8-02-07, 9:29 am
Beijing
China has approximately 1.3 billion people or around 1/6th of the world's population living in one nation. The economy is growing at 10 percent per annum and the urbanization of China continues.
Depending who you asked Beijing's population is somewhere between 17 million and 20 million people. The city has modern roads and a subway system that is clean and efficient, where travel costs approximately 30 cents. Buses are numerous and subsidized, although they are very crowded at times. The bus fleet was well maintained and very modern. Although older buses were to be seen in outlying suburbs there was not the damage that I have seen on the fleet in Central Delhi or even the patch-up jobs I have seen in Brisbane.
However, this has not stopped the growth in use of private transport in the form of motor cars, with 44,000 new vehicles per annum being registered, a figure quoted by one of our tour guides.
The city's roads are not at gridlock but they will obviously reach this point at some stage in the future. Petro-chemical smog is a major pollutant. The road rules appear to involve any right turning vehicle having right of way. There are traffic police on some intersections and they seem to be shown as much regard as the road rules.
There is constant debate in the media about paying attention to the rules and there is a public campaign on road safety. Surprisingly there seem to be few accidents and little road rage despite driving methods that would lead to riots here in Australia.
In India, it was nothing to see an outraged member of the ruling class defending their actions in mowing down pedestrians or those riding bicycles. There were no such reports of poor people being run over in China.
In Beijing, there were beggars, who seemed to be very well organized with large shopping bags for collecting money on the sub-way. The attitude of people to these beggars was in the main generous. There was only one instance where I saw an act of degradation in the form of a man lying prostrate on the Great Wall and wailing. The reaction of many locals was to at first try to help him up and summon medical assistance. There are others who gather bottles for recycling and quite a few street vendors.
Life has improved
Life is busy and the work is difficult. Many put in long hours of work but all who I spoke to said that life had improved under the reforms. The students I met were practicing hard to become volunteers for the Olympics and many people were pleased to practice their English skills on me.
Young primary school aged children would come forth and beam, 'How are you?'. Proud parents would sit in the background urging their pride and joy to show off their language skills. English is to become a second language in China and is being taught now from a very young age.
Child policy
The 'One, Two, Three' child policy in which city dwellers can have one child, rural can have two and minorities three (yes the policy is misrepresented in the western media) makes their presence more noticeable. Young children are fewer in numbers but they are extremely valued.
The under 30 people that I met were confident of themselves as people. Where so much is built on sibling rivalry there are some advantages to being an only child. The predominance of male children will undoubtedly lead to some unusual social developments in 20 years from now.
University entrance exam were being conducted over two days – a mass phenomena with parents camped outside the testing center for most of the day, streets blocked off and some parents paying for students to stay at hotels to avoid traffic delays.
There is a common view that working hard and studying hard will lead to personal improvement.
I found the streets clean and the water from the town supply perfectly safe to drink. This is in stark contrast to India where a slight dribble of water in the mouth while showering can lead to illness. Or should I compare the water in remote towns like Burke or Adelaide and say that the water is probably safer than both of those by miles.
From discussions Beijing is regarded as a good window into China but other remote parts are less well off. In traveling around the city I found that the Art students when not raising money from tourists to finance their group's overseas travel would adopt a poorer region of China to assist in a chosen project, thus taking pressure off their government.
People's Governments
China has a system of People's Governments at all levels of administration from the local to the regional and central. These governments being people's governments are at the cultural and political level of the people.
One issue stands out, that is the question of whether people accept and obey the law or not. No amount of legislation can resolve this. Thus in a system of people's governments the people have to be persuaded first, then the legal processes follow. Thus I saw on television a debate over the blue-green algae contamination of the Wangxi city water supply over the question of responsibility.
As a part of the development of Socialist Law, the System of Leadership Accountability is being addressed in law. It provides not just for those who have made decisions leading to a particular accident, tragedy or wrong-doing being held accountable but those public officials who by their errors of omission have let events happen in their jurisdiction also being held accountable.
Successes of reforms
As the Conference noted, China embarked on reform some 28 years ago and the proof of its success is the double digit growth, the maintenance of China as a society still in transition to communism evidenced by the continuation of the system of peoples' governments, and the continuing central role of the Party and the primacy of social development over capital.
This process which was compared to a NEP-type* procedure for coping with the chronic underdevelopment of China and the need to deal with the new international situation.
The participants outlined the setback that was represented by the attempts to force reality to fit into a linear process of development envisioned by the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.
The other factor discussed as retarding development is the level and degree of corruption. It was cited that 16.5 percent of the GDP is stolen through corruption practices of public officials and corrupt business practices. President Hu Jintao is seen as a leading campaigner against the corruption and this is popular amongst the people. Many describe their government as not perfect and this fact was recognized in the theoretical concept of the development of law and socialist democracy.
