If Beijing, the capital city, is known for its Peking Duck, Shanghai is famous for its dumpling—Xiaolungbao. To the American tourists, one can easily find a MacDonald, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks on most streets (or blocks) in Shanghai to satisfy one’s craving for fast food and coffee (or latte). If one is really sick of eating Chinese day in and day out, one can find Tony Roma, California Pizza Kitchen and other respectable Italian restaurants in five-star hotels such as The Portman by Shangri-la and Hilton. And, if one is really into Chinese cuisine, Peking Duck by Quanjude (the original Peking Duck restaurant in Beijing) is available in Shanghai, and some of the best restaurants serving Cantonese, Qiuzhao, or other regional cuisines. Mexican is perhaps the only American favorite cuisine not well represented in Shanghai—Taco Grande is the sole representation. The irony is that taco is not even Mexican.

For sightseeing, Shanghai is limited to the Yu Garden and Xintindi in the city, and Zhouzuan in the suburb. It is interesting that while Shanghai has a very rich history dating back over a hundred years, this is not a city that offers much to see in terms of historical remnants. Yu Garden has although a long history, but it has been completely re-modeled to become a tourist attraction. Xintindi is a newly developed hot spot for modern entertainment, filled with restaurants and bars. The attraction of Xintindi is built on the foundation of some very old buildings meant for preservation, but remodeled and renovated to successfully become a tourist attraction. Zhouzuan, on the other hand, is perhaps the only historic site. A city built alongside the Suzhou River known as the Venice of China. While all the buildings maintain the same ancient architectural design, one can easily notice that they have all been renovated, even the cobblestone narrow streets and alleys.

Today, nowhere in Shanghai can anyone detect any signs of the small village that Shanghai was, once upon a time. Prior to the 19th century era, before the formation of the city, Shanghai was merely a small fishing village and was considered a part of Songjiang county, governed by the Suzhou prefecture. (Songjiang is now one of the 18 districts within Shanghai.) The importance of Shanghai did not grow until the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842. While the Qing emperor didn’t see the strategic importance of the city, the foreigners, especially the British recognized the strategic location of Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangtze and Huangpu rivers, a perfect location for international trade. Included in the treaty, Shanghai and several other cities were opened for international trade; and thus began the destiny of Shanghai to become one of the most important cities in the world before the “liberation” by the Communist regime in 1949.

Although the Chinese economic reform started in the late 70s, it was concentrated in the southern cities in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Shanghai was not permitted to initiate economic reforms until 1991 and even then, the actual reform did not begin until early 1992 when Deng Xiaopeng visited Shanghai and “encouraged” local government to speed up the economic reform process. Since then it has experienced continuous economic growth of between 9 to 15 percent annually and quickly surpassed early starters of Guangzhou and Shenzhen to reclaim the leadership position in economic development in China. Foreign direct investment in Shanghai has been among the tops in the nation, dominated by Chinese-American, Hong Kong and Taiwanese investments in the beginning and followed by American, German, and Japanese and Korean in the later years.

Looking back at the two different stages of economic boom in Shanghai, two common denominators have played critical roles in the transformation of Shanghai from a quiet small fishing village to one of the top cities in the world—foreign investment and migration of population from neighborhood cities and provinces to fulfill the labor needs. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Corporation building on the Bund, still a significant landmark of the city, was located in the former British Concession, occupied and ruled by the British in the 19th century. The Okura Garden Hotel, formerly the French Consulate, on Maoming Road, was located in the former French Concession, occupied and ruled by the French in the same era until the “liberation”. In the “second coming”, it was again the Hong Kong investors who noticed the absence of office buildings, that started the commercial build-ups of skyscrapers in Shanghai on both sides of the Huangpu River (Pudong and Puxi).

Human resources have always been the most critical element in a successful economic development. In fact, it is a classic ‘chicken and egg’ syndrome. In the 1800s, when the British, American, French and Japanese each claimed their respective concessions, it also marked the influx of migrants from Europe, North American and Japan. Included were a large group of Jews, known as the “Shanghailanders” along with Chinese from neighborhood villages and provinces, all looking for a piece of the opportunity that the city presented. Most of the foreigners left Shanghai when the city was “liberated” in 1949 but the Chinese stayed and called themselves Shanghainese, even though they weren’t—the original inhabitants were people living on the east side of the Huangpu River (Pudong).

