Double Handshake

Writing a blog about China and Latin America, some news stories seem just too good to be true. This is one of them: Real, live bullfighting may be coming to Beijing as early as next year. CAS International, a Dutch anti-bullfighting organization, reports:

According to pro-bullfighting websites, bullfighter Manolo Sánchez made a deal with the local government of the Huairou District in Beijing (Peking) to build a bullring and a bull breeding farm close to the Chinese Wall, as part of a Spanish amusement park (also with tapas bars and flamenco shows).

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In January, they want to import 100 bulls and 100 cows from Spain and they also want to start building the bullring. The bullring will be finished in October 2010 and will be inaugurated with two bullfights. From 2011, they want to organize 16 bullfights a year, 4 in June, 4 in July, 4 in August and 4 in September.

Wow. Where to start on this one?

It’s worth remembering that China has toyed with this idea before. In 2004, Beijing almost allowed the city’s Wild Animal Park to hold a fight, but eventually scrapped the idea. City council members complained that bullfighting was cruel and had “the potential to tarnish Beijing’s and China’s image” ahead of the Olympics.

However, that same year in October, Shanghai successfully held two days of bullfights. Organizers imported bulls from Mexico, matadors from Spain, and converted a city stadium into a bullring, spending US$605,000. Bulls were taunted and stabbed with spears, but not killed.

Not all fell under the spell of “a bullfight with a truly Spanish flavor.” The editorial board of China Daily called the event a “mistake.”

While animal protection and anti-violence is becoming more fashionable in society, Shanghai’s “bravery” in staging this kind of bloodsport betrays itself as one of China’s most modern cities.

Rather than a milestone in its bid to become a much-coveted international metropolis status – indeed, the bullfighting episode is more like a slap in the face.

Will this time be any different?

Worldwide, times are tough for the industry. Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region recently banned the sport, and other regions may soon follow suit. In Latin America, bullfighting can be found in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela and may survive there a bit longer. Still, anti-bullfighting sentiment is on the rise in Latin America too. Many people see exporting the sport to China and other foreign countries as a last-ditch strategy to save a dying industry. Pro-fighting optimists may believe China to be bullfighting’s last great hope.

But don’t count on it. Organizations like CAS International are already circulating petitions and mobilizing efforts to stop the sport from coming to China. On top of that, it will only take one top cadre deciding there is something decidedly “uncivilized” about the bloodsport before this plan gets scuttled like the last. Don’t get me wrong, I think most Chinese could stomach the blood to watch for the “mystery” and “passion,” as this account can attest.

My guess is this project becomes something much more benign and tourism-friendly – more “Spanish amusement park” and less bullfighting. Bloodless “bullfighting demonstrations,” perhaps. Tourists dressed up as matadors. Tours of the stables and photos with the bulls. Chinese copies of Death in the Afternoon, plastic banderillas, magnets and other tchotchkes – these all seem likely.

An authentic bullfight in Huairou? Not so much.

Image: China Daily

Peru’s defense minister Rafael Rey said his country is in talks with China to purchase “a fleet” of tanks made in China to replace its current 1970s Soviet-era line-up. The country is also planning buy Super Tucano planes from Brazil’s Embraer to fight drug trafficking in the Amazon.

Both Rey and Prime Minister Javier Velasquez were quick to dismiss any notion of a budding military arms race with arch-rival Chile. Times are sensitive given last month’s espionage controversy and 100-plus years of general bad blood stemming from a border dispute. However, the ministers did not mention what Peru’s leading newspaper La Republica reported recently: That in July, a Peruvian military delegation traveled to China to evaluate the MBT-2000 tank model. The result: The Peruvians were initially turned off by the MBT-2000 because they didn’t think it would be able to defeat the Chilean Leopard 24A.

Doesn’t exactly assuage fears.

Anyway, how do you go about closing an arms deal for a buyer on the fence, you may ask? From AP:

Rafael Rey told The Associated Press that the army is testing MBT-2000 tanks brought from China, but wants a better-equipped model of the tank. Peru showed the tanks in a parade on Tuesday.

Rey didn’t say how many tanks Peru would buy. The Lima newspaper La Republica reported that it plans to buy 80 to 120 tanks and has evaluated Chinese, German, Russian, Ukrainian and Polish models.

A parade! There’s a novel way to evaluate military hardware. Tank parades in Beijing during October’s National Day 60-year anniversary and now Chinese tank parades in “the US’s backyard”?