Socialist market economy
In statements to the conference Yo Jinhai outlined the achievements and the negative features of the socialist market economy. Distribution according to labor and the efficiency (productivity) of the enterprise is better when compared with the problems arising from a simple distribution according to plan, he said.
On the negative side there is a disparity of income and the gap between the rural and urban economies is widening considerably. An underdeveloped social security network leads to other social problems.
There is the development of a lack of social trust and the fact that uneven development appears throughout the nation. This creates problems of exploitation of peasants and migrant workers (this refers to internal migration). The debate is at what point to bring about income redistribution of income and it appears that the point between enterprises is favored for this.
The lack of a Chinese tradition of democratic forms as well as the need to develop a new form of democracy were seen as important. The battle against corruption and the development of the media and people's democracy are important features. The feeling was that whilst overcoming 3,000 years of feudal history they would play a central role in developing Socialist Democracy.
Evidence that such thinking still holds sway can be gathered by a simple visit to the Ming tombs where currency is thrown to the emperor's tomb in the hope the emperor will give a better life. Lest we get too patronizing don't forget the huge crowds lining up for the Pope or Dalai Lama in this country.
Rather than suppressing religion, the progressive and national characters of these religions are encouraged against the backward religious practices such as infanticide or foot binding. The occasional skinning of a peasant or two under the theocracy of Tibet was practiced until 1965. The universal looking down on women was practiced in most religions.
The fall of the Soviet Union came from the initial embrace of western liberalism i.e. that the liberal democratic (capitalist) reforms enacted by Gorbachev in the Soviet Union led to the turning of the Soviet Union from a society in transition to socialism to one in transition to capitalism. That is, to deny the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry and to substitute bourgeois democracy in its place leads to capitalist restoration. The liberalism of many western communist parties on this question affects their agenda on the socialist transformation of society and turns them into mere social democratic parties.
Path to socialism
This is simple but profound. Equally profound is the view that the development of socialism is not a linear process, rather a spiral formation with all the twists and turns of a spiral. This analysis restores Lenin's concepts of the construction and process of historical materialism.
That socialism is not guaranteed against capitalist restoration is an historical fact as capitalism itself took many decades and several revolutions before its dominance over world systems could be pronounced. It is also a simple but incontrovertible fact that if China is to stand as an independent nation in the 21st century then its development must be a socialist one.
It has been argued, correctly, that any other course of action than that occurring currently would lead to China's return to being a slave country of western imperialism. The danger of any social stratum in China being lured onto the path of counter-revolution is real. Such a path could mislead the Chinese people into calling for so-called 'democracy', and the implementation of one of the many 'color revolutions' – initiated and funded by the American Foundation for Democracy and its European counterparts – that have torn down other socialist and anti-imperialist governments.
China has real problems, amongst them: sustainable development; the development of a unity between the people's governments; the labor and the organizations of the people against the capitalists whilst using the capital to develop China are the contradictions to the harmonious society that the Chinese People want.
Evidence of optimism
I saw real evidence for optimism in the current leadership, in the struggle against the gangster economy fostered in Shanghai by the west, and in the willingness to tackle the underdevelopment in parts of the country.
To lift 800 million people out of poverty is an enormous task for a developing nation. The achievements of China's revolution are already staggering. The defeat of Japan, the removal of the Eight powers, to hold socialism despite the breakdown of friendship with the former Soviet Union, the maintenance of proletarian state control despite huge interference from imperialism. China is such a vast human undertaking that each development is world historic.
The hope for China is socialism by the turn of the 21st Century. The hope for socialism in the 21st Century must include not just mighty Cuba, the defiant Koreans and Vietnamese and the emerging democratic revolutions of Latin America but must also include in its calculations the rising world influence of China.
In evaluating China I opened my eyes and saw the thousands of homeless people in this rich land Australia, the growing belligerence and warlike posturing of both political parties (Liberal and Labor) in this two-party system.
I saw a China and a people in struggle with imperialism and in control of their own nation as a socialist state.
*NEP – the New Economic Program implemented following the socialist revolution in Russia under the leadership of Lenin.
--David Matters visited China as part of a study tour organized by the Social Journal Nature, Society and Thought, a conference held in Beijing last month to explore the theory and practice of market-based socialism. As well as representatives from the Academies of Marxism in Shanghai and Beijing, the Academies of Social Sciences and other Chinese social research institutes, there were participants from the US, Canada, Turkey, Germany, Greece and Australia. David Matters is the Queensland Secretary of the Bus Division of the RBTU and a member CPA CC. He participated in the conference and reports on his observations and experiences there.
From The Guardian
| | |
