By snoadmin
The economy is not a problem just in the United States and Europe.
In China, the government predicts that by year’s end, 25 million migrant workers will be jobless. For the world’s most populous nation, this is just another loop on the roller coaster that is modern Chinese history. This matters because in a globalized world, how China rises will affect more than just those living there.
In the past three decades, the government’s focus on economic liberalization, foreign investment and an export-driven economy has brought a higher standard of living for hundreds of millions.
By 1978, the era of Mao Zedong was over and new times had arrived. But even after the economic transformation of China, there are still many problems.
Reading Philip P. Pan’s “Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China,” one gains a better appreciation for the complex issues of the day in contemporary China. There may be less government involvement in day-to-day life, but it is still painfully clear that anyone who tries to challenge the one-party state is swiftly silenced. Those who manage to get attention and give a voice to the voiceless pay a very high price.
Pan chronicles the stories of several people who make up China’s emerging civil society, among them a doctor who exposes the true extent of the SARS epidemic and a blind activist who fights the government practice of forced abortions.
Pan, an award-winning Washington Post reporter who is also fluent in Mandarin, reported from China from 2000 to 2007.
Being there allowed him to make insightful observations. He writes: “On one side is the venal partystate, an entrenched elite fighting to preserve the country’s authoritarian political system and its privileged place within it. On the other is a ragtag collection of lawyers, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists, hustlers and dreamers striving to build a more tolerant, open and democratic China.
The Chinese Communist Party, master of China going on 60 years, has been able to maintain rule despite many policies that have led to deadly political upheaval, and at times, widespread famine.
Some estimates put the number of deaths between the 1950s and 1970s at 30 million. Recently, the party has relied on economic growth and nationalism as its twin saviors. As Pan details, however, failing to listen to dissidents may cost it its legitimacy.
The stand that Dr. Jiang Yanyong takes during the SARS crisis tells us that there are still honest people willing to put their freedoms on the line if it means that lives will be saved.
In 2003, Jiang noticed that people coming into the Beijing hospital in which he worked were afflicted by a strange and highly contagious respiratory disease. He decided that he should counter government propaganda stating that this “atypical pneumonia” was under control. The party was trying, at all costs, to prevent anything from ruining the annual meeting of the national legislature and the installation of China’s current president, Hu Jintao. Aware of the risks that he faced, he decided to question official statements about the number of SARS victims. When he publicly challenged the government, the party had no choice but to concede that leaders had lied about the number of dead and the disease’s reach.
The story of the activist Chen Guangcheng is another example of the blatant corruption of the party.
Chen, a blind activist who taught himself about Chinese law, decided to challenge the government’s continued campaigns aimed at people who broke the one child policy. Armed with a digital voice recorder, Chen and his wife traveled the countryside documenting instances of government abuse, including coerced abortions and the torturing of family members of women who were avoiding them.
Chen decides to seek redress through the courts, but the government stoped him. After hired thugs went to Beijing to kidnap him and he was unable to file his case. He is now imprisoned and expected to be freed next year.
To think, these are only two tales. The beauty of this book is that Pan personalizes issues such as the fight against government secrecy or the exploitation of peasants, making it easier to understand what the heck is going on in China.
