Floating Officers of China

There was a joke about Boris Yeltsin, late president of Russia: To increase his ever declining popularity, Yeltsin decides to use a top secret Russian technology which enables a man to walk on the water. He selects a lake in Moscow and in front of a large crowd, starts to walk on the water. A man from the crowd shouts after the initial shock and reflects the feeling of the crowd: “Look, our president even cannot swim!”

When I saw the floating Chines officers of Huili, I remembered this joke. They can float on the road but people prefer to make fun of them ? You may not know the story: Everything starts with a bored Chinese citizen who decides to visit a web site no one typically visits, his city’s official web site. There he sees this shocking photo: His high profile officers are floating on the road! I have a word to these Chinese officers from here, I understand you want look like you are doing something to deserve your salary and other typical officer cash flows, but why can’t you make a professional prepare the photo instead of your neighbour’s computer geek kid? This is one of the worst Photoshop job in the history of internet!

The officers later try to explain that they actually have gone there but because the original photos were bad they have decided to prepare and put this photo on the net. But they could not escape from humiliation and many photos showing them landing on the moon or inspecting the dinosaurs.

Floating Officers of China

Floating Officers of China: Moon Mission Source: tt.mop.com

Floating Officers of China: Dino Mission Source: tt.mop.com

Unfortunately reflecting an illusion to hide the reality behind is very common in Chinese management culture, in both public and private sector. Remember the endless food scandals, accounting magic by Chinese firms, massive sales fraud in Alibaba, etc. In our age, all the hope of the West is tied to this country whose only real magic (!) is to convert its underutilized villagers to cheap labour. And after destroying billions in revenue-less dot coms and never paid back mortgages, the gold men of Wall Street are now pouring the money (printed to rescue them)  into east and commodities because they think China will continue to grow forever. With the scandals following each other, they may start to have sleepless nights now. Or maybe I am too naïve. They are probably sleeping like babies since they will get they commissions and bonuses and go away while United Banana Republics of America tax payers will shoulder the losses if Chinese bubble explodes.