China II
For all the talk about China's vertiginous progress, very little is said about its poor and underrepresented, mainly peasants that border on poverty and lack any voice on the Leviathan that is the Chinese society. The NYT frames that situation with the tragic story of one gifted student that died because the market forces that identify one of the most powerful economies of the world also lack compassion:
China has the world's fastest-growing economy but is one of its most unequal societies. The benefits of growth have been bestowed mainly on urban residents and government and party officials. In the past five years, the income divide between the urban rich and the rural poor has widened so sharply that some studies now compare China's social cleavage unfavorably with Africa's poorest nations.
For the Communist leaders whose main claim to legitimacy is creating prosperity, the skewed distribution of wealth has already begun to alienate the country's 750 million peasants, historically a bellwether of stability.
The countryside simmers with unrest. Farmers flock to the cities to find work. The poor demand social, economic and political benefits that the Communist Party has been reluctant to deliver.
For the Communist leaders whose main claim to legitimacy is creating prosperity, the skewed distribution of wealth has already begun to alienate the country's 750 million peasants, historically a bellwether of stability.
The countryside simmers with unrest. Farmers flock to the cities to find work. The poor demand social, economic and political benefits that the Communist Party has been reluctant to deliver.
All this growth and progress and development in China makes me wonder about the moment in which the social and environmental costs start weighing them down. China has an incredible resource base, with labor being its strongest point, but in the same vein its weakest point: social costs, brought about by the increasing dissatisfaction with living conditions and wealth gap will drive its costs higher. At the same time, the pressure that Chinese consumption puts on raw materials means that in the long term, technological advanced ways of production, recycling, and long lasting products, will have a resurgence. Finally, the environmental effects of mass production in the scales required by the Chinese society will necessarily drive prices through the roof.
Right now there are only few parameters to involve in the discussion. However, as the different factors such as fair jobs and environmentally friendly practices are introduced into the international trade equations, the preponderance of China just because of the size of its market fades somewhat, showing the need for a more sophisticated and elaborated wealth redistribution system and manufacturing process.
Too soon to tell.
via MeFi