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.
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| 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??
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| 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?
