Red, red is the color of my true loves what?

Seeing red is a danger sign in colloquial English, but China is festooned with red. Merchants mined December festivities to hawk their wares, and though the manger scene with halos of medieval Europe artwork was missing, mistletoes and snow, the reindeers and sleighs, and jolly Ho! Ho! Ho! St. Nick were not, specially in the ubiquitously clustered triumvirate of McDonald, Pizza Hut, and KFC who herald the new Chinese obesity. We saw red when we met three of five young students we tutor grossly off the normal scale, at a time when 80 percent of the population eke out an existence that can use the extra lard.

We are seeing red again before the Jan. 23 Lunar New Year fest. We were not here last year so we inquired if the red was for last year’s Tiger (some people saw red with the NYC Amy Chua Tiger Mom’s bestseller book on her extreme child-raising techniques), or next year’s Dragon but we were told that even at the onset of this Year of the Rabbit, red was all over the place.

Ads in China do not have the kind of hypocritical Victorian morals that the Anglo-west has on half naked bodies and what they wear, so the selling of lingerie is an on-your-face affair in the department stores and market stalls where undies are liberally spread out. From socks to stockings, panties and briefs, headgears and bras, nightgowns and shirts, in silk, nylon, silk, and linen, they are all in red. This is not generally true of the outerwear, but red sheen is the celebrative color of the East, and highly dressed-up attires blend perfectly well with the American red rose.

China’s economy is in the black, but the decline in the economic growth is already felt in credit tightening, austerity in public administration, and the retrenchment of personnel in the public and private sectors. China is a country of “façades,” so building and construction are neatly drawn in huge billboards; half-finished high rise apartments dot the skyline. One constructs “face” first before finessing logistical reality. The countryside abounds in glorious visual intents and purposes, but is finding out that old-fashioned corrupt practices derail implementation. Two highly positioned executives went to jail over the failure of the newly initiated rapid rail system outside of Shanghai because of irregularities in materials’ procurement and construction procedures.

The bottom line of much of the financial ledgers of the economies of the West, including Japan, is awash in red. Miracle economies like South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, are feeling the pinch. For the uninitiated, just Google “phantom wealth” and one will find books explaining this anomaly exercised by financial institutions. Corrupt practices are more institutionalized. Briefly, by supply and demand measures, each country’s productivity and market activity is given a numerical value, and from there, a country is allowed to print money as exchange mechanism; surplus value on one sector is utilized in another.

The problem arises when the act of currency holding itself, and its exchange, becomes a money-making venture (making money out of money); add derivative value, and reality gets saddled with illusory balloons that in time, burst. The global stock markets fuel this speculative activity and the worst practitioners of the secretive acts of value manipulation are those engaged in weapons product, unaccounted for in the name of national security. The business of anti-terrorism is terrifying.

Equally accountable is our unexamined right to personal credit, which counts non-existent assets on the basis of future earnings, or possible earnings arrived at from corporate self-serving mathematical formulas. Our consumer society tickles our fancy and we program it that way. The U. S. and EuroZone finances that live off the industry of emerging economies overextended their assets and the balloons have burst on its expected revenues. War as an instrument of stimulating a national economy, widely practiced by former colonizers, is coming to an end, revealing the strategy to be nothing but expensive hot air.

China is moving toward utilizing its domestic strength, on internal consumption, and the financial value of its ancient art traditions. The last CCP presidium is promoting art and culture, including innovative traits in aerospace, information technology, and transport industries. A new staging of the ’60s operetta The East is Red counts among the offerings in the national stage. India is moving in the same direction, if only it can shake off its expensive and unnecessary internecine quarrels with its separated kin.

Given the combined population of both political entities, we would not want either economy to see red. On the other hand, American politics has yet to shake off its McCarthy-esque red herring bait mania, even if its federal budget is a trillion on the red, but we will let Joe Blow of this year’s high profile homophobia to worry about that. We will stick to the red lingerie!