Interesting thoughts. It is very easy to underestimate the difficulty in moving from a 3rd world to a fully developed country. China’s got a long way to go, and many problems to address, but that shouldn’t detract from the fact that it does seem to be moving in the right direction.

One issue though: did he really talk about “constraints are hard-wired into the Chinese DNA”? I’m hoping he’s using this as a figure of speech to imply cultural limitations, but even then it sounds a bit off …

November 14, 2004 @ 9:13 pm | Comment

I was listening to Tom Freidman (NYT) and I guess he has a new book coming out called’ the World is Flat’, in which he extols the coming era of india and china as Superpowers..economic, military, eyc.
Indeed, they are going to be in a short time, rivals for the US as the newest hegemons…
Balderdash..I respect Mr Friedman and I am not a China “expert” but China’s problems are immense from the disparity of men to women, to corruption etc. And India has the same problems.
comment?

November 14, 2004 @ 9:39 pm | Comment

All very well said and thank you so much for sharing what you heard.

On the point of alternatives, sometimes I wonder whether the Chinese “dissents”, students and immigrants who are residing overseas, especially in America, would become a source of viable alternative, if one day (touchwood) that the CCP comes down in a blink like the Berlin Wall.

During my last stay in China, I also noticed that there are quite a number of burreaucrats (in their early 40s) who have received some training in the West. Perhaps they would also be a source of change, when they come into power.

But all in all, I am cautious more than optimistic.

November 14, 2004 @ 10:04 pm | Comment

Asia by Blog

Asia by Blog is a twice weekly feature, posted on Monday and Thursday, providing links to Asian blogs and their views on the news in this fascinating region. Previous editions can be found Asia by Blog is a twice weekly feature, posted on Monday and Thursday, providing links to Asian blogs and their views on the news in this fascinating region. Previous editions can be found

November 15, 2004 @ 1:33 am | Comment

I think the more you know about China, the harder it is to be optimistic. I don’t know that I agree that corruption is the worst of the problems … I just think that is simply a factor that makes all other problems worse or harder to fix. I think in the end it’s going to be physical factors that pose the greatest challenge to China - food production, water supply, erosion, and demographic factors, that are ultimately the biggest challenge and the biggest threat. When I think about the problems China faces, try as I might, I find it hard to see how she can overcome them all. I cling to a hope that somehow she’ll “muddle through” … and we better all hope that is good enough, because I can’t see China producing any kind of leadership capable of more than incremental reform … tinker a bit here, tinker a bit there. If any kind of vision or major system change is required … China is all but lost.

As for whether any other group could provide a viable alternative to the communist party? My answer (for whatever you consider that to be worth) is “not a snowball’s chance in hell.” I also can’t see any likelihood of an alternative emerging at any time in the future either. What I can see is a repeat of the past: fall of the Qing Dynasty, an ill fated attempt at parliamentary government, seizure of power by a military strongman superficially operating within the new constitution, and finally decline into regionalism and low-level civil war.
*** SHIVER ***

November 15, 2004 @ 1:56 am | Comment

Having lived in China for more than five years, I ABSOLUTELY agree with “Filthy” and John Pomfret.

BTW, ecology disasters aside, (for those of you don’t live in small town China) you just can’t even imagine what a culture desert most of China is.

November 15, 2004 @ 4:54 am | Comment

richard, what is the SARS ambulance story?

November 15, 2004 @ 5:21 am | Comment

SARS ambulance story: The government hid SARS patirents in ambulances and drove them for hours through Beijing to fool the World Health Organization inspectors into believing there were no SARS patients in the hospitals.

November 15, 2004 @ 5:50 am | Comment

I have to apologize to my good austrian friend Jürgen then. When he told me the story at the time I didn’t believe him, I thought I was a joke.
Jurg if you are reading this blog…you were right and… ok fine, austrian soccer doesn’t suck.

November 15, 2004 @ 6:40 am | Comment

I would be interested to know how Taiwan compares with China in the areas mentioned here. Is corruption as rampant as it is in the PRC, or do they have it under control? If so, perhaps Taiwan could provide a counter-argument to his idea that the problems in China are “hard-wired into their DNA”.
I’ve always thought that Taiwan proves that a democratic system isn’t incompatible with Chinese society. On the other hand, Taiwan has never had to deal with the sorts of problems which exist on the Mainland.

November 15, 2004 @ 2:17 pm | Comment

There’s corruption everywhere, but nowhere is it like Mainland China. Hell, most Singaporeans are Chinese are corruption is extremely rare there, and punished harshly. Remember, modern corruption in China only soared to its insane heights after Deng took over. So the true “hard-wiring” took place in the 1980s. While there was always corruption in China, it was only then that it became the oil that kept everything moving. So the hard-wiring applies to those ruled by today’s CCP.

November 15, 2004 @ 2:30 pm | Comment

Hmmm …with regards to my earlier comment about corruption … it may be worse than I imagined.

14 ot 15 vice-chancellors of various Chinese universities were down here recently, and pretty much all of them were shaking their heads, sighing, saying “curruption, corruption, you just can’t imagine how bad it’s become” and then sighing and shaking their heads again. Older people are even reputed to be saying things like “KMT corruption? Hah! Nothing like what we have today!”

I forgot to mention my other possible scenario (which doesn’t exclude what I said earlier) of a Neo-Maoist peasant revolutionary movement against the current leadership and wealthy elite. They might even get to repeat the flight of the capitalists from Shanghai all over again.

For the above reasons, and because of the dreadful state of the Chinese banking industry, I urge my Chinese friends to do everything they can to get theirs or their parents’ savings out of China and into some kind of secure international bank … but none seem to give sufficient credence to my words to actually do anything about it. There’s such a strong belief among the general Chinese population that things will just keep getting better and better … which, ironically, is possibly the most dangerous factor of all. If people start getting disillusioned with that …
*** SHUDDER ***

November 16, 2004 @ 4:30 pm | Comment

Li En, have you ever tried to get money out of China? Good luck! Those bloodsuckers make it virtually impossible to move your RMB out of the country. They need to keep their banks as full of cash as they possibly can. The only way to do it now to is to travel to Hong Kong with suitcases crammed full of 100-rmb notes. At least there you can get it changed to dollars (although dollars isn’t the best investment choice these days either).

November 16, 2004 @ 5:26 pm | Comment

Greg, please stop sending in comments using different names and saying nasty things — your IP address tells me who you are, so it’s quite silly. How will people take your site seriously, knowing you do this sort of thing? Please be an adult.

November 23, 2004 @ 6:19 am | Comment

When considering China’s future, John Pomfret describes himself as a “cautious pessimist”. While I agree with many of his arguments, I prefer to remain a cautious optimist.

Corruption may remain a huge problem, but it is the increasing pressure that economic development is placing on China’s environment, particularly on its river systems, that will prove to be the most difficult and costly to overcome - in my opinion.

Just take the mighty Yangtze River for example, which begins its life from the Geladandong glacier on the Tibetan plateau. According to a recent article published in The Guardian, “China’s leading glaciologist, Yao Taedong, warns that global warming is melting ice that has been locked in place for more than 5,000 years,” and while in the short term this may be adding to the volume of the river, in the long term the river may simply end up drying up – which of course, would be the worse case scenario.

Already the river is under serious strain: “For the first 3,200km of its journey it runs clean and fresh through some of the most remote and spectacular scenery in China, but even here it will not remain pristine for much longer”. That’s because the upper reaches of the Yangtze face an explosion of dam-building. According to the WWF and the World Resource Institute, “46 major dams have been built or are under construction or are being planned in this area.” Among the most controversial is at the Tiger Leaping Gorge - a world heritage site, which I have been to - where work has begun in recent months on a dam that “will sweep away the area thought to have been the inspiration for James Hilton’s Shangri-La in Lost Horizon.”

The lower reaches of the Yangtze are already so polluted that the WWF says that it is now the biggest cause of pollution in the Pacific Ocean.

Of course, the melting glaciers of Tibet are the result of global warming, and China is certainly not the only contributor to its causes. The United States is by far the world’s biggest producer of green house emissions, and per capita, Australians are the biggest offenders. But China is nevertheless the second largest emitter of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions after the United States, producing 12.7 per cent of the world’s total. China’s share of world carbon emissions is expected to increase in coming years, reaching 17.8% by 2025.

