The economy is fine over here, guys!

Go East, young man!

That is a cry that I have heard before, and that I continue to shout out.

For foreigners working in Beijing, the wages are still plenty high, and the job openings are still far higher than the number of candidates (and WAY higher than the number of qualified candidates, but that is whole other issue). A couple times a month I tend to get an email or a text message from some lady who put me on her list of foreigners. These always contain jobs which I know I could easily get if I just showed up and didn't act like an idiot. In fact, anyone who is a native English speaker (or who can pass for one) and is able to conduct themselves even vaguely professionally should be able to do these jobs. Having some kind of a teaching certification helps, but it is by no means necessary (I don't have one). Being white also is a benefit. I know non-white foreigners who work as English teachers, but there is a good deal of discrimination against people with black or brown skin, and especially against people with an Asian appearance. The way I see it, I am effectively turning down job offers. This is an email I got last week (I didn't edit it at all), and it is pretty representative of the kind of thing I am sent regularly:

Hello,

Here is some jobs details.If you need more information please let me know.

1.Full time teaching job at Beigao in Shunyi.The kids are about 2 to 4 yrs old.We need a female teacher who got experience in taking care of the little kids.The teaching hours now is not too many.It's about 10 hrs but will pay you the full time salary.Working time at the beginning will be by days on some weekdays.

They can pay 10,000 or more(depends on the teacher) plus some benefits.

2.Full time job in Tongzhou.The working time is from 8am to 3pm.It has lunch break.The working days are from Monday to Friday.They pay about 10,000 or more plus some benefits too.

3.An 8 yrs old girl's lived in Austrialia for a long time.They prefer the teacher from england.Also the teacher can talk with the girl about some daily life english.The working time will be on the whole saturday or Sunday.She lives by western 2nd ring road.Pay 150 per hour.

4.Full time job in Huilongguan by line 13.Working time is from 9am to 2:30pm from Monday to Friday.The students are aobut 4.5 to 6 yrs old.Pay about 11,000 including bonus,airplane tikets,insurance and accommodations.

5.Sub teacher for 2 weeks in Wangjing.Every Mon,Wed and Fri from 10am to 12am.The kids are about 5 yrs old.Pay 150 per hour.

If you got any friends who're interested in it please contact me.We're going to pay you the fee for introduction.

Best,

Jade

This isn't something that I am doing to make myself highly marketable or anything. That is the market here. People here are DESPERATE for English teachers; for their young children to get them ahead in life, for themselves for corporate promotions, and for high schools and universities because English is a required subject in the national curriculum. I gotta tell you guys: if you are having trouble finding work in the U.S., come over to Beijing and I will help you get settled in and find a job. One friend who I know from college (and potentially two more) are already making plans to come here to work. Wages are plenty (especially considering the cost of living), and enough can easily be made to pay off college debt (as long as your monthly payments are less than $750 a month you can handle it). [EDIT: If you have to pay off $750/month, you can afford it, but your lifestyle will definitely have to involve a lot more frugality and cutting corners] Aside from basic wages from a full-time job, you can easily get more money by teaching private classes on the side. There is high demand for foreigners to teach preschool classes on weekends as well as private one-on-one tutoring, which tends to pay upwards of 120元 ($20/hour). You don't even have to speak Chinese to live here!

 You don't have to come to China though! You could go South too! Economic growth in Latin America has recovered quickly, and economic growth is making Africa a land of opportunity. Indeed, I get the impression that the globe has basically recovered from the economic crises... except for North American and Europe. If you get out of the developed, industrialized, advanced OECD countries, things suddenly brighten up. The rest of the world still has so much growing to do that despite being a catastrophe for many individuals in the U.S. and western Europe, the global financial crisis didn't set the global south back nearly as much, and things are looking back on track already in many countries. So good, that

 "...growth in developing countries is estimated to reach 6.1 percent in 2010, 5.9 percent in 2011, and 6.1 percent in 2012, while growth in high-income countries is estimated at 2.3 percent, 2.4 percent, and 2.6 percent respectively. This trend would mean the collective size of developing-country economies would surpass that of developed-country economies in 2015."

According to a paper published by the Brazil Institute, Brazilian exports are "projected to reach the pre-financial crisis high mark of $180 billion by the end of 2010." The global economic crisis had a relatively "muted" effect on India, according to the U.S. government, while Asia and Africa are the only two regions where GDP rose during 2009's global recession.

Reading a little about this stuff really makes me feel that I turned an eye to the world outside of the U.S. at the right time. I am vaguely planning on staying outside of the U.S. for the next several years anyway, and although I will make a stop in Europe, it is mostly the developing parts of the world that interest me more.

At least there is some good news in the world (or, a billion links with what I read recently)

I am so glad to find news that is not related to the mid-term elections in the United States. Even all of my regular foreign and international focused news sources have been running material about the elections.

Other than a new mysterious writer in China, the PRC government trying to throw it's wight around (once again, like an immature schoolyard who has suddenly realized that he is bigger than most of the other kids on the playground) bully to influence European governments and some entertaining multicultural iconic romance, there has been a lot of writing about India recently, presumably due to the upcoming Obama visit. I assume it will made away after Obama leaves south Asia.

I just read that, according to a UN study, the world is now better off since people are, in general, "healthier, richer and better educated than ever before, with most developing countries registering huge gains over the last 40 years." With a more critical perspective, however, a Foreign Policy article on the subject mentions how inequality is still high. Fortunatly, alternatives do exist, even if many of them are a bit idealistic rather then practical, some make a difference.

