24h China

On German TV, 3Sat to be precise, there was a special issue about China today. This fact on itself is not so special: there are China specials on German TV almost every day. Special about this special was, that 3Sat had a 24h focus on China, with reports, documentaries and movies from and about China. I would have liked to sit in front of the TV all day, but as most of the reports you can see on TV show the same cliche about the booming economy, the millionaires, the differences between rich and poor, about Shanghai, and about the looming instability, I did not think it would be worth to take a day off for it.

Of course, I did watch some reports after work.
It was remarkable how much attention there was for the issue "the upcoming burst of the Chinese soap bubble".
One fact, reported about in a travel documentary, struck me. Apparantly, 27% of the surface of China is covered by desert, and that this figure is increasing rapidly, because of deforestation. The sand dunes supposedly have come as far as 70 km north of Beijing. The sand, moved forward by continuous winds from the northeast, is so powerful that villages have been abandoned and by now have been partly covered by sand. These ecological developments worry me more than a possible collapse of the Chinese economical and social system.

Will the soap bubble burst? Nobody knows. One thing is for sure: China is still big in Germany. So, I am looking forward to the next TV special ... how about a soap series about the country ....