In 1980s China, it seemed everyone was a winner. Under Deng Xiaopeng’s
reforms, farms were decollectivised allowing farmers to grow and sell
more food, and keep the profits; millions of new jobs were created in
factories in special enterprise zones; the country opened itself to
foreign investment and entrepreneurship. At the same time, state-owned
enterprises went largely untouched and the “iron rice bowl” of a job for
life, pensions, rudimentary health care and free education (though
never available to everyone) was still intact for many. This delicate
balancing act epitomised the Chinese dream that sprang up in the 1980s.
Until about 1992.
Tiananmen Square and Deng Xiaoping’s renewal of the Communist Party’s reforming zeal in the early 90s brought the restructuring of state-owned enterprises previously unaffected by economic reform. Loss-making factories closed and work units were combined into something like modern corporations, though the Party still owned at least a 70 per cent stake. The “iron rice bowl” was peremptorily smashed as millions became unemployed, their old communities demolished and ways of life abandoned. If they were lucky they were compensated with tiny, isolated flats in poorly-built tower blocks; those even less fortunate were cheated out of their meagre entitlements and got nothing. Without a job or welfare support, prospects of prosperity turned dim.
In the cities and the countryside alike, conflicts and protests regularly spring up without warning, usually about land abruptly sequestrated without adequate compensation, or about maladministration by cynical, corrupt local Party bosses. Hapless junior officials clumsily exacerbate the unrest, usually seeking first to cover up the complaints and, failing that, punish the complainants. The wrong remains without redress.
In 2006 I became a visiting social sciences professor at a university in the industrial mega-city of Chongqing. While the city is controlled centrally, Beijing encouraged Chongqing to take on an experimental approach to public consultation. As part of these measures, I was enlisted by a Civil Affairs official who, frustrated by the ineffectual policing, wanted to see a method of public consultation that would help local officials to understand the unrest in the region. Communist control makes surveys and media reports unreliable bellwethers in China, so I had to think of a different method.
Turning to the ancient superstitious ritual of wish trees proved the most reliable solution. Wish trees can be found in any Buddhist or Daoist temple, with slips of paper or cardboard tied to their branches asking for success in exams or family health, praying that the wind will blow their prayers to heaven.
With the hesitant approval of the local authority, I erected a version of a wish tree in several neighbourhoods in Chongqing, far from city centres and shopping malls, in broken-down factories and housing estates where farmers had been warehoused after their land was confiscated. The “leaves” were postcards and people were asked to write their wishes and fears on the cards. Who are you? What event changed your life? What is your biggest worry? What do you wish for? the cards asked. More than a thousand people responded in the presence of officials and foreigners, quickly dispelling the myth of Chinese fear and stoicism in the face of authority.
Over a thousand responses were recorded, identifying the collateral damage of a city re-purposed to satisfy tourism and business interests. Chief among the complaints were poor public housing conditions, unpaid pensions, and the disappearance of free public health services, which left entire families financially ruined from paying out-of-pocket to treat the illness of single relative.
Without jobs, skills or money, relying on only one child in old age is a terrifying and very real prospect for many; the inverse of that burden equally terrifying to their children. In the countryside, hundreds of millions of people are surplus labour, but household registration means they cannot move to the city without permission. Millions move anyway, listlessly wandering and drifting on the margins of the city. Except for the chosen few, the Chinese dream of reform, prosperity and security that brought hope in the 1980s, turned out to be a flash in the pan.
Fast forward to 2009, and miraculously, someone in Chongqing seemed to be listening to all this—the man once known as Chongqing’s “emperor,” the now-disgraced politician Bo Xilai. Once a top official in the city, his career as a high-flying Party apparatchik with populist tendencies was brought to an abrupt end earlier this year, mired in scandal. Before all this, his high profile anti-corruption campaigns and low-income housing initiatives were a hit with the people of Chongqing, and by many accounts his presence is missed. Bo had been tipped as a contender for the Party reshuffle this coming October. Instead, as Beijing plots and schemes through a once-in-a-decade leadership transition, he and his wife are under house arrest following the mysterious death of British businessman Neil Heywood.
Despite the loathing he engendered in his fellow Party bosses, Bo shrewdly tapped into the longstanding discontents of ordinary people, a legacy that maintains his popularity in the region despite his spectacular fall from grace. Of course, speculation is rife that Bo’s reforms were merely a self-aggrandising tool. Regardless, if they stop now, there will be trouble.
Neither timid nor politically motivated, but bewildered and traumatized by endless upheaval, the dispossessed people of Chongqing have concrete demands. The threat of another Tienanmen Square has always been there. What is in doubt is the appetite and the capacity of the Party, and military it’s coupled with, to deal with it when it comes.
