We Are All In This Together...

This week, I find myself back in the UK and enjoying a generous, if not particularly tasty, cup of 'Pike Place' from Starbucks in Epping. Starbucks are the sort of company that, in general, I tend to avoid as representing some of the more irresponsible strategies and tactics that such concern employ in order to avoid paying taxes in the countries where their outlets are actually located. I think my favourite from Starbucks was the importation of coffee beans from that well known coffee 'producer.'..Switzerland (the word 'riiiight' springs to mind). Given the subject matter of today's blog however, I thought that it might be appropriate to put my head in the mouth of the beast.
During the last few days a scandal of global proportions has broken over the tax dealings of many of the rich, powerful and famous. I use the word 'global' advisedly, as those implicated range from the father of the British Prime Minster David Cameron to the brother in law of Chinese Premier Xi Jingping, from the Royal family of Saudi Arabia to the business 'associates' of Vladimir Putin, from the talentless Simon Cowell to the talented Lionel Messi. All it would seem, if the evidence of the released documents is to be believed (it does indeed appear to be a very well substantiated leak), have been happily avoiding large amounts of taxation in the very countries that they are plying their trades or form part of the political or business establishment.
As I read the allegations that related to the apparently nefarious doings of David Cameron's father, Ian Cameron, and his investment company, Blairmore Holdings, I could not help but recall the UK prime minister's words when he took up the reins in 2010: “We are all in this together.” At the time, I was under the impression that what was being referred to was the austerity being imposed as a result of the financial crisis and bank collapses of 2008 instigated by the banking services industry. Now, in retrospect, it appears that 'we' may have been referring to the wealthy and powerful, and 'this' the massive tax avoidance that so many of them seem to have indulged in. 

 
In Iceland as I write, Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson is facing calls to resign following revelations that his wife was involved in just such practices. Odd how often that seems to happen. Perfectly respectable pillars of the community like the Maxwell brothers or Philip Green seem to be fortunate enough to have very pro-active wives suitably concerned with preserving the family wealth by becoming adept at the nefarious skills of tax 'efficient' conduct. Lucky them…

In Russia, the trail has led to a very close friend of the premier, Vladimir Putin. A cellist by profession, with apparently no business acumen, yet the documents released show him to be again and again being involved in multi million dollar deals that he seems to have little or no knowledge of. I suppose that in such circumstances it must be comforting for the Russian President to have a friend so adept at fiddling...

Vladimir Putin's favourite fiddler...

 In China, it seems that the documents implicate the husband of the premier's older sister, Deng Jiagui. Xi Jinping himself has been running a well publicised campaign to stamp down on the widespread corruption within official and business circles in China. Interestingly though, his own families wealth now runs in the hundreds of millions. I for one am very impressed with the investment skills which obviously he and his family must possess. His salary is in the region of $22,256 a year, and that only after his rise to the top of the political tree. It would seem quite an achievement to turn such limited resources into the huge financial empire he now finds himself the head of.

Chinese leaders with their financial adept relatives...

Reading the Chinese Communist Party's media outlet, The Global Times, one has to be impressed at the prowess of the investigative journalism on display. The only article published to date talks of 'Western smear campaigns' (conveniently ignoring the fact that many Western leaders themselves have been implicated) and fails to even mention the connections leading to the premier, or even to his family. Journalistic truth is a very flexible concept at times, but perhaps never so much as is the case in China.
The usual blowhards represent such a scandal in terms of East versus West, or maybe capitalism versus communism, or some other such anachronistic nonsense. The reality, unfortunately, is far more sinister. Worldwide the gap between the wealthy and the poor has been growing at a huge rate for the past few decades, getting increasingly worrisome with the passing of time. Unfortunately, with globalisation and with the influence of financial services, banking and moneyed concerns on governance, there now seems to be little or no defence to the hegemony of the plutocrats.
All very sad. The likely result of all this will be a few scandals here and there, a few speeches by government ministers about the evils of tax avoidance, but very little action indeed. Those that are making the laws are themselves the beneficiaries of such practices. Given that, it would appear highly unlikely that they will pay anything other than lip service to reform.
The UK government itself perhaps represent a particularly adept use of rhetoric followed by a complete and utter lack of action. Three examples among many spring to mind. The extremes of the Murdoch press were supposed to be regulated after a range of illegal activities were perpetrated by them, the Prime Minister himself making several stirring speeches on the subject. The result six years later? Nothing. Even a refusal to sign through the very limited proposals of the Levonson enquiry. Rupert must be pleased, at least. Secondly, the regulation and prosecution of the bankers who caused such damage to the World's and the UK's economy back in 2008. Eight years later we have had precisely one prosecution, a low level banker of little importance, and no enforced regulation whatsoever. Thirdly, the current topic – clamping down on tax avoidance schemes. Again many a stirring word has been uttered by Messrs Cameron and Osborne on the subject. The result of all these fine words? Nothing, nada, zilch, not a thing. Osbrone carries on enjoying the hospitality of Russian oligarchs whilst Cameron works out ways to word statements to avoid his own all too apparent apparent culpability.

