The Holiday Chengdu

A large part of yesterday was spent walking around the Renmin Nan Lu area where our hotel is and the impression one gets is that this is one of the more pleasant larger Chinese cities and these larger cities are not small; the Chengdu administrative area has a population of about 10 million and the urban area has some 3.5 million people. Therefore, what we have in China is cities ranging in terms of size from Tokyo and Mexico City to Berlin and Rome that are making there way into the first world. Chengdu's new ambitious metro project indicates where the city is going; in 2010 the first line of will have been completed and by the time all seven planned lines are completed round about 2035, Chengdu and China will already be a developed country. Of course, there might be a number of obstacles that will prevent this happening and, while the government of China remains an enigma for me, it might indeed, prove to be that development and the the present system will prove incompatible.

There was an interesting article in yesterday's 'China Daily', "Officials face sack for bad public work"1, which emphasised that local government and CP officials can be sacked should they be incompetent in dealing with the public. Reference was made to the Weng'an (see post on media) and new guidelines were laid out for officials when dealing with the public. Having personally witnessed some of the failings of those officials, I can only emphasise the need for a change in attitude. Of course, such behaviour from police and government officials is not unique to China. However, at least in the west, there is an accountability and transparency that, at least, appears to be lacking here. The question is when the government ushers in proper procedures for grievances where will the buck stop and what will this ultimately mean for the political system in China? One would hope that China and the Chinese will be allowed to solve that dilemma on their own for the evidence would seem to suggest that they are more than capable of doing so.

The picture above was taken in a nice trendy little corner of Chegdu, where I had a lovely cup of illy coffee.

1 'China Daily' (July 25th) front page