China Inside Out E-Book

Bill Dodson

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 447

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

An in-depth look at the forces and trends changing China and its place in the world China has dominated the news for nearly a decade and will continue to grab headlines as it moves inexorably toward becoming the world's largest economy. It already has the largest middle class in the world; the most Internet users; the largest army; and is the world's largest polluter. Yet all this growth causes problems as China adapts to the laws of other lands in which it has investments; learns how to meet international guidelines and safety standards for its products; stretches its resources to the limit; and struggles to maintain stability and control over an increasingly restive population. China Inside Out explores the social and economic forces unleashed by China's relentless drive to modernization. Bill Dodson presents the stories of average Chinese workers, along with interviews with experts interlaced with his own experiences. The end result is an insider's view of the forces reshaping China as it takes an increasingly prominent role in the new world order. * Looks at the trends reshaping China and reveals how China's place in the world is evolving * Written by an industry analyst, advisor, and business manager in China, who is also a columnist for the China Economic Review * Explains important changes for investors and business leaders interested in China For business leaders, investors, and China watchers, China Inside Out offers a truly in-depth examination of China's changing role in the world.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword

CHAPTER 1 - The Rise of Generation W(eb)

HUMAN FLESH SEARCHES

“THIS POST DOES NOT EXIST”

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE ONLINE

THE GRASS-MUD HORSE STRIKES BACK

WHEN NETWORKING BECOMES THE RAGE

END NOTES

CHAPTER 2 - The Anxious Class

PROPERTY RIGHTS AND WRONGS

UNIVERSITY AND BEYOND

PRECARIOUS HEALTH CARE

HOLDING IT ALL TOGETHER

END NOTES

CHAPTER 3 - A Tale of Two Countries

MIGRANT WORKERS: SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL

FACTORY LIFE: NOT THE TICKET IT USED TO BE

HUKOU 户口: A LIFELONG SENTENCE

A DAY IN THE COUNTRY

LOOKING AHEAD: THE UNITED STATES OF CHINA?

END NOTES

CHAPTER 4 - Not in My Backyard!

AN AIR ABOUT THE PLACE

“BUT THEY DID IT FIRST!”

CANCER VILLAGES

NOW IN YOUR BACKYARD

CLEAN UP YOUR ACT

END NOTES

CHAPTER 5 - With the Appetite of a Dragon

LAND AHOY!

FORESTS FOR THE TREES

OILY DAYS

GLOBAL BUYING SPREE

OUT OF THEIR ELEMENT

INFLAMMABLE WATER

WHEN THERE’S NOT MUCH LEFT TO CONQUER

END NOTES

CHAPTER 6 - China 24/7

CONSTRUCTING THE FUTURE

THE ARTERIES OF A NATION

ROAD WARRIORS

PORTS OF CALL

RAILROADED

CHINA SHELL GAME

THE BIG GAMBLE

END NOTES

CHAPTER 7 - China, at Your Services

SERVICES RUN-DOWN

SCARY HEALTH CARE

FAWLTY CHINA

SERVICE WITH A SMILE

THE TV REPAIRMAN COMETH

DEARLY BELOVED

SERVICE WITH A FROWN

END NOTES

CHAPTER 8 - The Global Sugar Daddy

A BIG STICK

A YUAN FOR MORE

BALANCING INTERNATIONAL AMBITIONS WITH DOMESTIC REALITIES

MODERNIZATION OF CHINA’S BANKING AND FINANCE INDUSTRY

OUTBOUND INVESTMENT

INTEGRATION, NOT DOMINATION

END NOTES

CHAPTER 9 - Hot Pot Nation

ALL IN THE FAMILY

POPCORN POPULATION

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

4-2-1 . . . BREAKDOWN

GRAY TIGER POWER

HOT POT NATION

END NOTES

CHAPTER 10 - In the Shadow of the Emperors

A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

A CHIP ON ITS SHOULDER

PLASTIC MYTHOLOGIES

G.I. ZHOU GETS A NEW UNIFORM

TOWARD A CHINA WITH DEMOCRATIC CHARACTERISTICS

END NOTES

Afterword

Bibliography

Index

Copyright © 2011 Bill Dodson

Published in 2011 by John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte. Ltd.

