Shanghai - Paris

Nihao!

Jintian wanshang wo hui Faguo!

Et oui, ce soir, je rentre a la maison en France!

Cela va bientot faire un an que je n'ai pas vu la campagne Francaise... ca commence a me manquer un peu. Je ne sais pas encore au bout de combien de temps Shanghai va me manquer, ou pas... mais ce qui est sur c'est que j'ai hate d'aller faire le touriste a Paris et profiter de la cuisine Francaise.

Je continuerai a vous donner des nouvelles depuis la France et essaierai de poster qq photos.
En parlant de photos, j'en ai pris plein ces derniers temps, mais pas encore eu le temps de les developper donc pas encore sur le blog... bientot...

Bonnes vacances tous, si vous en prenez et a bientot.

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SebT

Beyrouth

J'ecris regulierement que Shanghai est une ville dans laquelle je me sens bien et qui me facsine. Il y en a une autre ou je suis passe rapidement il y a plusieurs annees qui m'avait impressionne pour d'autres raisons: Beyrouth. Enfin Beyrouth, mais aussi Baalbeck.
A l'epoque la reconstruction etait en marche, mais cette ville etait encore marque des traces de la guerre qui s'etait acheve quelques annees plus tot. La fameuse "ligne verte" etait encore visible. L'hotel Holiday Inn, qui faisait justement partie de cette ligne verte etait encore la, et portait toujours des cicatrices de cette epoque: impacts de balles et traces d'obus. L'armee Syrienne etait encore presente partout, mais on sentait que la restruction battait son plein et que ce pays retrouverait bientot son lustre d'antan.

Il y a qq mois, j'avais poste un dessin a propos de l'opportunite manquee de paix au Proche-Orient suite a l'accident de sante de Sharon. A ce moment la, on sentait une ouverture possible. Le faucon israelien responsable des massacres de Sabra et Shatilah avait ordonne le debut du retrait des colonies, le mouvement etait lance, la creation de son parti politique etait une etape supplementaire pour une nouvelle voie... quelques mois plus tard, le Ministre de la Defense est un travailliste, clame haut et fort qu'il a decide de bouter le Hezbollah hors du Liban Sud et qu'il continuera d'ordonner la destruction totale des infrastructures Palestiniennes et Libanaises... et si au passage des civils meurent ca ne compte pas. Alors certes le Hamas et le Hezbollah ont enleve des soldats et en ont tues d'autres et ainsi rompu une treve tacite et continuent egalement de bombarder a l'aveugle des cibles civiles du nord d'Israel, mais la disproportion des moyens est tellement enorme que toute comparaison est inutile. Le Liban qui avait mis 15 ans a se relever est a nouveau detruit, Israel est simplement en "stand-by".

Cette situation m'exaspere. J'accepte qu'on ne soit pas d'accord avec moi, mais je tenais a exprimer ma tristesse et mon exasperation a propos de cette situation. Pensons un peu a Beyrouth et aux Libanais, tous les Libanais.

Shanghai - ma ville (2)

Comme je l'ai ecrit dans un post precedent, nous habitons entre la Concession Francaise et l'Ancienne Ville Chinoise, du cote de la Fuxing Road. Cette longue rue, une des plus longues de Shanghai dessert de nombreux lilongs, or depuis quelques mois certains portaient l'ideogramme de la destruction. Rien ne fut fait au debut. Quelques camions de demenagement ci et la. Et puis tout s'est accelere depuis 6 semaines et des quartiers entiers ont ete detruits encore et encore.
Cette partie de la ville va avoir totalement change de visage depuis que nous sommes arrives.

Quelques photos NB prises recemment sur la Fuxing Road...




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SebT

Bono, l'Afrique et la Chine

Ce n'est une fable des temps modernes mais presque. Cet article du Times du jour est excellent (surtout vu de Chine). Il est en anglais (... forcement c'est extrait du Times) et un peu long, mais si la Chine (et Bono) vous interesse, prenez 5 minutes pour le lire!

Times du 4 Juillet, article de Gabriel Rozenberg
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2254596,00.html


Africa is not going to rock to Bono's tune

A year on from Live 8, China has trounced all hope of change in Africa by doing deals with its kleptocrats.

PINK FLOYD, so the tale goes, lost their brilliant but troubled frontman Syd Barrett when they were driving to a concert and forgot to pick him up on the way. One year on from Live 8, when the band re-formed to play to an audience of two billion people, it’s clear that the organisers were similarly forgetful. By focusing on the G8, they ignored a country that is not in that group, but which holds Africa’s future in its hands: China.