The End of the Chinese Dream: Why Chinese people fear the future by Gerard Lemos is published by Yale University Press
from http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blog/chongqing-bo-xilai-communist-reform-xiaopeng-1980s-chinese-dream/
Tiananmen Square and Deng Xiaoping’s renewal of the Communist Party’s reforming zeal in the early 90s brought the restructuring of state-owned enterprises previously unaffected by economic reform. Loss-making factories closed and work units were combined into something like modern corporations, though the Party still owned at least a 70 per cent stake. The “iron rice bowl” was peremptorily smashed as millions became unemployed, their old communities demolished and ways of life abandoned. If they were lucky they were compensated with tiny, isolated flats in poorly-built tower blocks; those even less fortunate were cheated out of their meagre entitlements and got nothing. Without a job or welfare support, prospects of prosperity turned dim.
In the cities and the countryside alike, conflicts and protests regularly spring up without warning, usually about land abruptly sequestrated without adequate compensation, or about maladministration by cynical, corrupt local Party bosses. Hapless junior officials clumsily exacerbate the unrest, usually seeking first to cover up the complaints and, failing that, punish the complainants. The wrong remains without redress.
In 2006 I became a visiting social sciences professor at a university in the industrial mega-city of Chongqing. While the city is controlled centrally, Beijing encouraged Chongqing to take on an experimental approach to public consultation. As part of these measures, I was enlisted by a Civil Affairs official who, frustrated by the ineffectual policing, wanted to see a method of public consultation that would help local officials to understand the unrest in the region. Communist control makes surveys and media reports unreliable bellwethers in China, so I had to think of a different method.
Turning to the ancient superstitious ritual of wish trees proved the most reliable solution. Wish trees can be found in any Buddhist or Daoist temple, with slips of paper or cardboard tied to their branches asking for success in exams or family health, praying that the wind will blow their prayers to heaven.
With the hesitant approval of the local authority, I erected a version of a wish tree in several neighbourhoods in Chongqing, far from city centres and shopping malls, in broken-down factories and housing estates where farmers had been warehoused after their land was confiscated. The “leaves” were postcards and people were asked to write their wishes and fears on the cards. Who are you? What event changed your life? What is your biggest worry? What do you wish for? the cards asked. More than a thousand people responded in the presence of officials and foreigners, quickly dispelling the myth of Chinese fear and stoicism in the face of authority.
Over a thousand responses were recorded, identifying the collateral damage of a city re-purposed to satisfy tourism and business interests. Chief among the complaints were poor public housing conditions, unpaid pensions, and the disappearance of free public health services, which left entire families financially ruined from paying out-of-pocket to treat the illness of single relative.
Without jobs, skills or money, relying on only one child in old age is a terrifying and very real prospect for many; the inverse of that burden equally terrifying to their children. In the countryside, hundreds of millions of people are surplus labour, but household registration means they cannot move to the city without permission. Millions move anyway, listlessly wandering and drifting on the margins of the city. Except for the chosen few, the Chinese dream of reform, prosperity and security that brought hope in the 1980s, turned out to be a flash in the pan.
Fast forward to 2009, and miraculously, someone in Chongqing seemed to be listening to all this—the man once known as Chongqing’s “emperor,” the now-disgraced politician Bo Xilai. Once a top official in the city, his career as a high-flying Party apparatchik with populist tendencies was brought to an abrupt end earlier this year, mired in scandal. Before all this, his high profile anti-corruption campaigns and low-income housing initiatives were a hit with the people of Chongqing, and by many accounts his presence is missed. Bo had been tipped as a contender for the Party reshuffle this coming October. Instead, as Beijing plots and schemes through a once-in-a-decade leadership transition, he and his wife are under house arrest following the mysterious death of British businessman Neil Heywood.
Despite the loathing he engendered in his fellow Party bosses, Bo shrewdly tapped into the longstanding discontents of ordinary people, a legacy that maintains his popularity in the region despite his spectacular fall from grace. Of course, speculation is rife that Bo’s reforms were merely a self-aggrandising tool. Regardless, if they stop now, there will be trouble.
Neither timid nor politically motivated, but bewildered and traumatized by endless upheaval, the dispossessed people of Chongqing have concrete demands. The threat of another Tienanmen Square has always been there. What is in doubt is the appetite and the capacity of the Party, and military it’s coupled with, to deal with it when it comes.
The End of the Chinese Dream: Why Chinese people fear the future by Gerard Lemos is published by Yale University Press
from http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blog/chongqing-bo-xilai-communist-reform-xiaopeng-1980s-chinese-dream/
