Oriada

If I had a yuan for every time I’ve been asked by folks from home why, with 1.3 billion football-crazy people to choose from, China is apparently unable to round up 11 half-decent footballers to form a competent national team,  I’d be a very rich man.  Well, maybe not rich but I would, at least, be better off than most professional footballers in China, who according to Chinese football legend Hao Haidong are poorer than migrant workers.

In a TV interview yesterday, Hao claimed that non-payment of wages is rife in Chinese football and many professional footballers are in dire financial straits .  The beanpole striker’s comments drew criticism from some quarters, but shed light on the reasons for both the appaling standard of football in the domestic league and the national team’s embarrasing display against Singapore a few weeks back. 

The players aren’t being paid because the entire league is riddled with corruption, illegal betting and crooked refereeing. Gambling rings have destroyed competition and bled all enjoyment from the leagues.  In 2004, the Super League came close to meltdown, when even the players refused to continue the farce.  In October of that year, players from top clubs Beijing Hyundai, Dalian Shide and others, walked off in the middle of their games in protest at obviously biased refereeing decisions.  The players then went on strike, and it took an extraordinary climbdown by the CFA to bring them back to work, with the national governing body promising to open their books and cede some power to the players,

Little has really changed in the interim, though, and attendances keep dropping.  Fans, naturally, have voted with their feet, and sponsors have followed suit.  Last year the Super League’s main sponsor, Siemens, terminated its association with the event.  As a result, many clubs are just barely staying afloat. No sponsors and no fans means no money, and no wages for the poor stooges going through the motions on the field.  

The money problems extend right the way up the chain too.  An article on Sina.com last month (link in Chinese) investigated why a big-name coach still hasn’t been appointed to lead the national team, even though it’s been almost 5 months since the last coach stepped down and a number of high-profile candidates, like former England boss Howard Wilkinson, have registered their interest. The reason?   There’s no money.  The sponsors aren’t willing to spend the estimated 500,000 euros it would take to attract a top manager, and given the ptitful state of the domestic game, can you really blame them?

So now you know why Chinese football is so bad.

Spare a thought, though, for the players of 2004-05 champions Shenzhen Jianlibao.  Earlier this year they went to the labour court to  force their club to fork out almost 5 million yuan’s worth of unpaid wages.  It seems possible, however, that while they were waiting for their cash,  some of the players may have turned to some less-than-legal sources for fiduciary assistance, because, in the last year, two of the club’s first team have been attacked and savagely beaten on the streets of the city by "unidentified assailants".

Unsurprisingly, there are no official statistics available on patriotic and nationalist sentiment in China, but if there were they would make for interesting reading.

National spirit in China is not just that misty-eyed feeling one gets when the Irish rugby team beat England at Twickenham (or anywhere else for that matter).  With China on the up economically, but relations with Japan at an all-time low,  nationalism here much much more than that.   Almost every social and cultural activity is infused with nationalist spirit, from computer games to pop star fashions.  More than that, nationalism is a political weapon, a convenient plug for the gaping hole left by the demise of communism, and, as such, something the authorities are keen to foster.

So, despite the shortage of official stats, one would expect the level of national pride in China to be high, very high indeed.  Perhaps seeking to fill the statistical void and confirm this trend, someone at the popular 163.com website apparently decided to quantify national pride in China by finding out how many citizens would choose to be Chinese if they were born again.    The results, though, were  surprising, with more than 60% of the respondents indicating that they would not choose to be Chinese.

As soon as the authorities caught this faint whiff of a controversy (with its potential to spark debate on the taboo topic of Chinese national identity), the official clamdown, was swift, clean and thorough.  The South China Morning Post reports that two editors - Tang Yan and Liu Xianghui- from Netease, the company running the website that organised the survey, have been sacked and the poll and its results have been taken down. 

