How valid is the claim that industrialization in China has created internal pressures

for the Chinese authority and society?

Industrialisation in China started in 1978 when Deng Xiao Ping began his Four
Modernisations program. Chinas economy grew at an annual rate of 9.6% from
1979 to 2000. In 2007, it grew to an astounding 11%. It is rapidly becoming the
worlds largest mobile phone market. It is overtaking Japan as Asias largest
manufacturer of personal computers. Today, it is the second largest economy in the
world and is poised to take over the US by 2035. However, industrialization has vast
impact in a mixture of negative and positive ways.
Industrialisation has created domestic pressure for the Chinese authority and
society because the rural urban divide that it has brought about is a source of much
tension. Deng Xiao Pings four modernizationsagriculture, industry, defence,
science and technologyinitially benefitted peasants, party bureaucrats on the
coast, and urban workers in coops. Students, intellectuals, and urban dwellers had
been sent to the inland areas during the Cultural Revolution and not allowed to
return to the cities. Since they had marched and demonstrated to help bring Deng
to power, believing he would improve their lot, they felt betrayed and formed a
protest movement that ultimately culminated in the 1989 showdown in Tiananmen
Square. The official response was quite harsh but, in an effort to defuse their anger,
Deng instituted the second set of reforms focused more on industrialization. These,
in turn, disadvantaged other groups, largely peasants and farmers, especially in the
remote areas. Today, in China, the rural countryside suffers not only from a
changing economy but from rampant corruption on the part of local and provincial
officials. Their land is confiscated with little or no compensation. At best they
become underemployed labourers. This is one problem that will be exacerbated by
Chinas WTO membership because they are not the worlds most efficient famers.
All of this contributes to civil unrests. Rapid industrial growth has meant the
government has focused on building in the urban manufacturing centers. Individual
entrepreneurs are also seizing farmers land to build upscale suburban
developments, often in cahoots with corrupt local officials.
Rural households do not receive the same rate welfare benefits that urbanites do,
either, in terms of education, medical care, and pensions. Many leave to try to find
work in the cities, leaving the rural areas depleted of needed workers and markets.
Even those who move to the cities as migrant workers in search of a better life are
often discriminated against by hukou which means they are not considered urban
residents and so are not eligible for housing. Unless they are provided a factory
dormitory by their temporary employers, they must construct their own makeshift
housing. This creates resentment on the part of urban dwellers that see them as
adding to urban squalor while their cities are being modernized and rebuilt.
China is a vast and varied nation that has always been divided between the more
prosperous, technologically advanced coastal regions of the east and the more

traditional interior on which the coastal regions depend for food and other
resources. Inequality is deepening in China, creating a massive underclass but with
growing access to global telecommunications technology. Bridging this gap between
rich and poor, rural and urban, is crucial to Chinas future prosperity, economically
and politically.
Chinas industrialization, like that of all other nations, has led to increasing
urbanization. Around each major city, farms are being converted to industrial parks
and apartment buildings or razed to create transportation networks. They are
merging with towns that are also constructing building and factories, creating a
megalopolis. In the next 10 to 15 years about 250-300million people are expected
to move from agriculture to non-agriculture work, leading to a massive influx of
rural to urban migrants. The government and the private sector is investing in
building factories, housing, roads, and all the other infrastructure elements
necessary to sustain an industrial economy but there are problems. Some are
similar to any urbanization process ie increasing crime. Others are more specific to
China, Lacking funds, taxes and fees are imposed on farmers to finance schools,
hospitals, roads, and police in even residential and commercial buildings in the
urban areas, creating destitution and unrest in the rural areas. Due to poor design
and quality, even residential and commercial buildings constructed in the 1980s are
crumbling or outdated and reconstruction is necessary.
Chinas industries are also major polluters. Pollution of surface water in the cities is
worsening, rivers are warming from wastewater dumping, and red tides are
increasing along the coastline where many industries are clustered. Rural industries
are polluters as well, due to lack of funds to update equipment and increase energy
efficiency. Chinas energy economy is largely dependent on burning coal. Increased
consumption and inefficient cleaning methods mean that particle levels in Chinas
cities are worse than in most industrial nations. China is one of few nations in the
world with an acid rain problem, mainly from the sulfur dioxide emissions of burning
coal. From 1950 to 1990, Chinas carbon dioxide emissions grew from 1% to 11% of
the global total. By 2001, it had grown to 27% of the global total. It now ranks third,
behind the US and Russia, in national emissions. Its per capita emission rate in 1990
was only half the global average. Chinas increasing population, dependence on the
burning of coal, and rapid industrialization mean the per capita rate is rising. In
2003, 2million automobiles were sold in China, doubling the number already on the
road. At least an extra one million a year are expected to be added throughout the
decade. Chinas emissions alone would exceed the 1990s total global emissions. In
2004, 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world were in China.
Much is made of Chinas commitment to education and many in the West both fear
and envy the Chinese system. It is true that China has begun investing heavily in
education, including higher education. However, there are many lingering problems.
In 1999, adult illiteracy in China was 16.6% or 200million people. Even as more
children are receiving more education, there is still a sizable number unable to read

