Tag Archives: globalization

steamboat mao

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Reading Walter Benjamin’s Mickey Mouse fragment after the Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art by way of the Cultural Revolution and rural urbanization in Shenzhen reminds us that the revolutionary and the subversive refers to potential here and now, not any particular artistic form or genre. Anyway, I was reminded that the Mickey Mao pun is compelling and not actually shocking: they really do go together like vinegar and oil on a global word salad. Anyway, I was playing with photoshop and mashed up Mickey and Mao and came up with Steamboat Mao, a tribute to Benjamin that plays on Mao’s status as the Great Helmsman and Mickey’s former status as the ultimate underdog:

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The Mickey Mouse fragment comes from from a conversation among Walter Benjamin, Gustav Gluck and Kurt Weill:

Property relations in Mickey Mouse cartoons: here we see for the first time that it is possible to have one’s own arm, even one’s own body, stolen.

The route taken by Mickey Mouse is more like that of a file in an office than it is like that of a marathon runner.

In these films, mankind makes preparations to survive civilization.

Mickey Mouse proves that a creature can still survive even when it has thrown off all resemblance to a human being. He disrupts the entire hierarchy of creatures that is supposed to culminate in mankind.

These films disavow experience more radically than ever before. In such a world, it is not worthwhile to have experience.

Similarity to folk tales. Not since fairy tales have the most important and most vital events been evoked more unsymbolically and more unatmospherically. All Mickey Mouse films are founded on the motif of leaving home in order to learn what fear is.

So the explanation for the huge popularity of these films is not mechanization, their form; nor is it a misunderstanding. It is simply the fact that the public recognizes its own life in them.

inscribed dongguan

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Unlike Shenzhen, which has managed to disassociate itself from its rural past, Dongguan continues to be considered a market town, population and exports, notwithstanding — provincial in all condescending senses of the word. Unfortunately for folks in Dongguan, urbanizing strategies to overcome the stigma of cultural boorishness are often the problem. The Lamwa (联华国际) development, 星河传说 (Milky Way Legend), for example, is located in Dongcheng District, Dongguan Municipality’s aspiring middle class district, where English inscriptions, including a Cambridge education kindergarten are all part of local efforts to rebrand the city. It feels, however, like 1990s Shenzhen, before millennial skyscrapers and creative industries replaced industrial parks, creating Shenzhen urbanity and the concomitant nostalgia for urban villages. Impressions of Milky Way Legend’s high culture pretensions, below:

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foxconn + walmart = shenzhen, or globalization after mao

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China Labor Watch has reported another Foxconn strike, this time at the Zhengzhou campus. According to the report, the shortage of iPhones led to increased demands on Foxconn workers, who were required to work over the holiday, for longer hours, at jobs that they did not have the skills to perform. Moreover, quality control inspectors also joined line workers in the strike for more reasonable work conditions. From the report:

(New York) China Labor Watch (CLW) announced that at 1:00PM on October 5 (Beijing time), a strike occurred at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory that, according to workers, involved three to four thousand production workers. In addition to demanding that workers work during the holiday, Foxconn raised overly strict demands on product quality without providing worker training for the corresponding skills. This led to workers turning out products that did not meet standards and ultimately put a tremendous amount of pressure on workers. Additionally, quality control inspectors fell into to conflicts with workers and were beat up multiple times by workers. Factory management turned a deaf ear to complaints about these conflicts and took no corrective measures. The result of both of these circumstances was a widespread work stoppage on the factory floor among workers and inspectors.

Ironically, on the same day, Salon dot com reported that workers at Wal-mart also went on strike for the first time in the company’s notoriously anti-union history. As at Foxconn, Wal-mart workers are striking in large part because they are being to asked to do the impossible — do the jobs of several people. From the article:

I’m excited, I’m nervous, I’m scared…” Pico Rivera Wal-Mart employee Evelin Cruz told Salon yesterday about her decision to join today’s strike. “But I think the time has come, so they take notice that these associates are tired of all the issues in the stores, all the management retaliating against you.” Rivera, a department manager, said her store is chronically understaffed: “They expect the work to be done, without having the people to do the job.

News of these two labor strikes resonate ironically in Shenzhen because Foxconn (鸿海科技集团) and Walmart were two of the first multi-nationals to benefit from Shenzhen’s establishment in 1979.

