Countryside Development in the Post-Mao Period - Essay Example

Governance of the Government of the People’s Republic of China (PROC) in the Context of Countryside Development in the Post-Mao Period” Introduction The emergence of China, hereinafter referring to the People’s Republic of China (PROC), as a world economic power gives birth to many opinions and assumptions. Prominent line of thought is reflected by the notion that “people in China are much better off than they were fifteen years ago. This presents opportunities and challenges for the regime.” This, like any idea for that matter, warrants further scrutiny. This connotes to the effects of Chinese governance to the uplifting of its peoples’ lives. Thus, this paper revolves to the problem, that is, how has governance of the Government of the PROC affected countryside development during the Post-Mao years? Countryside or rural China is chosen on the basis that the majority of the Chinese are in rural areas. An assessment of how majority of the stakeholders (the Chinese living in the countryside) benefit from the economic growth of the PROC is essential to qualify the success of being a world power of the developing country. Therefore, a grasp of the policies is important for policies are statements on how the Chinese leadership grapples issues. Moreover, the timeline of this research is beginning from the crucial years of 1978-1979, the time when Maoist China became Dengist. Policies and Programs of the PROC Tackling Countryside Development The establishment of the PROC in 1949 heralded a victory for the proletariat’s struggle. Many in this working class are farmers who were mostly concentrated in rural China. Hence, it is understandable that development of the agriculture sector and the rural areas remains a priority in a largely agricultural country. In the early years of the People’s Republic, in which Mao Zedong was the leader, the principle of collective agriculture was the primary basis in settling policy incongruity. “Ideological imperatives ensured that under Mao, the underlying policy dilemma was resolved through the establishment of a collective agriculture” (Ash 2001, p. 91). Utilizing agriculture to gain surplus was an important element to industrialize, indeed, “the essential developmental role of agriculture is to generate a surplus, albeit one that assumes various forms. A basic imperative is to produce a real surplus: of food, especially for industrial workers and their urban dependants; of raw materials for light industry; and of exports in order to earn foreign exchange” (Ash 2001, p. 77). Labour development was the most evident result and was parallel to agricultural and rural development in Maoist China. “In general, the process of agricultural collectivization was instrumental in providing an institutional framework that went some way toward maximizing rural employment opportunities, albeit at the expense of waste, inefficiency, and the concealment of large numbers of surplus farm laborers”(Ash 2001, p. 78). Mao’s death in 1976 provided an avenue for the moderates led by Deng Xiaoping. Modernization of agriculture remained one of the four top agendas, though Deng opted to achieve this by gradually employing an open system. “The ultimate thrust of agricultural policy since 1978 has been to transform Chinas farm sector from a supply-orientated to a market-responsive, demand-oriented system” (Ash 2001, p. 83). Furthermore, some capitalist aspects were injected to policies in developing agriculture and rural sector under the brand of “Socialism with Chinese characteristics.” “In ancillary farming activities (research, irrigation, crop spraying, processing) there does exist considerable potential to realize scale economies and secure the benefits of cooperation. Typically, capitalist agriculture is characterized by the use of small manpower units devoted to the main farm tasks, combined with a significant degree of cooperation in such activities. Farm policy in China during the post-Mao period has increasingly sought to provide institutions that would preserve these valuable aspects of cooperative activity” (Ash 2001, pp. 79-80). These modifications of policies translated to improved living conditions for the Chinese as years progressed. Property ownership was allowed to a degree not imaginable in the past. Definitely, “the general quality of life improved dramatically during the 1980s. Average living space per person doubled in both urban and rural areas during the same period”(Lichtenstein 1991, p.52). Moreover, “access to a wider variety of consumer goods has certainly improved among rural residents”(Ash 2001, p. 89). Despite these, however, policies highlighting state control were still implemented. Examples of these were the controversial “One-Child Policy” and the “Late Marriage Policy” aimed to control the growing Chinese population, which were not totally welcomed especially in rural China. This is the reason why the two policies were seen effective only in urban areas. “In Chinas cities and towns, growing acceptance of the small-family norm, reinforced by the late-marriage policy and tight administrative control in workplaces and neighbourhoods, had brought the urban total fertility rate down from 3.3 in 1970 to about 1.5 by 1978, a remarkably low level for a developing country”(White 2003, p.185). Given the difficulty of implementing a “One-Child Policy” in the provinces, the Chinese leadership, though becoming lenient, maintained a firm position on population control. “In the countryside, where the policy was met with hostility and widespread resistance, intense