James Fallows

Last April, the British writer J.G. Ballard died at age 69 79. By chance, on a trip to Shanghai a few days earlier, I'd seen the house where Ballard had lived as a boy in the 1930s, before the Japanese invasion and the experiences that gave rise to his unforgettable novel Empire of the Sun. I described the visit here, along with photos of how the house looked, 70-plus years after the Ballard family had fled, in its new role as a fancy restaurant. This is the attic where the young Ballard had played with his toys, which had become a private dining room:



The house was built in 1925 and through the next 85 years survived the Japanese bombing and invasion;  the Chinese civil war; the years under Mao and the Cultural Revolution; and the redevelopment of Shanghai starting in the 1980s. But, according to this report today in the Shanghaiist, based on this story by Malcolm Moore in the Telegraph, late last year its luck ran out. It is being redone in concrete and will be some kind of luxury club. The owners told Moore they had no idea who'd lived in the building in the 1990s, let alone 75 years ago. Please see the Telegraph site for a very interesting video about the house, plus this detailed account of its and the family's history, as part of a larger discussion here.

Westerners have to be careful in waxing nostalgic for China's "good old days," especially when this involves artifacts of the colonial era known as the "Hundred Years of Humiliation" in China. But it's objectively true that the early 20th-century architecture and street layout of Shanghai's old "Concession" district make the city distinctive in the world and provide much of its style and very self-aware sense of elegance. Shanghai's skyscraper-laden Pudong district is the occasion for much predictable touristic marveling at the city's rate of growth -- "This was a swamp 25 years ago, and Jeez would you look at it now!" But, like skyscraper concentrations anywhere, Pudong is built on an inhuman scale and is more impressive/imposing than attractive/enjoyable. Shanghai's older west-of-the-river districts, of both Chinese and Western design, are what make the city memorable.*

My specific point is simply to note the fate of one structure that has a lasting role in world imaginative history. The larger point, for ongoing discussion, is the complicated relationship between a culture very aware of its thousands of years of history, and the ever-changing forces (eons of poverty, a decade of chaos in the Cultural Revolution, the dawning of a new kind of prosperity-driven chaos now) that have made people uninterested in, unsentimental about, or unable to preserve the physical artifacts of that history. I am glad that I saw this house in the "old days" -- a full 11 months ago.
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* I was going to insert here several more photos of the Shanghai Concession district from last year, but at the moment I can't retrieve them, since our new website system does not yet support the old "categories" function for locating previous posts. Web sites aren't built, or redesigned, in a day.

Tai Shan the panda -- so cute and widely beloved during his early years at the Washington National Zoo, now a lumbering near-adult recently dispatched to his ancestral homeland -- has just come out of a one-month quarantine period in China and is prepared to begin his new life. Below, with his new best friend, trainer Wu Daifu:

In response to this item, two comments arriving within 30 seconds of each other. To be honest, this sort of thing is the main payoff of having a web site.

From a reader in China:

I live in Zhengzhou, Henan Province and when I travel around the city I have the privilege of using the buses.  Today, in the rain, through the steamy window of my jam-packed bus, I saw a women just sit down in the middle of the road and take her shoes off.  My God, do I know how she felt! In true Chinese fashion, the other drivers just drove around her through all the potholes.

From a reader on a visit to the US:

Like yourself, this week I am being subjected to  experiencing the "pleasure" of riding Acela from Washington, DC to New York and back.  However, unlike you, I am having a hard time finding anything to be even remotely optimistic about. 

Let's start with their much touted, free Wifi.  I was in the business section on my journey up to New York and found the Wifi so painfully slow,  I was pining for the days of dial-up.  Trying to load the Atlantic's web page? I gave up after it took nearly 5 minutes for the just the Atlantic masthead to appear on the page (luckily, I had a hard copy with me .  Google news managed to load after about two minutes, but when I clicked on a story from PC World, I was redirected to another page which informed me the site was being blocked because it may contain content deemed offensive to other passengers.  My two theories:  

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Although it may be hard to believe, in the same modern America in which most people appear to be talking on a cellphone or texting/reading/etc on a Blackberry or smart phone on top of whatever else they are ostensibly doing (notably driving), overall "connectivity" really is weak in the U.S. compared with most other places. For reasons examined here.

