Double Handshake

In the wake of Saturday’s devastating 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile, the internet is already abuzz with a curious “law” linking the event to both the quake in Haiti earlier this year and 2008’s Wenchuan earthquake in Western China. Hecaitou (和菜头), an influential Chinese blogger, claims the phenomenon has been noted, albeit in different forms, in all three countries. He credits Chinese netizen googlor for the following formulation:

The black numbers represent the month and day of the three earthquakes – ie. 5/12 Wenchuan quake, 1/12 Haiti quake, 2/27 Chile quake. The red characters are the place names – 汶川 = Wenchuan, 海地 = Haiti, 智利 = Chile. You can see that the row and column marked for each location read the same either way you read.

It’s unclear what “law” is really supposed to imply. Hecaitou himself says he finds the coincidence “interesting” but dismisses the would-be numerologists, arguing there have been hundreds of earthquakes over the past three years, and finding number patterns wouldn’t be difficult. I’ll add that had Chile’s earthquake struck anytime from February 20 through 28, the table above still “works.”

Nevertheless, number patterns are compelling stuff and easy to understand. I expect this “law” to linger in the Chinese blogosphere and media while Chile stays in the world’s news.

I was reading about the weird and intriguing (and for purposes of this blog, not so relevant) theory of geological hot spots in Al Gore’s great climate change primer Our Choice, and it got me thinking. The (still unproven) idea is that areas of the earth’s surface that are unusually hot, such as Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park in the US, can be explained by large asteroid strikes in the ocean at the corresponding place exactly on the opposite side of the world. This point, 180 degrees away, is called an antipode.

This made me remember growing up in the US and occasionally hearing grownups say “if you dig a hole straight through the earth to the other side, you’d be in China.” This, I can confirm with this nifty Antipode Map, is not the case. America’s whole collective anitpode is out in the south Indian Ocean (exception: Hawaii – you’re in Botswana!)

But it turns out that China and Latin America have some serious antipodean matching going on. John at the great Sinosplice blog apparently figured this out three years ago:

So you can see that China mostly just overlaps with Argentina, and most countries don’t overlap with any land at all. According to another website, China gets these exciting antipodes match-ups:

1. Beijing – Bahia Blanca, Argentina
2. Taipei – Asuncion, Paraguay
3. Shanghai – Buenos Aires, Argentina
4. Wuhan – Cordoba, Argentina
5. Xi’an – Santiago, Chile

Some of them are give-or-take a few hundred kilometers according to the map but still cool approximations to know.

Back in October, I posted a snippet of a Shanghai Daily article relating to Chile’s pavilion preparation for this year’s Shanghai Expo:

At the Shanghai event next year, Chile will attract visitors with three special wells. People will be able to look into the wells in the pavilion in Shanghai to see scenes and hear the sounds of some Chilean cities on the opposite side of the earth.

It still sounds hokey, but I guess now more credible than the “digging a hole to China” silliness I thought of when I first heard about it – even if those scenes and sounds are technically coming from Argentina.

Image: Sinosplice

A few noteworthy links from around the web (a few that I’ve had on my desk for some time now). With a little down time in the coming weeks, I’ll hopefully give a few of these stories their proper treatment. But, for now, the short list:

Bloomberg reports that newly christened 2016 Olympic city Rio de Janeiro is looking to China to help finance the its planned US$11 billion in Olympics-related infrastructure projects. (China knows a thing or two about the topic). State-owned China Development Bank loaned Brazilian state-owned oil giant Brasileiro SA US$10 billion earlier this year.

On the subject of oil, the Latin Business Chronicle republished an article from the Wharton Business School on China’s quest for oil in Latin America. Buried half-way down in the piece is a good breakdown of China’s proposed deal to buy Argentinean oil exploration and refining firm YPF for around US$17 billion – which would be the largest-ever overseas deal by a Chinese company.

R. Evan Ellis, whose book China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores has been reviewed nicely here, published another exhaustively cited bird’s eye view of what China’s presence in Latin America means for the US earlier this month for the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief.

Two of his four main claims raised an eyebrow for me: “[China] is enabling the survival and spread of regimes oriented against the United States, Western-style democracy and economic models” and “[China] is undermining the United States as a source of political and economic influence in the region, as well as U.S. options for regional engagement.” Ellis takes pains to point out that China is, of course, not directly undermining democracy and US influence, but rather propping up the economies and the political lives of leaders like Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa with its investment and trade dollars. Still, should we be alarmed or is Ellis being alarmist? Is the US’s capacity for “regional engagement” actually hindered by China’s presence or is the US simply in less of a position of power?

Chile is the only South American country to commit to its own pavilion at next year’s Shanghai Expo, spending US$6 million on construction rather than renting, according to Shanghai Daily. Fear not: Easter Island will be represented at the Chilean pavilion, as will this groan-inducing design idea:

At the Shanghai event next year, Chile will attract visitors with three special wells. People will be able to look into the wells in the pavilion in Shanghai to see scenes and hear the sounds of some Chilean cities on the opposite side of the earth.

