"Neal Stephenson - In the Kingdom of Mao Bell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

In the Kingdom of Mao Bell

A billion Chinese are using new technology to create the fastest
growing economy on the planet. But while the information wants
to be free, do they?

By Neal Stephenson (Published in Wired, February 1994 )



In the inevitable rotating lounge atop the Shangri-La Hotel in
the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, a burly local
businessman, wearing a synthetic polo shirt stretched so thin
as to be semitransparent, takes in the view, some drinks, and
selections from the dinner buffet.

He is accompanied by a lissome consort in a nice flowered print
dress. Like any face-conscious Chinese businessman he carries
a large boxy cellular phone. It's not that he can't afford a
"prawn," as the newer flip phones are called. His model is prized
because it stands up on a restaurant table, antenna in the fully
erect position, flaunting the owner's connectivity - and in
China, connections are everything.

The lounge spins disconcertingly fast - you have to recalibrate
your inner ear when you enter, and I half expect to see the
head of my Guinness listing. Furthermore, it is prone to a subtly
disturbing oscillation known to audio engineers as wow. Outside
the smoked windows, Typhoon Abe is gathering his forces.
Shenzhen spins around me, wowing sporadically.

Thirty-one floors below is the Shen Zhen (Deep River) itself,
which separates China-proper's Special Economic Zone from
Hong Kong and eventually flows into the vast estuary of the
Pearl River. The boundary serves the combined functions of the
Iron Curtain and the Rio Grande, yet in cyberspace terms it has
already ceased to exist:

The border is riddled with leased lines connecting clean,
comfortable offices in Hong Kong with factories in Shenzhen,
staffed with nimble and submissive girls from rural China.
Shenzhen's population is 60 percent female.

The value of many Hong Kong stocks is pegged to arcane
details of PRC government policy, which are announced from
time to time by ministries in Beijing. For a long time, the Hong
Kong market has fluctuated in response to such
announcements; more recently, the fluctuations have begun to
happen hours or days before the policies are made public.