Foxconn has 13 factories in China, but its oldest and largest is the Shenzhen Longhua Campus, which has an estimated population of 250,000 workers and managerial staff. Moreover, the Shenzhen Campus is the location of Foxconn China’s headquarters and represents over 1/4 of the Company’s global workforce. Foxconn is the worlds largest contract provider of computer, communication and consumer electronics products. In addition to Apple, Foxconn partners with Acer Inc, Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba, and Vizio. In other words, Foxconn employees also make Kindles, PlayStations, and Xboxes in addition to iPhones, so if you’re using any kind of high-end electronic product — especially a smartphone — odds are it was made in one of Foxconn’s Chinese factories. Foxconn posted net profit of US$ 102.74 billion in 2011.

Similarly, as Walmart’s world buying headquarters, Shenzhen is a critical site in the multinational’s chains of production and consumption. Walmart reportedly sources 70% of its merchandise from China, and many of its earliest subcontractors were located in Shenzhen. Importantly, the level of worker exploitation at Foxconn Longhua and Zhengzhou cannot be understood outside the context of Walmart in China. With a global workforce of over 2 million people (or two Foxconns), Walmart is the world’s largest private employer and shapes daily life at the level of both supply and demand. By 2005, Walmart had become China’s sixth largest export market–just behind Germany–making it a larger trader partner than many countries. Indeed, Anita Chan argues that “When the two giants Walmart and China established a stable symbiotic relationsip at the turn of the millennium, and as Walmartization of the supply chain took root on Chinese soil, Walmart’s competitors had to use the same sourcing techniques to survive.” Walmart reported US$ 15.4 billion net revenue in 2011 (or roughly 15% of Foxconn’s net revenue for the same period).

As Walmart is to commercial products, so Foxconn is to high-end electronics. Given their global dominance in their respective niches, both companies are in a position to squeeze more labor out of their workers, demanding (as on Foxconn Zhengzhou’s iPhone 5 production lines) overtime work that effectively pushes wages down below even locally acceptable wage levels. Here, “forced overtime” can be understood in two ways. 1. As in Foxconn Zhengzhou, where workers are expected to put in extra hours to meet orders. And 2. as in South California Walmarts, where one worker does the job of several, so that even when working a “forty-hour” week, they may have put in 60 hours worth of labor.

Here’s the Shenzhen connection to new forms of labor exploitation. During the 1980s and through the 1990s, but especially during the pre-1992 Southern Tour years, Shenzhen business offered Chinese citizens an opportunity to opt out of the planned economy, in both cities and rural areas. The lure, of course, was a salary that was based on market demands, rather than fixed by the central government plan. Indeed, in 1988, the Shekou Tempest began when visiting Beijing officials accused local workers of being nothing more than gold diggers, who were motivated by greed, rather than by nobler sentiments, such as patriotism to modernize the national economy.

Shenzhen is not the first city to boom through low wage production. In fact, many of the earliest companies that set up factories in Shenzhen simply relocated from nearby Hong Kong and Taiwan. However, in retrospect, it is clear how small the 1970s Asian miracle actually was. With the establishment of Shenzhen, the world’s largest corporations suddenly had access to the world’s largest workforce — a workforce, moreover, that was trained, disciplined, and  eager to work for wages, making forced overtime a globally viable corporate strategy. Today, forced overtime has become one of the most effective means of labor management, not only because it results in higher profit margins, but also because exhausted workers are more docile.

Even as China debates pushing forward the Shenzhen model of production, it’s clear that this model has already gone global. Consequently, Shenzhen may be the key to understanding globalization in the post Mao era. In fact, Shenzhen has become the city that US Americans would recognize as “middle class” in both practice and ideology. Most residents are migrants, who came to Shenzhen to make their fortune. Moreover, they believe that individuals need to work hard in order to get ahead; Shenzhen espouses individual effort, transparency in business deals, and home ownership as simultaneously being the means and ends of the good society. As in the United States, Shenzhen residents talk on their iPhones while shopping at Walmart. As in the United States, this standard of living has not spread throughout the general population because it depends upon increasing levels of exploitation. Thus also as in the United States, now that the factories have moved to Zhengzhou and Vietnam, the squeezing of service industry labor has intensified, which leaves enquiring minds to wonder: when will workers in Shenzhen’s 12 Walmarts strike?

