After visiting China every few years through
the 1970s and 1980s, almost ten years had passed since my last trip in 1992.
So, when members of the Executive Board of the U.S.-China Policy Foundation
were asked to participate in an International Hi Tech Forum in northern Anhui
Province in mid-October, I took the opportunity to visit China again and see
for myself some of the many tremendous changes I have been reading and hearing
about. An added bonus would be the increased credibility that comes after
a recent visit to China. What follows, then, are some very personal and informal
impressions about what I saw in my eight days in the country where I spent
the first fourteen years of my life.
Huaibei City and the Forum
I must admit when I first heard that "The
International Forum of High Technology in China's Second-Rank Cities, 2001"
was to take place in Huaibei, it seemed a most unlikely locale for such a
meeting. Although no one I asked seemed to have heard of this city, I eventually
did find it on a map in northern Anhui, at the intersection of Jiangsu, Shandong,
and Henan provinces. The nearest airport is 50 km. away in Xuzhou in Jiangsu
Province, but we took instead an eight-hour train ride (via Nanjing) to Xuzhou,
giving me an opportunity to see some of the countryside. After an official
greeting at the railroad station by Huaibei's vice-mayor and his entourage,
we were off on a police-escorted drive to our destination.
Under the circumstances, I don't think any of us were prepared for Huaibei.
Proud of its history which goes back thousands of years and located adjacent
to a recently unearthed "lost" section of the Grand Canal, this
city of almost two million people is thriving in every respect. A six-lane
divided highway (in anticipation of future development) brought us to a modern
hotel with large dining room, luxurious meeting rooms, and all the amenities
one would expect in a major city. Huaibei's location in an area of both fertile
land and mineral resources, its buildings (and the many that are still under
construction), its transportation facilities (despite the absence of a local
airport), energetic people, historical sites, and some unique museums, all
suggest that there is a good basis for the optimistic future envisaged for
this city. This optimism is perhaps best exemplified in the development of
a beautiful complex of villas now being completed on a lake front and priced,
as I recall, at between $200,000 to $300,000 each. Most of them have already
been sold. And, of course, a golf course is part of the plans. I might also
mention that the old abandoned coal mines are now filled with water, providing
a beautiful setting for a park that has been developed around these very deep
lakes. And very conveniently, some of the adjacent ponds are now raising impressively
large fish.
The forum itself was the brainchild of Mr. Dato' Joseph Chong, a successful
businessman and CEO of a large Malaysian corporation (among other enterprises).
Chong, the Huaibei City government, and the China International Culture Exchange
Centre in Beijing were its sponsors. While the international representation
was very small, the forum was attended by some 200-300 representatives from
the large number of growing cities located at this intersection of the four
provinces. As suggested by its title, the main purpose of the Forum was to
promote the development of "second-rank cities" by displaying their
achievements and potential, provide an opportunity for them to seek additional
foreign investment and, at the same time, provide useful information to representatives
of towns that have not yet achieved Huaibei's level of success. Since it held
center stage, Huaibei promoted its locale, existing infrastructure, trained
labor force, and the surprisingly favorable investment policies dealing with
land and taxes. Through additional foreign investment, the city hopes to further
develop not only its light industry, metallurgy, telecommunications, pharmacology,
and agricultural processing, but also tourism.
It was an interesting learning experience for all concerned. The USCPF was
ably represented through the much-appreciated presentations made by Board
members Don Anderson, Chas Freeman, and Chi Wang.
Shanghai and Beijing
Because many readers of this newsletter are
themselves frequent travelers to China, they are well aware of the transformations
that have taken place there. There may be others, however, who will find some
amusement in my unabashed wonder at the changes I saw after a ten-year period.
I will be very brief.
It is difficult to imagine another city anywhere in the world undergoing the
type of growth experienced by Shanghai in the past decade. Most striking are
the city's new towering offices, apartments, hotels, and government edifices
and the many that are still under construction. They are incredibly creative
and surely a unique experience for the architects that worked on them. During
the day, the Pudong district sitting across the Huangpu River from the Bund
looks like lower Manhattan, and when lit up at night, like a giant Disney
World. While the traffic on Shanghai's streets tends to be bumper to bumper
(with seemingly more BMWs, Audis, and Buicks than seen on Washington streets),
the intersecting freeway overpasses above the center of the city are a sight
to behold, especially at night when a solid blue glow (invisible during the
day) reflects the headlights of the passing cars. The new building of the
Shanghai Museum of Chinese Art and History and the just completed Museum of
Science and Technology are spectacular must-see sites. It would appear that
every up-scale American and European store has an outlet in Shanghai and,
as I walked the streets, I did not see one store without customers. As for
the masses of people, whether on the main avenues or the side streets, they
all seemed well dressed, engaged, and on the move. Only one Shanghai sight
has not changed since my first trip in 1973: smooching lovers on the Bund.
