They’ll have to pay us more than that if they expect us to buy any new Fords. (As Henry Ford himself well understood.)
I’m not Apos, but I agree with him, and so does this guy.
Well that’s all you had to say!
But an article by some guy whose whole article (which had the quality of a blog) is his anecdotal experiences while traveling through China leaves me underwhelmed.
You know?
I was looking for a credible cite to back up, " In the last ten years, the basic standard of living for most Chinese people has plummeted, not improved".
Not a good cite for the assertion. Sorin says “The remaining 1 billion, however, remain among the poorest and most exploited people in the world, lacking even minimal rights and public services,” but nothing in his article really supports that; it’s all anecdotal. And nothing he even says supports Apos’ assertion that “In the last ten years, the basic standard of living for most Chinese people has plummeted, not improved.”
The City Journal, BTW, is published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a right-wing think-tank – which does not necessarily discredit its articles but is grounds for careful skepticism.
Getting good statistics out of China is not easy, because the government releases false data regularly, and will not let people who actually study or collect alternative valid data unless they find the results that are desired. They also threaten and bully and deny access to those who will not toe their line on how things are going. And that’s just for people in the West. People that try to do that in China are just thrown in jail, or have their economic interests and connections cut off if they are Westerners. So all you will hear out of China is that everything is on the rise, everyone is better off. What else are you going to hear?
Note that despite all the hype about China having tons of capital, China lives on foreign investment, and increasingly inefficiently as well.
As for standard of living, I can’t back up my claims with cites, but then no one can back up the alternative with credible cites either. The best I can do is point to people I know living there who have told me that especially outside the urban areas, they cannot afford what they could a decade ago, particularly in terms of medical care. Western medicine is more and more affordable only for the party elites, foreigners, big corporate buddies and pals. For the rest of the population, eastern traditional medicines have been played up more and more, primarily because they are way cheaper and nationalistic.
All of this is fine by those in the cities as long as they keep making money, and the party members, who live like kings, stay happy. The rich get richer, the poor don’t get any richer, but everything they need rises in cost.
But that is inevitable. A general rise in living standards is not going to be a linear trend for the entire population.
Is there any society where it ever has been, during a period of industrialization?
Seems very unlikely to me.
He has an okay take on the Chinese psyche, but it does not follow that leads to anarchy/revolution/overthrow. Also I’m pretty sure that Gordon didn’t expect the economy (and more importantly trickle down into the impoverished countryside) to grow so fast.
He’s completely off base on Taiwan. Economic integration will cause some sort of political settlement certainly within a decade if not half that time. Look for direct flights to open up between Taiwan and China the day after Chen shuibian leaves office. It makes no sense on any level for China to attack Taiwan. China has had the ability to take some of the outlying Taiwanese islands off the coast of Fujian for decades but haven’t.
I remember the Hainan plane incident. I was trading B share stocks full time, and the only thing about the incident all the other local Chinese investors had to say was “why is the US fucking up our stock market?” No one cared except for the news hurt share prices.
Not much revolutionary sentiment – not much political feeling of any kind – there. A revolution, however, might start in the countryside and be in full swing before the guys you’re talking about, or the government, are fully aware of it. It’s happened before.
As I posted earlier, one can find an example of anything in China. What I always find curious is that the observers make a very tenuous logical leap that if incident A happens in village B, then it was part of the grand conspiracy at the highest levels of Chinese government. President Hu will tell you there are huge problems.
A hick sherrif in the US pulling over blacks at a higher than average rate or something much worse doesn’t translate into President Bush personally ordering a policy of aparthied.
It’s hard to imagine how many people live in China and the logistical challenges of just making sure daily life kinda works for the country. India is probably the only other close country for comparison, and there are plenty of issues in India as well. Both countries have different forms of government, but the same challenge of managing such a massive population.
As for the blogger, color me unimpressed that he met with 2 high profile dissidents. You can search on both of their names. IMHO he has no real understanding of China, nor real experience in country on which to make any kind of meaningful analysis much less conclusion.
I’ll come back and say that as a whole, China is much better off than it was 2 decades ago. And a decade ago. Sure there are millions and millions left behind in the economic boom - including a lot of my relatives.
