I am now back in Lund after having visited Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. Overall, I had a great time! See this link for my paper presentations at Zhejiang University.
I have been to China a couple of times before so I think I can say with some degree of certainty that I am truly impressed with the speed with which that country develops. Last time I visited China was in 2004 (Shanghai) and you can really touch the difference! Both Shanghai and Hangzhou gets more and more the feeling of Taipei, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur or Tokyo. Since I lived in a leafy up-market part of Hangzhou I sometimes (N.B., sometimes….) even thought I was in Tokyo! It was fairly quiet, green and everywhere there were quiet 6-cylinder Mercedes-clones with automatic gear boxes sneaking up on you. OK, let’s not exaggerate things (everything is certainly not wonderful for an expat living in China and much of my praise is relative rather than absolute), but I must recommend all the younger readers of this blog to start learning Chinese! It is so obviously the most important language after English. As for Italian, French and perhaps even Spanish: go hide yourself in some dark osteria, dusty old tapas bar or chilly wine cellar. You are so “over the hill”……
Don’t make any mistake about it though: I am not advising anyone to buy a sizeable piece of China corp. right now. As obvious as it is that China is a giant in the making, equally obvious it is that it is all one giant bubble at the moment. The stock market is inflated, the housing market is crazily overpriced and the currency is probably grossly undervalued. At least if you ask me! Like so many others I really want a piece of the action but I will not buy anymore until prices have corrected themselves downwards. I do not pretend to be an expert after a month in Hangzhou but many civil servants I talked to claim that they have to flip property since their salary is too low to live on! Well, that’s a hell of a recipe for disaster……
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To finish this blog I want to lecture you somewhat on Hangzhou and Zhejiang University :)
What most of you probably don’t know is that Hangzhou is a former Chinese capital and the major tourist destination among Chinese people. It is a beautiful city (well, around the famous West Lake at least) close to Shanghai that has not rested on its laurels. It is for instance the home to the head quarter of the, at least in Sweden, now notorious car factory Geely; the company that bought our national treasure Volvo, one of the Vs in the Swedish middle-class dream (Villa-Vovve-Volvo, i.e. to have your own house, dog and Volvo)! Depending on who you ask, the population of Hangzhou is at least a couple of millions, sometimes as many as 8 millions including the whole “commune”. That, ladies and gentlemen, is, give and take, all the Swedes in the world in one place the size of Stockholm. And this is considered a small city by Chinese standards!
What most professors among us probably do not know is that Zhejiang University (I can still barely spell the name correctly....) is the Princeton of China! It is not the best university in China (i.e. the Harvard of China) and it is not the second best (i.e. the Stanford of China), but it is one of a handful that considers themselves number three in China! The quality of the students mirrors this and it is a bit strange that so few outside of China know about this. I guess they have to rename the university to make a dent in the psyche of the ordinary professor in the rest of the world….