McDonald’s: El último Big Mac de una era en Rusia | Internacional

En 1998, el año de la crisis del rublo, el expresidente soviético Mijaíl Gorbachov rodó un polémico anuncio para Pizza Hut. Dos clientes discutían: un señor caracterizado de ruso conservador que parecía recién salido del túnel del tiempo y otro joven liberal con un look mucho más moderno y mejor vestido. “Por su culpa tenemos el caos económico” e “inestabilidad política”, decía el primero, al que el ruso “moderno” contestaba que Gorbachov trajo “una nueva oportunidad” y “la libertad” al país. Al final, una señora mayor mediaba y todos brindaban porque con él había llegado la cadena de comida rápida estadounidense.

Diez años antes, en 1988, Estée Lauder abría su primera oficina en Moscú. En 1990, desembarcaba enfrente de la plaza Pushkin el primer McDonald’s de la Unión Soviética. Tres décadas de apertura a Occidente que podrían haber llegado a su fin este miércoles con el último Big Mac servido, por ahora, en la capital rusa.

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Las multinacionales estadounidenses han suspendido su actividad en Rusia ante la incertidumbre económica que se cierne sobre el país. Todas prometen mantener sus miles de puestos de trabajo a corto plazo, aunque aguardan a que quede más claro cuánto valdrá un rublo en el futuro y prefieren esperar a vender hamburguesas con pérdidas.

El banco central se afana por suavizar la devaluación del rublo desde que comenzó la ofensiva rusa el 24 de febrero, pero no está aún claro su horizonte: ha pasado de cotizar 85 rublos por euro antes de la guerra a rondar los 125, casi un 50% menos de valor. La misma noche que algunas empresas históricas anunciaron su cierre temporal, el organismo regulador anunciaba un corralito “suave” a las cuentas en divisas extranjeras.

McDonald’s abrió su primer restaurante el 31 de enero de 1990. Cientos de personas se agolparon aquel día ante el edificio, mucho más personal entonces, con su clásica techumbre de teja, que con el frío rediseño vanguardista actual, donde solo la gran eme indica que aquello no es un museo o una sede de oficinas.

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Colas en un McDonald’s en Moscú en 1992. DIMA KOROTAYEV (EFE)

“El Bolshói (gran en ruso, como Big en inglés) Mac es algo que nunca has probado antes”, decía un empleado hace 32 años, según recoge una crónica de la época de The Washington Post. Este miércoles cientos de personas abarrotaban el mismo lugar, la gran mayoría chavales que nunca conocieron los noventa rusos. La cadena tiene 850 restaurantes en el país.

A diferencia de McDonald’s, su rival Burger King ha decidido mantener su actividad. “Seguiremos trabajando en Rusia y abriremos nuevos restaurantes en 2022″, dijo su director de comunicaciones, Iván Shestov, a la agencia Interfax, aunque reconoció algunas dificultades en el suministro de materias primas. “Seguimos firmemente en pie”, añadió.

Coca-Cola es otro símbolo de Occidente que ha abandonado Rusia por ahora. El robo de su fórmula por la Unión Soviética ya inspiraba hace más de 60 años una de las películas más reconocidas de Billy Wilder, Un, dos, tres, y sus primeras botellas llegaron a la URSS en 1979 con motivo de los Juegos Olímpicos de Moscú, que, en otro paralelismo con el veto al deporte ruso actual, acabarían siendo boicoteados por Occidente por la invasión de Afganistán. La compañía estadounidense anunció que dejará de suministrar temporalmente su bebida a Rusia, donde no tiene plantas embotelladoras.

Las consecuencias de estas suspensiones se desconocen y algunas voces abogan en Rusia por nacionalizar las empresas. El propietario de Pizza Hut se decantó por una postura intermedia a la de ambas hamburgueserías. Yum! (en español algo parecido a ¡Ñam!) anunció que cierra temporalmente los 70 restaurantes de Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) y los 50 de Pizza Hut que tiene en propiedad, aunque seguirán abiertos el millar de KFC que están franquiciados.

“Yum! Redirigirá todos los beneficios de sus operaciones en Rusia a ayuda humanitaria. Además, seguimos centrados como siempre en la seguridad de nuestra gente en la región y actuaremos decisivamente para apoyar a nuestros equipos en Ucrania”, recalcó la compañía.