But if Tibet’s glaciers were to melt away too much, it would have a huge and devastating impact, not only on China, but on all of South-East Asia, and therefore it would have a huge impact on the entire world.

All of China’s rivers have their starting point in Tibet. I don’t think I need to detail the consequences here - other than to say that billions would starve, with social stability severely disrupted and strained. No glaciers, no rivers. No rivers, no rice.

Still, China does have a chance to clean up its act, but only if it acts fast. The building of 46 major new dams along the Yangtze is hardly a promising sign though. Chongqing, a city of 30 million, pumped out 1.3 billion tonnes of waste water last year, 90% of which ran into the Yangtze and other rivers untreated, adding to a contamination corridor that stretches from Sichuan to Hubei Province. In the past, the fast-flowing river could clean itself, but the construction of the giant Three Gorges dam hundreds of miles downstream of Chongqing has raised fears that the 600 kilometre lake behind it will become a huge cesspool. The government insists that water quality has not deteriorated since the dam was sealed last year, but that raises the question of why it is now spending billions of dollars on 320 new water treatment facilities in the area. Fisheries officials certainly have no doubt that the ecology has changed.

The volume of petrol consumption in China is very quickly rising too, as the number of private cars sharply increases - a situation which I think is definitely unsustainable. China consumed about 3.3 million barrels of oil per day back in 1995. It now guzzles up more than 6.3 million barrels per day. China needs to introduce alternative energy sources to power its cars, and I know that researchers at Tongji University in Shanghai are right now busy developing hydrogen powered models. If China can introduce such a “standard” before petrol powered cars become too firmly entrenched, then great! It is possible, but once again, only if such technology can be introduced commercially soon, and this can happen only if the Central Government encourages such an alternative to the extent that it can become a new standard. Time is very quickly running out in this regard.

John Pomfret notes the fact that 800,000 people here in China fell below the poverty line last year. While this is disturbing, it needs to be viewed in the wider context. Let us not overlook the fact that China’s stunning economic development has produced a dramatic political liberalisation in this society compared to two decades ago, one that promises (as I said earlier, I remain cautiously optimistic) to eventually transform China into a modern nation. According to the World Bank, since China opened its economy in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping first came to power, its gross domestic product has increased from $362 billion to $11.9 trillion. As a result of the rapid economic growth and various poverty reduction policies that include having wealthy cities forming partnerships with poorer areas, the number of people in China living on less than $1 per day dropped from 490 million in 1981 to 88 million last year. During this period the country’s output has increased more than eightfold and the average income has risen by 7% a year, passing $1,000 for the first time in 2003.

China’s economic expansion has been on a scale and at a speed the world has never seen before. Since opening its economy in 1978, China has accounted for three-quarters of all the people in the world lifted out of abject poverty.

So while 800,000 people may have fallen below the poverty line last year, this needs to be seen in the context that, over the last 26 years, roughly 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty, or at the very least, have had their living standards significantly improved. It is because of this overall trend, that I am able to remain an optimist, despite the many serious challenges that China now faces, and despite the fact that the impressive growth in China’s economy and the accompanying improvements in living standards have been made at the expense of China’s environment - particularly, as I said before, at the expense of its river systems.

Finally, let me comment on another of the issues raised by Pomfret: the question of nationalism. “China is trying to offset the people’s anger,” argues Pomfret, “by inciting nationalism.” This I agree with, though not entirely - rather than “inciting” nationalism, they are in fact quite cautious about encouraging nationalism, and for reasons that I will explain later.

Of course, every country on this planet promotes nationalism, because nationalism serves as a unifying discourse. The virtual collapse of Communism as an ideology here in China has resulted in the rise of nationalism as a replacement - and Mao’s image is manipulated by the Central Government in order that he may be used as a signifier of unity. Zhang Yimou’s film Hero, in my opinion, reinforces this idea by presenting us with the morally ambiguous idea that peace and stability can only be achieved by sacrificing our own struggles for independence, by giving in to the dictates of the hegemon (like a Qin Shihuang or a Mao, or a Central Government authority - or, if we think globally, to a hegemonic superpower like the United States).

Pomfret also mentions the Urgyur separatists from Xinjiang, and predicts that they will be crushed. Only last week I sat watching a television interview on Hong Kong’s Pearl TV with a Beijing official, talking about the Central Government’s feelings towards the re-election of George W. Bush. He very frankly stated that Beijing is happy with the election outcome, which he said would help legitimise Beijing’s plan to crackdown on Urgyur separatists in Xingjiang Province. Pomfret was definitely spot-on when he said that China can now “crack down on radical Islam in Xinjiang” without fearing that Americans will “say anything”.

A few weekends ago my girlfriend and I visited the Shenzhen Folk Culture Villages theme park, which made me think a little of this issue of nationalism and ethnic cohesion here in China. In my opinion, the Folk Culture Villages in Shenzhen is a Disneyfied fantasy-world, designed not merely to make money and to attract tourists to Shenzhen, and to mainland China more generally, but also to create and to promote a particular Central Government-inspired narrative: such amusement parks provide a space of representation, within which the nation can be rendered as a total concept, a timeless essence. Ethnic minority theme parks narrativise the nation as an eternal unity, made of an essence that does not change, that allows it to cohere together.

China’s capitalism may have lifted many millions out of poverty, but it has also created a society of growing inequalities, and with it, the increasing threat of social fragmentation and potential instability - as Pomfret is keen to stress. Beijing’s “One China” policy is aimed at maintaining and strengthening social cohesion, by promoting a greater sense of nationalism as a unifying discourse in place of a discarded communism.

Ethnic separatism is the last thing that the Chinese Government wants, or can afford, which is why the proliferation of carefully managed ethnic tourism is about more than merely the consumption of commodified forms of the cultural past - and which is why Beijing is also keen to wipe out Urgyur resistance before it can spread or serve as an example to other would-be separatists.

But where I disagree with Pomfret, is where he says that this nationalism is merely “skin-deep”. Just about every Chinese person that I have ever met here on the mainland harbours a very strong sense of national pride - something which they are taught both at home and at school. In particular, the Chinese are very proud of their varied food culture, and of their long history of civilisation. Most of the students I have taught here at university level love to write nationalist and patriotic poems, and express enormous pride in China’s national poets and artists. They know what it means to be quintessentially Chinese, and they are proud to be so.

The Central Government in Beijing is well aware of this, I am sure, and is aware of the potential dangers that growing nationalist sentiments could cause should it be allowed to flower unchecked: the growth of separatist movements for starters, could be one bi-product of an unchecked surge in nationalist sentiments. China, after all, is home to a recognised 56 different ethnic minority groups.

Of course, Pomfret is not all doom and gloom when it comes to imagining China’s future. As Richard points out, “he didn’t say China is doomed to defeat or that it will all come crashing down - only that its vision of itself doesn’t jibe with reality, and that its opportunities are more limited than [what Chinese leaders have] led themselves to believe.” Where I differ from both Pomfret and Richard (who says he agrees with Pomfret’s assessment), is that I edge more on the optimistic side – but only just! I think that the opportunities for China are immense, and that realising them is an obtainable goal, in spite of the huge challenges that presently stand in its way.

To conclude: new environmental technologies could indeed allow China to manage its environment sufficiently well enough to enable it to continue to prosper. A good number of cities in China over recent years, like Dalian for example, have won international environmental awards for their efforts in cleaning up their air and river systems, and as I said earlier, it’s still not too late to replace petrol-driven cars with hydrogen-powered ones as the national standard.

There are also other clear signs that the Chinese are now beginning to take the future of their environment more seriously: unlike other developing countries such as India, South Korea and Brazil, both the amount of energy and carbon consumed per dollar of GDP have decreased dramatically in China over the past two decades. With average annual GDP growth rates of around 7-8% over the last decade and with energy consumption growth rates somewhat lower, China has been reducing its energy intensity. This is in large part a result of efforts by the Chinese Central Government to conserve energy, and by the adoption of more modern industrial plant equipment. China’s Energy Conservation Law entered into force on January 1, 1998, and efforts by the government in recent years to increase overall energy efficiency have included the reduction of coal and petroleum subsidies.

