Where to for China?

By S.P.SETH

Without discounting China’s impressive economic growth, starting with the opening of its economy in the eighties, it has also done a good job of projecting itself as an alternative model to the faltering Western world with its economic malaise. But China’s alternative model is not what it is made out to be. To understand this, one needs to go back to the eighties when it all began under Deng Xiaoping.

Soon after Deng initiated economic opening, he had to contend with the ideological opposition of the Left-wing in the CPC worried about ‘spiritual pollution’ from the ‘tainted’ Western economic model of economic growth. He did prevail. But he wasn’t all that prepared for an incipient democracy movement making the death of the axed General Secretary Hu Yaobang as a rallying point. This students-led movement, inspired also by the Soviet leader Gorbachev’s perestroika, was emerging to challenge the system as well as the practice of communism in China, and favoring a democratic polity. And we all know what happened to this democratic movement with its brutal suppression by the army in June 1989.

One main lesson communist China’s leadership learnt from the collapse of the Soviet Union was not to go for the Gorbachev-style perestroika, as this would be the end of the Party’s monopoly power. When the Soviet leader visited China in 1989 in the midst of students’ movement for democratic reforms, Deng Xiaoping had apparently already made up his mind to crush the democracy movement as it was expanding its constituency to include other segments of the society and beyond the capital, Beijing. After the brutal crackdown in June 1989, China faced strong international condemnation and selective sanctions, imposed on the country by a number of countries.

Deng was not deterred and, after a brief hiatus, he sought to rally the Party around his policy of economic growth and China’s modernization. And he was successful in this. At the political level, however, he was determined to uphold the Leninist political system of the Party wielding all the power. He came to the conclusion that as long as China was in a growth mode with opportunities for employment in the country’s industrial economy, the communist regime will be able to maintain momentum and a measure of legitimacy. Besides, as economic growth picked up, it created an aspirational middle class with stake in the system. After Deng died, his successors have broadly followed the same guiding philosophy of stepping up economic growth, with the Party controlling political power.

However, the country’s political and social situation is getting more complex. The sectoral economic and social imbalances in the country have created serious distortions. The disproportionate emphasis on industrial economy has hit the agricultural sector, resulting in millions of rural workers migrating to cities in search of jobs. As a result the rural sector has lost many of its young and able-bodied people to the cities, thus hurting its economy as well as its social landscape.

In the cities, they either have very little or no access to local facilities because of original residency. Their wages are low (though this is changing gradually because of increased labor demand) and there have been reports of employers withholding wages and, at times, not paying at all. Since the employers are politically well connected, the workers don’t have access to legal processes. In any case, the legal system is subject to political interference and/or manipulation. At the same time, rural workers are blamed by the locals for rising crime in the cities.

Indeed, the rural sector has been subsidizing industrial growth in a number of ways. First: its labor force, working on industrial and construction sites, have been paid low wages. Second: the prices of rural produce have remained depressed to keep the industrial scene competitive. Three: the farming communities have been subject to local taxes and imposts at the whim of the party committees because they lack necessary muscle at the central level. Fourth: rural land on urban periphery has been acquired arbitrarily for industrial and construction sites.

In rural areas, which still have the most population in China, people are doing it very tough. They have been virtually left out of the country’s industrial economy, controlled and dictated by the rich and the powerful operating in a symbiotic relationship. The resultant economic distortions are widening economic and social chasm between the urban and rural sectors, and fostering severe regional imbalances with the coastal hub hogging the economic limelight. There is an obscene wealth gap between the rich and the poor, which keeps growing. The worsening environmental pollution is choking China’s cities and affecting its river systems.

Underlying all this is a corrupt system that pervades from the local levels to the highest organs of the state and the Party. It is not that the Party leadership is not cognizant of the endemic corruption that pervades the system. Indeed, President Hu Jintao only recently highlighted the danger from widespread corruption for the Party, and emphasized the need for drastic action. But the funny thing is that despite all these exhortations at the highest level, the corruption keeps on spreading its net wider and wider.

Since anyone and everyone in the Party is involved, nobody wants to bell the cat for fear of being ensnared in a serious nationwide crackdown on corruption. Therefore, the Party leadership makes routine exhortations about the danger of corruption to calm down people’s jittery nerves. But exhortations are not action and people’s cynicism is growing.

While the President talks of tackling corruption, Premier Wen Jiaobao talks of political reform and creating a responsive democratic system. Again, nothing happens and dissidents and activists keep on being rounded up. Sometimes, between the President and the Premier, China’s politics looks like a Judy and Punch show without any serious intent to deal with the two main issues that China faces. Which is: corruption and the need for a responsive and transparent political system answerable to the people.

Premier Wen Jiabao seems to have perfected his act of being the nation’s kindly grandpa who emerges at a time of major catastrophe to calm people’s nerves and assure them that everything will be all right and the culprits will be apprehended and punished. He recently appeared in this role after the collision of two bullet trains that killed at least 39 people and injured more than 200. But this routine is also wearing thin.

He started with apologizing for taking some time to appear for the occasion due to his 11-day illness. But it didn’t cut much ice with many people when pictures soon appeared on the internet showing him in perfect health at functions during the period of his presumed illness. Which doesn’t say much for the top leadership of the country.

The Chinese oligarchy’s standard approach to dealing with unrest in the country is to beef up its internal security apparatus, now at $90 billion. Despite this, it is not succeeding entirely. It is estimated that, so far this year, there have been 180,000 riots in the country. The one area where the state is finding it really hard is the internet, notwithstanding all the firewalls and other gadgets and programs to control and censor it.

The Chinese site, Sina Weibo, (like the Twitter) has given a new meaning to news and views. With about 200 million Chinese using it, this has also allowed other forms of media to push their boundaries. For instance, even the state broadcaster ignored the warnings about not reporting on the train collision disaster.

Its news anchor made a searing, on air, commentary on the state of affairs in the country, without making it explicitly political.

He reportedly said: “ Can we live in apartments that that do not fall down? Can the roads we drive on in our cities not collapse? Can we travel in safe trains? And if there is a major accident, can we not be in a hurry to bury the trains? Can we afford the people a basic sense of security?”

And, he added, “China, please slow down. If you are too fast, you may leave the souls of your people behind.” This says it all.

May be it is time for the world romanticizing about China to slow down too and get a better grip on the reality of that country.