From Sandton to Shanghai

(Not a NASA lift-off, but China’s Shenhua rocket that propelled the country’s first manned space mission in 2005. Photo: Xinhua. )

As the new millennium winds on, many people will look for concrete evidence that China has indeed arrived on the world superpower stage. If you are looking for a definitive date, then diarise the year 2020 when China plans to send its first man to the moon.

Thus far, there have only ever been 3 countries in the world to send humans to space. In 2005, China became the newest member of the 62.1 mile high club. It joined US astronauts and Russian cosmonauts when its taikonauts (from 太空 - ‘taikong’ or ‘outer space’) blasted into the heavens on a Shenzhou spaceship in 2005

USA and Russia both staked their claim to superpower status during the height of the cold war. Their competing space programmes signified the apex of global military and technological advancement. But it was only the USA that was able to sustain this advantage and put a man on the moon in 1969. In 1972, Eugene Cernan was the last man on the moon and both China and the USA are speculating that the year 2020 will see a lunar return after half a century’s absence. My money will be on China.

While China’s space ambitions are not a state-held secret, what is unique will be its method of delivery. Very simply, China is in dire need of a overarching goal to drive its national agenda once the Beijing Olympics and Shanghai Expo are resigned to the history books. It is my belief that China’s next big national goal will be its space programme. More specifically, this generation of Chinese citizens will be compelled into the 21st century by seeing a Chinese person on the moon in 13 years time.

The Chinese having a saying: “旧不去，新不来” which basically means if the old does not go out then the new can not come in. At the moment, Shanghai and Beijing are the hotbed of China‘s national development goals. These are driving China‘s modernizations and its rise to global prominence. Just about nothing happens in Beijing that is not linked to some pre-Olympics goal and ditto goes for Shanghai’s hosting of the World Expo in 2010.

In Beijing this means teaching taxi drivers to speak English, cutting down on the fake DVD sellers on the roadside, banning spitting in public, encouraging metro manners and getting people to walk on the right side of passage. It has also meant massive infrastructural investments in new subway lines, high-speed trains, airport modernizations and of course hugely impressive sports stadiums and related infrastructure.

In Shanghai, the dawning of the World Expo in 2010 has meant (amongst other things) the construction of an 18km bridge to Chongming Island, adding a few dozen more metro stations to the grid, increasing the font size of local street signs, testing the world’s first 4G cell phone network and demolishing 3km of prime land on the banks of the Huangpu River.

In this light, the Chinese government has shown strategic smartness to the highest degree. There is nothing to smooth-over the difficult transition of moving a fifth of the world’s population from a communist to market society quite like having big aspirational goals on the horizon. This type of socio-economic evolution is painful at best and creating a sense of ‘future hope and present progress for the greater good’ is an imperative chasm-crossing feat.

Ever since I arrived in China, I have had much respect for how well the Chinese are capitalizing on the opportunity of hosting 2 of the 3 biggest events in the world. In some ways, I am also seeing the many lost opportunities that South Africa seem to be passing in the night as our Soccer World Cup stage draws closer.

Sure, we will hold a successful World Cup beyond all the eternal pessimists of the world that sell newspapers or who we have thankfully forever banished to Australian and New Zealand shores. However, where are the big housing, education and crime goals that should surely be proactively addressed through such a unique cause to unify the nation around?

However, realizing the just how important the Olympics and World Expo are to China’s bigger national cause and global interests, I have always been fascinating to ask “What Next?” There is little else on the global calendar to compare. What China needs is a massive externally focused goal. These are its characteristics:

• Bigger than just a city centric goal like Shanghai or Beijing
• From 2010 to 2020. Beyond this is too intangible a time span
• Aspirational goal of the highest possible military and technological achievement

This goal needs to combine China’s unique assets: its immense financial capacity, the long-term planning capabilities of an autocratic government, large doses of national pride and vast pool of intellectual resources to draw on. There is nothing else as tangible or logical to accommodate all these facets as putting a man on the moon. Not only is this something to unite the country around, but it is something that says to the rest of the world that China has finally arrived.

There are some shortcomings to contend with. China is often judged for where it is going rather than where it is. The reality is that it is many (many, many) years behind the USA’s current space prowess. It is catching up really fast and it has the extra capacity to catch up even faster. Money, smart vision and a big national goal can get a man on the moon and this is what inspired the US in the 1960s.

The second issue is one of pride. Simply putting a man on the moon is doing what the USA did 50 years ago. The Chinese definitely don’t want to emphasize that for all their advancement, they are still miles behind the USA. So expect the rhetoric and tweaks to come in so as to differentiate the two space programmes. While China is not the threat that Russia was, it is still a proud nation to contend with.