Adiós a los Levi’s

No obstante, uno de los mayores iconos estadounidenses para los soviéticos que ahora cierra no fueron los restaurantes, sino la marca Levi Strauss. Como sucediera en España con los vaqueros, su diseño acuñó otro neologismo en los países eslavos, los dzhinsy, del inglés jeans, y fueron uno de los productos más demandados durante el contrabando de los años ochenta.

Levi Strauss anunció el 7 de marzo que suspendía sus ventas en Rusia, donde obtuvo un 2% de su facturación el año pasado. “Pero toda consideración de negocios es claramente secundaria ante el sufrimiento humano que experimentan tantos. La comunidad de Levi Strauss sigue entristecida por el devastador conflicto en Ucrania y nuestros pensamientos están con todos aquellos que han resultado afectados, incluidos nuestros empleados, socios y sus seres queridos”, dijo la compañía en un comunicado.

La firma de cosméticos Estée Lauder también fue una de las pioneras en abrir mercado en Rusia. Su primera oficina data de 1988, y por entonces atraía más curiosos que clientes. La compañía tenía precios estadounidenses, como 15 dólares por el pintalabios, cuando el salario medio ruso rondaba los 245 mensuales, según otra crónica de aquella apertura de Los Angeles Times.

“Estée Lauder sigue devastada por la trágica invasión de Ucrania. Estamos con aquellos que sufren, incluidos nuestros empleados y sus familias y conocidos en Ucrania”, denunció la firma en un segundo comunicado publicado este domingo donde revelaba el cierre de todas sus tiendas tras haber anunciado días antes la suspensión de sus inversiones en Rusia. “Seguiremos monitoreando la situación y emprenderemos acciones consistentes con los valores de nuestra compañía”, agregó.

Si estas firmas representaron la apertura de los noventa, Ikea, que también ha anunciado su cierre, ha sido el símbolo de la occidentalización de Rusia en la primera época de Vladímir Putin. La globalización de los muebles suecos causó furor en el país desde la apertura de su primera tienda en el año 2000 a las afueras de Moscú, y las casas rusas no volvieron a lucir igual. Sus tiendas —tanto los establecimientos propios como los que fueron fruto de su alianza con la cadena de supermercados Mega— trajeron a las casas un nuevo estilo cuando comenzó a crecer una clase media emergente en la primera década de Putin.

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Why Asian Gaming Hub Macao Is Getting Tougher on its Big Casinos

SAN FRANCISCO — 

For many serious patrons of casinos, Chinese-ruled Macao has been the mecca of gaming, with high-end shopping and even higher-stakes tables. One of the world’s biggest gambling centers before the COVID-19 closures, Macao is now experiencing tougher scrutiny on its casino scene as part of what analysts describe as an effort to control crime and capital outflows that rippled into the mainland China economy.

A draft gaming bill now pending in the Macao Legislative Assembly would stop casino operators from issuing junket licenses, which are for larger organized tours, and from sharing revenue with any gambler-to-casino intermediaries. It would limit the number of newly licensed casinos to six, with terms of 10 years, half the current time, while specifying maximum numbers of gaming tables and gaming machines.

Efforts to redo gaming in the former Portuguese colony that has long thrived on casino income fall in line with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ideals for a less corrupt, more controlled China, some analysts believe.

Mainland Chinese tourists, the top source of casino revenue, had taken so much cash to the offshore territory by 2013 that China began tightening rules to curb money laundering. The Chinese Communist Party increasingly resented outflows of mainland Chinese money into Macao bank accounts and has tried for years to slow that process, said Dexter Roberts, U.S.-based author of The Myth of Chinese Capitalism.

“I think that in many ways, in the eyes of Xi Jinping, Macao is ugly and objectionable,” Roberts said. “I think he would sort of plug his nose and put up with it, knowing that the last thing they want to do is destroy the economy of Macao, but I think that Xi Jinping actually has an attitude where he looks down on excessive wealth (and) looks down on vice to a degree.”

Controlled return of tourism

The COVID-19 pandemic has sealed Macao’s borders, even to nearby Hong Kong, since early 2020, handing casinos a “devastating shock,” said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist with IHS Markit in Singapore.

Mainland Chinese tourists began coming back in August 2020 as COVID-19 was brought under control, a tourism office spokesperson said. They’re allowed to visit today in limited numbers.

“With the COVID-19 pandemic situation relatively stable in Macao and mainland China, tourism flows have started to resume between the two places in a phased manner since mid-August 2020, placing the city’s tourism on track for a gradual recovery,” the spokesperson said.

