Word: chengdu
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...most of those who French describes are resigned to life under Chinese occupation, although their eager questions about the Dalai Lama prove that nationalism isn't totally dead. In Chengdu, watching elaborate rallies celebrating 50 years of communist rule in China, French asks a Tibetan how he felt. "I suppose I was expecting ... a neat speech about the theft of his birthright and the pain of being a Tibetan caught in a false, imposed culture," French admits. But he got a simple, tragic response: "I feel nothing...
...Then again, a quid pro quo with a business associate is probably a less costly option than borrowing money from pawnbrokers that have become China's de facto commercial lenders. The booming city of Chengdu, Sichuan's capital, is home to some 200 pawnbrokers. Don't think of them as sleazy purveyors of rusting bikes and busted TVs. The tiled floors and tawny sofas of Liu Jianjun's Building China Pawnshop suggest a bank lobby, and rightly so. His loans, which can run up to $1 million each, mostly go to private businesses...
...pain to lend to small firms. Their owners show up in bank lobbies with account books that frequently combine grade-school math with Enron-style deceptions, making it nearly impossible to place a value on their operations. Liu Binbin has seen it all as a lending supervisor at the Chengdu City Commercial Bank (C.C.C.B.), one of a hundred or so such banks set up over the past several years across the mainland specifically to lend to small companies. One applicant, the owner of a factory that makes pickled vegetables, visited Binbin's office recently with his ledger: a single piece...
...state-owned enterprises are muscling in on the initiative. In Chengdu last year, a government-owned machine-tool company was saved from bankruptcy after local bureaucrats ordered one of the city's four credit-guarantee offices to back loans to the factory. Officials feared that if the company closed, laid-off workers would raise a fuss. The case is not an isolated incident. Yan Guosong, general manager of a Chengdu loan-guarantee agency, estimates that more than half of government-backed business loans are now going to state enterprises. "The central government created guarantees to help small businesses...
...grassroots social uprising. The number of jobs created in China barely keeps up with the armies of workers laid off by failing enterprises?and angry, laid-off workers are the biggest threat to the country's stability. Sichuan has seen its fair share of trouble: last June, traffic in Chengdu came to a halt on two occasions when workers held a protest about unpaid salaries; in September, 800 oil refinery workers in Chongqing demonstrated over paltry severance payments...