可怜天下父母心: generation 80 and 90 go abroad

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I tend to think that middle class Chinese parents have it good. Grandparents take care of young children, elementary school children go to school and can generally be pressured into doing several hours of homework a night, and older children hang out with their parents, not only out of respect, but also because they acknowledge that being with children makes parents happy. In fact, a visit to any park or mall, or even an ordinary bus commute suggests how well behaved Chinese infants are. One or two fuss, but most sit calmly on their grandparents’ laps or play with a water bottle. School age children get themselves to and from campus, attend cram sessions, and organize their homework.

Even after graduating from college, middle class children take care of their parents’ well-being. I know more than one member of Generation 80, for example, who returns home for weekly meals. Working Chinese children also arrange for their parents and parental-in laws to live with or near them in order to attend to parental needs. So common is the assumption of parental care that throughout Shenzhen, hospitals and shopping malls market themselves as places where children can express care for parents — arranging a mother’s dental appointment or family dinner, for example. Certainly, facilitating migrant remittances from Shenzhen to neidi and family network phone plans are huge sections of the financial and service industries. In other words, my experience has shown me the extent to which middle class Chinese children — even members of Generation 80 and 90 —  remain remarkably filial. Or certainly seem so when compared with their age cohorts in the United States.

I realize that mine is a minority position. Commentators in both China and the West have focused on how China’s middle-class parents work exceedingly hard to provide the material conditions for their only child to live well. These parents sacrifice all sorts of ambitions and desires so that their child can go a famous university. They also point out that since promulgation in 1980, China’s one-child policy has produced not a few “little Emperors (小皇帝)”, who in common English are simply “spoilt brats”. Now it may be that when two sets of grandparents and often a nanny orbit the lone descendent, some children become unreasonable. But not all. And certainly not the majority, who study hours as long or longer than their parents work to achieve academic results that will make their elders proud. Indeed, I am still impressed by the number of young Chinese people who make their parents’ dreams (rather than their own) their lodestar.

As I have begun to gather stories about generations 80 and 90 abroad, however, my perspective has shifted. I am beginning to realize the extent to which their parents have made these young people their life’s purpose. It is not simply that middle class parents bask in the glory of their child’s accomplishments, but also and more importantly, that they have crafted lives out of raising this child. These parents often confuse high grades with success and low grades with failure, or interpret independent thinking as “rebellion” and “intransigence”. Nevertheless, once their child successfully matriculates in an overseas high school or college, these parents suffer acute ” empty nest” syndrome, as we call it in the States not only because they realize that they will no longer be able to direct their children’s development, but also because they finally understand, no matter what and how they dream for their child, ultimately they cannot give their child a smooth and carefree life.

Yesterday, I helped a mother read and understand US insurance documents. Her daughter is in California and was in a car accident. The other party has filed for damages, and the daughter’s insurance company has begun to negotiate with the claimant’s lawyer. Ironically, the mother sold her own car so that the daughter could purchase a car, which she explained, “is more necessary in California than Shenzhen.” The daughter whose English is fine, but not strong enough to feel confident about her understanding of documents in legal English sent her mother digital copies, asking for guidance. The mother does not read English and used half a day to find a connection to me to make an appointment. After I explained the content to her, we came up with a plan of action and contacted the daughter, who is no doubt figuring out what needs to be done and doing it. Her mother, however, is in Shenzhen managing the anxiety of helplessness; she deeply wants to help her daughter, but cannot.

All this to say that I am hearing the expression “take pity on the hearts of the world’s parents (可怜天下父母心)” differently, and perhaps more accurately. I used to hear it as spoilt parent moaning about a child’s attempt to establish a bit of independence. Today, I am better able to pity parents, not because their child received poor grades or has a stubborn streak, but rather because they would do anything to make their child’s life smooth and happy. Of course, that is precisely what they cannot do, and so they suffer.

Interesting cultural postscript: in Chinese, empty nests refer to lonely grandparents and the phrase “empty nester” is translated as 孤寡老人. Thus, when their children go and remain abroad, Chinese parents not only become empty nesters in the US sense of “children have moved out”, but also potentially in the Chinese sense of “old person without a grandchild”.

the social media production of mutual assured cross-cultural contempt in the US and China

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By now, most have heard that Global Times, the Party’s international mouthpiece printed an editorial which called for the Chinese public to permit a moderate amount of corruption; if you haven’t jump over to Fauna’s piece at ChinaSmack for translation of the article and web responses. The self-justifying rhetoric and virulent counter-attacks illuminate the cynicism and anger that increasingly characterize public debate in the PRC micro/ blogosphere. Moreover, the virulence and smugness of English language responses to the post need to be analyzed in terms that explain the ongoing social media production of mutual assured cross-cultural contempt in both the US and China.

