GDP apostasy

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

IN AN officially atheist country, one form of worship actively encouraged by the Chinese government has been devotion to GDP. From village chiefs to national leaders, presiding over fast economic growth has been the surest path to career success. Targets for GDP have formed the centrepiece of annual budgets, with officials convinced that failure to achieve them would lead to soaring unemployment and even chaos. Officials fiddle the numbers—massaging them up when growth is too slow and down when it is too fast—but basic faith in GDP as the most powerful expression of their aims and accomplishments has been unwavering.

So the break with tradition was something akin to Vatican II, when on January 25th the Shanghai government announced its policy plans for 2015 and chose to omit a GDP target. While Yang Xiong, the mayor, pledged that the city would “maintain steady growth”, he gave no indication of what that might mean in numbers. In recent years China’s 31 provinces and mega-cities have steadily lowered their GDP targets as the economy has slowed. At least two-thirds missed their goals last year, a sign that such targets have become less important than in the past. But Shanghai is the first to dispense with a target altogether. The city’s Communist Party chief, Han Zheng, is a member of the ruling Politburo, so the omission was a powerful...Continue reading

An ex-cop’s connections

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

Leader of the boys in Blued

MA BAOLI had served in the police force of the coastal city of Qinhuangdao for 16 years when, in 2012, his superiors delivered an ultimatum. During his spare time Mr Ma (pictured), who is now 37, had secretly been running a website for gay men, Danlan.org, which had begun to attract the attention of the local press. Outed, he was told he could either shut his site or hand over his badge. “They considered it a sensitive issue…that a policeman was gay,” Mr Ma says. “So I thought, I’ll just quit.”

Later that year Mr Ma set up a company, Blue City. It launched a male gay-dating app called Blued that helps locate potential partners using global-positioning technology. The app now has a staff of 60 and around 15m users, making it one of the most popular of its kind in the world. In November Blue City got $30m in funding from DCM Ventures, an American venture-capital firm. Mr Ma plans to expand his app’s user base to 20m-25m by the end of this year and to launch a sister one for lesbians, Pinkd.

It was very different in the 1990s when, as a young man, Mr Ma risked being sent to...Continue reading

Out brothers, out!

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

AS CHINA’S economy slows, and labour-intensive manufacturing moves elsewhere in search of cheaper workers, anxious and angry employees are becoming ever bolshier. According to China Labour Bulletin, an NGO in Hong Kong, the number of strikes and labour protests reported in 2014 doubled to more than 1,300. In the last quarter they rose threefold year-on-year, with factory workers, taxi drivers and teachers across the country demanding better treatment.

The authorities often respond with heavy-handedness: rounding up activists and crushing independent labour groups. But in parts of the country, they have also begun to give state-controlled unions more power to put pressure on management. Officials, usually in cahoots with factory bosses, are beginning to see a need to placate workers, too.

Independent unions are banned in China. Labour organisations have to be affiliated with the state-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), whose constitution describes the working class as “the leading class of China” but which usually sides with management. In recent years, officials have stepped up efforts to unionise workforces,...Continue reading

Dodging peril

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

ONE foreign-policy issue on which, in theory, China and the West stand shoulder-to-shoulder is the fight against jihadist terrorism. When Chinese and Western leaders meet, their statements usually condemn terrorism “in all its forms” and pledge more co-operation in countering it. But reactions in China to the Charlie Hebdo atrocity in Paris and to recent successful counter-terrorism operations at home reveal a big gap in perceptions.

China criticised the Paris attacks unreservedly. But its press also blamed Charlie Hebdo for offending Muslims. The latest issue of another French magazine, Fluide Glacial, gave China a chance to show that it, too, is a victim of what Global Times, a Communist Party tabloid, calls “free-speech mania”. The magazine features a cartoon of a Frenchman pulling a rickshaw with a Chinese passenger, under the headline “Yellow Peril”. Not everyone, warned Global Times, is as “good-tempered” as China, whose officials loftily ignored the slur.

The West’s reactions to terrorism within China...Continue reading

To the piste!

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

Freestyle medallists in 2022?

THE provincial outpost of Chongli, 250km (150 miles) north-west of Beijing, has all the trappings of a proper ski town. There are hotels, restaurants, shops offering the latest gear, and even a street of bars for the après-ski set. Chongli’s rapidly developing resorts may lack the striking vistas and the rich forest landscapes of the Alps or Rockies. But the scenery, if less grand, is nice enough. So is the skiing itself. Chongli’s drawback is that, as in much of China’s arid north, there is an acute shortage of water to make snow. But in their pursuit of prestige, government planners see that as little hindrance. Developing winter sports, say officials, is China’s “dream”.

