29 January 2005
Passing of an era or naivety?
I was in my last six months of graduate school when news broke about the drama in Tien An Men Square. Images and sounds of shooting gave a hint of the brutal reaction to a campaign of civil disobedience by students, farmers, ordinary town folk. In the ensuing fallout, one of the scape goats for the uprising was the then Secretary-General of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhao Ziyang. It is with his death this month that many pro-reformers mourn the passing of an era.
Today, students know little about those events and those who do, have a different view to how they would have acted. As the BBC reports, today's students view their predecessors as naive and misguided. A student said that while she wasn't entirely satisfied with today's society [in China], she was convinced that the leadership was acting in the best interests of its citizens. If this is in fact what citizens believe today, then Beijing has succeeded in stabilising its society. Or has it?
Most estimates, official and otherwise, peg the rural unemployed at about a mind-boggling 280 million people. With the liberalisation, many SOEs (State Owned Enterprises) closed their doors, unable to survive in a market economy which demanded efficiencies, quality standards and products they simply couldn't deliver. While many tens of millions have found work in new factories, still more languish in the countryside.
The 280 million unemployed are part of the cost of transitioning from a command economy to a market economy. The story was similar for Poland when it took the plunge as well. But the difference is China's vast population. Any time you take even a modest percentage of 1.6 billion people, you still end up with numbers denominated in millions.
Problems confronting the central government are manifold. Although the economy has been expanding at a rapid clip, the resulting wealth hasn't percolated out to the inland provinces. What little that has seeped inland, has been dipped into many times by corrupt officials. In fact, one of the main reasons driving the civil uprising in 1989 centered around disgust with corruption in the Communist Party.
To its credit, Beijing has been dealing with serious problems like official corruption in typical fashion - ie trial followed by execution. The question is despite apparent determination at the top, does Beijing have sufficient time to deal with the armies of unemployed, corruption, an overheating economy, insolvent banks, pollution, degraded water supplies, energy shortages etc. before the country implodes?
I think Beijing believes that if they can accelerate the sharing of wealth throughout the country, it will buy them time to grapple with the very long list of problems. But not on Beijing's to-do list is bringing "freedom and liberty" Bush style to the yearning masses. 1.6 billion people running around doing whatever the hell they please, simply won't fix the unemployment, corruption, insolvent banks etc.
Take for example, a former US colony, the Philippines. Despite the US moulding that country's government into an image of itself, corruption is rife, its citizens are the country's largest trade export, and the five wealthiest families still monopolise over 95% of land in the country. All the process did was to entrench the wealthy land-owning oligarchy.
Over decades, numerous attempts at land reform and redistribution have been defeated in the Filipino congress. Senators and congressmen are either wealthy land-owners themselves or have been co-opted by them. So much for government by the people, for the people. Really, it's fantasy to believe inequalities, broken infrastructure etc will be magically fixed with the arrival of freedom and liberty, Bush style or otherwise.
The bottom line for the average person in China is that they want their material needs met first, regardless of political ideology. Being pragmatic people, I suspect they now understand that you can't eat freedom or liberty nor is it much good if some form of government is absent. Just ask the newly liberated Iraqis.
Today, students know little about those events and those who do, have a different view to how they would have acted. As the BBC reports, today's students view their predecessors as naive and misguided. A student said that while she wasn't entirely satisfied with today's society [in China], she was convinced that the leadership was acting in the best interests of its citizens. If this is in fact what citizens believe today, then Beijing has succeeded in stabilising its society. Or has it?
Most estimates, official and otherwise, peg the rural unemployed at about a mind-boggling 280 million people. With the liberalisation, many SOEs (State Owned Enterprises) closed their doors, unable to survive in a market economy which demanded efficiencies, quality standards and products they simply couldn't deliver. While many tens of millions have found work in new factories, still more languish in the countryside.
The 280 million unemployed are part of the cost of transitioning from a command economy to a market economy. The story was similar for Poland when it took the plunge as well. But the difference is China's vast population. Any time you take even a modest percentage of 1.6 billion people, you still end up with numbers denominated in millions.
Problems confronting the central government are manifold. Although the economy has been expanding at a rapid clip, the resulting wealth hasn't percolated out to the inland provinces. What little that has seeped inland, has been dipped into many times by corrupt officials. In fact, one of the main reasons driving the civil uprising in 1989 centered around disgust with corruption in the Communist Party.
To its credit, Beijing has been dealing with serious problems like official corruption in typical fashion - ie trial followed by execution. The question is despite apparent determination at the top, does Beijing have sufficient time to deal with the armies of unemployed, corruption, an overheating economy, insolvent banks, pollution, degraded water supplies, energy shortages etc. before the country implodes?
I think Beijing believes that if they can accelerate the sharing of wealth throughout the country, it will buy them time to grapple with the very long list of problems. But not on Beijing's to-do list is bringing "freedom and liberty" Bush style to the yearning masses. 1.6 billion people running around doing whatever the hell they please, simply won't fix the unemployment, corruption, insolvent banks etc.
Take for example, a former US colony, the Philippines. Despite the US moulding that country's government into an image of itself, corruption is rife, its citizens are the country's largest trade export, and the five wealthiest families still monopolise over 95% of land in the country. All the process did was to entrench the wealthy land-owning oligarchy.
Over decades, numerous attempts at land reform and redistribution have been defeated in the Filipino congress. Senators and congressmen are either wealthy land-owners themselves or have been co-opted by them. So much for government by the people, for the people. Really, it's fantasy to believe inequalities, broken infrastructure etc will be magically fixed with the arrival of freedom and liberty, Bush style or otherwise.
The bottom line for the average person in China is that they want their material needs met first, regardless of political ideology. Being pragmatic people, I suspect they now understand that you can't eat freedom or liberty nor is it much good if some form of government is absent. Just ask the newly liberated Iraqis.
