Contemporary China

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the heads-up on the National geographic feature, though I guess I'm a bit late...

My wife's family lives in Jinzhou, one of the Rust Belt cities in northeastern China, in Liaoning province. The town itself was the scene of a crucial battle in the civil war, as it is the rail hub of northern China. Today it's very much running down, with something like 60% unemployment - and no social security. Even in winter, which is brutal, the streets are full of people trying to get by on what they can make from selling food cooked over a small open fire, or by pedalling bicycle taxis... the last time I was there, four years ago, there'd been a bank robbery, not a common occurence but maybe an indication of how desperate poeple were becoming...

Making the transition from a communist state-finaced economy to a corruption-free free market economy has left many Chinese stranded high and dry, and is surely one of the major problems that China has to deal with if it can fulfill its potential as an economic super-power.

Ray[Edit by="rrobinson on Apr 3, 7:44:45 AM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Another timely article surfaced in today's Guardian International (now that we have spring break, I actually have time to go read this good stuff!).

A recent paper by a Professor Paul Sharpe puts forward the rather interesting thesis that China will surge ahead economically chiefly because of its huge population, rather than any other factor. Not sure I agree... what do you think?

Ray

Population, not free trade, behind China and India booms

An academic paper has challenged widely-held views about the emergence of China and India on to the world stage, one of the most important economic phenomena of recent years.

The reasons for the growth of these countries are usually thought to be globalisation, free trade and high wages in developed countries. But a paper by Professor Paul Sharp of the University of Copenhagen suggests the answer is much more prosaic. Drawing on a study of 19th century America for the Economic History Society's annual conference at the weekend, Prof Sharp said America's emergence in the 1800s was due to phenomenal population growth, not the free trade that was sweeping the globe at that time.

The increase in wheat trade between Britain and the United States in the nineteenth century had little to do with falling barriers to trade, but was linked to a rise in production in the US. This was almost certainly the result of large-scale population growth as immigrants flocked to America and became farmers. Prof Sharp's statistical analysis shows that a 1% increase in US production led to a 3% increase in UK imports. US production increased well over 1,000% in the nineteenth century.

The populations of China and India have been outpacing those of western economies for years, so it should be little surprise that most electrical appliances are manufactured in China or that an increasing amount of software outsourcing goes to India.[Edit by="rrobinson on Apr 3, 7:43:43 AM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

China puts a new coal-burning power station on line every week! The pollution this causes will only be exacerbated by the exponantial growth in car use and ownership (interestingly, last night's BBC World News - available on fine PBS stations everywhere - had a feature on just this topic, with the reporter on the spot in Beijing describing how, taking a good deep breath, you can taste the coal at the back of the throat).

Looks like all the post-Kyoto protocols to lessen air (and, more devastatingly, ocean) carbon will be overwhelmed as China's economy takes on a full head of exhaust...

The conclusion of last night's Beijing report was that China and Chinese cities were increasingly suffering under a shroud of air pollution - unspoken was the obvious extension -that these pollutants won't stay neatly within China's political boundaries, but disperse across the globe, and over the Pacific (I read one report that one-third of California's pollution is from China - sounds rather a lot to me, but I think it's probably true that particulates do arrive here from the growing Asian economies).

Ray

[Anonymous]

I was listening to Public Radio about the new relations Japan and China have been sharing. There is indeed a big gulf dividing them because of their histories, but it will be interesting to see if they become more allies or competitors.

[Anonymous]

Something I've been reading a lot about lately is the controversial use of coal in China, especially the large amounts of deaths of coal miners as well as the enormous amount of pollution that the use of coal emits into the atmosphere.
This has obviously been a problem for a number of years, but it has been in the American media recently. I first came across it in a few different magazine articles during the past two months. This sparked an interest in this subject and I recently found another article from the New York Timeshttp://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/business/worldbusiness/11chinacoal.html?ex=1307678400en=e9ac1f6255a24fd8ei=5088partner=rssnytemc=rss&pagewanted=all
According to this article, over 400,000 premature deaths are caused annually due to the sulfur dioxide emissions that are a by product of using coal as an energy source. There are thousands of illegal coal mines in China where there are horrible safety and environmental hazards. This article contains many shocking and eye opening statements, including that China creates so much sulfur dioxide pollution that it is being carried downwind to South Korea, Japan, and even further.
I was surprised to learn that China creates one sixth of the world's sulfur dioxide pollution and that they are the world's leader in mercury emissions.

