The recent recall of paint-laden children’s toys, toothpaste and other goods imported from China may well encourage safety reforms (or the death of Chinese health officials, as punishment is often meted out there) from the number one source of U.S. imports in the world. It won’t, however, solve a tide of other problems plaguing the nation as it further industrializes, including the destruction of rural life for the millions of villagers excluded from their country’s economic transformation.
Evidence of the civil unrest comes in the form of riots among farmers and others not profiting from the country’s industrial boom, which numbered 87,000 in 2005, compared to a mere 8,700 in 1993, according to an article in Adbusters magazine. Specific rural areas, like Dongzhou village in southern China, have been sites for deadly armed conflicts between police and residents, as poor residents demand compensation for the construction of power plants and other projects on land they used to farm.
Unfortunately, the benefits of economic booms are not equitably allocated to all citizens of an industrializing country, and many, especially the uneducated and right-less, often get the short end of the stick. This inequality is exaggerated further in a country like China, where poor villagers still living by the rules of the 15th century have never known property rights, or what it means to own something apart from the government. So when these farmers’ lands suddenly become prime real estate for the construction of a power plant, a toy factory or some other institution of capitalist development, they are often not fairly compensated for the loss of a lifestyle now becoming quickly obsolete.
So, they often take to the streets, where they are paid for their land in the form of bullets and bruises from police-hired thugs, whom the government finds cheaper to employ than actually paying the villagers for their resources, both in a monetary sense as well as in accountability, as a nascent national press and a heavily regulated Internet prevent such news from coming to light.
These conflicts have become a regular occurrence in the Chinese countryside and in poor urban areas, where the gap between the very rich and the very poor has been so exaggerated that the wealthy are often above the law, able to bribe themselves out of any legal conflict involving the working poor, who have no such recourse.
In 2005, a riot broke out among workers angered at police indifference to the injury of a bicycle rider on his way to work, who, after being hit by a car driven by the owner of a local hospital, had his legal rights ignored.
Unfortunately, this duality of Chinese life is not only the product of a loose legal structure, but principally is due to the influence of world goods and financial markets, who have financed this economic development. Every year, through the purchase of billions of dollars of imports from the burgeoning country, as well as billions of dollars of financial capital flowing into the country’s business, both investors and consumers are to blame for providing the motor for this economic upheaval.
This is not to say that we should stop purchasing cheap, Wal-Mart distributed consumer items, as some have suggested, or refrain from reaping high returns on emerging markets funds pouring money into the country, which would certainly help, but to recognize, at the very least, that in the globalized world that we inhabit, little that we do thousands of miles away from a country like China can be felt in the everyday struggles of its citizens.
Joshua is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at joshuamalina@gmail.com.