This is China! BLOG

Key to China Stability: “Opportunity” - American Style

Reuters recently reported on the growing disparity between rich and poor in China through the lens of the small, isolated and very poor town of Ankang, in Sha’anxi Province.

“In Ankang, a grimy city some 400 km (250 miles) south of Xian in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, 24-year-old Tang is one of the winners of China’s bounding economic growth, despite his hometown’s relatively remote location.

‘I feel lucky that my family has had so much success,’ Tang, recently returned from study overseas, said in very passable English, standing outside a hotel his father’s decoration company is fitting out.

‘The rich here drive big cars and own two or three apartments. The poor can barely keep a roof over their heads or afford to send their children to school. The divide between the two is more and more obvious,’ he added.”

But all is not economic up-turn in the city:

“Dong is at the other end of the scale.

Unable to find a proper job, he works as an ad hoc taxi driver, and says he can rarely bring in more than a few hundred yuan ($28) a month to pay for food and medical bills.”

Ankang essentially has to pull itself up by the proverbial bootstraps, as do so many cities in China’s interior:

“Ankang, hemmed in by mountains and far from the sea, making it hardly a top choice for foreign or domestic investment, oozes poverty and disparity, even with a massive government works scheme to build roads and railways to ease the isolation.”

Now here’s the key to how the Chinese Central Government has been successful to date and how it can remain successful in the eyes of the disadvantaged Chinese: Opportunity, American-style…

“Yet there is little sign in Ankang of the unrest the government is so worried about.

‘Of course, I would be lying if I didn’t say I was jealous of the big cars being driven around by those rich guys,’ he said, as his two friends nodded their heads in agreement.

‘It actually makes we want to work harder, so I can have a car like that one day.’”