Essays

Shedding Light on Shadow Banking

Mary Davis

Demystifying the commoner’s financier – Mary Davis

Shadow banking has a bad reputation the world over, but particularly in China. Major media outlets and economists alike have demonized it, casting their black mark of economic imbalance across all faux-banking operations throughout the country. But what if they were not the evil shark-loaning, wobbly institutions that we’ve been made to believe? What if they were helpful more than harmful?

This was the opinion of one Chinese banker who left his job as deputy head of Investment Banking at UBS to become a shadow banker in 2011. After moving to the "dark side,” Joe Zhang ended up publishing a book on his experiences, Inside China's Shadow Banking, in which he described the greater opinion of shadow bankers in China to be “only slightly more respectable than perhaps massage parlors or nightclubs.”

Video

China Bound, 1964

Bill Callahan

Beijing before the start of the Cultural Revolution – a video by Bill Callahan

In the early 1960s, after being embarrassed at diplomatic events by the mistakes of his interpreters, Zhou Enlai decided that the Foreign Ministry needed to recruit English native speakers to train a new cadre of translators. Australians Colin and Alyce Mackerras answered Zhou’s call, and in August 1964 went to teach English at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute for two years. Bill Callahan’s short video ‘China Bound 1964’ explores Colin’s experiences as he encountered a radically different way of life. Leaving China in September 1966, he witnessed the transformation of Chinese society provoked by the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

Q&A

Hiding in Plain Sight

Nicky Harman

Yan Ge in Conversation With Nicky Harman

 

Nicky Harman: How did the story of the novel occur to you? I was struck when I read it that here was an author, young and female, who had chosen to make the main protagonist a philandering middle-aged man.

Yan Ge: Looking back, it probably was a strategic move rather than a spontaneous one. Having been writing and published since 17, I’ve always been a writer (it seems), while at the same time, I’ve always been a student. In my previous stories, there’s always a writer in it and the stories are always more or less about literary people or intellectuals.

Chinese Corner

Trump(et) King Mushrooms

Victor Mair

Move over French fries, for Trump little crisp strips – Victor Mair

Chef Jon seems to be very fond of king trumpet mushrooms. They occur as an ingredient in three of his dishes on this menu. As might be expected, in the Chinese names of two of these three dishes, the word gū 菇 (mushroom) appears, but in the third it does not.  Instead, in the latter, it is called simply Chuānpǔ 川普 (Trump), with nary a mention of an equivalent for "-et" nor for "mushroom."

The name of this dish in Mandarin is Chuānpǔ xiǎo cuìtiáo 川普小脆條, which Chef Jon calls "Crispy King Trumpet Mushroom" in English, but which may more literally be translated as "Trump little crisp strips."

Reviews

Money Speaks

Mike Cormack

Mike Cormack reviews The War For China’s Wallet by Shaun Rein

Written by a businessman rather than an academic or economist, The War For China’s Wallet looks at China’s use of its economic power and huge consumer market for political and strategic goals. The author, Shaun Rein, is the founder and managing director of China Market Research Group, and the author of The End of Cheap China and The End of Copycat China. His previous books have proved highly prescient, outlining incipient economic trends and their consequences at a time when proclaiming them seemed bold, if not foolhardy. The War For China’s Wallet takes a broader perspective, delineating China’s efforts to use its power over consumer spending for its own purposes.