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anir (炉边人似月) 于 (Tue Dec 29 12:55:27 2009, 美东) 提到:
China's Divisive Development
Growing Urban-Rural Inequality Bodes Trouble by Joshua Levin
Disease, Vol. 23 (3) - Fall 2001 Issue
JOSHUA LEVIN is a Staff Writer at the Harvard International Review.
In an August 1999 incident reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution,
Chinese farmers rampaged through government offices and pillaged the
homes of the rich in Jiangxi province. Two thousand People’s Armed
Police called in to stomp out the rebellion confronted 20,000 peasants.
Ironically, Jiangxi is the original home of Mao’s Chinese Communist
Party (CCP), which once based its strength and legitimacy on the support
of poor peasants by promising relief from the excessive taxation and
corruption of the Kuomingtang. Yet, many of these same Chinese have now
turned against the CCP, claiming they have been left behind in the
nation’s recent economic development.
China has enjoyed tremendous economic growth in the past 20 years, but
simultaneously, levels of inequality have risen to unprecedented levels.
This is the result of an urban-biased development scheme that favors
industry and foreign investment over agricultural development. This
scheme increases CCP legitimacy in critical sectors, but at the cost of
increasing urban-rural inequality.
The human response to such policies has been rural social unrest and
mass migration to cities in search of jobs. Many other countries have
faced similar dilemmas of human displacement in the course of their
development, including the United States. But the peculiarities of
China’s demography and history make the nation’s urban-rural divide a
real source of acute social turmoil, whose potential will only increase
with China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).
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anir (炉边人似月) 于 (Tue Dec 29 12:56:07 2009, 美东) 提到:
Growth in Phases
China’s economic history of the last 20 years is at the heart of the
current situation in the nation’s countryside. Development has occurred in
two phases, and although overall growth has been impressive, it has been
highly sectoral. The first phase began in 1979, when Deng Xiaoping launched
a series of reforms, including decollectivization of agriculture and a
return to household farming. This liberalization initially stimulated
agrarian production. However, beginning in 1985, agricultural output has
experienced a steady decline due to subsidy cuts and rising costs of inputs.
Although agricultural output has been declining for the last 16 years, until
1993 the Chinese rural sector still experienced growth in overall rural
output. This was due to the rise of town and village enterprises (TVEs):
light manufacturing ventures in rural areas that soon out-competed the urban
-centered state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The central government was giving
local authorities more and more fiscal autonomy, and thus regions began
diverting funds intended for agriculture into TVEs with higher returns.
Despite increasing inequality within the countryside, TVEs were quite
effective in temporarily reducing overall urban-rural disparity. TVEs were
based on high levels of inputs and human capital, not technology—a strategy
typically not sustainable in the long run. Yet in the 1980s, they expanded
rapidly and swallowed up a certain amount of agricultural unemployment. By
1987, TVEs already superseded agriculture as the primary source of income in
the rural sector. Overall, the 1980s were a time of agricultural decline
and industrial growth for China, but TVEs kept the rural sector’s economy
strong.
From 1993 until the present, in the second phase of China’s growth, TVE
growth virtually halted. Foreign-owned enterprises (FOEs) began entering
China and replacing both SOEs and TVEs. FOEs were more efficient and
technological, providing goods that Chinese consumers preferred over
domestic goods of inferior quality. FOEs were naturally less input-oriented,
however, and they tended to hire fewer people and use less equipment. Thus,
during a period when SOEs were already being dismantled, FOEs, which were
generally urban-centered, flattened rural output and employment. In 1997,
TVE employment declined 4.8 percent; in 1998, it fell by 18.7 percent; and
the trend has been continuing. The 1990s in China were a time of overall
rural decline, while the urban economy boomed with foreign investment.
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anir (炉边人似月) 于 (Tue Dec 29 12:56:51 2009, 美东) 提到:
Rising Inequalities
From 1994 to the present, a tremendous growth in unemployment has turned
many rural farmers into absolute economic losers. Meanwhile, the influx of
foreign direct investment and the rise of industrial joint ventures have
increased urban-rural disparity. With average urban real incomes now four
times that of rural real incomes, China’s levels of inequality greatly
surpass that of Eastern European transition economies, Western European
industrialized nations, and other Asian developing nations such as India,
Pakistan, and Indonesia.
The inequality we see in China is a result of an urban-biased development
strategy. Like many other developing countries, China’s growth scheme of
the last 20 years has focused on industrialization. A high percentage of
agricultural output in the economy is seen as the mark of an “
underdeveloped” country, and many nations attempt to leapfrog a
reorganization of rural production. The erosion of agricultural investment,
tariffs, and subsidies drives down food prices, and in turn, wages can be
reduced. This is intended to attract foreign investment that will produce
jobs that both satisfy urban workers and absorb the swelling agricultural
unemployment. Yet in the last eight years, this growth has been “jobless”
for China. Although, compared to the countryside, urban opportunities abound
, a simultaneous growth in urban unemployment due to SOE downsizing has
meant that urban centers are nowhere near being able to swallow up rural
unemployment with industrial jobs.