[Anonymous]

Another current article on Chinese coal mines appeared in Time magazine On March 2, 2007 titled "Where The Coal Is Stained With Blood".
This article focuses more on the horrible conditions that coal miners endure rather than on the environmental damage caused by the coal mines. According to this article, since China relies on coal for over 70% of its energy needs, Beijing has plans to officially open about 40 coal powered electricity generating plants each year for the next few years. This has created a capitalist greed among many Chinese entrepeneurs who open illegal coal mines and become wealthy rather quickly, with little regard for the miners' well being. (Similar to many unregulated or poorly regulated businesses in many places.)
The article mentions a documentary film titled Yuan Shan (Distant Mountain) by filmmaker Hu Jie that covers some of the horrible conditions that coal miners endured over ten years ago. I have been searching for this film to no avail. If anyone finds a copy of it, please let me know because I would really like to view this and possibly use excerpts of it in my classroom.

[clay dube]

On April 20, former US ambassador to China J. Stapleton Roy addressed a USC US-China Institute audience on "The Future of US - China Relations." Roy retired in 2001 from the US Foreign Service after a 45 year career holding the service's highest rank: Career Ambassador. He subsequently went to work as Managing Director of Kissinger Associates, a strategic consulting firm.

You can see his talk at:

http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=61

What do you think of his assessment of what Americans know about China and where China is heading?

The website includes copies of papers and presentations.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for an interesting and thought-provoking post. Is it really possible that one-third of our smog and/or air pollution in California is from particles blown in from China?! You mentioned that China completes a new coal-burning power station every week - I thought coal was considered to be clean-burning and relatively more environmentally friendly than other power alternatives. Given your comment that people in Beijing can taste the coal at the back of their mouths, it doesn't seem as though the coal is burning very cleanly!

[Anonymous]

In today's Los Angeles Times (June 23, 2007), there's an interesting article about China's diplomacy and growing influence around the world. "China's Charm Offensive" on page A23 describes how China is building relationships with nations that want an alternative to the "meddling power of the West." The article lists several nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that are allowing China to invest in their infrastructure, businesses, and development. Most developing nations seem to want to follow China's need for economic progress while not interfering in their internal affairs (unlike what the U.S. does). However, the article points out that in addition to the economic benefits, some leaders of developing nations also want to adopt the totalitarian government of China. A new study was also cited that indicates citizens being less likely to support democrtatic government seems to play into the bigger scheme of why China is more appealing.

[Anonymous]

In the Times Literary Supplement (London) for 1 June 2007, "Checked by Hand," a review of the Tate Liverpool exhibition "The Real Thing: Contemporary art from China," freelance art critic Tanya Harrod notes that it is a great time to be a visual artist in China because contemporary Chinese art is selling for record prices. However, there is a catch to it. As Harrod notes, the biggest buyers of contemporary Chinese art, the US and Great Britain, want their Chinese art to look, for lack of a better word, Chinese. That does not necessarily mean Ming Dynasty landscape paintings. But it does mean art that "employs reassuringly academic mimetic skills to make political points," such as artist Wang Guanyi grafting Western luxury-brand logos onto famous revolutionary posters or artist Shi Xinning inserting Mao's iconic image into famous photographs with arch Andy-Warhol-type results: Mao sunbathing with Peggy Guggenheim, Mao and the Queen Mother, Mao at the Yalta Conference, etc. This kind of hip political art is appreciated by the former Western imperial masters of China as cool and contemporary and yet quintessentially Chinese.

But what about contemporary Chinese artists who want to create art that does not look recognizably Chinese, at least not to Western eyes? Harrod examines some contemporary Chinese artists featured in the Liverpool exhibition who are doing just that: creating art that responds to China's tumultuous social dynamics without catering to Western ideas of what contemporary Chinese art should look like. She discusses artists like Wang Gongxin, whose video "Our Sky is Falling In," about the corrosive effects of change in contemporary China, features Chinese actors, but they could be Chinese-British or Chinese-American. Wang has given his video an international rather than a distinctively Chinese style. Harrod also comments on Cao Fei's video "Whose Utopia?" on the politics of work, filmed in the Osram lighting factory, once located in Hammersmith in England, now out-sourced, along with so much else, to China.

