Awash in a tide of booze
Businessmen the world over are known to down cocktails after work - then wine over dinner - while they discuss business. In mainland China, however, business discussions take on 'Chinese characteristics' - particularly when they involve local-level government officials.
Local officials start drinking at noon, becoming uproariously drunk. Massive drinking continues at night, following an afternoon nap. The more local the government level, the more common this situation seems to be.
In a recent anecdote, the party secretary of Yanxi township, outside Beijing, met foreign investors one afternoon. He interrupted the talk frequently to pop handfuls of pills and make trips to the bathroom. The foreign investors asked accompanying city-level officials what the secretary's problem was.
'Oh his liver is shot,' they were told. 'You know, to be party secretary here in a rural district of Beijing, the chief job is to drink. That's it.
'He can't take it any more. His entire body has rotted out, inside, from drinking.'
In another case, a provincial-level party secretary fell ill with a blood clot in the brain, last year. He was rushed back to Beijing for treatment, and the general public believed his illness was caused by overwork in the service of the party and people.
But insiders knew what caused the haemorrhage and physical collapse: drinking liquor, day and night, at one function after another.
The epidemic of drunkenness among local-level government officials and mainland businessmen has spread into professional fields, as well. In the commercial banking sector, foreign and domestic banks vie intensively for customers.
Said one Chinese banker working for a foreign bank branch: 'Foreign bank officers retain their customers by providing competitive service. Chinese banks retain customers through the volume of liquor they can drink.'
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, China was flooded with opium while Chinese silk and tea poured into Europe. Opium from Bengal was shipped into China, creating widespread addiction. This eventually impoverished the country, which was insultingly dubbed the 'sick man of Asia'.
It's almost impossible to imagine such a thing happening again: China's economy today is far from sick. Rather, after nearly two decades of 8-per-cent annual growth, it is one of the world's most robust economies.
On the other hand, the prosperity has brought social dislocation, cancerous government corruption and a society that is totally infatuated with money worship - and suffering widely from related psychological problems.
Such an environment provides a boon for foreign liquor companies: China's liquor imports increased by 296 per cent from 1999 to 2004. The country's whisky and other hard liquor imports now account for 23 per cent of the world's consumption.
Foreign liquor companies spend a total of 1.1 billion yuan per year to advertise their products in the mainland market.
Domestic liquor makers are also sharing in this prosperity. China produces 9 million tonnes of rice wine a year: the Wuliangye distillery alone has sales of 15 billion yuan. Its plan is to reach 45 billion yuan in less than five years.
This may be great for China's consumption economy. But how will the government's creaking and already overburdened medical system cope with the effects of its population bathing itself in liquor over the coming decades?
The country is unlikely to collapse, though its medical system may.
Karl Marx once dismissed religion as the 'opium' of the people, and the Communist Party of China shares that view.
But while its members are forbidden to practise religion, they're allowed to drink.
They are even encouraged to do so at official banquets, and throughout the day, by peer pressure.
If religion is an opiate, then what is liquor?
Laurence Brahm is a political economist, author, filmmaker and founder of Shambhala Foundation
