How China transforms into wealthy nation
Saturday, 8 September 2007
Farid Hossain
At Beijing International Airport we are greeted by a young woman who looks more like a college girl than a professional guide.
"Welcome to China. My name is Narisha," says the woman, flashing a grin on her pretty face. ``That sounds very much like a Bengali name," says Reazuddin Ahmed, President of National Press Club and leader of our six-member group, as we conduct our formal introduction to Narisha, who would be our guide during the week-long tour of China at the invitation of All-China Journalists Association.
As our air-conditioned bus heads towards the city centre along the tree-lined avenue we strike conversation with Narisha, a woman from Inner Mongolia who has married a Han Chinese that account for majority of the China's 1.3 billion population.
Narisha is not a communist (her diplomat husband is a member of Chinese Communist Party), but she works at ease at All-China Journalists Association, a communist-run organisation of the Chinese media. She is typical of a new generation of Chinese people who care little about communism, but find no difficulty in living with the system. She does not feel that she has been discriminated in her education nor in work just because she does not belong to the Communist Party.
``I've no problem working with the communists. I don't think people like me face any discrimination here," asserts Narisha who got this job at a job fair after graduating from a Chinese university.
With a monthly salary of 2,000 yuan (about 6,000 taka), our guide is far from becoming a white-collar worker in China. A white-collar job is worth about 8,000 yuan or 64,000 taka a month. Yet, Narisha sounds like a woman who has little complaints. She lives in a small apartment in the cheaper part of Beijing, commutes by bus and gets free lunch in the office. Three years into her marriage, she is still childless. That has helped her keep running with her income, she says.
Her husband, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official, lives abroad and she does not join her husband for fear of losing the small job she has.
``It's difficult to get a job here once you lose one," she says. Narisha belongs to a generation of Chinese people who like to delay taking a child after marriage or do not at all like to have one. Career and economic difficulties seem to be some of the factors that many young
Chinese men and women do not rush for a child after marriage.
``When are you going to be a mother? Isn't it getting late?" I ask Narisha. ``We have not decided yet," replies Narisha, as shy as a new bride. I guess people like Narisha and their government's encouragement of one-child family have helped cut down China's population growth rate to less than 1 per cent (0.58 per cent to be precise).
As a guide, Narisha is very careful about our choices of food. On our first day in Beijing, she takes us to a Muslim restaurant that promises to serve halal food. While ordering the food she makes no mistake in excluding pork from our dishes. That is quite an effort in a country where even snakes are a delicacy.
Since our guide is so sensitive to our religious faith, I decide to ask her about the religion she practices. ``I don't have any religion," replies Narisha, ``and there are so many Chinese like me."
No wonder that Narisha has no religion. She is the citizen of a country that is officially atheist, even though the faithful is free to practice religion. Among the Chinese population there are Daoists (Taoists), Buddhists, Muslims and Christians, and they are free to practice their faiths. China still is a communist country, governed by a system known as socialism with Chinese characteristics.
This Eastern Asian country is still under a one-party communist rule, even though it has been pursuing a ``reform and opening up" policy since 1978 thanks to Deng Xiaoping regarded as the pioneer of "new-look" China. The new policy left the dominant state-run enterprises out of privatisation, while gradually easing restrictions on the development of market-oriented non-state-owned enterprises.
In the case of China the policy worked like a magic pushing the economic growth at one stage to two-digit percentage points. Even though that annual economic growth has now slowed down to about 8 (eight) per cent, it is still considered very vibrant and high.
China is aiming to overtake the United States in its economic growth. In next 25 years? Sooner than that, according to experts on China. The newfound wealth has created a new generation of Chinese who drive luxury cars, live in air-conditioned apartment buildings, eat at McDonalds and wear fashionable clothes.
Young Chinese men and women sport expensive mobiles as they stroll through tree-shaded avenues or drive through a maze of flyovers that have adorned cities and towns across China. Is the awe-inspiring wealth widening the gap between the rich and the poor in the Chinese society? Yes, comes the reply from a senior Chinese journalist involved in the editing of China Daily, one of the few English-language dailies in China. The editor says the Chinese government is aware of the problem and is taking steps to deal with it.