In many ways, the cynicism of the exchanges remind me of populist diatribes in the US; I actually can hear Mitt Romney and other anti-gay or anti-black or anti-women or anti-child advocates calling for “moderate levels of discrimination” and exhorting the country to “understand” the necessity of continued legal inequality because there are so many incompatible definitions of discrimination and we need to respect everyone’s traditions. The pseudo-rational justifications for continued discrimination understandably anger those who directly suffer the consequences of said laws and customs.

Just how closely does the tone and rhetorical form of US and Chinese popular debate mirror each other? Below, I have copied the Chinese editorial and substituted the following keywords, underlining the substitutions in text:

  • discrimination for corruption
  • prejudiced for corrupt
  • strong economy for development
  • prejudice for income
  • America for China
  • Western for Asian
  • Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney for Railway Minister and Party Secretary Liu Zhijun (and yes, in both countries we keep pandering to our lowest acceptable prejudices and greed, respectively)

I have made these substitutions to make a simple point; although the effects of economic globalization and political inequality are different in the PRC and the USA, nevertheless the turn to cultural justification and excuse-mongering is similar. Moreover, tone of the debate transcends relative levels of legal freedom of expression. The anger and absurdity of debate in the Chinese micro/ blogosphere is matched by the anger and absurdity of debate in American television and radio programs (Hello, weibo and Fox News).

The implications of this point, however, are far from simple when our respective national debates end up in our interlocutor’s public sphere. For US citizens, for example, it is difficult to understand the prevalence of and popular resignation to Chinese corruption. Likewise, most Chinese see US concerns about gay marriage and reproductive freedom to be a cases of privileged angst. In the worst case scenario, we focus on the other’s words to explain/ justify our inability to reach mutual understanding because, it seems so obvious, that our interlocutor has such fuck-up values. As a result, in both both countries, we end up focused on the cultural content of public debate, rather than on a shared political-economic structure that has created what are in both the PRC and USA, untenable situations.

So, another call for creative rethinking of what forms cross-cultural understanding and dialogue might assume when translation might do more cross-cultural harm than good.

The modified text begins below:

The American Public Should Permit a Moderate Amount of Discrimination

It was announced yesterday that Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney won the Texan nomination. This piece of news once again touched the public’s most sensitive nerve, that dealing with discrimination. From a national perspective, there is indeed continuous news of discriminatory officials being elected, which does give people the feeling that discrimination is “unending/overwhelming”. They aren’t catching/arresting less, it’s that you can never catch them all [never finish catching them all]. Just what is going on?

America obviously has a high incidence of discrimination, and the conditions for completely eliminating discrimination do not exist at present. Some people say, as long as we have “democracy”, the problem of discrimination can be easily solved. However, this kind of view is naive. The West has many “democratic countries”, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, India, etc. where discrimination are all much more severe than America. But America may very likely be the Western country with the most pronounced sense of “resentment towards discrimination”.

This is related to America’s “serve the people!” official political morals having deeply been engrained in the people’s heart throughout society. However, the reality is that the market economy has attacked its practicality/feasibility, resulting in government officials who half-heartedly observe it or have even betrayed it constantly slipping through various cracks in the system. America is a country that has been deeply penetrated by globalization and the high standards of integrity of developed countries is already known by the American public, and with information coming from different periods and different circumstances being forcible stuffed into America’s sphere of public opinion, bitterness and consternation can find no relief.

Discrimination in any country is unable to be permanently controlled/cured, so the key is to control what the degree that the people will permit/allow. However, to do this is particularly difficult for America.

Singapore and China’s Hong Kong institute a policy of high pay to discourage discrimination. Many Chinese political candidates are wealthy, and normally when someone becomes a government official there, they accumulate renown and connections. After office, they can use then various “revolving doors” to change all they have accumulated into financial return. However, these options and possibilities are not available in America.

Giving government officials power to discriminate is something American public opinion cannot accept. Allowing government officials to step down and use their influence and connections to discriminate against groups is something the system does not allow. Allowing the prejudiced to become government officials is something that people find even more unpalatable. The legal prejudice of America’s government officials is very low, and the compensation for officials of some places is often realized through “unwritten rules”.

