Rumor on the streets is that Shanghai’s three major urban districts — Huangpu, Luwan and Jing’an are going to merge into a new, central Puxi district which spans throughout the city’s most affluent areas and covers almost all of Puxi’s top real estate spots, business/shopping centers and historic streets. The merge between Huangpu and Luwan is said to be a done deal, as the Luwan district government is already in a shutdown mode, transferring all affairs to Huangpu. A month ago, Jing’an was said to be a question mark to join, the catastrophic 1115 fire being the main obstacle, as the other two districts were said to be unwilling to deal with the financial and political mess the fire brought to the district. Newly circulated rumor, however, proved otherwise, that the district is going to join the big merge within the 2011 fiscal year anyway.
The idea of the yet unnamed new Central Puxi district has been attacked by natives, for mostly sentimental reasons. The three districts, though geographically much smaller compared to the massive Pudong New District and residential districts like Minhang and Yangpu, are Shanghai’s golden districts, where the city’s collective memories are rooted at. Throughout Shanghai’s developing years, the three districts also varied vastly in their visions of development. Competition made them do so. Huangpu, where Shanghai’s oldest areas are, aimed to preserve the “old town” atmosphere with a modern touch. The district, which covers the Yu Garden, The Bund, East Nanjing pedestrian street and People Square is Shanghai’s old-time signature, yet the district also inherited some of the oldest “historical” buildings, most of which in unfavorable conditions. In 2000, Huangpu absorbed the neighboring Nanshi District — the oldest and poorest in central Puxi, as the only central area of Shanghai that was never colonized (the Chenghuang Temple and Yu Garden being the center of Nanshi). Even after 2000, Huangpu remains the least populated district in Shanghai, as old town residents continue to relocate or be relocated outward.
Luwan District is home to the city’s new establishments. This historical district went through the most radical transformation and was turned into the signature of today’s bourgeois class, with Xintiandi, Tianzifang and most of Huaihai Road’s most active areas (East of Shanxi Road) serving as intense commercial interests. South part of Luwan used to be lower class and less developed, but last year’s Expo had changed that as well, with the Dapu bridge area turned into the brightest new city spot. Of the three districts, Luwan seems the most financially strong, and the district’s philosophy seems to be that it just never ceases to grow, upwards or if not, blend history with five star hotels. Luwan has always been fond of demolition and reconstruction, as you can see in today’s Huaihai Road. A few nice streets up you are in Jing’an, another district fond of the exact same thing. Luwan is into turning low-class residential areas into spectacles, Jing’an is into starting everything luxury way, noted by how West Nanjing Road is different from Huaihai Road. A Xintiandi, for example, would never happen in Jing’an, as the area is relatively newer and lacks a certain old bourgeois flavor, despite the Parliament legend and the Temple being the district’s centerpiece. J
Any native Shanghainese would easily recognize the difference among these three districts. The three district governments’ philosophies seem to collide as well. The question is of course, does it matter that they are different? Sentimental all you want, but the basic philosophy behind the merge is to redistrict the city into a population-wise more balanced state. Pudong, the entire thing being one district, shoulders a large proportion of the city’s education, housing, health care, security and development needs, when smaller districts like the downtown three are allocated the same money with much less responsibility to call their own. The merge facilitates resource sharing, as schools, hospitals, police forces and even government workers can be reallocated among downtown Shanghai’s residents. It also, theoretically speaking, brings down operational costs for the government.
There is technically nothing wrong with re-zoning. The municipal government, itself rumored to be relocating to Pudong in the near future is drawing a big map, entirely based on the fact that smaller districts are getting too much support for too little work. And yet, we wonder whether the drawing itself has too much favoritism written all over it. The very concept of this strong+strong+strong merge seems to be the opposite of balancing out, but concentrating power. The new Puxi Central District, let’s call it that for now, is sort of the definition of “too big to fail”, in the sheer financial sense. Most of the city’s economic resources concentrate in these downtown areas, when population does not, and in turn, the burden is really on the neighboring larger districts like Xuhui, Putuo, Changning and Hongkou. These districts, already with more people to deal with, would be overshadowed by the Central and ripped off of already scarce opportunities. The border of Putuo and Jing’an has always been the most exemplary. Putuo, a less affluent lower-middle-class, large residential district suffers from the complex of being so close to Jing’an, but geographically just a little further out. That little something matters, as Jing’an continues to market itself as the Jing’an Temple Jing’an or West Nanjing Road Jing’an, Putuo’s appeal dwindles in comparison. Just imagine now, when anything south of the border calls itself “central Puxi”, how much business would Putuo lose?
We are no financial gurus, and we do full-heartedly believe in the sharing of resources, but we would like to draw a different map. Why don’t Jing’an merge with Putuo instead? Huangpu can merge with Zhabei, another area needing some good attention, when Xuhui and Luwan could work out as well. Like how Huangpu took care of Nanshi, this kind of merge promotes city-wide development, not further squeezing out populated districts and trying to turn those into urban/suburban ”residential” prisons like the ones in Minhang. That would be completely unnatural and unethical, as the entire North America being a bad example in place.
