I have just finished a three week holiday which included 2 weddings on 2 continents and passed the flight time by reading ‘The Lexus and the Olive Tree’ which talks of the gathering strains of globalisation and how economies must adopt, or be forced into, the ‘golden straightjacket’ of economic liberalisation, and I return to Beijing feeling as though I may need my own straightjacket. Landing back to an operation that was holding together as a function of cut and paste management and some naivety is always difficult, and perhaps it was for this reason that I found returning to Beijing tough. I broke my own anti-jetlag rule and headed to bed for a 30 minute nap after coming off the 9 ½ hour dawn flight from London, and woke up fully 12 hours later. Judy and Ben had come, worked, worked, and then left the office before I surfaced. The next day Judy told me that she likes working with me but needs to quit due to the twin demands of her final thesis and her desire to move away from Beijing; my investment in the trip to Singapore another sunk cost. The saga of setting up the legal entity continues with the Bank of Construction being nominated by the State Administration for Foreign Exchange (SAFE) as the bank that can open accounts for WOFE’s, but the BoC forms that demonstrate foreign currencies being paid in are apparently not accepted by SAFE; a new ruling from September 1st – it seems as though I am at the forefront of every new promulgation. Now I have to pay RMB500 (US$62.5) for a new chop. The upside is that until we have this chop we are not due to pay tax, although profitability at this stage is more a threat than a reality. On the upside I returned to find business is looking up. One large IT company seems to want media training in November and another US$4bn company need media consultancy straight away, but preying on my mind is that I have still to make peace with Coding after some client service disappointments. The Beijing office has some initial interest now from more and more agencies that have found EASTWEST on the Internet and my ‘geography independent’ strategy is starting to pay dividends as the Beijing and Singapore offices are able to share information quickly via our Intranet. A group of people that will have their ability to share information quickly curtailed are the foreign news agencies who were faced with 11 articles promulgated on Sunday 10th September that effectively state that they must send their news through Xinhua and shall not be able to solicit for subscribers. Bowing to international pressure on Thursday 14th Premier Wen Jiabao said, while visiting Tony Blair, “the open policy adopted by the Chinese Government regarding foreign news media and financial information agencies remains unchanged.” In essence these new articles forbid agencies being involved in anything that may ‘undermine China's national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity,’ which means that news will essentially be about finance, sport, and art but not about politics; considering the shenanigans in the British press Blair may wish he could promulgate a similar article. In his book ‘The Lexus and the Olive Tree’ Thomas Friedman argues that countries have to don the Golden Straightjacket of free market global economics and risk the loss of national sovereignty in the process, and I can see how Wen and his ministers are desperately trying to balance the twin demands of the people for luxury while retaining national polity. As I went for a run in Beijing leaving the CBD heading northwards and then turning due east along chaoyang beilu, the scenery changed dramatically from construction hoardings promising ‘The Place You Want to Be in a Good Mood In’ to scrubby patches of grass and small copses of trees littered with debris. Within the 10km run from SOHO to the 5th ringroad that encircles Beijing I saw people driving the luxury cars through the neighbourhoods that are literally in transition to the semi-rural hinterlands of Beijing where the vegetables are being cycled to the market by old ladies and men with mao suits on. On my run back to town I lapped the Honglingjin park where kids on a theme ride shot elephants and tigers with laser guns and old people did Tai Qi, and where a fisherman cast his line, willfully oblivious to the bloated dead fish drifting on the green sludge below the 4th ring road. 
There are some 692 days to the Olympics and I think that everyone here is pleased to have this event as a focal point, but with it is bringing the very tide of globalisation that China is trying hard to stem. On the Friday I escorted Rob’s father to the China Open Tennis tournament (chinaopen.cn) being organized by the specifically name General Administration of Sport of China, an escort necessary because the English website did not have any instructions or a map of the venue and a call to the hotline yielded only Chinese automated ticket sales. At the single-standed arena grandly named the Beijing Tennis Centre, the sponsors included western and Chinese brands gazed upon by people drinking Starbucks and eating KFC, the march of time kept by the Wimbledon-size large Rolex clock. There was an air of being ready, and now being in waiting for the crowds who would no doubt arrive in the second week of the tournament to see players including Ancic and Mauresmo. In the book ‘The Lexus and the Olive Tree’ Friedman argues that globalisation threatens to make everything the same, but resistance to the democratising effects of abundant capital, pervasive technology and real time information will sink a country. In China the administration wants to let the people feel the pleasure of the sleeves of the golden straightjacket, but control when and how they wear the whole vest, and it is this tension that makes living and working here at once fascinating and frustrating; in effect I never know if I am about to be put in a straightjacket or not.
There are some 692 days to the Olympics and I think that everyone here is pleased to have this event as a focal point, but with it is bringing the very tide of globalisation that China is trying hard to stem. On the Friday I escorted Rob’s father to the China Open Tennis tournament (chinaopen.cn) being organized by the specifically name General Administration of Sport of China, an escort necessary because the English website did not have any instructions or a map of the venue and a call to the hotline yielded only Chinese automated ticket sales. At the single-standed arena grandly named the Beijing Tennis Centre, the sponsors included western and Chinese brands gazed upon by people drinking Starbucks and eating KFC, the march of time kept by the Wimbledon-size large Rolex clock. There was an air of being ready, and now being in waiting for the crowds who would no doubt arrive in the second week of the tournament to see players including Ancic and Mauresmo. In the book ‘The Lexus and the Olive Tree’ Friedman argues that globalisation threatens to make everything the same, but resistance to the democratising effects of abundant capital, pervasive technology and real time information will sink a country. In China the administration wants to let the people feel the pleasure of the sleeves of the golden straightjacket, but control when and how they wear the whole vest, and it is this tension that makes living and working here at once fascinating and frustrating; in effect I never know if I am about to be put in a straightjacket or not.