All Work and No Play Unmakes China

It is hard to imagine how one of China's innovative business leaders or beautiful movie stars could look at the Chinese loyalists hunched over their desks at a Chinese Communist Party Congress and commit all their energy to further the will of Chairman Xi. Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader who decided to end the 1989 democracy demonstration in Tiananmen Sq uare by force, proclaimed, "It is a glorious thing to be rich." Yet, Hong Kong's Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, who is said to be among the leaders receiving the highest remunerations in the world, does not pocket any interest on her funds. Prompted by fear of US sanctions, she has no bank account and keeps her cash at home. Mr. Deng neglected to include joy, happiness, fun, freedom, beauty, truth and privacy on his list of glorious pursuits. In AMERICAN FACTORY, the Netflix documentary film about a Chinese factory in Ohio, a Chinese factory manager reveals he has had to commit to two years working away from his family. Even so, the factory manager is one of the lucky men his age who has a wife. China's earlier one-child policy has left 30 million men without mariageable women in 2020. And China's well educated urban women expect to marry men with money; they are not about to settle for villagers. While the Chinese Communist Party focuses on collecting data to control its 1.4 billion Chinese population, the Chinese people entertain other ideas. Ignoring social distancing and assorted restrictions imposed to prevent the coronavirus, China's young people flocked to see Mickey Mouse as soon as Disneyland reopened in Shanghai in May, 2020. For relief from China's "996" work schedule requiring labor from 9 am to 9 pm six days a week, fun-loving Chinese also ignore the government's distain for the lack of socialist values associated with playing Tencent's "Honour of Kings" or watching amateur dancers, singers and comics on Douyin, China's version of TikTok. Some have discovered they can discuss taboo topics away from censors on the Clubhouse app. Unfortunately, a team of Buddhist monks and nomad sheep and yak herders failed to play in a 2019 international basketball tournament because their participation was canceled by Chinese police who felt they might be unable to control a crowd of fans during the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. Watching the Chinese Horse Club owners cheering when their Triple Crown winner, "Justify" won the 2018 Kentucky Derby, no one would have known China bans gambling. China's race horse buyers and trainers also can be seen at the New Zealand Jockey Club. Casinos on Macau, the former Portuguese island that is now a Special Administrative Region of China, continue to attract wealthy Chinese. Less affluent Chinese hide in the woods to gamble on mahjong games. At the same time, the Chinese culture that cultivates cheating and lying to achieve business objectives caught up with Lin Qi, the billionaire developer of "Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming," who died of poisoning on Christmas Day, 2020. Founded in 2009, Mr. Lin's Chinese YooZoo Games studio launched his popular strategy game in 2019. Accordig to the BBC, Mr. Lin was poisoned at the hands of a suspect, identified by Shanghai police only as Xu, but later as Xu Yao, the head of YooZoo's film productio unit. YooZoo holds the film adaptation rights to the popular Chinese sci-fi novel, THREE BODY PROBLEMS, the first of a trilogy by Liu Cizin. Like other Chinese movie projects, the plan for the book's film adaptation never developed. But Netflix now seems ready to adapt THREE BODY PROBLEMS for television. China expected its 1.4 million-plus population and twice as many eyes to serve as waving strobe lights attracting film-makers to Qingdao's new 2016, $8 billion film production complex. At first they came, but they soon refused to deal with the demands of censors in China's State Administration of Press Publications, Radio, Film and Television. China's popular film star, Fan Bingbing, was on her way to international fame until the government charged her with tax fraud, and she disappeared. Nowadays, the fledgling movie industry that made a Netflix romantic comedy despite electricity outages in poor little Zimbabwe offers more promise than China. Just as China allows its population limited film fare, readers have to be content with propaganda slogans on factory walls. In 2015, the owner of Hong Kong's Causeway Bay Books was arrested and charged with the "illegal sale of books," the political thrillers and bodice-rippers the Central Propaganda Department decided the Chinese population should not read. Before moving his bookstore to Taiwan in 2020, he observed, "Contemporary China is an absurd country." No doubt, most cowed Chinese will self-monitor their activities to conform to Beijing's control requirements. But some will defy personal recognition by shielding their faces with umbrellas and masks, wear black-face makeup to trick artificial intelligence into thinking they are apes, point lasers to disable surveillance cameras and travel on crutches or in wheelchairs to "disguise" their gait. What will the top tier geniuses China needs do? As some have done in the past, they will tire of finding their natural human desires unsatisfied and flee to Silicon Valley.

