Beneath the glamour
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11/01/2002
To me the Oriental Pearl Tower looks like something out of a Star Wars movie. In fact pretty much everything east of the Huangpu serves as a megaphone for Shanghai's status and potential. With people left, right and centre all declaring a bright future, trade expansion, economic growth etc., it's very easy to get carried away and forget that we actually live in today.It's especially hard as a foreigner to get over this superficiality. When a foreign visitor asks me about Oxford, the division between students and locals, the seedy nightspots and the Saturday night drunken brawls are not the first thing I tell them about. Of course not, instead I tell them that Charles I used Oxford as his Capital during the civil war and that Bill Clinton "didn't inhale" 10 minutes up the road from my house. Time is the only factor that brings transparency to hype in general, and it's something that I have not yet been endowed with. Yet certain elements are just poking through Shanghai's opaque facade. Despite millions of new labourers entering the job market each year, an abundance of rural surplus labourers and a number of workers being laid off by State-owned enterprises, it is still difficult for me to perceive any feeling of insecurity. With any great change, though, comes a certain amount of suffering. The law of averages suggests there will always be some who do not benefit from a very beneficial change, while at the same time there are those who benefit from a disaster. Unemployment rates that have climbed in parallel to Shanghai's gross domestic product suggest this may be one of the government's biggest challenges in the coming years. It is a challenge that they are visibly tackling. Internship opportunities and training schemes, designed to meet the demands of a changing market, amount to preventative measures, while social security reform aims to insure the unemployed. Entrance into the World Trade Organization will certainly mean further restructuring of China's and, therefore, Shanghai's economy. According to Zhang Zuoji, minister of Labour and Social Security, national unemployment will rise to 8 million this year from 6.81 million in 2001. A City with such a promising exterior will no doubt attract those looking for work. That human minds thrive on aesthetics is a curse when trying to comprehend new surroundings. I always find that if I truly want to understand something I have to close my eyes before looking at it. Most would agree that today's Shanghai is the rest of China's tomorrow, so what is Shanghai's tomorrow? Perhaps it is better to wait and see, and concentrate on today.
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