Look what I found in my letterbox today. An advert for the "Toothy Rabbit’s Children’s EQ Camp!"

Those of you who are patient enough to stick to this blog might remember the last post I did about the popularity of self-help/business books in China, and in particular those related to Emotional Intelligence (EQ). Not surprising at all, we said, in a society where the education system is ruthless, that the alternative concept of R.Goleman’s EQ is welcome by millions of Chinese with almost religious faith.

But somehow, I think they got it all wrong.

The program in the camp includes courses on leadership,controlling emotions,competitiveness, determination and social networking, among other scary items. The minimum age to access the camp is 3 years old, and the booklet is not exactly describing games, but rather hardcore EQ training from the start. It looks pretty successful too, with some 10 centers already open in China, as you can see in the map below.

Little girls learn to lift hands like Hu Jin Tao

Now I don’t mean to be more snarky than is strictly necessary on this blog, and I am afraid I might be looking at this from a very European angle. I am told in the US  as well as in China people believe in these things, and I respect you if you do.

But parents: please let the children play, meet new friends, prowl about the nongtang forming bands of little outlaws, ride the bikes around the compound like nutty Shanghai taxis and come back home every other week with a bruised knee and one tooth in the pocket. That will give them loads of EQ. I did that as a kid, and look where I am now, single handedly running Chinayouren.

And I just can’t wait to get the next pamphlet for a "Wacky Mouse Moving your Cheese Summer Camp for toddlers"

It has to be my lucky day. Today’s marathon meeting in Chongqing was aborted mid-session, and we had the whole afternoon for ourselves to explore the city in the mist.

The place feels like all the energies of China concentrated in one tiny peninsula. The result is not beautiful, perhaps, but it is intense.  By dinner time, my colleague was disappointed that we’d failed to spot any picturable monument, so I asked a taxi driver to show us the views.  He took us to this breathtaking spot on a nearby mountain called “One Tree” (一棵树):

Below, in the middle of the Yangtze, lies the city of Chongqing, and this view was in itself worth the visit. It is the best skyline I have seen in China.

It is not he buildings themselves, they can hardly compare with the towers of Pudong. It is something to do with the round perfection of the scene, the glowing isle on the Yangtze,  and the sudden revelation that there is some higher order in the dusty chaos below.

My colleague summarized it in a single phrase, that can be more or less translated to English: “She was beautiful from far, but far from beautiful” .

More bad news about the Crisis. Yesterday All Roads had another of those worrying posts: 3 Announcements and 2 Rumours, and not one of them good.

Still, on our return from the double New Year’s season, many of us are suprised to see the sky is not falling on our heads, and the dire predictions we did before the holidays have not quite turned true. Indeed, the Crisis in China seems to have a very annoying quality for bloggers: it is not happening. Yes, we’ve had bad news coming every week for the last months, we’ve seen experts we respect telling us how bad the unemployment is, how many factories are closing. And all of them are right, if we look at the numbers. Yet, on the street, no Crisis to be seen.

What is going on here? Who is taking our Crisis away, depriving the dismal scientists of their fair share of joy and fulfilment? And more importantly: is it not time to deem the whole affair a bluff, and go join the ranks of the optimistic, together with the guys at the World Bank and the CPC?

Where are all the Crises Gone, long time passing?

You might remember that post I wrote where I started out wondering about the different perceptions of the Crisis in China and in the West. 3 months have passed and this contrast is, if anything, sharper than before, as I have seen during my New Year’s travels. Right now Europe is bleeding, there is no question about this. China, on the other hand, looks to the casual observer like a normal, almost healthy economy. One cannot sense the Crisis.

In Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, three of the engines of China’s economy, I have seen nothing going on but normal everyday life. The shops are full of people, “we hire” signs are on the windows, and taxi drivers remain for the most part optimistic – at least those who didn’t buy shares. One of them even told me: “Riots only happen in Guangdong, in Shanghai we are civilized”

Back to the office, in my work with industrial investors in China I see the same picture: while some Western clients have cancelled or postponed their 2009 FDI projects, not a single project has been stopped by our Chinese clients, which are all large SOEs.

The time’s for the Ox and don’t give me no Bull

Here are 3 reasons that might explain this strange gap between theory and observation: delay, transparency and inertia.

• Delayed effect: The crisis comes to China in a very different way than to the West. In our case it was a bursting financial bubble,  hitting us all with the speed of sound. In China, it is different. They didn’t have the “complex financial instruments”,  their financial system was relatively isolated. In China the Crisis is caused by exports and FDI, which is a far less explosive mix. Look at FDIs, for example: a typical project cycle to build a factory is 3 years, and there’s a point of no return somewhere in year 2, when the construction is mobilised and the equipment paid for. This introduces a long delay while the ongoing projects finish and until the absence of new projects cause panic in subcontractors. Same effect with the production of factories which had a large backlog in 08.

