Illustrated by

Joel Hopler

The Inspiration

China Rebalancing the economy: Bottoms up

Illustrator’s Notes

In 2002 Thomas Rawski of the University of Pittsburgh complained about a ‘Tornado of Deception’.

When looking into imagery to represent China’s prosperity, I came across the deity Cai Shen (and in particular, this image by artist Qin Jing Bin). I chose an image of the God of Wealth with an eye patch to signify China’s view of their own statistics. The deity promoting a popular retail website, Alibaba, over a common farm animal highlights the growing awareness of the gap between rural folk and urbanites.