Thus it is with grateful surprise that I discover, in real time, that Amtrak is offering free (for now) and pretty fast Wi-Fi service on its East Coast corridor Acela trains, like the one in which I am just passing through Baltimore on the way to New York. Last time I made the DC-NY haul I took the BoltBus, as described here, precisely because of its onboard Wi-Fi. Plus, what a bargain! The Acela is pricey but has prided itself on offering a "civilized" way to go from city to city. This is a nice step -- on the whole. That is, it's a good sign for American infrastructure, and for me slightly more good than bad for peace of mind en route. Nonetheless, I will try to make this the last post I ever file from inside a moving vehicle.

No, no, no -- I'm not talking about the case for health-care reform he made in the East Room on Wednesday afternoon, although I thought that was strong and not one minute too soon (more like, six months too late). I mean instead the resounding way he ended the speech, Skip ahead to approximately time 19:20 in this official White House clip to share the joy:

  
Not to spoil the surprise, but he manages to get off the stage with words other than...  "God Bless America!" (For why this was the right way to go, see here and here.) Know hope.

And, apart from the ending, the speech is good too.

David Leonhardt, in an "Economic Scene" analysis piece in the NYT today, talking about fears that the U.S. unemployment situation might be about to get even worse. One problem is the continued weakness of consumer spending. And then:

The second problem is that the stimulus program and the Fed's emergency programs are in the early stages of slowing down.

These programs have done tremendous good, as I've written before. The bubbles in housing and stocks over the last decade were far larger than an average bubble, and yet the resulting bust is on pace to be shorter and less severe than the typical one in the wake of a financial crisis. That's not an accident. It's a result of an incredibly aggressive response by the Fed, Congress, the Bush administration and the Obama administration.

Why do I mention this at all? Because he didn't let the current landscape of partisan argument scare him into a "sources say" approach. The most ill-informed part of the GOP/Fox criticism of stimulus spending is that unemployment is still bad, so the programs must not have done any good. It's almost embarrassing to have to point out the reply, which is: unemployment would be even worse without the intervention. (So the stronger argument would be: the stimulus should have been larger all along.) The real point is, Leonhardt wasn't cowed into saying, "sources say the programs have done tremendous good." He could just say what the facts were. Plus, he gracefully points out that both the Bush and Obama administrations were pulling the plow.

Also, just now on NPR's All Things Considered, Michele Norris's interview with Sen. Lamar Alexander about what happens next with the health-care reform bill. (Link here; audio will be there later this evening.) Alexander was manfully making the same points he did at last week's Health Summit -- the Republican "ideas" that had been added to the plan were "rear view mirrors on a car going the wrong way," passing the bill on a majority-vote reconciliation would be a historic offense against Constitutional balance etc. In each case, Norris in a polite but no-nonsense way asked him the "Yes, but what about???" questions. Didn't GW Bush get his big measures through by reconciliation? Why was it good then and bad now?

The impressive aspect, which should be standard in big-time interviews but obviously isn't, was the refusal to take a first-level talking point as the end of a discussion, and instead raising the counter-evidence. Significantly, this was not just "gotcha" counter-evidence familiar from many talk shows, the effort to smoke out some minor changes of position over time, but rather the probing of deeper holes in an argument. And, before you ask, of course politicians from every part of the spectrum should be subjected to such "Yes, but what about?" questions. This just happens to be what I heard today.

Last month I had a series of responses (latest one here; links to all the rest when our previous "category" feature is restored) on the question of whether America was really going to hell -- and if so, what might be done about it. Original "going to hell" article here.

The previous entries, plus many more still in the queue, were mainly about alternative prescriptions -- ways to deal with the filibuster, the role of money in politics, the calcification of the Senate, and so on. The one I'm about to quote concerns my diagnosis: that the United States remained strong in its resilient and creative powers, and is troubled mainly by an obsolete governing system.

Below and after the jump, a long dispatch from a reader who is a university-based research scientist and department chair, questioning whether America's two, related commanding-heights advantages -- its dominant research-university system, and its role as magnet for high-end talent from around the world -- are as durable as I suggested:

I enjoyed reading your article on the historic American sense of fear of decline and rejuvenation. However, I wanted to comment on your discussion with regards US science in comparison with rapidly developing countries like China.

First, a bit of background about myself. I am a plant molecular biologist involved in crop biotechnology and grew up in the US from Canadian parents who later moved back to Canada. I worked in the past for two of the largest agricultural biotechnology companies in the US... and currently have a large research collaboration with XXX. Further, people who I have trained or worked with are in the research organizations of all of the large agricultural biotechnology companies. Finally, over the last few years we have set up research collaborations with many researchers in China including developing a large collaboration between the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and my Canadian university, XXX. s such, I have travelled to China 3 times in the last 2 years and hosted many researchers from there. That is enough about me.

