Society

It has been a big news month for China’s top two sportswear brands, Li Ning and Anta, each of which announced endorsement deals with NBA headliners, the number two pick in the draft Evan Turner and Boston Celtics star Kevin Garnett. But the small news item that caught my eye was the mid-year report this week from a third Chinese sportwear label, Xtep International Holdings: revenues and profits up 22%.

Then I looked at the Hong Kong-listed company’s stock price, with mild professional trepidation as I had singled out the company for an optimistic appraisal in Forbes Asia 16 months ago, interviewing the supremely confident founder Ding Shuipo. I need not have worried. The stock had spiked 140% since I met Ding, and is trading six times higher than at its financial crisis nadir at the end of October 2008, making the company worth $1.7 billion on paper, or 18 times earnings. That makes it look cheap by comparison to its two leading competitors, whose shares have also surged. Anta, for example, is trading more than seven times higher than its darkest day in that October. Investors are valuing it at $5 billion, or 27 times earnings.

Fireworks in New York on July 4? Pretty enough. But I want more noise, more flash, bigger crowds, and an obvious historical context. Thanks to China, I’ve gotten used to having my symbolic moments more orchestrated. Something more heavy-handed, over the top, and obvious. Like the Beijing 2008 Olympics or the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.

Those of us old enough to remember Montreal ’67’s monorail and geodesic dome, the magic of the Unisphere as touchstone of New York’s 1964 World’s Fair, the Crystal Palace in Kew Gardens…well no one is that old. You get the point: the adolescent flush of newly felt power, shiny and bold; the magic of symbol large enough to walk through. Back before we were all jaded by theme parks, it meant something to be part of a nation that built monuments to its own economy.

“We need to get that many visitors to the Expo to outdo Japan… You know how Chinese feel about the Japanese, don’t you?”

I heard this comment yesterday from a cab driver in Shanghai, who chuckled when he said it, sounding more bemused than virulently nationalistic, as I chatted with him about the curious obsession in the Chinese press with whether or not the proclaimed target of 70 million visitors to the country’s first World’s Fair would be reached.

Yesterday I bought a copy of Li Delin’s (李德林) latest book: “高盛阴谋” (Goldman Sachs Conspiracy). Li is a well-known financial journalist and author who has written several other books, including the November 2009’s “干掉一切对手——看高盛如何算赢世界 (Eliminate All Competitors–How Goldman Sachs Wins Over the World”. You can read Li’s blog (in Chinese) on Caijing here.

According to the promotional sleeve around “高盛阴谋” (Goldman Sachs Conspiracy), the book has sold 100,000 copies since its June 1 publication; that counts as a bestseller in China.

In just a brief skim through the book I can tell it is ugly, driven by not just all the expected conspiracy theories, including an undercurrent of anti-Semitism, but also by a provocative nationalist theme. The first chapter, which declares that Goldman’s “ultimate goal is hunting and killing China,”,sets the stage. In a possible, but failed, attempt to outdo Matt Taibbi and his vampire squid, Chapter 1 concludes in part with the author saying the company “has the IQ of an Israeli Shar Pei Dog and the cruel nature of a Manchurian Tiger (这个有着以色列沙皮狗智商和东北虎残忍性格..” To Taibbi’s credit, the book’s cover does refer to Goldman as “bloodsucking.”

I have written about Goldman in China previously here and here. Goldman may be taking a PR battering in China (the 21st Century Business Herald has a story today on a developer complaining about Goldman “cheating him” with a high interest loan), but it got the mandate for the Agricultural Bank of China IPO, the company made 200x or so on paper in their 2007 investment in Hepalink, and it still generates decent business in the country. Probably the clearest sign that Goldman is in trouble in China would be if it can no longer hire or retain children of some of the more influential people here. So far that does not seem to be an issue. So far.