As the world regards China’s emerging economic power with a mix of anticipation, fear, and unease, few look beyond the country’s bloated annual growth rates and glamorous coastal skylines to the real engines that drive the Chinese economy. Millions of migrant laborers flood in every year from China’s rural regions to build the infrastructures of rich urban centres. Much has been written about China’s powerful influence on the global economy and how that influence is only expected to increase as its massive population is mobilized. What fails to receive sustained attention in the mainstream media, however, is the army of underpaid labourers who travel hundreds of kilometres from their homes to work in dangerous, dirty conditions for meagre compensation.
What creates China’s economic miracle is its ability to produce goods at lower costs than anywhere else in the world. It is the sweat of an army of skilled and unskilled workers that has made China the world’s go-to market for everything from textiles to cell phones. The international community sends a dangerous message by acquiescing to China’s failure to protect its working class. Nations like Canada are sending the message that growth at all costs is acceptable as long as a profit is reached in the end.
With a Leninist political system and an economy embodying the ideals of Adam Smith, China has created a hybrid society that has engineered the most dramatic economic transformation in recent history. It has gone from being an isolated country with a centralized economy characterized by state-owned industry to one of the biggest players in the global economy, with an ever-expanding role.
As the ‘developing’ world is continually pressured by the West to pump up their economies and integrate into the global order, China will be upheld as an example of economic development. If this example does not include adequate provisions for sectors of the population beyond the wealthy elite, however, the precarious situation in China could be mirrored all over the world.
The Chinese situation highlights a problem in which newly adopted free market systems are implemented selectively, omitting a social safety net and measures to protect the rights of workers in order to ensure economic survival during slow times. Nowhere is an ideological change to broaden the scope of new markets more needed.
Sustainability is a concept that is rarely pondered in the world of market economics. Resources, human and natural, are typically treated as infinite fuel for incessant growth. At some point China and the rest of the world will need to decide to what extent their current approach to managing their environment and labour class is sustainable. While the Chinese Communist Party stated at a recent meeting on economic policy that it will make more of an effort to address social disruption and inequality brought on by market reforms, at present neither the desire nor the mechanisms exist within Chinese government or society to alleviate these volatile inequalities.
The people of China now enjoy more freedoms than at any other point in their illustrious history. They now have access to personal earning potential, but that is only half the equation. Those not fortunate enough to strike it rich in the new system need to be accounted for in order to ensure China’s social and economic stability. Due to its incredible size and importance, no major problem in China will be contained within its borders, thus how the problems of present day China play themselves out will be consequential for the world as a whole.
