Because it would be far too cliché to begin a text about the wealth of the Chinese elite with cigars or whiskey, an abstract thought is required first. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about wealth is that it behaves like a pseudogiant: the farther away the viewer moves from it, the more impressive it appears. If in rare glimpses becomes clearThe fact that the Chinese elite drinks whiskey for $800,000 a bottle and puffs on cigars for more than $60,000 makes many people’s jaws drop.
However, the closer wealth gets, the more ordinary, yes, piefiger it seems. When a Chinese billionaire shuffles past his own likeness on plush slippers and then takes a seat on a gold-framed sofa with purple upholstery – as the business magazine says capital once described – many just think their part.
Because of such scenes, the Chinese “Central Commission for Disciplinary Control” has now sent a 3,500-word memorandum primarily to the bankers in the huge country. Big donors, according to the recommendation, should become big donors – splurgers, in other words, large donors. In the future, the financiers should end their hedonistic way of life. And please stop copying the West all the time.
In Frankfurt am Main you can observe which customs could be adopted in China
The Beijing officials in particular are unlikely to have given much thought to the latter appeal, given that the apparatus of power only recently allowed major Western banks to enter the Chinese market more strongly. Which customs could then be introduced can be observed in places in Frankfurt am Main.
Pedestrians can just squeeze past the Rolex-wearing financiers who block the sidewalk in the evening in front of the open window front of the Chinaski Bar. However, the situation is quite different with suspected bank trainees who rent sports cars on Friday evenings in order to disturb ordinary citizens on walks with them at exemplary walking speed but with forbidden loud roaring engines.
The topic hardly seems to have arrived in local politics. Even the left-wing faction in Frankfurt’s Römer put it on record when asked that they saw little leverage. Theoretically, thresholds could be installed in the road surface in some places or controls against car tuners could be strengthened. However, it is questionable whether this would include those who meander through downtown Frankfurt “with legally registered vehicles”. And how many of them are bank employees? Even the left faction, well, doesn’t want to speculate about that.
One solution for Beijing would be to think more about the cultural difference between bankers and stockbrokers. For years, Frankfurt traders dined in the traditional “Mutter Ernst” pub instead of starred restaurants, until a real estate investor sold the restaurant. A few weeks ago the pub opened again elsewhere. This is where tourists, stockbrokers and Frankfurters eat chops, Kassler or potato salad together. At least here it seems to many that communism is already complete.