I had a chance to visit Shanghai this week on business for the first time since my last trip their about 8 years ago. Wow! Things have changed a lot, like this bar in the Bund called Rouge. Prices were at least as high, if not worse than Hong Kong's trendiest establishments.
But make no mistake. This is China. The government rules. From the office, I couldn't even view RealClearPolitics.com, which is just an aggregator of other basic news and blogs from the US. But at least they had Starbucks, so my coffee was OK.
Here are a few more nighttime shots form my cell phone:
Shanghai is the forefront of the new China. What is amazing about all this, is that it is Capitalism and Entrepreneurship that has unleashed this growth, almost in spite of one party government. This to me shows the power of free markets even over the most entrenched vested interests.
There is a lot of hot money. The RMB is now 6.8, vs. 7.8 HKD to the US dollar. That's probably as much as sign of dollar weakness over China strenght, but at the end of the day a cup of joe at Starbucks is cheaper in Hong Kong than in Shanghai, and that's saying something.
As for the Olympics? Well it is everywhere. Even at a business lunch on Thursday a replay of the US/China pairs women's beach volleyball was playing (why is it that sport is so easy to watch?!?) The US won! But amazing that at a business lunch, that's what we did - watch the Olympics.
One more thing - at immigration, there was a little panel where you could rate the service quality of the immigration officer (very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, took to long, poor or something like that). I've never seen that anywhere, much less China. I suspect that those with the best scores become heros of the Socialist motherland, and the the low scores are simply executed and the family has to pay for the bullet. . .I hope I am wrong on the latter, but it was nice to know that my opinion is solicited.
And by the way, the Westin hotel was awesome and all the female staff were total babes. On that score China is scoring high, just like golds in the Olympics!
Great trip - and I'll be back.