Another influx of migrants from mostly neighborhood cities, towns and inland provinces came during the ‘second coming’. Since 1992, when Shanghai embarked on its economic reform under the guidance of Deng Xiaopeng, the need for labor rose and soon the demand for all kinds of labor can only be satisfied by ‘out-of-towners’ (waidi-ren). As the country continued its economic reform and mobility of the people continued to increase, Shanghai became a Mecca for out-of-towners to try their luck for that pot of gold. According to the 2000 census, the population of Shanghai is roughly 17 million. More than 5 million of them are people who work and live in Shanghai “undocumented”, representing the floating population of temporary migrant workers from Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. What is interested to note is that the Shanghainese today strongly regard the ‘waidi-ren’ as inferior. They have obviously forgotten that they too, were once upon a time considered as inferior because they were ‘waidi-ren’ too!

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Several hundred miles south of Shanghai, near the border of Kowloon peninsula, lies a newly developed city—Shenzhen. In the late 1970s, singled out by the late Deng Xiaopeng, Shenzhen was transformed to become the first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of China from a small fishing village. The SEZ was created to be an experimental ground of capitalism in socialism with Chinese characteristics. Shenzhen was chosen for its proximity to Hong Kong, then a British colony, to attract industrial investments from Hong Kong since the two places share the same language, dialect and culture. The concept proved to be a great success and Shenzhen eventually became one of the fastest growing economies in the Pearl River Delta region.

To most people in Hong Kong, Luohu was the more recognizable ‘city’ not only because of its proximity, being adjacent to the Kowloon peninsula, but more of the status as the gateway to the mainland. Today, Luohu is the financial and trade center, and one of the six districts of Shenzhen, and still one of the several gateways to the mainland through Shenzhen—the other two is by bus via Huanggang and by boat via Shekou. As a result of the fast-paced economic development in Shenzhen, especially when many of the Hong Kong labor-intensive industries moved to Shenzhen for its low cost labor, the immediate impact was the vast migration of people to Shenzhen from all over the inland cities and provinces such as Sichuan, Henan, and Hunan. With 17 million population today, the vast majority are from outside of the immediate Shenzhen vicinity. While there are many foreign investments in Shenzhen, mostly from the immediate neighborhood of Hong Kong, the infrastructure are all locally invested and built. In other words, one would not find any trace of historic sites or remnants in Shenzhen, or architecture of any kind that indicates foreign presence at one point or another. Shenzhen is a modern city built from scratches by the government of People’s Republic of China, along with the people who wanted a new life in a new place. That explains one very interesting characteristic of Shenzhen—average age of the population of Shenzhen is below 30. Of the 17 million population, only 1.2 percent are aged 65 or above. Another interesting fact is that in 2002, Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce estimated approximately over 7,000 Hong Kong residents commute daily to Shenzhen for work and almost 2,500 students from Shenzhen commute to Hong Kong to school.

In the 1990s, a famous line referring to Shenzhen is “one high-rise a day and one boulevard every three days”, illustrating the pace of its development and economy. Among them, Shun Hing Square is the 8th tallest building in the world. By design as a SEZ, Shenzhen is a major manufacturing center in China. Successful high-tech companies such as Huawei and ZTE and many other foreign IT companies have all made Shenzhen their respective homes. As a result, Shekou, the seaport in the Yantian district has claimed the top spot in export and import for the past nine consecutive years, and Shenzhen was ranked second in industrial output.

While Shenzhen claims a tourist industry, it can only offer man-made theme parks such as the Wonders of the World, Splendid China and the Safari Park, Happy Valley and the Chinese Folk Culture Village. Due to the proximity to Hong Kong, Shenzhen has fast become the home of many labor-intensive industries for Hong Kong; adopting a very similar life style as well as preferences. This is mostly evident in the food industry. The Hong Kong style Cantonese food is predominantly displayed in Shenzhen along with many other regional cuisines from China as well as other parts of the world. In Shekou, there is a residential area with few commercial buildings, features many western-based restaurants

Also from Shekou, fast ferries link Shenzhen with Zhuhai, Macau, Hong Kong International Airport, Kowloon peninsula and the Hong Kong island. In addition, a metro system with two lines connecting Hong Kong to Shenzhen—one from Louhu to the Window of the World, and the other from Huanggang to a point further north of Shenzhen. Since 2003, the road border crossing with Hong Kong at Huanggang has been opened 24 hours a day. The journey can be made by private vehicle or by bus.

