Black laptop case in his right hand, a mobile phone in his left. Completely engrossed in a business conversation, an Asian dressed in a black suit strolls about on a two-colour map of the world: the continents are in a uniform green, the oceans turquoise. The man's right foot brushes the eastern bays of Madagascar. Behind him, the expansive sprawl of Asia. This picture from Reuters was used in autumn 2002 to illustrate a report on Standard Chartered. This London bank, which took up business in Hong Kong in 1859, only six years after its foundation, making it the oldest financial institution in the former British colony, was intending to float new shares on the Hong Kong stock market. The accompanying ticker report stated that, by taking this long-planned step, the bank was aiming at increasing its company capital by around 409 million US dollars; the amount that could really be earned through the new share certificates would admittedly depend on the demand existing in the midst of the current downturn on the global markets.

Shortly before this, Standard Chartered, whose business activity is mostly centred on Asia, had undergone some radical modernisation. This primarily involved the introduction of extensive internet services, rounded off by a corresponding »image overhaul« - an aspect that is also reflected in the Reuters picture: if it is enlarged, the turquoise-green area turns out to be the steps of the bank building, erected in the centre of Hong Kong in 1990, whose 42 storeys tower 185 metres up into the sky. The »young professional« in his black business garb is thus strolling amidst a »brandscape,« a three-dimensional corporative sculpture communicating the bank's brand identity. The names of countries are inscribed between the steps in white, with a year written next to most of them. This shows since what year Standard Chartered has operated a branch in each country: Thailand 1894, Singapore 1859, Indonesia 1863, Japan 1880.

[b]Dodge City[/b]

This brandscape shows in a striking manner that the process of globalisation has been going on for longer than ten years¹. At the same time, it enlarges the debate on globalisation beyond its narrow focus on processes of the market economy, opening the sector of image production to scrutiny. If this latter area receives any consideration at all, it is mostly with regard to the international branches and subsidiaries of media corporations, which are always set up with an eye to spatial concentration - hubs and locally centred communities of the media economy in the urban space², such as Babelsberg or Dubai Media City. However, the special case represented by the Global City, which the Standard Chartered bank building shows as an urban cluster, illustrates that a nerve centre in the global attention economy can be established even in the absence of a domain of the culture industry. To make an overstated case: even Silicon Valley can be Little Hollywood, provided that some form of image production gets under way, be it through the distillation of lifestyle options or the stylisation of the working environment.

Sophia Antipolis is not a good example: in contrast to the Indian version of Silicon Valley, Bangalore, almost no one in the broader public knows of the existence of this business park. This is despite the fact that it was dreamt up more than thirty years ago by Senator Pierre Lafitte and encompasses more than 1,000 companies on a piece of land near Cannes that rivals a district of Paris in size. On the other hand, Dongguan, situated on the Pearl River Delta, is an excellent example of how to maintain a high profile. Inspired in the eighties by the success of Shenzen, it was soon to become an alternative to the Special Economic Zone next door. Unlike Shenzen, people did not need a residency permit, so it offered free access to »migrant labour.« It was not very long before Dongguan's production centres were able to offer everything at a considerably cheaper price than their competitors. Today, they manufacture almost everything carrying the label »Made in China,« even things that are not visible at first glance, such as computer components. As observers emphasise, the boom was able to develop not only without the basic laws of a modern economy, but without any laws at all³ - an anarchistic situation in the vacuum between feudalism and industrial society. The harsh climate there put a »Wired« journalist in mind of the Manchester of the 19th century, but also of Dodge City⁴, the city to the south-west of Kansas that formed the crucial pivot between Franklin, Missouri, Santa Fe and New Mexico from 1821 to 1880 and that still epitomises the Wild West.

This orientalistic image, which promises all foreign investors another bout of golddiggers' euphoria⁵, does not have to run counter to the tactics of China's PR department, however. After all, the image of the other time zone reinforces the impression of this being a territory that is clearly separated from the internal ideology. This is the type of scenario that Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997) had envisaged at the start of the eighties with his »One Nation - Two Systems« concept, which is still seen as the master plan for the unification of China: Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are to become part of the communist nation once more, without forgoing their capitalist system. However, with this credo, Special Economic Zones and Special Administration Regions were also set up within the existing borders, thus further promoting the opening up of the country. In this, way, Xiaoping's comprehensive course of social reform was externalised: the country could still boast of defying US imperialism and remaining unaffected by the globalisation process. It is not by chance that one speaks today of a state-regulated process of globalisation in China.⁶

The second reason why the Dodge-City image, in the sense of a »reversed orientalism,« fits the marketing of the communist state's national identity so well is also based on this rhetoric: it turns the wheel of history rapidly back to a time long before globalisation. The colonialism of Europe and Japan is left out, or even made good - painful memories that trouble North Korea in particular. For, although its own independence could be guaranteed by setting up a rigorous control state, this state was build up on the remnants of Japanese colonial rule⁷. This is perhaps why there are such indefatigable attempts to establish a special zone. Now that the Rajin-Sonbong project has finally been binned, Sinuiju is the new hope: a city on the border with China that is to become North Korea's testing laboratory for globalisation.

[b]Las Vegas[/b]

Joseph Steinberg from Dong-eui University calls it, somewhat cynically, a »fairy-tale island of prosperity in a desert of incompetence.« The North Korean government, on the other hand, speaks in hopeful tones of a new Hong Kong. Even the Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) has made positive prognoses⁸. Nonetheless, there are problems to be overcome: because the city Gaesong is only a few kilometres distant from Seoul, South Korea gives it the preference to Sinuiju and wants to fulfil this capitalist dream on communist soil there instead. China, for its part, sees Sinuiju as unnecessary competition, while the West calls into question the credibility of the North Korean way of business. The Federation of American Scientists meanwhile tells us to bear in mind that chemical weapons are being produced in the Sinuiju Chemical Fiber Complex and that other military factories are also located in the industrial district of Sinuiju. So how can this project be made palatable to the outside world? North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il has come up with quite a few ideas on the city marketing front: Sinuiju is to be separated from North Korea by a wall, and a large number of the around 400,000 people presently living there are to be resettled by the government over the next two years.

In keeping with the tried-and-true motto »One Nation - Two Systems,« Sinuiju is to become a Special Economic Zone, an international centre for finance, trade, IT industry, modern science, entertainment and tourism. To make this plan reality, the city will be given a largely autonomous administration by December 31 2002 - with elections and a legislative council. The city will issue its own passports and have its own currency. It is also to have its own flag, a peony on a blue background: the reminder of Hong Kong is no coincidence. A Chinese businessman with a Dutch and North Korean passport and resident in China was chosen to be the first governor: the immensely wealthy orchid dealer Yang Bing is to do more than represent the new open attitude: he is an entrepreneur of reputation, who is not least known for having put up a 34-hectare »Holland Village« near the north-eastern Chinese city Shenyang, replete with gabled houses, a copy of the Amsterdam railway station, and a windmill. The fact of his having been recently arrested in Beijing by the Chinese police fits the picture. It makes him seem overdrawn like a Hollywood character who, like Bugsy Siegel, wants to make the impossible possible against all the odds: to build a fairytale oasis of wealth in the midst of a desert, a truly utopian place for which the late Wild West mythology also has a name: Las Vegas.

 

Translated by Tim Jones

 

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