pressures to comply in the early years of the campaign gave way in 1984 to a one-son or two-child policy’”(White 2003, p. 187). The succeeding leadership of Jiang Zemin witnessed the implementation of the “Grain Bag Policy,” an agricultural policy that affected the countryside in increasing supply though a burden to the Government (Ash 2001, p. 84). Experiments of successive Chinese leaderships from the founding of the PROC result to an irony, that is, despite the clarity of policies, the different interpretations of Socialism under which policies operate led to a dilemma. “But as Chinas experience in the Mao and Deng periods shows, unambiguous policy advocacy of either is likely to pose fresh dilemmas for policy makers, to which there is no easy resolution”(Ash 2001, p. 90). Another paradoxical effect is as Chinese leaders, though modifying policies, continue to uphold communism, capitalist traces are observable especially in agriculture and rural development. “Yet at the beginning of a new century, thanks to policy dilemmas as well as ideological shibboleths, Chinas agriculture is still some way from typifying an unconstrained free-market system”(Ash 2001, p. 91). The pursuit of devolution in a, still, centralized decision-making process in the national level compounds the dilemma. “The contrasting experiences of China in the second half of the 1950s and after the mid-1980s highlight profound policy dilemmas, associated with the differing motivations of farmers acting individually and under state guidance in the wake of the devolution or centralization of decision-making powers in the agricultural sector”(Ash 2001, p. 90). Considering the history of, the nature of, the development brought about by, and the dilemma rooted from policy-making in the PROC, the Chinese Government is faced with challenges like advancing farmer’s interests while batting for economic development through agriculture. “To argue that the economic role of agriculture has diminished is of course not to deny the significance of that lesser role. But it is perhaps to suggest that the social dimensions of farm policy - above all, those stemming from the poverty of certain groups of farmers - have come to assume the even greater importance. The effort simultaneously to accommodate the economic requirements of agricultural growth and meet the legitimate welfare demands of these farmers remains a huge challenge for the Chinese government” (Ash 2001, p. 92). Other challenges, which affect governing the countryside and have implications to the progress of every Chinese, are provided by the pressures experienced in pushing for “One-Child Policy” under Dengist China. By historical analogy, reluctance to follow policies perceived to threaten the conservative mores of rural folks is likely to happen. “If changing child-bearing preferences and state control worked together to induce compliance with the one-child policy in urban China, rural China posed a far more difficult challenge”(White 2003, p. 185). Confrontation, evasion, and accommodation could serve as modes to express dissent and to redress grievances. “However successful the states birth control policy may appear to be in the aggregate, success has been achieved in the face of widespread resistance that has taken three basic forms: confrontation, evasion and accommodation”(White 2003, p. 187). A double standard legal system could effect, that is, to appease rural China while to further implement objectionable policies to urban China. “Although the intent of the 1984 policy change was merely to legitimize what was already the de facto rural policy in many areas, its effect was to split the states ideological hegemony into two conflicting spheres-one sphere that applied to all urban residents, state cadres and administrative personnel, and another that applied to the peasantry” (White 2003, p. 194). Cultural clash could ensue and could polarize Chinese living in the rural and those in the urban areas. “The tragedy of the policy is that it has forced a large portion of the population to choose between two types of hegemonic discourse-a socialist and developmental one that emphasizes duty to the collective society, and a patriarchal one that emphasizes duty to family and ancestors-both of which have been legitimated by the state, though the latter was intended to be subordinate to the former” (White 2003, p. 197). Despite reforms manifested in Dengist China and with what is happening today, there seems to be no change in the trend of policy formulation, which is to uphold the ideology of the Government of the PROC. This is reflected by the recent developments in policy-making and policies being implemented. For instance, in the case of “Population and Family Planning Law,” “Still, the road to reform has been slow and rife with controversy. After some internal debate, China officially reavowed its one-child policy in 2000, and in 2001 passed a long-debated Population and Family Planning Law that upheld the existing policy and gave compliance the force of law” (White 2003, p. 199). Perpetuating the political doctrine, according to some critics, comes first above anything else. The updated urban population is able to respond to this while the rural populace is struggling. The “Austerity Policy” is a case at point. “Public officials adopt policy in politically expedient ways, and economic rationality rarely attains priority in the policy-making process. Political calculations lead officials to respond to the (real or perceived) political clout of pressure groups. This explains why the austerity program launched by the Chinese leadership