Arrivals totaling 7.7 million in 2021 were up 30% over 2020 but were 80% below pre-pandemic levels, according to Macao Government Tourism Office data. About 91% of the visitors came from mainland China, up 48% from the previous year, the data show.

Macao, like Hong Kong, is a special administrative region of China with its own currency and immigration controls.

Straitjacketed gaming

Macao, pre-COVID, served mostly groups of mainland Chinese or Hong Kong day-trippers. In the open-to-all casino areas, the visitors would play baccarat and poker alongside handfuls of tourists from other parts of the world, usually elsewhere in Asia.

Different from their counterparts in the U.S. gambling hub of Las Vegas, the giant casinos of Macao eschew cheap meals and children’s playrooms and instead feature swank shopping malls with name-brand clothing, jewelry and watches.

Among the clientele are junket gamblers. Junkets are formed when outside operators paid a commission by the casinos contact wealthy gamblers with offers of luxury travel. Some junket intermediaries lend money to players and collect debts.

In a sign of China’s aim to stop the practice, Macao police arrested junket organizer Alvin Chau in November on suspicion of criminal association, illegal gambling exploitation and money laundering.

High-end shopping for tourists is likely to loom larger over time. Macao could eventually morph into a venue expressly for wealthy Chinese who shop lavishly, said Stuart Orr, School of Business head at Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Chinese officials will feel pressured to reopen again in pre-COVID fashion, he said.

“I think that’s a challenge,” Orr said. “The economic consequences of staying closed are that the economy starts to wind down, and I think a lot of countries are facing that.”

Casinos that stay in the game will find that the draft bill removes “the considerable uncertainty” about how far new regulations will eventually go in Macao, said Rajiv Biswas, chief Asia Pacific economist with market research firm IHS Markit.

“As these [COVID-19] restrictions are gradually eased, this should allow a strong rebound for the Macao gaming industry over the medium term,” Biswas said. “Nevertheless, Macao’s gaming industry will need to adapt to operating in an environment of greater regulatory scrutiny.”

Wynn Macau, one of the largest casinos in the territory, did not answer questions for this report about its future operations.

China’s economic crackdowns are hardly limited to Macau. Regulators have tightened grips in the past year over private education, internet technology and listings of Chinese companies on offshore stock exchanges.

China last year paired Macao with neighboring Guangdong province of China in a special economic zone with special tax and other policies aimed at diversifying Macao’s economy away from gambling into finance, high-tech, traditional Chinese medicine, tourism, exhibition and trade.

But Chinese domestic arrivals remain a priority for now, the tourism office says. “While at this stage, due to the travel restrictions in place, the focus remains on attracting visitors from mainland China, with a synergy of online-offline promotions and events in the city, this office has similar plans on hold to be launched in other destinations in the region and internationally, once safe travel links with Macao resume,” the spokesperson said.

Chinese officials realize that gambling and tourism run Macao’s economy, Roberts said, so they will avoid any crackdown so strong that it hurts those core businesses.

2 Olympics and China's Love of Big

Tiananmen Square. The Forbidden City. The Great Wall. The Three Gorges Dam. Dozens of high-end malls in Beijing.

China has thousands of years of doing things in a really big way, reinforcing its perceived place in the world and the political power of its leaders — from emperors to Mao Zedong to the current leader, Xi Jinping.

Beijing becoming the first city to hold both the Winter and Summer Olympics may not be a feature on the actual landscape. But it’s in the same realm for the world’s most populous country, which has long framed itself at the center of the world, evident in its name in Chinese, “Zhongguo,” or “middle country.”

This affinity for bigness isn’t new. It goes back to a dozen dynasties that ruled China for thousands of years — one of which re-created an entire army of terra cotta warriors to be buried with an emperor. It’s a tradition of projecting large-scale power that was adopted by the Chinese Communist Party when it took over in 1949.

Writing in his book “Mandate of Heaven,” U.S. China scholar Orville Schell explained how Mao, who led China’s communist revolution, expanded Tiananmen Square in the 1950s to make it the largest public square in the world — 100 acres.

That’s five times larger than Moscow’s Red Square. And Mao even went the Russians one better by adorning the square with Soviet-style architecture, the most famous of which is the Great Hall of the People. Eventually, after Mao’s death in 1976, the square came to include his imposing mausoleum.

Schell wrote of Tiananmen, calling it “a propagandist’s dream come true. Everything about it was gargantuan.”