With economic development, population growth and higher living standards, the amount of primary energy consumed will almost undoubtedly continue to increase in the future, as will the resultant carbon emissions. These absolute increases will occur despite continued technological improvements and reductions in energy intensity.

But China has introduced bold initiatives to cut back on coal use, and in an effort to encourage a switch to cleaner burning fuels, the government has introduced a tax on high-sulfur coals, and in Beijing, officials are aiming to phase out coal from the city centre and have already established 40 “coal-free zones,” and have made plans to construct natural gas pipelines. Similar efforts are taking place in other major Chinese cities. A system of emissions trading for sulfur dioxide, similar to that used in the United States, is being tested in some cities with pilot projects, and may eventually be applied nationwide.

One of China’s main priorities for the future is developing and utilising technologies to solve the major environmental challenges it is currently facing and will face in the future. These efforts are focused on technologies that will treat wastewater, prevent air pollution and improve environmental monitoring systems. There are a number of policies that the State Environmental Protection Administration is considering: adopting the “polluter pays” principle, and allowing for the accumulation of funds for pollution abatement are currently policies being enacted. Ensuring that fees charged on pollutants are higher than abatement costs and strengthening existing laws, which currently are not strongly enforced and impose only small fines on pollutant emissions exceeding the legal limit, are also now being considered.

Future Chinese environmental initiatives may also include formulating a tax structure beneficial to environmental protection, and granting preferential loans and subsidies to enterprises that construct and operate pollution treatment facilities or produce environmentally friendly products. Clearly, I think, there is some room for optimism.

But the biggest environmental threats to China are global ones, and so China’s future prosperity is intimately linked to that of our own, to all of the world, just as the world’s future prosperity is linked to China’s.

All our futures are now one and the same - and this is essentially why I can continue to remain cautiously optimistic about China’s future - because I remain cautiously optimistic about humanity’s creative potential to come together in order to overcome global issues for the collective benefit of all.

If China is doomed, then we are all doomed.

Regards,
Mark Anthony Jones

November 23, 2004 @ 10:25 pm | Comment

Thanks for the comment, Mark.

I have to say that Pomfret never said or even remotely implied that China is “doomed.” Only that the lofty aspirations they have set for themselves — to be not only a truly great country but a good country — will most likely not be reached, based on the staggering problems it faces and its poor track record to date in dealing with many of them. China isn’t doomed. It’s doing better than it ever has in many ways, because the CCP loosened its grip on the economy and decided to be a global player instead of an inward-looking and perpetually prickly whiner as it was during the Cold War.

As far as overcoming environmental obstacles, Pomfret talked at length about how and why China is failing miserably in this regard. The CCP is really, earnestly and aggressively trying to make a difference. They are closing down factories dumping poisons into the lakes and rivers. But because China is huge and because there is no rule of law as we in the West know it, their efforts are nearly always thwarted. The factory owner tells the local cadre that the factory shut-down will drive hundreds into joblessness and ruin the village’s economy. And he gives the cadre a “gift” for his help, and voila, the factory quietly reopens. This simply cannot occur in a country where there is a free and active media and a court system where these acts of corruption can be challenged and punished. And the corruption can’t be stopped, because it’s part of the vast loyalty system that keeps the CCP united and in power. It’s the grease that keeps the machine in motion.

As to global warming, this is the first time I have ever heard this mentioned as a significant factor in China’s environmental devastation. I’m sure it plays a part, but every country is a victim to global warming, but very few have such devastated environments. If you read Jasper Becker’s The Chinese, he traces the origins of this depressing phenomenon, and it can mostly be pinned to Mao and his policies. The depletion of Chinese soil, the pollution of its water with lead and industrial runoff and waste, the acid rain — none of this is in any way related to global warming, but came about as a direct result of Mao’s inane belief that man could fashion the environment as he chose to, killing the sparrows and forcing farmers to grow incompatible crops, etc., etc. It’s a tragedy of carelessness and stupidity with strong roots in the 1950s, a tragedy that blossoms further with dams that have created unimaginable drought and devastation on a scale unprecedented on the entire planet.

You’re right about the Chinese being fiercely proud of their nationality; I’ve seen plenty of that myself. But as Pomfret said, when you get down to what they really want, it’s to own more American goods and work for a non-Chinese company and worship American stars and athletes. So while they may sincerely feel this nationalism and talk about it a lot and celebrate national culture, when it comes to their actual choices, this nationalism is only skin-deep.

As for the “dramatic political liberalisation:” of the Chinese people, I again must take issue. I would say rather that there’s been a dramatic social and economic liberalisation. But not political. Censorship of political materials has increased, not decreased. We all know the stories of the news reporters in Guangzhou sent to prison for reporting on corruption and government-related crime. We all know there will be no national elections anytime soon. We all know how just 2 years ago the government betrayed its own people by deceiving them about SARs so as not to make the CCP congress look bad. Of course there are signs of new hope under Hu, but there have been virtually no political reforms to speak of — maybe a less totalitarian approach than under Mao or even Deng, but no true reform.

November 24, 2004 @ 8:47 am | Comment

Thank you most sincerely for your thoughtful and detailed response Richard. I agree with much of what you say (especially about corruption, the CCP and the scale in which it continues to violate the human rights of its own citizens), and I am also well aware of the fact, as I mentioned in my original piece, that Pomfret is not all doom and gloom when it comes to imagining China’s future. His central argument, as you say, it that China, while it may one day be able to develop into a good country, is likely to fail in its ambitions to develop into a “truly great country”. But what exactly does Pomfret mean by “greatness”, and just exactly whose vision is he referring to when he talks of “China’s dreams”?

His comments about nationalism provide a hint here: Pomfret notes that some American sports stars are more popular among the Chinese than their own sports star equivalents, and that many young Chinese “want to work for US companies and own US goods.” He then draws what I think is the wrong conclusion from all of this, that Chinese nationalism is only “skin-deep”.

The wealthier urban Chinese like to buy luxury imported goods, only some of which are from America, as well as the faked brands, because they, like humans everywhere, enjoy the status that comes with owning such products. It’s why many Chinese students say they want to study at Harvard, or Oxford or Cambridge. They want to study in the “famous” ivory-league universities of the West, because of the status they expect this will bring them. Owning status gives human beings a greater sense of self-esteem and self-worth, which is why owning status is so important to most people in this world.

Commodities are endowed with status for various reasons: pricing and scarcity play a major part, as well as advertising and of course, quality.

I like to buy imported products too sometimes. I like New Zealand cheeses, Italian suits, and Spanish olives. And whenever I buy a bottle of French red wine, I never feel guilty because I chose not to buy one of the many fine bottles of red wine that are produced in the country of my birth, Australia. Consumers rarely base their choices in accordance with their patriotic loyalties.

Let us take the two Disney theme parks that are planned for China – the one for Beijing, the other for Hong Kong: many may presume an opposition between real, natural panda that symbolises inherent Chineseness, and the artificial, fabricated American imperialist token of Mickey Mouse. But to do so, in my opinion, would be false and misleading. The giant pandas in San Diego Zoo are no less fictional and imperialistic than Mickey Mouse, whereas the Disney cartoon figures could also be regarded as a “natural” part of the growth of consumer capitalism in the Chinese community.

The Chinese are happy to embrace the advent of “Disneyfication” on their soil, because what Disney the corporation stands for is no longer simply American cultural imperialism or the omnipresence of American mass culture. Disney theme parks are always connected to many other projects in urban planning, ecological development, product merchandising, technological innovation, construction of national character, as well as manifesting a vision of a utopia made possible by capitalism and technology.

If many young urban Chinese long for American products and dream of one day being able to study in American universities, it is because they see America as somehow representing the kind of utopia that they themselves wish to live in, and which they hope China will one day become. The living standards enjoyed by those who reside in the developed West, and America is usually regarded throughout Asia as representing the West in its most spirited form, is what many young urban Chinese aspire to.

