The communist emperors need to get out and smell the pu'er tea

If there was ever a region in China that was underserved, it is Guangdong. Sure, those western provinces and territories don't seem to warrant much attention from the stodgy communist cadres in Beijing either, but those provinces aren't exactly the economic engine of the country now, are they?

For all of Guangdong's importance to China's ascendancy, it garners scant attention in the news and is home to very few foreign correspondents.

Adam Minter, who writes the blog Shanghai Scrap, lamented this fact during the recent snow-job in China, which left over a million people stranded at Guangzhou Station, in his post "Massive Story, No Reporters: It's Just the News from Southern China:

... foreign news organizations continue to run their south China coverage out of Hong Kong, and not out of Guangdong properly. Though the distance between them can be covered in under two hours, the cultural distances are so much greater. No reporter - foreign or otherwise - can expect to cover the subtleties of the Pearl River Delta without actually living in it (I've toyed with the idea), or spending extended period of time there. It's amazing, actually, that more reporters and news organizations don't base in Guangdong. After all, it is, as we are so often reminded, the Workshop of the World, headquarters to much of China's export capacity (and thus, the world's), and home to some 30 million + migrants (in addition to 80+ million locals).

Let's break this down a little bit more. The Pearl River Delta region is comprised, generally, of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Zhuhai, Zhaoqing, and Foshan (along with a few other smaller centres). Hong Kong and Macao are included sometimes, and sometimes not, mainly because they lie on the other side of an international boundary.

Regardless, the region is undoubtedly China's top economic zone (the following statistics are for the PRD region, and do not include the entire province of Guangdong):

• The PRD accounted for 29.7% of China's total export.
• The PRD accounted for 8.7% of China's total retail sales of consumer goods.
• Some categories of the toy industry in the PRD have a world production share in excess of 60%. In 2006, mobiles produced in Shenzhen alone accounted for more than 1/8 of the global market. Other leading products include footwear, lighting fixtures, furniture etc, to name but a few.
• In 2006, the region's utilized FDI reached US$11.3 billion, 19.2% of the national total.
• Guangzhou is becoming one of the three auto manufacturing bases in China. In 2005, its annual capacity of cars ranked 2nd in China, only after Shanghai.
• In 2006, PRD enjoys a per capita GDP of RMB47,094, three times of the national average of RMB 15,973. With 3.3% of China's total population, the region accounted for 8.7% of the nation's total retail sales of consumer goods.

It's amazing, to this correspondent, that amid all of this robust economic development that more people, both Chinese and foreign, aren't paying more attention.

This isn't just a matter of the northern provinces, and more specifically, Beijing, ignoring Guangdong's importance. As a former resident of Guangzhou, the entire Cantonese-speaking world is virtually immune from Beijing and its backward communist propaganda.

This could not be illustrated better than last month's spring festival gala on CCTV, which many Chinese believe is a tradition that takes its place alongside eating dumplings and vinegar on lunar new year's eve. Not so, in the south, according to viewership ratings:

Going inside the stats reveals some interesting details, the majority of viewers were in northern China. The top 5 provinces with the most viewers were (in order of ranking): Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Beijing, and Hebei. You have to go down to 15th before you find a "southern" province, in this case Anhui. The bottom 5? Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan. Disappointingly for CCTV, less than 5% of Guangdong viewers tuned in this year.

So why is the show so popular in northern China and not watched in the south? Is it an issue of dialect? Is it just habit? In the north, Spring Festival is ALWAYS about preparing dumplings while watching CCTV and complaining about how horrible this year's show is while reminiscing about previous years. Do those in the south fail to tune in because they don't feel connected or is it just their New Year's habits are different?

Well, the only real difference I noticed in the south's new years habits are they spend time shopping at the flower market, which isn't possible in the frigid north. But the parts of Guangdong that are near Hong Kong don't pay much attention to CCTV, because they get TVB, Phoenix, and several other stations that originate in Hong Kong. The audience in Guangdong is far more sophisticated, in my humble opinion, than their northern neighbors, and they have little desire for whatever slop CCTV can serve up as an excuse for nationalist propaganda.

The much-villified Da Shan made a comment to me last year that he rarely goes to Guangdong, because people there aren't as familiar with him. First, he figured because they are largely Cantonese speaking, and second, because people in Guangdong tend to watch Hong Kong television. The only exceptions, he told me, were Shenzhen and Zhuhai, two cities which are populated with migrants and largely speak Mandarin Chinese.

When one steps back and considers these facts, one can see a recipe for potential future discord with the cadres in Beijing. If China were a democracy, I could foresee a scenario where splinter parties from the south would advocate independence or a more autonomous role. And even more-so, when Beijing tries to force-feed its own culture down the throats of others.

China is a big and diverse country. As the writers of this blog, as well as our commenters, have mentioned, those that confine themselves to the comfortable western cocoons of Beijing and Shanghai are missing out on what's happening on the ground. It's no different than a person sitting in an Upper West Side loft in New York city commenting on what's going on in America. Yes, that is still a valid perspective -- but not a well-informed one.

I'm amazed at the passivity of the people in Guangdong. China needs Guangdong far more than Guangdong needs China. Guangdong has very little in common with the rest of the country; they speak a different language, have a different history, and a different (Lingnan) culture.

They contribute far more to the country than what they get out of it.