China-Mongolia and the Deaths of Race Horses in California

Many aspects of global life illustrate how connected the world is. As preposterous as a connection between China, Mongolia, and last year's deaths of 23 horses at California's Santa Anita racetrack  seems, it is a connection worthy of  investigation.

     On the books, China's Communist regime outlawed gambling when it took over in 1949. Efforts continue to purge online betting apps, and prison awaits those who challenge Chairman Xi's abhorrence of corruption. Nonetheless, local administrators of state-run lotteries manage to take their cuts, gamblers access online casino apps designed in Southeast Asia, illegal mah jong games hide from overhead drones in China's woods and mountains, and police even had to break up gambling at a cricket fighting tournament near Shanghai in August, 2019.

     Off shore, casinos dominate Macao, a former Portuguese island and now a Chinese Special Administrative Region. In 2017, New Zealand created a Jockey Club to attract Chinese  thoroughbred buyers and to cater to Chinese owners who want to train and race their horses in Australia and New Zealand. When Justify won the Kentucky Derby and the other two legs of the U.S. Triple Crown in 2018, owners from the China Horse Club just laughed after a reporter questioned how racing squared with China's ban on gambling.

     If there is a connection between China and the 23 race horses that died at Santa Anita, it runs through China's landlocked northern neighbor, Mongolia. The historic domain of Genghis Khan's horses and riders also is the current home of dusty courses where hundreds of children as young as five ride bareback in races to win a Russian-made car. When racing was legal in China, owners used to send their horses north to strengthen their bones by grazing in the nutrient-rich  pastures of Mongolia. Reporting on the fatal leg injury that caused the horse, Mongolian Groom, to be euthanized after the Breeders Cup Classic at Santa Anita in November, 2019, Billy Reed mentioned the need to reassess the calcium-building limestone content of the soil and water where many race horses graze in Kentucky.

     As a cause of last year's race horse deaths, in recent months the coronavirus is receiving more attention that the dietary value of Kentucky's pastures, Scientists suspected COVID-19 could pass between animals and humans after researchers discovered pig farmers died of coronavirus in Malaysia. Observers watched bats land on a tree and poop into a vat of pig slop. Tests found the bats carried COVID-19 and transmitted the disease to farmers who had contact with the pig slop.

     The coronavirus that affects humans and the equine enteric (gastrointestinal) coronavirus horses pass between each other are both among the large group of RNA messenger viruses. Since both forms of the virus in horses and humans lock onto cells using the same kind of spikes, transmission between  these species is highly probable. Lack of evidence showing horses and humans exchange COVID-19 at this time may be a function of a lack of testing fecal samples of thoroughbred race horses and the failure to test personnel at Mongolian Stable, who may have shown little or no initial symptoms of the virus.

     In August, 2019, the San Diego Tribune ran a photo showing Enebish Ganbat, a Mongolian who trains horses at Mongolian Stable, kissing Mongolian Groom's face. Such gestures, not unusual among those who love and care for horses, provide ample opportunity for humans and horses to transmit coronavirus to each other. Horses contract equine enteric coronavirus by contact with surfaces exposed to the manure of infected horses or by consuming some of their manure. Therefore,  to prevent contracting coronavirus from a horse, people need to wash their hands whenever they touch anything, such as a shovel or pitchfork, that may have been in contact with an infected horse's manure. Unless humans who have or may not yet show symptoms of COVID-19 wear masks, they may spread coronavirus to horses.

