How can I describe China to a person who has never
been there? It is a land of contradictions. They claim to be a socialist country but only
the top 10 percent have health care, vacation time or the ability to
purchase a home. Well, 10 percent of
2 billion is 200 million people. After travelling from Beijing
to Tibet to
Tiger Leaping Gorge to the Island of Sanya
and countless other cities, I believe I can make an informed opinion of what I
have seen.
By no means is China
underdeveloped or a developing nation in the context we describe third world
countries. They have over 100 cities
with over 1 million people. And each of
these cities is as modern as any western city with computers, construction,
banking, internet, gas, machinery, energy use and etc... What differs is the lack of efficiency on how
projects are completed. Where we would hire a union laborer at $50 an hour to
sand blast a wall with a $250 dollar machine,
the Chinese would hire 100 Chinese men each with a piece of sand paper to sand
down the wall at less than 1 dollar a day.
My preconception of China was starving people living in villages. I thought that inevitably there would be a peasant revolution for equality of living
wages. It is not easy to stop a
revolution (as exemplified in Iraq)
but it is easy for China to prevent a revolution. The first thing I see is keeping the masses
happy. Either through religion, sports, entertainment
and / or consumerism. Religion has no
place in the world of communism. This
was effectively stamped out by Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution. So what is left is entertainment and
consumerism.
Consumerism in China is
much different than in the western world.
These people love to shop but don’t ever buy anything. There are a plethora of shops from Adidas, Nike,
Carrefour, Wal-Mart, DG, Guess etc but only the top 10% can afford this. But the masses feel happy in window
shopping. Maybe this is an extension of
their previous inability to even have the opportunity to purchase these things. There other method of stamping out subversives--imprisonment. There is not such thing as
individualism or human rights. To the
government, what is a thousand lives compared to 1.5-2 billion people they have
to control?
This is a story which is told around
town in Tiger Leaping Gorge: the government for a fact has decided to dam
this river at 8 locations to fulfill the deficiency in drinkable water. This will lead to hundreds of thousands of
fertile land being flooded and displacing millions of farmers. Apparently these farmers will be compensated
but minimally and with money and not land.
Well the local journalist printed some articles suggesting these farmers
send representatives to Beijing to
voice their concerns about relocation and compensation. Their government proceeded to relocate these representatives
to prison with their journalist compatriots.
Any more complaints.
Overall this was a great experience to actually see a
country changing and growing by leaps and bounds almost daily. The people here are very friendly, helpful,
honest and genuinely nice. If we as a
nation do not get on the ball of the economic race, I fear we will fall behind
this nation and it will not take a hundred years but in a decade. They have galvanized its population to become
a lean, mean economic machine.
While we
take for granted the natural resources of the land and of the people and become
complacent, while we sit at home on our
"made in China" sofa, while we wear "made in Thailand"
clothes and watch "made in China" TV, the Chinese are building up their force to reclaim their position as world power (a position they held for thousands of years before the rise of the Western world). The Chinese are not driving the "made in the USA"
ford explorer and are consuming very little “made in USA” anything for that
matter. I am crying wake up! Wake-up! We
must educate our people and encourage ingenuity and recapture what made our
country great—hard work!
