Mighty Yuan

I readily felt I was back in action in Manila upon arrival from an official trip to China after I watched the late night news last Wednesday on the continuing anti-government protest rallies in Mendiola.

It reminded me of a joke about a conversation between a Filipino tourist guide and a foreigner. It goes this way.

— A Pinoy tourist guide talking to a foreign guest: As you can see, this cockfighting game is the No. 2 most favorite national pastime in the Philippines.

— Foreigner: Ugh, it’s revolting!

— No, madam. That's the No.1 national pastime in the Philippines!

Funny but it is a sad commentary on the prevailing situation in our country. While Filipinos claw each other down like crabs, our neighboring countries like China, both their peoples and governments, are busy and preoccupied with how to make their nations prosper and spread the wealth to as many and as widely as it can trickle down to the countryside.

I would not be surprised if the Philippine economy, especially the country’s currency, continues to weaken amid this self-inflicted political instability.

It is such a woeful reality. I have seen while I was in China how these turmoils in our body politic have left us behind in the global race for economic prosperity.

A high-ranking Chinese official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) had a slip of the tongue about a projected readjustment anew of the yuan, the official currency of China. It is also called RMB.

On the last day of my stay in China, I asked his assistance to help me change my remaining 1,600 yuan back to US dollars. This was equivalent to $200. He, however, advised me against doing so, saying I will get less than $200 to change my yuan. The prevailing official exchange rate in China is 8 yuan per one US dollar. One yuan, on the other hand, is equivalent to more than P7.

In his ebullience, the young MFA official complained that the growing strength of the yuan vis a vis the US dollar has substantially cut his monthly salary, paid to them in US dollars at the Chinese MFA. Just five months ago, he recalled, he got the equivalent of 8.3 Yuan to $1. But now, he rues, his monthly take home pay is less by 3 Jiaos (equivalent to 30 centavos) per dollar and multiplied many times over.

The same Chinese MFA official disclosed their central bank is set to raise the interest rate by two percentage points and this will definitely further boost the value of the yuan.

Under the five-year development plan approved last Oct. 10 in the Central Plenum of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese leadership has laid down the economic growth directions of their country to bring prosperity to all of their 1.3 billion people.

At the end of our ten-day program in the just concluded China-Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Joint Press Delegation, we were toured around Shenzhen City in the Province of Guangdong. Guangdong, formerly known as Canton, is located in the southern part of China.

We were very much impressed by the great strides made in the information communications technology (ICT) industry in China based on what we saw in our visit to the two giants in the telecommunications industry, Zongching Telecom Equipment (ZTE) and Huawei Technologies in the Shenzhen industrial park.

Huawei, in April this year, won the bid to provide GSM (Global Mobile Solution) network coverage service in Manila for Digitel Philippines. ZTE, while 20 percent owned by the Chinese government, is also a publicly listed telecom firm, registered in both Shenzhen and the Hongkong Stock Exchanges.

But while China has greatly advanced in the production of such telecom equipment and devices, there is so much room for improvements in their service carriers, especially in the inter-connectivity of their telecom firms. As I have experienced in China, I had to change my SIM card twice when we travelled to another province to enable me to use their pre-paid international roaming cell phone service.

The funny thing is even in the choice of number for SIM cards, you have to pay a much higher price if you want to have the "lucky" numbers for your cellphone. Those with triple 8, 6 or 9, must pay at least 80 to 100 Yuan. The less desired numbers like 1, 4, or 7 are priced at 50 Yuan.

These two telecom giants in China are both multi-billion dollar earners for their country in terms of sales of telecom equipment, devices, and solutions ranging from mobile cellular phones either as PHS (personal handy system); CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access); FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access); TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access); and, WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access). Don’t ask me about those devices because I am not exactly a techie.

Although they may have developed and even patented the most advanced high-tech telecom equipment and devices, China admittedly still has to make a lot of improvements in the communication skills of their people, specifically, the ability to speak English.

The Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee (BUCOG) has informed us that there is on-going intensive training in English language proficiency taking place in their country, especially for those in front line services like taxicab drivers, hotel and airport workers, even their policemen, in time for the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008. Having modern communications equipment is one thing, but talking in the most understandable language is another.

While on tour of the two telecom firms, Singapore Straits Time Beijing-based reporter, Tracy Quek shared a joke with us related to this. Three teams of archeologists, one from America, one from Singapore and one from Malaysia, went on a digging expedition. The American team dug 1,000 feet deep, and found cables and wires and exclaimed, "America is the most advanced because we have the cable wires which gave birth to telephones." Then, the team of Singapore dug deeper and reached 2,000 feet and found submarine cables and exclaimed, "Singapore is more advanced because we have the cable network that made Internet possible." When it was the turn of the Malaysians, they dug to 3,000 feet but found nothing and exclaimed "We’re the most advanced nation because we are wireless!"

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