Prompted by Wanning Sun (P&I June 9, 2024), I have just read Yu Yang’s excellent work Private Revolutions. Wanning observes that according to western media the Chinese population is mostly imagined as a monolith and faceless crowd: divided into those who are victims of a repressive Chinese regime, or heroic individuals who dare to defy the system. This is a fallacy.
The four young women whose experiences are detailed by Yu Yang had entirely different experiences during China’s modernisation and their relationship with the Communist Party were also different sometimes good sometimes not so good.
Yu Yang’s book set me thinking on my own attitude towards China and the Communist Party developed during my time working for the World Bank in twenty-three Chinese provinces over the period 1989 to 2005 which covered a substantial period (but not the entire period) of China’s modernisation. Some People who know me might consider that I am an apologist for China possibly because in the face of negative attitudes of most people towards China informed by the mainstream media, I am forced to come to China’s defence. In fact, I consider that the record of the Communist party in China is something of a curate’s egg, neither totally bad nor totally good but something in between..
The period covered by the book encompasses my time working in China and I found its coverage of the various individuals in the book rang true in that there was no universal story common to all people affected by Chine’s ascent to becoming an economic powerhouse, the envy of most developing countries.
Relationship between Communist Party and government
In general, parallel structures exist between the Party and the Government and in State Owned Enterprises. In the lower levels of Government (province, county, township administrative village) one finds considerable variation as to whether the leader (usually termed the mayor) or the Party official takes the lead. I found that is very much dependant on the competence of the individuals involved. On one occasion, when we found the Party official and the mayor working closely together and we asked how the system worked, we were told by the mayor. “I row and he steers”. Competence of individuals also figured largely in population resettlement which was required in many of my projects. In State Owned Enterprises, the Chief Executive is usually a party member eliminating the need for a parallel structure and enabling decisions to be made very quickly but this is not universal.
Corruption
Yu Yang describes several instances of petty corruption. These occurred at the lower levels of government. Xi Jinping’s drive against corruption mostly affected upper levels of government. In my time working there. I found gradual reduction in corruption in procurement in large projects until eventually procurement practices were the most transparent internationally. In the early part of that period. Two of my counterparts were jailed for accepting minor thank you payments. I am certain that corruption still exists at lower levels of Government but China compares favourably to other countries in Asia except Singapore.
Centrally planned versus market economy
Officially China’s economy is a market economy with Chinese characteristics. One might be forgiven for thinking that these are just words and that it is really a pure market economy. It is not. In many instances it is deliberately planned, whether in the scope and type of renewable energy, the number of AI firms, the number of electric vehicles produced, economic growth rate and other measures of economic growth. And I would venture to suggest that this is more efficient than allowing for these factors to be purely market controlled, and the competence of the planners generally exceeds the competence of government ministers in western economies.
At the outset of my last major project in China in 2003, I set out the task ahead of China at that time. The task was stated to be “transitioning China from a command economy to a market economy, from a rural agricultural economy to an urban society focusing on development of institutional frameworks, development of environmentally sustainable infrastructure, while addressing the needs of disadvantaged peoples and regions.” I consider that China has been spectacularly successful at that task. Lifting some 800 million people from abject poverty is but one example of their success.
In the context where China is mainly responsible for Australia’s wealth, it is time to celebrate their achievements rather than to continue to denigrate them.
For more on this topic, P&I recommends:
Barry Trembath
Barry Trembath is a retired hydropower engineer living in Sydney who spent about 45 years working in developing countries living in five before joining the World Bank where he worked for 17 years. He worked in 24 provinces and province level cities in China.