The other growth

June 23, Monday.
By GS
In late 2006, I had dinner with the Japanese wife of a German diplomat in her stylish Osaka apartment. After praising China’s remarkable economic growth, she railed against the lack of refinement among its burgeoning nouveau-middle-class.

And the much-vaunted Japanese humility and restraint went out the window.

She fumed to me of Chinese visitors in Geneva who trampled over lawns despite posted signs. Chinese tourists who spit, blew snot twenty meters, were loud, ill-mannered, and wore stripes that shitted on any common fashion sense. So on and so forth.

I nodded wholeheartedly, and let fall from suspended chopsticks another slab of delicious marbled tuna into my already brimming, lustily upturned mouth. Her daughter watched in horror.

I’m one of this guilty race, after all.

But the woman had a point.

Beijing has changed tremendously in the past two years. The subway system has been completed revamped. Three new lines have been added, with three more in the works that will ultimately blanket this sprawling city from beneath. The great systems of London, Tokyo or New York still have more extensive networks, but they’ll soon be leapfrogged technologically by Beijing, where new, sleek subway cars fitted with air conditioning and LCD monitors have replaced old, rickety metal cabins.

After a meeting with a news organization, I walked into a subway station on the main line. Two Swedish girls struggling with the touch-screen ticket machine jumped back then giggled in surprise when a subway attendant cursed and grabbed the money out of their hand and stuffed it into the sophisticated machine for them.

That reminded me: During a dinner at the home of a prominent observer of U.S.-China relations a few months ago, he told me that economic convergence is the easy part, it’s the 40 years afterwards, picking up the soft skills, the P.R. tricks, the manners, that’s difficult.

Economic growth is easy compared to cultivating the character of people to the world (read: Western) standard.

There’s an ever-so-slight colonial tinge to it all that discomfits those sympathetic to the developing world, but prudent observers will note that Emily Post convergence will naturally follow economic convergence, and given time, increased outside awareness will follow increased wealth.