Dominiek.com

On my way back from the booming city of Shanghai I was reading this article in my newspaper: China, the pretend superpower. It explains how most of us in the west here overestimate China. The media is full of the 'next big superpower', but I think I have to agree with this critical article: it's still far from it.

It is true however, that the great People's Republic of China's economy is surging. During my stay in China I could notice that in the vastness of skyscrapers, the huge consumer markets and the supply of luxury goods. When you see the tremendous mass of people and rapid change, it's almost absurd not to consider China as the next superpower.

But when we look careful at all these things we start to see things. When we start looking at the little details, we notice that something is missing. For example when we look at the high capital buildings scraping the sky, it looks all very nice. But when we enter them and start looking at corners ceilings and the less obvious places, we can see that no attention to details is paid. You notice the same when eating a meal in a simple western restaurant. Often, quantity is chosen over quality.

One evening my girlfriend and I we're watching the opening of the 2007 sailing race in Qingdao. This sailing race was a test run for the Bejing Olympics of 2008. The Chinese arranged a big opening ceremony with musical performances and huge fireworks. It lasted very long. During this ceremony we finally realized something that was on the tip of our tong all along. China wants to be part of it. China wants to be part of it so bad, that they are putting in so much energy to the point where it's just too much. The tremendous amount of energy put in to the change is often misdirected and ill spend.

For example the Maglev train from Pudong airport to downtown. It's a very expensive project which will never be economically sustainable, but it looks hell a cool, especially for the Expo 2010. And that's one of the nice things about this communist regime: not everything has to be capitalistically justified. Often China's communism is seen as an unstable factor in future economic projections. I think this is true, but unstable doesn't have to be bad. If a way is found to actually combat corruption (for example by dropping censureship policies), a more socialistic system could even speed up the overall welfare and mindsets of this nation.

One thing is undeniable. China has vast lands with the biggest slice of our earth's population. Both the old and new culture can be beautiful and is very interesting. We will start seeing more and more Chinese culture into our western lives. I like it.