Seeing the future in Shanghai
A little while ago on an abnormally sunny summer’s day in London, I was standing outside the Wellington pub in Strand, London having a few beers with my old friend Peter. A usually animated speaker, Peter suddenly went quiet and stared somewhat vacantly at the buildings in Aldwych behind me.
“Marvellous idea,” he said.
“Yes,” I agreed, “nothing like a drop of London Pride on a warm summer’s day.”
“No, you twit,” exclaimed Peter irritably, “not the beer, Australia!”
“Australia?”
“Yes,” he said, “some clever clogs had a brainwave a few centuries ago. Ship out all the riff-raff from these shores to the colonies! Pity we couldn’t carry on doing it.”
Peter’s reverie had been triggered by the sight of the Australian flag flying from the rafters of Australia House in Aldwych. I was reminded of this last week when I read a newspaper article about the vast armies of Chinese manual labourers to be found in various pockets in Africa working on roads and railways. The article was written from the perspective of African ladies of the night who are none too pleased about these recent arrivals. Typically, foreign tourists and expatriate workers have proved easy pickings for hard working prostitutes in places like Mombasa but not the Chinese. Ascetic to a fault, these chaps are diligent and very well disciplined in all matters. But the article demonstrated to me that the Chinese have applied the logic of the eighteenth century Brits but sharpened it with a Chinese edge.
Offering African potentates development assistance in exchange for rights to extract much needed natural resources like base metals and oil is by no means a new game; the Europeans have been at it with varying degrees of intensity for centuries. It is also not new for Country A to lend money to Country B and then require that Country B use the same money to buy machinery and equipment from Country A and pay for professionals (architects, engineers, lawyers etc) from Country A. The money, in effect, never leaves Country A. The Chinese play this game applying the age old rules but with an added new twist: the money is also used in importing manual labourers – pick-axe wielders, bricklayers, stevedores, drivers, even spanner-boys – from the People’s Republic. This way, China gets the natural resources it needs but also solves any unemployment problems it may have while giving China its own “Australia solution”. Quite clever when you think about it.
The world is slowly waking up to the fact that these chaps from the east could just about be the cleverest on the planet. They look at things using a long telescope. The decision to invest in a grand prix circuit capable of hosting Formula One races was taken with a view to the future. Want to create a diversion from your nasty habit of sending in battle tanks to disrupt peaceful student demonstrations? Why, invite the glamour kids of the world to your largest city to drink champagne and watch cars being driven very fast round an expensive circuit! That should do it.
For simple chaps like me, it does. When I think of Shanghai I don’t think of unhappy looking people wearing green collarless jackets and waving little red books. I think instead of the 2008 Chinese Grand Prix which was so decisively won by Lewis Hamilton that the best efforts of the FIA and Ferrari to deny him any chance of winning the world championship were as nought (you may recall that he was gifted a heavy penalty of docked points after the preceding Japanese Grand Prix for a driving incident). Although it is still very early in the season, things are looking less rosy for Hamilton now than they did then but I would not put it past him.
Hamilton is one of five drivers – the others being Rubens Barrichello, Fernando Alonso, Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel - who could be the first to win the Chinese Grand Prix twice. For some reason – perhaps Chinese juju – nobody has stepped on the top step of the podium more than once since Rubens Barrichello won the first ever Chinese Grand Prix in 2004. Barrichello doesn’t stand much of a chance this year but any of the others could do it. If the track favours a particular manufacture that manufacturer would have to be Ferrari. With their three wins – 2004, 2006 and 2007 - they are the only team to have won in China more than once. By this reckoning the race should belong to either Fernando Alonso or Felipe Massa. The latter of the two Ferrari men looks the most comfortable in the 2010 Ferrari and could just be in the running for his first win of the season.
There is, however, a chap itching to settle an argument. Ever since Michael Schumacher announced his return to Formula One, writers on the subject – including this one – have argued that it was a mistake. I have always thought that Schumacher was not ready to retire at the end of 2006 and should have kept going even if it meant driving for another team. Heavy pressure to leave the team was exerted upon him by the Ferrari bosses, though, and, feeling that it would be an act of extreme disloyalty to drive for the opposition, Schumacher opted to retire early.
Three years later, the driving itch proved stronger than the guilt provoked by disloyalty to a team which had given him five successive world championships and he agreed to sign up with the new Mercedes team. But three years away was three years too many. Too much technological development happens in three years. Worse, too much deterioration happens to the human body each year after the magic figure of 35. Still, Schumacher’s last win was in China in 2006 and it would give him enormous personal satisfaction if he was able to get the press off his back by a win on Sunday.