America is what many Chinese measure their own country against, and it is what they hope China will one day become. This is not unpatriotic of the Chinese. Such ambitions and tastes do not signify a nationalism that is only “skin-deep.” The gesticulated excitement that I witnessed here last year when China succeeded in putting a man into space signifies a growing confidence among the urban young that China is well on the way towards meeting its ambitions of one day rivalling the United States as a nation of true greatness. The country’s success in the last Olympic Games has had the same effect.

The dream of one day developing into a country as developed as America, with the global status of a present-day America, is as nationalistic as any.

And so this, I assume, it what Pomfret really means when he speaks of a “great nation”. He is referring to the type of nation that America is now, and he doesn’t believe that China is capable of one day realising its dream of becoming one. He uses the present state of the Chinese military as one indicator of China’s inferiority, dismissing it as a “middling power” that is unlikely to ever develop into a force capable of turning China into a truly hegemonic global force – a power capable of invading those countries in the developing world whose resources it may one day need to exploit.

And he is right. I agree with him here. It is unlikely that China’s military capabilities will ever be able to match those of the United States. And it would be foolish of China to even try. The costs would be so huge, that China would most probably end up going the same way as the former Soviet Union did if it were to try to compete. And who wants another Cold War?

But is replicating America’s military might a prerequisite to becoming a nation of true greatness?

Mark Leonard, director of Britain’s Foreign Policy Centre, has noted that “everywhere in the developing world people are sitting up and taking notice of the Chinese juggernaut. As a model for development it is a source of inspiration, its giddy growth rates of over 8% a year lifting millions of people out of poverty.”

But what is even more exciting, according to Leonard, “is the prospect of a new superpower that might challenge US hegemony and the American way of doing things”. In a paper for the Foreign Policy Centre, Joshua Ramo, a former foreign editor at Time who is based in China, laid out the elements of a new “Beijing consensus”, which he sees as a direct challenge to the “Washington consensus” that defined attitudes towards the development debate in the 1990s. Beijing is “driven not by a desire to make bankers happy, but by the more fundamental urge for equitable, high-quality growth”, he wrote.

“China,” argues Leondard, “treats the ideas of privatisation and free trade with caution rather than pursuing them with zeal; the country is defined by its ruthless willingness to innovate and experiment and has created a series of special economic zones to test out new ideas. Its foreign policy is driven by a lively defence of national borders and interests and an increasing commitment to multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, which it hopes will pin the US down. Together these policies have allowed China to grow without surrendering its independence to such financial institutions as the World Bank and IMF, global companies, or the Bush administration.”

This recipe for success is so intoxicating that countries as diverse as Iran and South Africa, are now discussing with excitement the “Chinese model of development”. China’s model is seducing leaders in countries as different as Vietnam (which is taking business tips from the thoughts of the former Chinese president Jiang Zemin), Brazil (which is sending study teams to Beijing), and India (Ramgopal Agarwala, an eminent sociologist, observed: “China’s experiment should be the most admired in human history. China has its own path.”).

Few in the West have picked up on this excitement, because they have looked at China’s power simply by measuring the size of its economy or the technology of its army. But by focusing on Chinese hard power in the way that Pomfret does (its ability to use military force or economic might to get its way) people are missing the extraordinary rise of the country’s “soft power” - the ability of its ideas and values to shape the world. It is an unwritten rule in the minds of the West that though China might become wealthy, it is Western values and culture that will continue to define the rules of the world.

That is already beginning to change. For the first time there is an emerging pole that is strong enough to change the way things are done on the global stage. Japan was too small and inward-looking; India is too protectionist; Russia too weak. As China emerges as a superpower, it is desperately trying to present itself as a force for good in the world. The past few years have seen a successful Olympic bid, the creation of an English language international TV channel (CCTV 9), a series of high-level visits by President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to key countries, and a concerted attempt to befriend not just China’s neighbours but other countries as far afield as Africa and Latin America. Two centuries ago Napoleon warned China was a “sleeping giant” that “once awake would astonish the world”. That prediction – I say this as a cautious optimist for China – may just one day come true.

Of course, as you quite rightly point out Richard, the image that China is now busy trying to create for itself does not always sit well with the present day reality: corruption remains a serious problem, and the CCP continue to censor their critics, and to violate the human rights of its citizens, and in a variety of ways.

China has many serious hurdles to get over, but I’m not sure that I would go so far as to say that they are unlikely to be one day largely overcome. Once again, I remain an optimist – but only just.

China’s environmental problems are indeed very serious, as you mentioned Richard, and yes, global warming is a global problem, and one that China contributes very significantly to. While cleaning up river systems and rescuing soils and improving air quality are all costly and difficult, they are nevertheless achievable for China, and the signs are that the country is beginning to take these problems more seriously, and is beginning to act. But as I said in my earlier piece, the biggest environmental problem that China faces is global in its nature: the melting of Tibet’s glaciers and the overwhelming impact this could have on the health of not only China’s river systems, but on those of all of South East Asia, and in particular, on the rivers of India.

Finally, let me address the point you made about political liberalisation. I must concede this one to you, though I’m afraid I didn’t express myself very clearly when I spoke of China’s “dramatic political liberalisation” over the last twenty years or so. I agree that the liberalisation that has occurred throughout this period has been largely confined to the economy, and to social policy. What I meant though, was to say that the economic and social liberalisation that has taken place in China over the years represents a shift in the thinking of the country’s political leaders – economic and social policies are political by nature, in that they are the result of decisions that are made at the political level.

I don’t wish to sound in any way inherently anti-American, because I am not, but I just cannot buy this idea that for a country to be “truly great” it has to replicate modern America. Pomfret is perhaps being a little arrogant when he cautions his fellow patriots not to bother worrying too much about the possibilities of China ever rivalling the power of the United States – his own use of language, used either consciously or unconsciously, betrays his ethnocentrism here, as David, one of Peking Duck’s other contributors, has already noted: “Not all of China’s dreams” says Pomfret, “are going to be achieved because hard-wired into their DNA are serious constraints that will keep China from becoming what it aspires to.” As David says, this does sound “a bit off.”

Finally, I want to say that, personally, my idea of a “truly great nation” has little to do with the power of its military might, or with the strength of its economy, or with how many colonies its manages to gain and control, or even in the size of its Gross Domestic Product.

What makes a nation truly great lies in how it treats its own citizens, and in how it treats its neighbours. How egalitarian is it? How well educated are its people? How healthy and happy are its citizens?

China has a long way to go before it can claim to be truly great, if measured using these kinds of indicators. But then, having said that, Western countries like the United States and Australia also have a long way to go before they can be said to be “truly great”. And already, China doesn’t compare too unfavourably on many of these measures - according to UN figures.

Mark Anthony Jones

November 24, 2004 @ 11:23 pm | Comment

I think we — you, Pomfret and I — are in basic agreement, but there is a problem with the definitions. He never said said China wanted to be another US. They want to be great, which doesn’t mean they want to be America. He was saying, I believe, they want to be like any other economically strong and prosperous country, like Norway or Canada or South Korea or Japan or Australia: these are great countries because their people are realtively prosperous, they are self-sufficient, they are strong in global trade, they are hugely respected by the international community. They don’t need to impress anyone by building the world’s tallest building — their greatness is real and apparent to all. They can claim true economic and social successes on a nationwide and global scale. That’s not to say everyone is a millionaire and there aren’t problems, often serious. But they command huge respect becuase their system works. China’s system of SOEs and corruption and government meddling may “work” but they command no respect because it is a house of cards. If the government stopped supporting the Iron Rice Bowl there would be collapse and revolution. It is not an independent, healthy and fair system that benefits the entire population — far from it! And, of course, there’s that dirty little secret of China’s human rights that perpetually stains the good image China so desperately wants to convey.

About nationalism. Someone in my post yesterday on China’s “lost generation” points to an article on how today’s Chinese students have no knowledge or interest to speak of in China’s history! That tells me a lot about how deep their nationalism goes. It’s shallow, propped up by jingoistic sloganeering against Japan and other “enemies,” and the CCTV is constantly going to near-insane and embarrassing lengths to keep drumming into the viewers’ heads how great the country and its rulers are. A truly great country never needs to do this.

