote when the territory’s next chief executive is selected in 2017. But it would limit their choice to three candidates. These must first be approved by a 1,200-member committee stacked with members of Hong Kong’s business and political elite who are supporters of the Communist Party. The package needs the support of two-thirds of Legco in order to pass. Pro-democracy politicians, who control just over one-third of the seats, have vowed to veto it. Its adoption, they say, would be tantamount to accepting sham...Continue reading

Watering the gardens of others

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

MEI WU, a young lawyer in Shanghai, earns 1m yuan ($160,000) a year. She recently left her abusive husband. Ms. Mei and her parents invested all their savings in her 5m yuan home, which has tripled in value over five years. It was bought solely in her husband's name. She will now leave her marriage without her savings and without her home.

Hers is not an isolated case. Although the condition of women in China is better than in many developing countries, and has advanced dramatically in recent years in some respects, old customs and new laws have combined to short-change China’s women in the property market. Since the privatisation of the housing market in 1998, they have “missed out on the greatest accumulation of property wealth in history”, says Leta Hong Fincher, a sociologist.

One problem is a Chinese divorce law that went into force in 2011. The supreme court ruled that in the case of divorce, residential property should not be divided, but should be entirely given to the person in whose name it is registered. That is almost always men, due to the social norm that they are...Continue reading

A motherland’s embrace

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

HALF a year on from pro-democracy protests that gripped Hong Kong for weeks, the city’s economy is—depending on your perspective—beginning to suffer the fallout or sailing along as if nothing much happened. A tale of two property markets sheds light on this. At one end of the spectrum are retail spaces. Hammered since the unrest by a slowdown in the growth of visits from the mainland, shop rents are expected to fall by as much as 20% this year. At the other end are offices. Buoyed by a series of new financial links with the mainland, vacancies in Hong Kong’s forest of glass-and-steel towers are at their lowest since the onset of the global financial crisis. The common thread is evident: more than at any point since the end of British rule in 1997, Hong Kong’s economic fate depends on mainland China.  

That Hong Kong should be so interwoven with the rest of China might not seem surprising. It is, after all, a city of 7m people controlled by a country of 1.3 billion. But, as well as being administered under a separate political system, Hong Kong has long maintained a measure of economic distance from the mainland. Its currency is still...Continue reading

Candy-flavoured smokes for kids

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

WHEN the world’s first electronic cigarette was invented in Beijing in 2003, the device was hailed as a godsend for tobacco fiends. It used power from a small battery to vaporise a nicotine solution that delivered the hit smokers crave with fewer toxins than tobacco smoke. Today over 95% of e-cigarettes are made in China, but until recently the Chinese themselves have shown little interest in the product.

“Vaping”, as it is known, is far more popular in Europe and North America. In these regions, many health campaigners argue that e-cigarettes may help smokers quit. In China, however, awareness of tobacco’s health risks is low and regular smokes are cheap. A pack can sell for as little as 2.5 yuan ($0.40), compared with an electronic one that costs around 200 yuan for a starter kit.

The government is stepping up efforts to persuade the country’s 280m daily smokers—nearly one-third of the world’s total—to give up. On June 1st a ban on smoking in public places was introduced in Beijing. If successful, it will be rolled out nationwide. For the first time, the annual meeting in March of China’s legislature was made...Continue reading

Tiger caged

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

HAD it been held in public, the trial of Zhou Yongkang, who was once in charge of China’s vast security apparatus, might have been the most sensational since Madame Mao and her fellow members of the “Gang of Four” were sentenced for “anti-party” activities in 1981. But the authorities were clearly worried about what might be revealed: the trial was held in utter secrecy in the port city of Tianjin, about 120km (75 miles) south-east of Beijing, rather than in the capital itself. No news of it was released until after Mr Zhou received a life sentence for bribery, abuse of power and the leaking of state secrets.

Nor was any hint given in the official account of the trial of what many observers believe was the main reason for the case being lodged against Mr Zhou—that he had been a key ally of Bo Xilai, a former member of the Politburo who was himself jailed for life in 2013 for abusing his power. Mr Bo, it is widely thought, was a rival of President Xi Jinping. The sentencing of both men was likely an attempt by Mr Xi to crush political resistance.

By going after Mr Zhou, Mr Xi certainly broke with precedent. Never before had a...Continue reading

Once more, a breach

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

ONE of the largest breaches of data in the history of the United States government may have put the records of as many as 4m current and former federal employees in the hands of hackers. The attack, which was launched in April against the Office of Personnel Management, risks exposing employee data and security clearances. Investigators have reportedly said they are looking at the possible involvement of a "foreign entity or government", and hint that China may be involved. A previous attack against the same agency last year was also pinned on Chinese hackers. The Chinese embassy in Washington has issued a quick warning against "jumping to conclusions". But in advance of a state visit by President Xi Jinping to the White House, schedule for September, Sino-American relations, already in a tetchy state, seem to be heading in the wrong direction.

