Traveling the World

• July 1: Fly from Wuhan to Shanghai, Shanghai to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Miami
• August 6-9: Fly from Fort Lauderdale to Chicago to see my friend Ish
• August 14: Fly from Fort Lauderdale to Seattle to see the Twins and Maddy
• August 15: Skydive in Seattle
• August 17: Fly to San Francisco
• August 21: Rent a car and hit the road south to Monterrey
• August 22: Drive to LA
• August 26: Fly from Los Angeles to Shanghai
• August 26: Fly from Shanghai to Wuhan

As I mentioned above, I’ll be coming home with $7000, $2200 of which will be going to pay back my credit card bills (flights and pre-existing charges), thus leaving me with about $4800. My roundtrip tickets (WH-SH,SH-LAX,LAX-FLL,LAX-SH,SH-WH) cost $1800, which I know is a lot, but considering I used only one website to book them all in a row without any hassles, it’s a good deal.

My intent is to spend no more than $2000, and I should be able to stick to that budget since my friend Ish generously offered to cover my expenses (need to look for a cheapppppp flight, anyone?). During the times not specified, I’m free to do whatever I want, and will be seeing as many people in Florida (Miami, Pines, Weston, Davie, Coral Springs, Orlando, Gainesville) as I can. It’s already proving to be a crazy trip.

It’s been 2 very long, trying years that have also been very fruitful and educational. 1 more year to go!

At 7:49AM local China time, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit the Western province of Qinghai, a province which is nestled between Xinjiang (Muslim riots February 2009), Sichuan (massive earthquake June 2008), and Tibet (D.Lama). If we thought that China was doing better, we thought wrong. It seems that something must happen to China at least once a year, be it a natural or man-made disaster. I guess it’s fair to say that since the country is so large, covers so many timezones, and has so many people, that these things are bound to happen, but every time it does happen, it leaves us feeling worse than before.

It’s never fair for innocent people to die, and in this situation there’s no one to blame, which makes it harder. The current death toll is about 700, however in this small remote town of 100,000 people, no one will be sure until they begin to give up hope that survivors will be found. It raises the argument that the quality of life for people around the country is completely unequal, and that a standard code for buildings should be introduced so that those buildings unable to withstand natural disasters should be torn down and rebuilt, or at least be reinforced with steel.

I hate the feeling of being unable to do anything to help, and so it’s my intent to find out if I can go there during the May 1st holiday to assist the Red Cross, however I doubt they’d let a single person like myself go there as I might only add to the confusion. You might say that waiting 2 weeks will yield no result, however with Sichuan earthquake, they were out looking for a month and are still rebuilding two years on.

I beg you to donate money to the HK Red Cross so their efforts can be increased. They’ve already collected over 200,000 HKD (about $27,000) and need your donations badly, as the epicenter is located over a very remote town and it takes time to get people out there to help.

Since the late 1970s, America has been partners in crime with China. They slowly (or quickly, depending on who’s speaking) moved all factories overseas to the once sleeping giant. As our workers lost their jobs and China gained them, the owners of those companies became corporate fat-cats who remained in the US and ignored the problems on the eastern front. America was doing business with a country that had many issues we won’t discuss here, yet it overlooked these in exchange for the amazing profits.

Now that it’s happy with the amount of money it’s pocketed over these last three decades, America feels bad about keeping the Chinese people a bit in the dark, and as a result is trying to clear it’s conscience by pressuring Hu Jintao and the other current Party leaders to remove the peg which keeps the Yuan firmly fixed in place at 6.82-6.88 RMB per USD. Doing this has immense consequences, and these are what they are:

The article says the US Federal Reserve believes the true value of the RMB is 40% more, which would mean the new exchange rate should be 4.09 RMB per USD. Here’s an example: I am currently making about 10,000RMB a month, valued at $1500. If the new rate were to kick in, I’d now be earning $2440 without doing anything differently. I don’t have much money saved, but I’m a foreigner so my case is different. For different reasons, it’s understood that it’s quite difficult for Chinese people to leave China, so many people save every cent they earn so they can afford to leave later in life.

Let’s say person A has 200,000 RMB saved at an exchange rate of 6.85 thus giving them almost $30,000. However when the new rate kicks in, they’d now have almost $50,000. You can see how this would immediately change their position in life (in terms of being able to leave the country). Now everyone in China would be like person A, in that they suddenly have much more money to use towards the global economy, which might cause issues for the local economy.

As a result of this, the cost for manufacturing would drastically increase only in the sense that it used to cost $0.10 to make something, when now because of the new rate it would cost $0.75. This would force companies to either raise their prices, stop producing, or move to another developing country like India. To do this would mean millions of factory workers would lose their jobs thus increasing unemployment rates to high levels.

As China is very communal and family oriented, it would put immense pressure on family members and local and federal governments to take care of the newly unemployed on a permanent basis since the removal of factories means there’s no new source of work for these laborers. Since they can’t afford to continue living in the cities, they would be forced to return to their villages and push China in a backwards trend from before the time of the economic explosion, thus slowing their expansion to a crawl.

For those people not directly affected by the closing of factories, the new-found increase in wealth would make the citizens feel the government should make new concessions like added freedoms and maybe even wage increases. Even though the labor force would be drastically reduced by the factories closing, everyone else would be unable to see wage increases because the money needed to provide the increase in wages came from those companies that are no longer using the Chinese labor force to manufacture their goods. In the end, those not directly affected would become directly affected by the change in the cost and standard of living. Everything would cost more, from the small bowl of noodles to the 150sq.m house you just purchased.

It’s my strong opinion that the increase requested/demanded by the US government would wholly uproot the system in place within China, and strongly recommend no changes be made at this time. If the government does go ahead with it, I believe the only way to successfully do it is to gradually increase the currency’s value so that by two or three years from now when the global economy is in a much better position, it would actually help the world, rather than right now when it would hurt everyone.

What are your opinions? Let me know by leaving a comment below!