The yin and yang of China's contradictions: prosperity is only a part of the big picture, and a relatively small part at that

National Catholic Reporter, April 11, 2003 by Robert J. McClory

By mid-November it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas at the Regal East Asian Hotel in Shanghai. A large angel blowing her horn and an equally large neon reindeer had been installed on the overhang of the entranceway, and festive lights were glowing in the lobby. Christmas, in fact, seemed to be coming early all over China. Newspaper ads and store windows promised bargain prices during "Happy Shopping Season."

As my wife Margaret and I discovered during a three-week tour of the country, it's not that the new regime in Beijing has been converted to Christianity, The surprising Yuletide cheer was just the latest manifestation of China's obsession with all things Western. The religious study tour, organized by Maryknoll Sr. Janet Carroll, executive director of the U.S. Catholic China Bureau, took 16 Americans to eight cities and a variety of locales off the beaten path. We saw a busy nation full of vitality with productivity that may equal that of the United States in a decade, with a potential to become, as some experts predict, the world's next superpower before the middle of this century. We also came to realize that China is a land where contradictions abound and every yin has to be balanced with a yang.

Enchantment with Western goods and styles could not be ignored in Shanghai (population approaching 17 million) where towering signs along its historic waterfront touted Canon cameras, Nestle food products, Volkswagen cars and a dozen other Western brand names. Nor could it be overlooked on the streets of Beijing (population 12 million) where well-dressed young people chatted on cell phones or huddled over their food in McDonald's or Starbucks or Colonel Sanders (whose smiling Kentucky features are far more visible in China than those of Mao Tse Tung).

There are presently more than 2.2 million foreign companies operating in China. U.S. firms alone invested $35 billion in the country in 2001, and there are lots more where that came from. For example, hotel giants Best Western, Ritz Carlton and Hyatt recently announced plans to make major entrances into China next year.

Meanwhile, public works and private construction projects are everywhere as the nation rushes to keep up with all this investment. New streets, new superhighways, new parks, new malls, new museums and art galleries, towering new office and apartment complexes line the horizon in many cities. Our Chinese guide joked that the crane--the construction crane--is now the country's new national bird.

Chinese companies produced 116 million tons of steel in the first eight months of 2002, 22 percent more than in the same period in 2001. China Telecom, a mammoth telephone company that hooked up with 20 million new residential and business customers in 2001, recently opened offices in Washington to offer services to U.S. corporations doing business in China. Each of the country's two major oil producers, PetroChina and China Petroleum and Chemical, is building extensive pipelines into the central and northern regions, setting the stage for major competition between the two. Then there's the country's biggest building project since the Great Wall: the controversial Three Gorges dam, 1.5 miles wide, creating a reservoir 400 miles long.

Privately owned companies are also springing up in China like bamboo shoots after a summer rain. In November the country's first privately financed technology exchange was approved, in the northern city of Dahlian, where investors have poured $121 million into technology research and production during the last three years. In every city we visited there was an abundance of local entrepreneurship: everything from upscale clothing, food and electronic goods outlets to tiny mom-and-pop groceries.

All this growth is the direct result of the "Opening Up" that began in the late 1970s under Deng Xiaoping and has been continued under Jiang Zemin; its most recent, dramatic manifestation is China's entry into the World Trade Organization. What was anathema under Mao--free market, private investment, competition--is now approved and acceptable up to a point.

But such prosperity is only a part of the big picture, and a relatively small part at that. Richard Longworth, senior correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and a frequent visitor to Asia, estimated there are more than 100 million Chinese who are plugged into this modern economy, living at or well above middle-class Standards. However, he added, "There are more than I billion Chinese who aren't."

We caught a glimpse of this other China. Even in thriving cities like Beijing, scattered amid the ultramodern high-rises were older, badly maintained apartment buildings with drying laundry and bundles of leeks hanging out the windows. It was not necessary to get more than a few miles from a city's center to encounter narrow, unpaved streets packed with small one-story wood or mud-brick houses, the residents clustered outside, some cooking food, others selling homemade objects. No shopping malls jammed with quality goods here. Farther out (but sometimes still within view of the high-rises) were the rice paddies, some no bigger than a typical American back yard. The scattered homes here were crumbling, many with bricks or tin piled on top to either keep the rain out or the roof from blowing away. Transportation was by bicycle, mule cart or human, foot. Later, as we boated along the Li River, surrounded by beautiful mountains, we saw women washing clothes on the rocks, boatmen in rickety sampans fishing or harvesting seaweed, and water buffalo swimming or grazing along the shore. The contrast between the two Chinas was stark, like passing suddenly from the 21st century to the feudal 17th.