     Before racing resumes at Santa Anita this summer, last year's fate of Mongolian Groom is reason to test the nutrient value of Kentucky's pastures and to test for the presence of coronavirus in the horses that race there.

             

China Beyond the Headlines

Much is made of the contrast between the corruption overlooked in Russia and the crackdown on corruption in China. But other Chinese behaviors and practices deserve examination.

     Stealing is rampant in China; the country's prohibition on tax evasion and gambling is evaded; and a form of discrimination is legal. Foreign companies expect their intellectual property rights to be ignored. Chinese companies contracted to manufacture products for foreign firms readily produce knock-offs of those same products. Even exchange students find they have to keep a sharp eye on their belongings or they will disappear. An engineering student from a U.S. Ivy League college, who planned to stay in China for a couple of months, left after a week when her caliper was stolen.

     China is not exempt from tax dodgers. There is the revenue a company makes, the amount it reports for tax purposes, and the difference deposited in overseas banks or in Khorgos, an out-of-the-way Central Asian Chinese town on the Kazakhstan border. Along with film studios, media outlets, financial services, and over 14,000 other companies, Chinese movie star, Fan Bingbing, who earned $43 million in 2017, registered her company in Khorgos. Ever since China began a probe into tax evasion on June 3, 2018, Miss Bingbing has not been seen in public, and she has been fined $129 million. Her 62 million followers on social media correctly speculated she was caught in the Communist Party's anti-corruption, tax evasion campaign. She also might be a victim of President Xi Jinping's new morality crackdown on culture and behavior not in line with socialist values.

     Gambling is illegal on the Chinese mainland. Beijing stopped approving new gaming apps created by China's Tencent tech leader and  pressured Apple to remove gambling apps in its Chinese App Store. But casinos attract Chinese gamblers to Macau, a Special Administrative Region of China, and Chinese travelers freely gamble on overseas trips. "Justify," the winner of the Kentucky Derby,  Preakness, and Belmont Stakes is owned by the China Horse Club, as is "Audible," the horse that came in third in the Kentucky Derby. No doubt Chinese handicappers won plenty of cash, when "Justify" won all three legs of the Triple Crown.

     Finally, the U.S. State Department's annual report on religious freedom called attention to the million Uighur Muslims China holds in secret re-education camps. In another example of discrimination in China, members of China's poor underclass, unskilled rural transplants earning little in city jobs, find they are victims of the hukou system. They are shut out of health care, housing, and quality educations in state-run schools. They also have been shut out of watching some short-form videos on Douyin, the app Chinese authorities find shallow and addictive and monitor for illegal or morally questionable content contrary to socialist values. Young Chinese viewers say they enjoy watching good-looking amateurs tell jokes, sing, and perform imaginative stunts on Douyin; it's fun and relaxing.

(Also see the earlier posts,"China's Plan for World Domination" and "China Stretches a Napoleon-Style Belt.")

What Does North Korea's Kim Jong-un Fear?

On February 13, 2017, Kim Jong-nam's assassination with a banned VX nerve agent in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where North Korean nationals have visa free travel, brought to light more information about both North Korea's so-called hermit kingdom and China.

Kim Jong-un, 33, who inherited leadership of North Korea after the death of his father, Kim Jong-Il, was not the first choice for succession. That honor was to go to Kim Jong-nam, 45, until bad publicity followed his 2001 arrest while using a fake passport to sneak into Japan, allegedly to visit Disneyland. New information in 2018 claimed Kim Jong Il and his other son, North Korea's current leader, Kim Jong-un, tried unsuccessfully to visit the West using fake names and Brazilian passports in the 1990s.