I can’t go through every point you make, but I can say I’ve heard it all before and I was totally seduced by these arguments myself. It was only when I lived there and saw what was really going on that I came to the conclusion that a lot of it is propaganda and illusion. For every quote telling us how great China is and will be, I can find one (or 100) testifying that it’s a mirage and a pipedream. I give far more credence to John Pomfret, who lived there for 10 years up until a few months ago, than to Napoleon, who died nearly 200 years ago and was not, to my knowoledge, a China hand, when it comes to discussing China’s greatness. Not that Pomfret is the only one who knows, and not that I’m unwilling to listen to counter-arguments. But after doing my own reading and seeing China with my own eyes I’ve decided whose camp I am in. I recommended Jasper Becker’s The Chinese, and strongly recommend you pick up a copy (which you can’t do in China, another reason why it is far from being a great or good country).

I want China to succeed and thrive. I love many people there. I think they’ll do okay. But while they will continue to dominate the light manufacturing markets — mostly based on the fact that they pay their vast oceans of workers practically nothing and often treat them no better than animals — I see no signs that they will emerge as a great country in the tradition of Switzerland or Japan or England. As long as you have a relative sliver of the population living like kings and nearly everone else living in poverty, and as long as you have a police state that has the power to arrest and torture anyone who raises a voice, as long as you have a government so insecure it has to ban books and arrest Internet essayists, as long as you have a corruption system so deeply entrenched that it simply cannot be overcome….as long as you have these things, China remains a long, long way from greatness. I am cautiously optimistic China will succeed, improve and grow. I am totally pessimistic that it will ever achieve international greatness like Sweden or even Singapore; not under its current leadership who put their own survival infinitely higher than the well-beling of their people.

November 25, 2004 @ 8:57 am | Comment

Well, I must say that I’m really impressed with the intelligence of the commentary here. Yet another reason why I consider the Peking Duck a required daily read. Just want to throw my two cents in on the topic.

When I arrived in China in August 2002 I was absolutely enthralled: I was looking at the future. The United States was toast.

When I left China in July 2004, my opinion had, to say the least, changed. My experience had been eye-opening, I had made many good friends, had many memorable travels…and yet I left with a deep unease about the future of the country. I was (and still am) quite doubtful about the sustainability of the society I lived in. So what happened?

I think modern China is, for the most part, a triumph of style over substance. The state seems far more concerned with making the ‘nation’ look good than with the 1.2 billion people who actually have to live in it. Hence the plethora of questionable mega-projects and urban redevelopment projects on an almost insane scale.

Mark Anthony Jones quotes Leonard in his comment above:

“the country is defined by its ruthless willingness to innovate and experiment and has created a series of special economic zones to test out new ideas.”

Ruthless is the key word here. Development has become an end in itself; all these projects often take place to the detriment of the people they are supposed to be helping in the first place. Having a problem? Throw a huge boulevard, an empty highrise and a few redudant shopping malls at it.

I admit that many of us Westerners are completely complicit in these actions: the current environment in China allows us (as planners, architects, businessmen) to get away with wild schemes that wouldn’t get past the boardroom at home. Can you imagine a plan to destroy and rebuild central London in 5 years? I sure as hell can’t. But is all this instant modernity really going to help China overcome its serious problems? I’m not convinced.

China is in such a rush to be the world’s super power that the government has thrown caution to the wind in terms of development projects. The probem is that when you trip running that fast, it hurts. For a country with such a long history (as I was so often told), it sure doesn’t seem to have much patience.

As for innovation, I see very little going on at the macro-level. China could theoretically offer the world an alternative development model…but it won’t. It seems intent on beating the United States by, well, become a US full of Chinese people. America with Chinese Characteristics.

I just read a journal article about the development of Pudong, and the whole idea there was to make the place the most “un-Chinese” as possible. China needed to show the world it had arrived by, well…not being ‘China’ anymore. Kind of warped.

Chinese leaders have really bought into a very Western conception of modernity (and they are definitely not alone in this regard). In this sense you could say that the ‘West’ has already won.

Lastly, I do not think China is going to collapse. Many people seem stuck on the “either/or” scenario of world greatness or absolute societal collapse, but I don’t buy into it.

Rather than moving towards world supremacy, China has instead become just like any other developing country. There are really rich people, and there are a lot more really poor people. The path out of communism doesn’t automatically lead to a wealthy, ‘developed’ society. And being capitalist doesn’t necessarily mean automatic ‘all-around, well-off’ societies.

I might be of the minority opinion, but I don’t think China will change that much in the next 10-20 years. It seems to have hit a point it doesn’t know how to get around (barring massive political upheaval, obviously). In fact, many chinese cities might regress to being more ‘third world’ in character, as millions of migrants crowd the promised land and the hastily built ‘modern’ infrastructure starts to wear. As Chinese society loosens up, it will come to be more ‘third world’, not less, as so much of China’s development has consisted of trying to hide the fact that it has almost one billion, rather poor rural citizens. As they urbanize, so will extreme poverty become more evident in Chinese cities (effectively ending the common “I can’t believe this is a poor country!” response so common by visitors to Chinese cities).

China has mostly completed its transition to being just another highly unequal, ‘developing’ country, but I’m not very convinced it can get much further. Brazil, India and Indonesia have cars and skyscrapers too.

How’s that for a dose of negativity?

November 25, 2004 @ 2:17 pm | Comment

This has become a more interesting thread. But I have two questions.
Jasper Becker wrote in his book, “The Chinese’, years ago, that you can never trust Chinese government statistics, If that is true how do we judge the true status of the Chinese economy, especially in the hinterland?
What about the surplus of males in China and India?
More violence/wars/civil disorder as males “fight” for females?
I ask, because it is my understanding that having a family is VERY important to the Chinese.

November 25, 2004 @ 6:48 pm | Comment

This dialogue is certainly for me a very stimulating and thought-provoking one, and so thanks again Richard for your critical commentary on my views. And thanks too to Patrick, for entering into the dialogue with some equally challenging ideas and insights.

I think all three of us – all four of us if I include Pomfret – do indeed agree on many issues, but I think where I differ is that I remain, in spite of all that the three of you have said, a cautious optimist. I remain so not out of stubbornness, but because I am perhaps reading all of the signs and indicators a little differently. You may assume then that I must be wearing rose-coloured glasses, but I can assure you that I am instead the proud possessor of 20-20 vision.

I do not wish to dwell much more on the issue of nationalism, because I do not think that it is crucial to Pomfret’s central argument – other than to say that I am sticking to my guns on this one. Just because many of today’s Chinese youth do not have a good in-depth knowledge of their nation’s history does not in any way indicate the depth of their nationalism. Having taught in Japan, South Korea, England and Australia, I know that Chinese youth are not alone in their historical ignorance. They simply have too many other pressing issues in their lives to deal with, and education systems today focus more on information technology, the sciences, and numeracy and literacy skills rather than on the humanities, not to mention the effects of the entertainment and communications industries on the lives of today’s urban youth, which of course compete with any intellectual interests that they may happen to harbour.

A nation, of course, is an imagined community, and from my observations and discussions with Chinese students, they certainly do see themselves as belonging, emotionally and spiritually, to the imagined community that is China today, and virtually all of the young Chinese that I have met, have felt a strong allegiance or affiliation to this concept that is China. The fact that many of them may not have a very good understanding of their own country’s history is, I think, no indication of how strongly they feel themselves to be “Chinese”. But let us leave this issue aside, at least for the time being.

Let me address instead the three crucial factors that Pomfret identifies as being constraints on China’s future ambitions: the state of the environment, employment and social inequalities, and what he believes is the biggest constraint on China’s future development – corruption, and the absence of the rule of law.

I shall begin by addressing the environment:

In yesterday’s edition of The Economist there appeared a very interesting article totally relevant to the discussion that we are now having. The author of the report, A Great Wall of Waste, began by cataloguing all of China’s environmental problems, and the seriousness of each. It was noted that “water and waste pollution is the single most serious” environmental issue in China today, and that this is “the bottleneck constraining economic growth in China”. Per head, China’s water resources are among the lowest in the world and are concentrated in the south, so that the north and west experience regular droughts. Inadequate investments in supply and treatment infrastructure “means that even where water is not scarce, it is rarely clean. Around half the population, or 600 million people, have water supplies that are contaminated by animal and human waste.”