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anir (炉边人似月) 于 (Tue Dec 29 12:57:29 2009, 美东) 提到:
Rural Discontent
In response to the persistent unemployment and poverty, and an inability to
pay the exorbitant state, provincial, and local taxes, there has been great
unrest in the Chinese countryside. In 1999, a farmer who could not pay taxes
in central Hunan province killed himself when officials threatened to
destroy his house. This resulted in a battle between 10,000 Hunan farmers
and 1,000 police. In Northern Shaanxi province, 30,000 peasants signed a
petition demanding the release of lawyer Ma Wenli, who had been sentenced to
five years in prison after attempting to help peasants sue the government.
In 1999, demonstrations and public protests numbered 110,000, a 70 percent
increase from 1998.
Mobilized peasants in China generally find it difficult to gain political
clout and have few avenues for influencing policy. The current unrest in
China follows the Chinese historical tradition of peasant uprisings.
Frequent victims of over-taxation and impressment, Chinese farmers have in
the past been left little recourse but rebellion. Yet part of this legacy is
also the leadership’s deliberate refusal to acknowledge such revolts.
China’s expansive geography has meant that unrest is considered threatening
solely when it takes place in urban areas. However, a novel phenomenon now
emerging in China is throwing a wrench into traditional attitudes and
creating new pressures on the government.
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anir (炉边人似月) 于 (Tue Dec 29 12:58:16 2009, 美东) 提到:
Migratory Patterns
The significant urban-rural income disparity, combined with modern modes of
transportation, have led to massive rural-urban migration. Numbers of
migrants peak during the time between planting and harvesting seasons, and
they come desperate for jobs, often sleeping en masse outside train stations
and in filthy warehouses. Approximately 100 million poor farmers have
dragged themselves into the cities looking for work.
The government’s response has so far been cosmetic. Last summer saw the
implementation of weight limits on urban-bound trains, in addition to
frequent fare increases, for the purpose of keeping farmers out. Migrant
workers are banned from many jobs and are frequently rounded up and shipped
out. Yet such efforts merely patch over the problem in a country with 900
million farmers and an urban-based development scheme. Chinese peasants have
traditionally rebelled in the face of tremendous repression, and
authorities fear this tradition, especially now that the front has moved to
the train station parking lot.
The urban-rural divide in China has a psychological dimension as well.
Peasants were once a symbol of the human ideal in China, but now the urban
middle classes look down on the rural poor as filthy and ignorant. These
negative attitudes are enhanced by pre-existing urban resentment over lax
enforcement of the one-child policy in the countryside, which leads to
frequent rural violations (or so city dwellers believe). City residents, by
contrast, are closely monitored for any infractions. The Chinese government
has frequently played upon these issues in the press, blaming many of the
country’s social ills on the rural poor. But it has offered no solution,
and China’s ignored majority has arrived at the city gates.
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anir (炉边人似月) 于 (Tue Dec 29 12:59:23 2009, 美东) 提到:
Entry Into WTO
Amidst this backdrop of rural poverty and inequality, China has finally won
its bid to join the WTO. Such a move is not a step but a leap on the urban-
oriented path that the Chinese government has walked. It will greatly
exacerbate the issues of unemployment and inequality, making the situation
unbearable for many.
The import quotas, subsidies, and tariffs that have traditionally protected
Chinese agriculture are going to disappear, and foreign companies will dump
wheat, corn, rice, cotton, soybeans, wool, dairy products, and other
commodities onto the Chinese market.
The effects of WTO membership will be catastrophic for many Chinese farmers.
The US State Council estimates that 10 million more farmers will lose their
livelihood—equivalent to the population of Michigan. Some independent
analysts are estimating upwards of 40 million. Most of these people will
probably head to the cities, but in the short run, at least, the urban
sectors will have no ability to absorb this labor supply.
The Chinese government has taken a gamble. It banked its legitimacy on
economic growth for the last 20 years, but now output has slumped slightly,
and the consequences of an urban-biased development scheme, combined with
corruption and fiscal irresponsibility, are rearing their ugly heads. The
hope is that membership in the WTO will bring foreign investment and
technology that will sustain long-term growth. The risk is that in the
meantime, unemployment and social unrest will grow unabated.
This gamble is nothing new, and is in fact the dominant paradigm for most
developing countries. However, there are several peculiarities facing China
that make the game unique. First, China now has an urban-rural divide in
income and psychology greater than what most regimes face. Secondly, peasant
unrest has been on the rise. But whereas in the past, Chinese governments
have ignored peasant rebellion, the phenomenon of mass migration is bringing
the problem directly to urban centers. Finally, China has just concluded a
trade agreement that is seriously stacked against the rural poor. Rural and
urban unemployment will rise, and the prospects of “job-creating” growth
are uncertain.
China has the potential to defy many of our previous development models, but
political turmoil following China’s entry into the WTO seems unavoidable.
The next 20 years of China’s development may bring wealth and prosperity
for some; but China’s losers will need a big outlet, and only time will
tell what form that will take. |
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