Opinion Sur
Over the past decades China has grown at very high rates enabling hundreds of millions of its inhabitants to exit poverty and integrate into national development. At the same time, a process of social differentiation and inequality -unprecedented in its history- took place. Today China faces the challenge of defining how the ongoing process will continue: what the desired systemic course is and what kind of country, of society, of economy it seeks to build. Over the past decades China has grown at very high rates enabling hundreds of millions of its inhabitants to exit poverty and integrate into national development. However, at the same time a process of social differentiation and inequality unprecedented in its history took place. This so dynamic and filled with tensions process was sustained by the need to initiate first and consolidate later, a transition towards a Chinese society with higher consumption rates and improvements in life standards. The country’s political leadership (integrated by the Central Committee, the Politburo, the Permanent Committee and the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party) imposed a new economic course mobilizing until then held back productive forces. The results achieved included an accelerated growth with strong rural-urban migrations, a leap forward in technologic development, the aforementioned social differentiation and, among other effects, the emergence in a large part of its population of individualistic and consumerist values encouraged by an advertising and commercial organization imported from the West.
Today China faces the challenge of defining how the ongoing process will continue; particularly, what the desired systemic course is and what sort of country, of society, of economy it seeks to build.
Western myopia believes (or expects) China will ‘complete’ its transition towards a market economy, as if that would have been the intention of its politic leadership and of its followers. That perspective claims China will promote greater competition strengthening the private sector so that, same as in Europe, United States and the rest of the Western affluent countries, it will lead the march and from that power platform, the sooner the better, it can have strong influence upon the national fate. This expected kind of Chinese transformation would enshrine capital’s dominance at a global scale.
That is why certain Western ‘analysts’ propose (i) greater independence for foreign banking in China so it can develop and profit without the regulations they have to abide in the world’s largest growing financial market; (ii) dismantling large Chinese State companies despite they have been modernized and reporting large profits, which those ‘analysts’ only attribute to the financial prerogatives they enjoy; (iii) to fight corruption that grows under the wing of public power until it is eliminated through the reduction of the power of the State, as if corruption was not also an endemic evil in Western societies ruled by the private initiative See [[[They have stolen even spring from us->http://opinionsur.org.ar/They-have-stolen-even-spring-from?lang=en]. Opinión Sur, september 2012]] ; (iv) ensuring greater social transparency of what happens in the country and a greater citizen involvement in strategic decisions, something really necessary although, it is worth admitting, neither do those characteristics shine in Western democracies in ‘normal’ times and much less throughout the current crisis they are going through.
These and other issues are ‘analyzed’ by Western observers biased by their own world vision, ideology and interests. Their opinions are presented as unique and universal truths when they actually express very particular perspectives; of course, they are backed by an amazing ideological-media apparatus that makes those voices resound above other multiple strategic options. It would result more significant instead to ask what the Chinese leaders have in mind, what is the logic they intend to impose, what type of systemic rationality they aspire to achieve and to what extent will the current social order be capable of ensuring the new path that is being proposed. A path that, certainly, will never be linear since it is the result of variable circumstances within which the struggles and tensions among diverse forces converging over the national, regional and local leadership carry significant weight.
Critical issues to solve
(i) Motivation/ values /referential utopia
It is understandable that after a long period of deprivations and sacrifices to set the foundations of a new society, and once the system opens to the traditional entrepreneurial capacity of the Chinese people, there would be a strong pendular movement towards the free initiative of millions of individuals. This new economic dynamic has generated permanent increments in the country’s production capacity sustained, on one hand, by the phenomenal expansion of the domestic market and, on the other, by exports making the most of competitive advantages based on important organizational, financial and wage differences.
Emerging middle sectors have in their past an experience of sobriety in expenses and contained needs that when accessing an unknown purchasing power bursts towards an almost unbridled consumerism for non-basic goods and services. In addition to this consumption there is another one of essential goods from rural migrants that do not cease to converge towards urban centers drawn by higher labor opportunities than those they access in their places of origin.
In this context of sudden social mobility, of growing income availability, of satisfaction of withheld basic needs that, once satisfied, slides towards a sort of consumerist alienation, what values emerge instead of the traditional ones?; which becomes the prevailing motivation of the large emerging majorities?; will it be possible to sustain a referential utopia of solidarity and social cohesion?
Do the wheels always turn because of money or when people fall trap to alienation and to those benefiting from it? Maybe people can adhere to other motivations even in times of abundance without succumbing to voracity as long as we are encouraged and educated to let them flourish. Perhaps social peace, supporting the destitute, taking care of the environment, reducing the anxiety, the existential anguish, the disorientation, learning to listen, understanding others, acting fraternally, building communities in which it is peasant to live in, helping those who need to be held, will not end up being mere naiveties, unreachable idealizations, but values that can be adopted as references useful to identify and outline a better course for everyone; utopia sure, but a referential one.
The Chinese citizen, same as the Latin-American, the African, the Asian and now, perhaps much more than before the crisis, the European and the American, will want, know, be able to escape the traps and perversities of societies in which privilege oppresses majorities?; societies in which speculation is awarded, corruption is forgiven, those helpless and vulnerable are punished?