Osborne and his yachting companions, Oleg Deripaska and the Prince of Darkness himself...

Sad times indeed.
Back in Starbucks I finish the admittedly generous cup of Pike Place. It is a comfort to know, as I imbibe the very last drops, that scarcely any of the £1.95 I paid for said beverage will find its way into the hands of the exchequer but will instead be lining the pockets of the already fabulously wealthy but obviously still very needy owners of this enterprise...

Broken China...

As I start this blog entry, I find myself sitting in the rather impressive Shenzhen Bao'an airport terminal 3, a wonderfully modern, state-of-the-art construction, designed by the somewhat unfortunately named Massimiliano Fuksas. It is the kind of architecture that modern China has fallen in love with, or at least those responsible for the pubic purse. One finds examples of these structures everywhere in modern China these days. The railway stations in the medium to large cities for example, often so dully normal in many countries, are on a scale that is scarcely believable in the PRC. Like modern cathedrals, the interiors bedecked with shining white marble, one cannot help but wonder at the cost of such constructions.

Arriving in Hangzhou last year, I recall wanting to buy an onward ticket and being directed to the ticket office at the other end of the inner concourse. The walk, through a vast echoing hall of gleaming stone, the subject of more or less continuous care from a vast army of cleaners, took a full ten minutes. It feels more like catching a plane than taking the train when using such places, the stations more akin to airport terminals than anything we would normally think of as a railway station. Many of the processes are the same. One's luggage is run through scanning machines in much the same manner, passports or I.D. papers have to be shown, and one is not allowed onto the platform itself until the train number has been announced when one proceeds to the appropriate departure gate.

It is all very impressive, the contrast all the greater though after starting the journey from the back alleys of Chang An where rubbish was piled high and left for days, stinking and rotting, the home to an army of cockroaches and rats. Personally, I was somewhat averse to the sight and the smell, but one would regularly see elderly people, their trailered bikes piled high with all sorts of flotsam and jetsam, scrabbling through the mounds of detritus looking for anything of any value whatsoever. This even went as far tearing open packets of discarded foodstuffs, trying to retrieve the small amounts of content that remained after being thrown away, often just a few grams of powder.

One of the justification that the Chinese government trots out, when asked to justify their truly awful CO2 emissions to climate change conferences, is that China is 'a developing country' and hence should be allowed more leeway than the 'developed' countries of the West. China alone is actually responsible for a quarter of the entire planets emissions and yet they manage, year in and year out, to avoid any restrictions whatsoever on their polluting activities by trotting out this excuse.

China is not an under-developed country in any sense that the phrase was originally meant to convey. The infrastructure would, for the most part, be the envy of most countries around the World. Development goes on at a pace that is truly stunning. New projects are constantly being commissioned by local and national government on a truly herculean scale. Money seems to be everlastingly available for such schemes. They seem to represent an expression of national or local pride, a kind of civic vanity for many local authorities to make the very best possible impression on visitors to their cities. Town halls in China in particular, can be seen as very clear examples of this civic vanity. They are often vast megalithic constructions, or examples of the very latest in architectural trends, that cost untold millions. 

No, China is not an undeveloped nation in the normal sense. On many levels it is vastly rich with sums of money owed to it that are truly staggering (the US debt alone is far more than most economies are worth). What they do have is a wealth distribution problem. The contrast between the wealthy, often an odd admixture of people in China between entrepreneurs, business owners and civic officials with sufficiently influential positions to make their patronage worthwhile, and the poor is often extreme.

It is indeed quite strange to reflect that for a so-called 'communist' country their wealth distribution is actually somewhat worse than either the UK or the US. Indeed, it is odd to think that in the former of those two countries, theoretically a capitalist Western country, there is far more state sponsored help for individuals (hospitals, pensions, welfare, education, etc.) than in the, theoretically at least, communist country of China. The money is there in the latter case but... they would rather spend it on endless vanity projects and suchlike than use it to assist alleviating the load on the poor or providing facilities to the population.

There is a strange factor at work here, or at least strange to someone such as myself coming form a Western perspective. There is a really quite bewildering callousness at times built into the culture. It is not that it is a mean culture or anything of that ilk, in many ways and in many situations, it is actually quite generous. Once one is accepted within a given group then the generosity becomes almost embarrassing at times. On several occasions during this trip, I almost had to fight in order to pay a restaurant bill. People who had treated you previously already would scarcely allow you to reciprocate, assuring you that as their guest they would be happy to pay. It can almost reach comic proportions at times, with several male members of a given group theatrically almost coming to blows for the right to pay the bill.

