China Today: Miserable but Not Hopeless
China has replaced the
U.S. as the country that has the most foreign direct investments (FDI).
Sixty percent of China’s ten-percent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth
rate came from increase in exports. How do these developments affect the
lives of the ordinary Chinese people? Has capitalism worked for China?
BY EMILY VITAL
Bulatlat
Chinese craftsmen like
this man are fast losing ther jobs as China adheres to
monopoly-capitalist ideology
PHOTO BY OLIVER GARCIA
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China has
replaced the U.S. as the country that has the most foreign direct
investments (FDI). Sixty percent of China’s ten-percent Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) growth rate came from increase in exports.
How do these
developments affect the lives of the ordinary Chinese people? Has
capitalism worked for China?
These and more
were discussed by Pao Yu Ching, a Chinese scholar and a retired professor
from Marygrove College in Michigan, in a forum at the University of the
Philippines (UP) during her visit here last week.
China’s road to
capitalism has resulted in what Pao describes as many imbalances. She said
that the Chinese economy is terribly out of balance. “China’s big trade
surplus is being loaned to the U.S. to buy goods from China,” she pointed
out.
Pao also revealed that China exports
eight percent of its GDP as capital. “Total production is not used for
domestic investment and consumption,” she said.
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China also suffers from internal
imbalances, she also disclosed. “China’s 45-percent investment rate goes
to infrastructures.” This means that huge investments were used for
construction of highways, railroads, subways, airports, buildings and
hotels.
The irony, however, Pao said, is that
these are inaccessible to the majority of the Chinese people. She said
that there are airports that are empty. Another example that she cited is
the fastest train near Shanghai: “Nobody is riding it. It costs the same
as the taxi.”
Why the numerous infrastructures? Pao
revealed that local government officials are promoted to the central
government if they build more infrastructures.
The scholar also said that 70 percent
of China’s industry has overcapacity, meaning that only a part of the
industry is being used and other parts are idle. “This is not being
corrected,” Pao said. “Soon, profits will drop and businesses will close
down.”
Impact on the people
Pao pointed out another great
imbalance. “Eighty percent of Chinese consumed only 25 percent of what
China produced,” she said. “This is because of unemployment and low
wages.”
Pao said that a high official from the
research unit of the State Council admitted that the GDP growth does not
translate to an increase in employment.
In the past, she said, there is a
0.4-percent growth in employment for every one-percent GDP growth. Today,
the rate is one-percent GDP growth rate to 0.1-percent employment.
She also said that state enterprises
lay off tens of thousands of workers. In 1992, around 84 percent of the
workforce belonged to the state enterprises. By 1999, only 47 percent
remain in state enterprises.
In Hunan, for example, 70 percent of
workers have lost their jobs, she said. Most of the workers belong to the
informal sector, which pays very little, usually $50 a month and have no
benefits.
Meanwhile, 100 million of the workers
in the cities came from the countryside, she said. “They work with the
hardest jobs and have terrible living conditions.”
There is a high injury rate among
workers, Pao said. In fact, she said, there are factories where workers’
arms are cut off. She said Chinese doctors have become experts in
reconnecting limbs because they have done so many.
She said that workers do not have
medical insurance. “Hospitals will not treat you if you don’t have money…
The cost of a surgery, for example, is equivalent to five years of pay.”
Pao also said there is a resurgence of
diseases, which were eradicated during the 1950s. Tuberculosis, malaria,
snail fever came back.
Ching said that China’s agriculture
has not been modernized. “By dissolving the communes, peasants need to
work harder to produce more.” Ching said that distributing little parts
of land to peasants has reduced productivity.
Peasants, she said, have little income
to buy machineries to modernize farming.
Adherence to monopoly-capitalist
ideology
The retired professor attributes these
problems to adherence to monopoly-capitalist ideology. “China is doing
what the mono-capitalists want it to do,” Pao said. She defines the
monopoly-capitalist ideology as a myth about economic development: open up
everything and export oneself into prosperity.
China, she said, is trapped in
low-cost production. “China is exporting so much… It has cheap goods,
cheap labor,” she pointed out.
Pao revealed that foreign corporations
control 60 to 70 percent of exports.
She also said that China today is
owned both by bureaucrats and capitalists. She disclosed that 50 percent
of state enterprises are in fact privately owned. “The sole purpose of
state enterprises today is to make profit,” she said.
Pao also said that in the past, state
enterprises produced according to economic trade and the wage fund came
directly from the government.
“Bureaucrats rob the public money to
put into their pockets,” she added.
Hope
Despite all these, the situation in
China is not at all hopeless, Pao said.
She said that there is an average of
80,000 demonstrations and protests a year. At least 200 protests are held
a day. “Most of these are economic struggles,” she said. “Some are
political ones.”
“The government is afraid that workers
will soon link together,” she added. The government recently closed down a
workers’ website, she revealed.
The scholar shared a story of 150,000
workers involved in a labor struggle. “Four workers were arrested, charged
with conspiracy and executed,” she said. “The workers put up a monument
for the slain workers. For the government, they are criminals but for the
workers, they are heroes.”
“Imperialism cannot exist a minute
longer if the people fight together,” she said. “It will happen. It cannot
just continue like this.” Bulatlat
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