PETITION to SAVE the NHS from PRIVATISATION
If you feel strongly about this, even though with the Welsh Assembly there is no immediate danger, then add your name to the petition against the UK government legislation at
https://secure.38degrees.org.
38 degrees present many important petitions which do seem to apply significant pressure to government, for instance they claim to be a major influence in quashing plans to privatise of our forest land. Other petitions include requesting action to curb Tax Avoidance by individuals and companies.
TAX AVOIDANCE - IT'S HUGE
High Profile Companies Avoiding Tax
Barclays
Amazon
Starbucks
Google
COUNTRIES
Barbados, Bermuda and British Virgin received more foreign direct investment than Germany or France
Channel Islands
British Virgin islands source of 14% of outside investments in China
Cyprus 25% of outside investments in Russia
Mauritius 25% of outside investments in India
PERFORMANCE ARTS
RICHARD 3 at the TOBACCO FACTORY IN BRISTOL
Richard 3rd the ultimate example of ruthless evil murder in search of the crown. His skeleton was recently dug up from a car park in Leicester, thus proving one more hitherto doubted part of Shakespeare's character, for he was indeed a hunch-back. The Independent nick-named it a Pay and Decay car park which was once the site of the Abbey where he was buried. How better to remember the end of the Plantagenet dynasty the War of the Roses and the Middle Ages and usher in Henry 7th at the start of the Tudor dynasty.
Joan and I went to the Tobacco Factory in Bristol to see Shakespeare's Richard 3rd (earlier in life just Duke of Gloucester), in its first week of a 6 week season. We would strongly recommend the experience. The day before it had received a 4 star rating from Lyn Gardner of the Guardian. The lead role of Richard is played by John Mackay who is on the stage virtually throughout.was in our opinion the strongest of many great performances in this theatre-in the-round since Hamlet played by Jamie Ballard and directed by Jonathan Miller in 2008.
In addition there are three wonderful performances from the suffering women in Act 4, Dorothea Myer-Bennett who played Lady Anne daughter-in-law of Henry 6th who he had just murdered, she agrees to be his wife in a wonderfully dramatic scene in Act 1. Lisa Kay playing the Duchess of York mother of Richard, had seen off his two older brothers to clear his way to the crown, Edward 4 of ill health and the Duke of Clarence in the Tower. Finally Nicky Goldie playing the old Queen Elizabeth (married to Edward 4th) was the mother of the two young princes Richard had had murdered in the Tower) whose daughter Princess Elizabeth he intended to marry so as to unify his House of York and her house of Lancaster to gain complete control of England. In practise he had just time to cry out 'A horse!, A horse! My kingdom for a horse'. Before being was killed down in a personal battle with Henry 7th at Bosworth Field near Leicester. Thus ended the last battle in the War of the Roses.
CITY MAYORS
The Tobacco Factory is an excellent example of Urban Renewal now in its tenth year since its rescue from destruction by the foresight of visionary architect George Ferguson which building now houses the theatre of which I write, a performing arts school (a ballet lesson was taking place when we were there last Saturday) a pub and excellent restaurant restaurant usually selling one course meals (I had an excellent Moroccan fish stew Joan a mixed plate mezze of bread, meats cheeses and stuffed vine leaves for under £20, a shop and apparently some appartments.
I have just realised that George Ferguson was elected Mayor of Bristol (without I think being supported by a political party) in the November 2012 election and he has many ideas to revamp the city centre to inject vibrancy and visual form. His aim "Making Bristol known across the world so we don't have to say it's a port somewhere near Bath which I have found myself saying in China America and India".
My own vision of city mayors was previously one of respect for the achievements of Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson in London, but the Bristol experiment would seem to be even more exciting, I can think of no-one I would rather have as mayor.
FLUELLEN THEATRE IN SWANSEA
In Swansea Fluellen theatre gave an excellent one act performance of a play by J M Barrie (of Peter Pan fame) in their Theatre in Focus monthly series 1pm Saturdays in the Dylan Thomas Centre. There were quite a few U3A members in the audience but for the first time Patricia Morgan was one of four old 'cronies' discussing their soldier sons away in the war. I owe Patricia a special debt because it was her work as Convenor which rescued Carolina Jones Italian Group from a prolonged a difficult start, Carolina expresses delight with her class nearly every time I see her.
Fluellen are on the main stage at the Grand Theatre with my wife's favourite play Hobson's Choice. We will be there. It runs at 7.30pm from Thurs 7 March till Saturday 9 March, with a 12.30 matinee as well on Friday.
MODERN DANCE
I have enjoyed the few classical Ballets I have seen but am really enthused by modern dance of which there was a particularly fine example recently in the Taliesin recently by the 10 dancer Richard Alston Dance Company in front of an reasonably full audience. They started to Ragtime tunes played live on piano which made a fine start but it was completely a outshone by the two the very different music and dance routines of Buzzing Round the Hunnisuccle and then the startling Madcap with music and choreography from New York.
SWANSEA JAZZLAND
I often talk of Swansea Jazzland and comment on the quality but never before has it been in the same breath as Ronnie Scott's club in London. American saxophonists Vincent Herring on alto and Eric Alexander on tenor played three dates on short UK tour, the first two nights at Ronnie Scott's the third at Swansea Jazzland.
It was a superb gig especially for lovers of hard bop, like me, entitled 'In the Spirit of Coltrane and Cannonball', all very fresh and very musical, all originals though the chords of Coltrane's most famous recording Giant Steps were often heard, and incredibly three of the compositions were written by the drummerJoris Dudli. Giant Harold Mabern owner of the largest hands I have ever seen on a piano, but they didn't stop him twinkling and when needed they gave plenty of power. Milan Nikolic completed the quintet on string bass. John Fordham gave him a three star Guardian revue for the London Concerts, he should have come to Swansea, ours was worth four stars.
U3A ACTIVITIES
ARMCHAIR TRAVEL
Tomorrow Friday 1 March at 2pm at Hazel Court
Polly Davies will talk on Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee
It should be good, she gave a Wednesday Lecture recently for us in the University
JIVE
Going strong as usual including a large proportion of the beginners taught in the Autumn Term
Photo taken by me this week there will be more on the website from our forthcoming weekend dancing and holidaying in Tenby.
PHOTOS
There are photos sets of many of the Activity Groups on the website including records from me of Jive's previous weekend in Torquay and of the Politics and Citizenship visit to the Lifeguard Station at Mumbles
Anyone who has photos to post should send them by email attachments to our webmaster Adrian Crowley at webmaster@u3aswansea.org.uk
WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE ABOUT KINDLE?
In many respects it represents an important breakthrough, some very good books which are out of copyright are actually free, others considerably cheaper than their paperback equivalent and all somewhat cheaper. The print is very easy on the eye, as pleasant to read as a conventional book because unlike say a computer monitor or a TV there is no constant refresh of the display, typically 50 or 100 times a second, and therefore non of the flicker which causes eye strain. A Kindle display only alters when you change page.
