Hong Kong

The famous Hong Kong skyline from Kowloon
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On April 13,  I exchanged the drenched streets of Kyoto for the drenched streets of Hong Kong.  Although it stopped raining shortly after I arrived, it remained cloudy all 5 days I was there - the start of the monsoon season.  That made 9 days in a row without any sun.

Hong Kong is one of those few cities in the world that truly earns the moniker "World City."  It is a center of international business, finance and tourism.  A meeting place for people from all corners of the globe.  Apparently, this is most true when it hosts the twice yearly Asian Electronics Exhibition.  People and companies from across the globe flock to Hong Kong for this Exhibition to source from and seek access to the Chinese market.  Clearly, the dreary Chungking Mansions, the building in which my hostel was located on the 12th floor, is a popular destination for those people and companies (primarily from developing countries) that cannot afford the price of Hong Kong's hotels.  The two elevators serving the building cannot hold more than 6 people each.  So each time I came to ride the elevator up, I had to wait 20mins with the United Nations there for the Exhibition - Chinese, India, Pakistani, African, middle-eastern, SE Asian, Euro/NA/Ausie/NZ travellers and all religions....  - waiting to get up to the various guesthouses on each floor of the building.  I soon learned to take the stairs down.  That is when I became acquainted with the smell of urine which has thus far proven to be a consistent theme in China.  All of this for a room which was probably no more than 50sqft and $19Cdn - a necessary bargain after the expense of Japan.

The vertical Hong Kong from Victoria Peak
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Hong Kong is an exceptional city.  It is also the most vertical city I have ever seen.  Not only does it climb mountains with towers, the condos and skyscrapers literally tower 30-60 stories.  New condos literally reach for the sky, on a scale and in numbers I have never seen before. It amazed me as much this visit as it did on my first visit.

If you like shopping and eating, then it can keep you busy for days and days and days.  Hong Kong is really about lifestyle, so unless you dive into the food and shopping you will find yourself wanting after a few days.  To do there is Kowloon, the Star Ferry, tall buildings offering staggering views, the traditional Chinese sector, Victoria Peak and a couple of very good musuems.  Unless you take trips to Macau or the non-urban parts of Hong Kong, it is down to food, shopping and atmosphere.  Shopping mixes high end and low end, and brand names and Chinese knock-offs in an unending barrage of malls.  Food among the endless resto choices offers dim sum, Cantonese, Indian, Japanese, Southeast Asian and all manner of regional Chinese fare, and there are of course modern and other international cuisine types.  And, there are are no less than 25 Starbucks in town, all conveniently located.  Only downside: many roads are lined by barriars that dont allow jaywalking and many times the only way to cross streets or get anywhere in the downtown area is to take elevated pedestrian flyways.  Very confusing and inefficient until you get the lay of the land.

Dim Sum...
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There was one question I had while in Hong Kong, which I did not have the perspective to answer: what will the unification with China and the Chinese government's commitment to building up Shanghai as its pre-eminent city mean for the long-term future of Hong Kong.  Will the international legacy and international business of the city already there continue to use Hong Kong as the key staging center for international business ,finance and investment in China?  My bet is that companies doing business in China will find their way to Shanghai or other cities in China to establish Chinese headquarters, R&D, etc., while international finance and services may still find their primary home in Hong Kong, in part due to legacy, the huge amount of $ there and due to the acceptance of english.  Of course, HK has the physical setting, the food and the dynacism to remain a great place to visit for a long, long time to come.

Temple in th downtown
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After Hong Kong I headed to rural SE China, via Shenzen.  Shenzen is across the river from the Hong Kong territory.  In 1980, with a population of 70,000 engaged largely in fishing and rice growing, it was designated by the Chinese government as the first Special Economic Zone in China (there are now a number of such zones) to leverage off the influence of Hong Kong and build some industrial base.  Twenty-five years later Shenzen has 7,000,000+ inhabitants, an international airport, a state-of-the-art subway system (which technology puts ours to shame) and gleaming condos and office towers as far as the eye can see.  Most of these buildings are brand new and many of them feature original design the likes of which is rare in North America these days.  The new highways are lined by trimmed hedges, flowers and trees.  The whole city looks like it was dropped from the sky in the last few months.  The air is a smoggy tan colour and what water I did see was fetid.  All of this is emblematic of what is going on in China and why I am spending time here.  There is so much economic dynacism here right now and the effects of its exponential growth will be so far-reaching, that I have to at least try and get a handle on it over the next several weeks.  I am no scholar in the economic (and political) rise of China.  For anyone of similar curiousity, I highly recommend reading the recent book "China, Inc.", from which I draw some of the below facts and hard examples.  It is a wide ranging survey of the source and consquences of China's economic re-emergence.

Bustling street in Kowloon
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As background, despite the fact China has one of the world's largest economies, is the no.2 consumer of oil in the world, and has had GDP growth at or above 10% for several years, when wealth is measured on a per capita income basis, it is one the world's poorer countries - less so than some African countries.  Its per capita income, I believe, is about 1/19 of Canada's per capita income. In fact, it has 100s of millions of abjectly poor citizens, mostly in rural areas, concentrated, but not exclusively so, in provinces that have not been lucky enough to be fully included in the boom.  Yet its explosive and awe-inspiring growth is based on its sheer numbers (at least 1.4 billion) and a middle class that is now only 100 million or so (3x the entire population of Canada), and growing.  Its strength is also based on its nearly inexhaustible supply of cheap (very cheap) labour which numbers rival the entire population of the US and western Europe.

