Tsinghua University

Qinghai Province – The Biggest Small Place in China

Taersi

In most things to do with China, the “law of big numbers” applies. A population of 1.4 billion mandates that. So, whether it’s the fact there are over 50 cities larger than Rome, provinces with populations larger than any European country, or that more of just about everything is sold every year in China than anywhere else, the reality of China’s huge population is always a hulking presence.

Except for Qinghai Province. Here, the numbers are so small Qinghai can seem like one of the Baltic States. The province is a little larger than France, yet has a population of only 5.2 million, or 0.3% of China’s total. The capital city, Xining, where I’m now writing this, has about one million residents. Tibet to the south and Xinjiang to the north are both autonomous regions, rather than provinces. Both are far more well-known and talked-about, both inside China and out, and benefit from much more investment from the central government.

Qinghai is unlike anywhere I’ve been in China. It is so empty as to be almost desolate. Xining is in the midst of a very rapid transformation from a dusty low-rise backwater to a more obviously modern Chinese city, with high rises, two new expressways, broad boulevards and shiny new shops selling brands familiar in other parts of the country. It sits alongside a tributary of the Yellow River, wedged like a sliver between low barren brown mountains.

Xining is also the most conspicuously multi-cultural city I’ve been to in China, with a Han majority sharing the city with a large contingent of Tibetans, and a very significant population of Hui Moslems. The Dongguan mosque, on the city’s main street, is one of the largest in China. As many as 30,000 people can worship there. Every twenty paces or so you’ll pass a small brazier with a Hui cook barbecuing lamb kebabs.  Most also sell yak milk yogurt. It’s delicious, in case you’re wondering.

The Tibetans are more concentrated outside Xining. Qinghai makes up most of the Tibetan region of Amdo, and much of the province’s landmass is inhabited by Tibetan herdsmen. The current Dalai Lama was born not far from Xining, and had some of his first schooling at Kumbum Monastery, a 450 year-old establishment that has long been among the most important sites of religious worship and study for Tibetan Buddhists.

Kumbum is a half-hour drive from Xining.  I’ve wanted to go there for about 30 years, and finally got the chance on this trip. I always felt a pull towards Kumbum because it was established to venerate Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelugpa tradition in Tibetan Buddhism. I’ve lived for the last 15 years with a beautiful thangka of Tsongkhapa, and hang it near where I sleep. Here it is:


Tsongkhapa

If I had a patron saint, it would be him. Tsongkhapa was born where the Monastery now sits, in a small mountain village. The Monastery spreads lengthwise about one mile up a hillside. At its height, it was home to 3,600 monks. Now there are said to be about 500. A lot of the more ancient buildings were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and have since been rebuilt. There are also some newer structures in traditional Tibetan monastic style, including one built with a donation from Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing.

Tibetan pilgrims circumambulate the important buildings, do their prostrations, and leave offerings of money and butter. They share Kumbum with Chinese tour groups, who are for the most part respectful, attentive.

After visiting the Monastery in a steady drizzle, I went to see a doctor at the nearby hospital. I was feeling just fine, but for a little sleepiness from the high altitude.  I’ve had a long, intense interest in Tibetan medicine, and the hospital here is staffed by lamas educated at Kumbum and graduated with the equivalent of a PhD in Tibetan medicine.

I saw a physician named Lopsang Chunpai, dressed in maroon and yellow monastic robes. He took my pulse, pronounced me healthy, and prescribed a Tibetan herbal medicine called Ratna Sampil, a combination of 70 herbs that is compounded at the hospital. According to the package, it’s used “clearing and activating the channels and collaterals”.

Though I saw only a very small part of it, Qinghai struck me as an especially lovely place:  a wide, open and arid plateau not unlike parts of the American West. Even accepting the cold winter (with temperatures of 20 to 30 degrees below zero centigrade), it’s hard to understand the high vacancy rate here. It’s population density, at 7 people per square kilometer, is 0.3% of Shanghai’s.

It’s empty, of course, because comparatively few Chinese have emigrated here. That seems likely to change. The air is clean, the economy is booming and the infrastructure improvements of recent years are integrating the province much more closely with the highly-populated parts of China to the east.

