Here’s why I’m giving serious consideration to a move to China

I found this via HuffPo:

9 Signs of America in Decline

By

Image via WikipediaRick NewmanPosted: October 26, 2009

The sky isn’t falling, exactly. America isn’t on a fast track to irrelevance. Even in a state of total neglect, we could probably shamble along as a disheveled superpower for a few more decades.

But all empires end, and the warning signs of American decline seem to be blinking more consistently. In the latest annual “prosperity index” published by the Legatum Institute, a London-based research firm, the United States ranks as the ninth most prosperous country in the world. That’s five notches lower than last year, when America ranked No. 4. The drop might seem inconsequential, especially in the midst of a grueling recession—except that most of the world has endured the same recession, and other countries are bouncing back faster.

China and India have recovered smartly from the recession, for example. Brazil seems to be barreling ahead. Australia is growing faster than expected, prompting worry among government officials who fear they may have overstimulated the economy. The United States, meanwhile, is muddling through a weak, jobless recovery, and we have a lot of problems that could make prosperity feel elusive for a long time.

I still have the energy and interest to pursue business opportunities in China and I have had encouragement from my accountant and a respected business associate. My wife, who is Chinese from Dalian on the coast of the Yellow Sea, and I are having a good think about this.

We have lived there before and our financial fallback, my pension income paid in CDN $ looks pretty good at a conversion rate of $1 to 6.5 rmb, China’s currency. Rents for comfortable apts look ok, or about $700/month for a fully furnished 2 bedroom unit in a very good location in Dalian.

I am planning a move for next March or April.

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A different view of downtown Vancouver with lotsa background

I got this (skitched it) from the VAncouver Sun site. It’s a great view of Vancouver and will be much appreciated when i am living in Dalian again in about 5 months:

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

And views of Dalian for comparison

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Change

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I can’t decide whether my change gene was hyperloaded at birth or not. But I have experienced many changes in my life.

And in the first month of my 75th year I have decided on a course of business and living that should bring an end to my Vancouver Sojourn.

Me and my wife have decided that we are moving back to China to pursue a line of business involving e-commerce, fine spirits made in the Okanagan and other North American products that we can bring into China as well as order fulfillment beginning in Dalian, the city we are going to live in.

I am no stranger to Dalian. I lived there from Oct 2004 till Oct 2005 and then for 5 months in 2009, this year. My wife is no stranger to Dalian because she was born, brought up and worked there for at least 22 years. So its not a completely foreign land to us. And here’s a snap of she and me!

During the next few months I will be completing negotiations with the owner of the distillery that will supply us with fine eaux de vie and liquers. I will also be looking for other products that we can add to our catalogue, but we will be starting with fine products produced in a magnificent distiller installed in Penticton BC. I will eventually say more about individual who triggered my interest in this line of business. I will also be setting up a BC corporation and developing a working agreement with my buddy Hodge Zhou, who is CEO of Dalian Advanced Backoffice Technology Co Ltd in Dalian.

If any of my friends read this I trust they “won’t be surprised” that this old fox is still up to “his tricks”. This business feels like a natural to me and more than ever I feel it’s not too late to get something meaningful started in China. After all the market there is big enough and growing as wealth spreads across that giant land, the Middle Kingdom!

Normally I would have posted this news at robertg69.typepad.com but for some peculiar reason it feels more comfortable here. I will not be moving 100% to China because I will be maintaining a residence here in Vancouver since the supply part of my business model will be in North America, probably mostly Canada.

Image via Wikipedia

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Oct 1, 2009 will be the 60th birthday of modern China

Big Picture – www.boston.com – has some spectacular images of preparation in different parts of China. I skitched this one because it involves policewomen from Dalian:

I have difficulty imaging that this image of policewomen with swords on horseback would be taken anywhere other than China and Dalian!

Image via Wikipedia

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I’m getting into the business of buying and selling edible legumes

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I am in the final stage of working out a working arrangement with the CEO of Maple Harvest International Group Ltd. This company has a factory in Dalian. It processes and sells about 30,000 metric tonnes of edible legumes, including many varietie of kidney beans, lentils and peas.

Our web site is www.maple-harvest.com

I will be posting to our Pulse products web site regularly as I get into this business more deeply. My blog is at http://sinowg.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=8

Check this charming link for recipes with legumes. There is no surer diet to improve health than a diet with lots of legumes and vegetables.

