life with Lillian
The Chinese Yuan could even take over the dollar as the principal trading and reserve currency.
through years of clashing elements (yes, 2012’s elements of Water
Now as we enter soon into a new year of the Dragon, and we live
structure of its society has transformed irrevocably. China is no sleeping Dragon now; it is a roaring Dragon!
cheap, its population are less illiterate, and the
and Earth continue to clash), China’s cheap labour is no longer that
Today, wealthy Chinese nationals look beyond China to accumulate assets. Tey own foreign companies in Asia, run factories in Africa, build roads in Nepal, exert influence in every emerging nation of the world and even villages in Italy and streets in France have been
34 FENGSHUIWORLD | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011
snapped up by investment-hungry Chinese businessmen. Properties in cities like New York and London, Singapore and Los Angeles are extremely popular too. Growth in the rest of the world
may have slowed, and the global debt crisis casts a long shadow, but China remains the world’s major manufacturer and the US’s biggest creditor. Te Chinese Yuan might even overtake the dollar as the principal trading and reserve currency. Around the world, strings of schools offer Mandarin classes to children as young as three. My grandson Joshy who turned 3 in October started learning mandarin six months ago in his international kindergarten. Wherever one looks, one sees
evidence of China’s presence. But is China really influencing the world OR is it
that China and its new
generation have been seduced by the free-style capitalism of the rest of the world? Anyone visiting China must
be awed by the pace of change that has engulfed it. Beijing and other Chinese cities boast super- modern, western-style glass/chrome
skyscrapers, mega shopping malls that have American-style fast food chains and European Designer boutiques. In downtown areas, gigantic billboards flash the day’s stock market prices. Te roads swarm with cars and there are millions and millions of people. Everything in China is done on a super BIG scale! Te Forbidden City which once was
so awesomely large seems quite small in the context of modern Beijing. Of course, it has been painstakingly restored even though its old-style architecture stands out starkly surrounded as it is by 21st century multi-level buildings. It now takes five times longer to get anywhere. Traffic jams are everywhere unless you take the train or the underground. Cars crawl along smaller roads while highway traffic move bumper to bumper almost all of the time. (Te number of cars on the road in China recently hit 100 million, second only to the US’s 285 million). AND of course… CHINA’s ONE CHILD POLICY has changed many values and priorities. Te awakening of the Dragon means that everyone is living a better life. Peasants and labourers now have better housing and more stable incomes. But having a
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