Harrod believes that contemporary Chinese artists like Wang Gongxin and Cao Fei have the right to be international in style rather than distinctively Chinese, although she admits a personal fondness for the use of more traditional material, such as Buddhism and scroll paintings, and notes that these older influences were the central focus of an exhibition last year at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, "Between Past and Future: New photography and video from China," where even Cao Fei himself mixed more traditional Chinese imagery with the modern worlds of anime and video games in "COS Players." I must admit that I agree with Harrod, that I like my Asian art to look more Asian than anonymously international, that I prefer Chinese and Japanese period films to contemporary dramas, and that I am more likely to visit a Zen temple than a Hello Kitty boutique. This is unhip and perhaps even politically incorrect and yet I think Harrod and I have more than a few co-conspirators in this reactionary attitude. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we in the West, despite our marginalization of Asia on the one hand and our mistreatment of Asians on the other, still feel, hope, believe that we have much to learn from Asia and Asian artists and we want them, therefore, to keep looking and acting like Asians rather than something like us. But whatever Harrod and I think, Chinese contemporary artists will do what they want to do and not what the West wants to see.

(For those planning to catch the exhibition in Liverpool, it closed 10 June, but the artists and some of their work are no doubt available, untraditionally, online.)

Leigh Clark
Monroe High School

[Anonymous]

This is interesting and quite a reality that some have foreseen coming . This might be a backlash directed at the Bush Administration, but I think that is too simplistic. The other nations see America having so much material wealth and living way beyond our means that it may border on the absurd. Also, with so much wealth, how we do not invest in the things to make us competitive-education, helping the poor, our infrastructure, health care, etc. And other nations are witnessing our fascination and voyeurism with all things superficial and, simply stated, we are not practicing what we preach when we try to impart values. Also, other nations see our imperialistic tendencies and our rationale of spreading Democracy in ways that are less then Democratic, and we see the backlash. The opposite of that is always more control of the masses, which is why the article cites sympathy for totalitarian ideas. Democracy works only when we see examples of Democracy working.

Our culture may be a turn-off for some, but I think our role in the world as a leader globally has been cast into question by our actions. If we remain oblivious to this trend and way of thinking, it could damage our status politically, and our place on the world stage could be in jeopardy. Don't think it can't happen.

[Anonymous]

I would like to see China look into using wind power for provide energy for there greater energy needs. I would also like to see the ocean waves used for generating energy. Wouldn't it be great if China decided to take the moral high road for the good of its people and planet?[Edit by="skiwasz on Jul 3, 1:22:49 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Yes, it seems like we are in bed economically with China. We depend on them for cheap goods and they depend on us to purchase them. The world economy is what dictates the politics of our time. Will we ever outgrow the market mentality? I hope to live to see that day.

[Anonymous]

I read an article in May 2007 issue of Faces magazine (for kids) about the problems the modernization of China is posing for the preservation of the Great Wall. It discusses how much of the Great Wall is in ruins and the many reasons why. Tourism is to blame for much of the deterioration, along with vandalism and erosion. Other causes of the deterioration are nearby building projects, sections of the wall being removed to build highways, and the trend of throwing wild parties on or next to the wall.

Recent laws have been passed to help preserve the Great Wall by making grafitti, carving, removing parts, throwing parties on, and driving on the Great Wall all illegal. The International Friends of the Great Wall (IFGW) is a society dedicated to preserving the Great Wall and has employed farmers and rangers part-time to patroll the wall and the paths leading to it.

Modern technology is also being used to preserve the wall. Planes, sensing devices, and satellites are being used to check the condition of the wall.

I think this article would be very interesting for my elementary aged students to read and discuss. The idea of using modern technology and new laws to protect an ancient structure is great topic.

[Anonymous]

There has been a lot of media attention to Chinese problems lately. We had the food scare not too long ago, the toy scandal, and recently the implication that the safety inspections on aircraft (china airlines disaster) is not up to international standards. we are forced to wonder if their fast growth is a factor, media sensationalism, or a clever ploy to discredit products from a growing competitor.

[Author]

Posts