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If you're looking for more evidence that simply plunging a living being, frog or human, into an already-boiling cauldron will stimulate that creature to bounce out self-protectively, unharmed, consider this recent sad news from Russia:

I feel as if I'm having versions of the same conversation each time I talk about "what's China really like?" with Americans or other Westerners. This may say something bad about me, but it also reflects the challenge of getting across a series of contradictory-sounding thoughts that are all simultaneously true. I think this messy combo is taken for granted by most foreigners who have spent much time traveling through China, but it can sound odd to those who've mainly read awe-struck news articles or been to the fancy hotels and restaurants in the biggest Armani-equipped "Tier 1" cities. A distilled version of this melange is:

• China is big, exciting, fast growing, absolutely worth taking seriously, and nothing like the house of cards or hollow achievement some skeptics have suggested;
• BUT ALSO it is chaotic, slapdash, full of poor people and feuding factions, very assured in some ways and nervous in others, and all in all nothing like the nonstop juggernaut or illustration of perfectly effective governance we hear about from people who've taken a quick look; 
• AND ALSO it has surprisingly few elements of built-in, unavoidable, zero-sum conflict with the United States and is nothing like the looming military menace some people like to fantasize about;
  
• BUT THEN AGAIN but it has many obvious differences of values and interests from the United States and unattractive elements (as of course do we) that aren't going away soon.

 Here are three recent articles that convey (what I view as) exactly the right complex mixture of "taking China seriously" without being "taken in by China."

"There's a New Red Scare: But is China Really So Scary?" by Steven Mufson and John Pomfret in this weekend's Washington Post. About this I'll simply say: read it.

"What the PBOC Cannot Do With Its Reserves," by Michael Pettis on his web site, China Financial Markets. I've written about Pettis in the magazine and think he has a track record (along with some others) of calling Chinese developments the right way. The PBOC of this item is the People's Bank of China; the reserves are the countless trillions of dollar-dominated assets it holds; the topic is whether China really can push the U.S. around as a result of the holdings. Read this too. Sample paragraph after the jump.

"A Land Without Google," by Jane Qiu at Nature.com. If you've been following the Google/China case, there might not be too many surprises here. I mention it because of its theme about China's own vulnerabilities, as it hopes for a higher-value and higher-tech future, in being cut off from the global flow of high-end intellectual competition and ideas.

Is China strong? Yes. Is it weak? Yes. Is it opening up? In most ways Yes. Is it closing down? In some ways Yes. Is it a friend? In many ways. Is it a potential foe? In some ways. If you read these pieces you'll see what I mean.

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Or, second-best, after being in the Atlantic tribe, is at the Washington Monthly magazine. My first "paying" job in the magazine world was there*, and in the long years since I've been a devoted alumnus and reader. (*Charles Peters, the founding entrepreneur/crusader/editor, filed for Chapter 11 protection a day after I signed on -- a contingency he hadn't mentioned in our previous talks. Good preparation for the necessary adaptability of the journalistic life, and still a very fortunate break to have met him, from my point of view.)

Every two years or so the latest team of young staff editors wears out and drops in the traces has learned everything that Charlie Peters and his successor Paul Glastris have to teach them, and a new team is brought in. At least one such opening is in sight at the Monthly. Details after the jump. This will be a great opportunity for someone. For another time: why I think long-term career prospects are actually bright for people in their 20s or thereabouts just getting into journalism now.

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It's probably a mercy in this case that the "Categories" feature of our old web site has not yet been ported over to the new design. That means I can't at the moment provide a link to all the countless old entries in the "Boiled Frog" saga. Summary for those joining us late: It's not true!!!! The frog in the slowly-heated pot of water will do his best to escape once things get too hot, and a frog thrown right into a pot of already-boiling water will be scalded, wounded, or worse before he gets out. Exception: if the frog's brain has been removed, he'll sit in the pot and let himself be slowly cooked. See this by Michael Jones for more.

Imaginary frogs, in fools' paradise:


Real-world frog, doing his best to escape. Yes, those seem to be lily pads in the background, but you get the point:

Last week, as part of a soon-to-be-revived Tech Update Fiesta series, I mentioned that the Google Nexus One had held up very well in all of its "smartphone" features. Navigation, entertainment, email, web browsing, photography, telekinesis, etc. But when asked how it was at the "dumbphone" basics of making and receiving calls, I said that it was only so-so. I added that I couldn't be sure whether the problem was the phone itself, the specific carrier I was using (T-Mobile), or the overall shoddiness of US mobile phone coverage, compared with most other countries'.