Neighboring Tibet and Xinjiang have experienced large Han Chinese migration over the last 60 years. Not so Qinghai. Geography is destiny.  Qinghai, unlike Xinjiang and Tibet, does not border any other country. It has far less military and strategic importance. Xinjiang borders Russia and Tibet borders India. China has fought border wars with both.

Xinjiang and Tibet have also both recently had some serious ethnic conflicts, including anti-Chinese riots in both places in the last two years.  Although its population is about 20% Moslem and 20% Tibetan, Qinghai has stayed peaceful. It is China’s melting pot.

Qinghai is rich in mineral resources, including large seams of high-grade coal. As the transport system improves, more Chinese will migrate there to work in mines. Xining, as small as it is, is the only proper city in all of Qinghai.

The ostensible reason for my visit was to speak at a conference on private equity. The provincial government has a target to increase the number of Qinghai companies going public. The mayor of Xining, who I met briefly, was until recently a successful businessman, running one of the province’s largest state-run companies.

I met a few local entrepreneurs and visited one factory making wine from buckthorn berries, using technology developed by Tsinghua University. It’s a healthier, lower-proof alternative to China’s lethal “baijiu”, the highly alcoholic spirit, mainly distilled from sorghum,  that is widely consumed across China.

Up to now, as far as I can tell,  there’s been no private equity investment in Qinghai. I’d like to change that. It’s a special part of China. Though it’s statistically one of the poorest provinces, Qinghai will continue every year to close the gap. More capital, more opportunity, more prosperity — and more inhabitants. This is Qinghai’s certain future.


The Time of Candied Crabapples and Persimmons: Beijing in Autumn

Persimmons, from China First Capital Blog Post

Back in Beijing after an absence of two years. I know enough to expect big changes every time I return to Beijing, a city that is undergoing the most “meta” of metamorphoses. The most noticeable one this time, in the midst of a short and busy stay, is the completion of at least four new subway lines, and a high-speed train to the airport.

While crowded, the subway is a far better way to get around than above-ground, where the traffic situation in Beijing continues to worsen. This in spite of the fact that 20% of the city’s cars are kept off the street each weekday. Weekends are a free-for-all. With car sales in China running now at over one million per month, traffic is only going to worsen, especially in Beijing. 

Beijing is the most car-crazy city in China. The simple trope is: in Shanghai, people would rather spend money to live in a nicer place and then ride the bus. In Beijing, the opposite is true. Having four wheels under you matter more than the four walls around you. 

October is, famously, the nicest month of the year in Beijing. Daytimes are still warm, the air fresh and the sky often a shimmering blue. The streets are filled with vendors selling the wonderful assortment of autumn foods that have been an inseparable part of October in Beijing for hundreds of years: candied crabapples, persimmons, chestnuts. 

I’m here to participate in a private equity conference organized by and held at Tsinghua University. I readily accepted the invitation to appear, both because it’s an honor to be invited to speak at Tsinghua, and also because I wanted very much to return to the northwestern part of Beijing where the university is based. I was last here (gulp) 28 years ago, when I first arrived in China. I haven’t been back since. 

The changes are so comprehensive that, but for a few old candy-striped smokestacks, nothing seems to remain from the early 1980s. The area around Tsinghua is now filled with shops and modernist glass towers. I remember the university district of Beijing (which houses both Tsinghua and Beijing University) as being very gray, remote and very somber,  with nothing either to comfort or disrupt the life of a student at China’s two most elite universities.  Now, it’s got a hip, Harvard Square kind of vibe.

Tsinghua has a special history, one that has always symbolized for me the unique nature of the relationship between US and China. The university was founded by the American government, using some of the indemnity paid by the Qing emperor following the Boxer Uprising in 1900. While the circumstances that led to the payment of the Boxer reparations are mainly ignoble, I’m nonetheless proud that my country used its relatively small share of the money to establish first a scholarship program for Chinese to study in the US, and then, later, to establish Tsinghua University. The Russians, Germans, British, French and Japanese, who collectively got 93% of the indemnity,  took their share of the money and did nothing of any kind to benefit China. 

Not always adequately or consistently, but America has mainly viewed its role in China as mentor and friend, the least barbarous of the foreign barbarians. 

The conference just ended. I’m going to huddle up against the nighttime cold, and go out to smell the roasted chestnuts, and dodge the fierce Mongolian winds that are juddering the trees.

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