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Latest credible report about the state of the Chinese Internet

Image by sinosplice via Flickr

Whether I have been in China or out, I have regularly checked in with danwei.org

I always enjoyed text and video posts from Jeremy Goldkorn, one of the Danwei principals. This was especially true after I enjoyed an all-expenses paid junket to Tengzhou from Dalian to participate in a photograpers ‘festival’ during the Lotus Blossom Festival of 2005 facilitated for me by Danwei guys and gals in Beijing.

So when I saw an entry in ESWN’s aggregator this morning from Jeremy, I quickly clicked over to a piece in telegraph.co.uk by Jeremy about the lastest status of the Internet in China. It turns out that with the latest tenseness exhibited by China’s Internet Nanny leading up to the Oct 1, 2009 celebration of the 60th anniversary of the CCP taking over the government of China under Mao’s political leadership, Danwei.org like other sites in China has been shut down.

Here’s the lede of this article:

China’s internet: the wild, wild East
The Chinese internet, for all the state censorship and other disturbing abuses, is an anarchic playground that is the closet thing to the Fourth Estate the country has, argues Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy, in his usual open faced and no holds barred style remains optimistic about the Chinese Internet, unlike many other A-List whiners, who don’t live in China or earn the rent and food monies in China.

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mi

Image by Elizabeth Thomsen via Flickr

Pomfret’s China in the Washington Post has a decidedly unconventional view of the evolution of politics in China since the days of Sun-Yat-Sen which ended in 1925 in this article!

It did feel a tad surreal reading this on my  ‘puter in Dalian, China this morning without interruption from China’s Internet Nanny. They may still be celebrating Labor Day May 1 or just be otherwise engaged!

Update 9/8/21: My Chinese friend, W Ming, told me that many chinese believe that they would have been better off, or lived better if Chiang-Kai-Chek had won in 1949 rather than Mao. Chinese would have lived more like the Taiwanese. There is some historical revision going on these days even in China.

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If Tina B says it’s so, then it must be true for me too!

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Here’s the lede:

Now that everyone has a project-to-project freelance career, everyone is a hustler.

And here is the link!

I’m heading off tomorrow to sort of create my own GIG in Dalian, China. So I guess I might call myself a Gig seeker! I picked China as the place to do it since the Cost of Living is much lower there than in Vancouver’s Lotus Land.

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In the bigger world couples live apart to enhance their finances.

Image by Elizabeth Thomsen via Flickr

So Emma and I will not be an exceptional exception, except in the view of our Vancouver friends and acquaintances. I will be pursuing business opportunities in Dalian, China about 12,000 miles west of Vancouver, while she works here in a casino resort hotel. Here’s the evidence, in this morning’s NY Times, of the bigger picture of couples working apart:

The Ghoshes are hardly alone in choosing to live in different places because of work. In 2006, the Census Bureau reported that 3.6 million married Americans (not including separated couples) were living apart from their spouses. In March, Worldwide ERC, the association for work-force mobility, released a report revealing that three-fourths of the 174 relocation agents surveyed had dealt with at least one commuter marriage in 2007, a 53 percent increase since 2003.

“Families today are undergoing all sorts of strains that didn’t exist before and are simply having to adjust to make things work,” said David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, who says the challenging economy may force more couples into commuter marriages for the sake of a paycheck.

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I will be spending quite a bit of my time in Dalian, China …

Image by Elizabeth Thomsen via Flickr

during the next few years, should my fate to remain healthy and active continue on the course I’ve known during the last 73 years. I liked the experience of living and working in Dalian in 2005. And I look forward with a nicely developing sense of exhilaration to returning there in a few weeks time.

China has and is going through lotsa change, without taking anything away from Obama’s plans for the US Presidency. So I guess I could only feel positive when I read this morning that the Bank of China expects to buy a 20% equity interest in a Rothschild bank:

HONG KONG — Bank of China has set an extended March 31 deadline to complete its proposed €236 million ($326.9 million) purchase of a 20% stake in French private bank La Compagnie Financiere Edmond de Rothschild, according to a person familiar with the parties’ agreement.

Last week, the fate of the deal, first announced in mid-September, was thrown into question after the original New Year’s Eve deadline passed without a word from Chinese authorities, who must sign off. It comes amid concerns that Chinese officials have become wary …

The good news is that Chinese bankers are now “wary” of real valuations of interests in Western banks. I wonder what the spirit of the old long dead Rothschild banking ancestor feels when it considers whether or not the Chinese have reasons to be “wary”. And then for that matter, what would the spirit of Mao Zedong feel about the socialist meaning of owning a interest in a Rothschild banking venture?

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