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| Jeremy Goldkorn |
The New York Times:
“I was moved by that bleak, wild nature,” [developer Mr. Huang] told The International Herald Leader, a newspaper affiliated with Xinhua, the state-run news agency.
The developer, who has climbed Mount Everest twice and published six volumes of poetry with titles like “Don’t Love Me Any More,” “looks forward to become a wandering poet and lead a wild life,” according to his company’s Web site. “Why do people want to ruin this win-win investment?” he asked in the newspaper interview.
One answer: deep suspicion about a country with increasing global weight but little “soft power,” analysts said.
“It does show what a failure they’ve been at their soft-power efforts,” said Jeremy Goldkorn, the founder of danwei.com, a Web magazine and research firm, and a 16-year resident of China.
The phrase “gets bandied about in various ways,” said Mr. Goldkorn. “It should mean that you have the power of attraction, and China’s been very bad at that,” he said, citing its lack of transparency, harsh treatment of dissidents, hard-line stance over claims in the South China Sea and food safety scandals. “The soft power that they are getting is exclusively because of their money,” he said. “They haven’t managed to build a country where people feel safe.”More in The New York Times
Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.
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1 comment:
Is not just about trust. It is about 'integrating' with the place where you live. How many Chinese have you met outside of China integrate easily into the local society? Recently they even get into problem in Singapore (the curry war !!)
My question is: why buy a part of Iceland? Why not buy a part of inland China, IF the reason of buying a piece of land is to cure his 'wanderlust' lust'?? Multi billionaires of China think they can buy up the world because they have money?? Not all of us can be bought by money.
The problem with this world is, we are counting how many billionaires this country has, or that country has. Why not ask, how much Chinese rich are helping their own countryman? Considered when we placed someone in the million or billionaires list, it is in USD not RMB? Think exchange rate and how much these wealthy Chinese can help their own people by buying a piece of a remote country proper of China? Can one imagine the advantage of this injection of wealth to some remote areas of China like Zhiangshu province? For example.
Soft power IS earned. Just like trust. NOT by throwing one's cash around. That is corruption. It is the greatest difference between "old-money" and "new-money". Laugh at "old-money" by all means. BUT "old-money" is what "new-money" dying to reach and never quite get there. Gracefulness cannot be bought. American still work on being European even when they think Europeans are backward.
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