All of American society now has some “unwritten rules”. In industries that involve the public welfare such as doctors and teachers, “unwritten rules” have also become popular. Many people’s statutory prejudice isn’t high, but they have “gray prejudice”.

What are the boundaries for “unwritten rules”? This isn’t clear. This is also one of the reason for why there are relatively many discrimination cases now, with some even being “cases of a community of discrimination”. Amongst the people, there is the popular saying that “what is commonplace amongst the people cannot be punished by the law”, and the moment government officials believe this saying while believing “others are the same as me”, then he is already in danger [of becoming prejudiced].

Those who engage in discrimination must be strictly investigated, and not to be tolerated, as this would greatly increase the risk and cost of discrimination, creating the requisite deterrent effect. The government must make the reduction of discrimination the biggest objective of their governance.

The people must resolutely increase supervision through public opinion, pushing the government to fight discrimination. However, the people must also reasonably understand the reality and objective fact that America is unable at its present stage to thoroughly suppress the discrimination, and not sink the entire country into despair.

Writing this definitely does not mean we believe fighting discrimination is not important or should be put off. Quite the opposite, we believe fighting discrimination indeed is the number one problem that must be solved for the reform of America’s political system, and it is also the common demand of the entire country.

However, we believe that fighting discrimination is not something that can be completely “fought” nor completely “reformed” because at the same time, it needs “strong economy” to help solve it. It is a problem of the individual prejudiced officials as well as the system, but that’s not all. It is also a problem of the American society’s “overall level of strong economy”.

Fighting discrimination is a difficult/entrenched battle in the strong economy of American society, but its victory at the same time hinges upon the clearing of various obstacles on other battlefields. America can never be a country where other aspects are very backward and only its government officials are egalitarian. Even if it is for a time, it won’t last long. Eliminating discrimination would be a breakthrough/turning point for America, but this country ultimately can only “advance overall” [any specific progress requires overall progress/strong economy].

more confucian business ethics: collect the bags!

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Roughly twenty years ago, he, his wife, and their son immigrated from China to Southern California. They came to Shenzhen last year to do business with successful college classmates and brought a daughter and a younger son. The older son remained in California. The man was 40 something years of age, and he told me that his wife and son met a friend and business associate at LAX. When the three went to pick up the visitor’s luggage, his wife went to collect the bags. However, because she is a woman, the visitor stopped her and collected the bags instead. The man didn’t say, but I’m assuming the wife and friend engaged in some who-can-hold-onto-the-bags shuffle, with the result that the visitor ended up carrying his own bags. The son waited for the ritual to end and then led his mother and his father’s friend to the car. The son drove them home.

The man told me this story because he wanted to know what I thought; how had the son behaved?

“Based on what I know of American or Chinese cultural norms?” I hedged, thinking that any young man who drove his mother to the airport to pickup a guest was an accommodating son, and that if his parents and their friends wanted to engage in who’s-the-most-polite shuffles, then that really was their business and why not wait for the storm to end. In fact, personally, I sympathized with the son’s position because I am frequently nonplussed when confronted by demonstrations of Chinese courtesy that are also not-so-sutble assertions of dominance.

He explained that afterward his friend had approached him to talk about the matter. The friend worried that the son did “did not understand things (不懂事),” an expression with meanings that range from ‘immature’ through ‘is insensible to the feelings of others’ to ‘has no concept of proper behavior’. The friend had acted out of concern because he worried for his friend’s son future prospects. To declare a college graduate “does not understand things” means that those in positions of power “cannot use him (不能用人)” and thus will not place him in positions of responsibility, thereby foreclosing opportunities for advancement.

At the time, the father had replied that he thought skill (能力) was the most important criteria for promotions. However, when he discussed the issue with another friend, this time the CEO of a small company, he realized that from the point of view of makers and shakers in China, his son in fact “could not be used”. The CEO explained that he had two employees, A and B, who went everywhere with him. The CEO did not have a driver and so A and B took turns driving. When A drove, he made sure to open the CEO’s door for him before getting into the car. When B drove, he immediately sat in the driver’s seat and A, again, opened the CEO’s door before settling himself in the car.

“Now, who should I promote?” the CEO rhetorically asked the man. “Obviously, A is more meticulous/ attentive (更细心) than B. Consequently, he can be trusted, whereas B doesn’t see the big picture.”