2 Clementi Loop, #02-01, Singapore 129809

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as expressly permitted by law, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate photocopy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center. Requests for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte. Ltd., 2 Clementi Loop, #02-01, Singapore 129809, tel: [phone], fax: [phone], e-mail: [email protected].

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

Neither the author nor the publisher are liable for any actions prompted or caused by the information presented in this book. Any views expressed herein are those of the author and do not represent the views of the organizations they work for.

Other Wiley Editorial Offices

John Wiley & Sons, 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA

John Wiley & Sons, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, P019 8SQ, United Kingdom

John Wiley & Sons (Canada) Ltd., 5353 Dundas Street West, Suite 400, Toronto, Ontario, M9B 6HB, Canada

John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, 42 McDougall Street, Milton, Queensland 4064, Australia

Wiley-VCH, Boschstrasse 12, D-69469 Weinheim, Germany

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 978-0-47082643-0 (Hardcover) ISBN 978-0-47082645-4 (e-PDF) ISBN 978-0-47082644-7 (e-Mobi) ISBN 978-0-47082646-1 (e-Pub)

Typeset in 10/14pt, Meridien-Roman by Thomson Digital

For my parents, William R. and Norma Dodson, in gratitude for their patience and sacrifices.

Acknowledgment

China Inside Out has been a collaborative project with numerous individuals who have contributed both directly and indirectly over the past decade. More than a few of the insights expressed in the book were born through the countless conversations I’ve had with those who have lived, studied, and worked in China for many years, many of whom were North Americans and Europeans. These discussions often were excavations of their experiences, their observations, and their reflections about the swift and dramatic changes in China they’ve become part of.

In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to longtime China veterans Peter Holmes and Keith Cairncross, who through long hours of conversation, have helped me to put many of my own China experiences and musings in perspective. Other close friends and China veterans also have shared their experiences and thinking, especially Palle Linde, Michael “Mickey” Duff, Mark “Six” Kissner, Doug Wack, and Oscar Hernandez. I also feel a need to sound a note of deep appreciation for my counterparts at the Blue Marlin “Think Tank” in the Suzhou Industrial Park—professionals and their families who have a combined hundreds of years of experience from all over China, and whose warmth and humor have provided me a home away from home.

Certainly, my colleagues Bhavesh Mistry and Basile Waite at TrendsAsia in Greater Shanghai have been invaluable critics and tireless reviewers of the manuscript as well as great listeners when I needed to bounce ideas off individuals with an intelligence and sensitivity to Chinese modern society. Andrew Hupert, an adjunct professor at the Shanghai campus of New York University, will always be my first stop for stimulating conversation about the intersection between culture, government policy, and commercial interests in China. Scott Tong, who was the China bureau chief for the Marketplace program on Public Radio in the U.S. from 2007 through mid-2010, was always willing to swap the latest China news and hearsay with me over cups of coffee. I have to thank the prolific Paul French of the China consumer market-research company Access Asia for his encouragement during the project, and for his guidance vis-à-vis getting around the publishing world. I am also grateful to my once-colleague and forever-friend Franziska Gloeckner for the fresh eyes she provided me through her years living and working in Nanjing. Justin Lusk, also a China longtimer and the general manager of a foreign-invested operation in China, is singular in my mind for the amazing support he provided this writing project before the book found a home with John Wiley & Sons.

Of course, I have to thank the many hundreds of Chinese I’ve met in China over the past 10 years who have shared with me their own stories and thinking during the past decade of tumultuous change in their society. In particular, I would like to thank Robert Kong, a longtime friend in my adopted Chinese hometown of Suzhou, near Shanghai, for explaining to me over innumerable get-togethers in a balanced, dispassionate manner the dynamics of Chinese relationships in families, and between friends and coworkers. I must also thank a Shanghai family I admire and appreciate, the Chai brothers, Guoxing and Guofeng, for helping me get oriented and for being so supportive when I first began traveling to Shanghai on business and asking a million questions about everything but business.