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Shanghai and Shenzhen seem to be two fast economic developing cities and have undergone major transformation to modernization on the surface. However, the underlying contrasting similarities and differences present a very interesting case study for some people. Unlike some of the ancient cities such as Beijing, Nanjing, Xi’an and Chengdu, with rich historic background and civilization, Shanghai and Shenzhen were merely small fishing villages until it was being developed for commerce—Shanghai by the British and other foreign powers during the Qing Dynasty and Shenzhen by the PRC government on some 30 years ago. In international trade, Shanghai claims the highest traffic for container shipments while Shenzhen claims the busiest feeder service for both export and import shipments. As a small fishing village, both cities lack the human resources to sustain the demand for manpower and rely heavily on the migrating population from neighborhood and inland cities, counties and provinces. And here, in the people of the two cities, lies the biggest difference between Shanghai and Shenzhen.

The early immigrants of Shanghai have lived in the city for generations and therefore, they claim the identity of ‘Shanghai Ren”. These are the people who have completely assimilated to the culture of Shanghai, which is very international, and unfortunately, also very discriminating. Perhaps it is because of their insecurity, many Shanghai-ren have developed a sense of superiority and tend to discriminate against anyone who is not a Shanghai-ren. To the new immigrants, it is therefore imperative to learn the Shanghai dialect so that they will be more receptive by the Shanghai-ren. Interestingly, these new immigrants eventually developed the same sense of insecurity and superiority complex and begin to discriminate the newer immigrants. It is perhaps this interesting sense of insecurity and superiority complex that gives the city of Shanghai an unfavorable reputation to many other cities in China, most notably, Hangzhou and Beijing.

In contrast, the history of Shenzhen although dates back a long time as a small fishing village, the modernization process has been very young indeed. Many of the “Shenzhen-ren” has yet taken up the identity of being a Shenzhen-ren since most of them are still in the first generation of immigrants. The sense of equality is clearly displayed in the interactions among the people in Shenzhen. Whether one is originally from Henan or Sichuan, Shanghai or Hunan, Wuhan or Guangxi, they all look upon themselves as living in Shenzhen, making a living in Shenzhen, supporting their respective families in wherever they came from, and one day, hope to return to wherever they came from with a fortune. There is a severe lack of the sense of belonging. They are travelers, and Shenzhen is merely one of the stops in their respective life’s journey. As a result, there is no urgent need to learn Cantonese dialect, Putonghua is just fine. Given the proximity to Hong Kong, and the origin of Shenzhen’s original inhabitants, one would be surprised to find out that Putonghua is the single language spoken and Cantonese dialect is barely used.

One may say that the culture in Shanghai is significantly defined by the immigrants in Shanghai, as in the importance of the Shanghai-ren identity; while in Shenzhen, it is still a virgin land for immigrants and therefore, the importance of the Shenzhen-ren’s identity is still unclear. Whatever the reality maybe, let’s hope the Shenzhen-ren will maintain their openness to receive waidi-ren as equal and do not discriminate against them while finding their identity.

The anti-corruption rally is the news in Taiwan for the past weeks. From the day that Shih Ming-teh, former Chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DDP) published his public decry to Chen Shui-bian, urging him to step down as the President of Republic of China (ROC), followed by his announcement to lead the people to a peaceful sit-in protest until Chen steps down, the momentum of the anti-Bian movement has accelerated at an amazing pace. While it started as an “anti-Bian” rally, the theme was quickly changed to “anti-corruption” to reflect on the alleged corruption-plagued presidency as well as to attract a wider range of support from the people. In a way to differentiate from both the KMT (Blue) and DPP (Green), Shih and his organizers decided to designate Red as their color—as in the anger of the people against their “corrupted” president.

Fact 1: Unlike previous rallies, this anti-corruption rally is entirely supported by the people with no political party involvement.
Fact 2: Because of the non-partisan status, the movement attracted supporters from both the Blue (Kuomingtong, KMT) and Green (DDP) supporters respectively.
Fact 3: The movement requires the people to remit NT$100 as evidence of determination of support for the movement. The target was to recruit 1 million people. This target was accomplished in record time, collecting over NT$100 million in seven working days.
Fact 4: During that time span, many key Chen Shui-bian supporters defected and joined Shih, adding credibility to the anti-corruption movement; among them, many of them were key members of Chen’s successful presidential campaigns and made decisive contributions in 2000 and 2004.

The demonstration started on Saturday, September 9 in front of the presidential office building. Although the organizers anticipated a crowd of over 300,000 people, the actual attendance was far smaller due to the heavy rain storm on Friday night and throughout Saturday. However, the crowd grew steadily as the peaceful demonstration continued despite the poor weather. A few glaring facts in this rally that are being examined seriously are:

• A huge number of the participants are women
• The demographic of the crowd reflects typically Taiwan’s highly educated middle class
• There was no violence throughout the rally
• All participants joined the rally voluntarily; there was no mobilization by any of the political parties
• The resilience of the movement—despite the foul weather, the crowd continued to grow rather than decrease.

