Re: Fear of a Beige Planet

On 7 Mar 2006 16:43:12 -0800, John Schilling <schillin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

In article <qp3q02hep12udv0n039jo147pfahj5nuqd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, Lawrence
Watt-Evans says...

About 60% of the Chinese population is still peasants, yes. The
inefficient state-owned industries are updating rapidly, though.
Things are changing _fast_. My daughter's been working in Hebei
Province since August, and says there's a visible difference there
just in that time.

Improvement, I hope, and preferably not the Potemkin-villiage sort.

Yup -- more paved streets, better housing, cleaner air.

While we were there we heard a news story saying that the central
government has set a target of raising the average living space per
person from 18 square meters to 25 by the end of the decade. The U.S.
average is 40, by the way. I think that someone somewhere in the
corridors of power believes that the way to stay in power is to
improve the lot of the average citizen fast enough to stave off
discontent.

There's a huge gap between areas that the government is either
allowing to boom or forcing to boom, and the places that are still
stagnating, yes, but there's also a range, it's not purely either/or.
Shanghai is doing better than Shenzhen, which is doing better than
Beijing, which is doing better than Tianjin, which is doing better
than Shijiazhuang, which is doing better than Kaifeng. (Kiri reports
Kaifeng is something of a pit, actually.)

I have heard from other sources that the gap comes at least in part
from the conflict between Chinese industry's desire to capitalize
(pun intentional), compete in the global market, and rake in the
bucks on the one hand, and the communist legacy requirement that
each be provided for in proportion to their needs on the other.
IOW, factory jobs for anyone who isn't a peasant farmer or a party
functionary, no matter what.

That's the theory; it's not necessarily the practice. There are
beggars in Beijing and Shanghai and Suzhou, and some of them look
entirely capable of factory work, and the government knows they're
there -- I saw a serving officer talking to a panhandling able-bodied
veteran in a pedestrain tunnel in Beijing.

They theoretically guarantee jobs, but the jobs aren't necessarily
factory work; they're really pretty inventive about finding things for
people to do, whether it's street-sweeping or dumpster-diving (there
are official government "recyclers" whose job is going through the
trash finding cans and bottles to recycle) or grotesquely
over-staffing department stores.

And there are literally millions of migrant construction workers --
something like eight million altogether, if I remember correctly.

Whichever factories wind up with that segment of the labor pool,
can't compete, but can't be allowed to fail or to lay off workers
either. And, as the Japanese proved a decade or two ago, clever
accounting via tame banks can only postpone the inevitable where
that sort of thing is going on.

But shifting the unproductive labor force elsewhere can help.

Geographic segregation, and strict control over the flow of
information, also aren't going to do more than postpone the
inevitable, but it's understandable that the Chinese government
will try anything to buy time.

Question is, can they finish reforming the system before the
temporary patches fail?

I get the impression they _know_ they're racing against disaster, and
are doing their damnedest to win.

I don't know if they'll make it.




--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
.

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