Fen and maoed

The coins in China are called jiao, but their nickname is Mao, for the late Great Helmsman despite that his mug only appears on the paper currency. One-hundredth of one RenMinBi (RMB) is called a fen. There are no coins of this tiny denomination any longer. The "mao" is equivalent to the dime.

A nickel is five cents and a dime is ten cents. The expression "nickel and dimed" is similar to the expression "death by a thousand paper cuts."

In her book, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson.

When I return to Changchun in February, I will spend the remainder of the 29-day month and March living on as little money as I can, scrupulously reporting to all of you on this experiment. I will not embed as either a fu wu yuan (service personnel) or as an ai yi (housecleaner), nor would my employer, employment or the Chinese Foreign Affairs bureau allow it. My language ability limits my ability to communicate with the truly poor, but I will do my best to share with you about how the other half lives in China.

I will do things that really poor people and Third World denizens do, like hang out my clothes. (Watch this video of a couple people in New York decrying the clothesline and then see this ABC News story about a "poor woman" who left 2 million to the Salvation Army.) You can expect more on the mechanics of this experiment in the future. Here is a little economic overview that helps set the stage.

Challenges Ahead

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in a recent staff report, describe the challenges and realities thus:

Focus. The consultation examined the macroeconomic outlook, the potential for a property price bubble, the risks to the banking system, and the policy measures underpinning the 12th Five-Year Plan. The mission drew on the work of the FSAP—to connect financial sector reform to macroeconomic rebalancing—and of the spillover team—to trace out the international implications of rebalancing in China.

Macroeconomic Policies. The ongoing withdrawal of monetary stimulus is fully appropriate but a greater weight should be given to the use of higher interest rates and nominal appreciation in tightening monetary conditions. A continued steady decline in the fiscal deficit is also warranted, accompanied by a reorienting of tax and expenditure policies to support consumption.

Risks. The main near-term domestic risks to the outlook are from higher-than-expected inflation (most likely from domestic food supply shocks), a property bubble that inflates and then bursts, or a decline in credit quality linked to the post-crisis expansion in lending.

Rebalancing. There has been much progress on a number of fronts and the 12th Five-Year Plan lays out a comprehensive strategy to advance the transformation of China’s growth model. To achieve these goals, a range of measures will be needed including improvements in the social safety net, policies to raise household income, a liberalization of the financial system, a stronger currency, and increases in the costs of various factors of production. A successful rebalancing, with policy changes on all these fronts, will generate positive spillovers to the global economy.

Financial Liberalization. Financial reform holds significant promise in contributing to the needed transformation of the Chinese economy. Over the horizon of the 12th Five-Year Plan, reforms should seek to secure a more modern framework for monetary management, improve supervision and regulation, deepen the channels for financial intermediation, transition to market-determined deposit and loan rates, and open the capital account. In all of this, a stronger renminbi will be an important complement.

Understanding the 12th Five-Year Plan will also be part of my assignment.

Minimum Wage in China

As some of you may know, I was on the board of Burlington, Vermont' Peace & Justice Center when they were rolling out the first major livable wage study in the nation. Understanding wages will be one topic that I discuss here. Is "Communism with Chinese characteristics" just a cynical and authoritarian version of Western capitalism? As we approach the November changes expected when seven of nine politburo members step down, how will the economic system here adapt to insure that the Revolution continues (i.e. continuous reform and opening) and that the people are served by their government instead of the people serving their government?

The average minimum wage for most the People's Republic of China rose by 21.7% by the end of September 2011, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security reported. The city of Shenzhen, next to Hong Kong, guaranteed the highest minimum wage of 1,320 yuan ($207; £130) a month. Beijing offered the best hourly rate of 13 yuan ($2). (See BBC News.)

The cost of living for expatriates, though, is higher in Beijing than in the Big Apple. Housing in China is widely viewed as out-of-control. There are scores of empty tenements and shopping malls, though, and about half of the population is still rural. Half of these people still live on a dollar a day, depending on how you calculate it.

The Wealth Gap

As in United States, the income gap in China is a source of national embarrassment. Michele Geraci at Zhejiang University explained it well in a well-researched piece printed in China Daily last February. As my own country wrestles with the issues raised by Occupy Wall Street, questions of income disparity are front-and-center around the world.

As fascinating to me, though, is the ancient culture of China and people's sense of their own place in the world. The disgusting displays of wealth here shock me. Are the majority of the proletariat ("proles," for short), pacified or comfortable with the Moutai drinking class? If so, why? This blog will continue to talk about fur coats and green coats; Hummers and bikes; corn meal and caviar.

China's National Winter Games in Changchun?

Xinhua, the Chinese national paper, reports on Monday:

A total of 12 foreign referees will officiate in the 12th Chinese National Winter Games which is scheduled to start in northeast China's Jilin Province on Tuesday.

"Most of the domestic judges are from northeast China and Beijing, where winter sports are well developed, so we hope these overseas referees can help ensure fair play at the upcoming games," Wang Fuhai, an official with the organising committee, told Xinhua on Monday.