As "China, Inc." describes, and is well known, the migration of 100s of millions of China's rural poor to the industrial cities (when China finally stopped prohibiting such emigration) of the east coast and heart of the country in the last 20+ years has been the single largest human migration in world history.  2 yuan a day is a step up.  And so, in the last 20+ years, and most pronounced in the last 5-10 years, China has offered to the world virtually unbeatable manufacturing costs - coming to be known in business circles as the "China Price."  The snowball effect is such that China has come to dominate (read, make nearly all of it) the world's production of many items, such as textiles and clothing, electronics (not Japan anymore - it has sent production to China), bric and brac (souvenirs, dollar store items), manufactured goods for use in other production (component parts of appliances, or cars, for example) and now increasingly more sophisticated goods.  As they take ever increasing shares of the manufacture in various 'traditional' sectors they are also continually entering new ones with gusto and determintion, quickly coming to dominate those as well.  Auto parts and furniture are relatively recent examples of the latter.  Just today watching the Chinese (state-run) english news (an entertaining viewing experience once - then mind-numbingly unsubstantive and lopsided), there was a story on China's yacht building industry.  From 2% of the world's production last year, they expect to have 20% of the world's production in less than 5 years. Yacht-building!  The result is that in the last 5-10 years, the range of sectors and depth of manufacturing departures from NA, Japan and Europe is completely unprecedented.  Moreover, in donig so, China is also hollowing out shakey economies in the developing world (Vietnam, Phillipines, Sri Lanka) which have traditionally had a significant piece of certain manufacturing sectors (i.e. textiles)and which are increasingly losing production to China as China consolidates its dominance in these sectors (cut throat competition is also occuring between China's provinces).

Though overly simplistic to point to its cheap, willing and endless workforce, that is the driving force.  It also helps to have a central government that can dictate and implement strategies without the  policitical inefficiencies of a democracy and fickle unionized labour, as well as an entreprenurial population hungry to make something of themselves and China. I am not sure everyone understands the true extent of the re-emerging Chinese force.  Perhaps it will be more apparent when GM and Ford have moved almost all of their component part production to China out of Southern Ontario; or when Boeing, Bombardier and Airbus move all production to China in order to compete with their low-cost Chinese counterpart(s) to be.  Even high-tech industries (aerospace, software, hardware, pharma, biotech, etc.) are now in the stated gunsights of the Chinese government.  Helps to have  highly educted technical class at its disposal and multinational companies that have had to hand over their secrets (either explicitly or by unavoidable osmosis) in order to do business in China.  How many kids in Canadian schools are learning sciences, technical skills (engineering) and Mandarin.  Not nearly enough.

So bringing it around to where this digression began, Shenzen is emblematic of the profusion of rural labour feeding an economic engine that has exploded.  Surrounding Shenzen and in the rest of Guangdong province is the manufacturing heartland of China.  Factories in all directions.  This wealth is evidenced in the overnight-like nature of the skyline and infrastructure of Shenzen.  It absoluletly blows the mind to see and makes even the poshest new suburbs or urban development in Canada look bush league.  How long has it taken Toronto to build a new downtown skyscraper (yes, much first class office space has been created, Allied)?  Shanghai has 1000s going up. I counted 50+ on the way to Shenzen airport from downtown.  So you can see, hear and feel the boom in places like Shenzen, or Chengdu or Guangzhou  or Nanong or some of the other 100+ cities in China which have more than 1 million people and of which you have not likely heard.  All this being said, my first substantive exposure to the re-emergence of China, besides my brief time in Shenzen, was the rural southeast - a place that has seen its young and capable leave by the millions and abject poverty continues in an startling manner on those left behind.

45 minutes after taking off from Shenzen's new international airport, I landed in **** province and the city of Guiling, which I immediately left for the smaller backpacker haven town of Yangshao. The Yangshao region is famous for the random pattern of limestone (I believe) mountains/hills that literally appear to pop out of the landscape.  If you have seen pictures of Krabi, Thailand or Ha Long Bay, Vietnam it is much the same geological phenomenom.  All this in a countryside of verdent green, rice fields and meandering rivers which wind their way between the mini-mountains.  It is often refered to as the stereotypical landscape that people think of when they imagine what the Chinese countryside looks like.  Yangshao itself is a very soft landing into China.  It is small and sedate by Chinese standards (300,000 is the population, I think). Western travellers' accomodations are very familiar and one can eat out all week and not have to eat Chinese food or speak Chinese.  Some of the hardcore backpackers were complaining - I was quite happy.  I will slip slowly into my snake soup and mystery meat.  That being said, I ate (familiar) Chinese for every meal but breakfast - muesli and fruit will always win that battle.

I spent the better part of 3 days biking through the rice fields and along the Li and Yu Long Rivers which wind their way through the area.  Visually spectacular, it was very satisfying.  I would often stop for quite some time just to watch it all happen.  Furious work in the fields with the oxen to sow the rice crop, bamboo rafts being paddled downstream and children running back and forth between school and home.  Though quite a romantic and tourist-friendly picture, the reality of these peoples' plight was apparent when you passed through their villages.  The stench of waste was omnipresent (human and animal, no doubt) and the conditions were primitive (but almost all had a TV, if nothing else - likely sent back by relatives "making it" elsewhere).  As bad as I have seen in poor parts of S. American and SE Asia - but this is one of the largest economies in the world.  A real eye-opener on those struggling at the bottom of the ladder in booming China.  It will be quite a comparison to those living in Shanghai and Beijing who are living the boom.  Some people in town are doing better, though, as the Yangshao is undergoing some new development, even outside the "foreigner" street where souvenir stands and western-style cafes and restos blur into similarity.