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| China at 60: Showing off |
| Sunday September 27, 2009 |
| Sixty years ago when Chairman Mao and his comrades-in-arms established the Peoples Republic of China, the world did not know how to react. Winston Churchill's description of Russia - A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma - seemed to fit China of 1949 more than Russia. At that time, China was a desperately poor country which had just come out of a long, bloody and enervating civil war that brought the communists to power. For much of the first thirty years of its existence, New China, as the People's Republic calls itself, the country struggled to come to grips with its enormous problems brought about by a huge population and grinding poverty. It was as if the country and its leaders were following Mao's dictum: Once all struggle is grasped, miracles are possible. The struggle seemed unending. But the miracle happened two years after Chairman Mao's death as China opened its economy in 1978. Ever since then, the world has watched in awe, its rapid economic progress and peaceful rise. The change is astonishing but not entirely unexpected. Thirty years of sustained economic reforms and consequent prosperity has given a new confidence to the leadership. The Chinese economy is now the third largest in the world. Nothing symbolises this change than Shenzhen, a city on the edge of China's southern tip, closer to Hong Kong than to Beijing. A simple but radical idea by Mao's chosen successor, Deng Xiaoping, not only transformed Shenzhen from a sleepy fishing village to a throbbing commercial centre but also fundamentally altered the Chinese economy. This also set the stage for China's rise as an economic and military superpower Back in 1978, no one even in China had perhaps heard of Shenzhen. Most of its residents were farmers, barely surviving on less than 5,000 yuans a year. Thirty years later, the decision to set up a special economic zone here has benefitted most residents in this boom town the now have an average annual income of over 40,000 yuans. But if Shenzhen represents the new, brash China, Shanghai, perhaps the most well-known Chinese city across the world continues to retain the importance it had even a century ago. Shanghai is China's 2nd most populous city, and also its most cosmopolitan. Now, Shanghai is planning to go a step further to transform itself as one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world. The Maglev or magnetic levitation train is an indication of this future trend. Plush, fast, furiously fast, at 301 km an hour, the maglev is not yet the most favourite means of transport in Shanghai but it certainly is the city's pride and like the train, the new development area in Pudong is futuristic. Perhaps because of this single-minded focus, China's next big event after the Olympics, the World Expo is coming to Shanghai in 2010. Like everything else in China, the scale is grand, indeed intimidating. 150 nations, 5,000 acres of exhibition space, the entire manufacturing world will be in Shanghai for six months trying to impress the Chinese, easily the world's largest consumer base. But amidst all the hype and hoopla, there are tiny, very tiny cautioning voices about what remains to be done. As a senior Chinese minister says: "Please don't go by what you see in the big cities. We still have a large population that lives in absolute poverty, earning less than two dollars a day and are poorer than many SAARC countries. Coming from a minister, this admission is all the more remarkable but at another level it also shows why the world should watch China more keenly then ever. Despite monstrous economic progress and an assured place at the top of international order, Beijing continues to remain realistic. Perhaps that's the secret behind China's transformation. Today China is the fulcrum around which the world revolves, be it in tackling the global economic crisis or in attempts to rein in a rouge nation-state like North Korea. Every time one visits China, one can't but notice the giant economic strides made by large parts of China. Even in Tibet, China has managed to raise the economic stakes of the new generation of Tibetans to a higher level, blunting in the process much of the pro-Dalai Lama sentiments. Today, the US is forced to accept China as an equal in most international forums. Its military is modernising rapidly, pouring in billions of dollars in building capability that is focused on making China a military super-power within the next decade. Years ago, Chairman Mao had said: In waking a tiger, use a long stick. The world is still wary of China and keeps a distance. On the eve of China's 60th anniversary celebrations on October 1, the world perhaps needs to keep this in mind and realize that in the case of New China, political power does not merely flow out of the barrel of the gun but is perhaps determined more by the currency reserve in a country's exchequer. (NDTV's Defence and Strategic Affairs Editor, Nitin Gokhale has travelled to China every year since 2006. He will be updating the blog every day during his stay in Beijing through the week). |
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A student of conflicts, insurgencies and wars, Nitin Gokhale has spent 26 years reporting on military and militants from various hostile fields like India's north-east, Kashmir valley, the Kargil war, China and Sri Lanka, among others. He's currently NDTV's Defence and Strategic Affairs Editor.