Since 2003, local government officials across China have provided me with thousands of hours of tours, conversation, and education about their local cultures and economic development progress over the years, many of whom continue to provide me with updates. Some of the most delightful experiences I have had in China were spent at banquet tables with some of these individuals, who were always warm and engaging hosts. Some have even become friends. One of my greatest pleasures has been and will continue to be dropping by their towns and cities to see them again and to learn of the changes they have helped facilitate.

I owe a debt of gratitude to my publisher, Nick Wallwork, who is based in the Singapore office of John Wiley & Sons. It was Nick who first seemed to figure out what I was getting at with China Inside Out and helped me craft the project into something readable and saleable. Editorial Executive Jules Yap took on the project and remained my primary liaison through the editorial and production processes. My copyeditor Jennifer Wells was tireless in encouraging me to write what I meant and to mean what I wrote. The professional efforts of the production team as a whole for the book, led by Fiona Wong, could not have made birthing the project any more fulfilling for me.

Finally, my gratitude to my wife, Jessica Zhou, who was pregnant with our first child throughout most of the writing phase of the book. Sometimes I think she was the charm that brought the book to life. Neither of our individual labors was easy; hers, however, was the most rewarding: our lovely son Ashley Xavier.

Foreword

Men and women in China have the right to dress as they please: plaids, stripes, purples, reds, acid-greens, fuchsias, rhinestones, tight skirts, baggy T-shirts—all at the same time, even, if they choose to experiment (which some do). They can buy at bargain basement prices or, those who can afford it, can shop at expensive boutiques. They can dress as peculiarly as they like—or as fashionably—as the glittering catwalks of Shanghai have spotlighted since the opening years of the twenty-first century.

China hasn’t always been that way, though. As the bad old days of the Cultural Revolution closed in the late 1970s and the country sought its way out of the economic and social chaos that had defined the lives of generations, the Mao-suit was all the fashion. Actually, it was pretty much the only fashion for adults, available in the most drab shades of gray, blue, and green conceivable. The statement the social uniform made was “we are all equal,” though, of course, Communist Party members were more equal than others. For the 30 years after Mao Zedong announced the liberation of the People’s Republic of China, Communist Party apparatchiks tightly controlled all parts of Chinese life: where one lived, if one attended university, what discipline one would study, where one worked, where one shopped, how much one could buy (if shelves were stocked at all), even who to marry (dating was illegal). In other words, up until about 1980, China’s government was totalitarian, interested mostly in exercising its power and ideology at every level of its citizens’ existence.

Now, Chinese citizens have freedoms those aged 45 and over could hardly have imagined in 1980. They can start their own businesses, they can purchase as many homes as they can afford, they are increasingly owning their own cars—once the sole entitlement of Party officials—they can choose where to send their children to school, and, if they have enough money, even completely escape the onerous university examination system and send their child abroad for study. Television programming and commercials are as mind-numbing as any in the developed world now, with as many cable stations. The country now sports a wide choice of newspapers and magazines, many of which are simply “lifestyle” publications that give a growing middle class hints on how to dress, how to put on makeup, how to pick up girls, and the best ways to bring your man (or your woman) to climax. Then there is the impact of the Internet, which is perhaps the single greatest lever that has pried open the society to what is possible in the modern world. In some aspects, Chinese society has more freedom than many societies throughout the world.

Of course, as is already well-known, the Communist Party still censors whatever it considers seditious, or anything that could destabilize society; or rather, what could upset its increasingly tenuous control of Chinese society. It regularly arrests and jails political dissidents, it still applies its one-child policy with gusto, its judiciary for the most part is still embryonic and shackled to political expediencies, and its lack of consideration of intellectual property rights is still atrocious. The Chinese government has become authoritarian. In other words, it can no longer totally control the lives of its citizens to the same extent it had 30 years before. Economic progress, the development of a high-maintenance middle class, the need to present continuing, uninterrupted economic opportunity to 20 percent of humankind, have forced the Communist Party to reform itself as an oligarchy with visibly reduced powers over its citizens. The Communist Party’s modus operandi has changed from impressing its will unilaterally on citizens to survival of its dwindling power base and managing the genii it has let out of the bottle of history.

