Misblog

Originally Published October 18, 2008; Last Updated February 11, 2010; Last Republished February 11, 2010:

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) begins the difficult and expensive task1 of developing rural China—even at full capacity China’s coastal cities could not absorb its rural migration—and more are coming if rural living standards are not raised. Imagine the entire population of America moving to China's coastal cities in search of work at a time when a global slowdown is reducing coastal city factory output significantly below full capacity.

The CCP is probably thinking China's peace, harmony, and stability depends on significantly reducing rural migration. But, reducing rural migration depends on significantly increasing rural China's standard of living. But, increases in rural standard of living depend on efficient increases in output. But, efficient increases in output depend on training, education, and factories which are all currently in the coastal cities operating below capacity²!

Fortunately, repression and censorship aren't working³ and may no longer be options?

YouTube: (让西方丧胆的最牛小学生朗诵—2009中国加油, 2009, Go China!)

• All nations struggle with how to develop healthy cultural pride, so vital to national development and growth, without creating a destructive nationalism.

  When nationalistic indoctrination dominates or replaces a healthy cultural pride much harm eventually befalls the nation, its people, and the world⁴.

  An English translation of 2009中国加油, 2009, Go China! is available at ChinaDigitalTimes; Video Performance: 2009 Go China! (Updated).

Web:

• UPDATED 02/11/2010 UPI, China jails quake activist.

  It will be helpful to the development of civil society in China if dissidents are not routinely jailed for assisting the rural Chinese address their impoverished plight.

• UPDATED 12/29/2009 UPI, 40 million farmers live below poverty line.
• UPDATED 08/27/2009 UPI, Huge urban influx forecast for China.

• UPDATED 08/21/2009 Sina En, Farmers receive social basic old-age pension in E China.

  Northeast China has some of China's poorest provinces—these provinces have not shared proportionally in China's transformation toward a market economy.

  These pensions will not only help the hard working Chinese in these regions, but enable China to continue its transformation with less instability.

• UPDATED 04/21/2009 UPI, China to build highway to roadless county.
• UPDATED 04/07/2009 Xinhua English, China unveils action plan for universal access to basic health care. China plans on spending 850 billion yuan (124 billion U.S. dollars) toward universal healthcare, including rural village clinics.
  "The authorities have also pledged to build 2,000 county hospitals and 5,000 township clinics in rural areas in the next three years, extending medical services and making them more affordable"--Xinhua, Wang Yan sourcing China Daily--".
• UPDATED 03/12/2009 Reuters, Chinese output growth slumps but lending spurs hopes. Exports, declined 25.6 percent for February year on year.
• UPDATED 02/07/2009 UPI, China tabs nearly $13B for drought relief.
• UPDATED 01/22/2009 NYT, China Announces Subsidies for Health Care.
  • Xinhua, Chinese pin hope on new health care reform plan
• UPDATED 01/13/2009 BBC, China's exports in record decline.
• UPDATED 11/30/2008 BBC, Economy warning from China leader
• UPDATED 11/26/2008 AP, China says impact of global crisis deepening
• UPDATED 11/18/2008 BBC, China moves to stem mass layoffs
• UPDATED 11/18/2008 BBC, White Horse Village 4: Betrayal
• UPDATED 10/20/2008 NYT, China’s Growth Is Slowest in 5 Years
• UPDATED 10/20/2008 AP, China's Communist Party approves rural land reform
• PRI, Rural poverty in China

-----notes-----

1. China has significant amounts of foreign exchange, courtesy of the American consumers and hardworking migrant Chinese.

China, by the minimal measure of $1/day, has decreased rural poverty from 79.4% (1980) to 26.5% (2001), a stunning feat by all accounts.

However, China's CCP must now contend with large urban:rural income imbalances, of more than 3:1 and one of the world's largest GINI coefficient. China's GINI has risen from the stable low .3s to unstable high .4s, in little more than a decade (see Brandt and Rawski, China's Great Economic Transformation).

2. Of course Beijing can and does subsidize rural China while developing it—until now it has only been a trickle. Some combination of development and subsidy are likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

Developing rural China offers plenty of opportunities for synergistic China-America cooperation—much work will be required to ensure this happens.

3. There are so many daily incidents of violence in rural China nobody can keep an accurate tally anymore.

4. Ultimately the entire world is harmed because it must eventually eliminate the imbalances created when nationalism dominates (eventually destroys) a nation's healthy cultural pride.

Chinese intellectuals, thinkers, and dissidents are all to aware of nationalism's cultural destructive power. Significantly, they have been among the first and fiercest critics of the above "2009 Go China" video.