I spent February in China traveling by myself (Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong) and I must say I found the general mood of the average Chang to be almost hopeless. I found the Chinese for the most part to be warm and kind. Although their culture is big on saving face (which keeps them shy) I talked with plenty of young students. I think the problem isn’t that theirs is a faceless oppressive bureaucratic machine, or that their education doesn’t develop critical thinking to be wielded on the government. Or that their culture favors harmony over advancement, concessious over truth, quiet seething over public debate. Their problem is that they’ve been oppressed for so long, they don’t even know it. Being as polite as possible I would often ask them what they thought about their government and, if it should change, how? They often didn’t understand the question, and not from lack of English skills. How can another nation successfully criticize a government, when the citizens THEMSELVES don’t criticize it. I’m not talking about just in public either, yeah Tienanmen Massacre I get the reluctance to speak out, but even in their own souls I don’t believe they ask this question. I feel sorry for a beaten people.
Hmm, my old stomping grounds. Add in Sichuan and Tibet and 3 years in the 1980’s.
Your observations are fair but suggest you’d have a completely different opinion if
a) you spoke fluent Chinese
b) had context for rights of the individual versus rights of the State, especially in such a populous country. Also, hugely populous countries don’t place the same value on an individual. Not a dig, but think you probably haven’t run into a similar society before.
c) had a snapshot of 20 years ago to benchmark against. almost no food, rice with pebbles in it, everyone wearing drab Mao clothes, ability to go to school dependant on your grandparents class, inability to leave your city of residence without the requisite papers (not that one could afford to), no access to outside media sources, etc etc.
d) how would you percieve the average Chang if not criticizing the government was removed as a measure if a society was “beaten” or not? It’s in the DNA of a lot of western countries.
One factor completely overlooked in the Western press is the role of the migrant labor force for change. To start with, there are between 100-200 *million * migrant laborer’s at any time in China.
The Western press focuses exclusively on the plight of the migrant workers and they do have a plight and a really tough life. . On how the economic dualism is going to blow apart China. Here’s an article from the State owned propaganda piece the People’s Daily. The migrant laborer’s work long hours for low pay in generally poor conditions far from home. They are also outside of all the vestiges of State control.
The missing story of their sacrifice and hardship is that for the first time in Chinese history, these people are not serfs tied to the land. The second is that for the first time in Chinese history, there is grass roots money going back to the impoverished countryside. Third, that there is wealth creation in these impoverished areas for the first time in Chinese history. Most of these impoverished areas are such because they are inland and marginal land. Often areas such as Anhui Province, which supplies Shanghai with much of it’s migrant labor, have massive flooding once or twice a decade, wiping out the peasant wealth tied to the land.
Things have changed. Now these impoverished people can come work feeding the export machine, in the construction boom, as domestic help, doing the labor type jobs that more affluent city people have economically grown above. The money goes back for education, to build homes, small businesses, and even for legal representation to buy *some * meaure of justice. Go to villages in Anhui and only children and grandparents are there. Everyone else is in the city. Come harvest and planting season, and there’s a mass migration when all the migrant labor goes home to help with the crops.
I’m certainly not trying to paint this as some wonderful paradise. That said, this is literally the first time in Chinese history where real money is flowing into the countryside. This is what will cause or prevent a revolution. As long as enough people feel that they are better off, that their kids are better off, that there are more opportunities than before, etc, then you’re likely to see China continue to modernize. YMMV
…Apos’s quote…
Agreed also…from what I’ve seen and talked with friends there, standard of living has been increasing. Of course, it is very dependent on specific economic sectors and regions, but overall it has been skyrocketing. China Guy’s assessments support everything I’ve seen so far.
The sector that has been struggling the most (although still increasing in standard-of-living overall) has been the rural agricultural, which relied very heavily on the stability of the collective method, and is suffering a lot of shake out with the free market. Some win big, some eke it out, some fail miserably. That’s capitalism for you.
A cultural hurt that is being felt in the rural sector is the attractiveness of the city opportunities. In many cases where a family is restricted to single-child, that child leaving for the city can devastate the available labor to sustain smaller farms. I talked with a college girl in Shanghai who was suffering through that dilemma, but there were already being created some government amnesty and subsidies (like scholorships and tax breaks) to mitigate the impact on her family. It was certainly interesting.
Or when the Communists decide they don’t need the capitalists anymore.
The really wealthy do not buy a lot of municipal bonds because there is a limit to how much tax free interest you can earn. Much of the dynastic wealth is in the form of treasury bonds, they are exempt from state and local tax and there is no limit to that exemption.
The ruling class of any society only have a commitment to being the ruling class.
The Chinese are really good at Table Tennis