Although Kim Jong-nam was the illegitimate son of Kim Jong-Il and Sung Hae-rim, the South Korean-born actress murdered under suspicious circumstances in Moscow in 2002, he grew up with all the advantages of an heir and attended school in Europe, where he was susceptible to capitalist teachings and playboy womanizing. A bloody shootout with Kim Jong-nam's bodyguards failed to kill him in 2011, but it showed Kim Jong-un considered his half brother a threat to his position.

When Beijing became Jong-nam's protector, Kim Jong-un also seemed to have his suspicions about China, supposedly North Korea's closest ally. Back in December, 2013, Jong-un ordered the arrest and execution of his uncle and close adviser, Jang Song-thaek, who was considered North Korea's liaison representative with China.

 Despite reports that Kim Jong-nam was trying to defect to the EU, US, or South Korea, did Peking see Jong-nam as a possible hereditary backup in case China wanted to stage a North Korean takeover? At the time of his assassination in the Malaysian International Airport, Jong-nam was separated from his bodyguards, and he was en route to Macau, the "Las Vegas of Asia" and former Portuguese territory that became China's autonomous Special Administrative Region for at least 50 years beginning in 1999.

When Malaysian police began looking into possible North Korean embassy and airline personnel involvement in Jong-nam's assassination, North Korea prevented Malaysian citizens from returning home.

China's Corruption Crackdown, New Bank Backing, and Release of PR Activists

In case there was any doubt about China's determination to stamp out corruption, the April 2015 arrest of Zhou Yongkang, former head of the domestic secret police and the most senior member of the Chinese Communist Party to face corruption charges, should dispel that notion. Assets from Zhou's family members and associates totaling $14.5 billion were seized, and 300 of his relatives and allies have been  taken into custody or questioned. Zhou, and earlier Bo Xilai, were believed to have been investigated by the special investigation team composed of cross-agency law enforcement officials that can only be authorized by Beijing's senior leadership to investigate high ranking Communist Party members.

     In the book, The Little Red Guard, mentioned in the earlier blog post, "See the World," model workers of older Chinese generations felt betrayed by a new corrupt system that rewarded friends and relatives of Communist Party officials with promotions and raises. Although President Xi Jinping was said to be worried that the extent of corruption revealed at a trial of Zhou would undermine public faith in China's Communist Party and alienate other high level party members who fear their own corruption charges, Zhou was sentenced to life in prison in June, 2015. China also has added Wang Tianpu, president of Sinopec, China's state-owned Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, to its list of corruption suspects. In October, 2015, Sam Pa, who heads the Queensway group in Hong Kong and who has ties to China's intelligence service, was detained in Beijing. Queensway is an active deal maker in Africa and North Korea. In March, 2016, HSBC froze $87 million of Sam Pa's assets.

     Following the explosion of the Rui Hai International Logistics's chemical warehouse that killed over 100 and damaged 17,000 homes in Tianjin, ten Chinese officials were detained on suspicion of safety violations. Two Rui Hai executives admitted using political connections to get waivers that allowed the warehouse to be build closer to a residential area than allowed by law, and the warehouse had been cited for safety violations in the past.

     China's corruption crackdown already has put politician and powerful Chongqing party boss, Bo Xilai, in prison for life and given his wife, Gu Kailai, a suspended death sentence for poisoning British businessman, Neil Heywood, who may have been murdered for wanting too big a cut for helping get the family funds of Bo and Gu out of China. On July 28, 2015, when Man Mingan, the Chinese prosecutor in Gu's murder trial, was found hanged in his Anhui province apartment, police launched an investigation into the circumstances. In another strange development, China uncovered a fake anti-corruption unit that had its own interrogation room.

     The anti-corruption campaign has caused China's big rollers to flee Macau's casinos for Cambodia, where, as described in the earlier post, "Let's Visit China," they hope to do their gambling under the radar of investigators. Consequently, Macau's investors, who have seen their revenue drop, have decided to follow the Las Vegas model and give the island a more family-friendly image by adding a $2.3 billion theme park to a new casino.