Before surrendering the right to the space in front of the presidential office building to the supporters of Chen Shui-bian, who were given the permission to hold their pro-Chen rally between September 16 and 20, the anti-corruption movement planned a peaceful rally around both presidential office building and the presidential residence on Friday evening, September 15. Amazingly, Shih and his organizers pulled another miracle—led a crowd estimated at 750,000 through a highly controlled, but peaceful walk-through of the presidential office and residential buildings that lasted through mid-night.

While the rally maintained a theme of anti-corruption, it is apparent that the rally was directed at Chen Shui-bian, the lame duck president of the island regime, whose term will end in 2008. Faced with the continuing declining economy, Chen and his staff has been the subject of allegations of corruption going back several years. In fact, his second term was severely discredited by the incident on the eve of election day in 2004, known as the two “magical bullets”. On the eve of election, Chen was mysteriously hit by two magical bullets that swirled around his body guard and scratched his belly. The news of his “failed assassination” quickly changed the voting climate and Chen narrowly won the re-election. Months later, the police claimed that the suspect of the alleged assassination was found drowned, allegedly committed suicide for fear of being caught for his “crime”.

Following the riot in 2005, erupted by the Thai labor hired to construct the subway system in Kaohsiung, which disclosed a wide spread corruption among the contractor and sub-contractors of the Kaohsiung subway system, the agency who recruited and managed the Thai labor, and the Kaohsiung municipal government, the allegation has begun to point directly at the presidential office, and senior officials that are closely related to Chen. Before this scandal was officially investigated, allegations that Wu Shu-chen, the president’s disabled wife, was involved in interfering with the transfer of Sogo Department Store to new ownership and profiting from the involvement. The alleged corruption scandal continued to include Chao Chien-ming (Chen’s son-in-law) with insider trading, the mysterious jewelries that Wu claimed to have borrowed from relatives and friends (with no evidence of returning), Chao and his family living in the former presidential residence rent free (a government-owned property), payment of his housemaid’s wages from the national security budget, and finally, the use of false invoices to account for presidential administrative fund expenditures in the name of secret diplomatic activities.

Throughout these allegations, Chen repeatedly claimed innocence and vowed that if he ever accepted the Sogo gift certificates, he will step down. When evidence began to surface that Wu is deeply involved in the scandals, Chen changed his statement to “he will step down only if there were evidence that he directly accepted the gift certificates.” Interestingly, the prosecutor’s office was completely quiet throughout the growing allegations. In filling the vacuum, the media took over and dug up all kinds of evidence indicating that there were indeed, presidential involvement in all of the alleged scandals. When the prosecution finally reacted to these allegations, they took an unusually passive route and moved in a snail-pace. Such unusual behavior led the people to believe that there indeed, is presidential involvement, and perhaps even obstruction of justice.

While the prosecutors of the Chao’s insider trading case eventually took the case to court, the prosecution chose to file charges against Chao for insider trading activities only and not the other alleged corrupted activities such as embezzlement and bribery. According to the legal experts in Taiwan, it is next to impossible to prove insider trading based on current Taiwan laws. Furthermore, it was reported that although there were mounting and obvious evidence pointing to bribery—an unexplained transfer of NT$2 million to the personal account of the Chao’s wife (the president’s daughter), the prosecutors responsible for the case chose to ignore completely and took no action. One interesting note is that despite the evidence, all defenders claimed not guilty but offered no explanation or counter evidence.

Another interesting note is that throughout these allegations, Chen has been quiet and avoided the presidential office; instead, he has busied himself with all kinds of activities outside of Taipei and Taiwan. Before the anti-corruption rally started on September 9, Chen flew to visit the two small Pacific island nations in Palau, and Naru. Instead of using the civil aircrafts from China Airlines and Evergreen, which is the standard procedure for presidential travels, Chen decided to use the “Air Force One”. When the United States denied his request to stop at Guam for refuel purposes with “Air Force One”, Chen insisted in using his presidential plane to Palau and changed to the civil planes from China Airlines to continue his journey to Naru and Guam, resulting an additional fuel cost of over NT$2.6 million.