inflicted more of the pains of adjustment on rural residents than on urban workers” (Yang 1996, p.234). It is true that the Dengist idea of development and socialism provided impetus to the economic progress the post-Mao PROC is experiencing and, as indicated in earlier observations, Dengist China raised the quality of living of the Chinese in general compared with Maoist China. But, still the current leadership has many things to address with regard to agricultural and rural development such as in areas of infrastructure, decentralization, and financing and lending of capital to farmers. “Attainment of the goal of agricultural efficiency and rapid agricultural growth would have required the continued evolution of commercial and financial infrastructures. It would have also required the depoliticization (i.e., rationalization) of decision making. But the scarcity of capital, competition from rural enterprise, the still undeveloped state of rural finance and credit markets, and the continued politicization of lending practices by rural credit cooperatives and by the Agricultural Bank of China all helped to prevent these changes from occurring” (Lichtenstein 1991, p.63). Policy-making itself, indeed, in the PROC needs to be essentially reassessed and reevaluated for it proves crucial to the development of the quality of life of the Chinese. But will it help if the assessment still revolves around ideology? “Chinese social policy has always been, and perhaps always will be, marked by constant ideological self-evaluation and self-criticism” (Lichtenstein 1991, p.43). Conclusion It is, undoubtedly, observable that the Chinese are better off at present than they were years ago. This is valid as a general observation and, specifically, it seems applicable to the case of urban China, where the emergence of middle class in a supposed to be “classless” goal of Chinese brand of socialism-communism is taking place. But it is a different story for rural China. The issues of inequality in income distribution and the unequal development between coastal China, where the urban cities are located, and inland China, the countryside, are testaments to this. So the derived questions would be are rural Chinese better off than they were 15 years ago? How does the answer to the preceding question present opportunities and challenges to the regime? These require examination of history and survey of policies from Maoist China to present-day Hu Jintao-led PROC. As observed, the principles espoused common among the mentioned policies are characteristically community-oriented and pragmatic, which define Deng’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The aims and the thrust of the policies are for common benefit, which is idealistically communist. There is no problem in the theoretical aspect of policies. But there is in practice. This is best indicated by the progress the rural Chinese have experienced for years. There have been improvements in terms of property ownership and even in income. But these are negated by slow progress in addressing the basic problems of infrastructure and the brand of politics especially evident in financing capital for rural and agricultural development. Thus, the rural Chinese are not as better off as their urban counterparts at present. The challenge for the Chinese leadership is to grapple on inequality of development, which has been the object for change since the foundation of the People’s Republic. How can they do this? It is to integrate “the people” element in policies. The concern should be how to “trickle down” the reaps of economic progress to the grassroots level. Accompanying this challenge is the opportunity of proving that it is not the system, whether communist or capitalist, that determines development in real sense. For these are guides or frameworks that can be modified according to the situation the PROC is into. Thus, sticking to ideology in policy-making does not make sense at all. “The people” element is very important and it is not prioritized because it is superseded by ideology in policy formulation. This is evident in the case of the “One-Child Policy” which was effective in urban areas but was met with dissension in the rural areas. There could have been no reluctance, resistance, double jeopardy in laws, and clash of cultures should “the people” element was taken into consideration. A research sensitive to the rural culture should have been undertaken prior to formulation and implementation of the policy, which was a product of too much pragmatism and emotion-adherence to ideology. In the implementation of the Policy, the question is where are the people in the Policy? considering this Policy trampled people’s personal choice. State intervention transcended its limits and the Policy proved disastrous and unsuccessful because “the people” element was not taken into account. REFERENCES Ash, RF 2001, Chinas Agricultural Reforms A Twenty-Year Retrospective, in CM Chao & B J Dickson (eds.), Remaking the Chinese State: Strategies, Society, and Security (pp. 77-100), Routledge, London. Lichtenstein, PM 1991, China at the Brink: The Political Economy of Reform and Retrenchment in the Post-Mao Era, Praeger Publishers, New York. White, T 2003, Domination, Resistance and Accommodation in Chinas One-Child Campaign, in EJ Perry & M Selden (eds.), Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance (pp. 183-203), RoutledgeCurzon, New York. Yang, DL 1996, Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society, and Institutional Change since the Great Leap Famine, Stanford University, Stanford, California. Read More