     Meanwhile, a new Chinese-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which has won the approval of the World Bank, has been founded. The bank's president, Jin Liqun, was among the world's 100 Most Influential People selected by TIME magazine in 2016.  AIIB attracted 57 prospective founding members, including Singapore, India, Thailand, and even the UK (but not Japan, Australia, South Korea and the US, the more developed countries that control the rival Asian Development Bank.) Hoping the UK can cash in on billions of trade deals with China, British Prime Minister Cameron gave Chinese President Xi the royal treatment, including a ride in a horse-driven carriage, when he visited the UK in October, 2015. Although President Obama cautioned the UK about developing close ties with China and initially opposed Britain's participation in the AIIB, he eventually suggested the bank may have a positive impact on emerging markets. By 2017, the AIIB had 80 member nations including Britain ad Australia. The Asian Development Bank now works with AIIB to fund energy, transport, and infrastructure projects.

     The July, 2015 purchase of the former Milan headquarters of Italian bank, UniCredit, by the Chinese Fosun group headed by Guo Guangchang was just the latest in a series of recent Chinese investments in Italy, including Italian banks and companies, such as tire maker Pirelli and luxury goods manufacturer, Caruso.

     After being held for a month, China released five women's rights advocates who have a flair for gaining public attention. They were arrested in March when they prepared to distribute posters and stickers protesting domestic violence. Earlier, they had gained attention for the same cause by parading through the streets in bloody wedding gowns. The women who were charged with creating a disturbance could still be sentenced up to three years in prison, if they fail to report their movements to police and to make themselves available for questioning at any time.

Let's Visit China

While the world is focused on Scotland's vote to remain in the United Kingdom, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and ways to contain the ISIS menace, a  number of Chinese developments merit attention.


China's e-commerce platform, Alibaba, raised $25  billion when its shares went on sale September 19, 2014. As with other e-commerce firms, there are charges pending about the lack of sales tax paid on Alibaba purchases, and there is concern about e-commerce sales of counterfeit items. Also, there has been no news about how well China's shipping and delivery network is handling online purchases, a problem that has adversely affected India's e-commerce boom (See the later blog post,"Problems Present Career Opportunities.").

Alibaba was not the only company to enjoy a strong response to its initial stock offering. China's CGN nuclear power group received a similar response when its shares went on sale for the first time in Hong Kong. Yet, in January, 2015, the Chinese residential real estate developer, Kaisa Group Holdings, defaulted on a $128 million payment to foreign investors holding $500 million in bonds promising a 10.25% yield.

Urbanization and higher incomes in China are raising demand for locally produced goods, baby formula, disposable diapers, Western foods (such as cheese and Starbuck's and Costa coffee) and movies. Aiming to expand into the film business, Dalian Wanda, China's fourth richest man, who operates China's largest cinema chain and luxury hotels, is expected to open a major office in Hollywood, where he  has shown interest in buying shares in and film collaboration with Hollywood's Lionsgate studio. Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba, also has had discussions with Lionsgate. In 2017, movie box office revenue in China will be $8.6 billion. By then, film studios and movie stars will begin to stash revenue in the Khorgos tax haven on China's far northwestern border with Kazakhstan.

Local governments continue to prop up failing heavy industrial plants, and China's manufacturing sector does not turn down opportunities to produce religious items. Though an atheist country, a Chinese factory has published over 125 million Bibles. Unfettered industrialization continues to cause China problems with pollution. Recent studies show China's population produces more carbon dioxide (CO2) per head than the European Union and U.S. Therefore, it was great news November 12, 2014 to learn that China and the U.S. have signed a pact, however symbolic, to limit carbon emissions. At a dinner and meeting in Beijing's Great Hall of the People during the November 11-12, 2014 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, both President Obama and President/General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, stressed peace, prosperity, stability, and a partnership that fosters security in a Pacific Ocean "broad enough to accommodate the development of both China and the United States."