As reported by Danwei on Sept 11th, the survey asked respondents if they were to be reincarnated would they choose to be Chinese again.  The unexpected results, as noted by Danwei, were as follows:

38.1%: No, because Chinese people get no respect.
17.4%: No, because you can’t afford a house in China, and the good life is too far off.
0.4%: No, because you can’t see good cartoons in China.
0.7%: No, because you can’t make spoof videos in China.
7.8%: No, no reason.
6.3%: Yes, I want to be a descendant of the dragon.
1.7%: Yes, because China’s economy is developing and the future is bright.
6.7%: Yes, because China’s long history and vast culture fills me with pride.
2.7%: Yes, because I’m currently pretty happy, and I trust it will be the same in the future.
18.2%: Yes, because I love my homeland, no other reason.

These results were based on 10,234 responses.

The PR geniuses at Peking University, one of the country’s most prestigious seats of learning, are at it again.  Just weeks after announcing their intention to keep out the riff-raff by banning tour groups, last week it was revealed that they were planning to build a golf course slap bang in the middle of the campus. Accused of elitism and wasting both financial and environmental resources, they came out swinging , claiming that they are only going to build a teeny tiny driving range.  Less a golf course and  "more like a cage for students", said PU’s PE Director Hao Guangan.  (Well, ok, what he actually said was "more like a cage for students to practice their swing") 

Nevertheless, that Peking University has decided to add golf to its syllabus is both surprising and revealing.  Golf has yet to capture the public imagination in China.  It’s commonly referred to derisively as "the rich man’s game", the sport of the elite and the spoiled few.  Earlier this year, the Chinese golfing enthusiasts made a brave, if foolhardy, appeal to patriotism in an attempt to stoke up public interest in the game, claiming that golf had been invented in China several centuries before the Scots thought of it.  But public apathy (and very very flimsy supporting evidence for the audacious claim) undermined their efforts. 

In China, golf remains a cult sport, at best.  Courses are few and far between, and with arable and residential land at a premium in China, the government actively discourage their construction.  Regardless, even if you found one you could never afford the green fees or membership.  China is one of the few countries where Tiger Woods could walk around unnoticed on the streets of most towns. 

Yet, despite this, Peking University has decided that its students need to spend their time honing their driving skills.  When the range is completed, students will apparently be offered golf classes as part of their PE syllabus.  It’s not yet known whether the classes will be compulsory.

The question everybody has been asking is why PU felt it necesssary to offer classes for golf, a sport that his not at all popular.  One reason this story got so much attention is because Peking University’s staff and students have long been accused of having ideas above their station.  That they had decided to descend from their ivory towers and  take up their 3-woods for a few rounds of the rich man’s game was seen by many as yet another sign that the folks at PU had lost touch with reality.

But in fact, rather than symbolising Peking University’s overinflated self-importance, this story may actually illustrate the extent to which the school and its leaders are racked with insecurities and starting to panic.  PU has been noticeably slipping in public esteem in recent years, and this golfing fad may be part of its attempt to claw back some of the cred and prestige it has been haemorraging. 

There was a time when Peking University, and its elite counterparts Qinghua and Fudan, were guaranteed to attract the absolute best of the country’s student population.  They feared competition from none bar the US Ivy League schools.  In recent years, however, it has become increasingly obvious that China’s top colleges are losing their lustre.  The standard of education in general on the mainland has failed to keep pace with the country’s economic development.  A survey last year by the McKinley group found that only 10 % of graduates from Chinese universities were fit to work in foreign companies. 

With that in mind, students have been taking their business elsewhere, many of them only as far as Hong Kong where they the more international style of education will improve their chances of finding a job on graduation.  30,000 of the nation’s brightest students applied to universities in Hong Kong this year, with only just over 1,000 places up for grabs, a huge increase on applications in 2005.  The reasons for this are plain.  99% of graduates from Hong Kong’s top universities found work on graduation.  At Chinese universities, even the very best ones, that figure stands at around 85% at best.  

Faced with this new threat, universities on the mainland have been scrambling to rebrand themselves and present a new, dynamic public face.  For Peking university this doesn’t just involve building cages for students (to practice their swing). As part of its image overhaul it has also announced that it will change its English name, ditching the quaintly old-fashioned Wade-Giles spelling of Peking, and adopting the fashionable "of" style.  From next year, it will become known as the University of Beijing. 

Xinhua reports today that the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is predicting problems ahead, after 30 years of the one-child policy.  An ever-increasing number of old people will rely on an ever-decreasing number of young people, a lob-sided equation that bodes ill for long term economic development.