The Party has been learning, though, genii do not return to their abodes upon command. Instead, the transformative, almost magical forces, once released, must run their course, with unimaginable consequences for Chinese society and the world.

China Inside Out is about the stresses and strains along social fault lines that have developed as the Party’s entrenched interests in control and self-enrichment rub against economic growth demands, commercial priorities, middle-class requirements, generational warfare, criminal rivalries, and international standards of engagement and responsibility. Daily, it seems, social and political progress occurs as the battle lines between social and political blocks in China shift with first one faction pushing successfully into the domain of another, and then giving up “territory” on another front, each time with a great deal of energy released in unpredictable bursts of creative destruction.

Most international commentators on China—and many Chinese scholars themselves—ascribe the country’s rapid transformation to one or another Party genius or dissident-hero or corporate maven—the so-called “great person” theory of history. Instead, China is shooting economic and social “rapids,” the untamed flow of which is the confluence of technological, social, and economic trends. The world is “flatter” than it’s ever been in human history, as Thomas Friedman wrote in his book The World is Flat, and China is taking advantage of the leveling to heft itself into the twenty-first century. International business, Western consumers, and the Chinese Communist Party, for the most part, have been able to capitalize in the most literal sense on this juxtaposition of trends.

The chaos of the Cultural Revolution reduced the Communist Party to one of two courses through which to pursue its future. It could accompany its eastern neighbor North Korea further in the direction of totalitarianism, insularity, and poverty, or it could allow the shoots of Western-style entrepreneurship that had already begun to sprout in farming communes in the early 1980s to take hold and to thrive, and to rebuild industry from a capitalist orientation. The choice to allow capitalism a foothold in the society unleashed powerful social forces that had major ramifications for China’s Communist Party. The citizenry began to question the Party’s Mandate of Heaven—the permission from the citizenry to rule that every Emperor throughout Chinese history has required to retain power. During the events of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, political leaders came very close to the same fate as their Soviet cousins had that same year—expulsion and obsolescence.

Now, at the outset of the twenty-first century, the Party is as sensitive as it has ever been about the balancing act it performs in its stewardship of the country, even though it has encouraged and even accelerated the pace of social transformation. What concerns the Party most is that the currents it has chosen to follow have passed beyond its absolute control. The cascade of activities and events that form the trends discussed in China Inside Out are irreversible now, to the extent that to drastically alter the direction and/or speed of any of the trends would be to rupture a society just injecting itself into modernization. Disruption could possibly result in protests and riots greater in scale than even those recently seen in the autonomous regions Tibet and Xinjiang. Termination of any of the trends is not an option for a government that wants to maintain some semblance of control over the country: the people will simply not submit to an untimely end to the boom times.

Each chapter in China Inside Out discusses an irreversible trend and its implications for neighbors near and far, and for international businesses invested in China. Chapter 1 opens with the impact the Internet is having on the shape of Chinese society, identity, policy, and moral behavior. Many Chinese are increasingly seeing unfettered Internet access as a right, not a luxury, much to the government’s dismay. For the first time in Chinese history, the ruler and the ruled are on a much-leveled playing field. Chapter 2 discusses the drive nearly every Mainland Chinese has to achieve a middle-class lifestyle and the attendant anxieties and strains placed on the society, on individuals, and on institutions such as marriage and childbearing. Chapter 3 explores how the backbone of a middle-class lifestyle, mass urbanization, has created tensions between urbanites and country folk that have surfaced as a sort of policy-driven apartheid, which society actually needs to continue its economic development. Chapter 4 relates how China has needed and continues to believe polluting industries are essential to kick-start its economy and develop its interior.