The colossal begins with the country’s population of 1.4 billion and extends to public buildings all around China. Towering apartment blocks — some Soviet-inspired, others thrown up in a binge of modern development in the last few decades — are typically set far back from 10-lane avenues, shrinking the size of pedestrians on road-size sidewalks.

The vastness reaches to shopping malls, commercial spaces and to buildings like the Bird’s Nest stadium, a 91,000-seat colossus put up for the 2008 Olympics and used a week ago for the opening ceremony of these Winter Games.

A shopping mall in the western city of Chengdu, the New Century Global Center, is billed as the largest building on Earth. How big? Three Pentagons could fit inside. Or at least 300 football fields.

The seven-story, block-long media center for these Olympics — a convention center in normal times — replaces another outsized building that’s a block away and was used as the media center for the 2008 Games.

Add the Beijing headquarters of China Central TV, a 768-foot (234-meter), two-leg tower known around town as “Big Underpants” for its unusual design. Architect Rem Koolhaas famously said the building “could never have been conceived by the Chinese and could never have been built by Europeans. It is a hybrid by definition.”

Then there’s 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) of high-speed rail lines, and the Belt and Road Initiative — often described as the New Silk Road. Many view it as the largest building project in history, stretching from China and East Asia to Europe and consisting of rail lines, ports, highways and other infrastructure projects to expand China’s trade and influence. Critics warn of the unsustainable debt burden for many participating countries.

China’s attack on COVID-19 is fittingly mammoth, too, capable of locking down millions in a show of state power built partly on Orwellian surveillance architecture. Need a medical facility? During the pandemic, China built 1,000-bed hospitals in 10 days.

Maria Repnikova, a China specialist at Georgia State University, termed China’s policy of going large as the “politics of grandeur,” something that reaches beyond concrete to include scholarships for foreign students, exchanges, training, and economic aid.

“The idea is to give more to impress upon external audiences that we have so much to give you, that nobody else can compete with that,” Repnikova said in an interview.

“The first thing you see (in China) is the intensity of the scale, whether it’s the presidential buildings or whether it’s other sites or Olympic venues. That’s something that at first catches someone’s eye, and then it makes one wonder — how have they done it?”

But in the China context, what does big really mean? It’s impressive and can literally change the landscape. Yet there’s massive meaning, too, in the thinking behind it — particularly for a government that has long prized the projection of control outward to its sometimes disobedient hinterlands.

“Authoritarian use of political symbols and propaganda can serve two purposes: to persuade audiences of the regime’s legitimacy, and to demonstrate state power,” Sheena Greitens, who researches China at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote in an email.

“I suspect that Beijing will use both during the Olympics, presenting domestic and international audiences with humanizing stories about ordinary Chinese people while also making sure they witness impressive displays of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and state power.”

Diana Fu, a China expert at the University of Toronto, said authoritarian states often build in a systematic way that she terms “spatial governance,” which helps them put down any protests or insurrections.

“Small, winding streets and dense neighborhoods can foster a sense of neighborly feelings and trust, which is critical for collective action,” Fu wrote to AP. “In contrast, large boulevards and predictably geometric patterns of streets and districts allow the state to better surveil and control its population. Authoritarian states like contemporary China are able to do so while facing little opposition from civil society.”

For the 2008 Olympics, China even tried to control the weather, claiming to make rain to clear the polluted skies, and then drive rain away when it was called for. The rainmakers had installations outside Beijing, where peasants donned military fatigues and helmets and used anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers to blast the sky with silver iodide, hoping to coax rain from the clouds.

That’s going big.

Sixty years ago, during the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong made extravagant claims about new agricultural techniques that could lift China out of starvation. His plans to beat nature were based mostly on ideology and pseudo-science and caused widespread famine.

“Authoritarian parties and leaders try to create a sense of unassailability,” Alexander Dukalskis, who teaches international relations at the University of Dublin, wrote to AP. “Through symbols and displays of state power they communicate that their rule is inevitable and that challenges are bound to be fruitless.”

He added: “Projections of state power are also useful for an international audience: They can convince other states or companies that if they step out of line, then they can be punished.”

China's 'Belt and Road' Risk in Syria May Reap Big Rewards

WASHINGTON — 

Syria, a country torn by civil war, recently joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a move analysts say reflects China’s growing interest in the Middle East.

Through BRI, China has been investing in and building infrastructure on several continents to realize its vision of land and sea trade routes linking Asia to the rest of the world.

By staking its claim in Syria, experts contend, China can increase its influence in the Middle East, realize its goal of reestablishing its ancient Silk Road trade route and perhaps gain additional energy sources.

