|
URUMQI, Xinjiang – If Adam Smith and Karl Marx are today watching global developments from the great yonder, they are probably somewhat bewildered at what’s happening. The communists in China are doing a lot better at capitalism than the Western capitalists in the US and Europe. As a CNN article puts it, “China’s millionaires keep millionairing – it won’t be long before there are one million US dollar millionaires in the country, guided by the philosophy: if you can’t make a million, make a billion.”
It is weird to see the Europeans groveling before China begging China to buy some of their soon to be worthless government debts. And the Americans while telling China to float its currency, the world’s only superpower is doing it ever so gently so as not to upset the one country that holds a lot of America’s debt papers. It is as if we moved back several centuries with the likes of Marco Polo bowing before the Chinese Emperor for the right to trade in silk, spices, porcelain and other valuable products of the Middle Kingdom.
I have been traveling the whole week from the East (Shanghai) to the extreme West of China, somewhat tracing the Silk Road from Xian to this capital city of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. There is no way one can miss noticing the very visible evidence of prosperity --- from the flashy cars, fashionably dressed people and expensive name brand stores even in this city in the remote Western region. I first visited China in the early 80s when everyone was in blue or black Mao jackets and riding millions of bicycles everywhere. Today, there are traffic jams of high end cars even in the remote county of Yining, just 100 kilometers from the Kazakhstan border.
At the largely agricultural Yining, SUVs and Benzes compete for space with improvised tractor powered carts of farmers in newly constructed roadways. Yining officials told us their farmers no longer live in poverty and are actually enjoying the benefits of rising demand for farm produce from both domestic and export markets. I saw some of the government sponsored housing for farmers and I can say those are definitely better looking than a lot of the low cost housing we give our urban poor... and government housing for Filipino farmers is unheard of.
Farm income was actually the subject of some controversy in local media. A farmer in Northeast China’s Heilongjiang province in an interview with Chinese government TV network CCTV boasted his annual income could reach 300,000 yuan or $47,000. While this farmer may be an exceptional case, if he wasn’t exaggerating, I was told that farmers do have the chance to make good money as they mechanize their farms and get government subsidies. Industrialists in the big cities are having a difficult time recruiting workers for their factories because many farmers now have the option of staying home and still make a living.
In the case of that high earning farmer on television, a newspaper report tempered his claims by citing official statistics showing annual income of a farmer was more in the range of 6,000 yuan. Thus, the story of one farmer has not removed the need to prioritize the issue of increasing the income of farmers, who, despite improved lives, in general still lag way behind the affluent city dwellers living on the eastern coast.
Prosperity or the near certainty of attaining it in one’s lifetime seems to be powering the Chinese people’s bullishness but they are not without worries about the problems prosperity brings. They look at what’s happening in the West today and some think it is just a matter of time those problems will come home to roost in China too. The widening gap between the very rich and the rest of the people that caused the Wall Street protests of recent weeks is something the Chinese, both government and people, are watching closely.
There are also changes brought by China’s attempt at a market economy that are not too popular with the people. In health care for instance, Global Times, a tabloid owned by the People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, reports about a fundamental shift from government financed health care to user-pay. According to Global Times, this change has had “traumatic impact on both doctors and patients.”
Global Times reports that while 80 percent of China’s hospitals are public health care facilities, they receive little by way of public funding. Public hospitals now earn 86 percent of income generated by all hospitals. Global Times quoted Andy Xie, a Hong Kong economist that “it is not surprising the current system is the cause of considerable resentment.”
What’s happening in China’s health care system is probably one other reason for Adam Smith and Karl Marx to wonder about a world gone upside down. As China moves from state financed to user-pay for health care, US President Obama has started to revolutionize America’s health care system by increasing government’s role including funding in assuring quality health care for marginalized citizens. The Communists are behaving like capitalists while the Capitalists are behaving like socialists.
No wonder recent disturbing developments in the West are being closely watched in China. The protest actions in the US Wall Street, the Global Times editorialized, provide useful lessons. “It is certain that since the gap between the US economic capacity and voters expectations is widening, the rapidly accumulated social discontent will not disappear in an easy way… Another possibility is that US society cannot reach a consensus on how to satisfy the public’s requirements and the country will sink into a long period of political instability as a result.”
I couldn’t suppress a grin as I read that line about political instability in the US, coming as it did, from China. It has really been a long time and a very different world since Tiananmen. Up until now, no one has called the US politically unstable. Yet, there is a tinge of truth in that observation about the US, not that it has turned into a banana republic but that its extreme polarization has indeed, turned it somewhat ungovernable. Exhibit A: threats of federal government shutdowns have become routine as Republican and Democratic members of Congress argue and hold their own citizens hostage in their ideological battles. I guess even Obama will agree up to a point about this Chinese observation.
The Global Times editorial also betrays China’s worry about what’s happening in the US because it could happen in China and perhaps, it already started to happen. Chinese public opinion is quite familiar with the slogan of “social justice” the US protesters are shouting, the Global Times observed, many Chinese take the US protests to be a mirror of the Chinese reality. “The US system generates the country’s prosperity as well as its problems and the same is true of China’s system… Reform and adjustment are necessary for both China and the US… The spreading protests in the US are a free lesson for China. We should learn from them.”
Maybe what China needs are a little bit more of Marx and maybe even Mao Zedong Thought to moderate its rush to glorious prosperity. They must not allow the gap between the rich and the poor to widen dangerously, a current problem of the US, because that will bring them back to the inequality of the Chinese society before the Revolution. As for the US, they probably need less Adam Smith and more of another FDR who has the guts to introduce some amount of socialism and central government regulation to save American capitalism from self destructing.
I am impressed by China’s progress. But at the same time, a mindless and soulless rush to riches can only spell trouble, as the 2008 financial crisis and the current Wall Street protests are showing. China’s growing number of educated middle class can be easily frustrated and the working classes can end up feeling betrayed. Hopefully China is able to complete its success at capitalism by inventing a variant that is more than a shallow and almost inhuman pursuit of wealth with no regard to its impact on larger society. If China succeeds in this, they would have proved Deng Xiaoping right… that being rich is glorious.
China and America
This one’s from Jay Leno.
China is now expected to surpass Japan as the 2nd richest country in the world. They could become the richest, but that’s only if we pay them the money we owe them, and that’s not going to happen.”
Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com. He is also on Twitter @boochanco.
No comments:
Post a Comment