Er schreibt:
[…] Sitting in my office overlooking de Avenue of Eternal Peace, Beijing’s main thoroughfare, I fancied I could actually see some of the economic forces that China was conjuring before it sent them hurtling around the world. People were buying cars at such a rate that, week by week, the traffic on the avenue became noticeably more clogged. The buildings on the far side of the road that were Soviet-era apartment blocks when I started my assignment had become high-rise towers with marble foyers and glass and chrome exteriors by the time that I finished it. Bicycles, once ubiquitous, were disappearing. On the pavement outside my ground-floor window, the sibilant touts who peddled pirated DVDs out of the corner of their mouths had proliferated. […]
Es erinnert mich sehr an meine eigene Erfahrung, als ich 2007 das erste Mal nach Peking kam, mit ganz unschuldigen Absichten nur einmal die große berühmte Hauptstadt China’s sehen zu können. Wir blieben für 3 oder 4 Tage und hatten eine großartige Zeit. Als ich 2008 erneut nach Peking kam und die Orte und Plätze von “damals” besuchte, erkannte ich vieles bereits nicht mehr wieder. Was für eine Stadt. Heute merke ich, wie ich ein Teil meines Herzens an sie verloren habe …- was für eine unglaubliche Zeit.
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S. 86
In fact, the whole of Europe was similarly affected with sloth, which only went to show the when people had money, they lost enthusiasm for work. ‘Their lives are just too comfortable,’ said the young man screwing up his mouth as if the thought tasted bitter. The boss nodded silently as he stared out at the Tuscan countryside.
S. 89
C. appeared resigned that this practice would continue and that Italy’s jewellery industry might be heading for a collapse. He did not blame the Chinese, he said. They were willing to work hard and they were smart. What really exercised him during our lunch and later during discussions in his office was how ignorant the Italian and Swiss governments seemed to be of the nature of Chinese competition. From his perspective, the threat came less from China’s rise than from the failure of European governments to understand it and formulate policies to deal with it.
[…] A couple years ago, he said, there had been a move to increase the twenty-five-hour working week of schoolteachers in the canton by one full hour. But many teachers opposed this, so a public, canton-wide referendum had to be held to resulbe the issue. C. shook his head at the memory of it.