I’m very skeptical about the supposed “Chinese miracle”. While there’s no doubt that China has a larger middle class than it did in the 80’s or 90’s it’s still a very poor country for most people and in some ways it’s become more backwards and conservative since adopting capitalism. For all the crappy things about Maoism you have to admit that it was great for things like women’s rights and public health. The modern Chinese state is basically Nazi-lite and their only ideology is greed and blind patriotism.
The idea Chinese poverty went from 80% to 10% in 30 years or whatever is a bunch of crap most Chinese people are very poor by American standards. It’s typical in China to make about $7,000 a year in buying power and this is considering the fact so many are practically slaves and work insanely long hours with no benefits. To make stuff for us Westerners, I’ll add.
I’m sick of the trend of neoliberals and conservatives glorifying Chinese totalitarianism, it reminds me of when Time Magazine named Hitler man of the year. A lot of Westerners loved Nazi Germany before the war while they were persecuting minorities; China today does the same thing to the Falun Gong and the Muslim ethnicities in Xinjiang on a lesser scale. The stealing of organs from prisoners is just as sick as anything during the Holocaust. I’m sure the elitist thugs in this country would love to remake America in China’s image.
And while the Chinese government is not as ruthless as they used to be the idea that democracy would blossom there due to having a freer market has not come to fruition. They’re only gradually becoming less ruthless because their rule is more secure. If the Chinese people ever revolt en masse the CCP will probably end up shedding a lot of blood.
Chinese companies are known to inflate their earnings reports and lie about how much they pay their workers. Much of the GDP growth is actually measuring the construction of ghost towns and stores on bogus Western credit. Many of these lay empty because the vast majority of ordinary Chinese people are far too poor to afford them.
People often say China was as poor as Africa at the beginning of the 1980s but this is an apples/oranges comparison. Communist countries have publicly shared wealth so the fact their incomes might be extremely low on paper doesn’t mean their existences are equally miserable to some war-torn country in Africa that has a similar PPP on paper. When you count public services and the black economy that existed there’s no question that China was a better place to live in 1980 than most of Africa.
Oh and one more thing - the one child policy has barely made a dent in the Chinese population, so I’m sick of people saying we should try that over here! Nothing but a bunch of dead babies all over BS Malthusian fears.
I agree that many Americans don’t recognize how much of China’s remarkable growth is due to having a very low baseline. It’s easy to get spectacular percentage growth when you start from a very small number. Going from one to two is a hundred percent growth even though it represents less actual growth than the two percent growth of going from a hundred to a hundred and two.
I think you’re misunderstanding what the title means. It’s not glorifying the subject. It’s saying the subject had the greatest influence on events in that year. And it’s hard to argue that Hitler wasn’t making the most history in 1938.
$7000 a year after 2 more doublings will be $28,000 a year. South Korea has a per capita GDP in that area. If China’s economy grows at 8% a year, it will undergo a doubling each 9 years. So assuming they can keep up growth rates of 8% a year by 2030 they will be at western levels of wealth.
China making excuses for human rights abusers is more offensive than their domestic abuses. Granted the west did the same thing 30 years ago, but it is bothersome to watch them protect places like North Korea or Sudan.
The one child policy has reduced Chinas population by 400 million. That isn’t a small number, they would be about 1.7 billion now instead of 1.3. However by doing that they are creating a labor shortage. On the plus side of that this could lead to more investments in automation and robotics to deal with the labor shortage.
I have no idea what the future of democracy and human rights is in China.
It’s these kinds of assumptions that are deeply misleading. Assuming that China is simply going to keep growing at the same ignores the fact that all countries’ growth slows down eventually, and China’s initial growth is due to its very low baseline (as Little Nemo noted). It’s like this xkcd: blindly assuming that China is going to keep growing at current rates is obviously wrong (or at least, a very unlikely outcome). In addition, China’s growth is widely predicted to slow down in the next several years to Western levels, e.g. 2-3% per year.
The change in China is undeniable. I taught students who grew up dreaming of being able to eat meat regularly. Having a bite of pork with dinner every day was unimaginable. Those same students are saving up for iPads, traveling the world, and very, very far from the hunger they grew up with.
That doesn’t mean the average Chinese person is rich. China is a middle-income country. In development terms, that is victory. The difference between “abject poverty” and “middle income” is far more meaningful to bridge than the gap between “middle income” and “high income.” Middle income isn’t a bad place to be, globally. Middle income people have motorcycles and laundry detergent and secondary education and basic healthcare. The really important stuff is for the most part there.
With that in mind, there are some weaknesses in the economy, and a good chunk of the current boom is either illusionary or unsustainable. But even without that chunk, the difference between this generation and the last one is breathtaking. When I saw grandmothers with their grandkids on the street, I knew that those grandmothers lived in a time where one in six died of famine, while those babies are never going to know hunger.
The government can be pretty bad, but it’s not all-powerful. And the people of China are, for the most part, pretty aware of what is going on. I agree that economic loosening isn’t going to automatically lead to democracy- there has been very little change in terms of actual political organization since Maoist times. But the powers that be are pretty aware that personal freedom is a powerful tool for staying in power, and that is something.
So in short, it’s not all good, but it’s not all bad. There is no question that Chinese people are better off than they were 30 years ago. But that doesn’t mean China is some kind of magical paradise-- and I don’t think many people truly believe that.
The change in China is undeniable. I taught students who grew up dreaming of being able to eat meat regularly. Having a bite of pork with dinner every day was unimaginable. QUOTE]
More people eating meat regularly is not a good thing.
Japan was once said to overtake the U.S but that never panned out. And Japan was rich on par with the U.S. Who knows what will happen but either way China will be an economic force on the world stage. For the foreseeable future it will be poorer than the U.S however.
People get dazzled by this numbers game all the time and it drives me nuts.
Kind of like “The number of cases of CHINBALLS has increased by 300% in the last year!” when the actual numbers say the cases of CHINBALLS went from 1 in 100M to 4 in 100M etc…
Many countries start at or are currently at a low baseline and are not maintaining 7-10% growth rates year after year like China does. To what degree is China’s rate of growth due to good governance rather than just a low baseline? They only started growing at those rates in 1978 onward.
Where is this ‘wildly predicted to slow down to 2-3%’ coming from? I’ve been hearing that for the last several years and China is still growing at 7-10% a year. I don’t know when China’s growth rate will drop but other east asian nations that are now developed continued to grow rapidly while in middle income status. I don’t think South Korea dropped to western levels of growth until they were at $13,000 per capita GDP, and that was in the mid 90s so the adjusted figure would likely be closer to 20k per capita now.
I look forward to a wealthy China. They are already a world leader in renewable energy and a big part of why solar has suddenly become affordable in the last 5 years, China has a lot of things to contribute to the world of science, energy, medicine, technology, etc. It will be interesting. Even if their growth slows down at about 12k per capita that is still a pretty decent sized economy.
I know income inequality is becoming a serious problem in China, but I thought people at the (non agricultural) bottom saw rapid wage growth in the last 2 decades, like 10-20% a year in export based industries like manufacturing.
The gap between “abject poverty” and “middle income” may not be huge in terms of dollar amounts, but it is huge in terms of standard of living. Even in poor rural villages, the change is immense, and the depth and frequency of extreme poverty just isn’t on the same scale.