The other big virtue is reduced space and weight which makes it especially attractive for holidays. My Kindle is two years old one of the first to include a wi-fi interface which allows one to buy new books rapidly across the world of wi-fi, which today is very widespread, and they then download automatically also to other wi-fi devices with a Kindle App. But the book seller can only be Amazon.
The more modern versions might include features I am not aware of. The main drawbacks of mine are the lack of colour, a downside of the display technology, the lack of a zoom-in feature so useful to pick up details on maps or other diagrams full of minute detailed information, and the paucity of the navigation make it ideal only for linear reading, ie from cover to cover without flicking pages. These downsides, except colour disappear when used in conjunction with say an iPad, a virtually indispensable facility in other respects particularly if like me you want to blow up detailed street maps of the kind which identify the location of chosen hotels and restaurants from a travel guide of the Lonely Planet, Footprints or Rough Guide type.
So what's not to like? Well it all comes down to Amazon. It is widely known that they do not pay UK taxes on their sales in the UK, for that reason alone, without cutting off my nose to spite my face, I intend to stop trading with Amazon and would urge others to do likewise, and today they are not just a bookshop but sell over the Internet an evermore increasing range of products.
The other quibble is just as serious for with no good reason apart from profit they have chosen to use a proprietary printing protocol for Kindle when a perfectly good and better protocol is freely available all over the world from Adobe.
The real problem is with Amazon itself is TAX EVASION. It does not paying taxes in the countries it makes its profits , for example the UK. For this reason alone I personally boycot them and have signed 38 Degrees petitions against tax evasion.
That issue becomes even more pointed in the case of Kindle which is totally uncompetitive. Ebooks to play on Kindle have to be bought from a single supplier Amazon, usually at prices just below the purchase of a new paperback from them. There are many other forms of ebooks available, but they can not be loaded to Kindle.
UK Corporation tax on profits has had to be lowered by this government and still stands at 20%. Given the huge benefits of closed markets and tax avoidance it is no wonder that Amazon can provide the good web sites and good service that make them otherwise a very attractive supplier. John Lewis arguably our favourite store and owned by its staff was recently warning that its own future was at risk from unfair competition from international firms avoiding tax.
There are alternatives to buying books via email, our local bookshops which are under fierce competition from Internet Sales. Waterstones can offer either, so do charities like Oxfam with their wide supply of donated second hand books. I have currently written to Oxfam to enquire why they sell books via Amazon for just 1p. From a quick recent comparison Oxfam sell direct at approximately twice the price of their supply via Amazon. In both cases they supply, package and post the books. I will keep you informed of their reply
Other alternatives for Internet include
Book Depository
Play.com - owned by Rakutan, Japan's biggest Internet Shopping site (probably also a tax avoider)
A decade or so ago when I working on the design of computer systems for the highly specialised field of Industrial Automation, the rage in the software industry was Open Source (code) and the governments of the day spent a lot of time and effort promoting this path to open competition for their own purchases in finance education and healthcare. If source code is published and freely available then the computer programs can be understood, copied and modified by any adequately skilled programmer.
I guess the venture failed because restricting competition is in the nature of private industry. From what I saw of attempts like MAP and FIELDBUS, both excellent aims associated with creating a universal communication protocol for 'plugging in' the various parts of factory automation systems (eg instruments, automatic controllers). In my view it was sabotaged by commercial firms who saw their best chances in getting on board the various committees and stringing the arguments out so they never reached conclusion.
I had started to investigate the alternatives for competitive ebooks when I had my eyes opened by a recent Satellite series on BBC 4 and especially the program on Google with its Google Books venture starting with capturing their own digitised versions of entire of libraries of invaluable books held in some of the worlds most famous libraries. They were invited to copy the Bodleian in Oxford, one of America's top university libraries, if I remember correctly Harvard, Michigan University and a French National library before being stopped over a Copyright Lawsuit, mainly on the need for agreement books still under copyright but no longer in publication. It seems to me, since all copyright is time limited, that the greater concern is over the ownership of books out of copyright.
Googles ultimate target was to produce a digital copy of all the books in the world. The idea of a complete global library is a noble one, but it needs to be jointly owned and available to the citizens of the world. The potential value of such information to Google for a proprietary strangle hold is uncalculable.
A similar grab by Google to that made in the captures for the creation of Google Earth in which they listened in to personal wi-fi systems unprotected by password entry and extracted a great deal of personal private information including passwords.
I am sure I will return to this theme of ebooks, but it is clear far more research is needed. The Internet was conceived as a wonderfully free way for university academics and research scientists to share information across the globe. But it is now, as feared, radically changing aims with commerce as a major user, which I have seen it argued will ultimately challenge governments and democracy itself.
INTERMITTENT FASTING
I had thought I would leave this issue until I noticed that the best selling book for the last two weeks, outselling its nearest rivals by a factor of two had been 'The Fast Diet' by M Spencer and M Mosley. I assume this is the Michael Mosely who presented the Horizon program which interested Joan and I immediately. We both followed the recommended principle of partial fasting on two days each week by eating a single meal of 500-600 kcalories. We are still following the regime some 7 months later. My weight stabilised just before Christmas and today was 81.0kg, exactly my weight at 20 so were I twenty again I would be sweating a bit wondering if I could meet 81kg (12stone10lbs) Light Heavyweight boxing weigh-in! A loss of well over one stone from a highpoint a year ago of 89kg. Joan has lost two stones but her weight is now too showing signs of stabilisation.
I have long been tolerant of the fasting regime, though it was difficult at first. Joan has had to struggle harder to master headaches, in part related to over low fluid intake, and irritability. There is no doubt that we would advise someone interested in fasting to eliminate first having a third meal in the day, as a means of an easier entry to the self control demanded by a regime of Fast Days. As a warning note that Fasting is dangerous to those with Diabetes.
I also received a cutting from the New Scientist 17 November 2012 from friends of Bill and Margaret Massey from Carmarthen U3A. The article discusses its authenticity as a means of improving Health and Brain function; avoiding Cancer, Alzheimers and Parkinson's; lowering 'bad' Cholesterol; developing resistance in those overweight to getting Diabetes, Cardiac problems and reduction of problems from Asthma; increased alertness with just possibly an increase in lifespan as well.
It did this mainly by a review of published papers. Amongst the advice found is to make an early start on such a regime in middle age (say at 50), that it is more effective than calorie restriction alone (which has its own dangers). A fast is not considered to have started until about 10-12 hours after the last meal and it is more effective in those already overweight. It popularity on this blog was almost entirely as a way of dieting, it could be much much more.