The author of the report then went on to detail air pollution problems and the problems of increasing desertification. “Adding it all up,” he wrote, “the World Bank concludes that pollution is costing China an annual 8-12% of its $1.4 trillion GDP in direct damage, such as the impact on crops of acid rain, medical bills, lost work from illness, money spent on disaster relief following floods and the implied costs of resource depletion. With health costs escalating, that figure will increase, giving rise to some grim prognoses that growth itself will be undermined.”

It was also noted, and this is something that Richard raised in his last entry, that “in a country where data are untrustworthy, corruption rife and the business climate for foreigners unpredictable”, neither the causes of China’s environmental problems nor the smooth efficiency of its remedies are necessarily what they seem. “As with many other aspects of China’s economic development, rapid progress and bold experiments in some areas are balanced by bureaucratic rigidity and stagnation in others.”

And yet, despite noting all of this, the author of this article remains cautiously optimistic about China’s ability to manage its environment sufficiently well enough to enable it to continue to prosper: “Certainly, awareness of China’s environmental problems is rising among policymakers at the highest level—reflected in a new package of right-sounding initiatives like a green GDP indicator to account for environmental costs. So is the pressure, both internal and international, to fix them. But while all developing economies face this issue, there are historical, political and institutional reasons why it will be a long and complicated process in China. There is some cause for optimism, not least an influx of foreign technology and capital.”

And later in the article: “There is no need to be unremittingly gloomy about China’s environment. As developing countries get richer, they tend to pollute less. Nationally in China, discharges of chemical oxygen have declined over the past three years, those of industrial dust have stabilised and sulphur-dioxide emissions had been on the downtrend until 2003 when energy shortages increased demand for sulphurous coal. Most east-coast cities are enjoying more sunny days and the pollution load in the rivers is falling. Environmentally, in many places, China may have passed its nadir.”

Indeed, the Central Government is increasing environmental spending and the more concerned attitude of the top leadership could filter down the hierarchy if the performance of officials begins to be measured partly on environmental criteria. This is already beginning to occur, according to one report that I read recently on the China Environment Forum website.

What is encouraging is that Beijing is under pressure to do more, and partly from domestic public opinion. As urban Chinese see their material wealth increase, more are caring about the environment, while the concerns of the poor are increasingly being channelled by green non-governmental organisations. Though these remain extremely weak—few have more than a handful of members and all need government affiliation – Wen Jiabao said recently that he suspended plans for the construction of 13 dams along the Nu River in Yunnan Province partly because of the concerns outlined by such groups.

External pressure on China is even greater. Despite reservations, foreign companies are flocking to China, scenting a fast-growing market for their environmental technologies and skills. According to a new study conducted by the Business Communications Company Inc., titled “RE-114 Environmental Protection and Control in China: Air, Water and Land”, the total market in China for pollution control products and equipment reached $5.3 billion in 2001. Rising at an average annual growth rate of 15.1%, this market is expected to reach nearly $10.7 billion by 2006.

International agencies are now beginning to tie funds to environmental criteria, while foreign governments are beginning to complain about China’s dust storms and greenhouse-gas emissions. All this will help spread best practices. Beijing is fast cleaning up ahead of the 2008 Olympics, moving out factories and introducing clean-vehicle technology: a new premium is being placed on global respectability – the effects of which I think should not be underestimated.

Although Richard acknowledges the fact that the CCP “is really, earnestly and aggressively trying to make a difference” to the environment, and that they “are closing down factories [that are] dumping poisons into the lakes and rivers,” he nevertheless remains skeptical of China’s ability to sufficiently overcome its environmental problems. He makes the very good point that, “because China is huge and because there is no rule of law as we in the West know it, their efforts are nearly always thwarted.”

“The factory owner tells the local cadre that the factory shut-down will drive hundreds into joblessness and ruin the village’s economy,” he says. “And he gives the cadre a ‘gift’ for his help, and voila, the factory quietly reopens. This simply cannot occur in a country where there is a free and active media and a court system where these acts of corruption can be challenged and punished. And the corruption can’t be stopped, because it’s part of the vast loyalty system that keeps the CCP united and in power. It’s the grease that keeps the machine in motion.”

While I think this a very good point to make, and while I have no doubt that this type of behaviour is common enough throughout much of China, I disagree that this is something which cannot be stopped, or at the very least, reduced significantly in its occurrence. As Robert P. Weller, a researcher from Boston University recently concluded in a paper published in the China Environmental Review, there is a growing awareness among the Chinese of the link between clean production and industrial competitiveness, though he admits that this awareness remains “fairly low” among the state-controlled industrial sector in China. Legislation is necessary to force change, which is exactly was the CCP has been busy doing, and as Weller says, “while enforcement may not be universal in the early stages, this legislation is likely to have a significant impact on clean production in China in the long term.”

To successfully reduce rural air pollution in China, Weller proposes broad policy changes that would address environmental consciousness, the ineffectual bureaucracy that Richard talks about, as well as changes to China’s immature legal culture. Admittedly, each area is extremely difficult to change. When educating the public on environmental issues, officials need to use less abstract examples such as the negative effects of global warming, acid rain, and endangered species and make environmental consciousness relevant to rural life—villagers must be shown they could make more money with better irrigation or that their children would be spared from debilitating disease by using cleaner burning household fuels. More difficult a task is to change the performance criteria by which cadre are measured for promotion. But one of the advantages of a strong central government is the ability to more effectively issue directives—if Beijing insisted on true enforcement of environmental regulations, Weller argues, the local officials would more quickly follow through. In the long term, Weller insists that China must “create a culture of law by establishing a truly independent judiciary, autonomous local environmental protection bureaus and independent statistical monitoring.”

All of this is possible, and as some researchers have cautiously pointed out, are now already beginning to take place.

Like Weller, Richard also identifies the absence of a “free and active media” as being a problem, and while I agree with him on this, I once again see cause for optimism. As James Detjen, of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Michigan State University, points out, “much like its other Asian neighbours, news media in China has undergone gradual change in response to market forces. Chinese journalists are indeed hopeful that greater economic success will translate into greater press freedom.” Indeed, only two days ago it was reported in The Guardian that “China will further relax its tight control of the media sector next week by introducing rules allowing foreign broadcasters to invest in television production companies.”

The short-term impact of this will be small, but this is a trial period. If the foreign firms respect China’s ideology and play a positive role in development and stability, they “may later be able to enter more deeply in the cultural market.” There could be greater openings in 2006 and 2007.”

As I said earlier, Chinese journalists and media consultants predict a steady expansion and opening of the market, which has already undergone some small but significant changes this year.

“In the newspaper industry,” reports The Guardian, “the Beijing Youth Daily has announced that it will be the first daily to seek foreign investment with a partial flotation on the Hong Kong stock market.” Wholesale book publishing is also poised to open up to foreign competition by the start of next year under China’s commitments to the World Trade Organisation. Once again Richard, there is room for optimism.

Let us look now at the problem of China’s growing inequalities. Deborah Davis, of Yale University, notes that China has experienced a rapid increase in income inequality over the past 15 years, with a large gap between urban and rural incomes. However, she maintains that China’s “human software” advantage—in terms of age and education—will help the country’s continued economic development. The World Bank, in its most recent report on China, agrees, and notes that the CCP is now pursuing policies to meet both its environmental and social equity challenges through its 10th Five-year Plan (2001-2005), which aims in part at economic growth and restructuring and reform by developing three related areas. First, the spread of market forces is being encouraged, especially through reforms of state enterprises, the financial system, agricultural output and labour markets, and pricing of natural resources. Second, market development is being supported by building the legal, social, human, physical and institutional infrastructure needed to spur private investment and rapid growth. Finally, and essential to its development agenda, China continues to go forward with broad-ranging initiatives for its integration with the world economy, building on its success in gaining WTO membership.