(ii) Systemic managing / leadership
Things do not just happen, they happen because interests become activated, which by force or shrewdness, manage to appropriate very critical spaces of economic, media, political, educational decisions. They are actors of flesh and bone that get privileges at the expense of the rest of our societies and that, consciously or unconsciously, work, operate, to preserve their privileges. Thus they are always aiming to control leaderships at local, national or global level which is an effective way of influencing the systemic managing, determinant of the entire spectrum of social and individual efforts.
Due to a whole series of factors that have been analyzed by contemporary sociology and political economy, today financial capital is in control of the global steering wheel and of most of the national jurisdictions [[Among other texts The casino ruling the world, schemes and traps of financial capitalism can be consulted, by Juan Hernández Vigueras and Global crisis: adjustment or transformation, from the author of this article.]]. The power accumulated by the large financial groups is so strong there is no field where their voices, seldom shamelessly and most of the times disguisedly, do not resound and impose over the rest.
Will it be that they also end up taking over new China’s steering wheel? How to curb a power that in the West is far greater than those of the national States? Is the Chinese consumer, the new affluent sectors or the national political leadership –the market or politics- the one who will determine the country’s new course?
Citizen democratic involvement is an essential political value but, beware, one cannot ignore the high degrees of imperfection Western democracies have, where serious inequality traps condition their capacity to represent the people and to express the full meaning of democracy. The issue is that economic power has an enormous capacity to manipulate public opinion so as to make common citizens end up defending interests that go against themselves. Those interests attached to privilege cannot be exposed transparently: disguising them is part of the privilege’s DNA since it would be impossible to sustain their prerogatives if they were openly announced. For that purpose they count with the complicity of the media and certain sectors in politics and the educational system which support institutions and promote values that interfere with changes and transformations.
(iii) Generation and extraction of value
The Chinese government has decisive influence over what is produced and who produces it: the priority should be social and environmentally safe goods or services, instead of destructive products such as weapons, pollutants, drugs, among others. The country has already decided it will not focus on less elaborated products but on those with aggregate value which are the ones with greater capacity to locally retain multiplying effects in technologic development and work force utilization.
A critical option remains whether China will invest its best efforts in promoting its real economy or enabling financial and commercial speculation’s development, which does not generate but extract value. Speculation that, financially, always tends to sustain itself with doubtful risk management, access to privileged information, taking advantage of unsuspecting, vulnerable actors, conditioning policies and regulators. Value extraction could also turn up in the international sphere if China imposes upon weaker nations heavy conditions in the exploitation of its natural resources (mining, aquifers, forests, fishing) or, as well, imposing unfavorable prices due to its dominant position in the market. The experience of developing countries regarding other western poles of worldwide power has been all too much traumatic.
(iv) Ultimately, who accumulates and what for?
In China, same as in any other economy, a key variable is who produces and, particularly, who of the millions of producers accumulate the main surpluses. The State has enormous influence here since it intervenes in the productive process with its own corporations and through regulations, financing, tax burden distribution and public resource allocation. The State keeps the economy’s steering wheel firmly in its hands and has the majority decision over where and how much is invested, thus shaping the desired model of national and regional development.
The Chinese State gets its resources from diverse sources, among others, (i) collecting taxes, fees and contributions, (ii) financial allocations (it is the world’s main lender), (iii) direct value generation through large State corporations in strategic sectors such as banking, communications, energy sector (where it controls exploration and production), and (iv) indebtedness capacity.
The political leadership understands perfectly well that, once a concentrative accumulation process has begun, the resources that a handful of actors control would sustain political, social and communicational forces which are hard to contain and that will coalesce to reproduce the concentrative dynamic. The prevailing balance of power would change making it harder to introduce reforms to prevent the accelerated social differentiation. The concentration of economic power enables the emergence of oligopolistic markets and the development of competitive advantages among certain privileged actors which allows them to obtain extraordinary profits at the expense of the rest. In addition, as the genesis of the current contemporary crisis shows, economic power concentration tends to impose flexible regulations so as to operate without nearly any restrictions, which facilitates abusive behaviors and evasion mechanisms from legal and social responsibilities.
A strategic option for China is promoting capital formation in those majoritarian sectors that have until now gotten fewer results from the economic growth. The purpose is mobilizing talent and productive potentiality that lies in those absurdly unconsidered sectors and, with it, achieving several effects simultaneously: contributing to the local economic development, improving income distribution and progressively cutting back the dependency on the redistributive policies themselves.
This transformational action does not just end at channeling financing towards majoritarian sectors: it requires being done effectively and responsibly, ensuring sustainability for the productive solutions that are adopted and promoting economic actors that will not affect the environment or social cohesion. For that purpose there are mechanisms and organizational engineering available which allow to articulate today scattered small producers with strategic partners and capital contributors in medium scale companies capable to access higher thresholds of opportunities. This action of wide productive mobilization leads to a new type of national accumulation where the State and large majorities are the pillars of development: they constitute a critical social, economic and therefore political support for a non-concentrative organic growth.
