China: Communism with a side of Capitalism

I am told China is a communist country…really?  The tourist wouldn’t know that by the look of things.  Capitalism is rampant and in the cities you will find a large and very wealthy population.  Many are educated at Ivy League Universities in the US and now run private multi-national companies in China.  Yes many of them are members of the Communist Party; it’s the smart thing for a wealthy business man to do in a Communist run country.  The only real vestige of communism I saw was the name of the party and the fact that all land is owned by the government.

Before my first visit to a Communist country, my mind’s eye envisioned oppressed people standing in bread lines, living very poorly in a rural tin roof shacks or dirty dilapidated city high-rises.  State owned companies, hotels and stores that are gray, uninteresting box shaped buildings with workers who are dressed in gray and could care less about their job.  I expected to see order on the streets with government police telling people where to go and how to behave.  Boy was I wrong!!

While I did see a lot of poverty, I saw many more vibrant, happy, healthy and very wealthy people.  They were decked out in the latest fashion brands and driving very expensive automobiles.   I saw many privately owned businesses from large fancy hotels all the way to small grocery stores run by one old woman.   There was no way for the tourist to tell the difference between a government owned business and a private business.  Order did not exist; chaos was the name of the game on the streets, in the airport, in stores and in restaurants.  There is no way to keep order when you have more than 1.3 billion people. 

As we drove through the country along the very nice but almost empty interstate highway system I saw a lot of farming villages.  Since the government owns all the land they designate where the farmer can farm.  The average farmer is given about an acre of land and uses it mostly for subsistence but will sell some produce and is able to earn about $200 per year.  The government also tells that farmer and all surrounding farmers where they can live so the farmers don’t live where they farm.  They congregate into small villages with townhouse style homes.  So the countryside was dotted with these villages.  I never saw any large farming operations but, of course, I only saw a small part of the country. 

Real estate development in the cities was everywhere; there is a joke about the crane used to build high-rises being the national bird of China.  You would think building a multi-million dollar high-rise on government owned land would be too much risk for developers but that was not the case.  I am told that most buildings are sold out before they are complete.  Oddly I saw many high-rise condos that looked mostly vacant; in the evening they would be almost completely dark and was told that was because they were purchased by speculators who were sitting on them in order to sell later.  Can you say, “Real Estate Bubble?”  In the 60’s the government started leasing the land to developers with a 70 year lease and no one knows what will happen when that lease is up. 

Something we are hearing about a lot in the news today is the one child policy.  Based upon our guides and US friends who live in China I am told that enforcement of rules varies by location.  With such a large country it is almost impossible for the federal government to monitor anything.  The local district and province leaders are the ones with the real power so they decide what laws are enforced and how.  In Shanghai couples who are both only children are allowed to have two children.  If you have a second child when you are not supposed to then you just pay a fine to the government.  No one in the city talks about forced abortions or forced sterilization.  Of course, it is also a problem they don’t want to talk about with tourists. 

One of 4 Museum Buildings, Terra Cotta Warrior Museum

The places we went that were obviously government run, such as the Three Gorges Dam and the Terra Cotta Warriors Museum, were extravagantly built.  Very fancy buildings, large visitor centers, beautiful gardens, decorative fountains, koi ponds, even escalators instead of stairs, plus wide and very new asphalt highways leading to them were all standard items.  The highway system had frequent toll booths and large, mostly empty, gas station/convenience stores spaced almost as often as the toll booths which were all quite overbuilt for the low number of users.  Where else can you buy pre-packaged chicken feet and Chinese beer for the road??

Chicken Feet To Go!!

I did find that many people would gloss over subjects like the brutality of Chairman Mao or the forced relocation of 1.4 million people plus 5000 years of historical relics at the completion of the Three Gorges Dam.  I got the feeling that the more they either don’t talk about it or put a positive spin on it the sooner everyone will forget the inconvenient truth and only remember the good.  From the tourist vantage point, albeit a very limited vantage point, it seems as if they have drifted from the strict communism of Chairman Mao into something altogether new:  Communism with a side of Capitalism (as long as you do what the party says).  Where will it go from here, what will it be like when these boys are running the country?