By Roger Cohan (NYT)
BEIJING — I’m bullish on China after a couple of weeks here and perhaps that sentiment begins with the little emperors and empresses. In upscale city parks and rundown urban sprawls, I’ve seen China’s children pampered by grandparents, coddled by fathers, cared for by extended families.
Scarcity may explain the doting: China’s one-child policy makes children special. But there are deeper forces at work. The race for modernity has not blown apart the family unit, whatever the strains. After witnessing the atomization of American society, where the old are often left to fend for themselves, China feels cohesive.
It’s seeing that most natural of conspiracies — between grandparents and children — flourishing. It’s listening to young women in coastal factories talking about sending half their salaries home to some village in Guangxi where perhaps it goes to build a second floor on a parental house. It’s hearing young couples agonize over whether they can afford a child because “affording” means school, possible graduate education abroad, and a deposit on the first apartment.
The family is at once emotional bedrock and social insurance. “My” money equals my family’s money. All the parental investment reaps a return in the form of care later in life. “Children are a retirement fund,” a Chinese-American friend living here told me. “If you don’t have children, what do you do in old age?”
The Chinese, in other words, might be lining up to play karaoke after long factory shifts, but they’re not bowling alone American-style. They’re not stressing because they’re all alone. That’s critical. There so much heaving change here — China’s planning to open 97 new airports and 83 subway systems in the next five years — the family strikes me as the great stabilizer (even more than the regime’s iron fist).
As Arthur Kroeber, an economist, said, “High-growth stories are not pretty. If you’re growing at 10 percent a year, a lot of stuff gets knocked down.” It sure does: China looms through the dust. But the family has proved resilient, cushioning life for the have-nots, offering a moral compass for the haves (rampant corruption notwithstanding).
After the emperors and empresses, in my bullish assessment, comes the undistracted forward focus. After a while in Asia, you notice the absence of a certain background noise. It’s as if you’ve removed a negative drone from your life, like the slightly startled relief you feel when the hum of an air conditioner ceases.
What’s in that American drone? Oh, the wars of course, the cost of them, and debate around them, and the chatter surrounding terror and fear.
There’s also the resentment-infused aftermath of the great financial meltdown, navigated by China with an adroitness that helped salvage the world economy from oblivion. In the place of all that Western angst, there’s growth, growth, growth, which tends (through whatever ambivalence) to inspire awe rather than dread. The world’s center of gravity is shifting with a seismic inevitability.
I know, China has kept its foot on the gas of its stimulus package too long and there are bubble signs in housing and labor is no longer limitless, with resultant inflationary pressure. I also know there are tensions between state economic direction and market forces, with resultant waste. But my third bullish element is nonetheless an economy entering a 15-year sweet spot where rising disposable income will drive the domestic market.
Think of what Japan, Taiwan and South Korea went through decades ago, but with a population of 1.3 billion. Think of the 10 to 15 million new urban residents a year and the homes and infrastructure they will need. Think of all the stuff the world demands and can’t get elsewhere with the same quality, quantity and price. Think underlying drivers. They remain powerful.
Of course, political upheaval could unhinge all the above. Given that China’s open-closed experiment is unique in history, nobody can say how this society will be governed in 2050. Immense tensions, not least between the rage that corruption inspires and the difficulty of tackling it without a free press, exist. Still, my fourth reason for running with the Chinese bulls is perhaps the most surprising: single-party democracy.
It doesn’t exist. It’s an oxymoron (although a U.S. primary is a vote within one party). It can easily be the semantic disguise for outrage and oppression. But it just may be the most important political idea of the 21st century.
Rightful resistance is growing in China. Citizens are asserting their rights, not in organizing against the state (dangerous) but in using laws to have a say. Nongovernmental organizations are multiplying to advance agendas from the environment to labor rights. This is happening with the acquiescence of smart rulers.
“They know they cannot manage in the old way,” Ma Jun, a leading environmentalist, told me. “They cannot dam the water, but they can go with the flow and divert it to the places they want.”
Whether that place will ever resemble one-party democracy, I don’t know. But I no longer laugh at the idea. Harmonious discord is an old Chinese idea. The extended Chinese family is a daily exercise in just that.
Some comments from readers:
Xiao Ling Tong
Tianjin
I am an American male who has made China his home for the last 12 years. I can say with absolute certainty that everything Roger Cohen has written is true to the letter. I am glad that someone in the West can see it.
The country changes at the speed of late and yet it remains eternally China. Friendship and family and personal relations can often overcome even the most obdurate problems. Yes, indeed, there are limitations but in in each passing year that I have been here they have decreased. Four subjects remain tabu, not more than that, and they are collectively referred to as the four T's. The social net exists in different ways than in the United States -- there are no food stamps, social security is still in its exception, but there is an abundant end of demand for labor and the retirement age is only 55. People retire and then go to a second job.
Mortgages are made freely available to all and any, under orders from Beijing, and if one purchases an apartment valued at less than $100,000.00 USD, it is not at all uncommon that the monthly mortgage payment is less than $25.00 USD per month. The United States loves to criticize China for its record on human rights but there is one right here still available to all and that is the right to work and to find a job without a problem. An 11% unemployment rate like you have in the States now would case the Central Committee apoplexy.
