China-bound

The People’s Republic of China, once a pariah and "doomed" to failure in the world’s eyes after the June 1989 Tienanmen Square "massacre," is now the Travel Destination of the Year. In ancient times, the saying went that "all roads lead to Rome." Not anymore. Even Wal-Mart and Starbucks – and yes, Versace – are making a beeline for China.

The other day, French President Jacques Chirac was in Beijing, portrayed on the front pages shaking hands with China’s Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing – a "hail-fellow-well-met", I well recall, and a former aide and translator of the late Chairman Deng Xiaoping.

I first met him with Chairman Deng in the Fujian Room of the Great Hall of the People when this writer, as a member of the Philippines’ Foreign Policy Council, accompanied the late Vice-President and concurrently Foreign Affairs Secretary Salvador Laurel to Beijing in 1988.

It was at that session that Deng first announced to us that the Spratlys "belonged" to China.

"What do you call our Nansha Islands?" That’s what he had asked Doy and our group.

Vice-President Laurel, in a stage whisper heard all over the room, turning to us, inquired: "Ano ba yung (expletive deleted) Nansha islands?"

I whispered back, lamely, "I think he’s referring to Admiral Cloma’s Freedom Land off Palawan." Beside me, the late Ambassador Luis Moreno Salcedo – one of our finest diplomats who looked like one, too – correctly replied: "It’s our Kalayaan islands, sir!"

Deng blinked, grinned impishly, and remarked in his heavily-accented Sichuan-Mandarin: "Whatever you call it, don’t forget those islands belong to China – but let’s leave a debate on that for another day. In the meantime, let’s have a friendly discussion."

He was a non-stop chain-smoker who lit each fresh cigarette from the glowing tip of the one which was down to the butt. He also would spit into a spittoon (at his left foot, naturally) with uncanny accuracy. It had been suave Li Zhaoxing (later Ambassador to the US) who finessed the charming, small but powerful Deng’s remarks into smooth diplomatese.

We laughed over that incident when we met in Malacañang a few months ago.

Mr. Li continues to be in the news. Last Saturday, there he was smiling toothily in a five-column top of the front page photograph, with a grim-looking US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had gone to Beijing to ask China to help break the stalemate over North Korea’s nuclear bomb.

The next pilgrim to China is obviously our own La Presidenta, who’s departing for Xiamen at 8 a.m. today aboard a PAL Airbus A330-300 at the Villamor Airbase.

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The biggest invasion of China (after those of Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s many years ago) is that of "STARBUCKS" coffee. Indeed, when you walk out of the luggage pick-up and Customs zone in Beijing’s international airport, the first thing you see before you is a "STARBUCKS" along with Kentucky Fried Chicken. (Perhaps you should have stayed home? Sus, there goes the fairy tale abut an exotic China, imbued with the mysteries of the East. It’s now wolfing down the overpriced coffee of the West).

According to reports, "STARBUCKS" plans to roll out about 100 new stores a year in China. The coffee chain’s ambition is to establish a network in China that will rival its outlets in the United States itself. They used to attack "Coca-Colonialism" in the Far East, Middle East and Europe during the Cold War era as the evil imperialistic force emanating from capitalist America. Today, they’ll have to buck "STARBUCKS" – which has established 40,000 cafes and outlets all over the planet!

That company has opened over 200 stores in China since 1999 and plans to push into the hinterland. By gosh, even when you take a romantic dinner-cruise on the Huang Pu river which separates Shanghai proper and Pudong, there you see the "STARBUCKS" neon blazing over its riverside cafe in the Pudong bank, and a few meters down that of McDonald’s. In Huangzhou, where the honeymoon paradise of West Lake lies, there are "STARBUCKS" downtown (beside Haagen Dazs) and beside the lake, too, in Huangzhou’s snazzy replica of Xintiandi.

Another Western designer icon going into China is "Versace," now being run by Donatella Versace, sister of the late Gianni Versace – who, by the way, had been murdered by one of his . . . uh, intimate friends, an American of Filipino origin. Donatella, according to Tom Mitchell of the Financial Times who wrote a report yesterday on Ms. Versace’s plan to set up nine more stores in China by the end of next year. The budget for it is allegedly euros 8 million or $10 million. Versace currently has five wholly-owned outlets in the country, including three in Hong Kong and one each in Beijing and Shanghai.

Why in China which is notorious for counterfeit copies and knock-offs of famous brand names, including Versace itself, Armani, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Fendi, Christian Dior, etc.? Apparently, there are many big buyers in China among the nouveau riche (my Shanghai friends call them "the upstarts") who made money fast and insist on purchasing only the real thing.

Perhaps Donatella is right. If you can’t lick the copycats – join ’em.