Finally, here is a new trilingual corporate blog from the newly launched SinoLatin Capital, which specializes in China-Latin American investment deals. The blog got off to a roaring start in August, but posts have since grown a bit infrequent. I can relate. There’s more to be written about SinoLatin Capital, but for now, find some background on the company here.

Last November, just before 2008’s APEC conference in Lima, Peru, China made news by releasing its first policy white paper describing its overall strategy for engagement with Latin American and the Caribbean. It’s a lengthy and far-ranging document, with sections devoted to political visits, trade cooperation and even sports exchanges. One finishes this document thinking: China’s top priority in Latin America may be procuring natural resources, but it has much more planned than that.

What about the reverse? Does, say, Brazil have an overall strategy for engaging with China? Has it been codified in its own white paper? Are Brazilian students flocking to Chinese language programs in Sao Paulo to gain a leg-up for the explosion of Chinese investment that’s to come over the next twenty years? The answers are all no. From Reuters:

China and Latin American specialists speaking at a conference in Sao Paulo said China sees Latin America as vital to its own future energy, food and economic security, but that the region had been slow to develop China policies.

“Latin America is acting toward China’s expansion in the world in a reactive, disorganized or ad hoc fashion,” said David Shambaugh, professor of political science at The George Washington University.

“When I asked Itamaraty (Brazil’s foreign ministry) about its strategy on China, I got blank stares. There is no strategy.”

Shambaugh, who is very well-respected on China-Latin American relations, has talked about Latin America’s unpreparedness for China before. Countries like Brazil and Argentina granted China market economy status years ago, which has created problems as Chinese manufactuers undercut local producers. “It’s almost as if these (countries) didn’t do their homework,” said Shambaugh. “The United States, Europe, Japan and Australia did not grant China market economy status.”

This alleged lack of strategy includes language. The article notes there are only two serious Chinese language studies programs in all of Latin America, one in Mexico City, the other in Buenos Aires. It is telling that in Latin America, the biggest development in Chinese language learning has come from China itself, in the form of its promoting Confucius Institutes abroad. These centers, which promote Chinese language learning and culture, are springing up throughout Latin America and the rest of the world. As of May, 328 institutes had been established, including a new one at Catolica University in Santiago, Chile.

I’ll add tourism to this list as well. Traveling in Peru, Chile and Argentina, I often asked tour operators about the prospect of Chinese tourists. Many of their eyes lit up at the prospect of a billion customers. Like many countries, Latin American countries are anticipating a wave of newly monied Chinese tourists to arrive in the coming years.

Yet, aside from some enterprising Chinese and Taiwanese businessmen I met in Lima, no one I spoke to was prepared to handle Chinese-speaking tour groups. Nearly no one in these tourism industries speak the language or understand the, um, unique demands of the Chinese tourist (hot water thermoses, slippers, casinos, shopping). It seems that when the tourism wave hits Latin America, it will be Chinese-owned (or ethnically Chinese-owned) tourism companies that will cash in.

So, how long will Latin American countries wait before they formulate their own China strategy?

The Atlantic has published a nice dispatch by Paul Starobin recounting his lunch with China’s ambassador to Chile, Liu Yuqin. Over the “eight course, two-hour affair,” Starobin and Liu play cat and mouse over China’s intentions in Latin America. One excerpt:

I asked if Chileans should be concerned about the Chinese succeeding the Spanish and the Americans as the new imperialists of South America. “It’s not like China comes in to ransack this country of its raw materials—China pays for these raw materials,” she noted evenly. When I pointed out that a union of Chilean copper workers had taken a stand against China’s bid to become an owner of the Gaby mine, she said, “As in all families, brothers can have an argument.”

That type of answer is about par for the course. It’s disappointing but non entirely surprising that Starobin can’t draw Liu into any firmer answers than ones like the above. He asks a number of good questions, ranging from China’s take on the Monroe Doctrine to prospects for China-Chile military exchanges in the future. Despite the article’s title: “China’s Copper Road,” the conversation strays far from the usual China’s-hunger-for-commodities coverage, which is refreshing.

It’s a colorful lunch and well worth your time.

Apologies for the recent lack of activity here. I’ve been traveling (currently in Puerto Varas, Chile) and have been trying to keep computer time to a minimum.

Anyone who travels is occasionally (or constantly) reminded of where he has been. Whether we like it or not, a mountain skyline, a village’s music, a drive along a coast remind us of past travels. So, in the spirit of my time on the road (and this blog’s theme), I thought I’d offer up some thoughts on places I’ve been and the China destinations they reminded me of (however superficially). Fellow travelers, add your own additions below!