 By 2020, CASS estimates that 17% of the population will be aged 65 or older. Other reports have extrapolated that, by 2050, over-65s will constitute 31% of the population.  What’s more, CASS says that the size of the labour force will peak at just under 1 billion in 2016 and decrease steadily from then on.  The country’s competitive advantage currently rests in the abundant availability of cheap workers, but within less than a decade this supply will start to dry up.

Coupled with the economic problems of the one child policy addressed in this article, a number of equally worrying social issues are emerging.  For one thing, the male-female birth ratio is well above the international average and increasing all the time. In the 1980s the ratio stood at a relativelly normal 108.5 boys born for every 100 girls.  But current estimates place the present figure at close to 120 boys for every 100 girls, and it is believed to be far higher  in certain parts of the country. As this mismatched generation comes of age, the already quite serious problems of bride-trafficking and female kidnapping will likely become increasingly common, with the potential for many other problems to emerge as large numbers of single male migrant workers descend on China’s urban centres.

The Globe and Mail ran a story last week on the frosty diplomatic relationship between Canada and China, focusing on China’s refusal to allow Cananda to market itself as a tourist destination.  It is a sobering parable of the price of doing business in China, and the  compromises that have to be made in order to succeed.

The Canadian authorities ran afoul of Beijing in 1999 when they refused to extradite China’s "most wanted man" Lai Changxing, a billionaire businessman who had fled China as the investigative net closed on his supersized smuggling operations.  That Lai has major questions to answer in China about how he accumulated his vast fortune is not in question, but Canadian authorities turned down requests for his repatriation because they believed that he would be executed for his crimes were he sent back to China, and therefore sending him back would be in violation of Canada’s human rights laws. 

Chinese authorities gave assurances that they would not seek the death penalty in this case, but since several other associates of Lai were executed for lesser crimes than those of which Lai is accused, Canadian authorities turned down China’s requests.  For this slight (and also ,in part, for cosying up to the Dalai Lama by giving him honorary citizenship) Canada was denied the right to advertise itself in China as a tourism destination , an almighty snub that has had continued and far- reaching effects on the Canadian tourist industry (and by extention the Canadian economy). This article claims that Canada is losing out on 700,000 tourists annually, each of whom would spend an average $1,800.

There is, the story says, a Canadian tourist office in Beijing but it receives only a dozen or so vistors a week since they can’t publicize their country or their services.  What’s more, despite being one of the first countries to apply for the priviledge, Canada has yet to receive Approved Destination Status, the ‘golden ticket’ that will allow cash-rich Chinese tour groups to visit the country.

So for doing something that, by Canadian legal standards at least, would be seen as "the proper thing to do", the Canadian government has cost itself incalculably large amounts of revenue from free spending Chinese tourists.  Not only that, as long as they are denied ADS, they will continue to lose ground to other countries competing for a share of the Chinese tourist market.

Things don’t show much sign of improving, either, with the incumbent Canadian conservative government taking about 5 minutes to get on the bad side of the Chinese government, with "Reds-under-the- beds"-style scaremongering about Sino-sponsored espionage. 

The fact is, though, that Canada will have to eventually make its peace with Beijing. It simply cannot afford not to, such is China’s economic and diplomatic sway. The question is how far they are willing to go, and how far they will have to go, to regain Beijing’s friendship.

This is a question that has cropped up again and again in relation to foreign companies and countries doing business with China.  From Yahoo aiding the conviction of investigative journalists to Google’s Party-friendly google.cn, to certain EU member-states lobbying to lift the EU arms embargo, observers have wondered whether the moral cost of doing business in China can be offset by the material gains, both for the companies involved and the Chinese people themselves.

Last week, Human Rights Watch put out a report criticizing foriegn Internet companies for their compliance in censorship and other nefarious activities in China. Entitled A Race to the Bottom, it called for foreign companies in China to start making "ethical choices" about the way they do business here and advises them to lobby the Chinese government to end censorship, refuse to hand over data to the authorities, refuse to censor any material and encrypt all emails.