Cue US Congressional fear-mongering.

Hugo Chavez is a blogger’s world leader. From last month:

Venezuela’s efforts to combat severe drought conditions may include President Hugo Chavez going airborne with scientists as they try to generate rain from clouds.

Chavez has said a team of Cuban scientists are in Venezuela to fly aircraft with special equipment designed to influence weather patterns, specifically to bring on much-needed precipitation.

“I’m going in a plane; any cloud that crosses me, I’ll zap it so that it rains,” Chavez said late Saturday, according to Reuters.

Brings to mind China’s cloud tinkering during the Olympics and Beijing’s most recent set of snowfalls. Not that Hu Jintao will be manning the cockpit anytime soon.

Image: Slate

Last month, a group of 15-20 gunman attacked a Chinese-owned copper project in northern Peru at dawn, killing three workers and torching 80% of the site. According to news reports filed in the following days, two other workers were still missing. The US$1.4 billion Rio Blanco copper project (bought by Fujian-based Zijin Mining Group in 2007) has been the site of violence and controversy before. In 2005, before Zijin took over, security guards killed one protester and allegedly tortured two dozen more. Those who oppose the mine argue it harms the environment and has a negative impact on local society.

Like the Bagua protests earlier this year, November’s Rio Blanco attack illustrates the major tensions between Lima’s economic and industrialization development plans for the country and some locals who fiercely resist it. Peru’s president Alan Garcia himself is a perfect example – he is lauded by international businesspeople for his open foreign investment policies and reviled at home, with an approval rating of 26%. Chinese companies, who are heavily invested in Peru’s mines, are caught in the crossfire.

Chinese mines in Peru have been targets of violence before, but I would argue the backlash against Chinese companies in Peru have little to do with them being Chinese. It is fast, polluting, large-scale development, and social and environmental upheaval that protesters are lashing out against. American and European energy and mining companies have been targeted as well.

Conflicts like the one in Rio Blanco are about development – about if and how it should happen, and who whose decision it should be.

In China, of course, fast, unconstrained, top-down development is near Gospel – The Gospel of Fazhan (or development). I’m using “fazhan” instead of “development” from here out because the word connotates so much more than new buildings and roads. You hear “fazhan” everywhere in China; it is a mantra, an obsession. Fazhan is progress, a thing to believe in. Fazhan levels are the way you compare countries. Fazhan is tied closely to national pride and unity. There are those who want fazhan and those who don’t know any better.

So note how state-owned newspaper China Daily handled the Rio Blanco attack:

Drug cartel behind Zijin Peru copper project attack

A weekend attack on a copper project in northern Peru that left three dead may have been the work of drug traffickers who want to keep the area undeveloped in order to protect their trade, the head of a business leaders group said on Tuesday

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“There is no dispute or conflict with the community, so this makes you think that criminal interests are behind it, probably drug traffickers,” said Ricardo Briceno, head of Confiep, Peru’s largest business federation. Police said they were still collecting evidence from the attack.

Big mines tend to bring roads, police and development to areas where those involved in the drug trade want to keep a low-profile.

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The company and people from the business community say townspeople now support the construction of the mine, though violence has broken out before at Rio Blanco.

The Peruvian government has also struggled at times to win the public debate over the benefits that big mines bring to isolated towns in the Andes.

The article is lifted from a Reuters report filed the previous day, which distanced itself a bit from the all-is-well comments from Briceno. Rio Blanco’s violent history disappears, as do mentions of environmental concerns. Indeed, with a few edits, the article becomes China Daily’s perfect affirmation of the Gospel of Fazhan – everyone welcomes fazhan with open arms except for the criminals.

It is much easier for China’s government to convince its own people that fazhan is a universal aspiration. Again, few of them need converting to the Gospel, and there’s no reason foreigners wouldn’t believe in the same thing. For every protest or attack against a Chinese mining interest abroad, China Daily and Xinhua will be there to dutifully explain that the cause was a few bad seeds at odds the vast majority of supporters.

But how does China sell the Gospel of Fazhan abroad to those who might resist it, to those who don’t share the same values? There is no doubt China will continue transform all of Latin America with its resource-buying and fazhan-leading. This reality is settled by governments, by trade agreements and investment policies.

But if China hopes to get along harmoniously with the Latin American people whose lives are being utterly transformed by all this fazhan, it may be useful to recognize and plan for the fact that not everyone is a believer.