Conscious of passing on Joan's cooking advice second hand I took over our twice weekly Indian style vegetarian meals and am now able to improve more than somewhat on the cooking details I gave in earlier blogs. Revised advice which I emailed privately to people I knew had a direct interest. I therefore update the blogged meal advice. In good faith I used the calorie figures in a tiny booklet Joan had bought years ago. Recently I found a table for bulk foods in reducing order of calories. In the case of several vegetables it gives higher values, even doubled for some low calorie vegetables, which does not alter the concentration needed on high calorie foods, for instance, cooking oils, oil based Pataks paste, and supermarket tinned spice red beans in sauce.
http://www.bodyfatguide.com/foodcalorie100gms
So I start by piling 1.2kg (nearly 3lb) of vegetables on the kitchen scales in roughly 200gm portions.
Calories/100gm
Onions 200 gm 36/23
then about 200 gm of the following five from the following list of possibilities with US/UK calorific values
Leeks with extensive greenery 52/24
Swede /18
Carrot /20
Potato 76/80
Cauliflower especially leaves and heavy stalk ? /13
Parsnip 76/86
Butternut squash 50/?
Peppers, red, green, yellow 22/15
Mushrooms especially needing prompt use ? /13
Courgettes ? /25
Broccoli 32/18
Celeriac 40/14
Celery /10 Nowadays I rarely use
Aubergine, no longer cheap 25/15
Tins or packets of chopped Tomato 22
Tinned Red Beans in Hot Sauce around 220
Tinned Lentils or Beans around 85
Last meal
20ml oil, 20ml aubergine pickle, 20ml Tikka paste = 320 kcal for 2
Onion, leek, carrot, cauliflower, squash, peppers = 330 kcal for 2
Fruit = 320 kcal for 2
Milk semi skimmed about 200ml 100 kcal for = 22 kcal for 2
Total for two big meals = 1080 kcal
PREPARATION AND COOKING
Nowadays takes just one hour in total
SOFTEN
Hard vegetables by pre-boiling unsalted for up to 15 minutes in a single saucepan
CHINA'S RAPID CHANGES, RURAL and URBAN LIFE in MORE DETAIL
A few days after writing but before publishing the section on China in the last blog Joy Gillard lent me 'Country Driving' by Peter Hessler, published in 2010 but mainly about experiences before 2008. He was born in 1969 and graduated from Princeton in 1992 in English and Creative Writing and won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. In 1996 he went to China in with the Peace Corps (the US equivalent of Voluntary Service Overseas - incidentally Bob Hughes revealed at the last Armchair Travel meeting he had taught with the VSO in Nigeria). Peter Hessler taught English to the Chinese in Chan province at the age 27 and obviously took the opportunity to learn Mandarin. A tremendous boost helping him question and learn about the Chinese both rural and in the new factory towns and to understand the mechanisms behind that countries unprecedented rate of growth. Already a fluent Mandarin speaker he started work as Foreign Correspondent to the NewYorker from 2002 to 2007, also publishing books and writing articles for The National Geographic. Indeed these articles obviously made this book possible. In 2011 he and his wife moved to Cairo where he intends to learn Arabic as no doubt a precursor to studying and writing in English about the Arab Spring.
Remember in 1976 China was on its knees 25+ years of after the Communist Party (founded in 1921) took control of government in 1949. Following the disaster of the Great Leap Forward (58-61) of nationalisation and collectivisation by farming communes, and the setting up DIY communes to manufacture steel and to the unattainable targets set by government which were met only by false recording of achievements and by melting farm implements. It
led to the great famine in which tens of millions perished.
The final straw was Mao's Cultural Revolution 1966-1976 in which he used gangs of Red Guards to terrorise the whole country including forcing middle, upper and academic classes to earn a harsh living from manual labour, often degrading them and separating them from their family. The Red Guards unthinkingly also destroyed much of the diverse heritage of the country as we heard during our trip along the Silk Road in 2006. Destruction that included the main temple in the Buddhist Yellow Hat monastery at Xiahe, near Tibet (a Chinese Autonomous Region) and used ancient caves full of valuable statues or paintings as living quarters. Xiahe was the closest foreign journalists could get to Tibet to report the most recent uprising there. The importance of those, now restored caves, has been recognised in recent years and they are now one of the chief tourist attractions in China.
The recovery since 1978 followed to the ideas of Deng Xiaoping, merging their Communist System with a Market Economy, he is famous for saying "It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice".
China will shortly have a GDP larger than the USA. Deng bowed out as an old man around 1992. The golden temple at Xiahe had been completely rebuilt (financed I think by the Chinese authorities) when we were there in 2006. There was considerable evidence of a change of heart leading to a revaluation of the value of their heritage, an exception being the family dwellings (hutongs) in Beijing. Farmers can no longer own land but they can rent plots from the state for an agreed rate of money or produce keeping as profit any excess and thus operating largely as owners before communism, though it is likely farming will develop into much larger units.
The of the book Joy sent me was in three separate sections. The first concerned Peter's experiences as one of the very first licenced drivers in the China. I think Joy's intention was to sow in me the seeds of exploring China along secondary roads, which scarcely exist in a form we would recognise, and in any case would demand far more than my limited understanding of Mandarin. This first section is often humorously written about and encounters with the police and escapades in rented cars, which were not authorised to go outside Beijing. But he used hired cars to explore the length of the Great Wall of China.
He obtained his driving licence in 2001 at the very start of personal car ownership in China, before usable road maps existed. The Chinese manufactured their first 12ft, 0.8 litre, sub compact car - the Chery - in 2003. It was a copy of the one General Motors intended to release later that year!
But I was really interested by the other two sections which were written in a much simpler journalistic style with the seeming intent to record, analyse and understand information rather than to entertain. It seemed to me that Peter Hessler has given an honest and correct picture which tallies easily with what I had seen in 2006 and that reported since by the BBC and the Guardian.
The second section 'The Village' describes his experiences about being the first to rent a cottage in a small remote hamlet near Beijing to use as a weekend retreat. Here he learned much about rapid rural depopulation as the young left their homes in search of a better future in the fast expanding factory towns, about the education which was voluntary and not free as I had imagined, about health care, and, about the continuing hold on the population by local members of the Communist Party. It was a hilly area and their main crop was walnuts.
His 'landlord' Wei Ziqi applied for party membership, he was vetted by the current members and six months later became a party member in 2004. He was their first entrepreneur having seen the future for his depopulated, depressed, area in becoming a tourist attraction for the rapidly emerging numbers of car owners in Beijing.
Following disquiet about the approval of certain local development schemes he was one of five candidates to challenge the long standing woman party secretary of Sancha district. Such elections are only open to members of the Communist Party. Wei Ziqi came fourth, which initially upset Peter, but he finally accepted they had reached the right solution. She, the incumbent chairman, and the Vice Chairman retained their positions.
Only about 5% of the population are members of the Party (in 2004 there were only 14 members in Sancha). New members are are chosen (elected) by the current members and on the basis of this district would seem to be well led. Members gain free tuition to equip them better for future roles in the party hierarchy. On the evidence in this book it does appear that the best rise in the party, and in an uneducated rural area that meant those showing innate ability.