If China wants respect abroad, it must rein in its...Continue reading

Who wants to be a mandarin?

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

GOVERNMENT jobs have long been prized in China. Most years new records are set for the number of people sitting civil-service exams. University students, for all their disenchantment with politics, have been flocking to join the Communist Party in the hope of getting a leg-up into the bureaucracy. Such a career has offered security and perks aplenty. The only drawback has been pitifully low wages. This month officials are to get their first pay rises in nearly a decade; even so, many are heading for the door. Students are showing signs of losing interest in the career. Civil servants are anxious.

The reason is President Xi Jinping’s campaign against corruption, the most intense and sustained in the party’s history. It has made it harder to trouser the bribes that have traditionally supplemented those meagre official salaries. Many civil servants now fear a knock on the door by agents of the party’s anti-corruption department. In 2014 it punished 232,000 officials, 30% more than in the previous year. That was still only about 3% of officialdom, but the publicity surrounding these cases has compounded anxieties. Many officials are being taken, with...Continue reading

The everything creditor

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

FROM shoes to furniture and cosmetics to cars, shoppers in China can find just about anything on Taobao, the country’s biggest online marketplace. They now have one more category to choose from: distressed assets. Cinda, a state-owned bank set up to manage non-performing loans, will launch an auction on Taobao later this month of bad debts with a face value of 4 billion yuan ($646m)—backed by collateral such as bankrupt factories and even unused mines. As the economy slows, such debts are piling up. This innovative technique may help the state to offload some of them.

Bad loans in the Chinese banking system reached more than 982 billion yuan at the end of March, more than double their level three years earlier. Non-performing loans are only about 1.4% of the total on banks’ books, reportedly. But this ratio would have been higher were it not for banks shuffling off their dud loans to Cinda and China’s three other asset-management companies (AMCs).

Established 15 years ago, the AMCs were initially treated as an expedient way of cleaning up banks’ balance sheets. Bad loans accounted for about a quarter of banks’...Continue reading

Tragedy on the Yangzi

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

IT APPEARS to have been the deadliest disaster on water in the 66-year history of Communist-ruled China, and the worst accidental loss of life during the tenure of President Xi Jinping. On the evening of June 1st the Oriental Star, a tourist ferry with 458 people on board—most of them old—capsized on the Yangzi river in what officials described as a tornado (the upturned hull is pictured above). By the time The Economist went to press, official media had reported the rescue of 14 passengers and crew (the captain and an engineer were detained). It was feared that the others on board were unlikely to have survived.

The stakes for any government are high when an accident this horrible occurs. In South Korea last year the poor response to the sinking of a ferry, which left 304 dead, severely tarnished the image of that country’s president, Park Geun-hye. Following the Yangzi disaster, China’s state media were quick to note Mr Xi’s urgent instructions on the rescue. The prime minister, Li Keqiang, flew to oversee the effort.

The media have carefully controlled the flow of...Continue reading

Under water, in the dark

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

MORE than 400 people are missing and feared dead. Journalists have been kept from the scene. If the death toll is as bad as it might be, this would be the worst boat disaster in the history of the People’s Republic of China. The prime minister, Li Keqiang, has arrived to oversee the rescue effort; the whole country is watching.

The tourist ferry with 458 people aboard overturned on the Yangzi river in stormy weather on the evening of June 1st. Only 14 of its passengers and crew have been rescued so far. Five people have been confirmed dead. Citizens are watching their government’s rescue effort with bated breath—and with a paucity of information, which is all too familiar.

Most of the passengers aboard the boat, the Oriental Star, were between the ages of 50 and 80 years old, according to state media. Official news reports said the boat sent no distress signal before it overturned. The captain and an engineer have been detained, although no reason for this has been announced. 

Dozens of boats and 140 navy divers have been deployed at the scene. A 65-year-old woman became the 13th person rescued just before...Continue reading

Determined

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

EVERY year on June 4th, thousands of people gather in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park to commemorate the crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. The former British colony is the only place in China where large-scale mourning of the bloodshed is tolerated. This year crowds will gather as usual. But a growing number of people now criticise the event, arguing that Hong Kong should fight for its own causes, rather than marking the mainland’s struggles. The splintering of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong is a product of growing antipathy towards China. Other protest movements increasingly stress a separate identity in the territory too. The governments of Hong Kong and China are watching with alarm.

When Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule in 1997, Chinese officials hoped that a gradual narrowing of the wealth gap between it and the mainland would help to overcome the misgivings of many Hong Kongers. There has been much evidence since then of the mainland’s growing success: millions of rich tourists have been pouring into Hong Kong to shop, China’s brightest students have been flocking to local universities and mainland professionals have...Continue reading

Big plan, a little fuzzy

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

FROM the damming and diverting of mighty rivers to the building of huge new cities from the ground up, China’s government does not shy away from grand schemes. The Communist Party’s highest decision-making body has now signed off on another one: the integration of the capital, Beijing, with the nearby port city of Tianjin and much of the surrounding province of Hebei in a “co-ordinated development programme”.

The idea had been under quiet consideration for years, but after the Politburo announced on April 30th that it would move forward, extravagant claims quickly followed. It could turn the region into a “Chinese version of the Rhine-Ruhr”, one of Germany’s most populous and productive areas, said Xinhua, a state-run news agency. Other reports likened the potential effects to the “powerful boost” enjoyed by Los Angeles when, decades ago, it incorporated nearby counties. An economist at Peking University said it would be “earthshaking” for the region’s population of more than 100m and bring “tremendous economic progress in north-eastern China by 2050”. According to the finance ministry, the project will attract 42 trillion yuan ($6.8 trillion) in investment over the next six years alone.

The decision to go ahead was taken at a meeting chaired by Xi Jinping, China’s president and the Communist Party’s leader. Reports in state...Continue reading

And the law won

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

IN DECEMBER 2005 Asia Weekly, a Chinese-language magazine in Hong Kong, put 14 Chinese civil-rights advocates on its cover. It hailed them and their brethren in the cause of weiquan, or rights protection, as “men of the year” for their brave efforts to advance the rule of law in China. The cover might as well have been a “most wanted” poster. Since then authorities have turned the lawyers into a gang of “criminals” and fugitives.

All of the activists pictured on the magazine’s cover have since been imprisoned, detained, beaten or threatened, except for one lawyer who had already fled the country into exile in Canada. The most vocal among them were, as their sympathisers like to put it, “disappeared” by party-hired thugs in extralegal abductions.

It has been a long and hard fall that says much about the Communist Party’s chosen path of evolution. Activists seeking to protect the legal rights of ordinary citizens rose to prominence in the early 2000s. At the time the party was trying to professionalise its legal system, to encourage people to seek redress through the courts and...Continue reading

A mighty mission

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

THE Chinese Communist Party does not go up against America’s mightiest heroes very often. But this month the latest Avengers film starring comic-book superheroes hit Chinese cinemas within days of “Mr Deng goes to Washington”, a documentary on a different kind of superpower alliance—Deng Xiaoping’s nine-day trip to America just after the two countries established diplomatic ties in 1979. The Avengers strive to save humans from extinction, whereas Deng must rescue China from poverty. Yet the biopic has diplomatic ambitions too: it seeks to polish the image of China’s relationship with America ahead of Xi Jinping’s first state visit to Washington as Chinese president in September.

The biopic is part of Mr Xi’s campaign to deploy the image of Deng, who ruled China from 1978-1992, to bolster his own position. Last year, for example, a 48-episode drama about Deng was aired on state television. The government did not directly fund the just-released “Mr Deng”, but its author and director, Fu Hongxing, used to run the state-backed China Film Archive. During the editing some of the wider geopolitics was reportedly stripped out. A reference...Continue reading

Correction: Bitter harvest

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

Correction: Our article on farm subsidies (“Bitter harvest”, May 16th) said China was providing food for two-fifths of the world’s population with a tenth of its arable land. In fact it provides for one-fifth of humanity with that area. This has been corrected online.

Deep roots

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

No poem lovelier

IN RECENT years the sight of historic neighbourhoods, their houses often a century or more old, reduced to rubble to make way for grim new structures has been tragically common in Chinese cities. Officials have often appeared to care little about the architecture they destroy and the communities they scatter. Oddly, however, they have just as often made strenuous efforts to preserve one beloved feature of the urban landscape: ancient trees.

The capital, Beijing, the scene of some of the most brutish flattening of traditional housing, boasts that it has the most trees over a century old of any Chinese city: more than 40,000, of which more than 6,000 are at least 300 years old. Many are in the grounds of former imperial palaces, which are well protected, but those in ordinary neighbourhoods are usually looked after lovingly, too. On new roads, traffic sometimes has to weave around them. So sacred are old trees that concessions are made for them even when tarmac is laid.

Officials charged with monitoring the trees’ welfare have long toured courtyards and alleyways with tape-measures and...Continue reading