What bottom?
This November, sell-side dreams are finally coming true. Data showing the Chinese economy expanded in October is ushering in a renewed era of optimism. On Tuesday, the yuan rose to a high not seen since the country unified its official and market exchange rates in 1993, and money managers registered the highest level of optimism about China since 2009. The economy has apparently turned a corner, with a little nudge from government infrastructure projects. Apparently, all this good news has put foreign critics out of a job. Google, The New York Times and Bloomberg have, erm, safely disappeared outside of the Great Firewall. Those with subversive messages have been reduced to communicating via ping pong balls hurled out of taxi windows – not a very efficient method of communication at all. Instead, the Chinese media is delivering hard-hitting reports on laobaixing queuing for commemorative Party Congress stamps, or pollution reaching an all-time low (apparently Hong Kong didn’t get the memo). After careful consideration, we can only conclude China’s problems have been banished with its pesky nay-sayers. So don’t fret about the US fiscal cliff, or the lack of solution to the euro zone crisis, or miraculously disappearing non-performing loans. If state media has taught us anything, it’s this: If you don’t think about it, it doesn’t exist.
Hong Kong elated by environmental victory
Hong Kongers took to the streets in celebration this week in what they said was strong competition with the mainland for overall abject nastiness. Hong Kong’s pollution levels were far higher than targeted, a record the special administrative region has hit each year since long before it was a special administrative region. Hong Kong first nailed the environmental slam dunk in 1987 when it set the target, although experts boasted that the city’s air and harbor water has been filthy for decades. Although the former city-state once prided itself on many accounts over its mainland comrades, competing with China at anything has become increasingly difficult. Hong Kong felt a sharp pain in its spleen in early 2007 when the renminbi surpassed the value of the Hong Kong dollar, and things have just never been the same. Now Shanghai is vying for Asia’s top finance spot, and the island is often the target of meandering mainland diatribes. In response to Hong Kong’s jubilation, one Weibo user in Lanzhou reminded netizens that bicycle travel in his city was often unsafe due to wandering clouds of noxious chemicals. A group of northeastern Chinese chimed in, bragging that there was enough benzene in local rivers to suppress aquatic life for the next 100 years.
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