1. Cuzco, Peru – Lijiang, Yunnan
Though historically these two destinations are nowhere near the same size (Lijiang was a small picturesque Naxi village, while Cuzco was capital of the Incan empire), the cobblestone streets, the mountain backdrop and pushy tourism industries put these two cities in the same league for me. Actually, Cuzco struck me as a mix between Lijiang and the Yunnan backpacker mecca Dali, with its narrow winding alleys lined with tour agencies, pizza restaurants, cafés and bars.

2. Iquique, Chile – Qingdao, Shandong
Both sprawling seaports combine good seafood, high-rise construction and patches of urban beaches. Iquique is hemmed in by large sand dunes to the east, while Qingdao is now pushing up against Lao Shan in the same direction. Though not in the red-roof Bavarian style of Qingdao, Iquique’s Plaza Prat retains its own early 20th century architectural flavor. Also, while nowhere near as famous as Tsingtao beer, Iquique even has its own local brew: Iquiqueño.

3. San Pedro de Atacama, Chile – Kashgar, Xinjiang
Aside from both being desert towns, these two cities initially seem to share little else in common: The former is a largely traditional Muslim town with heavy influences from “the Stans” across the border; the latter is a tiny backpacker bastion in the Atacama Desert. However, the dust and sand, the starry nights and stone/adobe buildings in San Pedro reminded me more of Kashgar’s old quarter than any other place I’d been. Now, if only llamas and alpacas could survive in the desert like camels do in the Silk Road town.

4. Lake Titicaca, Peru/Bolivia – Tai Lake, Jiangsu
Who would have thought that setting out from Puno, Peru, the world’s highest navigable lake is presently slimed like one of China’s high-profile ecological disasters? As you head out further into Lake Titicaca, however, the green algae layer recedes and the water takes on the deep blue unlike anything found in Central China.

Chuquicamata, or Chuqui for short, in northern Chile is one of the largest open-pit copper mines in the world. It has been in operation since 1910 – first run by American mining concerns and then nationalized in 1970. It is now operated by Codelco, a government-owned entity. Twenty-four hours a day, 20,000 workers and over 100 giant German Liebher and Japanese Komatsu trucks haul rocks out of the 1-km-deep pit to be processed nearby. Explosions at the bottom happen everyday at 5pm sharp.

When writing about Chuqui, it’s tempting to just reel off statistics: the main pit is 5-km long and 3-km wide; trucks cost US$4 million each (tires alone cost US$30,000 each and last one year); 600,000 tons of rocks are transported daily. The one stat that stood out to me, though, was 22% – the percentage of the mine’s output that heads to China, the mine’s biggest buyer. I visited Chuqui last week and asked our guide about China and the global recession.

“Oh, we’re having a very difficult time!” she told me cheerfully. “But you don’t understand how much money we had been making before the recession, when we were selling cathodes for US$1000.” (current copper prices are approximately US$600 per cathode).

China was largely responsible for Chuqui’s flush years. Now, she said, Chinese demand for copper had fallen a bit, but not nearly as much as demand in other countries. This corroborates news from Peru in recent months of Chinese mining companies announcing expansion plans as other foreign interests shutter mines and smelters.

From the viewing platform above the mine, the enormous trucks hauling 400 tons per load looked like toys in a sandbox. Puffs of dust rose up as rocks were moved. Trucks emitted black diesel smoke as they climbed the packed-dirt inclines. From my vantage point, the lines cut into the side of the pit looked like dusty rice terraces.

Image: sxc.hu

Pisco Sours, the national drink of Peru, were flowing in Lima over the past weekend to celebrate what has become my new favorite holiday: Pisco Sour Day. On Saturday afternoon, Barranco’s Plaza de San Francisco, pisco makers and restaurants had set up booths and displays dedicated to the cocktail. Vendors were handing out drinks, salsa music playing and kids chasing after pidgeons. In other parts of town, Miss Pisco Sour 2009 was crowned and there were countless professional Pisco Sour-making competitions.

The Pisco Sour is a mix of pisco – a locally produced grape brandy – lemon, egg white, sugar and a dash of bitters. Peru and Chile to this day fight bitterly over the origin of pisco. The production methods differ in the two countries, with plenty of scoffing on both sides. Until recently, Chile had been producing something like 50 times more pisco annually than Peru, but it seems that Peruvian exports of the drink have now surpassed Chile. From a Mercopress report:

Peruvian pisco exports have climbed 17 times in six years and the main markets are the US, Spain, Chile and Colombia.

“In 2002 we exported 80.000 US dollars and last year we jumped to 1.4 million US dollars, surpassing Chilean exports”, said Production Minister Elena Conterno.

In the same period pisco production soared four times from 1.5 million litres to 6.59 million litres.

For those like myself with little stake in the nationalistic struggle between Peru and Chile over the drink, the upshot is that Chile’s own Pisco Sour Day is coming on May 15. Mark your alcohol calendars!

Image: theworldwidegourmet.com