Chinese Vignettes 

 By Kollengode S Venkataraman

Contact: ThePatrika@aol.com

Monday, November 7.  I was in bed in a hotel in Qingdao, on the north east coast of China on the coast of Yellow Sea. It was 2:00 am. After an exhausting 30-h door-to-door travel from Pittsburgh, and being 12 time zones away, there was literally a day-and-night time difference. I was fully awake as a newborn being awake after hours of sleep watching CNN CNNs Sunday Late Edition was on with the droning Wolf Blitzer. 

Forget all the statistical measures of Chinas economic strengths, like consistently high annual growth rates (in excess of 8%) over the last twenty years; like Chinas trade surplus in hundreds of billions, like Chinese exports flooding the consumer markets all over the world, like the loss of manufacturing jobs in the Industrialized nations to outsourcing to China. For me a few anecdotal observations of the increasing self-confidence of China in itself are adequate to understand Chinas strength:

Before the current economic boom in China, the only European to tell something nice about Chinas prosperity and social structure would have been Marco Polo, who, in his 13^th century travels to the Cathay, described the Chinas abundance, sophistication, resources, arts, culture, social structure in glowing terms (Go to http://www.silk-road.com/artl/marcopolo.shtml for a brief summary). People in Genoa in Italy where Marco was from, did not believe Polos description of Chinas abundance, and derided the book he wrote on his visit, calling it Il Milione (Million Lies). They thought he was fantasizing.   

Afterwards, particularly after the Industrial Revolution that triggered the Europeans colonization of the world, non-European societies in Asia China, India, Japan were only worthy of European condescension till the middle of 20^th century. Then European perception of Asia societies slowly changed, first with respect to Japan, then Korea, and then the other South East Asian nations, the so-called Asian Tigers. 

And now China. I was reading an article in South China Morning Post (Thursday, November 05, 2005), by Peter Kammerer was quite revealing. Kammerer interviewed Beppe Severgnini, an Italian author and columnist, who has written extensively about the Italian Diaspora. This is what he says:  Only in China, I found a culture so similarly interested in its extended family [as Italy].  Chinese and Italians love trading, dealing, and negotiating. We believe personal relations are keys to most things.  Having dinner together and deciding what we are going to do in a project is more important than the contract we are going to sign   Oh, my my!.  What a difference wealth and power make in peoples perception!

In TV commercials and bill board hoardings in China, the faces you see these days are increasingly Asian, even occasionally Indian. One ad was revealing. The TV ad was for a scotch whiskey, Royal Salute. The ad showed the blue whiskey bottle wrapped appropriately in lovely silk, subliminally telling the viewer it was good enough as a prize to be won in a contest.

Then, two young, handsome men in dark suits and bright ties contested for the scotch. The contest was in archery. The target bulls eye was away across a pond, in an island.  Twenty years ago, the male models in this and all other ads in China (and much of Asia) would have been Caucasian men. Not any more in these days of Chinese self confidence. Now, Caucasian faces have to compete with Asians. In the whiskey ad were two handsome Asians, with characteristic high cheek bones, narrow eyes, even a brown skin tone.

In the ad, the first man takes his aim and shoots the arrow and hits the bulls eye. Not at the center, but well within the eye ball, closer to the periphery. 

It was then the turn for the second man in the ad. As he takes his aim at the target, the camera shows a flock of geese flying across. With the flock of flying geese between him and his target, this modern day Arjuna undauntedly takes his aim, and hits the bulls eye, not exactly in the center (as it would be if the ad was for a Caucasian audience), but within the eye nevertheless.

The camera then zoomed towards the prize Royal Salute whiskey bottle. For a Caucasian audience, the ad would have shown the winner walking away with the prize bottle. They would have also thrown into the scene a well-endowed and skimpily dressed svelte Asian woman standing nearby and watching the contest from the sidelines. They would have shown her putting her hands over victors shoulders adoringly and walking away with him, making the audience wonder what was the real prize the whiskey, or the woman? That would have whetted the fantasy of white men, much like in South Indian films where light-skinned modern pretty and petite women chase darker, earthy heroes.

But this is Asia. There was no pretty looking woman within the range of this TV camera, even though there were plenty of extremely charming Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Indonesian women in other commercials.  That is another story.  The whiskey commercial continued  

The winner opens the bottle, and the camera zooms towards two empty glasses with ice cubes.  The winner opens the bottle, and pours the whiskey into both glasses, chivalrously sharing the whiskey-on-the-rocks with the loser, who graciously accepts the offer.

For a very Western product, a very Asian 30-second TV commercial with Asian male models.

Other indicators of Chinas self-confidence are the usual ones.  The controlled Government TV is increasingly open (within the government control) in discussing corruption, issues of air and water pollution, social consequences of economic inequities of progress    These paled into insignificance. For me, the 30-second TV spot and modern day Marco Polos compliments were good enough. 

The four-lane freeways are good enough to go at 140 km/h.  And Volvos, Saabs, BMWs, and Lexuses built in China are zoom past.  Young Chinese drivers in these fancy cars in are even more aggresive than those in pickup trucks in Wyoming. 

The Chinese are proud of their languages, cultural, artistic, and political history. And they are only too conscious of the humiliation they suffered during 18^th and 20^th centuries at the hands of the Europeans and Japanese.  Today, China is only too aware of its overwhelming presence in Asia.

There are obvious reminders that China is still emerging:  Last year, over 6000 workers were killed in accidents/explosions in coal mines.  The water and air pollution is there for all to see. In Beijing, the smog is so bad that around 11 am in the morning, the sun looks like full moon. The income disparities between the haves and the have-nots is unbelievable, as it is in India.  One example:  The salary of daily workers are around 800 yuans per month.  The hotel charges in a 4-star hotel is 800 yuans per night!

If only it can reduce the huge disparity between the urban educated beneficiaries of the economic liberalization and the less educated agrarian rural population who are left behind, China would naturally become a Super Power in the next ten to fifteen years.

But if it does not address this internal inequity, its dream would only remain a dream. China may have the entire market share in the global market place, it can have the largest army, and the largest accumulation of foreign exchange reserves, and it may still have the latest technological innovations adapted in medicine, engineering, and communication. Notwithstanding all these, the increasingly widening disparity between its urban educated and urban working poor and rural agrarian population is sure to thwart Chinas ambition to become a super power.  This disparity even has the potential to internal strife.

Is there a lesson here for Hindustan?