The downside of this, and where the callousness comes in, is that the generosity tends to extend only to those within the group. Outsiders, be they outside the family, outside the business, outside the locality, anyone who is not considered part of a given group, do not enter into the calculation whatsoever. Often, they are not even extended the most basic of civilities or consideration. There is an oft-used expression in the West: charity begins at home. For many Chinese, this is a fundamental assertion.

The philosopher Confucius gifted the Chinese people with the notion, indeed the fundamental importance, of the beneficial nature of social harmony and relationsips. In day to day practice, this has evolved into the concept of 'guanxi'. Guanxi is expressed in China through interwoven networks of relationships. Here it is the classic case of not what you know but who you know that really matters. The individual is considered to be of little importance within this system. What matters are the networks of relationships that he is part of.

All can be decided by guanxi: education, job, social circle, social status. Those in authority frequently owe their position not to any particular skill or abilities but simply to the relationships they have build up, familial or otherwise, that will allow them access to such roles. If you have few connections, or those connections are not sufficiently powerful or influential, your career choices are likely to be extremely limited within this society.

As ever with these things, one's view of such practices depend how one frames them in one's mind. You could say that it is, of course, necessary to build networks, and relationships are important in almost any situation in life. On the other hand, one could look at guanxi as more or less an inbuilt culture of massive corruption that effects almost everything that occurs in China today. It is all-pervasive and everywhere in the culture, so omnipresent that it is scarcely even realised by those within the system. It simply is the way that lives are lived here.

Within this context, anti-corruption drives, such as the currently professed policy of Xi Jinping's government, are unlikely to meet with any sustained success in the long term. In practice, the hidden purpose of such policies in China has often been to 'purge' political opponents; a way of asserting the leader's grip on the party apparatus. This may or may not be the case with the current example; for the moment, it is too early to say. If it is a genuine attempt to root out corruption then it is a massive task indeed. One can only wish them well in such a venture.

Back in the departure lounge, my flight has just been called. Within a few minutes I should be leaving China and heading South to the sunnier climes of Thailand. In many ways I will miss the place. Each occasion I come here I enjoy it but, at one and the same time, I also find it maddeningly frustrating. One cannot help but be elated by the sheer magnificence of buildings such as this terminal, it is architecture on the grand scale. On the other hand, one cannot but help but be depressed by the sheer abject nature of the poverty one sees here. Magnificent and abject, generous and callous, so much opulence and yet so much squalor; the China of today is a land of great contrasts.

Some people love it, others loathe it. After another two months here, I am still not sure which of these groups I owe my allegiance to...

Not so easy peasy...

          This week's 'Letter from China' comes from the simple but comfortable confines of Pappa Gourmet, a tiny café cum tea bar in one of the slightly more salubrious side streets of Chang An. The place is only about ten feet wide but nearly makes up for it by having a mezzanine floor. I use the word 'nearly' advisedly, as those of us of slightly more generous height are challenged to do anything other than stoop on the upper floor. Still, it is comfortable, at least once one has levered one's long-legged frame into position.

          Many of the cafés and shops in this area follow the modern trend of naming their shops using the alphabet commonly employed in English. Most times, the premises bear two names, the Chinese and the English, but many dispense with the Chinese altogether and just focus on the more fashionable Anglo-Saxon. This trend has been noticed by the powers that be (and they are considerable powers...) in China and reacted to. Much like the French and their infamous 'Academie  Francaise', there is a feeling that the traditional culture, and the language in particular, is under threat from the modern preponderance of English in the world's of commerce and entertainment.

          For my part, the adoption of more and more English cannot come too soon. For the second time, before the start of this latest venture to South China, I dedicated myself, quite earnestly and with a fair degree of determination, to the study of Mandarin, both spoken and written. It seems though, that for the second time this most complex of linguistic systems has defeated me utterly. After some eight weeks of dedicated practice, averaging about an hour and a half a day, and six weeks of actual exposure to China and the spoken language, I feel I have barely scratched the surface of a scratch on the surface of the language.

          I can manage, at a push, the very basics such as politeness (to a point), asking for items in shops and enquiring after the price but beyond such bargain basement Chinese, I am stumped. Even such simplicities as asking directions, something that would come in handy in these bustling and constantly confusing metropolises, are quite beyond me. I may be able to ask the question but am utterly unable to comprehend the stream of apparently disconnected syllables that is returned to me. My only recourse in such circumstances is to follow the directions of the respondent's hands and nod, murmuring the odd 'hao' (good) and 'haode' (fine) and trying not to look too challenged.