— NewsNetwork
At Beijing International Airport we are greeted by a young woman who looks more like a college girl than a professional guide.
"Welcome to China. My name is Narisha," says the woman, flashing a grin on her pretty face. ``That sounds very much like a Bengali name," says Reazuddin Ahmed, President of National Press Club and leader of our six-member group, as we conduct our formal introduction to Narisha, who would be our guide during the week-long tour of China at the invitation of All-China Journalists Association.
As our air-conditioned bus heads towards the city centre along the tree-lined avenue we strike conversation with Narisha, a woman from Inner Mongolia who has married a Han Chinese that account for majority of the China's 1.3 billion population.
Narisha is not a communist (her diplomat husband is a member of Chinese Communist Party), but she works at ease at All-China Journalists Association, a communist-run organisation of the Chinese media. She is typical of a new generation of Chinese people who care little about communism, but find no difficulty in living with the system. She does not feel that she has been discriminated in her education nor in work just because she does not belong to the Communist Party.
``I've no problem working with the communists. I don't think people like me face any discrimination here," asserts Narisha who got this job at a job fair after graduating from a Chinese university.
With a monthly salary of 2,000 yuan (about 6,000 taka), our guide is far from becoming a white-collar worker in China. A white-collar job is worth about 8,000 yuan or 64,000 taka a month. Yet, Narisha sounds like a woman who has little complaints. She lives in a small apartment in the cheaper part of Beijing, commutes by bus and gets free lunch in the office. Three years into her marriage, she is still childless. That has helped her keep running with her income, she says.
Her husband, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official, lives abroad and she does not join her husband for fear of losing the small job she has.
``It's difficult to get a job here once you lose one," she says. Narisha belongs to a generation of Chinese people who like to delay taking a child after marriage or do not at all like to have one. Career and economic difficulties seem to be some of the factors that many young
Chinese men and women do not rush for a child after marriage.
``When are you going to be a mother? Isn't it getting late?" I ask Narisha. ``We have not decided yet," replies Narisha, as shy as a new bride. I guess people like Narisha and their government's encouragement of one-child family have helped cut down China's population growth rate to less than 1 per cent (0.58 per cent to be precise).
As a guide, Narisha is very careful about our choices of food. On our first day in Beijing, she takes us to a Muslim restaurant that promises to serve halal food. While ordering the food she makes no mistake in excluding pork from our dishes. That is quite an effort in a country where even snakes are a delicacy.
Since our guide is so sensitive to our religious faith, I decide to ask her about the religion she practices. ``I don't have any religion," replies Narisha, ``and there are so many Chinese like me."
No wonder that Narisha has no religion. She is the citizen of a country that is officially atheist, even though the faithful is free to practice religion. Among the Chinese population there are Daoists (Taoists), Buddhists, Muslims and Christians, and they are free to practice their faiths. China still is a communist country, governed by a system known as socialism with Chinese characteristics.
This Eastern Asian country is still under a one-party communist rule, even though it has been pursuing a ``reform and opening up" policy since 1978 thanks to Deng Xiaoping regarded as the pioneer of "new-look" China. The new policy left the dominant state-run enterprises out of privatisation, while gradually easing restrictions on the development of market-oriented non-state-owned enterprises.
In the case of China the policy worked like a magic pushing the economic growth at one stage to two-digit percentage points. Even though that annual economic growth has now slowed down to about 8 (eight) per cent, it is still considered very vibrant and high.
China is aiming to overtake the United States in its economic growth. In next 25 years? Sooner than that, according to experts on China. The newfound wealth has created a new generation of Chinese who drive luxury cars, live in air-conditioned apartment buildings, eat at McDonalds and wear fashionable clothes.
Young Chinese men and women sport expensive mobiles as they stroll through tree-shaded avenues or drive through a maze of flyovers that have adorned cities and towns across China. Is the awe-inspiring wealth widening the gap between the rich and the poor in the Chinese society? Yes, comes the reply from a senior Chinese journalist involved in the editing of China Daily, one of the few English-language dailies in China. The editor says the Chinese government is aware of the problem and is taking steps to deal with it.
— NewsNetwork