In our journey following the Silk Road route in 2006 we saw virtually no private cars and almost no traffic whilst travelling for hours, often on the only local bus scheduled that day, along newly built highways in order to cross the western half of the country. The big towns like Kashgar, Hotan and doubtless Urumqi, by far the biggest city in Xijiang state, had taxis, that was all we saw of cars until we reached X'ian well into the eastern tourist half of the country.
The third section 'The Factory' was most fascinating of all for someone interested in understanding the mechanisms behind China's remarkable rate of growth.The area he writes about is southern Zhejiang, the province south of Shanghai, a fast developing area around Wenzhou where 1/4 of the shoes sold in China are made (just like Northampton years ago in our industrial revolution, says Joan, but their potential home market is well over a million Chinese, or more than twenty times the population of the UK!). Wenzhou also made 70% of the world production of cigarette lighters. Over 90% of Wenzhou industry is private, quite the reverse of the state directed expansion I had imagined from a communist country. The title Wenzhou Model was earned for showing the way to rapid rural development.
The author set out to investigate in depth the progress in nearby emerging towns. He found that they were essentially one product towns with several factories mass-producing the same article. In particular he got in at the very early development of Lishui, a completely rural city 75 miles from Wenzhou. When first visited, July 2005, it had poor road connections so it took 3 hours to reach Wenzhou, and, Lishui had the lowest per capita income of any city in the province of Zhejiang. But the government was building a brand new expressway, which would reduce the travel time between them to one hour, and building industrial infrastructure - the Lishui Economic Development Zone.
Three months later he met 33 year old well dressed businessman Gao Xiaomeng usually known as Boss Gao, an already successful entrepreneur in the manufacture of clothing accessories. He was joined by Boss Wang and a building contractor and in a one and a half hour meeting they had sketch-designed the 21,000 sq ft factory building and asked for the contractor for the final price, not an estimate for competitive tender.
When he returned in January 2006 they were testing three big punch presses and learned they would be making two products, both parts for a woman's brassiere the smallest thin steel ring coated with nylon in fact the most technically complicated part of a brassiere. Back in the 80's manufacture of these parts had been dominated by France and Germany, and a far off Taiwanese owned factory had started earlier by importing a German machinery, but a 'tricky' technician with little formal education but exceptional visual memory had become very familiar with servicing the machine. He claimed to have 'created' a detailed blueprint from memory by 2006 twenty factories existed in China using replicas. Hence Bao had a working machine and to beat the competition his maxim was "It's not the product that counts. It is the volume".
The Wenzhou development strategy was explained as
1) Prepare the Infrastructure (expressways and development zones), a task shared by central and provincial government.
2) Sell land use rights at cut rates to Factory Owners
3) Grant tax breaks for the initial years of production
4) Then unleash human energy, let highly competitive, private entrepreneurs and their workforce do the rest
From 2000 to 2005 Lishui spent $8.8 billion in infrastructure and the rate of spending increased by over 30% in 2006. So where did all the money come from?
All land in the countryside is owned by the state so farmers like Wei Ziqi in Sancha have no right to sell their plots and homes on the open market. But the village controlled by its Party Chairman can sell, so there is a mechanism for sale 'the right of use' at low prices set by the government to a city. Next the city government borrows huge loans from state owned banks to build the infrastructure and reclassify the land as urban.
Urban landrights can be auctioned off by city government to entrepreneurs at prices far higher than the village was paid, thus arbitrage of land values is the means of funding the city (robbing - if you like - the poor farmers by selling their right to use to industrial entrepreneurs. Above all the population of the city skyrockets by attracting workers to its factories and so the tax receipts rise sharply and hence the payback to governments.
Communist because village, city and state politics are controlled by Communist Party Members, but the implementation is by private profit driven Market Forces.
We hear a lot about corruption in China but Peter calls it guanxi or 'pulling' a basic technique in China, also a term in common use here amongst the young in sexual relations. A technique familiar to every western engineering or arms salesman, particularly extreme when selling into the Middle East or less principled regimes. But how to pull and how much to bribe, 'even a schoolchild can figure it out', he is told, in other words listen and all will be revealed. Boss Wang talked of the necessity of dining and bribing local officials and bankers when buying the land rights, wooing customer buyers with gifts, but being especially respectful of government tax officials.
Peter Hessler was present when three government tax officials called asking the Boss Wang, a university trained economist, why the factory wasn't yet registered for production. During the conversation following registration, so henceforth they would be taxed on output, he was advised by a local official to get a particular accountant, and correctly answered by asking the price thus indicating he was prepared to pay the 'bribe'.
China's response to the Global Banking Crisis was informative not because of their own 'credit crunch' which didn't exist but because the loss of western markets resulted in a mass closure of factories. The workers went back to their rural villages and await better times. The Chinese Government's Stimulus Plan in 2008 was to spend an additional $586 billion, of which half went to develop roads, railways and airports, but not he implies to education.
By amazing coincidence the day after I wrote this preceding paragraph there was a letter to the Guardian on Alternatives to Austerity confirming the figure and 2008 date but saying that beside infrastructure there was a 45% increase in state funding of education and increased spending on health also stating that the implementation was 2009/10 which coincided with a big recovery in GDP by China. You have to be careful of raw percentages 45% of zero is not a great deal!! The letter concluded critically by noting that "The Chinese government reacted to the crisis , by building thing, not by giving money to the banks".
Another short newsclip in the same issue confirmed the strategy used by workers changing jobs, to make the change directly following a Chinese New Year Holiday in their home town. To give notice beforehand would simply result in the employer holding back payment of wages so as to provide a cash incentive to return instead. So those who have negotiated another job just don't return. The piece headed "Apple's partner Foxconn [who make their iPhone] stops hiring workers in China" confirmed that an unexpectedly high 97% percent of their employees returned from their New Year trip home to explain why Foxconn had ceased hiring new workers. Thus denying there was a freeze in the production of Apple's latest smartphone. Either Foxconn are a very good employer or jobs market is getting tough in China as well or just maybe Apple have problems.
Another report that day said that Chancellor Osborne ruled out full nationalisation of RBS. But nationalised banks is the way China triggers its growth. Funding the infrastructure development is the key to their approach. This kind of financing well before 2008 was the way China drove its economy. I accept the UK and China are in very different stages of rise/decline different, but the comparison illustrates their extra control over outcomes.
If you feel strongly about this, even though with the Welsh Assembly there is no immediate danger, then add your name to the petition against the UK government legislation at
https://secure.38degrees.org.
38 degrees present many important petitions which do seem to apply significant pressure to government, for instance they claim to be a major influence in quashing plans to privatise of our forest land. Other petitions include requesting action to curb Tax Avoidance by individuals and companies.
