GDP. While this decline is in line with trends in other industrializing countries, ensuring a continuing and adequate food supply for the population presents the Chinese government with a particularly daunting logistical challenge. Government investment has targeted agricultural modernization in an attempt to revive rural confidence and productivity. Animal husbandry (mainly factory farming) and production of corn for animal feed and crops vital to the food processing industries are booming, in large part due to the increased emphasis on meat and dairy produce in the Chinese diet. The amount of grain produced for human consumption was in decline, but is now climbing back towards its mid-1990s level. In 2007, as a result of the harmonization policy, a 2,600-year-old agricultural tax was abolished, along with a host of other taxes imposed on the rural population. The following year, the government discussed a new land-tenure policy designed to encourage smallholders to create larger and more productive farms through land-lease arrangements. Such a move would affect up to 800 million people still classified as farmer-peasants.
see also page 112
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AGRICULTURE
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China’s industrial output is expanding, with goods produced both for export and in the hope of building domestic demand. The highest growth in production is clustered around three key consumer goods: PCs, cell phones and cars, all three of which have a detrimental impact on the environment. The next fastest-growing commodity is cigarettes, the negative impact of which will be felt on the nation’s health and health services in the decades to come. China’s car production in 2007 was the third greatest in the world, in part to meet the demand for the passenger vehicles that are clogging China’s roads. Cell-phone manufacture includes production of global brands but also of home brands designed for local distribution. PC manufacturers have in some cases managed to globalize their brand names, with companies such as Lenovo now recognizable to users all over the world.
see also page 112
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INDUSTRY
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Over the last 20 years, the share of GDP contributed by the services sector has grown by 10 percent. Most of this growth would seem to be at the expense of agriculture, but the gap between industry and services is also shrinking, and China’s economy is looking increasingly like that of the industrialized nations. The challenge to the government and to China’s business community is to maintain a healthy level of production, which fuels growth, whilst also developing a strong and well-regulated infrastructure in the service areas of finance, education and training, welfare, real estate, creative industries, and leisure and hospitality. The chronic instability of global markets may slow the growth of services in the immediate future. Whilst the escalation of real-estate prices and the instability of overheated investment markets might well be curbed, the long-term needs and interests of the population lie in a sophisticated and well-managed services environment.
see also page 112
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Services
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The major focus of China’s tourism industry is on domestic mainland tourists and, to a lesser extent, on visitors from Hong Kong. The money they bring to the major tourist sites to a large extent fuels the industry. Although international tourism, which includes visiting overseas Chinese, is also important, much of it is confined to major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. And it is still secondary to the larger project of managing China’s brand in order to increase the country’s national status and authority in the region and across the world. China’s concern to communicate its own image to a global audience, rather than to individual and sometimes difficult tourists, is largely achieved through televized versions of major events, such as the Shanghai International Expo in 2010.The success of the 2008 Olympics was not measured in terms of the number of visitors to Beijing, which was actually lower than in August 2007 as a result of fierce visa controls, but in how effectively they conveyed to the world’s audiences a convincing and overwhelming message about China’s power, competence and cultural worth.
see also page 113
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TOURISM
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