Until the 1990s, winter sports in and around Beijing were largely confined to skating and, for a hardy few (mostly elderly men), swimming near-naked in pools cleared of ice. A lack of snow and, above all, of middle-class spenders, made skiing all but unthinkable. Now ski resorts abound on the hills near Beijing (the artificial snow is made with underground water) as well as across chillier and snowier regions....Continue reading

The great sprawl of China

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

IN ANCIENT times, Beijing built towering city walls that helped to prevent undefendable sprawl. These days it builds ring roads, stretching built-up areas ever outwards. Near Langfang, a city halfway between the capital and its giant neighbour Tianjin, diggers dip their heads and cement mixers churn, paving the next circular expressway. When complete, the 900km (560-mile) Seventh Ring Road will surround Beijing at such a distance that most of it will run through the neighbouring province of Hebei, to which Langfang belongs, rather than the capital itself. Parts of it are 175km from Beijing’s centre (see map).

The Seventh Ring Road (really the sixth, but for obscure reasons there is no First Ring Road) is emblematic of modern Chinese cities: giant, sprawling and dominated by cars. Even before it is completed in a year or two (and its use assessed), another, even longer, orbital is being plotted. Like many of China’s...Continue reading

On the outside looking in

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

Chips down

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

THE fire that sent clouds of smoke billowing from the roof of the Galaxy casino complex on Macau’s glitzy Cotai strip on January 8th had an ominous look about it. Since the tiny enclave’s gaming industry, once a monopoly, was opened to competition in 2002, it has rapidly become the world’s biggest. It is now seven times larger than that of Las Vegas, thanks mainly to visitors from the Chinese mainland where betting is banned. The boom has given the sleepy former Portuguese colony the world’s fourth-highest GDP per head. Nearly half its output is linked to gaming.

Yet Macau’s “casino capitalism” is, like the Galaxy’s unfinished roof, looking charred. Having risen remorselessly, betting revenues declined by 2.6% in 2014. In December they plummeted by 30% year-on-year. The economy, too, shrank in the third quarter. The downturn will be hard to reverse.

China’s economic slowdown is one reason for the end of the boom. A casino attendant says a smoking ban has also deterred punters. (Around him, many seats are empty; under-employed croupiers stare vacantly, while a handful of smokers puff forlornly in a corner...Continue reading

Butt out

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

WHEN China started opening up in 1978, its first economic reforms included raising the prices it paid to farmers for their crops. The decision, not surprisingly, led to bumper harvests. Controls on procurement prices for most farm products were eventually scrapped—but not on tobacco leaves. Only this year, nearly four decades later, will the government at last stop fixing their price.

Even as market reforms swept the countryside under Deng Xiaoping, the government kept its grip on the hugely lucrative tobacco industry. Tobacco companies remained exclusively in state hands. Prices of the leaf were set in order to assure farmers of an income and dissuade them from switching to other cash crops. Local governments wanted to boost tobacco farming, not least because of the taxes it yielded. Centuries-old taxes on every other crop were abolished in 2006, but not those on tobacco. The southern province of Yunnan derives nearly 80% of local revenue from the crop. The cigarette industry stuffs the central government’s coffers too, accounting for over 7% of its revenues.

Soaring demand for tobacco products has helped to keep the system (sort of) working. China’s 5m tobacco farmers now produce more than 3m tonnes of tobacco a year, 43% of the world’s total—more than the combined output of the next nine tobacco-producing countries. China is home to a third of...Continue reading

Don’t make yourself at home

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

CHINA is urbanising at a rapid pace. In 2000 nearly two-thirds of its residents lived in the countryside. Today fewer than half do. But two ethnic groups, whose members often chafe at Chinese rule, are bucking this trend. Uighurs and Tibetans are staying on the farm, often because discrimination against them makes it difficult to find work in cities. As ethnic discontent grows, so too does the discrimination, creating a vicious circle.

Breaking this circle is crucial to China’s efforts to defuse unrest in Xinjiang, Tibet and Tibetan-inhabited areas of other provinces, which collectively account for nearly one-third of China’s land area. In Xinjiang, Uighur grievances have triggered numerous outbreaks of violence. On January 12th, in what appeared to be the latest such example, six people were shot dead after allegedly attacking police in Shule, a town near China’s border with Central Asia. Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim, minority who number about 10m in Xinjiang. In 2000, 80% of them were farmers; ten years later 83% of them were.

There has been far less violence in Tibet, but separatism in the region is no less a headache...Continue reading

Blood lessons

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

A bitter farewell

SEVEN days after a stampede on New Year’s Eve in Shanghai, the souls of the 36 people killed in the crush came back, according to traditional Chinese beliefs, for a brief visit to this world. For the return of the dead, city officials spared no effort in their preparations.

