Apart from restoring the country’s unity, the central task facing the PRC was industrialization. To this end, it engaged in a huge project of land redistribution and the creation of large communes, from which it extracted considerable agricultural surpluses in the form of peasant taxes, which it then used to invest in the construction of a heavy industry sector. Its economic policy marked a major break with past practice, eschewing the use of the market and relying instead on the state and central planning in the manner of the Soviet Union. Despite the wild vicissitudes of Mao’s rule, China achieved an impressive annual growth rate of 4.4 per cent between 1950 and 1980, [294] more than quadrupling the country’s GDP [295] and more than doubling its per capita GDP. [296] This compared favourably with India, which only managed to increase its GDP by less than three times during the same period and its per capita GDP by around 50 per cent. [297] China ’s social performance was even more impressive. It enhanced its Human Development Index (a measure of a country’s development using a range of yardsticks including per capita GDP, living standards, education and health) [298] by four and a half times (in contrast to India’s increase of three and a half times) as a result of placing a huge emphasis on education, tackling illiteracy, promoting equality (including gender) and improving healthcare. [299] This strategy also enabled China to avoid some of the problems that plagued many other Asian, African and Latin American countries, such as widespread poverty in rural areas, huge disparities of wealth between rich and poor, major discrepancies in the opportunities for men and women, large shanty towns of unemployed urban dwellers, and poor educational and health provision. [300] The price paid for these advances, in terms of the absence or loss of personal freedoms and the death and destruction which resulted from some of Mao’s policies, was great, but they undoubtedly helped to sustain popular support for the government.
The first phase of Communist government marked a huge turnaround in China ’s fortunes. During these years, the groundwork was laid for industrialization and modernization, the failure of which had haunted the previous century of Chinese history. The first phase of the PRC, from 1949 to 1978, reversed a century of growing failure, restored unity and stability to the country, and secured the kind of economic take-off that had evaded previous regimes. Despite the disastrous violations and excesses of Mao, the foundations of China ’s extraordinary transformation were laid during the Maoist era. The 1949 Revolution proved, unlike that of 1911, to be one of China ’s most important historical turning points.
5. Contested Modernity
Since we got there first, we think we have the inside track on the modern condition,
and our natural tendency is to universalize from our own experience. In fact, how
ever, our taste of the modern world has been highly distinctive, so much so that John
Schrecker has seen fit to characterize the West as ‘the most provincial of all great
contemporary civilizations’… Never have Westerners had to take other peoples’
views of us really seriously. Nor, like the representatives of all other great cultures,
have we been compelled to take fundamental stock of our own culture, deliberately
dismantle large portions of it, and put it back together again in order to survive.
This circumstance has engendered what may be the ultimate paradox, namely that
Westerners, who have done more than any other people to create the modern world,
are in certain respects the least capable of comprehending it.
Paul A. Cohen, Discovering History in China
When a Western tourist first sets foot in Shanghai, Tokyo or Kuala Lumpur, peers up at the shiny high-rise buildings, casts an eye over the streets teeming with cars, walks around the shopping malls filled with the latest, and often familiar, goodies, his reaction is frequently: ‘It’s so modern!’, and then, with barely a pause for breath, ‘It’s so Western.’ And so, at one level, it is. These are countries in which living standards have been transformed — in a few cases, they are now on a par with those in the West. It is hardly surprising then that they share with the West much of the furniture and fittings of modernity. There is a natural tendency in all of us — an iron law perhaps — to measure the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar: we are all relativists at heart. As we see objects and modes of behaviour that we are accustomed to, so we think of them as being the same as ours. When we recognize signs of modernization and progress, we regard them as evidence that the society or culture is headed in the same direction as ours, albeit some way behind. As yet one more McDonald’s opens in China, it is seen as proof positive that China is getting more Western, that it is becoming ever more like us.
Of course these impressions are accentuated by the places frequented by Westerners. Businessmen land at an international airport, travel by taxi to an international hotel, go to meetings in the financial district and then return home. This is the ultimate homogenizing experience. Modern airports are designed to look the same wherever they may be, so give or take an abundance of Chinese eateries, Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok Airport could be Paris, Munich or Montreal. International hotels are similarly place-less, designed to meet an international formula rather than to convey any local flavour: in the lobby of an international hotel, one could be forgiven for thinking that most men on the planet wear suits, speak English and read the International Herald Tribune.
One might think that the experience of the expatriate who chooses to live in East Asia for a period is more illuminating. And sometimes it is. But all too often they inhabit something akin to a Western cocoon. A significant proportion of Westerners who live in East Asia are based in Singapore or Hong Kong, city-states which have gone out of their way to make themselves attractive to Western expats. Hong Kong, as a British colony for nearly a century and a half, still bears the colonial imprint, while Singapore, more than any other place in the region, has sought to make itself into the Asian home of Western multinationals, a kind of Little West in the heart of Asia. It is hardly surprising then that precious few expats in these city-states make any attempt to learn Mandarin or Cantonese: they feel there is no need. The great majority live in a handful of salubrious, Western-style residential ‘colonies’, enjoying a life of some privilege, such that for the most part they are thoroughly insulated from the host community: living in the Mid-Levels area on Hong Kong Island or Discovery Bay is a very different experience from Shatin in the New Territories.
[294] Maddison,
[295] Ibid., p. 552. See also Desai, ‘ India and China ’, p. 11.
[296] Maddison,
[297] Ibid., pp. 552, 562.
[298] The Human Development Index (HDI) is an index combining measures of life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment and GDP per capita for countries worldwide. It is claimed as a standard means of measuring human development. It has been used by the United Nations Development Programme since around 1990.