TAX AVOIDANCE - IT'S HUGE
High Profile Companies Avoiding Tax
Barclays
Amazon
Starbucks
COUNTRIES
Barbados, Bermuda and British Virgin received more foreign direct investment than Germany or France
Channel Islands
British Virgin islands source of 14% of outside investments in China
Cyprus 25% of outside investments in Russia
Mauritius 25% of outside investments in India
PERFORMANCE ARTS
RICHARD 3 at the TOBACCO FACTORY IN BRISTOL
Richard 3rd the ultimate example of ruthless evil murder in search of the crown. His skeleton was recently dug up from a car park in Leicester, thus proving one more hitherto doubted part of Shakespeare's character, for he was indeed a hunch-back. The Independent nick-named it a Pay and Decay car park which was once the site of the Abbey where he was buried. How better to remember the end of the Plantagenet dynasty the War of the Roses and the Middle Ages and usher in Henry 7th at the start of the Tudor dynasty.
Joan and I went to the Tobacco Factory in Bristol to see Shakespeare's Richard 3rd (earlier in life just Duke of Gloucester), in its first week of a 6 week season. We would strongly recommend the experience. The day before it had received a 4 star rating from Lyn Gardner of the Guardian. The lead role of Richard is played by John Mackay who is on the stage virtually throughout.was in our opinion the strongest of many great performances in this theatre-in the-round since Hamlet played by Jamie Ballard and directed by Jonathan Miller in 2008.
In addition there are three wonderful performances from the suffering women in Act 4, Dorothea Myer-Bennett who played Lady Anne daughter-in-law of Henry 6th who he had just murdered, she agrees to be his wife in a wonderfully dramatic scene in Act 1. Lisa Kay playing the Duchess of York mother of Richard, had seen off his two older brothers to clear his way to the crown, Edward 4 of ill health and the Duke of Clarence in the Tower. Finally Nicky Goldie playing the old Queen Elizabeth (married to Edward 4th) was the mother of the two young princes Richard had had murdered in the Tower) whose daughter Princess Elizabeth he intended to marry so as to unify his House of York and her house of Lancaster to gain complete control of England. In practise he had just time to cry out 'A horse!, A horse! My kingdom for a horse'. Before being was killed down in a personal battle with Henry 7th at Bosworth Field near Leicester. Thus ended the last battle in the War of the Roses.
CITY MAYORS
The Tobacco Factory is an excellent example of Urban Renewal now in its tenth year since its rescue from destruction by the foresight of visionary architect George Ferguson which building now houses the theatre of which I write, a performing arts school (a ballet lesson was taking place when we were there last Saturday) a pub and excellent restaurant restaurant usually selling one course meals (I had an excellent Moroccan fish stew Joan a mixed plate mezze of bread, meats cheeses and stuffed vine leaves for under £20, a shop and apparently some appartments.
I have just realised that George Ferguson was elected Mayor of Bristol (without I think being supported by a political party) in the November 2012 election and he has many ideas to revamp the city centre to inject vibrancy and visual form. His aim "Making Bristol known across the world so we don't have to say it's a port somewhere near Bath which I have found myself saying in China America and India".
My own vision of city mayors was previously one of respect for the achievements of Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson in London, but the Bristol experiment would seem to be even more exciting, I can think of no-one I would rather have as mayor.
FLUELLEN THEATRE IN SWANSEA
In Swansea Fluellen theatre gave an excellent one act performance of a play by J M Barrie (of Peter Pan fame) in their Theatre in Focus monthly series 1pm Saturdays in the Dylan Thomas Centre. There were quite a few U3A members in the audience but for the first time Patricia Morgan was one of four old 'cronies' discussing their soldier sons away in the war. I owe Patricia a special debt because it was her work as Convenor which rescued Carolina Jones Italian Group from a prolonged a difficult start, Carolina expresses delight with her class nearly every time I see her.
Fluellen are on the main stage at the Grand Theatre with my wife's favourite play Hobson's Choice. We will be there. It runs at 7.30pm from Thurs 7 March till Saturday 9 March, with a 12.30 matinee as well on Friday.
MODERN DANCE
I have enjoyed the few classical Ballets I have seen but am really enthused by modern dance of which there was a particularly fine example recently in the Taliesin recently by the 10 dancer Richard Alston Dance Company in front of an reasonably full audience. They started to Ragtime tunes played live on piano which made a fine start but it was completely a outshone by the two the very different music and dance routines of Buzzing Round the Hunnisuccle and then the startling Madcap with music and choreography from New York.
SWANSEA JAZZLAND
I often talk of Swansea Jazzland and comment on the quality but never before has it been in the same breath as Ronnie Scott's club in London. American saxophonists Vincent Herring on alto and Eric Alexander on tenor played three dates on short UK tour, the first two nights at Ronnie Scott's the third at Swansea Jazzland.
It was a superb gig especially for lovers of hard bop, like me, entitled 'In the Spirit of Coltrane and Cannonball', all very fresh and very musical, all originals though the chords of Coltrane's most famous recording Giant Steps were often heard, and incredibly three of the compositions were written by the drummerJoris Dudli. Giant Harold Mabern owner of the largest hands I have ever seen on a piano, but they didn't stop him twinkling and when needed they gave plenty of power. Milan Nikolic completed the quintet on string bass. John Fordham gave him a three star Guardian revue for the London Concerts, he should have come to Swansea, ours was worth four stars.
U3A ACTIVITIES
ARMCHAIR TRAVEL
Tomorrow Friday 1 March at 2pm at Hazel Court
Polly Davies will talk on Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee
It should be good, she gave a Wednesday Lecture recently for us in the University
JIVE
Going strong as usual including a large proportion of the beginners taught in the Autumn Term
Photo taken by me this week there will be more on the website from our forthcoming weekend dancing and holidaying in Tenby.
PHOTOS
There are photos sets of many of the Activity Groups on the website including records from me of Jive's previous weekend in Torquay and of the Politics and Citizenship visit to the Lifeguard Station at Mumbles
Anyone who has photos to post should send them by email attachments to our webmaster Adrian Crowley at webmaster@u3aswansea.org.uk
WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE ABOUT KINDLE?
In many respects it represents an important breakthrough, some very good books which are out of copyright are actually free, others considerably cheaper than their paperback equivalent and all somewhat cheaper. The print is very easy on the eye, as pleasant to read as a conventional book because unlike say a computer monitor or a TV there is no constant refresh of the display, typically 50 or 100 times a second, and therefore non of the flicker which causes eye strain. A Kindle display only alters when you change page.
The other big virtue is reduced space and weight which makes it especially attractive for holidays. My Kindle is two years old one of the first to include a wi-fi interface which allows one to buy new books rapidly across the world of wi-fi, which today is very widespread, and they then download automatically also to other wi-fi devices with a Kindle App. But the book seller can only be Amazon.
The more modern versions might include features I am not aware of. The main drawbacks of mine are the lack of colour, a downside of the display technology, the lack of a zoom-in feature so useful to pick up details on maps or other diagrams full of minute detailed information, and the paucity of the navigation make it ideal only for linear reading, ie from cover to cover without flicking pages. These downsides, except colour disappear when used in conjunction with say an iPad, a virtually indispensable facility in other respects particularly if like me you want to blow up detailed street maps of the kind which identify the location of chosen hotels and restaurants from a travel guide of the Lonely Planet, Footprints or Rough Guide type.