When parents of the victims, most of whom were students, collapsed in tears at the site of the fatal accident, white-coated medics were on hand to pick them up. Dense corridors of metal barriers restricted access to the site on the Bund, a historic riverfront promenade. Only family members and a handful of people who had come to lay flowers could get near it. Police lined the roads and security guards patrolled the perimeter. Onlookers who lingered too long were ushered away.

Had there been such extensive preparations for New Year’s Eve, the stampede might never have happened. Instead, a light police presence was overwhelmed by the vast numbers who flocked to the Bund for the countdown to 2015. The local government cannot claim to have been taken totally by surprise. Concerns about overcrowding had led the city to cancel...Continue reading

Ready for launch

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

AFTER decades hiding deep in China’s interior, the country’s space-launch programme is preparing to go a bit more public. By the tourist town of Wenchang on the coast of the tropical island of Hainan, work is nearly complete on China’s fourth and most advanced launch facility. Tall new towers are visible from the road. Secrecy remains ingrained—soldiers at a gate politely but firmly decline to say what they are guarding. Visitors, they say, are prohibited. But nearby there are plans to build a space-themed amusement park. China is beginning to see new moneymaking opportunities in space.

The decision to build the base on Hainan was made for technical reasons: its proximity to the equator, at a latitude of 19 degrees north, will allow rockets to take better advantage of the kick from the Earth’s rotation than is currently possible with launches from China’s other bases (see map), which were built far inland at a time of cold-war insecurity. That will allow a bigger payload for each unit of fuel—a boon for China’s space ambitions, which include taking a bigger share of the commercial satellite-launch market, putting an...Continue reading

Enforcing with a smile

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

DURING a visit to a young mother’s home in rural Shaanxi province in north-western China, Qin Shuhui, a family-planning worker, sets out a row of plastic cups on a bare concrete floor. They are playthings for the woman’s only child, a 27-month-old girl. Addressing the toddler by her nickname, Yingying, Ms Qin patiently tries to coax her to toss rings around the cups. When Yingying instead walks over and places a ring next to one, Ms Qin smiles and chirps “well done”. Turning to the mother, she says: “You should applaud no matter what. It doesn’t matter if she fails to toss it around the cup.”

It is an unusually warm and fuzzy scene given the harsh reputation of Ms Qin’s employers. She is a member of a 1m-strong army of family-planning officials whose mission is to enforce China’s one-child policy. They make sure that mothers are sterilised or are fitted with intrauterine devices (IUDs), or that fathers are given vasectomies, after they have had their last legally allowed child (many parents can have a second one if they meet certain conditions). Ms Qin used to perform such duty when she first met Yingying’s mother and prodded her about...Continue reading

Revelry turns tragedy

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

THE Bund, Shanghai’s riverfront promenade, is no stranger to crowds. The broad avenue, flanked by grand century-old buildings on one side and shimmering skyscrapers across the Huangpu River on the other, is a must-visit for tourists and the focal point for celebrations in the city. On New Year’s Eve, the thronging of revellers turned tragic.

A stampede shortly before the countdown to midnight killed at least 36 and injured more than 40. Photos of the aftermath showed people trying, vainly, to resuscitate fallen friends. Most of those who died were young, some still in high school. Shoes and purses lay scattered at the foot of stairs to a viewing platform over the river. That platform, normally a prime spot for tourist snapshots and wedding photographs, was soon lined with bystanders shouting in unison for revellers to retreat, to make way for medical help. Packed in so tightly, many were unaware of the calamity unfolding just a few steps away.

Crowd control, a headache anywhere, is a perennial concern in the densely populated cities of a country of more than 1.3 billion people. China has had stampedes before—for example at limited-time sales at stores or during earthquakes—but this was the deadliest in years. It occurred in a city that takes pride in normally being one of the country’s best-run metropolises.

Amid the shock and grief,...Continue reading

Back in the cold

Otmane El Rhazi from China.

WOOLLEN car-seat covers come in handy during the freezing winters of north-eastern China, giving drivers a plush layer of extra warmth. But as temperatures have plunged over the past month, seat covers that used to fly off the shop shelves in cold weather have piled up. At the Wu’ai Market, a wholesale emporium in the city of Shenyang, Li Xiaoli surveys her showroom stacked high with covers of every description: thick and thin, red and white, patterned and plain. “It’s getting harder for people to earn money, so they are not spending as freely as before,” she says.

Ms Li’s unsold seat-covers reflect a deepening economic malaise in China’s north-east. They stem from a slowdown in car sales that has been exacerbated by a property-market downturn, which has been weak nationwide but especially bad in the north-east. Home sales in Shenyang, the region’s biggest city, fell by 26% year-on-year in the first ten months of 2014. That, in turn, reflected a decline in heavy industry, the backbone of the economy.

The north-east’s provinces—Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning—ranked in the bottom five of China’s 31 provinces for GDP...Continue reading