News from China
A friend of ours currently living in China came to stay with us for a one-week visit. He is well-known to us and has been living and working very intensely there during the last few months. His reports from China include the following information:
- The German automobile industry did a good job in China and the “German” models can be seen all around the place on Chinese streets.
- VW, in particular, is a huge success with their own, very economically priced (compared to what they cost here) cars.
- In China, you do not drive your own car. Instead, you hire someone who drives you around.
- A chauffeur in China earns less than a salesperson at the Chinese McDonalds, because a chauffeur usually need not speak English, whereas a McDonalds salesperson is expected to.
- The reason Audi is such a success in China is that Audi were the first manufacturers to understand about China being a “chauffeur country”. Consequently, Audi were the first to offer economically priced chauffeur limousines with a long wheel base (A4 and A6), while the competition started out with only the “true” chauffeur limousines” like the 7 and S class models as extra long-wheeled cars in the premium class.
- The price paid in blood on the streets of China is unbelievably high by our standards, yet the cars and taxis usually have no seat belts. And if they have seat belts, you cannot use them because of the seat covers.It would be a “deadly” insult for your driver if you insisted on using your seat belt.
However, we did not exclusively talk cars. I also learned that:
- the social situation in China is “precarious” (huge class differences, conflicts will naturally arise),the Chinese speed keeps reaching new records (especially with respect to copying with the top-down approach),
- more and more products sold by the world monopolists are made in China (batteries, containers, …),
- The “Chinese” apply their business model rigorously. (The winner takes it all, and the winner is China),
- The European competition can no longer rely on their lead in high technology (so on what else can we rely?),
- In China, the development of infra structure such as roads is typically based on n tracks on m levels, without taking any detrimental effects into consideration. (Of course, nobody cares what it will look like in 20 years or who is supposed to pay for it),
- All citizens of Shanghai had free admission to a no-longer-up-to-modern-standards Expo (unlike Hannover).
I also heard silly things, for example that air conditioning is set to 26 degrees Celsius in winter? And serious things, for example that you must never eat everything that is on your plate. If you do so, you are signalling to your host that the food was not enough.
What worries me most on hearing these tales is that I hear tendencies that remind me of a time in our own past. That idea truly gives me pause. Luckily, I was born more than a decade too late for it.
🙂 Perhaps I will some day go to China (of course by bike and train) and then I will write my own report. But then I will need a VPN tunnel, because after hearing my friend talk, it seems to me that the internet restrictions are a lot more serious in China than I thought.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
The two pictures were taken by Hans-Peter Kuhn (HPK), when he travelled to China by rail.
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