This is the last of the early morning races before Formula One comes home to Europe, so I presume you will be wolfing down bacon and eggs as you settle down to,
Enjoy Shanghai!
Gitau
15 April 2010
“Marvellous idea,” he said.
“Yes,” I agreed, “nothing like a drop of London Pride on a warm summer’s day.”
“No, you twit,” exclaimed Peter irritably, “not the beer, Australia!”
“Australia?”
“Yes,” he said, “some clever clogs had a brainwave a few centuries ago. Ship out all the riff-raff from these shores to the colonies! Pity we couldn’t carry on doing it.”
Peter’s reverie had been triggered by the sight of the Australian flag flying from the rafters of Australia House in Aldwych. I was reminded of this last week when I read a newspaper article about the vast armies of Chinese manual labourers to be found in various pockets in Africa working on roads and railways. The article was written from the perspective of African ladies of the night who are none too pleased about these recent arrivals. Typically, foreign tourists and expatriate workers have proved easy pickings for hard working prostitutes in places like Mombasa but not the Chinese. Ascetic to a fault, these chaps are diligent and very well disciplined in all matters. But the article demonstrated to me that the Chinese have applied the logic of the eighteenth century Brits but sharpened it with a Chinese edge.
Offering African potentates development assistance in exchange for rights to extract much needed natural resources like base metals and oil is by no means a new game; the Europeans have been at it with varying degrees of intensity for centuries. It is also not new for Country A to lend money to Country B and then require that Country B use the same money to buy machinery and equipment from Country A and pay for professionals (architects, engineers, lawyers etc) from Country A. The money, in effect, never leaves Country A. The Chinese play this game applying the age old rules but with an added new twist: the money is also used in importing manual labourers – pick-axe wielders, bricklayers, stevedores, drivers, even spanner-boys – from the People’s Republic. This way, China gets the natural resources it needs but also solves any unemployment problems it may have while giving China its own “Australia solution”. Quite clever when you think about it.
The world is slowly waking up to the fact that these chaps from the east could just about be the cleverest on the planet. They look at things using a long telescope. The decision to invest in a grand prix circuit capable of hosting Formula One races was taken with a view to the future. Want to create a diversion from your nasty habit of sending in battle tanks to disrupt peaceful student demonstrations? Why, invite the glamour kids of the world to your largest city to drink champagne and watch cars being driven very fast round an expensive circuit! That should do it.
For simple chaps like me, it does. When I think of Shanghai I don’t think of unhappy looking people wearing green collarless jackets and waving little red books. I think instead of the 2008 Chinese Grand Prix which was so decisively won by Lewis Hamilton that the best efforts of the FIA and Ferrari to deny him any chance of winning the world championship were as nought (you may recall that he was gifted a heavy penalty of docked points after the preceding Japanese Grand Prix for a driving incident). Although it is still very early in the season, things are looking less rosy for Hamilton now than they did then but I would not put it past him.
Hamilton is one of five drivers – the others being Rubens Barrichello, Fernando Alonso, Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel - who could be the first to win the Chinese Grand Prix twice. For some reason – perhaps Chinese juju – nobody has stepped on the top step of the podium more than once since Rubens Barrichello won the first ever Chinese Grand Prix in 2004. Barrichello doesn’t stand much of a chance this year but any of the others could do it. If the track favours a particular manufacture that manufacturer would have to be Ferrari. With their three wins – 2004, 2006 and 2007 - they are the only team to have won in China more than once. By this reckoning the race should belong to either Fernando Alonso or Felipe Massa. The latter of the two Ferrari men looks the most comfortable in the 2010 Ferrari and could just be in the running for his first win of the season.
There is, however, a chap itching to settle an argument. Ever since Michael Schumacher announced his return to Formula One, writers on the subject – including this one – have argued that it was a mistake. I have always thought that Schumacher was not ready to retire at the end of 2006 and should have kept going even if it meant driving for another team. Heavy pressure to leave the team was exerted upon him by the Ferrari bosses, though, and, feeling that it would be an act of extreme disloyalty to drive for the opposition, Schumacher opted to retire early.
Three years later, the driving itch proved stronger than the guilt provoked by disloyalty to a team which had given him five successive world championships and he agreed to sign up with the new Mercedes team. But three years away was three years too many. Too much technological development happens in three years. Worse, too much deterioration happens to the human body each year after the magic figure of 35. Still, Schumacher’s last win was in China in 2006 and it would give him enormous personal satisfaction if he was able to get the press off his back by a win on Sunday.
This is the last of the early morning races before Formula One comes home to Europe, so I presume you will be wolfing down bacon and eggs as you settle down to,
Enjoy Shanghai!
Gitau
15 April 2010
posted by Gitau at 3:15 pm
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