Fenwick Yu, of the U.S. Department of Commerce, emphasizes the positive impact of China’s entry into the WTO on its economic development; China’s WTO membership, he argues, will force Beijing to protect intellectual property rights, develop the rule of law, and reform China’s state-owned enterprises and banks through global market competition. In short, he remains confident that China’s economy will be able to sustain high-speed growth in the many years ahead.

The 10th Five Year Plan incorporates a Western Region Development strategy to assist the 12 western and inland provinces where per capita income is less than half of that of the more developed coastal provinces, where illiteracy is higher, and where the largest proportion of China’s very poor reside. This strategy, as the World Bank reports, began with stepped-up government investment, primarily in infrastructure, throughout the western region. “The Government recognizes, however, that human capital development, environmental protection and an improved investment climate—with flexible markets, basic physical infrastructure, and a social protection system—also need to be addressed by its western growth strategy.” Since agriculture will continue to be the mainstay of the rural economy, agricultural research and technology development geared to the needs of typically mountainous poor western areas are likewise viewed as imperatives.

As indicated, environmental protection and sustainable development are intrinsic to the 10th Five Year Plan goals for both economic development and poverty reduction. In rural areas, it recognises the inter-relation of poverty and environmental degradation, specifically severe soil erosion, deforestation and desertification. In urban areas, the Plan points out the need to improve the environment by reducing water and air pollution, the latter by promotion of clean coal energy sources and technologies.

Indeed, growth in agricultural production has picked up recently and rural incomes have increased significantly—due to grain price increases and, to some extent, the government’s “pro-rural” policies. Plans announced to expand the social security system more fully to rural areas may help to reduce the remaining large gap between rural and urban living standards, although the feasibility of the plans at this stage of China’s development remains to be seen.

Rural living standards rose significantly in the first 9 months of 2004, according to the World Bank report, “mainly due to increased agricultural output, a more than 30 percent increase in the grain price, the introduction of direct subsidies to farmers, and a reduction in agricultural taxes. Rural residents’ cash income increased by 11.4 percent in the first 9 months of 2004, compared with only about 2 percent per year over the period 2002-2003. Indeed, for the first time in 6 years, rural incomes grew faster than that of urban residents. As a result, rural poverty rates are estimated to have come down significantly. In addition, anecdotal evidence suggests a favorable externality in the form of wage increases and improvements in living conditions for unskilled workers in the coastal region.”

There are no signs Patrick, that China has stagnated, or that it is about to. Quite the contrary in fact. We Westerners simply need to be more patient. Change does not come overnight.

Let us not underestimate the abilities of the Chinese Central Government to introduce plans and reforms capable of overcoming, or at least significantly alleviating the serious problems that Pomfret quite rightly identifies as being potential obstacles to China’s ambitions of one day developing into a country of true greatness.

Regards,
Mark Anthony Jones

November 26, 2004 @ 2:23 am | Comment

Mark Anthony Jones,

Our major difference in opinion seems to lie in the ability of central government planning to overcome the serious problems facing China. I feel they are still too enamoured with ‘national glory’ mega-projects to adequately deal with issues such as environmental degradation and rural poverty relief.

Many of China’s environmental messes come from the state’s long-standing desire to ‘conquer’ nature. Although communism has been dumped as an ideology, its legacy of preference for grandiose projects remains in such wild schemes as huge diversion canals from south to north and hundreds of dams pretty much everywhere. It seems to me that not enough attention has been paid to the fact that earlier “great society” projects might indeed by the source of the very problems they are trying to fix now.

Another serious problem facing China’s environment is the lack of political will to restrict consumer demand (and I will admit, this is not a problem unique to the Middle Kingdom…far from it!).

The CCP has staked its legitimacy on the betterment of material life for Chinese people…how can it realistically say “Sorry, most of you won’t be able to get remotely wealthy, there is just not enough to go around!”? Although it might well be aware that current trends in China are environmentally suicidal, I can’t see this awareness overcoming the party’s more immediate concerns for political survival. The CCP has promised the Chinese people too much, and now it is forced to deliver for its own sake.

Lastly, the Chinese economy has backed itself into a proverbial corner. The huge focus on foreign exports requires two things: cheap labour and lax environmental controls. International companies don’t come to China out of the goodness of their hearts: they come because they can pay workers nothing (or get contractors to do the same), and they can still largely pollute to their heart’s content. This, unfortunately, is what makes China such an attractive market/production base.

So how can China continue employment growth, pump out massive amount of exports while somehow fixing the environment and bettering working conditions? My answer: I don’t think it can. Its increasing wealth is based largely on rampant exploitation, both of natural resources and of people. China is getting richer precisely because it is such a mess right now.

As for China stagnating, I don’t mean in the more traditional economic sense. Sure, GDP will continue to grow, more consumer goods will be sold and so on. I mean more in terms of massive societal change (I know this sounds rather general and vague, so please bear with me).

I think all the fuss about China’s growth and rise has been due to the world witnessing a society’s move from centrally-planned poverty to a much more market-oriented, less poor state. Given China’s massive population, any segment of Chinese society moving into the middle-class is going to have a profound effect.

Yet, I am also of the opinion that this transition is largely over. Those who would be ‘rich’ in China have by-and-large become so. In a market economy, you get some wealthy people and lots of not-so-wealthy people. China’s relatively wealthy urban citizens are on a consumption binge, but I am skeptic of how many more millions (or billions) can join their ranks. They have played a big part in China’s boom; but what if there is nothing else after them? Is China’s economic ‘miracle’ nothing more than the natural realignment of wealth in a market economy after so many years of of forced equality? I think so.

And what happens when 800 million peasants want a share? I’m not so sure the urbanites will be happy to give it to them. The CCP, for political purposes, promises wealth to all but in fact needs to desperately protect its new urban guilded class from the poverty and blight that surrounds their citadels.

The Chinese central government decided that urbanization was the path to wealth generation. It may have been so for the past twenty years, but now they have hit a snag: to keep the cities wealthy (and happy), they will somehow have to limit any larger redistribution of wealth. When your economic system is based on short-sighted exploitation, you are bound to run into some problems.

And after all this ranting, I promise that my next comment will include the things I like and miss about China.

November 26, 2004 @ 8:44 am | Comment

Patrick, I really appreciate your comments, which reflect my own view of China to the letter. China isn’t going to implode or collapse or die. But it’s stuck in a rut of its own making, and unfortunately this rut ensures that corruption will flourish and the environment will further deteriorate, despite token gestures that are announced every few months.

Pomfret said it in a nutshell: “China is a third-, fourth- and fifth-world country.” Is it doing better and developing fast? Sure it is, but the leap from a fifth-world country to a country of true global greatness is a long and hard one under the very best of systems, and China’s current system can’t facilitate such a leap. Only an agonized crawl. There was the dazzling supersonic leap (sorry for straining that metaphor) after Deng took power to the present, but now, as you say, distributing the wealth poses incredible problems. And in a system where guanxi is everything, that doesn’t bode well for the disenfranchised peasant.

So China’s in a bind and it’s dreams seem unattainable any time soon. But that doesn’t mean it’s not one of the world’s most amazing countries. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think of going back, at least for a couple of years. When I think back to the day I made my decision to leave, I cringe, because it was a bad mistake — SARS and other anxieties played a big part in that choice and I regret it every day. I miss the people — at least the individuals. Not the masses who push me off of lines or the drivers who consider every pedestrian a moving target. But the individuals I knew there are among the most wonderful people I’ve ever known, and seeing them enjoy the fruits of China’s undeniable progress is thrilling. Let’s hope it continues, and let’s hope as the government matures they’ll recognize that making Pudong into a Jetson’s fantasy city or building the world’s biggest dam or tallest skyscraper isn’t the way to become a respected global power. Those things are actually symptomatic of insecurity, not greatness.

November 26, 2004 @ 9:44 am | Comment

Richard,

I’m completely with you on China being an amazing country. When talking politics and economics I tend to drift into cynicism, but then I stop and remember that the fact China works at all is a small miracle in itself. I’m utterly fascinated, perhaps almost addicted. One sixth of humanity bustles inside its borders. Just incredible.

