Two nights ago a Eurozone delegation headed for China to beg for money. Meanwhile a bit further south a young pair of Twigalets passed a couple of middle-of-the-night hours at Dubai airport in transit from London to Johannesburg. What have these two things got to do with each other?
Throwing away any vestige of a negotiating position or inscrutability,the Eurozone team's message beamed from Brussells was simple,- "We're out of money to underpin our currency against possible defaults by some of our more profligate members and the better behaved countries amongst us simply haven't got enough to cover for them all. Please rescue us by helping to prop up the lot." An interesting proposition. One can forgive the Chinese a flicker of a smile before asking the question: "And what's the payback for us?", never mind an underlying "You got yourselves into this,- getting out will cost you". Even within Europe the more thrifty, hard working and disciplined Germans are getting very unhappy at bailing out one fellow Eurozone potential defaulter after another. "Wouldn't we all like the Mediterranean lifestyle ",they ask.
China is a country of harsh realities. Crowded living conditions, long and hard work on the land or in sweatshop factories, and tough discipline are amongst its hallmarks. People survive and advance by sheer hard work and dogedness. Nothing like a welfare state bolstered with benefits, pensions and the like exists. It has strong similarities with industrial revolution Britain and Europe.
It may therefore be difficult to persude China to risk huge amounts of money to prop up a welfare addicted Europe with its poor wortk ethic,legal limitations on working hours,notions that people have a right to money even if they don't want to work and all the rest. Why should China support a life of milk and honey in the Eurozone when they can't afford anything like it at home,- and culturally probably wouldn't even want it? In Chinese eyes the Europeans just don't get it.
So what's that got to do with our two travellers observing life at Dubai airport in the middle of the night, a time of day when Europe's major airports and much of the rest of its economic activity are largely closed so that its earthbound citizens can have a good night's sleep? The Dubai concourse is teaming with people connecting in any combination of directions you can imagine. Not all of them want to be there but are driven by the needs of themselves, their families and their children to seek work or business wherever in the world it is to be found. Traders, workers (there are 1 million Chinese in Africa alone), tourists, family visitors of every social status, race and creed or none flow hither and thither. Within an hour or three they are on their way, leaving the life of yesterday or today for what and wherever their life and business will be tomorrow. A 24/7/365 truly global world is on display ,on the move, and immensely busy. It's about survival and advancement for this generation and the next, not for comfort. A little to the west, Europe has had a good dinner, is sound asleep and strangely irrelevant to most of what these nocturnal travellers are seeing and doing.
There you have it in a nutshell. That's why the gents in China did not hurry to the airport to meet the Eurozone delegation who will arrive to stand naked before them as supplicants. Not a good starting position from which to get a good deal,- or even Chinese tea and sympathy.