or write. In terms of higher education, most efforts initially involved sending

students abroad and accounted for only about 2% of the population. About 2/3
never returned to China. Also, China has began to expand its own university system,
in terms of both quality and quantity. While the percentage of students enrolled in
universities is still low, Chinas large size means the numbers can still stagger. In
2004, according to futurist, Medard Gabel, China had 15million college students as
compared to 12million in the US. Again, there is a large discrepancy, at all
educational levels, between the urban coasts and the rural inland. Rural primary
schools often lack supplies, have poor conditions, and teachers who themselves
have only primary school education. Womens education in China is not equal to
that of men. In 1958, girls accounted for only 28% of primary school enrolments. By
1958, they had risen to 38% and by 1976, 45%. In secondary schools, the
percentage of girls rose from 26% in 1951 to 40% in 1998. The university proportion
has been slower to climb and women still account for a disproportionate share of
illiterates, though the gap is narrowing.
As production and consumption increase, and more educated peoples push for a
slice of the economic pie, industrialization tends to create a larger middle class. This
is happening in China but the process is a bit different from that of the West.
Industrialisation in the West created a new middle class but they were separate
from the old nobility and used their newfound clout to overthrow the nobility and
create pluralist democracies. In China today, political and business leaders descend
from the imperial rulers and peasants who became Red Guard bureaucrats. They
may be engaged in private enterprise, making higher incomes, but their attitudes
are those of the existing order rather than being independent of it. They may see
the need for enforceable civil laws to protect the booming but fragile new economy
but they do not often push for anything beyond slow reform because they have no
desire to threaten political stability.
Current Chinese leaders depend on the countrys strong sense of nationalism.
Whether they are conservatives, moderates or reformers, they agree that the wellbeing of their country requires economy growth and social rights like education, the
right to work health care, shelter, food, and clothing. They do not believe these
include freedom of speech, assembly, or religion. They have eliminated most of the
totalitarian aspects of communism while retaining the authoritarianism. They
purport to rule for the people instead of by the people. They stress the Confucian
values of order, stability, and rule from above. A breakdown of order is a fear of
many Chinese. Thus many Chinese today have accepted the status quo, meaning
they accept that CCP is the only alternative that could hold China together and it is
good for the Chinese nation and nationalism. Western democracy does not matter
anymore as long as economic wealth is continually generated. It is an ood sort of
twist on Adam Smiths view that the only legitimate goal of a national government
is a steady increase in the overall wealth of its nation.

Chinese leaders understand that their power is challenged as industrial and

economic reforms take off and some people become less dependent on the
government. Industrial growth has also led to enhanced economic well-being for
some groups while it has endangered the well-being of others. This has led to
repeated civil unrests. Workers and peasants frequently strike and hold
demonstrations. It is hard to devise a way to stop the economic problems and
corruption in the countryside without slowing the industrial and economic progress
of the coastal cities. However, the government also realizes that slowing this
progress would create its own dangers. An economic slump would likely hurt all
groups and create more general unrests. They are hoping that keeping the
government stable while slowly liberalizing will keep most members of society on
board but it is a delicate balancing act.