Surviving Beijing since 1980

On 2 July I had a meeting in the Mayor’s office, with Mayor Guo Jinlong, Vice Mayor Ji Lin, and others from the Beijing Government. I was appointed (the only foreigner!) as “Committee Member of the Specialist Working Group for the Beijing 12th Five Year Plan”.

It was the first meeting, where the Mayor and others reviewed the main issues and concerns for the 12th FYP as well as a view back on the results of the 11th FYP.
Details cannot be provided as they are confidential. But one issue was already in the press the same day – the merging of 4 Beijing districts into 2: Xicheng + Xuanwu and Dongcheng + Chongwen. I am also the Senior Adviser of Dongcheng District.
I had met the Mayor officially on 20 May in his office on the occasion of the presentation of the 2010 Great Wall friendship Awards.
The Award Winner’s meeting was chaired by Mr. Liu Zhi (sitting next to the Mayor and toasting with Bashar Samra of ING/Bank of Beijing). Mr. Liu was my boss when I was working in the Beijing Development and Reform Commission; he is now deputy secretary of the Beijing Government (Fu Mishu Zhang). During the meeting I delivered a short report on how to improve traffic management in Beijing.
pics
The award is given to foreigners (“foreign experts”) for their contribution to the city’s social and economic progress. It is the top honor for foreigners in Beijing, already given to 145 foreign experts from 28 countries. I received the award from the then Mayor, Wang Qishan, in 2004; he is now vice Premier.

I get at least once a week cold calls from “investment advisors” who want to convince me to empty my pockets, give it all to them so I can get rich. They come with all kinds of charts trying to prove how great they are and how great it is to invest in stock markets. Problem is, only they get rich, and so do the bankers in Wall Street who buy multi-million dollar mansions like a hamburger (I call them crooks).
With all the eloquent explanations, shuffle the article under their nose and tell them to f### off and find another idiot.
Here in Beijing the cold-calls are usually done by foreigners (often girls from the Philippines). They seem never to give up and don’t take no for an answer. Annoying bunch. Slamming the phone helps.

21 November 2009 by Floyd Norris – excerpts
International Herald Tribune
“A decade to forget for U.S. stocks”
American stock markets have soared 64% since they hit bottom eight months ago.
And that leaves them just where they were over 11 years ago.
U.S. stock markets were the world leader in the great bull market of the late 1990s, but more recently they have been a laggard, in large part because of the weakness of the dollar.
As the accompanying charts show, a stock a stock investor looking for a part of the world to invest in back 1998 – and to hold on until now -  could not have done worse than to chose the United States.
After 11 years, the S&P index of 500 USA stocks climbed back to 1,100 this week – more than 11 years after it first reached that level on 24 March 1998.
Read the full story and see the charts:

So, beware.