At the end of the APEC summit, after Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, and China's President met on November 10, 2014, Abe said he hoped the two countries would talk again and again (a hotline to prevent their vessels from conflict in the East China Sea has been proposed) and that they would work toward a mutually beneficial relationship. Earlier, a Chinese diplomat in Iceland was arrested as a spy for Japan.

Hong Kong tycoons are spending freely. The Chan brothers have donated $350 million to Harvard and expect to make another sizable donation to the University of Southern California. Stephen Hung ordered $20 million worth of Rolls Royces to transport gamblers at his Louis XIII resort in Macao. Nonetheless, Chinese gamblers, who have been staying away from Macao's casinos for fear of being targeted in China's crack down on corruption, have put a big dent in the island's revenue as they try to stay clear of China's anti-graft investigations into the origin of their wealth. Casinos in Cambodia have benefited from this exodus of Chinese gamblers trying to stay under the radar. Macau's investors, on the other hand, are trying to regain visitors by following the Las Vegas model and giving the island a more family-friendly image by adding a $2.3 billion theme park to a new casino.

Despite the use of tear gas and the arrest of a leader of the pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, which has an almost country-to-country border crossing procedure with mainland China, protests continue to oppose Beijing's attempt to dictate which candidates can run for election in 2017. (See the later blog post, "Hong Kong Update.") Though not secure from authorities, Hong Kong protesters are using the smartphone mobile app, FireChat, to communicate with each other without relying on Internet connections. President Xi believes foreign countries are involved in the protests.

The number of Chinese students, who once made up 33% of international grad students in the U.S., is decreasing. French speaking Chinese students are on their way to former French African countries to work for Chinese companies there. In English-speaking Africa, China is building a $12 billion, 1,400 km railway in Nigeria.

(For more about China, see the earlier blog post, "See the World.")

Map Gazing

Before the internet, classrooms often had a set of encyclopedias. One of my fifth grade classmates decided he would read all 15 volumes of the Britannica Jr. that our room had. He started at the end. Not only did the last volume cover subjects that began with "WXYZ," but it also contained an atlas. He started looking at maps and never got any further.

     I was reminded of how interesting he found maps, when I read about a new book, Mapping It Out. One of the maps included in this book is a map of Africa that I used to hang in my classroom. To illustrate the size of Africa, this map fits China, the United States, Europe, India, and Japan inside the continent. This kind of presentation is very useful, since transferring a global world to a flat page distorts the size of countries north and south of the equator (See the earlier post, "You Are Here.").

     Having an Atlas, or a shower curtain with a map printed on it, is especially helpful when countries, islands, cities, mountains, and bodies of water are in the news. Hearing that Narendra Modi from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) became India's Prime Minister sent me to an Atlas, when I heard he was born in Ahmedabad, a coastal city in the western Indian state of Gujarat, south of Pakistan. As host to some World Cup soccer games in 2014, the city of Recife shifted our focus from the Amazon in the west to Brazil's eastern tip on the Atlantic Ocean. When hearing that Stephen Hung ordered $20 million dollars worth of Rolls Royces (30 cars) to transport visitors staying at his Louis XIII resort in Macau, the question arose: Where is Macau? Unfortunately, invasions, such as Russia's into Ukraine, and disasters, such as the downing of Malaysian Flight MH17 and the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370 and the finding of its wreckage on the island of Reunion (See the earlier post, "Who Needs International Expertise?"), cause us to visit the border of Ukraine and Russia and to contemplate the vastness of the Indian Ocean.

     Children can look at maps to pick out shapes (See the earlier post, "How the World Shapes Up."), to find where people practice different religions (See the earlier post, "Respect the Faith."), to have an international scavenger hunt (See the earlier post, "Games Children Play."), and to study currents, mountain elevations, count time zones, and plan where they want to visit and work (See the earlier posts, "See the World" and "What Do You Want to Be?"). Also, check out Maps4Kids.com, which has a wide variety of activities associated with maps.