So what's not to like? Well it all comes down to Amazon. It is widely known that they do not pay UK taxes on their sales in the UK, for that reason alone, without cutting off my nose to spite my face, I intend to stop trading with Amazon and would urge others to do likewise, and today they are not just a bookshop but sell over the Internet an evermore increasing range of products.
The other quibble is just as serious for with no good reason apart from profit they have chosen to use a proprietary printing protocol for Kindle when a perfectly good and better protocol is freely available all over the world from Adobe.
The real problem is with Amazon itself is TAX EVASION. It does not paying taxes in the countries it makes its profits , for example the UK. For this reason alone I personally boycot them and have signed 38 Degrees petitions against tax evasion.
That issue becomes even more pointed in the case of Kindle which is totally uncompetitive. Ebooks to play on Kindle have to be bought from a single supplier Amazon, usually at prices just below the purchase of a new paperback from them. There are many other forms of ebooks available, but they can not be loaded to Kindle.
UK Corporation tax on profits has had to be lowered by this government and still stands at 20%. Given the huge benefits of closed markets and tax avoidance it is no wonder that Amazon can provide the good web sites and good service that make them otherwise a very attractive supplier. John Lewis arguably our favourite store and owned by its staff was recently warning that its own future was at risk from unfair competition from international firms avoiding tax.
There are alternatives to buying books via email, our local bookshops which are under fierce competition from Internet Sales. Waterstones can offer either, so do charities like Oxfam with their wide supply of donated second hand books. I have currently written to Oxfam to enquire why they sell books via Amazon for just 1p. From a quick recent comparison Oxfam sell direct at approximately twice the price of their supply via Amazon. In both cases they supply, package and post the books. I will keep you informed of their reply
Other alternatives for Internet include
Book Depository
Play.com - owned by Rakutan, Japan's biggest Internet Shopping site (probably also a tax avoider)
A decade or so ago when I working on the design of computer systems for the highly specialised field of Industrial Automation, the rage in the software industry was Open Source (code) and the governments of the day spent a lot of time and effort promoting this path to open competition for their own purchases in finance education and healthcare. If source code is published and freely available then the computer programs can be understood, copied and modified by any adequately skilled programmer.
I guess the venture failed because restricting competition is in the nature of private industry. From what I saw of attempts like MAP and FIELDBUS, both excellent aims associated with creating a universal communication protocol for 'plugging in' the various parts of factory automation systems (eg instruments, automatic controllers). In my view it was sabotaged by commercial firms who saw their best chances in getting on board the various committees and stringing the arguments out so they never reached conclusion.
I had started to investigate the alternatives for competitive ebooks when I had my eyes opened by a recent Satellite series on BBC 4 and especially the program on Google with its Google Books venture starting with capturing their own digitised versions of entire of libraries of invaluable books held in some of the worlds most famous libraries. They were invited to copy the Bodleian in Oxford, one of America's top university libraries, if I remember correctly Harvard, Michigan University and a French National library before being stopped over a Copyright Lawsuit, mainly on the need for agreement books still under copyright but no longer in publication. It seems to me, since all copyright is time limited, that the greater concern is over the ownership of books out of copyright.
Googles ultimate target was to produce a digital copy of all the books in the world. The idea of a complete global library is a noble one, but it needs to be jointly owned and available to the citizens of the world. The potential value of such information to Google for a proprietary strangle hold is uncalculable.
A similar grab by Google to that made in the captures for the creation of Google Earth in which they listened in to personal wi-fi systems unprotected by password entry and extracted a great deal of personal private information including passwords.
I am sure I will return to this theme of ebooks, but it is clear far more research is needed. The Internet was conceived as a wonderfully free way for university academics and research scientists to share information across the globe. But it is now, as feared, radically changing aims with commerce as a major user, which I have seen it argued will ultimately challenge governments and democracy itself.
INTERMITTENT FASTING
I had thought I would leave this issue until I noticed that the best selling book for the last two weeks, outselling its nearest rivals by a factor of two had been 'The Fast Diet' by M Spencer and M Mosley. I assume this is the Michael Mosely who presented the Horizon program which interested Joan and I immediately. We both followed the recommended principle of partial fasting on two days each week by eating a single meal of 500-600 kcalories. We are still following the regime some 7 months later. My weight stabilised just before Christmas and today was 81.0kg, exactly my weight at 20 so were I twenty again I would be sweating a bit wondering if I could meet 81kg (12stone10lbs) Light Heavyweight boxing weigh-in! A loss of well over one stone from a highpoint a year ago of 89kg. Joan has lost two stones but her weight is now too showing signs of stabilisation.
I have long been tolerant of the fasting regime, though it was difficult at first. Joan has had to struggle harder to master headaches, in part related to over low fluid intake, and irritability. There is no doubt that we would advise someone interested in fasting to eliminate first having a third meal in the day, as a means of an easier entry to the self control demanded by a regime of Fast Days. As a warning note that Fasting is dangerous to those with Diabetes.
I also received a cutting from the New Scientist 17 November 2012 from friends of Bill and Margaret Massey from Carmarthen U3A. The article discusses its authenticity as a means of improving Health and Brain function; avoiding Cancer, Alzheimers and Parkinson's; lowering 'bad' Cholesterol; developing resistance in those overweight to getting Diabetes, Cardiac problems and reduction of problems from Asthma; increased alertness with just possibly an increase in lifespan as well.
It did this mainly by a review of published papers. Amongst the advice found is to make an early start on such a regime in middle age (say at 50), that it is more effective than calorie restriction alone (which has its own dangers). A fast is not considered to have started until about 10-12 hours after the last meal and it is more effective in those already overweight. It popularity on this blog was almost entirely as a way of dieting, it could be much much more.
Conscious of passing on Joan's cooking advice second hand I took over our twice weekly Indian style vegetarian meals and am now able to improve more than somewhat on the cooking details I gave in earlier blogs. Revised advice which I emailed privately to people I knew had a direct interest. I therefore update the blogged meal advice. In good faith I used the calorie figures in a tiny booklet Joan had bought years ago. Recently I found a table for bulk foods in reducing order of calories. In the case of several vegetables it gives higher values, even doubled for some low calorie vegetables, which does not alter the concentration needed on high calorie foods, for instance, cooking oils, oil based Pataks paste, and supermarket tinned spice red beans in sauce.
http://www.bodyfatguide.com/foodcalorie100gms
INDIAN VEGETARIAN RECIPE
Today I have almost no essential foods it is all a case of seeing what vegetables are available in the house.So I start by piling 1.2kg (nearly 3lb) of vegetables on the kitchen scales in roughly 200gm portions.
Calories/100gm
Onions 200 gm 36/23
then about 200 gm of the following five from the following list of possibilities with US/UK calorific values
Leeks with extensive greenery 52/24
Swede /18
Carrot /20
Potato 76/80
Cauliflower especially leaves and heavy stalk ? /13
Parsnip 76/86
Butternut squash 50/?
