GLOBESCAN
china in the world
How long the raj of the Mandarins?
Beijing aspires to match up to the US while India merely wants to reach where China is today
by VIJAY SANGHVI
HOME Minister P Chidambaram’s remarks at a recent panel discussion reflected India’s obsession with measuring its economic development with a Chinese yardstick. China is aiming to reach American standards and levels of economic supremacy while India is struggling to reach where China is today. But many people believe that India can outpace China sooner rather than later. Conditions favourable to India prevail and can be further improved. Perhaps the Indian obsession grew from the highly optimistic predictions by some economists of China’s rapid economic growth, enabling it to carry forward its wealth to be double that of Europe in the next three decades.
However, Salvatore Babones of the University of Sydney has questioned these predictions as dependent on many presumed invariables. The conditions favouring China cannot forever be invariables. It is true that China achieved a nearly 9% growth rate consistently since 1970. However, it cannot be presumed that the nation will continue to be ruled with the same discipline by the same political dispensation. Aspirations for better standards of life and exposure to the rest of the rapidly growing world with political freedom brought down the Soviet Union’s system of government at the time when China was embracing liberal economic philosophy. Even the Arab world, reeling under monotheism, has sought a change due to its exposure to the new world. Will people in China remain bound to the authoritarian regime when a new awareness is being thrust upon them every day? It is imperative to replace the old education system with a liberal one that will induce many people to seek liberation from their existing conditions.
Yet another factor that China will need to struggle to overcome is that it is a fast ageing nation. The system is laden with nearly 500 million old people dependent on the state for their health and food needs. Their children are unable to look after them. No doubt China is catching up with India’s advantage of an English-speaking youth. However, it will be difficult for young Chinese to get out of their cultural straitjacket with its reluctance to assimilate other cultures.
China’s growth is based on turning its economy into a totally export-oriented one with minimal home consumption. Its manufacturing is not of indigenous development.
China’s growth is based on turning its economy into a totally export-oriented one with minimal home consumption. Its manufacturing is not of indigenous development. It is borrowed from the West, not only the technology but also entire products with designs and labels. It is not even cloning but merely providing labour input. However, China has not been able to retain a hold over markets in Europe and the US due to the low quality of its products. It has suffered recall of inferior products. India has so far not suffered any serious setbacks in recent years in this regard as Indians have learnt the hard way that only quality can withstand competition.
The economic troubles that the US and Europe are facing due to high public debt, low demand, low productivity and increasing unemployment has turned the economic operations in foreign trade into deals on the basis of post-dated cheques. China has been using post-dated cheques drawn on US reserves against its $3 trillion plus reserves with the US to obtain technology, raw material and other inputs from various sources. It has been striving for the past two years to enter the African markets (not high consumers but certainly having instruments of negotiation encashable instantly).
In another qualitative change, China was forced to drop the word “Communist” from its description as a nation which it had proudly adopted during the Mao Zedong era. In fact, the nation is desperately setting a distance from its old image and doctrines. That Communism-oriented education was a liability for modern needs was accepted when China opened the doors for reorientation of its education system.
It has not only allowed but encouraged many brilliant minds from the West to join its faculties in an increasing number of universities. China has multiplied its capacity for creating graduates in various disciplines. India is no doubt behind in expansion of education facilities but it does not have to worry about inflow of liberal political ideas, unlike China.
Sensing the need for some change to provide ventilation for the suppressed political urges of the people, China opened the doors half a decade ago when local populations were given limited access to civic bodies through village elections on the same pattern as India’s Panchayati Raj. With increasing liberal thought, it will need to open doors at higher levels as well though not at the pace the West would demand.
THE unquestioned power and convenient social contract with its people provided by the system of governance allowed Beijing to go ahead with mega projects and building of infrastructure in total disregard of the environmental costs. It was able to accommodate in the slave labour market the migrating rural population, driven by the extreme poverty in their regions or due to their livelihoods being affected by mega projects. They were offered jobs at lowest returns and living conditions were no better than life in history’s slave dungeons. The poor had no alternative. At the time, China did not care for world opinion as it was consolidating its own base for rule. It was able to impose a social contract that said, “Leave power to us and we shall provide you with the chance to survive.”
But altered ambitions and the aspiration to become the world’s foremost economic power have brought in a new set of conditions. Western consumers are demanding proper environmental and human conditions for labour.China has been using post-dated cheques drawn on US reserves against its $3 trillion plus reserves to obtain technology, raw material and other inputs from various sources.
These consumers have been known to indulge in boycotts on these grounds. For them slave labour is as abhorrent as child labour. China can no more afford to ignore world opinion. In the past, corruption did not affect its growth rate as it utilized corruption as an efficiency factor to ensure that partymen delivered in return for what they were allowed to keep.
Thus, India has much to benefit from by viewing China with hindsight. The Anna Hazare movement may not bring about the desired result of minimizing corruption in the system. However, it has a positive angle because it has driven a new awareness among Indian politicians for soul searching to devise new methods for mobilization of resources and to finance their political activities.
But greater change is needed in the form of a takeover by educated urban youth of the steering mechanism from dithering leaders and an end to the old concepts of governance and economic development. The middle class young came onto the streets to protest and convey the message that they want to convert India into a new land of hope where their education and skills will be utilized. They would not like undue interference in the realization of their ambitions.
When he launched his movement, Hazare possibly had no intention of putting the urban youth in the driving seat. But that is what he has achieved. g
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