place in China. Tony Saich Daewoo Professor of International Affairs Harvard Kennedy School, November 2008
The 2008 beijing olympics represented an important statement by an emerging regional and world power. China is culturally, economically, linguistically and politically relevant to the global community. It is a huge, complex and contradictory geo-political entity that has taken its place in our collective consciousness on its own terms. Nonetheless, China still remains mysterious to many people. Media spectacle, commerce and extended trade relations do not entirely counteract the unknowability of profound difference. So how is China known in the contemporary world? Whilst, in the international imagination, China is bound up in extravagant symbols of development and capital, its minority peoples and most of its provinces are hardly known. Most people think of the “centralizing kingdom” (zhongguo), as it has been conveyed through classical art, Tang poetry, revolutionary meetings and the killings in Tiananmen protests of 1989, through to sparkling business districts in Shanghai, the spectacular historical epics of films by Zhang Yimou, and the woeful faces of Sichuanese survivors and their rescuers during the earthquake of May 2008. In media reports, China is either a friend or a foe. It is power or money, suppression or great courage. Sometimes it is a flood, the earthquake, demonstrations, or sporting valor. China remains seemingly unknowable, because – in getting to know China – the West must recognize the limits of its assumptions, and that challenge is too hard in our own state of chronic transition and global discomfort. China is intrinsically bound up with the world’s future, but its powerful national sentiments will mean that this mutual future has to be negotiated, not presumed. This is the great value in understanding the world through the state of China. Almost every day we read that China is among the top trading nations; that its economy is one of the world’s largest; and that it is one of the nations attracting the most direct foreign investment. As if this is not enough, China has become one of those powerful national economies with reasonable cash reserves, it is the government that could decide to de-invest from the USA and watch the leader of the free world go down in a whirl of debt. There is much to trumpet, even to celebrate, and we can marvel at China’s successes. Even on an ideological level, leaders of western nations derive a certain satisfaction since many of China’s economic achievements can be credited to the market-led reforms that began in 1978. This may be a dominant perspective but it is not the only one. As is the case for every nation the reality is more complex. There is no doubt that most citizens in China are better off than they ever have been. Many are richer than before. An alternative perspective, however, takes into account that although there have been impressive inroads into poverty alleviation many millions remain desperately poor; a new entrepreneurial middle class, and along with that an aspirational working class, is emerging, but the income gap between each socio-economic segment is widening. A welfare system is being developed, yet healthcare remains beyond the reach of most citizens; the ageing population will soon become the largest in the world, and they will need care and support. Meanwhile, new graduates with hard-earned college degrees are scrambling to find work. These are examples of the contradictions that confront China’s elitist and insulated leadership. They are problems familiar to other nations, but they are exacerbated by the sheer scale of China’s population, and by the spatial challenges and financial disparities of the country as a whole. China’s population size can be seen as a great resource in a globalizing economy, providing a flourishing consumer market and a bottomless pool of cheap labor to exploit. It is also a source of mounting
INTRODUCTION
dissatisfaction, unrest and conflict, and so it is no wonder that China’s authoritarian Party-State places political and social stability, alongside the market-led economy, as its main priorities in seeking to establish and maintain an “harmonious society”. Human-rights abuses continue, despite and sometimes because of international pressure. In 2008, many ordinary Chinese citizens (overseas and in China itself) demonstrated across the world against what they regarded as international interference in Chinese affairs, and China-bashing. Most threatening to the very fabric of the Party-State is the rampant corruption. The attempt to bring corruption under control is one of a number of reforms to the political system. Another example is the introduction of participatory, if not democratic, practices at the grassroots and basic levels of government. Reforming the Chinese Communist Party to grant more influence to the membership is also on the agenda. Whether the pace of these reforms is enough to meet the challenges to social justice is an open question. Economic power grants China considerable leverage in international relations, but it can also be problematic. The big if-and-when question within the region and the wider international system is whether there will be a struggle for dominance between the USA and China – and whether that will play out through economics and trade or some more deadly means. The current atmosphere of perpetual war, since the war on terror was declared in 2001, is frightening and would be more so if China too were pulled into the morass. The status of Taiwan and its mainland liaison activities is a constant source of concern, especially for those who see Taiwan’s democracy as a boon in the region. Meanwhile, statisticians and demographers in China collect large volumes of statistical information, through which they might measure the inequities across provincial and regional boundaries, and with which social scientists can interpret the state of China on the ground. It may be unfashionable but perhaps these public servants are more heroic, and certainly more functional, in determining what needs to be done in China now, and for whom. As we point out in Part Seven of this book, there are no perfect statistics, and even the collection of data is subject to political controls, both in China and worldwide. Statistics alone do not explain why one city will thrive under WTO regulations, whilst another will ignore them because they threaten local political elites, or because local businesses need local subsidy to survive and protect employment. One city will put resources and imagination into branding itself in the international imagination, whilst another will miss (or deliberately ignore) the point of tourism and “destination management”. There are maps in this book, then, in which to give a truly accurate picture of the state of China, we would need to provide detailed regional specifications, county- and township-level case studies, and a lot of historical background. Where we cannot give this detail we have suggested readings from works of current China specialists, in economy, culture, the social sciences and political history, and we really hope that readers are inspired to follow up these suggestions. There are many resources on the internet, the best of which we have tried to include in the commentaries at the back of this book. Financial pages of national newspapers are also good sources for seeing certain aspects of new China unfold before our eyes. Every deal, every bankruptcy, every corporate decision will affect someone, possibly many thousands of people, in contemporary China and beyond. As with all books, but especially one such as this, which requires a range of knowledge and expertise, the authors are indebted to the wisdom of others. The support (in time and space) from the Asian Studies and Chinese Departments
10
and Media and Communications Department at the University of Sydney, and a fellowship at the Department of Film at Kings College London have been invaluable. The ongoing work of colleagues in Australia and overseas: Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, Ying Zhu, David SG Goodman, Harriet Evans, Michael Keane, Luigi Tomba, David Kelly, Louise Edwards, Elaine Jeffreys, is always inspirational. We also thank the Australian Research Council for its support for the Middle Class Taste project (with Zheng Yi), which has informed the arguments of this book. We are grateful to Marc Blecher, Cynthia Enloe and Professor Hua Qingzhao, who engaged us about particular approaches taken in the atlas. The resulting interpretations are those of the authors. Sarah Cook, Rosemary Foot, Jude Howell, Jie Dao, Leicia Petersen, Peng Zou, Tina Schilbach, Ming Liang, Norman Stockman, Paul Wingrove and the truly wonderful Philippa Kelly, have made important contributions to the atlas and provided much-needed advice and encouragement for the whole project, while the University of Sussex was more than generous with the provision of facilities. We are pleased to have been able to select photographs for pages 24, 34, 62, 74 and 88 from Beijing-based photographer Ben McMillan. In addition, we are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce their photographs: 12 and 20 Christopher Herwig; 22 (top) John Sigler/iStockphoto; 22 (bottom) Adrian H Hearn; 23 (top) Adrian Beesley/iStockphoto; 22 (bottom) Anthony Brown/iStockphoto; 22 (right) Matthew Spriggs; 52 Mark Henley / Panos Pictures; 104 DSG Goodman. This
