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Things happen in China. They rarely happen the same way they seem to in the rest of the world. Hong Kong is having a real estate boom, with soaring prices, thanks to the US interest rate cut: think about that one. Can you say this of Chicago or Los Angeles or Liverpool?

Photo: L Bates. Northern China, beer festival 2007. Chances are good they all have cell phones.

Asian shares: the news today is that their prices are suddenly streaking up whereas the rest of the world stock markets, a bit brighter on Friday, are nevertheless still feeling bruised from recent batterings. China has invested in takeover target Rio Tinto, and Asian investors are feeling more confident about market values. Snow: the worst in 50 years, so that not even the astonishing numbers of Chinese government troops can get the roads cleared.

China will be increasingly in the news this year, of course, with the Beijing Summer Olympics coming up, but this Asian news bonanza would happen anyway. China’s numbers are such that a small change will often become newsworthy because it happens on such a large scale.

So do I believe the latest ground-swell of change reported by the New York Times, that the Chinese are getting fed up with their government’s Internet intervention, commonly known as the Great Firewall? Maybe, but I also wonder how much of this is Western wishful political thinking, along the lines of: Chinese rebel at personal privacy curbs, government power weakens, human rights established, etc.

Reporter Howard French does point out that most Chinese really don’t
care that much about government intervention and control as long as it
doesn’t stop them from doing the things they like to do best. Since
this is about the Interne he mentions online games and messaging. I
would add from my own experience
that most Chinese people are interested in making money, enjoying
themselves and spending time with family and friends. Now, it’s always
unsafe to generalize about such a vast population and before making
judgements about the Chinese people being shallow, based on this,
consider: if you replaced "Chinese" in that sentence with "American" I
think many of us would think the sentence held some truth. And while
Americans (I grew up there, so have some knowledge of the place) accept
a great deal of government intervention without quibbling, they will
rise up loudly when Washington or their state steps on their toes.

What rings true to me in French’s reporting is the sudden Chinese
surprise at discovering government technology controls and the
subsequent rush of irritation. A student from near Lausanne who spends
his summers in China was met by disbelief last summer when he told
Chinese pals that several web sites, in particular blogs, were blocked.
Their reaction: find a way around the blocking. Much of daily life in
China is all about finding ways around things, rather than clashing
head on.

I’m waiting to hear what should prove to be a lively presentation at Lift08 in Geneva this week, by Marc Laperouzza,
a Chinese telecommunications expert from EPFL and IMD. At a pre-Lift
event at TSR last week he mentioned that 5 million new cells phones are
sold in China every month. And almost all of these use pre-paid cards.
Think about the implications of that. But don’t jump to conclusions,
because the Chinese continue to surprise the rest of us, and that’s
really why they are in the news so often.

Ed. note: Ellen Wallace, editor of GenevaLunch, will be doing an author’s reading at Off the Shelf bookstore in Geneva Thursday evening 7 February from China, on the Ground, for the start of the Chinese New Year.

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