The big picture included hierarchy and etiquette, or understanding one’s relationship with another and each time A opened the CEO’s door, he demonstrated his understanding. In contrast, B did his job. On the CEO’s interpretation, it didn’t matter how talented B was. The real problem was that B couldn’t be trusted to treat guests and by extension business colleagues and clients, properly. A could.

I’m told there are serious differences between etiquette in state-owned industries, where bureaucratic privilege trumps skill and the private sector, where talented people are more valued than sycophants. Also, it seems that things “are different” in the IT sector, but again, people quickly remind me, that techies are young and often westernized. Westernized, perhaps, but as in Western business culture, Chinese business culture distinguishes between those who give good face and those who do their jobs well; rare is the individual who can both manage people and complete tasks.

Interestingly, although the characters for the Chinese words for CEO (董事长) and “understand things” are different, nevertheless they are homophones, which alerts us to the moral of today’s story. At an airport, there are several rules that apply when greeting Chinese guests:

1. If the guest is older than you — collect the luggage to show your respect;

2. If the guest has a higher rank than you — collect the luggage to show your respect;

3. If the guest is a friend — collect the luggage in order to demonstrate your good will.

There are three possible exceptions to the “collect the luggage” rule for greeting Chinese guests, gender, age, and White ethnicity. A friend would neither expect a friend’s wife to collect luggage, nor would that friend expect an elementary school child to collect luggage. Although if the child grabbed a bag, be sure to laugh happily, muss her hair, and exclaim, “Wow, she really understands things!” And yes, white Americans are forgiven for all sorts of social faux pas that Chinese-Americans are not so that when we go for the bags, we suddenly appear “Chinese”.

But to return to the father’s story. What do we say to a Chinese man, who clearly wants his American son to succeed, knowing that amongst globe-trotting Chinese he will be judged by ancestral values and not those of his hometown, Los Angeles?

渔一村：of old men and the landfilled sea

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Yesterday’s bloggy romance with the sea continues and although I have shifted my gaze from Cuba to Shekou, it is worth mentioning that the writers’ emphasis on masculine conquest continues; today, in episode 8 of The Transformation of Shenzhen Villages (沧海桑田：深圳村庄三十年), Chen Hong tells the story of Fishing Village 1 (渔一村), Shekou. Again, the story begins in a village, but this is also where similarities between the two narratives end. Hemingway figured human life through the isolated figure of an old man navigating the Caribbean on a rickety skiff and superstition. In contrast, Chen Hong figures humanity through the construction of ports, trading ventures and the world-making connections that they enable, suggesting that the opportunity to launch one’s skiff is itself a political decision which once made determines the fate of villagers. For those who remember the 1988 television documentary, River Elegy (河殇) which linked China’s decline and ultimate humiliation to the Ming decision to ban maritime activity, a not-so-subtle critique of Maoist isolation, Chen Hong’s passion for the sea and the [free trade] world it symbolizes is self-evident.

Episode 8 opens by juxtaposing images of Ming and Qing trade centered on Guangzhou with pictures of the construction of Shekou, reminding viewers that Zheng He (郑和) set forth from or loaded supplies at Chiwan Port at least five times. Lest the viewer forget the consequences of isolation, the opening sequence ends with bleak, black and white footage of a backwater port, overgrown and clogged with weeds, small wooden boats berthed in stagnant waters. Boom! The first explosion opens the door to new world order, which is also, new village order.

Traditionally, the villagers of Fishing 1 weren’t actually villagers but individual fishing families who lived on boats, coming onshore to sell the day’s catch. Families came from all over the Pearl River Delta forming a community through their livelihood, rather than through ancestry or even a common version of Cantonese. However, in 1959, the political decision was made to organize them as a brigade (生产大队). They were 90 households with a total population of 450 people and settled as four small production teams (小队) in Nantou, Gushu, Neilingding Island, and Shekou. The Fishing Brigade worked to modernize the fleet and in 1978 during a meeting on scientific production, Hua Guofeng actually gave the brigade a first place award. Indeed, at the beginning of Reform, the Brigade had 69 ocean fishing vessels, 72 transport ships, and 18 oxygen boats that fished the South China Sea and Pearl River Delta bringing in fresh seafood for Cantonese dishes and by 1992, had accumulated enough capital to invest in modern industrial deep sea fishing vessels.