But I think it does a huge disservice to all the struggling, hard-working people there to pretend that all is hunky-dory in the PRC. To buy into the blind hype around China’s ‘rise’ to superstardom is to deny the existence of their very real-life problems. Every time a major Western newspaper does a special on China you can guarantee drooling over Pudong and such. Are people really that gullible? I wonder.

Mark Anthony Jones’ informed, cautious optimism, despite my difference of opinion , is at least more realistic and not star-struck.

Like you, I made some great friends while I was in China, along with meeting dozens of truly memorable characters. From corrupt police officers trying to befriend me to absolutely hilarious college students, they still occupy my thoughts daily. Don’t even get me started on the taxi drivers! The place had enough of an effect on me that I’m continuing my Chinese language learning here at school in the UK, and I’m hoping to go back for a visit soon.

It’s really strange that some of the things that aggravated me the most while I lived there are the very same things that I now miss.

I never thought it would be possible to hate a place so much yet absolutely love it at the same time. I don’t know of many other countries that have this effect, but somehow many of the China expats I’ve met have the same reaction I do. What the hell is wrong with us?
In the end, the greatness of China really lies in its people and the absolutely random spontaneity of daily life there, not Pudong’s empty odes to the power of the state to glorify itself by wasting its people’s money.

(If you are wondering about my focus on developments projects and urbanization, I’m currently doing a Masters on urbanization and development. Needless to say, China comes up quite a bit.)

November 26, 2004 @ 11:15 am | Comment

Mark, sorry for not addressing your earlier comment. I understand all your points, and there’s merit to them. But for me, what they all come down to is that there is the potential for China to make great strides. True. There is a possibility — but it all hinges on a lot of “ifs.” As soon as I see genuine cause for optimism, I’ll be willing to make the shift into the cautiously optimistic camp. For now, I simply can’t. Just because there is a growing awareness of the problems among the CCP doesn’t mean they’ll do the right thing. Witness the staggering waste of money on the glitter and the nonsense — just last week they announced they’d be building the world’s tallest building. I’ll be more sympathetic to your argument when I see them apply their awareness and get real about their priorities. I saw them in action two short years ago, when they decided their image at the People’s Congress was more important than telling the truth about SARS and saving lives — it spoke volumes to me about their priorities and about how their minds work. So yes, they really do have the potential to solve their problems — if they took the appropriate action. But that is a tremendous “if.” In their minds, initiating real change and reform would threaten their power, alienating either the new middle/upper classes or the masses of peasants. And, since maintaining “social stability and harmony” is of paramount concern to an insecure one-party system obsessed with losing power, I simply cannot imagine them taking such a risk. But we’ll see over the years to come. I’ve tried to give them the benefit of the doubt time and again and always came away disappointed. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

November 26, 2004 @ 6:35 pm | Comment

Just a small point. Inciting nationalism is not China’s patent. Many authoritarian transition countries have done this.

November 26, 2004 @ 11:31 pm | Comment

Dear Richard and Patrick,

Thanks enormously for your detailed and informed criticisims. I am busy this weekend, but I shall definately write a detailed response on Monday morning (China time). For now though, let me say that I really do agree with much of what the both of you have to say - though I remain, nevertheless, cautiously optimisitic about China’s future to develop into a nation of true greatness - but by greatness I do not mean an imperialistic hegemon - and when I say cautiously optimistic, I mean only just - especially after considering your comments.

Best regards for now!
Mark Anthony Jones

November 27, 2004 @ 2:16 am | Comment

What a great series of posts! I’m in such agreement with everyone that I can only think of a few areas in which to throw my two cents.

a) Chinese nationalism. It’s not as “skin-deep” as people might think. When you’ve been as introctrinated as that to “ai Zhongguo” since birth … it’s going to have an impact. I’ve been particularly struck by the way a number of Chinese have said to me, quite unprompted, about how they would go back and fight for China in the event of a war. The other interesting aspect to their comments has been … it’s always “in the event of a war with Japan.” You can buy American goods, and still be nationalistic. Hasn’t anyone seen those pics from the middle east of people burning American flags, while they wear NY Yankees baseball caps?

b) My pessimism about the future of China is based entirely on internal factors to China, and not on the basis of any comparison to other countries … except in the sense that it provides a yardstick with which Chinese themselves like to measure their success. If the Chinese populace becomes disillusioned with their chances for reaching the goal they’ve come to expect is inevitable … then there’s going to be trouble.

c) I think people need to spend more time to consider the factors that have made China fall apart in the past. China is a universe in its own right, and so much of what goes on there is due entirely to its own internal dynamics. What this lesson says to me is this: the government will fall, sooner or later. When it falls, there will be no viable alternative to replace it, until years have passed. In the meantime, China will suffer terribly.

November 27, 2004 @ 5:18 am | Comment

Thank you Richard and Patrick, once again, for your insightful and challenging criticisms. And thanks too, to the writer who goes by the rather intriguing name of Filthy Stinking No.9, for joining the dialogue.

I am heartened by the knowledge that at least one person agrees with my take on the issue of Chinese nationalism. The point that Filthy Stinking No.9 makes about people from the middle east burning American flags while wearing NY Yankees baseball caps provides a very good example of what I was talking about earlier: that there is no link between nationalism and the consumer goods that people choose to buy.

When I first arrived here in China almost three years ago, the first person I met at the college where I taught was a young man whose English name is Paul. I was struck by the fact that, only a day after meeting him, he declared his allegiance to China as being so strong and passionate that he would “gladly” give up his life to help protect it in the event of a foreign invasion. Like the people mentioned by Filthy Stinking No.9, Paul also expressed a strong dislike towards the Japanese, but Paul was more concerned about a possible future American invasion over Taiwan. He was fiercely proud and nationalistic, to the point where I would even describe him as being a chauvinist, and yet he had ambitions of one day studying at the University of Sydney, and he loved American movies – though his favourite actor was Hong Kong’s Andy Lau. And despite his dislike of the Japanese (Paul is from Nanjing, where one of the worst atrocities committed by the Japanese in China took place), he always named Japan as the country he most wanted to visit for a holiday. He viewed Japan’s development and economic success as being a good model for China to follow, and he admired the Japanese for being the first Asian country to modernise. His attitude towards the Japanese was a love-hate one.

I wish that I had a dollar for every other Chinese person I have met who harbours these same sets of views.

But it seems as though all of us, as both Patrick and Richard have already pointed out, are actually in broad agreement with one another over most issues. Where I stand out as being different is that I am optimistic about China’s future to develop into a great nation, but very cautiously so. Patrick and Richard and Pomfret are all pessimistic, but are nevertheless cautious, and so it would seem as though all of us are not too far away from the centre. There seems very little point then, in continuing this dialogue by trying to entice the other across the fence, and into one’s own yard. I shall instead, simply share my thoughts on a number of the points and issues that have been raised since I last contributed to these pages.

Let me begin by addressing one of the points raised by Patrick. He argues that the Central Government is probably still not capable of solving China’s problems because “they are still too enamoured with ‘national glory’ mega-projects to adequately deal with issues such as environmental degradation and rural poverty relief.” Richard agrees, and calls upon us to “witness the staggering waste of money on the glitter and the nonsense - just last week they announced they’d be building the world’s tallest building,” he says. “I’ll be more sympathetic to your argument when I see them apply their awareness and get real about their priorities.” It is Richard’s view that “making Pudong into a Jetson’s fantasy city or building the world’s biggest dam or tallest skyscraper isn’t the way to become a respected global power.” Those things, he says, “are actually symptomatic of insecurity, not greatness.”

Now, I can certainly agree with Richard and Patrick with all of this, at least up to a point. To argue that money could be better spent on projects designed to help alleviate rural poverty or environmental degradation, rather than on these Jetson’s-like fantasy buildings, is certainly a fair enough comment to make. China’s space program provides another good case in point: estimated to be costing at least 2.2 billion US dollars per year, China’s space program doesn’t seem to serve any clear purpose other than to act as a kind of prestige program to enhance domestic legitimacy for the CCP, and to help give the impression that China ranks up there internationally with the big boys. China is now one of only three countries to have put a man into space.

But does the spa