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Ever since this writer got back from Shanghai, naughty people have been . . . well, pestering me as to where the clandestine stalls peddling the knock-offs and counterfeit "designer" goods which used to be openly and blatantly sold in Shanghai’s biggest tiangge, an open-air market called Xiangyang Fashion Mart can now be found.

The market, a mecca for tourists and out-of-towners who flocked to Shanghai to shop for years – where you could snap up Rolex, IWC, Cartier, Patek-Phillip, Omega, etc. watches for peanuts, or the biggest brands in handbags, luggage, Burberry coats, and all sorts of clothing, including one-dollar "Armani" socks – in sharp contrast in terms of price to those genuine items being sold in Three-on-the-Bund – was closed down with much fanfare by the Shanghai authorities a few months ago.

The Chinese government thus "appeased" the US and the European Union which were grumping over the insolent runaway theft of "intellectual property." In sum, the disappearance of Xiangyang Market was a major blow to eager bargain hunters.

After some research done by my underground sources, we discovered that some of the shops had relocated themselves – secretly? – to air-conditioned three-by-three or four-by-four outlets in Pudong.

If you’ll recall, when the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) ministers met in Shanghai the other year, they convened in the streamlined Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, in Century Square – the very hinterland of the Pudong New Area occupying an area of 96,000 sq. meters. The unique ovate hall occupies a site of 70,000 cubic meters by itself, and is ultra-modern, crystalline and glittering at night.

Anyway, the APEC delegates angrily condemned counterfeiting and "theft of intellectual property" in their meeting there. Guess where you’ll find the refugee shops from Xiangyang? In the underground corridors radiating from the admission ticket booth of the Museum (and Casino) – yep, that’s where the Chinese impudently concealed them! Hey, get there quick before they move again. The US spooks, and European revenue investigators are hot on their trail.

If you’re after excellent, very low-priced garments, shirts, blouses, scarves, sportswear, luggage, in fact everything in a cornucopia of excess, you don’t have to go to Pudong. Just ten minutes by taxi from The Bund in Shanghai are buildings containing thousands of tiny stalls, overflowing with goods. Although you’ll see some fake designer brands, most of them carry Chinese labels but are of the same quality – and cost only from ten to 120 yuan or RMB.

Don’t forget, many Western designer labels are manufactured "on license" by the Chinese and these goods probably come from the same factories or sweat shops.

The teeming avenue where these shops are located – on either side – is Qi Pu street (pronounced, significantly, chipu). The other side of the street is Shin Qi Pu ("New" Chipu).

Don’t get me wrong. As a Saluyot, I’m not a world-class shopper, not even a low-class shopper. I just like walking around to see how people live and work.

Anyway, this is your free "guide" to Shanghai’s shopping delights. The food there, too, is delicious, representing almost every cuisine in China in a metropolis of 16 million where everybody goes. But in that department, I’m no expert, so ask somebody else. Just as there are shops endlessly from corner to corner, for instance along Chang Li Road in Pudong, there’s a restaurant or food outlet in the same profusion.

When we were kids, my grandmother used to admonish us: "Eat, eat – don’t you know people are starving in China?"

In China these days, grandmas probably tell their grandchildren to eat everything on their plate, "because people are starving in the Philippines."

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Not everything is hunky-dory in China, though. The biggest corruption scandal is the subject of ongoing investigation in Shanghai where the Party Boss himself, a member of the ruling Politburo is under arrest.

Some 17,500 officials all over have been arrested, too.

Last year, the party committee responsible for party discipline investigated about 147,000 corruption cases. The People’s Supreme Court has reported that over 10,000 officials were convicted on corruption charges in the first six months of 2006. The indication there is that this may only be the tip of the iceberg – but at least those caught are being convicted.

What about over here in our country?

Some get away, even in China’s . . . uh police state. The Ministry of Commerce itself recently estimated that 4,000 officials (as reported by Jim Yardley of The New York Times) have fled overseas in recent years, taking with them $50 billion in embezzled money. In 2005, Yardley went on to reveal, the National Audit Office found $35 billion in state funds "misappropriated."

If we had a real honest-to-goodness investigation here, the mind boggles as to what we might find. That Fertilizer Scandal which hugs the headlines up to now would look like some petty caper.

Anyhow, our Presidenta is China-bound. By the time she gets back on November 3, I trust she’ll bring back a few ideas about infrastructure improvement, building, efficiency – and fighting corruption.

China is not democratic. China has still a long way to go. Probably more than 250 million migrant workers are being cruelly exploited in their own country. There have been 75,000 peasant demonstrations in a country where the peasantry once won for Mao Zedong a great Communist Revolution. But China is striving and trying. Here, unless we get off our self-complacent butts, it will be the status quo forever. And the status quo is disappointing – and, worse, often disgusting.

We talk endlessly about our EDSA People Power Revolution. Yet, EDSA itself remains the dirtiest, dingiest, darkest, most traffic-clogged highway in the world.