Reykjavík Grapevine - 21.09.2007, Page 18

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The only guide that tells you the talk of the swimming pools, how to
find the best cafes, how to recover from all night parties, an A to Z of
Icelandic music and what "Viltu kaffi?" can really mean.
imbued everyday Icelanders with the mythi-
cal qualities of their first names, relies on the
myth of the Land of the Vikings – where ev-
eryone believes in elves and speaks an an-
cient language of great wisdom and power.)
But as the two German brothers in the 2000
movie Enlightenment Guaranteed find out
when they are put to work scrubbing floors
at a Japanese monastery, we are all human,
and Asian cultures, though different, are nei-
ther more nor less spiritual than our own.
I am often concerned when I hear stu-
dents speaking casually about plans to study
Chinese. Spoken Mandarin is easy once you
figure out its four tones. But the writing sys-
tem is an inefficient beast (which other Asian
countries have mostly abandoned and which
Chinese schoolkids also find difficult). It takes
two to three years of intensive study before
you can even begin to read a newspaper.
Like studying any language, it’s a fascinat-
ing journey, but not one to be undertaken
lightly. You can make quicker progress in any
other Asian language.
To hook a customer, one doesn’t always
have to deliver tangible returns; sometimes
just expectations of returns are enough, and
sometimes even expectations of others’ ex-
pected returns. So before you drop every-
thing and get on the China bandwagon, or
any other, be an informed consumer: try to
find out whether there’s something real on
offer, or you’re just a sucker in a buzzmakers’
scheme.
Not the Only Asian Country
In the grip of the China buzz, mainland
China starts to seem like the only country
in Asia. But there are over 700 million East
Asians in countries like Malaysia, Thailand,
Korea, Singapore, and Japan, and roughly
1.2 billion in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
These countries are important business part-
ners, outweigh China as a source of imports
to Iceland, offer considerable investment
growth potential, and produce (on average)
higher-quality products. For example, Asian
food importers in Iceland prefer to buy from
Thailand, the Philippines, and Japan, not
from China.
China is just one of the scenes on a
broader Asian tapestry. The real long-term
story is the two-way encounter between
Asian and Euro-American cultures. Two hun-
dred years ago, there were virtually no Asians
in Europe or North America. Now people of
Asian ancestry make up about 4% of Brit-
ain’s population, about 5% in the United
States, and closer to 10% in Canada. Iceland
is at around 1%, but already Southeast Asian
cooking has had a huge influence on us, to
the point where fish sauce and coconut milk
have become commodities that we buy in
bulk at Bónus.
The encounter may be just beginning. Al-
though Asia is far away, I can well imagine
that in fifty years Europeans will be eating
more Asian food, reading more Asian litera-
ture, seeing more Asian movies, and using
more Asian design ideas than they do now.
The three billion people in Asia (compared
to less than one billion in Europe and North
America) have plenty of interesting, practi-
cal ideas that are worth knowing and learn-
ing about. And that means Indonesian pea-
nut sauce and Japanese red bean paste just
as much as Chinese pot stickers or Peking
duck.
China within Asia
The cultural differences and relations be-
tween Asian countries are as complex as
those within Europe. China has a special
position in Asian history. In medieval times,
when China was more powerful, many Chi-
nese settled in other Asian countries. These
communities were prominent in business
life, and in some cases enjoyed special favour
from European colonial administrations. Sub-
stantial ethnic Chinese minority communities
still exist in countries like Thailand, Vietnam,
Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
Especially after World War II, Asian coun-
tries promoted their indigenous languages,
religions and value systems at the expense
of Chinese culture. This process was com-
parable to the twentieth-century rollback of
German-speaking influence in Eastern Eu-
rope, as countries like Poland and Hungary
promoted their own identities. The measures
used were often drastic. Thailand closed
Chinese-language schools and made ethnic
Chinese take Thai names. Indonesia passed a
law in 1959 forbidding Chinese to own busi-
nesses. Tensions continue: in 1998, anti-Chi-
nese riots broke out in Jakarta.
