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November 6, 2005
Promise, Piracy, and the Buddha: China, Day One
It’s approximately two in the morning, and I’ve lost a battle with a jet lag-induced insomnia and resigned myself to getting some work done before the workday begins here in Hong Kong. I arrived here late Saturday evening. On my last leg of the journey, I sat next to Dan Miller, President and CEO of Excorp Medical, based in my home state of Minnesota. It turns out that Dan and I were not the only Minnesotans on board. There were a group of them, and they, too, were arriving early for a trade mission set up by Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty that is set to begin the same day as the California trade mission.
Miller’s company makes a device that helps liver disease patients. On his last trip to China, he signed a deal with officials in the city of Loudi, Hunan province, to form a subsidiary there. Prior to 2004, foreign firms had to cede 51% of their China-based subsidiaries to the Chinese partnering firm. Not so now, smiled Miller. In December of ’04, Miller told me, Chinese officials began to allow Chinese firms like the one he’s created, to be wholly owned by a foreign entity; a huge step that will surely boost foreign investment in China. Miller seemed very happy with the arrangement and awe-stricken by how the city of Loudi was run. Loudi is an hour away from Hunan’s provincial capital, Changsha, the birthplace of Chairman Mao Ze Dong. 25 years ago, it was a small village, says Miller. Now it’s a ‘small city’ of 4 million inhabitants. A few years ago, says Miller, city officials realized they had zoned a good portion of the city in a way that was not conducive to economic growth. So what did they do? They’re now in the process of razing half the city so that they can build it right this time. Miller was astonished at the effort.
After arriving to Hong Kong and getting some sleep last night, I woke up Sunday morning and heeded advice on how to cure jet lag: spend as much time as you can outside so the biological clock starts to adjust. I walked the streets around my hotel in Kowloon first, checking out the different markets set up devoted solely to the sale of rip-offs of designer watches, handbags, parkas, t-shirts, you name it. In between the shops were folks selling pirated copies of DVDs and software. Merchants in Hong Kong are some of the world’s biggest violators of intellectual property rights, and Schwarzenegger plans to address this issue when he arrives next week.
I decided to take a ferry across the harbor to Lantau Island to check out the world’s biggest bronze Buddha, on top of a forested mountain on this sparsely-populated island. Among the throngs of worshippers there, I struck up a conversation with a gentleman who brought his family here from Thailand. They were moved by the sheer size of the statue. I asked the him if he had seen the relic inside the base of the Buddha, a single tooth believed to have belonged to Siddhartha Gautima, the one and only Buddha. The man smiled cynically and said “Yes, I saw it. But I think it’s a fake.”
I guess it’s hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t in this epicenter of piracy, from handbags to a tooth of the Buddha.
Posted by Rob Schmitz at 2:44 PM
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Oh, you can't fake a Buddha tooth. Sounds like an amazing trip and the pictures are great. I assume the Governor won't show up until after the election. Right?
Posted by: Doug on November 7, 2005 7:26 AM
