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Jake Van Der Kamp

'The [fuel] shortages come as state leaders including Premier Wen Jiabao reiterated that Beijing would not waver from its goal of wrestling down inflation, which surged to a 10-year high of 8.7 per cent last month ...'
SCMP, March 24
'In the past several months, we heard a lot about tackling inflation, but now the top leaders are saying to find an appropriate balance between curbing inflation and economic development,'  [China International Capital Corp chief economist Ha Jiming] said.
Same page
During the Cold War the thing to be was a Kremlin watcher, someone who could make a living by talking about the nuances of how the Politburo geriatrics lined up at Soviet military parades.
The equivalent in the United States is the Fedwatcher, someone who can bore his firm's clients by talking endlessly about the significance of how the Federal Open Market Committee arranged paragraphs in its latest statement, or, if the clients won't listen to this, write it up for one of those brainy New York magazines that use lots of big words and never have any pictures.
The equivalent for China is the Zhongnanhai watcher and let me tell you right away that you're not supposed to know where Zhongnanhai is, or what it is, other than that the name means central south sea and it is part of a series of ponds and parks in the centre of Beijing.
My wife once took a photograph of the main gates, years ago, and a cop who was standing there demanded her roll of film. She gave him a blank roll and we still have the picture but I'm not going to show it to you because you're not supposed to know, so there.
If, however, you were a Zhongnanhai watcher who could get the thinking behind these gates consistently right, you would be on to a very lucrative and successful career.
You wouldn't have anything quite as valuable as inside information on the stock market, of course, as nothing is quite as valuable as that, but you would have people hanging on your every word nonetheless.
For instance, you would be able to say whether the Beijing leadership will now step on the economic brakes or step on the economic accelerator.
I'd like to think that you could also always learn which it will be by reading this newspaper but I have to confess that yesterday's front page of our Business section wouldn't have helped very much.
In one story on that page we had a report that Zhongnanhai will 'not waver from its goal of wrestling down inflation' (in other words it will step on the brakes) and in another story we have a Zhongnanhai watcher saying it will 'find an appropriate balance between curbing inflation and economic development' (in other words it will step on the accelerator).
What particularly troubles me here is that I would like to blame our sub-editors on the business desk for this confusion (find me the reporter who doesn't blame his sub-editors for everything) but I'm not sure that I can. I rather suspect that the source of the confusion can be traced a bit further back.
Could it really be that the professional Zhongnanhai watchers are so divided among themselves or have so lost their keen over-the-wall sense of hearing that we can no longer rely on them or know which of them we can rely on?
I am as aware as you are that every male Chinese citizen over the age of 30 thinks that he need only be table host at lunch to qualify as a Zhongnanhai watcher but I really do mean the professional ones, people who actually make a living of it in the universities, the media, the consulates and the investment banks. Their opinions on this key question are all over the shop at the moment.
And let us remember that we indeed have the key Zhongnanhai question right now. Can the leadership really inflict on the nation the full pain of suppressing what is now a rapidly surging inflation rate, of doing it moreover with the real tightening measures that are required rather than just the cosmetic administrative tools used so far?
Bear in mind that these kinds of tightening measures at a time of high inflation brought on the Tiananmen Incident in 1989. Will Zhongnanhai risk it again or will its firm resolve weaken in the face of widespread resentment? What is the thinking in this walled off compound, the location and nature of which remains an official mystery?
You know, I rather suspect we have found the source of the confusion at last. It is not among our sub-editors and not among the Zhongnanhai watchers. Just possibly it is actually to be found in Zhongnanhai itself. How odd that through happenstance the place has been named correctly. I think the inhabitants are all at sea right now.



Zhongnanhai watchers offer conflicting views