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Journey
to My Home: Hong Kong and China Rediscovering the Meaning of Labor Activism, Being Chinese and Chinese Nationalism By: Lee Siu Hin |
Part Two: How to Understand China
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| Photo: Tiananmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace, the symbol of the China's history, culture and politics, the portrait at the middle of the gate is Chairman Mao, the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC). On October 1, 1949, he stand at the podium of the gate to proclaim the foundations of PRC. |
I still remember today: back in the 1970's
and early 80's when I was a middle school student, every time I went to
China on an activist solidarity trip, we had to pretend we were "poor"
working class from Hong Kong, but people still immediately noticed that
we were "foreign tourists". I could enter "foreigners only"
restaurants or hotels with my hard currency, and people would stare at
me with wishful eyes with their body language telling me "I wish
I could be you ("gringos" from Hong Kong)." At that time
I attended a charter school run by left-wing pro China trade unionists
in Hong Kong. One day a classmate wrote a challenging letter to the teacher,
asking:
"Why is China so poor?"
"Why is America so rich?"
"Why does China need to export its best products when we don't even
have enough to eat?"
Why, why, why? Her harsh questions broke my teacher's heart; she spent
the next full week talking to all of us about how to understand our country-China.
I witnessed and was involved with China's transformation from the Cultural
Revolution to Deng Xiao Ping's reform era and the rapid economic growth
of the 90's. There's no doubt the quality of life today and the freedom
enjoy in China are much better then 70's, when we were still in the middle
of the
"Cultural Revolution" madness, whose slogans included
"being poor is glorious,"
"fight against bourgeois lifestyles," and "class struggle
is our principle."
Although I have been absent from my country for the past ten years, I
have still maintained direct connections with many people there. But I
didn't expect such deep social and political changes in the past five
years alone. As a Chinese friend told me: "No one want to go back
to the past (the Cultural Revolution period), and no one can stop the
current reforms in China. Anyone who want to stop them will be thrown
out!"
My country seemed familiar but also had become very strange to me. In
an article from a Chinese magazine entitled: "Understand China,"
in their first 2004 issue the author listed the following 8 important
facts which he says we need to know in order to understand China:
1) China has 1.3 billion people;
2) China has 900 million farmers, including 300 million "excess"
farm laborers who need other jobs;
3) China still has 30 million people living in extreme poverty;
4) China has a land area of 960 million square kilometers, with rich natural
resources; but per capita income is far below the world's average;
5) China has a 5000 year-old civilization-this is our pride, but also
our burden;
6) China has 56 nations, and we cannot allow anyone to undermine our national
unity;
7) China's income gap between rich and poor, and between regions, is widening;
8) China is now the sixth-largest economy in the world, but still far
below the level of the United States.
Changes in China had exceeded my expectations, and my trip this time marked
many China "first times" for me:
my first time using the Internet in China;
my first time using a cell phone in China;
my first time driving on China's freeways;
my first time reading China's tabloid newspapers;
my first time seeing dozens of foreign TV channels on Chinese TV;
my first time seeing MacDonald's, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, KFC,
and 7-11 stores everywhere in China;
But the more things change, the more they remain the same. Social and
politically, there are many similarities between China and the U.S.-things
just happened in a slightly different way; and then there are some fundamental
differences between China and America--some qualities we Chinese are very
proud of, but which Americans of any political stripe from left to right
would not like. Many of these differences have to do with our history
since the 1800's, and how Chinese nationalism affected our social movements,
the anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and revolutionarily movements.
Since the Opium War of the 1840s, China has been fighting for independence
from colonization and imperialism, and to build a strong modern industrial
economy. Everyone in China tells me they want to see China be strong,
prosperous and free from any western power's control.
There's no doubt that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Mao Tse Tung
have liberated China from imperialism, feudalism and colonialism, and
created modern industry, nationalism and a new society. Despite the fact
that many people in China have strong criticisms about the government
and the CCP, most Chinese people still strongly support the CCP and its
definition of Chinese nationalism. While many Chinese express a wish that
the country could be as free and democratic as Europe and U.S., they nevertheless
strongly oppose any foreign intervention in China's domestic affairs.
"Look what happened in the former Soviet Union, and what America
has done to Iraq," many Chinese told me. "Americans don't understand
China!" another told me.
