Jim Walker’s China Report
In
November, Donna and I took a trip to China that was promoted by
the Tucson Chamber of Commerce.
There were about 85 Tucson businessmen and
women on this trip. It appeared
that the Chinese government probably subsidized these trips which are being
promoted to various Chambers of Commerce across the country. I suspect they are also being promoted
to countries other than just the U.S. We think these trips are being sponsored
to promote tourism, trade and in preparation of the upcoming 08’ Olympics. It was one big infomercial. In all my travels, I had never seen so
much wealth and poverty existing side-by-side. One of our tour guides was a professor
of history that taught at the University one day a week, the other was a
medical doctor who gave up employment at the government hospital to assist his
father in a local clinic part-time and become a professional tour guide.
It
was a grueling trip starting in L.A. - 14 hours to Shanghai, a three hour
layover, and a two hour flight to Beijing. Sightseeing included Tian An
Men Square, the Forbidden City, and the Great Wall of China which is 4,000
miles long, a boat cruise along the Grand Canal aka
“Oriental Venice”, and the Bund, a waterfront park called
“Wall Street of the East”.
Meals were mostly “family style” and the food was not
great. Our lunch with a typical
Chinese family of modest means was one of our best meals. For shopping sprees we were taken to a
jade store where carving is done, one of China’s oldest
pharmacies, a pearl shop, the National Embroidery Institute where they do silk
embroidering, the largest silk factory in the country (government owned), and a
carpet factory. We took the fastest
train in the world doing 250mph from Shanghai to the airport in
seven minutes. This train has no
wheels, but works on electric magnetic power developed by Siemens. Shanghai’s population is
8 million, the metropolitan area, however, is 18 million. Beijing’s population
is 15 million and the two smaller cities we visited were 2 million and 5
million.
At
every stop we made, we were literally swarmed by individual vendors selling
hats, watches, purses, scarves, maps, trinkets of all sorts, and they literally
followed you everywhere you went.
Beggars
were also plentiful. All of
the signage, menus, etc… are in both Chinese and English. Most of the workers in the hotels were
encouraged to speak to the Americans in English. Everyone seemed to be practicing their
English! Construction and renovation were going on everywhere you looked. Traffic and pollution was the worst
I’ve ever seen.
China is still a
communist country where the government owns much of the industry and all of the
real estate, but the growth is being spurred by capitalism. In fact, the economic growth seemed to
be mostly from tax incentives for foreign businesses, and foreign investments
in the country are aggressively being promoted. It was very strange to see this communist
country encouraging capitalism and existing side-by-side. It’s just been in recent years
that the Chinese people feel they have property rights where they can buy their
own apartments or condos. However,
they don’t really purchase the property; they purchase the right to the
property for a 70 year period.
After 70 years the property reverts back to the communist
government. Long term financing is
available for the condo purchases on 20 year financing at around 6%
interest.
Most
of the farming is controlled by the government. For instance, the silk worm farmers must
sell their silk worm cocoons to the government at a price set by the
government. Farmers are eager to
give up their farms and move to the city because they are given such small
plots that they can not make much of a living. They can only produce enough for their
own consumption and perhaps sell small quantities in the marketplace. Farmers have no retirement or medical
benefits, whereas, the government guarantees them a job, free medical and
retirement benefits (age 60 for males, age 55 for females) if they move to the
city. Ranchers and dairy farmers,
however, are mostly in the western part of China and do have
sufficient land to produce profitable enterprises.
As
best as I could tell, the Chinese do not have a national sales tax, but they
have what seemed to be a value added tax.
The one child per family rule is enforced by encouraging birth control -
condoms and birth controls pills are free.
If a family has more than one child, there’s a very heavy fine, an
amount that equates to 10 – 20 years of wages, and abortion is
encouraged. Religion is outlawed,
however, there is very little they can do to curb religious worshipping or
activities. Confucius is taught as
a philosophy, Buddhism is tolerated since it somewhat serves the communist
ideology, Islam is not seen as a threat and Christianity and Judaism are very
much in the minority.
Much
of our information for this report came from personal observation and
information provided through our tour guides. It was a very interesting trip, one that
we were glad we made. We felt that
we learned a lot, however, we have no desire to return.
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