These overseas recruits, who are from Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Russia and South Korea, will all work on ice, officiating in speed skating, short-track speed skating, figure skating and ice hockey.

The National Winter Games will conclude on Jan. 13th.

Today is Tuesday, but none of my web searches and none of my Chinese friends can find any information about these competitions here in my city. There is another Xinhua story from December 28th:

While the organizing committee puts the final touches on the event, athletes are carefully devising their strategies as they aim for medals and national titles.

The ten-day tournament will cover 14 events, including speed skating - both long and short track, figure skating and so on. A total of 115 gold medals will be on offer, the most ever. The local Jilin delegation will participate in three events.

The organizers have rebuilt the facilities, and they have 32 snow making machines in case the natural fall is not strong enough to provide top competitive conditions. The event also aims to set new records in being economically frugal.

The opening ceremony will be held on Jan 3, showcasing northern hospitality from a region dominated by winter sports culture.

 I want more information. Can you help? My boss wants hockey tickets.

My Year-End Appeal to All Readers

Dear Friends,

I wanted to let you know of this initiative by the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests to conserve 5,800+ acres of land at the Balsams. As a supporter of this project and an opponent of Northern Pass, it is very exciting to know that this could happen very soon because it extinguishes a proposed right-of way that may otherwise be granted to Northern Pass.

If $850,000 is donated by January 15^th, the Forest Society will purchase conservation restrictions on most of the undeveloped parts of the property. As you can see, bringing this project to completion will require a substantial financial effort on the part of the Society, its friends, and others who care about this spectacular landscape. I am supporting this effort, and hope that you will also consider a generous gift.

There are several ways to make a gift:

1. Through the web at this link:

 www.forestsociety.org/balsams

2, By mailing a check to:

Forest Society-Balsams Project

54 Portsmouth Street

Concord, NH 03301

3. To make a stock gift, please contact Cheryl Lee Bozek at Cambridge Trust at 603-369-5055

4. To make a pledge, please contact Susanne Kibler-Hacker at 603-224-9945 x 314 or skh@forestsociety.org

You can track the progress of this project at this link: http://savethebalsamslandscape.blogspot.com/

Many thanks!

Alexander Lee

Foreigners in China

The Orphan's Christmas

For the first time in 37 years, I was not with my aunts, uncle, cousins, parents, and sisters for Christmas dinner. Nevertheless, I was able to speak with them during a frenetic Skype call and to enjoy turkey, beef, potatoes, and a lot of wonderful rum balls with several of my colleagues and foreign friends in Changchun.

My day began with breakfast at a little hole in the wall that serves baozi. I go here all the time and get a tray like the one pictured for about eighty US cents or five yuan.

In the morning, I went to visit an orphanage. I expected it would be a miserable place, but found a state-of-the-art facility that was extremely tidy. The girls dormitory rooms, where we were shown, all had pink sheets. The girls were in Japanese schoolgirl-style uniforms. I taught them all "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" and one of my colleagues told a story. For most of the time, I and a Chinese teacher from my school were with three fourteen year-old girls. They were sweet and full of questions about America. I introduced myself with my Chinese name. We sang a couple songs and played a game with chopsticks and lollipops that was coordinated by some students from Shi Da Fu Zhong, who helped plan this adventure. Apparently, my picture was in the newspaper yesterday.

They played some fun games and listened to a story.

We had an Asian student Santa Claus (aka Saint Nicholas) by the name of Jack.

These girls were 13-14 years old. The one all the way to the left was in my small group.

Beneath the beds were several pairs of Crocs for each girl and several basins for laundry, cold feet, etc.

They each have a little area for drying laundry, which did my heart good! The clothes freeze almost instantly at this time of year.

There was an abundance of over-sized stuffed animals, which is a society-wide phenomena. I am missing the gene that allows me to understand the Chinese affiliation for stuffed animals.

Northern Pass: A tragedy in the making

The lifelong "environmentalist" and environmental consultant thinks this is going to replace petroleum? This is the nonsense that gives environmentalists a bad name. Do your homework and you will realize that electricity comes from nuclear, coal and natural gas, almost entirely. Also, the millions of square acres of Northern Quebec already flooded and that will be flooded if we build this pipeline through NH to southern New England are something to consider. It is not just a transmission line.

Vaclav Havel and Kim Jung-Il RIP

"We live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only about ourselves. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility, or forgiveness lost their depth and dimensions, and for many of us they represented only psychological peculiarities, or they resembled gone-astray greetings from ancient times, a little ridiculous in the era of computers and spaceships. Only a few of us were able to cry out loud that the powers that be should not be all-powerful, and that special farms, which produce ecologically pure and top-quality food just for them, should send their produce to schools, children's homes, and hospitals if our agriculture was unable to offer them to all. The previous regime - armed with its arrogant and intolerant ideology - reduced man to a force of production and nature to a tool of production. In this it attacked both their very substance and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people, skillfully working in their own country, to nuts and bolts of some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine, whose real meaning is not clear to anyone. It cannot do more than slowly but inexorably wear down itself and all its nuts and bolts." VH