SINCE 1978, the economic role of the Chinese government has focused on fostering economic growth in the context of the international capitalist system, a departure from its former Stalinist policies of absolutely centralized economic planning. This Monday, the architect of that transformation, Zhao Zhiyang, died after a series of strokes. Under the reformist premier Deng Xiaoping, Zhao developed economic policies designed to attract foreign investment and intensively develop China's coastal regions. Today China aggressively promotes economic development through the construction of economic infrastructure and the protection of property rights.
China's economic policies have been extremely successful at promoting growth. According to University Economics Prof. Bruce Reynolds, China's growth over the past 20 years "has been miraculously high -- probably a record unmatched in history." China's phenomenal growth has come at the expense of the welfare of its rural citizens, however, as development projects necessitate forced removal of farmers and powerful industries are not subject to any environmental standards.
In the Huai River basin, home to 150 million Chinese, the rivers are too toxic to touch, and smell like "toilet water" according to the fishermen whose livelihoods have been destroyed by industrial development. Cancer develops in children as young as seven, and the cancer rates have skyrocketed since heavy industry moved to the area, according to Dr. Zhao Meiquin, a radiologist at a local hospital who spoke with The New York Times. Nor is pollution isolated to the Huai River basin; the World Bank estimates that 300,000 Chinese die every year from respiratory diseases that are the direct result of air pollution.
The farmers of the Huai River basin whose children die of cancer are lucky in comparison with those who are evicted from their land by the government. Within the past decade, the government has confiscated land from 70 million farmers in order to complete development projects that attract foreign investment and multinational corporations' factories.
The lack of social welfare programs due to the emphasis on development means that landless farmers have little social support or opportunity to transition to urban life. Recognizing the destitution that results from landlessness, farmers have organized protests and sit-ins. The police respond with rubber bullets and tear gas.
During Mao's Great Leap Forward, some 30 million people died after a collapse in food production. Today, the Chinese government still has centrally planned economic development projects, though they serve the interests of multinational capitalists rather than party ideologues. The effects upon the population are similar. The transition to capitalism has altered the nature of the human tragedy, though in a country where two-thirds of the citizens live in rural areas, the scale of human suffering may remain the same.
Additionally, though we Americans may think capitalism is often accompanied by political freedom, that has not been the case in China. Though the citizenry has gained more autonomy in the past quartercentury, that freedom is mostly in the area of property rights, which benefits the multinational corporations far more than the displaced peasant.
The institutionalization of property rights also accompanies a continuing suppression of real wages and lack of social welfare programs, as such populist policies are not conducive to "favorable investment climates" and do not help with China's development strategy. As a result of tight control of the population and policies designed to benefit foreign investors, China is the leading recipient of foreign investment, according to Reynolds. Last year, largely as a result of that foreign investment, China's economy grew 9 percent.
Yet the number of the "destitute poor," those earning less than 75 cents per day, grew to 85 million people. The growing number of extremely poor individuals is consistent with a quarter-century of growing income inequality under the capitalist model.
If you are a Phillip Morris stockholder, you will benefit from China's new capitalist policies. The majority of the Chinese people will not, however, and the American workers who have lost their jobs as factories take advantage of China's low wages will not either. China's current economic policies are consistent with the dominant capitalist paradigm that sacrifices our welfare for the benefit of the corporate elite.
Zack Fields's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at zfields@cavalierdaily.com.
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