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23rd February 2007 Published in The Japan Times By David Howell
In East Asia Airport Culture replaces Cargo Culture.
LONDON and ASIA – It is at the airports that one can tell. Tell what? That almost the whole of East Asia is now merging into one gigantic business and market entity, a criss-cross, latticework flow of people, goods, ideas, lifestyles, relationships – a coalescence of such size, speed and intensity that it is beyond the power of any governments to check or unravel it. But wait, say the sceptics. Airports are not real life. They are for the moneyed classes and not for ordinary people, and anyway they are all the same. But that is exactly the point. Sameness is winning over differences, over political stand-offs, over historic feuds, conflicts and assertions of rivalry and cultural separatism. Stand in the biggest concourse in the newest airport in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo, Bangkok, Seoul and a few things become obvious . First, these places, the new mega-palaces of modernity, are very big and very crowded – all the time. They are bigger and better organised by far, with more facilities and more glitz than anything to be found in Europe or much of North America. Second, they are not for the rich and the few, they are for the many. They are packed, as are the aircraft flying unceasingly, day and night, between them, with people of all income groups, all backgrounds and all walks of life. The public – en masse – now fills the airports of Asia with teeming life as it fills the streets and shops of nearby cities and as it once filled the railway stations in days gone by. Families, students, business folk, shoppers, tourists, shop staff and assistants, messengers, tycoons and toddlers – they are all there, and almost every one of them, even the kids, wired up with Ipods ,with mobile phones and 3Gs, all interconnected in a gigantic connectivity which no official, no amount of regulation and control, can break up. Third, while the long queues at Immigration and Passport Control , and the proliferation security checks, temperature checks, hygiene checks, eye checks, fingerprint checks and anything else that can be invented, keep reminding that politics and bureaucracy are ever present , yet once through these barriers the whole swirling throng melts into an unbounded sea of arcades and shopping malls, brand names and eateries, stretching and ranching from gate to gate, from floor to floor, from escalator to escalator , from terminal to terminal. This is no longer a thin veneer on the rest of life. This is the new reality. It is politics and governments, national interests and regional tensions which are becoming the veneer and being pushed more and more to the margins of existence. Outside, in yesterday’s world, politicians are arguing and international issues are being talked up as usual. China is threatening Taiwan – yet again. Meanwhile the aircraft between Taipei and China (Hong Kong) are fuller than ever. Japan and China have found something new to quarrel about. But the routes between Japanese and Chinese cities are filled to the last seat , as Japanese businessmen pour westwards into their biggest export market and Chinese tourists pour eastwards into the land of the rising sun. Its New Year and the whole of East Asia is on the move. But what about all the rising tensions and crises that fill the media? Read the papers and one would think the whole region was about to blow apart. Ministers fly between capitals and utter self-important statements. Officials draft communiqués and slip in and out of each other’s capitals for ‘talks’. Military authorities strut around demanding more security, more hardware to prepare against this or that threat or danger. And of course, there are some real dangers which cast a shadow over this teeming Asian togetherness. The Chinese are still building up their military forces opposite the Taiwan Straits, ready , presumably – and if things get out of hand – to strike at the great Taiwan-Mainland artery of investment and exchange which underpins the wellbeing of millions in both communities . Hard to believe as one stands in the great airport throng. Up in the North the ‘rogue’ North Koreans have extracted various ‘concessions’ from the reluctant Americans and the Chinese, at last slightly worried at the crazy regime on their doorstep. What does that mean the Asian millions who pack the airports and jet between the region’s cities? Nothing at all, except perhaps to reduce the chances of the crackpot Kim Song Il firing a missile at Tokyo, and ,if all goes well, to ensure that soon the North Koreans will be free to join their southern compatriots in the same airport melee – still more shopping malls, more Bulgaris, more Pradas, more jewellery shops, more electronic gadget bazaars, more boutiques , more businesses spreading north to Pyongyang. Governments cannot stop all this. The Soviets couldn’t and not even nin the end can the North Koreans. But they still have destructive power – power to frighten, power to shut frontiers with rows of nervous-looking policemen and militias, power to promote international quarrels, dig up past feuds, create tense stand-offs – as across the Taiwan Straits or between China and Japan or any other regional player. But the political squabbling is getting more and more of a sideshow while the air-linked, high-tech, mass consumer unity gets more real by the day. People power has taken wing, Government power is being dispersed. In East Asia, almost faster than anywhere else on earth, it is trickling away from the hands of officialdom and governments, however much they still pretend otherwise and however much the public posturing goes on. As the Year of the Pig begins it is the packed airport concourses and gateways which tell the real new story. La Commedia è Finita; the political show is nearly over, and the airport show is taking off. Ends
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