During the thirty years since the Cultural
Revolution, as mainland China has slowly re-
opened to the rest of the world, the image of
mainland China in other Asian countries has
been a less than positive one, of chain-smok-
ers with rude manners, who dress badly,
spit in public, and are suspicious of anything
non-Chinese. In a way, the mainland Chinese
have been the Ugly Americans of Asia. This
is a stereotype, of course, with only limited
truth behind it. Many people who travel to
China aim at getting beyond the stereotypes
to make human contact with the “real” Chi-
na. In the same way, thoughtful travellers to
America know that stereotypes of Americans
only apply to a minority.
Just as those with a Jewish identity do
not automatically identify with Israel, not ev-
eryone who is “Chinese” lives in or identifies
with mainland China. So overseas Chinese
can be as critical of mainland China as any-
one else. Singapore’s anti-spitting campaign,
for example, was not just a way of cleaning
up the city but also of symbolically distancing
Chinese Singaporean customs from those in
mainland China.
Many Asians feel they have worked hard
to create relatively tolerant, relatively open
societies and to develop sensible trade rela-
tions with the rest of the world. At one level,
they welcome mainland China’s re-emer-
gence. But they also find its current swag-
ger in world politics slightly nauseating. The
sense is a little similar to the feeling some
Europeans have towards a resurgent, ener-
gy-rich Russia, which they feel has not really
learned how to cooperate with its neigh-
bours or behave responsibly on the world
stage.
And that means that China’s prominence
in Iceland’s foreign relations, given the well
established Thai, Vietnamese, and Filipino
immigrant communities here and our busi-
ness relations with other Asian countries,
can start to come across a little as if Iceland
was emphasising political and economic rela-
tions with Russia at the expense of its historic
ties to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.
China is Important...
China has become one of the world’s most
important manufacturing centres and a
growing political power. The rise of China
as a world manufacturing centre belongs on
the same bookshelf with the story of Lan-
cashire in the early 1800s, the north-eastern
United States in the later 1800s, or Japan af-
ter World War II. Cities like Shenzhen have
sprawled from nothing to New York size in a
matter of two or three decades. Emigrants,
often young women, have arrived from the
Chinese countryside, and work 12 hours a
day, six days a week, for $100 a month. They
live in company dormitories, eat in company
cafeterias, and overworked but reasonably
secure, assemble the goods that China sells
to the world.
There’s no question that Iceland can
benefit from establishing more direct trade
channels with China. It’s likely that Iceland
can modestly increase its exports to China,
and that Icelandic investors can significantly
increase their holdings in China. It’s impor-
tant to have sensible political relations with
China. Understanding Chinese culture is im-
portant.
...But Location Still Matters
I mentioned that Icelandic exports to China
totalled 2.75 billion krónur in 2006. That
may have sounded like a lot. Here’s anoth-
er statistic: the same year’s exports to the
Faroe Islands totalled 2.89 billion krónur. Ex-
ports to the Faroes have outpaced exports
to China for many years running. China has
twenty-five thousand times as many people
as the Faroe Islands. But it is many times fur-
ther away.
We need to understand these sorts of
numbers to avoid building castles in the air.
As Stefán Úlfarsson put it, the “lack of criti-
cal discussion about China in Iceland” has
“probably played a role in Icelanders’ consid-
erable gullibility towards unrealistic ‘miracle
stories’ about the Chinese economy.”
Here are some more facts: Lithuania
and Nigeria are bigger purchasers of Icelan-
dic seafood than China. Japan is a far more
important export destination for Icelandic
goods than China. And something like 70%
of Iceland’s trade is with Europe anyway.
Now that China is open again, it is likely
to become a trade partner with Iceland of
an importance proportional to its size and
distance from us. That means that it is going
to be a significant partner, but surely never
the biggest one, and probably one subject
to relatively high geopolitical risk. I know this
isn’t a really exciting conclusion – but hey, my
goal was to evaluate the buzz, not perpetu-
ate it.
China’s high rate of manufacturing
growth will continue for some time, but it
will not last forever, just as Japan and Taiwan
matured as manufacturing centres. Iceland
is in the North Atlantic, and will always be
closely tied to its closest neighbours: Europe,
Canada, and the United States.
So, here’s my advice. Go to China. Learn
about it. Work with Chinese suppliers. It’s a
fascinating place. But keep in mind that the
Great Wall of China is not visible from the
moon. And don’t forget to learn some Faro-
ese.
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