From 1978 through 1986, the Fishing Brigade lived the socialist dream, which was a traditional Chinese dream; the men fished, going as far away as Guangxi, the women kept house, children went to school and had medicine, and all ate in a common canteen, where the work team provided delicious food, including squid and shrimp. The system was called the 8 provisions (八包). However, by the late 80s early 90s, the scale of urbanization and land reclamation meant that traditional fishing areas had been contaminated and fish breeding grounds buried, and it was impossible to continue living from the sea. Suddenly, the advantages of the sea declined as property values soared and Fishing 1 faced a contradiction that many other villages would eventually face — what to do when urbanization decimated the conditions of traditional livelihood?

Once the sea was gone, Fishing 1 had no way of making a living because it did not have any land, except for that which the government had given it for housing in 1959, including a section on Neidingling Island, which Fishing 1 decided to develop as a resort and in 1992 as part of the guannei rural urbanization movement, the Fishing Brigade became the Fishing 1 stock holding corporation. However, after Fishing 1 had already invested their accumulated capital and borrowed against the development, Shenzhen and Zhuhai began a court case over who actually owned the island. Traditionally, the Island belonged to Zhuhai. However, in 1955, the Center had assigned Neidingling to Baoan, but no one could actually prove whether or not the transfer had gone through until 2002, when a copy of 1955 decision was found. In 2009, the Guangdong Provincial government finally ruled in favor of Shenzhen’s claim to Neidingling Island. However, the case raged long enough to impoverish Fishing 1 as the joint stock corporation/ fishing brigade/ village could no longer fish and except for Neidingling had no other traditional land rights. Indeed, by 2009 when the case was settled, Fishing 1’s deep sea fishing rights had already been bought out by China Merchants, which in turn sold them to Wanxia, one of Shekou’s original land-based villages.

And so here’s the neoliberal twist in Chen Hong’s story of old men and their vanishing sea: Fishing 1 re-entered Shenzhen urban planning as part of the Together Rich Project (同富裕项目), and over the past decade restructured and invested elsewhere: an industrial park in guanwai Gongming and fish breeding farms in Zhanjiang, for example. In addition, the Municipality organized training for fishermen to learn new skills. Nevertheless, the members of Fishing 1 have not only been proletarianized over the past 30 years, but are still paying off one of the debts that fueled Shekou’s growth. After all, Fishing 1 had no rights to any of the coastal property developments that enriched both China Merchants and neighboring Wanxia Village. Instead, Episode 8 ends with exhortations — from the Municipality and from the filmmaker — for individual development and initiative, ironically and inexorably returning us to Hemingway’s sea, where old men struggle feed themselves because they have been isolated by .

For more on my obsession with Houhai Land reclamation, more entries, here. A wander through the earliest Shekou landmarks, including the Shekou and Neilingding fishing families settlements, below:

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Exporting the Shenzhen Model

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The Shenzhen Model not only shapes neidi development, but also the form and content of China’s recent push to expand and develop its international presence. Friend Jonathan Bach directed me to the article, African Shenzhen: China’s Special Economic Zones in Africa by Deborah Brautigam and Tang Xiaoyang. The article contextualizes contemporary Chinese investment in Africa, concluding that:

“These zones are using an unprecedented business model in Africa. Although there are exceptions, most economic zones in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, have historically been developed and operated by governments, and the results have often been disappointing (FIAS 2008: 31). In China’s own zones, government agencies were also responsible for their development, with generally good results. However, the new Chinese zones in Africa are not being planned by government bureaucrats and given to Chinese firms to implement. Instead, they are designed and established by Chinese enterprises spontaneously according to their assessment of business feasibility. The Chinese zone developers are expected to bring future-oriented design, high-standard infrastructure and world-class professional management to help industrial investors survive the harsh market environment in Africa and facilitate their growth.

In some parts of Africa, clusters of dynamic industrial development have arisen spontaneously, as private initiatives. If the expectations for the Chinese-run zones are realised (and the jury is still out on this), these cooperation zones could form a synergistic third model, combining the market forces of existing clusters with the systematic organisation of the top-down model. If so, this would help the business sustainability of the zones. The scale and experience of the developers mean that they are less vulnerable, and better connected to networks of capital, ideas and support than Africa’s existing clusters.

These developments may yet come to naught, given the obstacles that have beset past efforts to develop economic zones in Africa. They face significant challenges of inclusion, communication, and integration with local economies. Yet the timing is right for some African countries to catch the new wave of investors coming out of China. If even some of these experiments lead to a genuine transfer of knowledge and opportunity from China to Africa, much as happened with Japan and south-east Asia in the 1970s and with Hong Kong and Mauritius in the 1980s, employment could see significant gains and, in some spots, long-delayed industrial transitions may yet be realised (CHINA’S SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES IN AFRICA 51-2).”