China makes the G8 look like, well, a bunch of ageing musicians re-forming for one last gig. That weekend, as Pink Floyd sang Wish You Were Here, a Chinese company called Great Wall quietly announced it was to blast Nigeria’s first communications satellite into space. Selling Nigeria to investors is a tough job: insurgents, bandits and corruption are endemic. But here is Mustafa Bello, head of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission: “The US will talk to you about governance, about efficiency, about security, about the environment,” he says. “The Chinese just ask: ‘How do we procure this licence?’”

Something extraordinary is going on in the developing world: everywhere you look, there is China. Its foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, begins each year with a trip around Africa. It helps that he speaks fluent Swahili, which isn’t, say, Margaret Beckett’s forte [SebT: que dire de Douste Blazy qui ne parle meme pas Anglais...] . Trade between China and Africa grows at dizzying speed. Chinese firms are drilling for oil, mining metals and logging timber across the continent. They are also building everything from railways to football stadiums, in an unorthodox mix of hard business logic, soft loans and aid.

It is not only Africa. There is a similar story in Latin America, where China is buying natural resources from just about anyone; to sweeten the deal, President Hu Jintao has pledged up to $100 billion of aid over the next decade. China is even getting friendly with places such as Belarus. Belarus? The clapped-out Stalinist throwback in Eastern Europe with approximately no economic activity whatsoever? Or a “full market economy”, with which China has a relationship of “ strategic co-operation”, as President Hu dubbed it in December when President Aleksandr Lukashenko was treated to a three-day state visit? China has strengthened its ties with Cuba, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

China’s foreign presence is ambiguous, hard to adore, difficult to dislike wholeheartedly and all-pervasive: the diplomatic equivalent of tofu. Analysts say it is open to debate on its role abroad, far more so than on domestic policy. But on the other hand, China will deal with anyone, and pariah states are a gap in the market. Despite US concerns, China treats these countries as it wishes to be treated itself: be they corrupt, inept, or genocidal, it doesn't get involved. Put aside whether this is a recipe for a new Cold War — what does it mean for Bono?

Britain’s “development community” has been searching its soul recently. In particular it seems to have gone off aid. The idealistic, hippy talk of the redistribution of wealth is now passé as the penny drops that the billions given to Africa have only kept tinpot elites in power. “I think Africans must have been smiling and cringeing at times when they saw us just thinking that money could solve their problems,” said Bono earlier this year. “Aid is not a magic bullet,” says Duncan Green, Oxfam’s head of research. “The real drivers of change are internal.”

The new buzzword is governance. Growth will come only when accountable governments establish property rights and weed out corruption. Tricky though it is, the Department for International Development is now trying to encourage good governance, by cutting back aid to countries that persecute opposition leaders and supporters. The latest approach makes sense. But, sadly, the game is up: China makes it irrelevant. It is giving billions of dollars of loans to Angola, for example, with no strings attached in return for oil contracts. Raddled old kleptocrats such as President José Eduardo dos Santos can now raise two fingers to the West.

Unlike those wussies at the IMF and the World Bank, China doesn’t make aid conditional on respect for human rights. Privately, its leaders think that the West’s claim to the moral high ground is self-serving cant. Nor does China push a model of economic development — although its new friends are welcome to learn from Beijing. That’s a worry, too, as countries on a path to democracy may think again. After decades of following one faddish Western policy after another with little to show for it, whom would you trust on reform — China with its red-hot growth rate or creaky old Europe?

Bono et al are back at base camp. From now on they’ll need to pressurise China to pressurise African leaders to allow themselves to be voted out of office. It’s a tough sell in a country where charity rock concerts are pretty thin on the ground and no one’s heard of Bob Geldof.

Too late the US is realising what is slipping through its fingers. A recent report by the Council on Foreign Relations called for treating Africa strategically: “The United States should engage China on ‘rules of the road’ in Africa, to end support for egregious violators of human rights, reduce incentives for corruption, protect the environment, improve the long-term prospects for stability, and reduce unfair business practices.”

Sorry, but it is just not going to happen. Africa is not a road for foreign powers to drive on. For good or ill, its leaders can choose whose rules to follow. We can engage with China or try to pick a fight. But a world in which the West can single-handedly lay down democracy and good governance? That’s just hippy talk.