Another example -- two years ago a major earthquake destroyed most of a major Western province in the city and killed 100,000 persons. The country went into high gear, Beijing sent in the People's Army to rebuild an entire area and 18 months later, the entire province was rebuilt...and I say that to ask you WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN NEW ORLEANS? Last time I was there it still looked like Hiroshima.
Where I live, within five minutes of my house, there is a huge new Protestant church, a new mosque, and an old Catholic church all open and functioning daily. I have ample social benefits on my job, like 4 months paid vacation every year, subsidized housing, subsidized water, gas and electricity, a food allowance, a travel allowance, etc., etc., and I am only a medium-ranking employee.
Yes, the system is highly controlled but it works so well. I have no fear for my person at all and go out at night at all hours. Crime and criminals are dealt with harshly and rapidly and endless appeals for convicted murders just do not exist. When I travel, I rarely take the plane anymore -- I simply go to the nearest train station and get on one of the 300 kilometer per hour bullet trains that link the entire country. They are fast, new, clean and efficient. Etc., etc. Wake up, America, you are starting to look more and more like Argentina if you know what that means.
London
This article seems to be caught in the same (orientalist?) trap as those of other well-regarded columnists who visit China for a couple of weeks and return to inform us that the way they are doing things is better than us while blithely glossing over the negatives (for other examples, see Thomas Friedman's collected works).
It's akin to understanding the communist era by visiting the Dazhai model village. This is not to deny that China's economic 'miracle' has not been remarkable (although this serves to highlight how bad it's economic performance had been prior to that) nor that we can learn things from it about our political and economic systems but that there is a distinct danger of people losing their perspective on what lessons to take away.
The stuff about family is a prime example. The family unit is a core feature of most societies but it seems that the author's view of the Chinese family is informed more by a lament at what has happened to the Western, or more precisely the Anglo-American, family unit than by an understanding of what is happening in the Chinese family unit. Yes, there is intergenerational living and a sharing of wealth but this is driven, in large part, by economic forces i.e. the lack of a social security system a lack of care homes. It used to be that way in the UK/USA too before the welfare state was created and we were all required to increase our working hours.
Moreover, this phenomenon is already taking place in China - nursing homes are springing up in economically advanced areas, such as Beijing and Shanghai, because people don't have the time to look after their parents they have the money to outsource the care. There have been huge changes that have taken place within family relationships during the period of reform and opening up, such as parents working in different parts of the country to earn money while the children are raised by family relatives, the effect of the one-child policy, the preference for boys over girls in rural areas.
In the main, I share the author's sentiment that strong family relationships are a good thing but it would be better if he could remember that the economic reforms in China are causing changes to the family than are less beneficial.
chenliang
hunan chinaI wonder what is personal liberty? I really don't understand why so many people in the world in this 21 century always arguing about those tired topics talked long long ago! No body can give a meaning of liberty accepted by all.We need people who value actions more than words, rather than those always focus on the meaning of a single word!
Catrina Wang
Shanghai, China
The ironic thing is that democracy is written into the Chinese constitution: it states that citizens may exercise their right to vote in a general election every year. For the past 60 years however, this provision of the constitution has gone largely unenforced, like so many other laws. I think the close-knit nature of Chinese families has something to do with the poor rule of law in this country, where, as Mr. Cohen noted, "corruption is rampant" and money regularly buys complicity. If society-wide standards of justice and reciprocity are unreliable, then it makes sense to invest in a strong family unit.
SP
New York, NY
"One party democracy" does not and will never exist. What is in China is an oligarchy composed of corrupted, but yet talented and capable bureaucrats. In essence it is not very different from periods in China's long history when it was ruled by talented and capable emperors. Hopefully China is now on the same trajectory as Taiwan and South Korea some 30 years ago, when economic growth led to the end of one-party rule.
Shanghai, China
The ironic thing is that democracy is written into the Chinese constitution: it states that citizens may exercise their right to vote in a general election every year. For the past 60 years however, this provision of the constitution has gone largely unenforced, like so many other laws. I think the close-knit nature of Chinese families has something to do with the poor rule of law in this country, where, as Mr. Cohen noted, "corruption is rampant" and money regularly buys complicity. If society-wide standards of justice and reciprocity are unreliable, then it makes sense to invest in a strong family unit.
SP
New York, NY
"One party democracy" does not and will never exist. What is in China is an oligarchy composed of corrupted, but yet talented and capable bureaucrats. In essence it is not very different from periods in China's long history when it was ruled by talented and capable emperors. Hopefully China is now on the same trajectory as Taiwan and South Korea some 30 years ago, when economic growth led to the end of one-party rule.
i save the best for last :-) ...
Dong Liu
USA
It is interesting to compare China and US. Both have a single-party democracy that is; both are ruled by a single group of elites. The difference is that in China these elites join the Chinese Communist Party, but in US these elites all work for Wall Street.
30 january 2010