But, noble as Human Rights Watch’s goals no doubt are, the very obvious reality is that their proposals are extremely unrealistic and there is likely not a single major multinational company willing to adopt any of them, for the simple reason that to do so would mean being turfed out of the China market (as articulately explained by the Peking Review blog).

We are sure to see this issue arise again and again in the coming months and years, particularly with IT and Media companies coming into the market here.   As foreign media penetration increases in China, for example, officials are striving to gain even greater control over it, an untenable antagonism that will only end when one or both sides agree to compromise (as, Google did).

But this game of ethical chicken is being played on an uneven field. For its part, the Chinese government can offer to any foreign companies willing to forego their ethical standards access to the "China Dream": 1.3 billion customers and an emerging class of nouveaux riches eager to splurge.  The foreign media and IT companies, on the other hand, unless they play by Beijng’s rules, can only offer Chinese authorities a world of headaches, by providing the public with greater access to uncensored foreign news and other material detrimental to the long-term health of the government.

In these circumstances,  it’s clear to see who the winner will be.

Work has apparently begun on a new Disneyland in Shanghai.  This report says that it will open in 2010 and will be almost 4 times bigger than the Hong Kong Disneyland.  This has been in the pipeline for years, but it was previously reported that Disney wouldn’t open in Shanghai unless it had a guarantee that it could launch a Disney channel on Chinese TV.

It is interesting to note that Disney have promised that this park will be bigger than Hong Kong’s.  The HK one is the smallest off all the Magic Kingdoms and one of the many complaints levelled at it since it opened is that there aren’t enough rides inside (a mere 16 apparently, compared to 52 at the original). HKDL did not release visitor numbers for its first year of operation but it is suspected that they are well short of the target.   (Notwithstanding the mini-riots caused by crowds trying to storm the place over the Spring Festival)

On a related note, this blog’s former stomping ground, Wuhu city in Anhui province, has announced that it will build the biggest theme park in China.  It’s due to open next year, and the developers are expecting 3 million visitors a year.   Given that Wuhu’s rather run-down train and bus stations can hardly cope with the current capacity, some serious upgrading would be necessary to cope with an extra 9,000 visitors on average every day. 

The much greater worry, though, is where Wuhu is going to find these 3 million extra visitors once it has splashed the cash (2 billion RMB) on this new development.  It’s is certainly well located, near Nanjing, Hefei and other major centres. But even Wuhu natives would surely admit that the city doesn’t have many tourist draws, and would struggle to sell itself as a holiday destination.  Most people have never even heard of it, and many of those that have, know it only as the hometown of popular pop moppet and actress Zhao Wei.

What’s more, as this report outlines, themeparks are cropping up all over the country as grasping investors eye easy ways to soak up some of the disposable income of the emerging middle class.  Even the VP of the China Association of Amusement Parks is worried (and this is surely not a good sign): "If you go to any medium-sized and large-sized cities, you will find a theme park that is built up or under construction. I am kind of worried  what do we do with so many amusement parks?"

Exactly.  It’s the same old cycle of Innovation - Imitation - Saturation that has happened so many times before in the Chinese market.  As soon as someone starts making profit from something, the market becomes flooded with barely distinguishable versions of the same basic product, and before long nobody is making money.  Remember the short-lived Chinese pizza craze? 

The Olympics will kick off exactly two years from today.  Despite the highly public dismissal of Liu Zhihua, the Beijing official in charge of Olympic construction a few months ago,  it seems that the city’s Olympic projects are on, or ahead of schedule.  The major concern, however, is that authorities are losing their much vaunted battle to have a Green Olympics, particularly with regard to air quality.  China Daily reported that the city recorded a record 29 "blue sky" days in July, but only because it was raining on 27 of those days.  Yes, apparently rainy days are classified as "blue sky days". 

Organising Committee VP Jiang Xiaoyu was all over the media yesterday promising that the  targets would be met.  He has even promised that the weather will be fine for the Opening Day ceremony, stating simply and, it would seem, in all seriousness, that he reckons the chance of rain in Beijing 731 days from now is "30 to 40%".

Meanwhile, the Guardian is carrying an interesting Reuters story about Chen Chengda, a Chinese Olympic footballer in the 1950s and 60s, the course of whose entire career was dicated by the political turbulence in China after the founding of the PRC.