Beijing is more horizontal and "Chinesey" than the glitzy vertical
Shanghai, but it too has experienced great changes in the past decade. Once
again, the most obvious are the new and imaginative buildings, many still
under construction. As in Shanghai, the city streets are a mass of cars, but
the traffic would be impossible without the freeways, three of which ring
the city. As everywhere else in China, traffic lights are for the timid and
certainly not for pedestrians or bicyclists. Jianguomen, the very broad boulevard
with beautifully tiled sidewalks that runs through the middle of the city,
can be crossed only by way of some most attractive underpasses, many of which
also serve as entrances to the subway system. My guess is that more than 90
percent of the tens of thousands of tourists who crowd the streets of Beijing
are Chinese from other parts of the country. Although there are too many McDonalds
(no egg McMuffins) and Kentucky Fried Chickens (filled at 10am) throughout
the city, Beijing's fancy stores, incredible malls, and large department stores
(all of them crowded) match those in Shanghai in every respect. And in all
three locales we visited, the streets were spotless, the parks were populated
by grandparents herding their little "emperors" and "empresses,"
and flowers, not only in green spaces but in front of buildings and in hanging
baskets along the major streets, bloomed in proliferation. What has not changed
over the years is that almost all Beijing women continue to wear pants, albeit
more stylish and perhaps seasonal.
Some Personal Observations
Clearly, my latest impressions are based on
a short stay in just three cities. On the other hand, my impressions are superimposed
on a long career of China-watching and China-writing. And they are also based
on talking to some Chinese and American friends, as well as conversations
in English and Chinglish with many people in a variety of settings-from some
government officials to a long discussion in a book store with a Chinese doctor
unable to get a visa despite an invitation to do cancer research in Salt Lake
City, to many Chinese youths eager to talk to a foreigner, to two attractive
"students" on the Bund anxious to pursue our discussion in my hotel
room. I will therefore try not to stray too far from what I could conclude
from my observations and painfully limit it to just three points. In all fairness,
however, I will quote an Indian saying I heard the other day: "He who
controls the assumptions, controls the conclusions."
When appropriate, its leaders may say that China is a communist state, but
there seems to be no awareness that Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Zedong thought
are major influences in their policies or actions. Their priorities are obvious:
economic development, stability, and international respect. In private conversations
with U.S. officials, they have admitted that they will hold on to power not
for ideological reasons but primarily because they genuinely believe that
at this time any other form of government will result in chaos and a serious
setback for China and its booming economy. The loose hold that Beijing has
on local governments was clearly evident in Huaibei, where incentives for
foreign investors are most imaginative and surely locally concocted. As for
freedom of expression, while certain topics, well known to the few who might
raise them, are taboo, there seem to be very few restrictions placed on the
country's increasingly diverse media and seemingly no restrictions on what
individuals are willing to discuss in private conversations, even with foreigners.
The Chinese with whom I talked found it difficult to fathom how a notion of
China as a serious threat to the United States could receive serious attention
in Washington. In effect, what they were asking is: are we so stupid that
we would risk everything we have achieved in recent years, ruin the chances
of reunification with Taiwan, negate our hard-gained entry into the WTO, forfeit
the 2008 Olympics, and lose the good will of the world community? There may
be some in the People's Liberation Army hierarchy who want to assume a more
confrontational stand toward the United States. But a serious threat? Not
likely.
Finally, although the Chinese government does indeed make stupid decisions
that provide human rights activists with fodder for their cause, as I already
mentioned, the people are now experiencing unprecedented freedom of action
and expression. More rapid human rights progress will occur only when the
Chinese people become more concerned about human rights as visualized in the
West than with continuing to improve their living standards and assuring a
good education for their children. It will not come by cajoling the Chinese
to play by American rules, but through gradual changes in the leadership and
China's success in managing its trade and economic issues.