Peppers, red, green, yellow 22/15
Mushrooms especially needing prompt use ? /13
Courgettes ? /25
Broccoli 32/18
Celeriac 40/14
Celery /10 Nowadays I rarely use
Aubergine, no longer cheap 25/15
Tins or packets of chopped Tomato 22
Tinned Red Beans in Hot Sauce around 220
Tinned Lentils or Beans around 85
Last meal
20ml oil, 20ml aubergine pickle, 20ml Tikka paste = 320 kcal for 2
Onion, leek, carrot, cauliflower, squash, peppers = 330 kcal for 2
Fruit = 320 kcal for 2
Milk semi skimmed about 200ml 100 kcal for = 22 kcal for 2
Total for two big meals = 1080 kcal
PREPARATION AND COOKING
Nowadays takes just one hour in total
SOFTEN
Hard vegetables by pre-boiling unsalted for up to 15 minutes in a single saucepan
First I peel and chop into sort of 2cm cubes the vegetables needing to most needing time to soften
The full 15 minutes for Swede, Carrot and the Hard Stalk of Cauliflower
Less for Squash or Potatoes or Greenery (from cauliflower or leaks
Less again for parsnip
FRY
Once this underway I put the 200ml of cooking oil in a casserole pan and heat then first fry a teaspoonful of Cumin Seeds, then add the Onions and fry the onions till translucent
Then mix in the curry pastes I still like 20ml a heaped teaspoonful of Pataks Aubergine Pickle with another teaspoonful of medium hot Pataks curry paste, often their Tikka paste.
Then add the chopped white of leeks
BOIL
By this time the 'hard' vegetables will have finished their pre-cook so they are added to the casserole pan and by using our smallest saucepan for this task I can add all of the vegetable water.
Stir and boil for another 15 minutes.
Take the lid off if needed to reduce the soup. We eat it from shallow bowls so quite like a little broth but Indian vegetable dishes are usually served virtually dry with rice
SALT to taste and add any Ground Spices, I normally add a teaspoonful of Garam Marsala (mixed Indian spices without chilli)
That provides a tasty large meal for two, though by 5pm (23 hours from our last meal) Joan in particular is more than ready to eat.
First thing in the morning we usually drink two mugs of tea with semi- skimmed milk as usual, but drink mostly black coffee, green tea or Tinnies during the day. I have a half stock cube in boiling water before going to bed. We usually eat a piece of fruit, say 80kcal for desert and often a second later in the evening.
CHINA'S RAPID CHANGES, RURAL and URBAN LIFE in MORE DETAIL
A few days after writing but before publishing the section on China in the last blog Joy Gillard lent me 'Country Driving' by Peter Hessler, published in 2010 but mainly about experiences before 2008. He was born in 1969 and graduated from Princeton in 1992 in English and Creative Writing and won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. In 1996 he went to China in with the Peace Corps (the US equivalent of Voluntary Service Overseas - incidentally Bob Hughes revealed at the last Armchair Travel meeting he had taught with the VSO in Nigeria). Peter Hessler taught English to the Chinese in Chan province at the age 27 and obviously took the opportunity to learn Mandarin. A tremendous boost helping him question and learn about the Chinese both rural and in the new factory towns and to understand the mechanisms behind that countries unprecedented rate of growth. Already a fluent Mandarin speaker he started work as Foreign Correspondent to the NewYorker from 2002 to 2007, also publishing books and writing articles for The National Geographic. Indeed these articles obviously made this book possible. In 2011 he and his wife moved to Cairo where he intends to learn Arabic as no doubt a precursor to studying and writing in English about the Arab Spring.
Remember in 1976 China was on its knees 25+ years of after the Communist Party (founded in 1921) took control of government in 1949. Following the disaster of the Great Leap Forward (58-61) of nationalisation and collectivisation by farming communes, and the setting up DIY communes to manufacture steel and to the unattainable targets set by government which were met only by false recording of achievements and by melting farm implements. It
led to the great famine in which tens of millions perished.
The final straw was Mao's Cultural Revolution 1966-1976 in which he used gangs of Red Guards to terrorise the whole country including forcing middle, upper and academic classes to earn a harsh living from manual labour, often degrading them and separating them from their family. The Red Guards unthinkingly also destroyed much of the diverse heritage of the country as we heard during our trip along the Silk Road in 2006. Destruction that included the main temple in the Buddhist Yellow Hat monastery at Xiahe, near Tibet (a Chinese Autonomous Region) and used ancient caves full of valuable statues or paintings as living quarters. Xiahe was the closest foreign journalists could get to Tibet to report the most recent uprising there. The importance of those, now restored caves, has been recognised in recent years and they are now one of the chief tourist attractions in China.
The recovery since 1978 followed to the ideas of Deng Xiaoping, merging their Communist System with a Market Economy, he is famous for saying "It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice".
China will shortly have a GDP larger than the USA. Deng bowed out as an old man around 1992. The golden temple at Xiahe had been completely rebuilt (financed I think by the Chinese authorities) when we were there in 2006. There was considerable evidence of a change of heart leading to a revaluation of the value of their heritage, an exception being the family dwellings (hutongs) in Beijing. Farmers can no longer own land but they can rent plots from the state for an agreed rate of money or produce keeping as profit any excess and thus operating largely as owners before communism, though it is likely farming will develop into much larger units.
The of the book Joy sent me was in three separate sections. The first concerned Peter's experiences as one of the very first licenced drivers in the China. I think Joy's intention was to sow in me the seeds of exploring China along secondary roads, which scarcely exist in a form we would recognise, and in any case would demand far more than my limited understanding of Mandarin. This first section is often humorously written about and encounters with the police and escapades in rented cars, which were not authorised to go outside Beijing. But he used hired cars to explore the length of the Great Wall of China.
He obtained his driving licence in 2001 at the very start of personal car ownership in China, before usable road maps existed. The Chinese manufactured their first 12ft, 0.8 litre, sub compact car - the Chery - in 2003. It was a copy of the one General Motors intended to release later that year!
But I was really interested by the other two sections which were written in a much simpler journalistic style with the seeming intent to record, analyse and understand information rather than to entertain. It seemed to me that Peter Hessler has given an honest and correct picture which tallies easily with what I had seen in 2006 and that reported since by the BBC and the Guardian.
The second section 'The Village' describes his experiences about being the first to rent a cottage in a small remote hamlet near Beijing to use as a weekend retreat. Here he learned much about rapid rural depopulation as the young left their homes in search of a better future in the fast expanding factory towns, about the education which was voluntary and not free as I had imagined, about health care, and, about the continuing hold on the population by local members of the Communist Party. It was a hilly area and their main crop was walnuts.
His 'landlord' Wei Ziqi applied for party membership, he was vetted by the current members and six months later became a party member in 2004. He was their first entrepreneur having seen the future for his depopulated, depressed, area in becoming a tourist attraction for the rapidly emerging numbers of car owners in Beijing.