Chapter 5 explores how China’s insatiable appetite for land, oil, and minerals has forced it far beyond its borders to meet its industrial and consumer needs, while its growing lack of water—polluted or not—is already impacting its growth prospects. Chapter 6 is a discussion of the challenges China faces in developing its local economies and improving living conditions outside the prosperous Yangtze and Pearl River Deltas. Chapter 7 takes the reader into Chinese hospitals, its hospitality industry, customer-service care and wedding industry—likely the best-run services industry in the country—for insights into its nascent services sector, the key to full employment in China. Chapter 8 examines how China’s foray into the international marketplace is showing Chinese government officials and entrepreneurs rampant offshore investment has severe shortcomings in international business dealings, and that money isn’t always the most important part of a transaction in many countries worldwide. Chapter 9 delves into how China’s population pressure throughout its long history has been both a boon and a liability to its economic development, and how its one-child policy is already affecting social and family structures in ways never before seen. Finally, Chapter 10 relates how modernization has exposed to the world China’s national insecurity through a shrill variety of nationalism, an accelerated buildup of its military, and an inflexible foreign policy.

Ultimately, China Inside Out is a personal journey of discovery during one of the most important social transitions that any country has ever undertaken in human history. I wanted to dig as deeply as I could into modern Chinese society to gain insight into how a country can remake itself time and time again, and to understand what its latest incarnation means for us outsiders. The country’s resurrection from the collective suicide of the Cultural Revolution is one of the most important stories to be told in this century. China Inside Out is my earnest attempt at relating to those who don’t know China very well what I and others have observed and experienced in “the country that doesn’t sleep.”

Identifying the irreversible trends reshaping China was the first step in the expedition, while the travels, the people, the research, and the countless conversations made up the second. Tracing the arcs and intersections of the trends eventually brought me to three important conclusions about China’s development and the challenges confronting her. First, the advancement of China’s economic and social agenda is far more dependent on the stress released from friction between divisions in society than to the heavy hand of authoritarian self-styled genius. As British historian Edward Hallett Carr wrote in his book, What is History?, “History is, to a considerable extent, a matter of numbers.” Players both famous and pedestrian fill out the roles created by the swirling eddy currents of the flow of history. However, it’s how individuals respond to the predicaments thrust upon them or the roles that they have taken up in the midst of great upheaval that anchor historical narratives and make for a good read.

Second, China’s domestic priorities and challenges as well as its national identity will preclude China from “ruling” the world, though the adolescence of its ascent as a world superpower will be trying at times to the international family of nations and to international businesses invested in the country.

Finally, China’s Communist Party has done a colossal and impressive job of transforming itself from an intrusive totalitarian governor (with the exception of Tibet and Xinjiang) that micromanages its citizens’ lives to a form of government more similar to most of its Asian neighbors; that is, one-party rule with democratic characteristics.

If there is anything I hope readers take away from this odyssey, it’s that China is now at the leading edge of history. How the society negotiates the inevitable shocks of trends that come into confluence, and how, most importantly, it manages the eventual wind-down of those powerful social and economic forces in the next 10 to 15 years, will have major repercussions for its citizenry, its neighbors, international businesses invested in the country, and for Western civilization.

China’s success is just that important to us all.

Bill Dodson

Suzhou, China

October, 2010

CHAPTER 1

The Rise of Generation W(eb)

HUMAN FLESH SEARCHES

On the evening of May 10, 2009, Deng Yujiao, an attractive 21-year-old waitress, greeted the three guests entering a private parlor at a bathhouse in Badong Xiongfeng Hotel just as she normally would any other evening. Badong is a township in Hubei Province, nestled in tree-lined mountains, an ancient callous on an elbow of the Yangtze River, deep in the interior of China. The bathhouse was not luxurious by the standards of similar Shanghai or Beijing venues, with their great marble facades and Romanesque statues surrounding the Jacuzzis, scrubbing tables, and lounges attended by smartly dressed service staff. Rather, the Xiongfeng Hotel bathhouse was much more modest in scale and offerings; it was enough, though, for the three government officials who had come for massages to feel like kings. Deng followed her customers into the private parlor to take their orders for drinks and snacks. The three men pressed Deng to offer them “special services” a code phrase in China for prostitution. Deng declined, saying that was not her job. Deng Guida (no relation to the waitress), the chief of the county investment promotion bureau, threw a wad of cash at her head. She ignored the provocation and tried to leave the room. The officials barred her exit. She tried to push past them, but they continued playing cat-and-mouse with her, blocking her escape.