Contemplating China

Will Olympic attention reveal the economic disparities underpinning a nation on the rise? An economist contemplates China’s past and future.

As Beijing prepares to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the world is watching to see if the city can be transformed from a choked metropolis of 12 million people into a clean, green Olympic capital. Already mines and factories are being shut down, thousands of cars and buses are being switched to natural gas, and whole forests of trees are being planted. All this is a bid to dispel the thick pollution smog that lingers daily above the city. But that dirty cloud is a symbol too: effluvia from the mines, manufacturing and services that have propelled economic growth in China in recent years. Although it is only natural to doubt whether the air quality can be improved by the time the Olympic bandwagon rolls into town, it is certain that the Chinese Communist Party will hold up Beijing as the face of a nation on the up and up.
Despite this, some spectators are finding cracks in the visage.

Dr Jane Golley, a Chinese regional development expert from the ANU College of Business and Economics, is excited about the impending celebration of all things sport and Sino. She is also aware of the economic disparities behind China’s growth. While some hail the arrival of the Asian giant, Golley says it remains a patchwork colossus.

“It’s important for us to recognise that there is more than one China,” she says.

“Shanghai, for example, makes me feel very poor. Not all of it; there are some inequalities within every city. You can see people begging on the streets. But on the bigger scale, Shanghai is one of the most opulent cities I’ve visited. Beijing as well. Every time I go back, something new and fancy is being built: fountains, statues, skyscrapers. I walk into a department store and don’t spend my money because the goods are too expensive.”

Far to the west of Shanghai in the foothills of the Himalayas lies Lake Lugu. The azure waters and surrounding shores are known as ‘the kingdom of women’, being home to one of the world’s few matriarchal societies. But as Golley discovered on a recent visit, the villages around Lake Lugu are also home to living standards far distant from those of opulent Shanghai.
“Lake Lugu was one of the poorest places I’ve ever been. It was six hours from a tiny town near Lijiang. You could see the poverty increasing  the closer you came. In the village I stayed in there were 22 families. There was no running water. They had dirt floors, with rice paper on the windows. We ate a lot of cabbage and potatoes. Even the rice there was of a low quality. There was a bar, and the villagers were trying to pave the dirt road. Some of the old people had never left the village before.”

Why are the fortunes of Shanghai steaming ahead while Lake Lugu is only just beginning to climb out of medieval conditions? The answer contains a little history, a little geography, and whole spoonfuls of government policy.

Economic reforms were instituted under President Deng Xiaoping during the 1980s. Government policy changed to focus development in established growth areas, in the belief the economic development would then flow over into the rest of the country. The results were less than spectacular. In 2002 provincial per capita GDP ranged from 6,093 yuan in the western province of Gansu to 40,646 yuan in Shanghai.
In 2000, government policy reverted to a version of Mao’s western development focus, or, as Golley calls it, a ‘go west’ campaign.

The task will be immense. Today, the Chinese provinces with the highest rate of GDP growth are all still in the south-east. But does this mean the country can be split into blocks of wealth and impoverishment?

“Care must be taken to not fall into the trap of thinking that common economic conditions prevail across entire regions. Even after several hours of lectures, some of my students will still confuse east and west with urban and rural. In Western China there are many cities with more than one million people. All of these cities have some extremely rich people, with expensive cars and all the other signs of a developed country’s wealth.

“It’s important to recognise that there is more than one China. You can see the economic inequalities in Beijing. You can see it if you get on the train and travel for an hour, or travel for 50 hours. You’ll see every range from wealth to poverty that you can imagine.”

“Xinjiang has a large ethnic muslim population. In the aftermath of  September 11, one way of looking at it cynically is that the Chinese central government is using its regional development program to clamp down on activities that could potentially threaten the central government’s stronghold on the region.

“But, on the other hand, the standard of living for everyone has risen. Even for these really very poor people, their lives are better than they were 20 years ago. So there is this question of relative wealth versus absolute wealth. If everyone is becoming better off, there is something good in that.”

But will there be benefits for some of those Chinese people outside of Beijing during the 2008 Olympics? Golley believes there is the possibility of greater exposure for some regional areas. 

“The Chinese are really going to arrive on the world stage - as if they haven’t already. It will be their great big event. Beijing will be spick and span. Their biggest problem will be getting rid of the pollution, but the central government is determined to do this and I bet that they find a way.

“But presumably other stories from around China will come from the Western journalists in the country. I think we’ll get glimpses of the rest of the country because of expanded interest in China in general.”

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ANU Reporter
Autumn 2006