• Inertia: China is a massive system that has been moving at high speeds for 30 years. This doesn’t stop in one day. It is not only the phisical momentum of the thousands of ongoing projects, it is also psycological inertia. in the minds of many Chinese the system is strong, and there is no reason to believe in a Crisis that has never happened in their working lifetime. Behaviours do not reflect fear, and many go about their New Year’s shopping like any other year. Worse still, some seem happy to believe that it is America’s fault and this is an American Crisis; and mind you, not all agree that smart China need lend the old brother a hand.

• Transparency: This is the most important reason of the three, and the one that scares me most. For all the good things that one can say of CPC’s economic policy (yes, they did draw 300million out of poverty) there is one serious fault that nobody fails to notice: Lack of Transparency. With the largest part of the economy dominated by SOEs or following direct orders from the party, it is not unreasonable to think that there might be a bigger soup on the fire than we are led to believe.

I don’t want to cause alarm or instigate hoarding behaviours like that of our old professor, but this is not looking good. If there’s one single best way of making a Crisis more deadly, that is withholding information and letting it burst only when it is too late.

The two pillars of China’s growth in the 2000s were SOEs and FDIs. The FDI leg is seriously failing now, and the effects will be felt progressively. Even with all the financial might of the Chinese State, it is hard to imagine the SOEs taking the place left by the FDIs, let alone going out to take over the World. I cannot see the Chinese companies leading the effort, I can’t see their necessary creativity and initiative to open new markets to replace the lost export ones. All I can see is a bunch of Giant SOE’s which are better at leveraging their massive size and influence than at impressing us with their products.

There is something quite anomalous in this perceived calm of today, and this blogger thinks that he can smell a Rat. But the time is not for Rats anymore, it is for Ox.

Which is one 2 bits short of a Bull.

We are at the beginning of a historic week, and I just can’t not write about Obama’s inauguration. This blog is also about changing the World, and there is a chance that this Tuesday will be one of those days that changes everything. Call me a dreamer, but I want to believe that this new president of the USA will lead us to a better World, one finally based on the Rule of Law and not on the force of a few bullies. One where Western countries will not need to ask anymore for political change from China, because all know there’s no better teaching than leading by example.

Looking around the China blogosphere, I see some of the early birds have already done their Obama posts. There is this comparison of Obama’s inaugural ceremony with emperor QianLong’s, and Chinamatic here takes a look at one hilarious letter by a school kid. But I must say that up to now my favourite Obama post has been this one by Global Post. (h/t Peking Duck). I always liked the idea of interviewing a taxi driver, especially the chatty Beijing ones. These people get masses of information from all sorts of sources and can provide the best radiography of society. In this case, the taxi they chose sounds a bit conservative. He wishes Obama “to value Harmony”.

Now, one thing you don’t want to miss is the inauguration speech this Tuesday. For local info, it will be Tuesday night 12:30 China time and 17:30 West Europe. Whatever happens afterwards, this speech has all the chances of becoming a classic of political speeches. I dare say it might also become the most read/watched speech of all times: I’ve never known so many people in Europe and China preparing to watch a speech by a US president. Thousands of Chinese listened already to the election speech: We saw the Sensitive, who cried with emotion; the Ambitious, attentive to every detail of Obama’s technique; the majority, jotting down the new English vocabulary.

For American readers these links probably look too obvious, but for the rest: check out some analysis of the speech by previous presidents’ speech drafters, and here more details of the ceremony. Will Obama mention directly his ethnic background? Will he finish with “God bless America”, or with “I love you guys”? A whole lot of things to watch for Tuesday evening.

And what has Chinayouren been doing this weekend in preparation of the Historic Week? Well, among other things, reading Obama’s book in stereo Chinese-English. I bought these two books at the little stall next to my place, initially with the intention of getting some bilingual material to practice reading, but eventually captivated by the book and reading it all straight to the end (in English). As for the Chinese version, I admit I skipped a few pages and ended up in the passages where Obama plays with “Ma-li-ya” and “Sa-Sha”, which contain a vocabulary more adapted to my level.

By the way, if you are one of the thousands of Chinese out there trying to get this book, I would not recommend buying the daoban (fake) translation, buy the real one published by Han Manchun instead. The fake can be seen all over the place, riding on a thousand tricycles in Beijing and Shanghai, but believe me, I have some very serious doubts regarding the translation they are using. More about fake books in the next chapter I am preparing for this week…