Chinese Reflective Essay

MICROSOFT WORD ATTACHMENT: Paper 3

Reflection on China

Help Received: See Works Cited

Jonathan Hald

Jonathan Hald

5/1/15

IS-336X

Word Count: 1,517

            During the turn of the 20^th century, China grew to an unprecedented level of power and prestige due to a massive industrial push within its own borders. One hundred years from now this is what history textbooks are likely to say, considering that the past thirty years in China have been an era of economic development at a rate more rapid than any civilization in all of history. When evaluating Politics in China, the most prevalent theme I found is that China is growing exponentially, but with these changes come challenges that have never before been undertaken on such a massive scale. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has done an exceptional job in transforming China into an industrial powerhouse and real world player; however, with these developments come problems such as the struggle for political representation, corruption, economic mobilization, migration, minority rights, and environmental conservation. With a limited Knowledge of China it is easy to overlook many of these issues such as the environmental impact of industrialization or large rural migrations and focus on the push for democracy and China’s international standing. At the start of the course this is what I did, but now I am aware of the broader picture and how all these challenges are connected. To understand how China’s problems are all relative, it is imperative to first look at how the CCP operates as the ruling power over 1.3 Billion people.

Within the papers I wrote this semester, the main theme I covered was the political tension between the party and citizens. The push for democracy in China is a widely known collective action movement known throughout the world, especially in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protest. The iconic image of the lone man standing in heroic defiance against the tanks spread knowledge of the cause to the West, but there is much more happening in terms of reform within the modernizing Chinese political system. In my first paper I described the transformation of the Chinese political and economic landscape in the past 30 years, beginning with the death of Mao Zedong. China’s new direction is oriented towards massive industrialization efforts where they want to maintain control of China while also building up its economic capabilities. To achieve these goals the Chinese Central Committee first enacted reforms such as the National Rural Works Committee in 1982. This was China’s first step towards private ownership which encouraged farmers to produce a surplus of crops, thus transplanting China into a market economy. Twenty years later, China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. In the past 30 years China’s GDP has multiplied from about RMB 360 Billion to around RMB 30 Trillion.[1] Recently, President Xi Jinping, the current ruler of the Chinese Communist Party, has created committees on ending corruption and promoting national security, but for many years the change was slow and unstable. To illustrate this, consider that it took nearly 30 years for the Central Committee to design and implement a complete legal system, and even longer to start decentralizing the party’s power.[2] These economic changes have been made in order to grow the economic capabilities of China while appeasing some of the people’s desires. My papers throughout the course were what allowed me to gain the knowledge of the CCP’s intents; however, it wasn’t until the second part of this semester that I discovered the results of these changes[3].

A pivotal point in this course was a skype conference between cadets and Chinese university students. My expectation going into the lecture was that the Chinese government is viewed by everyone as oppressive, but after reading my blog posts before the conference I now see that I also thought the party was trying to make a very slow switch to democracy. My belief was that the CCP was listening to the people and taking note of the movements such as the Umbrella Protests. I was surprised to hear some of the university students support the Chinese Communist Party. It wasn’t all of them, but enough to make me reconsider my opinion of the Chinese political system. My assumption was that as students they would all be advocating democracy, but I wasn’t entirely correct about this. Their opinion was not that the CCP is the best regime in existence, but that it does an adequate job in managing Chinese affairs. I believe a large part of my incorrect assumptions stems from my view on America. In my blog posts I wrote that the US has many different levels of government such as state and local governments which look into local matters and the federal government which sets interstate policies and international affairs. In China the party sends out members to oversee local towns and provinces. The accountability in China is largely effected by party rankings where the local governors want to see profits from industry and care less about what the people want. The most noticeable difference between the US and Chinese governments is the different forms of accountability. In the US local officials are elected locally, but in China they are sent out by the Central Committee and only stay for three to five years. This has led to many unhappy citizens who feel they are unrepresented and sold out for industrial production and profit[4].

As I looked over my other blog posts I was reminded of other problems pertaining to the local party officials. In one of my recent blog posts I discussed the theme of the popular documentary titled “Under the Dome” which was a film targeted at exposing the horrors of massive industrialization in China. Because local officials are appointed and judged based on performance they push for more factories and greater output, which in turn pollutes more into the air and water systems. This has led to the creation of several movements such as the Not in MY Back Yard (NIMBY) effort. One article I pulled from an online magazine discussed the explosion of a chemical factory which was shut down as a result of this movement due to high levels of paraxylene. This is one successful attempt by local organizers to stop damaging industry, but the massive damage in China’s air and water systems is the resultant of industrialization during the past 30 years.[5]. Another recent theme I discussed is the massive mobilization within the borders of China. It is estimated that there are around 220 million migrants in China looking for work in the cities and surrounding areas. The sad truth is that there aren’t enough resources or money for everyone to be happy and prosperous, and so to survive many people are forced into the cities in search of work. Due to the system of Hokou which restricts traveling away from your birthplace, these migrants are illegal and don’t receive benefits from social programs such as education or healthcare. In the rural countryside there isn’t enough work or pay so many families are forced to disobey their Hokou orders to stay and must travel in search of menial jobs such as garbage collectors or sweatshop workers[6]. The last theme in my blog posts is the way the CCP tries to cover these issues up. The government tries to hide anti-regime sentiment through censorship over the internet and other media sources. The documentary mentioned above was sanctioned by the party, but once it spread and gained support it was censored. Any real criticism of the CCP such as blogs, art, or videos are subject to censorship. This is a measure taken by the party prevent the spread of these grievances and causing more discontent and protest[7].

In retrospect, I can trace all that I’ve learned in the past few months through my submissions of papers, blogs, and experiences within class. The Chinese Communist Party is walking a thin line between developing the nation and taking great leaps in its industrialization process. Unfortunately almost impossible for even the best leaders to keep the 3.1 billion Chinese inhabitants content amid the problems that have risen from the industrial and economic changes. Whether its migration, environmental damage, protests, or political representation, the areas in need of reform are caused by China’s massive undertaking of modernizing the country through industrialization. In conclusion, the Chinese culture is greatly influenced by the party’s modernization. The state is doing everything is can to produce more goods and increase retinue, but it must also enact strict regulations and social policies to maintain order in a changing world.

Works Cited
• Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany. 2015. Explosion of Once-Scuttled Chemical Plant Riles China’s Web. April 6. Accessed April 14, 2015. https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/06/chemical-explosion-china-px-nimby-environment-weibo/.
• Hald, Jonathan. 2015. Jon Hald’s Blog. Spring. Accessed April 16, 2015. https://sites.vmi.edu/haldje16.
• Hald, Jonathan. 2015. “The Chinese Political Evolution.” Politics In China Report, Lexington.
• Keping, Yu. 2014. “Sixty Years of Political Development.” China’s Political Development. Edited by Yu Keping Kenneth Lieberthal. Cheng Li. New York: Brookings Institute. 62-64.
• Subramanian, Sushma , and Deborah Jian Lee. 2012. Foreign Policy: China’s Left Behind Children. May 2. Accessed April 16, 2015. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/02/151837775/foreign-policy-chinas-left-behind-children.