The problem of that, it seems to us, is that the richer districts do not want to share. They decide to buddy up so they don’t have to deal with the pressure of doing too little, while still maintaining current status quo, if not better. Jing’an’s eagerness to join the deal is phenomenal, as the district tenses up its security forces recently to prevent any kind of sensational mess like the fire from happening. They know if they are not in now, they are going to be the one losing the game to the new Central. And that’s sad. As we always say, we are all in this together. The entire country, let alone the city. If the new Central’s mission is to become more of a Giuliani style Manhattan, Shanghai will no longer be what it is.
A Wave of Independent Candidates Up for Local People’s Congress Representative Seats. Question: What Does it Mean?
May 27, 2011 Leave a commentThis must have been the most interesting week in this country’s public political sphere yet. Before getting into what happened or what would happen, we have to realize on what scale of events we are engaging ourselves in. This is not, by any stretch of means, the first time there are independent candidates up for district congress representative elections. First of all, let’s go over how it works. In the municipality of Shanghai, each district has a people’s congress, which consists of hundreds of reps voted in by each neighborhood. The election is organized by community committees. Currently in Xuhui District of Shanghai, for example, there are 292 such representatives.
How do they get elected? Normally, key institutions in a certain neighborhood (universities, national corporations, government offices etc.) would be asked to nominate someone to the community committee, who will then select 4-6 people as the final nominees. These names will turn out on a ballot distributed to individual citizens and organizations. After that, actual voting occurs in a certain set date across the neighborhood. Public employees mostly vote at workplace. Retirees and private sector employees would have to go vote at locations set up by their community committee.
This is, indeed, the only process in which a Chinese citizen can exercise their voting rights, every five year. From there on it’s a representational process, as your rep would go on voting for a higher level representative, not you. Needless to say, most people don’t go vote, or don’t even know it’s taking place unless their employer organizes them to. The nominees are in names only and have no real platform for political expressions. All of these are known knowledge. Regardless of its obvious symbolical posturing, it is a process, a lawful process. The Chinese election law also specified that nominees have to be “checked out” by certain people, while not specifying who those people are.
There is a different channel to get elected, as an un-nominated independent candidate. What’s interesting is that, technically, you can be that candidate by just writing your own name on your ballot. Again, technically, if you have enough friends in your neighborhood, all of which writing your name on the ballot, you can be elected as a rep. This is the same as a so-called “write-in campaign”, as Alaska’s senator Lisa Murkowski won last year. Of course, the possibility of that is quite slim. To actually get your name on the ballot is a bit more difficult. You would have to gather signatures recommending you and get it approved by the community committee, a part of the Party/State system, which, in our experience, consists of the most conservative group of people. Here comes the problem. Liu Ping, the poster-woman for this “independent candidate” wave went into dispute with her local government trying to get her signatures approved. As these things go these days, she was briefly detained.
But we don’t want to talk about the supposed political danger of trying to be an independent candidate, as some high profile candidates are trying to make the story to be. The narrative is dishonest. Independent candidates have long existed in this process. Liu Ping wasn’t the model. More than a few people have succeeded in winning the election as an independent candidate in the past. It is, of course, a complicated matter. It’s not easy and has obstacles of great proportion to overcome, but who has ever said getting yourself elected to anything is easy?
But in our mind, this new streak of independent candidates are really interesting. In our opinion, none of these candidates has the slightest chance to get elected in the process, but this is a rare, rare opportunity of a face-off, between the internet reform wing’s ideals (if they have anything clear in mind) and the wider community — the constituents, the real, ordinary citizens, a much more diverse and complicated group of people than those on Microblog. Nominated candidates do not have to reach out to the community, which is the most problematic of all in this process, but independent ones do. If they really want this, they would have to convince enough people in their district, not on the Internet that they are in this for real. They would have to make their names known to 60-year-old community organizers who don’t share much in value with them. The most important of all, we hope they will figure out what they want, state their political ideas, put them out there for people to discuss. The opportunity, in our opinion is the most precious we’ve seen in recent years, and it shouldn’t be wasted on stating over and over again that they have the right to be in the game, because they are hardly the first.
This isn’t about any independent candidate winning, because none of them probably will. Frankly current reps are more politically qualified than most of them, and if you really want to know, a district rep really doesn’t do much. They hold a 4-6 days meeting every year. But all of these are just sideshows. The real showtime is for ideas to be said, for ideals to be cleared up, for some solid foundations to be built, for organized political campaign to be experimented with. It’s important. It’s also an opportunity to at least show there is a public will to slow down the ongoing trend of Party/Citizen dualism.
It’s going to be a good show, if the players are committed and know what they are doing. Politics is where ambitions are. the only thing making it more complicated (and fun) than what it really is. We truly respect them to try. This pseudo news outlet will be closely monitoring the situation from now on.