          This is, of course, hugely frustrating. The frustration was so great in fact that I began to doubt my own ability to learn and assimilate. I am no polyglot but can get by in German and have a little French. In the past though, when I have spent some time in a new country, I usually find that I can pick up the basics of what is needed to get by, at least to some extent, within a relatively short time, even if this entails learning a new alphabet as was the case in Thailand and Russia.

          To test my own apparently dwindling abilities I decided to look into another language to see if it would prove as difficult. I chose Spanish as it is likely to come in handy for future flaneurial visits to Spain and South America. I listened to some recordings from the redoubtable Michel Thomas (a fascinating character whose biography is well worth looking up in its own right – he packed an awful lot of living into his 91 years) and found that far from being unresponsive that I was actually picking up the language like a talented teenager. In three days I seem to have learnt the equivalent of two months of Chinese, perhaps more.

          So what is it that is so very difficult about Chinese that it intimidates even the most accomplished of polyglots? I say this having just read about the famous Italian cardinal, Joseph Mezzofanti, who was reported to be able to speak sixty languages fluently. Despite his previous acumen, it was rumoured that he had a nervous breakdown when faced with Mandarin. This event not only thwarted further progress in Chinese but led to him temporarily forgetting many of his other languages.

          The first problem with Mandarin is that it is a tonal language. This implies that the meaning of words is changed by the tone attached to them. As an example we can use the seemingly simple two-letter syllable 'ma'. This can mean a piece of hemp, a horse, to scold someone, a mother or can be used at the end of a sentence to indicate a question is being asked, depending on the tone it is uttered in. This multiplicity of meaning applies to every syllable that Chinese uses. Often, to the European ear, simply picking up the fact that the tone has changed in the first place is something of an achievement – to then add meaning to that is bordering on a minor miracle.

          The actual number of sounds employed by Mandarin is relatively few but this only adds to the confusion. The same syllable can be used multiple times even with the same tone and yet mean something completely different. The syllable 'shi' for example has a grand total of some 32 meanings, depending on tone and context. That is roughly 31 too many for this nomadic flaneur...

          I could say a lot more in regards to the challenges of the spoken language but, unbelievably, that is the easy part. When it comes to the written, Mandarin is saddled with a writing system that is both ancient and unbelievably cumbersome. The learner of English has to accumulate 26 letters which, for the most part, equate fairly consistently with sound. In Russian the task that faces the would be learner is 33 letters and for the Greek a mere 24. To learn even the most basic Chinese reading skills one would have to accumulate at least 2,000 symbols. Even then, it is thought that it would still not be enough to read even basic newspaper articles and nowhere near enough for any kind of literature. There are sinologists who have studied the language for ten years and still cannot read even a simple novel in Mandarin.

          The classic comeback to this observation is that the symbols are made up of only about 200 radicals (or basic building blocks). Again, this is only partly true. There are many words that have no radicals whatsoever. Those that do have them are combined in many strange ways and, just to make matters worse, the radicals often also change form when used in combination - squished, squashed, bent or just completely different!

          Combinations of radicals can be added to the left or the right, above or below, inside or outside the main symbol with no guiding principles whatsoever to predict their behaviour. Some add a degree of phonetic clue but most don't. Some add a degree of semantic (meaning) significance but again, most don't. The whole system, to put it mildly, is a complete mess. So much so that to use the word 'system' seems unjustified in the case of Mandarin.

          Finally, if one has stayed the course and actually manages to recognise the symbols, just to make things interesting they are spaced evenly with no indication if the word involved is made up by one, two or even three of these collections of symbols. In English, we simply use a space to indicate the end of one word and the start of another. In Chinese, one has to work out which of the possible combinations is intended as the spacing itself gives no clue. Oh, nearly forgot, just to add insult to injury, Chinese is sometimes written left to right and sometimes top to bottom...

          Back in the cosy confines of Papa Gourmet, I stare uncomprehendingly at the menu which, after several weeks of trying, is just as opaque to me as on the first day. One could, with sufficient dedication, application and time master this language to the extent that one could 'get by'  (about 25 years should do it) but... is it worth that much effort for such meagre returns? Unless there is a pressing necessity to do so for business or personal reasons, I would suggest that one's time might be more gainfully employed doing... almost anything other than learning Mandarin!

          Apparently, the Chinese Premier Xi Jingping himself believes that rather than the Chinese learning English, the rest of the World should now be learning Chinese. In response to this notion, I think I should utilise a commonly used phrase from Spanglish...

           No Way, José!

Just to show that sometimes the confusion goes both ways....