(Clearwisdom.net) The current Chinese social and economic milieu has two very different faces.
First of all, the gap between the rich and the poor in China is huge; the rest of the world clearly recognizes this severe polarization. Recent statistics show that those who have benefited from China's economic reforms are mainly Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, their family members and other related individuals. These people are the upstarts, or "nouveau riche."
For example, a jointly drafted investigative status report on China's society and economics was published in 2006. Participating in this report was the Research Office of China's State Council, the Research Office of the Party School, the Research Office of the CCP Central Committee's Propaganda Department, the China Academy of Social Sciences, and other government branches. The report pointed out that in the five big areas of finance--foreign trade, national resource utilization, large-scale projects and financial securities--highly placed government officials' children basically hold all the important positions. Ninety percent of the billionaires in China are children of high ranking officials; of those, 2,900 individuals own assets totaling two trillion yuan.
In drastic contrast to the above, at least one billion Chinese people have only marginally benefited from economic reforms. Increases in their personal income have slowed down, and for many, their standard of living has declined rather than grown. What most people witness in China is the CCP's window-dressing of highly developed cities, while the real China--the backward way of life and poverty in vast areas of rural China--is kept hidden. There is affluence in just a few cities located mostly on the east coast, while in the vast part of China, including the cities, conditions for most people are poor and underdeveloped. "Withering and prosperity" coexist in China, or as people say in the West, "It is either feast or famine."
What's the real situation regarding China's economy? Different people have explained it differently. Some say that China's economy is advancing too quickly and has even overheated, while others say that China's economy is about to collapse. After carefully examining the realities, one can find that China's economy has a dual nature, with the government-led economy of the privileged class being overheated, while the civil economy for the common people is stagnated and depressed.
Professor Larry Hsien-Ping Lang from the Chinese University of Hong Kong caused a great stir and much debate by pointing out some of the shortcomings of China's economic reforms. He stated that China operates on a very peculiar "dual economic system."
The CCP's "taking money as guidance (GDP)" policy has generated the following results: to create political achievements and win promotions, local government officials are fervently levying and selling land, because the higher the price they can garner for the land, the quicker the GDP will rise, which is the most desirous result for the CCP.
Local government officials want to heat up the real estate market, which would fuel this and other related markets, and allow projects to develop through which the local officials could show off their achievements. This is part of the reason for the emergence of an overheated market. Local government officials are known for confiscating land from people by force in order to sell it. This results in more peasants losing their land and being forced to move. These are man made social problems. In terms of getting bank loans, the free enterprises are always in an inferior position, so they have to borrow money at higher interest rates from underground money lenders, thus inhibiting the civil economy's normal economic development. With "internationalization," free enterprises have become even harder to bring to fruition.
The present economy of the privileged is known as "crony capitalism," in which the government officials' executive power and money are used in unison. This is the best soil for corruption to grow in. Considering this, people can plainly see that the Communist system of rule is the source of the corruption in China - the Communist Party is the root cause of the corruption and this is why it is completely unable and unwilling to solve the problem.
The capitalism practiced in Western nations is filled with free enterprise, and is really free compared to China's system that is dominated by executive powers. The former embodies the spirit of modern enterprise, while the latter represents privilege and monopoly-- two fundamentally different systems operating under the name of "capitalism".
Regarding economic development, what the Communist regime boasts is actually "crony capitalism," which embodies privileges, corruption and abnormal economic development. Those who benefit from it are never the common Chinese people. Furthermore, the CCP's version of capitalism operates at the cost of environmental damage and tramples the vital interests of the Chinese people and their future generations.
In China's dual economic system, the Communist officials, their family members and friends, who constitute only a small portion of the population, have always been the greatest beneficiaries, while the vast majority of Chinese people, who have always been treated unjustly, struggle to get by in the "withering" side of the economy.
(From The Epoch Times)
Category: Perspective