While he was in Naru, Chen held a press conference for the media that traveled with him. At the conference, he admitted the acceptance of the Sogo gift certificates, indirectly, from the family physician Wong, as gifts for his grandsons—disclaiming prior knowledge of the source of the gift certificates and therefore, responsibility. He also admitted to the fact that he knowingly authorized his staff to use false invoices for drawing funds from the presidential administrative funds budget to cover secret diplomatic activities but insisted that there were no wrong doings in these activities because they were for the benefits of the country.

With mounting evidence and his own admittance to fraud, Chen refused to resign and vowed to complete his presidential term. In his effort to divert the public attention, he continued to promote independence as his main theme for the remainder of his term. Insisting in joining the United Nations as an independent sovereignty, he is now proposing to renew the application to the United Nations under the name Republic of Taiwan.

As the Chen Shui-bian saga continues, the future of Taiwan is indeed “bleakier”, or is it not?

In today’s global economy, people talk about the huge global market out there, the opportunities that are available. The two most talked about Asian markets today are China and India. While both markets are huge, in comparison to many other developing markets, China is being considered more intriguing and attractive between the two oldest civilizations for two reasons—the miraculous economic development the Chinese has accomplished over the past twenty plus years and continue chugging along at phenomenon pace, and the mystic historic background of over 5,000 years. Doing business and visiting China can be very problematic for non-Chinese speaking people.

While the official language is Putonghua (???) or Standard Mandarin, spoken by approximately 70% of the population, there are several major divisions of dialects. In many cases, one will find oneself in a completely different environment based on the dialects spoken by the locals, in just crossing a river to a neighboring village. Although in most cases, the difference in two dialects is a merely a different annunciation or pronunciation of the same word, or the tone in saying the word or phrase, it is enough to confuse even Chinese people.

In contrary, although India has a rich history no less intriguing to those of China, but the mystery is significantly decreased because of the language. Although there are as many as 1,652 different dialects in India, and the Indian Constitution recognizes 23 different dialects as official language, Hindi and English are the only two languages used by the Indian government for official purposes. And since most Indians speak English, traveling to India for non-Indians becomes a much more “regular” activity than those of China. Through the commonality of the English language, the gap between two diverse cultures seems to be so much smaller than those of China.

There is no doubt in my mind that in order to be successful in today’s global economy, one needs to go to the places, to know its people, to find out what is going on, and what went wrong, to figure out what to do, how to do, and with whom to do it with. In China, many businesses have done it, and thought to have done it. But many of these businesses are also facing with similar issues—not knowing its people, thought they know what to do, but discovered that they’re continuing fixing symptoms instead of solving problems. The reason is simple. While they have managers who can speak the language, and thought they know the people, but they don’t really know the language or its people. Lacking this ability, they can only see the symptoms and never the real problem. As profitable as these businesses can be, they will have a very difficult time to accomplish success in China until the managers master the Chinese language, which requires the person to know the people, its culture and its civilization.

Therefore, I say, in this global economy today, I portray myself as the hedgehog—one who is passionate about one thing—China and the Chinese language.

The issue of allowing Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan has been under negotiation for a period of time. The reason that it failed to make any progress was primarily because of disagreement of the name to be used. China has long set up an organization to handle all cross strait tourist issues. The organization was named as Cross-Strait Tourism Association. Its counterpart in Taiwan was deadlocked in the namesake. Republic of China is a definite no-no since there is only one China. Taiwan is sensitive because the Chinese government wants to avoid any indication of independence when referring to Taiwan. And, the Taiwan government would not accept Chinese-Taipei because of the apparent implication that Taiwan is a part of China.

The name Taiwan Strait Tourism Association, as rumor has it, came as a suggestion from a lowly employee of the MAC. The idea came from its counterpart, China’s Cross-Strait Tourism Association. In Chinese language, cross-strait implies the Taiwan Strait. Thus, Taiwan Strait Tourism Association has two different implications, depending on how one looks at it and how one interprets the term. From the Chinese side, the word Taiwan, when used together with Strait, refers to the proper name of the strait–The Taiwan Strait and therefore, is acceptable. However, from the Taiwan side, the term Taiwan refers clearly to the “country” and “strait” simply refers to what the Chinese refers to as “cross-strait”. The difference in interpretation lies in the invisible punctuation, which was purposefully left out for easy interpretation and ambiguity. Obviously, the Chinese government reads the two words “Taiwan Strait” as the name of the strait, while the Taiwan government reads the name as “Taiwan, Strait Tourism Association”, interpreted as: the Strait Tourism Association of Taiwan, and Taiwan, in this situation, refers to the country.