The realm of the cracks
China today: a country unchained. A country, that astonishes you. And the man, who broke the chains, which Mao Zedong had put on its people, Deng Xiaoping, he would be 100 years old this month. They celebrate him now as the "Architect“ of China’s reforms, but actually he did not do much more, than give the genius of this so industrious and skillful people a free run. That was courageous.
And run it did. 1987 rang the first mobile telephone on Chinese soil. And today? China proclaims 300 million handy users: World record. The Chinese economy has been growing so fast, that observers are warning of overheating. Japan owes its recent upswing above all to its trade with China, and a third of the German export growth is due to China too. "It does not matter whether a cat is black or white", said Deng, while putting socialism to grave,“ as long as it catches mice“.
Foreign investors for example are landing head over heels on the shining Chinese bacon. Meanwhile the West is getting its shoes, toys and handies from China, usually from factories of international companies. China is becoming the workbench of the world - the British army has just let it be known, that it will have its camouflage suits made in China. And the political influence grows with the economical: flatterers abound.
Even if the economic power of China may be fondly overstated these days – the people of 1,3 billions represents just 3,9 per cent of the world economy -, this is an undisputable fact: in the 25 years of reform policies China has achieved fantastic results. And it has just as enormous challenges ahead of itself. If at this moment there’s no country in the world more confusing than China, then the contradictions in Deng Xiao Pings policies have much to do with it. They are getting more and more sharp edged with every new year. In China you can at the same time meet the first world and the third world, the past and the future, the wastelands of planned economy and the capitalistic glamour, ingenious pragmatism and depressing dogma, corruption and heroism, bloom and decay.
In China state enterprises are responsible just for half of the production, with new private enterprises sprouting up everywhere. At the last count 236,000 dollar millionaires lived in China. Is this country still communist? No: the communism is dead. That’s the good message, regularly cheered at by western observers. The bad message is: the dictatorship of the KP lives on. But it does not make any sense any more to compare the country with systems like the former Soviet Union. Since some time the former authoritarian governments of South America make for a better comparison. China has moved to the far far right.
The right-wing China: at the very top there’s a coalition of the political power and the nouveau riche elite. They rule with the support of the army and security apparatus and with the help of an economic policy that ensures the germinating middle class is positively inclined towards them. The party state is not totalitarian any more, it grants private liberties, it slams down, however, immediately on anything that may threaten it politically. Propaganda preaches nationalism. Money and profit are praised, but the social net hardly exists. Poor hinterland faces prosperous urban islands. In the boom regions Manchester capitalism is often prevailing. Farmers and cheap workers are controlled in a patriarchal way, free trade unions are forbidden. The London Daily Telegraph sees in the new China such a "tilt to the right that elsewhere students would already be long marching and screaming ‘fascism’" - the British newspaper itself is on the far right.
"Let some people get rich first." Another quote from Deng Xiaoping. Could he have imagined, how China would be looking today? It has meanwhile become one of the unfairest societies on the earth: The admired boom is happening on the backs of the people in the countryside - who nevertheless constitute two thirds of the 1.3 billion. The majority of the farmers remains poor and is at the same time, through a system of residence permits, kept out of the cities: Apartheid in China. According to the Fortune magazine the wealth of the 500 richest men in China increased by fabulous 31.5 per cent last year, while at the same time the number of the farmers, who have to survive on less than 75 dollar in the year, has increased, for the first time since 25 years, to current 85 millions.
China has today a larger prosperity gap than India. In India people are allowed to vote: In May they - on a short notice - voted their government out of the office. It has been all those people, who felt shorthanded by the economical miracle. In China people cannot vote. Another legacy Deng Xiao Pings, who had soldiers shoot at demonstrators. So that China stays stable, is what they said then. But on the long run no country can remain stable, if its people are refused their vote. To face and accept this is the biggest challenge facing Deng’s successors.
transl DJ
from www.sueddeutsche.de - Meinungsseite 3.aug 2004
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