Orient Excess
Three decades of economic liberalization have radically changed the face of China. With the number of Chinese billionaires increasing rapidly, the red ideals of the past may have been discarded forever.
"You can never have enough money. Money helps me fulfill my dreams", says Li Chao, for whom expensive hobbies like motor racing are no longer out of reach. He represents a new generation of pioneering red capitalists: immodest, accustomed to success and able to spend more money in one luxury evening in Shanghai or Beijing than others can earn in a year. Others, like the real estate developer Wang Dafu, were born into poverty, but are fast becoming the embodiment of the Chinese dream. "When I started working I sometimes couldn't afford a beer and a bowl of noodles." His personal fortune is now estimated at half a billion Euros. With more and more people splashing the cash the Chinese auto market is now the largest in the world, the luxury goods market "is huge" and the art market is "booming". This is life in the new China and it's one focused on a particularly unique ideology; what one party member labels, "socialism with Chinese characteristics". But not everyone is happy with the way things are going. "The Communist Party is nothing but a capitalist party through and through."
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