From Kristof in today's NY Times:
These inland rural areas lag behind the coastal regions, and so the income gaps are growing. But lives are unmistakably getting better almost everywhere. (The only exception I saw was Henan Province, where AIDS is impoverishing villages.) Partly gains come because peasants in villages like Gaoshan go south to work in those sweatshops denounced by American students but treasured by Chinese workers.Fair enough. While I hate China, I've never thought they were so backwards as to warrant being ignored. On the contrary, I believe they are quite sneaky and that they manage, despite today's super satellites and super spy technology, to keep the West in the dark about much of their internal goings-on. We should definitely be wary of China. What this doesn't mean (and I'm not implying Kristof is saying this), however, is that we should be bowled over by the possibility of a market of billions of new consumers. Our blind thirst to capitalize on China is what leads to our obliviousness about China.
The lesson, for me, is that China's transformation is trickling even into the poor interior, dragging all 1.3 billion people into the world economy. When historians look back on our time, I think they'll focus on the resurgence of China after 500 years of weakness — and the way America was oblivious as this happened.
Plenty can still go wrong in China, from a banking crisis (national banks are insolvent) to labor riots (laid-off workers are grumbling everywhere). The government is often brutal and is catastrophically mismanaging an AIDS crisis.
But it's possible for China simultaneously to torture people and enrich them. Human and financial capital are growing and being deployed more sensibly, and a ferocious drive and work ethic are galvanizing even remote nooks like Gaoshan.
Comments :
0 comments to “ ”
Post a Comment