The agreement between China and Syria, finalized January 12 in a ceremony in Damascus, “would help [Syrian President Bashar] Assad to break out of its diplomatic isolation. It would help Assad get more investments, said Ibrahim Al-Assil, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

China’s Middle East interests

Syria’s admission to BRI is part of a larger Chinese strategy to ascertain influence in the Middle East, experts say.

“Syria’s location offers a huge leverage for China. When any international player, if they have a leverage in Syria first, they can get some leverage over so many of its neighbors. We’re talking about Turkey which is important for China. We’re talking about Iraq, where more than 10% of China’s oil comes from. We’re talking about Israel. We’re talking about Jordan. We’re also talking about some global powers in Syria like Russia and the United States. So it’s more of geo-economic interests than just the pure economic interests for China to increase its investments in Syria,” Al-Assil told VOA.

FILE – Syria’s Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, right, receives his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at the airport in the capital Damascus, July 17, 2021.

As of December, 17 countries in the Middle East and North Africa have joined the BRI. Experts say the inclusion of the Middle East in the initiative is rooted in Chinese history and is a symbolic move for Beijing.

“China is trying to reconstitute the ancient Silk Road, and Syria was part of the Silk Road, so that was something that was emphasized in the announcement that China had with Syria,” David Sacks, research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told VOA.

There are also economic interests.

“China has become a net importer of energy in 1993, and in 2017, it became the largest crude oil importer in the world, and almost half of that oil, 47% to 48%, comes from the Middle East. And that’s why the Middle East is going to just rise in significance in the next decade for China,” Al-Assil said.

Filling the US gaps

Syria’s participation would help China’s Middle Eastern strategy as the United States leaves a smaller footprint in the region. In December, the U.S. ended its combat mission in Iraq and transitioned to an “advise, assist and enable” role for Iraqi forces.

“For China to have more leverage in the region, it needs to look at where the U.S. is disengaging and try to increase its diplomatic presence and economic presence in those gaps, or those subregions of the Middle East, and that’s where Syria comes in,” Al-Assil told VOA.

Syria-China relations

The diplomatic relationship between Beijing and Damascus dates to 1956, and ties between the two countries continued during the Syrian civil war.

China, along with Russia, has repeatedly exercised its permanent veto power on the U.N. Security Council to block resolutions imposing sanctions on the Syrian government concerning the use of chemical weapons.

In 2016, the Chinese military agreed to support the Assad government with training and humanitarian assistance, according to China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency.

Syria and China also share intelligence because of China’s fears of radicalized Muslim Uyghurs from China fighting in Syria.

The inclusion of Syria in BRI “provides the greatest contribution to the economic reconstruction and social development in Syria,” stated Feng Biao, China’s ambassador to Syria, according to Xinhua.

China’s risky investment

Any form of Chinese investment in Syria, however, is a risk because of the country’s dire financial situation, analysts say.

“I don’t think the Chinese will be able to get any real return on any investments inside Syria. The economy is still shattered, the country is fragmented, the corruption is deep within the Syrian state institutions, and that is not going to change anytime soon with the current conditions,” Al-Assil said.

“It seems highly unlikely Syria would be in any position to repay major loans for infrastructure in the future,” Sacks told VOA.

Geopolitical consequences

Some analysts say Syria’s participation in BRI reveals how China and its longtime ally Russia are showcasing a united foreign policy front. Moscow entered the Syrian conflict in 2015 in support of the Assad regime.

“I don’t think that this will force a rethink of U.S. policy towards the country,” Sacks said. “But clearly what it does show is that China and Russia are increasingly acting in lockstep on the global stage, and that’s becoming increasingly clear in Europe, in Central Asia and now in the Middle East as well.”

Others, however, including Al-Assil, say closer ties between China and Syria could create a rift between Beijing and Moscow, referencing the Chinese foreign minister’s high-profile visit in July to Syria and Russia’s adverse reaction to it.

“The Russian reaction wasn’t encouraging because they felt that the regime didn’t coordinate with them and that the regime was trying to seek other great power support,” Al-Assil told VOA.

Russian media, Al-Assil added, criticized the Chinese move and emphasized that the future of Assad was linked only to Russia and that “Russia would have the upper hand.”

Whether it is investing in diplomacy or infrastructure, China is taking a risk in Syria, experts say, but it’s all part of Beijing’s larger strategic calculus in the region.

VOA’s Elizabeth Lee contributed to this report.