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