To get a sense of why export Shenzhen and not Chongqing, check out the urban distribution of China’s top 679 enterprises. Not unsurprisingly, Beijing’s national state-owned enterprises dominated the list and Shanghai came in second. However, Chongqing had a mere 18 companies in the top. In contrast, Shenzhen came in third, with 52 top company headquarters. Moreover, the Shenzhen companies tended to be in the hi-tech, financial, or service sectors, representing the highest growth in new, rather than traditional industries and are precisely the companies investing in Africa.

Shenzhen-based Huawei‘s global expansion continues to accelerate, for example. Founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei, is the largest China-based networking and telecommunications equipment supplier and the second-largest supplier of mobile telecommunications infrastructure equipment in the world (after Ericsson). Likewise, Shenzhen-based Tencent made Forbes Magazine’s list of Asia’s Fab 50 companies and although the company is not yet in the China 500, it is the country’s largest and most-used Internet service portal. Other top Shenzhen companies include: Ping An Insurance (finance), ZTE Corporation (telecommunications), Vanke (real estate), and OCT Group (real estate).

And yet. These rankings indicate increasing inequality between regions, also explaining the ongoing appeal of Maoism.

Thoughts on Shenzhen’s New New Districts: Longhua and Dapeng

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This past week, when the Center brought the country’s 3,300 provincial, municipal, and county members of the Politics and Law Committee (政法委) to Beijing to learn “what to do and how to do it,” they did so to strengthen top-down unity, or the line from the Center (中央) to the “local (地方)”. Party control of the Politics and Law Committee means that it directly controls the writing of laws, their interpretation, and enforcement. As far as we know, Zhou Yong “Noodle Master” Kang remains the Chair of the National Committee. We hypothesize that Hu Jintao was critical to making the decision to convene a Politics and Law Committee meeting and what would be taught there. Ergo, we are waiting to see whose line actual becomes the standard that will be brought back to Local governments, like Shenzhen.

How does this administrative apparatus shape the possibility of progressive social transformation in Shenzhen?

One way to answer the question is to think of all the districting and redistricting and micro-districting and statutory planning that create what the Municipality spins as Shenzhen’s “Industry First” as ways of side-stepping Center intervention and oversight by giving investors in hi-tech manufacturing, logistics, finance, and cultural industry preferential policies without any kind of political reform. Continue reading →

new village origin stories: Caiwuwei redux

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What to make of the following quote by Terry Farrell, architect behind the KK 100?

The site of KK100, [Farrell] says, used to be Caiwuwei village, a poor and rundown area. Kingkey had to build seven towers to rehouse local people and a further seven for other locals to own and rent out, so that they might share in the boom. It’s an extraordinary idea: even as China hurtles into capitalism, it does still show remnants of old socialist ideals.

It echoes a quote from archello, a website dedicated to world architecture. Although archello has erased the reference to socialism:

The 3.6-hectare site [for the KK 100] was previously occupied by a dense residential quarter, Caiwuwei Village. The developer had the creative vision to form a company with the villagers, initiating an entirely new approach to the art of place-making in Shenzhen. This serves as a model for 21st century for urban change all over the world. Existing buildings were run down and living conditions were poor. As part of initiating this transformation, a Joint Development Initiative was formed in which villagers became stakeholders. Each owner was offered a new property as well as a second home which serves as an income generating asset. This meant the preservation of community links that are built over generations.

Origin stories for Shenzhen and its various buildings continue to use “poor backward Baoan villages” as a foil for their own achievements. In Mandarin, stories about the KK 100 are more detailed (深圳城中村专题－罗湖蔡屋围，蔡屋围：梦想的真实围绕, for example), but in essence no different: the KK100 symbolizes urban proress.

What’s more these stories share an enthusiasm for height, illustrating how phallic aesthetics not only bridge the social distance between England and China, but also between the Shenzhen Municipal Government, KK 100 developers, and Caiwuwei Villagers. Indeed, Farrell has received acclaim both for his design and the fact that it is the tallest building ever realized by a British architect, a neat illustration of the link between competitive masculinity and nationalism.

Importantly, the idea of the KK 100’s height is established through explicit comparison to low (level, quality, income) Caiwuwei. Continue reading →