CAPA WORLD

“Connecting Global Cities” is a monthly column written by Colin Speakman, Resident Director for CAPA Shanghai.

After a recent visit to Beijing from Shanghai with the spring 2019 students, Colin writes about the opportunities provided by CAPA for students to learn about their host city and other global cities around them. He compares and contrasts the features and local interaction of both cities, while describing how Beijing and Shanghai represent China globally, politically, and culturally.

“Connecting Global Cities” is a monthly column written by Colin Speakman, Resident Director for CAPA Shanghai.

With the impending Brexit referendum approaching, the principles and effects of globalization in the UK are up in the air. CAPA Shanghai Resident Director Colin Speakman sheds light on the history of the European Union and several impacts that the UK could face. He also covers perspectives from Shanghai and looks into alternative models of trade agreements.

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This is a relevant article, I hope. By the time readers are seeing these words, it will be March and, in principle, on March 29 the UK is supposed to leave the European Union (EU). Yet, such are the complexities of this event that it could be postponed—at the time of writing we do not know.

“Connecting Global Cities” is a monthly column written by Colin Speakman, Resident Director for CAPA Shanghai.

This post appears as China approaches the end of its Spring Festival; CAPA students arrive in Shanghai and, at universities all over the country, local students are making their way back to campus—after the long break between the Fall semester ending mid-January and the Spring semester starting at least a month later. Students are one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Spring Festival period which includes a week of Chinese New Year National Holidays but is much longer than that. Officially the Spring Festival ends with the Lantern Festival 15 days after Lunar New year, which would fall on February 20 this year. It is good timing as most locals are back on the week of February 18 so crowds can visit the special Lantern Festival displays in Chinese cities. CAPA Shanghai students are taken to one.

“Connecting Global Cities” is a monthly column written by Colin Speakman, Resident Director for CAPA Shanghai.

For China watchers, 1978 was a pivotal year—after nearly three decades of a planned economy under Chairman Mao, the famous leader’s passing, in 1976, was a prelude to China’s “Reform and Opening-up” led by Deng Xiaoping after he became the new leader in 1978. Thus 2018 marked the 40th anniversary of that reform, marked in part by the launch in Shanghai of the first China International Import Expo (CIIE) in November.

However, December 18, 2018 marked the precise date that “Reform and Opening-up” was launched and the Shanghai authorities marked this by a short exhibition of “China stuff” from 40 years ago onwards—held in a specially erected steel tent near Zhongshan Park, one metro station from CAPA’s Shanghai campus. Starting just before the weekend to facilitate attendance, it ended on Tuesday, December 18 to commemorate the special day. I was privileged to get a ticket to attend and I did not see any other foreigners while there. I will discuss some of the exhibition highlights below, but first a bit more background.

Today is the 81st anniversary of an event that horrified the world. On December 13, 1937, during the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, Japanese troops attacked the then capital of China, Nanking (Nanjing) - the government already having relocated - and over six weeks, according to records and reports, murdered around 300,000 Nanjing citizens, including women and children. Today fewer than 400 survivors are still alive to tell the tale.

The story of the Nanjing Massacre has been well told in Iris Chang's 1997 book The Rape of Nanking and in several movies in recent years including "Nanking" ,"City of Life and Death", "John Rabe" and most recently "The Flowers of War". It was perhaps fitting that, along with my students, we watched the showing of "The City of Life and Death" in a large movie theater in Nanjing in 2009. We were a small Western group in a cinema packed with locals and it was impossible not to feel the tears of the audience that night. I wondered how many in that very audience had lost grandparents and other kin in that massacre.

“Connecting Global Cities” is a monthly column written by Colin Speakman, Resident Director for CAPA Shanghai.

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Sister Cities are sometimes referred to as “Twin Cities” but that term has another meaning as well. In USA, it is used to refer to two cities of similar size that are geographically close together. Two examples which I have visited a few times are the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul (in Minnesota) and San Francisco and Oakland (in California). Some are twins across a border and quite close to it—San Diego in USA and Tijuana in Mexico (I have visited them too). The term is also used in other countries. Sometimes such twin cities lose their individual identities and merge.

Photo credit: Colin Speakman

Budapest in Hungary, which began as two cities (Buda and Pest) twinned merged in 1873 to become a united city. Where I live in China I have several friends from the city of Wuhan; I wonder if they learn that Wuhan was created in 1927 from no less than three neighboring “tri-cities” of Hankou, Hanyang, and Wuchang. We can see where “WuHan” came from combining parts of each city.

“Connecting Global Cities” is a monthly column written by Colin Speakman, Resident Director for CAPA Shanghai.

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There are times when studying abroad that important global events occur and this provides the opportunity to examine them in a different culture.

 Photo: Shanghai, the world's top cargo port by value from Colin Speakman

In the second half of the 1980s I was teaching International Economics and International Finance at an American university in London—where there were more than 100 nationalities on the campus with a significant percentage of students from the U.S. There were some important events to use as case studies.

“Connecting Global Cities” is a monthly column written by Colin Speakman, Resident Director for CAPA Shanghai.

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New York may have been unhappy at being knocked off the top spot on A.T. Kearney’s Global Cities Index by London, but they will be happier to note that a survey of global cities by “economic power,” compiled by Oxford Economics, puts them at number one.

Photo: George Washington Bridge from public domain

Economic power here is measured by GDP of different cities when converted to U.S. dollars and Oxford Economics have produced an interesting list. However, there are some important caveats. Firstly, the survey is future focused to project the ranking by 2030, not the current state of play—and things can change.

“Connecting Global Cities” is a monthly column written by Colin Speakman, Resident Director for CAPA Shanghai.

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“Xīn Nián Kuài Lè” (Mandarin - Happy New Year) or “Kung Hei Fat Choy” (Cantonese - Happiness and Prosperity) were sayings echoing out around Asia and beyond, even as far as London’s Chinatown when the Chinese New Year celebrations got underway as a near global event from Friday, February 15 (New Year’s Eve and China National Holiday) ending by Thursday, February 22.

Photo: Chinese New Year Parade in London by Colin Speakman

Of course, these holidays are found in other parts of Asia and, in 2017, I celebrated in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in the period of Vietnam’s Tet. This time I was in London and Western countries have no holidays for Chinese New Year (though China has National Holidays for January 1—three days this time). Thus, it was on Sunday February 18, a couple of days’ later, that London’s Chinatown held the famous parade and events in Trafalgar Square. I was there to celebrate the Year of the Dog even if with the help of a Snake (it was not the Year of the Frog!).