In what I see as positive news, two fairly bright fellows have made a comparison between China's current state and that of the United States of America in the mid 19th century. I think zooming out to this kind of a big picture is something that Americans (myself included) do not do often enough, but I suspect that it may be a basic part of Chinese culture to look at the bigger picture and interpret things more holistically and with more context.

Okay, so add in a plane nearly crashing into Singapore and a volcano and I guess that more things are happening in the world than just the U.S. mid-term elections.

A few quick references

Just a quick reference to a blog entry written by Daniel W. Drezner of Foreign Policy (a blog that was introduced to by through the writings of a former classmate, actually): it speaks fairly straight forward and clearly as to the domestic political issues of the Unites States and the tension that these issues have with Foreign Policy issues.

Also, a fairly long narrative about the political experiences of Thomas M. Engelhardt and his view of the most recent mid-term election. It struck me as a piece which was very nicely put together, and it lacked a lot of the anger or the passion that it often present in political writings. I very much enjoyed reading such a calm and contemplative piece.

Chinese views of the U.S.

In a recent post from a site I follow (which basically just translates popular Chinese BBS topics) I was suddenly reminded as to how ignorant people can be of things that are far away, that they perceive as having a very small impact on their lives, and which they have no personal experience of. I am sure that this can apply to many countries and many peoples. How many U.S. citizens know where Suriname is? How many Europeans understand the ethnic/linguistic diversity of China? How many South Africans know how the Japanese political system work? Of course, is also is perfectly logical to me that people are unaware of things that are completely irrelevant to their everyday life. I myself, in a slightly confrontational situation, was made aware of this in myself about a year ago when a Russian acquaintance berated me for having never even heard of the largest city in the eastern half of Russia. But what my attention was drawn to from this article in specific where some of the comments people had written which described situations in other countries. Rather than summarizing them, I think I will just post these in their entirety below:

英语绵绵 (on Tianya) & 七夜 (on LiuLiu):

All this is easy to fix, just use violence. China uses the hukou system to keep the poor population from settling in cities, and then uses chengguan [thuggish city management officials who are supposed to keep order on the streets but who often end up abusing citizens, see here and here] to beat the rabble to death. The cities will then look very nice.

bjwh50: (responding to above comment)

Actually, this is exactly how America does it, using violence to beat the Indians [Native Americans] to death, pushing the Asian, African, and poor out into the country, running the poor white people into the surrounding outskirts of the cities. America’s police are even more terrible than China’s chengguan. If you’re within two meters of a police officer, you have to raise your hands, otherwise American police have the right to shoot you dead.

The specific thing that I find interesting is the claim of the second poster (bjwh50) that "If you’re within two meters of a police officer, you have to raise your hands, otherwise American police have the right to shoot you dead." I do not know where the poster got this opinion, but the fact that it is being expressed, and therefore spread, is somewhat alarming to me. I readily admit that the U.S. police force is far from the best in the world, for I also know that this claim isn't true (right?). If this kind of mis-information is common on the Chinese-language internet, then the perceptions of many Chinese people toward the U.S. might be based off a a United States which is quite different from the real United States. Of course, U.S. citizens do the same thing to China.

Anti-China sentiment in the U.S., protectionism & nationalism

A fear mongering video which seems to predict the coming fall of the United Stated alongside the rise of China had become a bit of a sensation. It is very high-quality, and its nationalist/xenophobic message is shortly (but nicely) critiqued here. It has also spawned a parody which signifigantly alters the political message. This add in particular, and the anti-China/pro-China retoric in the United States in gerneal, is critiqued quite well in one of my favorite China watcher blogs.

There have also been some very xenophobic and anti-Chinese attack adds paid by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as a part of the U.S. election. One add implies that living outside the United States is somehow bad (one of the last things we need is fewer U.S. citizens going aborad and experiencing the greater world). These attack adds are nicely analyzed here. Indeed, since seeing the Obama presidency, taking a class in which the professor stressed the inefficiency of the U.S. political process, and now seeing some of the lunacy of this election, I am pretty much fed up with the current United Stated style of democracy, which I think consists of insults, the loud stating of claims without significant factual basis, and one's favorite color of a binary option. Seeing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's homepage just amplifies my view of U.S. democracy as a one-on-one fight between two giants in which money matters more than anything else. I am gonna have to get dual citizenship in another country someday.

There is a brief call for logic and sanity when thinking about international economics here. Indeed, the very way that international trade and the assembly of products works nowadays makes traditional ideas of national origin rather obsolete. Using the example of Apple's iPod (how ubiquitous can this product and brand become?), Shikha Dalmia writes:

"Think about the IPod, for instance. It is designed in America and its 451 parts are made in dozens of different countries. But just because it is finally assembled in China, it officially counts as a Chinese import and therefore a contributor to America’s trade deficit — never mind that the Chinese add only $4 to the IPod’s $150 final value. Imposing duties on IPods to slash the deficit, then, won’t just cost Chinese jobs  in Beijing assembly plants, but American jobs in Cupertino (Apple’s headquarters) computer labs."

A recent WTO speech by Pascal Lamy focused on a nearly identical topic, and I consider it well worth reading in full as a reminder to not get caught up in the rhetoric of economically protectionist and politically nationalist arguments.