Report from China: The long road ahead By Steven Hill Capitol Weekly, September 03, 2008
During the Olympics, China showed the world that it can throw a heck of a coming out party. But traveling here post-Olympics, one sees the many complexities and challenges of this vast and ancient land. Especially in the rural areas -- still where most people live -- the impressive economic rise of China has penetrated only superficially. True, the Communist Party, which still runs nearly everything, brought electricity and other developments here in the early 1980s. And some appliances like television and telephones can be increasingly found, yet indoor plumbing, electric ovens and other comforts are still scarce. The life of a farming family is still extremely poor, filled with backbreaking labor and scavenging for wood. They don’t have tractors, so they still use water buffalo to plow, an image completely at odds with modern Beijing. But one of the most backward of China’s policies that deeply affects these poor rural families is its education policy. The Communist government does not provide free education at any level. Families must pay out-of-pocket tuition for primary, high school and college education for their children. One acquaintance I made, a young woman named Ming in her late 20s from a farming family in southwest China, told me of the hardship this causes. While most farming families can scrape together enough money to send their kids to elementary and high school, finding the $1400 annual tuition for college is usually out of sight. ... Ming spoke with considerable frustration. “What is the future?” she asked,her face twisting in anguish. “I work hard just to help my family get by. My parents did the same when they were my age,as did their parents.” She talked of young people she knew who felt similarly trapped. ... More perversely, unlike the US whose economy is wracked by a large budget deficit, China has a huge budget surplus, trillions of dollars. And what do they do with this surplus? They buy tons of US government bonds, essentially funding our budget deficit and subsidizing each and every American so that Americans can keep consuming and buying Chinese goods. ... But it’s hard to understand why they don’t take more of that trillion dollar surplus and invest it in their people, especially in the rural areas and the young people there. China has become “one nation, two people” -- rich vs. poor, city vs. country. ... Full item at http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?_adctlid=v|jq2q43wvsl855o|xdt83w3zzdh3ub&issueId=xdrpqerwe05fn1&xid=xdridsn9hcd1eh ____ Charles Andrews _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