Following disquiet about the approval of certain local development schemes he was one of five candidates to challenge the long standing woman party secretary of Sancha district. Such elections are only open to members of the Communist Party. Wei Ziqi came fourth, which initially upset Peter, but he finally accepted they had reached the right solution. She, the incumbent chairman, and the Vice Chairman retained their positions.
Only about 5% of the population are members of the Party (in 2004 there were only 14 members in Sancha). New members are are chosen (elected) by the current members and on the basis of this district would seem to be well led. Members gain free tuition to equip them better for future roles in the party hierarchy. On the evidence in this book it does appear that the best rise in the party, and in an uneducated rural area that meant those showing innate ability.
In our journey following the Silk Road route in 2006 we saw virtually no private cars and almost no traffic whilst travelling for hours, often on the only local bus scheduled that day, along newly built highways in order to cross the western half of the country. The big towns like Kashgar, Hotan and doubtless Urumqi, by far the biggest city in Xijiang state, had taxis, that was all we saw of cars until we reached X'ian well into the eastern tourist half of the country.
The third section 'The Factory' was most fascinating of all for someone interested in understanding the mechanisms behind China's remarkable rate of growth.The area he writes about is southern Zhejiang, the province south of Shanghai, a fast developing area around Wenzhou where 1/4 of the shoes sold in China are made (just like Northampton years ago in our industrial revolution, says Joan, but their potential home market is well over a million Chinese, or more than twenty times the population of the UK!). Wenzhou also made 70% of the world production of cigarette lighters. Over 90% of Wenzhou industry is private, quite the reverse of the state directed expansion I had imagined from a communist country. The title Wenzhou Model was earned for showing the way to rapid rural development.
The author set out to investigate in depth the progress in nearby emerging towns. He found that they were essentially one product towns with several factories mass-producing the same article. In particular he got in at the very early development of Lishui, a completely rural city 75 miles from Wenzhou. When first visited, July 2005, it had poor road connections so it took 3 hours to reach Wenzhou, and, Lishui had the lowest per capita income of any city in the province of Zhejiang. But the government was building a brand new expressway, which would reduce the travel time between them to one hour, and building industrial infrastructure - the Lishui Economic Development Zone.
Three months later he met 33 year old well dressed businessman Gao Xiaomeng usually known as Boss Gao, an already successful entrepreneur in the manufacture of clothing accessories. He was joined by Boss Wang and a building contractor and in a one and a half hour meeting they had sketch-designed the 21,000 sq ft factory building and asked for the contractor for the final price, not an estimate for competitive tender.
When he returned in January 2006 they were testing three big punch presses and learned they would be making two products, both parts for a woman's brassiere the smallest thin steel ring coated with nylon in fact the most technically complicated part of a brassiere. Back in the 80's manufacture of these parts had been dominated by France and Germany, and a far off Taiwanese owned factory had started earlier by importing a German machinery, but a 'tricky' technician with little formal education but exceptional visual memory had become very familiar with servicing the machine. He claimed to have 'created' a detailed blueprint from memory by 2006 twenty factories existed in China using replicas. Hence Bao had a working machine and to beat the competition his maxim was "It's not the product that counts. It is the volume".
The Wenzhou development strategy was explained as
1) Prepare the Infrastructure (expressways and development zones), a task shared by central and provincial government.
2) Sell land use rights at cut rates to Factory Owners
3) Grant tax breaks for the initial years of production
4) Then unleash human energy, let highly competitive, private entrepreneurs and their workforce do the rest
From 2000 to 2005 Lishui spent $8.8 billion in infrastructure and the rate of spending increased by over 30% in 2006. So where did all the money come from?
All land in the countryside is owned by the state so farmers like Wei Ziqi in Sancha have no right to sell their plots and homes on the open market. But the village controlled by its Party Chairman can sell, so there is a mechanism for sale 'the right of use' at low prices set by the government to a city. Next the city government borrows huge loans from state owned banks to build the infrastructure and reclassify the land as urban.
Urban landrights can be auctioned off by city government to entrepreneurs at prices far higher than the village was paid, thus arbitrage of land values is the means of funding the city (robbing - if you like - the poor farmers by selling their right to use to industrial entrepreneurs. Above all the population of the city skyrockets by attracting workers to its factories and so the tax receipts rise sharply and hence the payback to governments.
Communist because village, city and state politics are controlled by Communist Party Members, but the implementation is by private profit driven Market Forces.
We hear a lot about corruption in China but Peter calls it guanxi or 'pulling' a basic technique in China, also a term in common use here amongst the young in sexual relations. A technique familiar to every western engineering or arms salesman, particularly extreme when selling into the Middle East or less principled regimes. But how to pull and how much to bribe, 'even a schoolchild can figure it out', he is told, in other words listen and all will be revealed. Boss Wang talked of the necessity of dining and bribing local officials and bankers when buying the land rights, wooing customer buyers with gifts, but being especially respectful of government tax officials.
Peter Hessler was present when three government tax officials called asking the Boss Wang, a university trained economist, why the factory wasn't yet registered for production. During the conversation following registration, so henceforth they would be taxed on output, he was advised by a local official to get a particular accountant, and correctly answered by asking the price thus indicating he was prepared to pay the 'bribe'.
China's response to the Global Banking Crisis was informative not because of their own 'credit crunch' which didn't exist but because the loss of western markets resulted in a mass closure of factories. The workers went back to their rural villages and await better times. The Chinese Government's Stimulus Plan in 2008 was to spend an additional $586 billion, of which half went to develop roads, railways and airports, but not he implies to education.
By amazing coincidence the day after I wrote this preceding paragraph there was a letter to the Guardian on Alternatives to Austerity confirming the figure and 2008 date but saying that beside infrastructure there was a 45% increase in state funding of education and increased spending on health also stating that the implementation was 2009/10 which coincided with a big recovery in GDP by China. You have to be careful of raw percentages 45% of zero is not a great deal!! The letter concluded critically by noting that "The Chinese government reacted to the crisis , by building thing, not by giving money to the banks".
Another short newsclip in the same issue confirmed the strategy used by workers changing jobs, to make the change directly following a Chinese New Year Holiday in their home town. To give notice beforehand would simply result in the employer holding back payment of wages so as to provide a cash incentive to return instead. So those who have negotiated another job just don't return. The piece headed "Apple's partner Foxconn [who make their iPhone] stops hiring workers in China" confirmed that an unexpectedly high 97% percent of their employees returned from their New Year trip home to explain why Foxconn had ceased hiring new workers. Thus denying there was a freeze in the production of Apple's latest smartphone. Either Foxconn are a very good employer or jobs market is getting tough in China as well or just maybe Apple have problems.
Another report that day said that Chancellor Osborne ruled out full nationalisation of RBS. But nationalised banks is the way China triggers its growth. Funding the infrastructure development is the key to their approach. This kind of financing well before 2008 was the way China drove its economy. I accept the UK and China are in very different stages of rise/decline different, but the comparison illustrates their extra control over outcomes.
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