The modernization of China serves not only to improve the living standards
of Chinese people, but also is a nationalistic movement to build a strong
and prosperous country independent from western imperialist powers. Just
like Peter the Great in Russia who three hundred years ago founded Saint
Petersburg, every Chinese envisions that, by the year 2050, China will
be a fully industrialized nation (200 years after the Opium Wars). Any
foreign powers who want to derail or even slow down China's economic growth
will be considered western conspirators.
I met with a customer manager from a branch of one of the major Chinese
state-owned banks in Shanghai. He told me that despite last year's SARS
outbreak (2003), China still has over an 8% growth rate (more than twice
that of the U.S.), and he believes that 2004's growth rate will be even
more robust.
"We can create a strong economy because of cheap labor in China.
That is our advantage. The label 'Made in China' means the labor costs
could be one-tenth, even twentieth of the same product made in the U.S."
He feels that if the U.S. truly believes in the rule of free trade and
fair trade, then "like Wal-Mart, they should return some of the profits
back to Chinese workers, not just keep them all in the U.S."
The high growth rate, created mainly by strongly domestic retail sales
in China and export growth, will help China in high economic growth for
the next several years, he says. "Within the next 5 to 6 years, our
economy will surpass Japan's, and labor conditions will be getting better.
By the year 2010, we will finally transform to an industrialized economy.
Within 20 years, we can beat the U.S. and they will downgrade to developing
nation status."
To understand the deep rapid changes of China in recent years, just visit
Weifang, hometown of my grandparents. Weifang, located in the northeastern
coastal province of Shangdong, is considered a small city by Chinese standards:
approximately 400,000 urban population and another 600,000 in the city's
large rural areas. It's a town with over 1,000 years of history, famous
for kite making and woodprint posters. Except for its international kite
festival in the spring, foreigners rarely visit the city.
For the past 20 years, since Deng's economic reforms, the city has been
transformed into one of the Shangdong region's biggest industrial and
agricultural centers. Known for high technology and heavy industry, in
the countryside private farmers with greenhouses grow many kinds of fruits
and vegetables for domestic consumption and for export all year long.
After 13 years, I was finally back home, visiting my grandparents. Living
standards had greatly improved: my grandparents had finally moved to an
apartment (with my parents' financial help) with a phone, cable TV and
a toilet (they didn't have toilets or bathrooms in their previous house).
Unimaginable even at the time of my 1992 visit, downtown Weifang now has
dozens of high-rise buildings, several large shopping malls and very large
supermarkets looking like the Beverly Hills Mall, and even several McDonald's
and KFC restaurants.
Yet like any other Chinese city, Weifang has its social and economic problems.
First of all, the income gap between rich and poor, urban and rural is
getting critical.
For government officials, it's kind of a "trickle-down" argument:
in order to develop the city's economy (including its rural areas) with
limited money, it should first spend money on the development of industrial
parks, roads, highways and hotels so it can attract foreign investment.
The thinking is that industrial and urban development can help absorb
the city's urban and rural labor forces. Better economic development helps
grow consumer demand for goods, and helps the countryside to sell more
farm products and increase incomes, and eventually to develop their local
industries.
But compared with downtown, the city's surrounding countryside is still
very undeveloped, like what happened in the United States. The income
gap between rich and poor is widening: while many of the city's new rich--primarily
private entrepreneurs, living in the best apartments in the city center,
middle class government employees and factory workers, and wealthy rural
farmers-can make a living, thousands of rural farmers without jobs have
to leave their hometown to seek employment hundreds and even thousands
of kilometers away.
According to a local newspaper, one of Weifang's rural districts has 90,000
semi-unemployed farm workers ("excess family farm labor forces")
in need of jobs, about 50,000 of whom have become export laborers traveling
across the country, working in the construction, service and manufacturing
industries. Ironically, there are at the same time thousands of migrant
workers from across the country coming to Weifang for work. As my grandmother
says: "China has too many people; in all things the solutions are
difficult."
Weifang is one of hundreds of such cities in China, a good example of
Chinese society. Throughout my five-day visit, I only saw one (presumably
lone) American at the shopping mall. If international activists need to
understand our country, they should come to a place like my grandparent's
hometown to stay, talk, touch and look. For me, this trip I finally made
in order to visit my grandparents and to stay with them for a few days
has been one of the greatest learning experiences of my life.
Part Three: Hong
Kong: Looking Down From Lion Mountain to Victoria Harbor