As I write this, China’s first lunar probe, Chang’e, is circling the moon and I am sure that China’s top brass are already contemplating the next big thing. With this in mind, I am happy to stick my neck out to predict that:

• The space programme will be China’s next big national goal after 2010
• The next person on the moon will be Chinese

(Source: Xinhua. Hot off the press. One of China’s first ever lunar photos taken by Chang’e I and published on 26 Nov 07)

(The old and the new of Shanghai. Our first apartment is in the distance. Photo: Julian Hewitt)

Bordering the East China Sea on one side and flanked by the Huangpu River on the other is Shanghai’s Pudong District. For all intents and purposes, Pudong is the golden child of the Chinese economy. The reason for this is that it does what no amount of facts, figures, GDP growth rates and statistics can ever do – and that is quite simply that Pudong puts a face to China’s economic miracle.

Go back 15 years and Pudong was essentially a smattering of low lying buildings and a collection of small scale agricultural plots supplying fresh produce to the city. Fast forward to 2007 and Pudong’s riverfront vista has to be one of the most impressive skylines in the world. Take Johannesburg’s tallest buildings and you would need to double their height to get a proper sense of Pudong’s scale.

Stare across the river at night and a rocket-like TV tower adorned with giant red spheres rises almost half a kilometer into the sky. Its impressive structure is bathed in light to capture every ounce of your imagination. To its right two massive skyscrapers compete for attention. The Jin Mao Tower stands at 88 storeys and has recently been eclipsed as the 95 storey World Financial Centre nears completion.

Someone one said that Pudong’s rice paddies were watered with money and it is a great metaphor to describe the frenetic-paced development taking place here. This really struck home when I recently tried to locate our flat using Google Earth’s satellite imaging. Instead of a huge complex that housed over two dozen, 30 storey apartment blocks, I found a vast track of dusty land and an old Chinese community nestled in the top corner.

The image on my computer screen had a rather surreal museum-like quality to it, and I felt a compulsion to locate other Shanghai landmarks I knew had not escaped the passage of time. Whole blocks of Shanghai’s old town replete with mazes of alleyways and old men playing Chinese Chess on the side of the road now stood in forlorn states of demolition. A massive swathe of industrial land between Shanghai’s bottom two bridges has been completely flattened to give way to what will blossom into the city’s 2010 World Expo venue.

It seems that Shanghai’s history is measured in months and years, not decades and generations. It’s the sort of change that affects living here on a month to month basis. For example, when we first arrived in the city, a gravel road connected our flat to my wife’s business school. Now, a brand new 2-lane highway has taken its place. The metro line I travel on everyday has been extended by 4 stops and a brand new line bisects it one stop up.

But it is the sheer scale and ambitions of the city’s development that I find most exciting. Shanghai’s 4000 plus skyscrapers already exceed that of New York City. The city’s 130km long metro line has another 400km in the planning or construction phases. The total figure will soon surpass the length of the London Underground. At the same time, the world’s longest trans-oceanic bridge is currently under development between Shanghai and the major seaport of Ningbo to the south. The 36km long bridge will reduce the current 4 hour journey to 1 hour.

To try and get a sense of the city’s dynamism, I enjoy frequenting a coffee shop alongside the Huangpu River to absorb myself in the many facets of the fascinating vista in front of me. The Huangpu is definitely no Riviera, so there are no yachts, no cruiseliners and no private jetties to be seen. It is a dirty, muddy coloured working-river punctuated with a plethora of barges going about their daily coal carrying, ore transporting duties.

The river makes for a perfect canvas to describe Shanghai. On the Pudong side, the massive skyscrapers and one of Asia’s most important financial hubs tower over the river. On the opposite bank, the elegant sophistication of classy sandstone buildings point to Shanghai’s strong colonial influences. In one panoramic view, Shanghai’s cosmopolitan past, industrial present and aspirational future make for rather odd acquaintances that merge into the city’s present.

If you go beyond the glitzy shopping malls and watch the city at work, whether it is the investment bankers in Pudong or the huge informal recycling community, you can start to tap into the essence of the city. What Shanghai does have in large doses is the kind of edgy energy than seems to punctuate some of the most dynamic cities in the world.

It is the same raw energy that you will find it in places like Johannesburg or New York City. Like Shanghai, these cities are melting pots of civilizations that attract people from far flung corners to play out their greatest dreams, or at the very least, to be standing in the theatre of those more fortunate.

There can be something quite disconcerting about watching the world change in front of your eyes. I like to call this the privilege of change – the opportunity to quite literally watch a society transform in front of you. I was lucky to live through South Africa’s political transformation and now I am living in the middle of one of the greatest economic miracles in modern times.

Despite all the paradoxes that change brings, there is one thing that I am certain about in Shanghai. While money does not grow on trees, it can do wonders for dusty tracks of land and rice paddies…