Visa. It’s Everywhere You Want To Be.
I’ve written many times before about China’s endemic corruption. Everything here is done with bribes. It’s a holdover from the communist days, when the government had everything and the people had nothing—the only way to get anything was through connections and bribery, a system still in place today called guanxi. Until recently visas were quite easy to obtain by greasing the right palms, but in the run-up to the Olympics the government has begun a crackdown. Actually, crackdown probably isn’t the right way to describe it. “Actually enforcing the existing laws” would be more accurate.
There have been people living here on expired tourist visas for three years who suddenly find themselves deported. Students are being told they have to leave the country until September or later. Even my business, completely legitimate in every way, is finding it more difficult to get visas for foreign employees. Why? Because with the eyes of the world ready to descend on Beijing in less than two months, the government is terrified about unrest. They don’t want agitators ruining the image they are about to present to the world, so they need to know exactly who is and is not in the country. The problem is, this new rigid enforcement is hurting their economy, as this article shows.
The plush lobby of the Kerry Center Hotel in Beijing is usually crowded with foreign guests this time of year, most of them lounging in Centro, a hip bar, listening to jazz and sipping martinis, or queuing up in the taxi line after power dinners at the Horizon restaurant.
A side note: I’ve been to Centro before, and yes, it is indeed a snotty hipster jazz bar full of poser fags which sells horrendously overpriced cocktails.
But Thursday evening, Centro had only a sprinkling of guests in a hotel whose occupancy rate is typically close to 100 percent during this time of the year. Tonight, the duty manager said after tapping a few computer keys, it stood at just 63 percent.
“I really don’t know what happened,” said Sun Yin, the duty manager. “Something strange has been going on.”
The problem, it seems, is that with the Olympics less than two months away, China has been restricting foreign visitors from entering the country in the hope of guarding against terrorist threats or unruly visitors who might plot to disrupt the Games, which begin Aug. 8.
The government appears to be approving fewer tourist visas. Business executives say they face new bureaucratic hurdles to visiting the city. And hotels are being asked to give the government detailed information about foreign guests.
But fear not. The old corruption will return as soon as the games are over.
The government does not seem to have come to its decision lightly. In a year plagued by riots in Tibet, protests of the Olympic torch relay, a terrorist plot to kidnap journalists covering the Olympics (according to Beijing officials) and the Sichuan earthquake, the government is stressing public safety, above all else.
Beijing appears less concerned about being the host of a global party, experts say, and more concerned with making sure no one spoils it.
“In order to secure a safe environment in Beijing, we will carry the new visa policy for a certain time,” Qin Gang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a May news conference. “This new visa policy is just temporary, not a permanent one.”
Translation: As soon as the foreign media have left we’ll let all the hookers and drug dealers back in, and everyone in power can resume getting bribes and kickbacks.
If there were any doubts about Beijing’s priorities, they were made clear Thursday, with the announcement that 100,000 commandos, police officers and army troops would be placed on high alert during the Games, signaling that China is prepared for anything.
This is why all the lao wei are dreading the Olympics. Our little bohemian wonderland is going all authoritarian.
“This is not good for business,” said Richard Vuylsteke, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, which represents American companies doing business in the region. “It’s kind of draconian from some point of view. But politics and security trumps economics, especially during the Olympics. We just hope that after the Olympics things will change.”
Of course it will. The people in power here make WAY too much money from bribes and kickbacks to ever let that source of revenue dry up. The government here is making the city look like Disneyland for the Olympics. As soon as everyone goes home it will turn back into the French Quarter.
