May You Live In Interesting Times

In case you are not familiar with the title, it is a deliciously ambiguous old Chinese toast--or curse. At the moment the words are relevant to China, or at least its government.

The Mandarinate has been successfully riding the tiger for some years now, balancing the change from a disastrously mismanaged command economy to one with all the hallmarks of a somewhat free market with the necessity of maintaining tight, centralised control over all social, political, and intellectual matters. To date the Men of the Forbidden City have been successful in their application of coercion--including naked force--and the inducements of capitalism.

Below the well groomed surface so perfectly displayed during the Olympic "coming out party," China and the majority of its population have been seething. It must be recalled that the overwhelming majority of the Chinese population are still rural dwellers. That is, they are peasants, the ruthlessly exploited mass upon whose backs the entire edifice of Chinese prosperity rests.

Ground down by both official taxes and the less formal exactions of local Party goons, many peasants have to have second jobs. As a result, many work in the other pillar supporting the Chinese "economic miracle." That second pillar is the coal mines.

China has the largest coal reserves in the world surpassing even those of the US, which was long thought to be the Saudi Arabia of coal. Coal is China's energy prime mover. Tons beyond count (unless you are so foolish as to trust the official figures) churn from mines owned by the state, mines owned by the private sector, and mines "owned" unofficially by individuals and syndicates who do not bother to register, preferring to pay bribes to easily found compliant officials.

To say the mines are unsafe is make the understatement of the millennium. Ignoring the "official" body count which is gruesome enough, a conservative estimate of forty thousand fatalities in China's mines can be offered. This means that at least five people--men, women and children as young as five--die for every million tons mined. By comparison the death per million tons in the US is approximately 0.05.

Rural deaths, rural poverty, rural exploitation do not and never have bothered the Chinese central government. It didn't bother Mao when during the Great Leap Forward of 1957 to 1961 as many as thirty million peasants died in the famine. The famine, after all, was created and maintained by government efforts.

What matters to the government is the urban population. It is in the cities that enough people to achieve a critical mass for street demonstrations or worse occurs. While you won't read about it in any Chinese media, the rate and size of protests in urban China has been escalating.

It is difficult to the point of impossibility to get a firm handle on the prevalence of demos in China given the tight censorship imposed by the central regime on all methods of communication, but it seems fair given data available from Chinese citizens willing to run the risks and post, that at least ten thousand street protests occur every year over the past five years. From the available data the rate seems to be increasing.

The current global recession has hurt the Chinese economy. The pain of layoffs and factory closings is bound to increase. While the Mandarinate will keep the lid on the actual figures, the likelihood that urban unemployment will reach or exceed ten percent in the next six months is very high.

While the regime will further increase its domestic stimulus efforts as well as social welfare expenditures, the past record of the government in actually, meaningfully addressing the needs of the lowest strata of urban society is very poor. (Just take a look at how Beijing handled the "privatization" of the rust belt factories of northeastern China and its human consequences and you get the idea.)

Unemployed urbanites are the Mandarinate's worst nightmare. Even the old men of the regime who look back for guidance to the successful repression of the Pro-Democracy Movement in 1989 including the remarkable removal of it from the public memory realise that it ain't 1989 anymore. Changes in technology coupled with the very success of the last decade of progress along the "capitalist road" have made any repetition unlikely.

The Geek is not given to predicting the collapse of the authoritarian rule in China. Neither is he persuaded by history that the Men of the Forbidden City are lacking in creativity as well as remorseless resolve.

Even if the collapse of the Mandarinate is not in the fortune cookie, the interesting times which confront China and its rulers constitute advantageous times for the United States. The Chinese need us far more than we need them. At least in the economic realm.

Yes, we need Chinese diplomatic efforts to assist in dealing with North Korea, Iran, and Sudan. There are other areas where a lessening of Chinese created speed bumps in the diplomatic road would be nice, even useful.

But, get a grip on this: Without our trade and custom, the Chinese economy sinks faster than the Titanic. Without Wal-Mart and its ilk, China is one hurting puppy.

The new administration should--must--take advantage of this perhaps transient reality. Without so doing we will lose the opportunity to bring critical matters such as North Korea to a successful conclusion. Without taking a tougher approach and grabbing Beijing by its economic testicles, we will not be able to do such good deeds as ending the bloodletting in Darfur.

Now, for the Greens out there, without taking advantage of the present state of Chinese distress and exploiting it to the fullest, there will be no chance at all of Beijing agreeing to realistic limits on its carbon footprint production. (Just keep thinking about all those Chinese coal mines and the power plants, cement factories, steel mills and so on that the coal powers. Then remember that most Chinese coal is "dirty" in its chemical composition.)

Further contraction of the Chinese economy will mean not only does Beijing have to spend more of its semi-stolen foreign currency reserves on welfare and internal stimulus programs, it means as well that the Men of the Mandarinate need to have more and more sleepless nights wondering about the next round of street demonstrations. The next pro-democracy movement. And, the reliability of their mostly peasant origin troops.

May they live in interesting times.