Two readers respond to say that it's probably not the phone: more likely either the national grid or the specific carrier. First, the argument that it's T-Mobile's fault:

I hear all the stories about how crappy iPhone service is through AT&T, and now your post about the problems with the Nexus and T-Mobile. Just wanted to say that I can't remember the last time I had a dropped call on Verizon.

Have to admit that praising a phone company makes me shudder. My usual take on them is about the same as James Coburn's in The President's Analyst. Or Lily Tomlin's.

Now, the argument that it's America's fault. Or, more precisely, that the U.S. is in a quality race with Indonesia on this score:

Further corroboration on how perception of the Nexus' call quality really depends on network quality: I've been using the phone in Indonesia for a month, where phone coverage is dismal across the board, and have gotten disconnected even in the middle of the CBD area. Data coverage often drops from 3G to E or even G (!!) and oftentimes stalls out. Sometimes the signal is strong but it looks like too many customers try accessing the Internet at the same time and the network could not route all the requests through!

As part of my move to Germany, though, I am in Singapore yesterday and today, and lo and behold, the phone works just well. Never dropped more than 1 bar even when underground in the MRT (subway). I wonder how many other cities boast the same facilities for cell phone users -- I believe you mentioned the same is true of the Beijing subway? [Yes -- in elevators and coal mines too.]

I'll soon -- couple of weeks -- be able to verify if that holds in Nuremberg, Germany too.

Ten years ago I did an Atlantic profile of T.D. "Tommy" Mischke, a late-night AM radio humorist from St. Paul who kept me amused on many dark drives from The Cities to Duluth, for a book I was working on. Below, Mischke in action, then on KSTP-AM.

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The NYT and WSJ have their places in the firmament, but my favorite newspaper will always be the China Daily. State-controlled, English-language, always touchingly earnest in its surface demeanor but often with a different message underneath. See after the jump for a few illustrations. Sometimes these gracenotes seem to have been added by slyly mutinous Aussie or Brit language "polishers." Sometimes they seem to have no explanation other than surplus earnestness itself. Eg, from today's front page:


The important news is, there's a new look and concept to the China Daily! And it's stunning in its effect, if the paper does say so itself:

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My sincere thanks to my colleagues Bob Cohn, Betsy Ebersole, and Scott Havens, plus their comrades on our tech team, for an unbelievably fast re-design of last Friday's major website re-design, which has restored the "personal" blog pages to their former look and feel.

(The Atlantic's edit and web teams, shown together in our offices this afternoon:)

When will China emerge as a military threat to the U.S.? In most respects the answer is: not anytime soon—China doesn’t even contemplate a time it might challenge America directly. But one significant threat already exists: cyberwar. Attacks—not just from China but from Russia and elsewhere—on America’s electronic networks cost millions of dollars and could in the extreme cause the collapse of financial life, the halt of most manufacturing systems, and the evaporation of all the data and knowledge stored on the Internet.

Thanks to our tech team. And if you click on the title bar of this item -- I promise, this is the last time I'll ask -- you'll see a comment I put on Ta-Nehisi Coates' site trying to explain what has happened to the "personal" pages, and why. That is all. 

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Thanks for many, many notes saying that RSS and Reader feeds are coming through with no text. Uncle! That's a bug, not a redesign "feature," and is being addressed. The new layout of blog pages, discussed here, was on purpose but in truth is also a bug that is being addressed. See you back here once that's fixed. No fun writing blog haiku.

Last year our site ran a large number of clips from the multi-CD series "Doing Business in China." At the moment I can't link to any of them, because of issues with our new web design. But I can say that Bob Schapiro, the director and guiding spirit, has (along with the rest of us) just been nominated for two Emmys for this series. Really impressive one is for "Best Documentary," in a field with 1600+ submissions. [Please click for more.)

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In the item below, I compliment the magazine's tech and business team on most aspects of the Atlantic.com's new design. But I also point out, in a part you wouldn't have seen if you didn't click through, that I consider the new layout of "personal" blog pages to be a serious step backward, since it makes all sites look the same and drains them of personality and visual interest, plus making them much harder to read. I hope, and think, that this part of the design will be re-visited.