The following meditation on extreme poverty is brought to you from the Weekly Standard:
The day after the IOC made its historic announcement, former Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski–who these days advises Barack Obama–took to the Times op-ed page to disavow any parallel between the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the 2008 Beijing games. Brzezinski had helped plan the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But “the situation with China” is “not only different,” he wrote in 2001. It is also “more complex.” Sure, Brzezinski continued, “grievous human rights abuses are being committed by the Chinese government. . . . Tibet continues to be repressed.” The “regime as a whole is still committed to one-party dictatorship.” But don’t believe your lying eyes. “China is nonetheless becoming a much more open society,” because millions of Chinese “now have access to satellite television dishes” and “even to the Internet.”
Of course, hundreds of millions of Chinese have nothing but dirt. Internet access is policed by the ever-more-sophisticated sentinels of the Great Firewall. And prosperity, while a great public good, is a meager substitute for the greater public good of natural rights such as the freedom to publicly oppose one’s government, to legitimate state authority through elections, and to worship God as one sees fit.
The whole thing is nonresponsive to Brzezinski’s argument, but it’s the last sentence that strikes me as weirdly dismissive. In 1978, the majority of rural Chinese were living at subsistence, the way the majority of Burmese live now. A third of the rural population–260 million people– lived under the poverty line, meaning that they were not adequately fed or clothed even in a good year.
By 1997, the number of people living under the poverty line had been slashed by 200 million. A Chinese person born in 1960 could expect to live until 41, give or take. Kids born today will, on average, live 30 years longer. No other society has ever undergone such a dramatic transformation in two decades. The fact that we can even talk about restrictions on Chinese Internet access implies a massive improvement in wellbeing.
There is a serious lack of imaginative capacity among pundits who can, in a sentence, brush this kind of thing aside. Bangladeshis vote for their corrupt leaders and legally worship whatever God they wish. In what substantive sense is a kid born in Dhaka (GDP per capita: $2300) better off than a kid born in Beijing ($7700) or Singapore ($31,400)? Free to do what? Almost anywhere, prosperity brings with it the ability to educate your children, to enjoy a modicum of leisure, to leave. What’s freedom of exit worth if you can’t afford a plane ticket?
I get the sense, reading this kind of analysis, that China hawks have stopped conceptualizing the Chinese as people. They’re just political objects defined by a checklist of political freedoms they do and do not have. The ability to educate yourself, to pay a doctor to treat your sick children, to take in a film, to do the things people do — none of that is on the list. I’ve written before on how silly it is to act as if Internet access means nothing if political material is blocked, as if all the entertainment and connection communication affords is meaningless unless directed at political change. This is just that same mistake writ large–every Chinese person is an activist whose life is worthless without the right to participate in the political process. It just exposes an incredible ignorance about the way people live.
None of this is to excuse the Chinese government for its many ghastly crimes, or to suggest that it does not continue to stand in the way of prosperity in meaningful ways, or to argue that prosperity is the only good that matters. But you don’t need to denigrate the alleviation of hunger to criticize political tyranny. I’d feel a little less put off by all the self-congratulatory China-bashing if the punditocracy’s understanding of freedom were less romanticized, less dismissive of the more mundane liberties afforded by a full stomach and regular income.
In 2004, while I was still in Burma, floods in neighboring Bangladesh killed 1000 people and left 10,000 more without any possessions. The Western press treated the whole thing as an unfortunate natural disaster–sad, but no one’s fault, really. And yet floods are completely predictable in Bangladesh–there is a reason they call it Monsoon Season–and that kind of devastation is the result of poverty rooted in economic mismanagement. Price controls strike me as just as criminal as religious discrimination, and a country with the good sense to get rid of them doesn’t need to hear that preventing starvation is a “poor substitute” for anything.
[...] by Matt Zeitlin on April 5, 2008 Kerry Howley on China. Just read the whole thing, here’s an excerpt: . In 1978, the majority of rural Chinese were living at subsistence, the [...]
Of course, hundreds of millions of Chinese have nothing but dirt.”
I hate to defend the Weekly Standard, but I think you’re misreading this line. I think they’re making reference to generalized poverty, not the poverty of not being able to use Google without censorship. Although it’s hard to tell.
You’re right that the Weekly Standard is dismissive of material gains made in China, but it’s not like that forces them go back to 1980 or 1988 and cut some kind deal where we get a poorer China with Democracy.
The Weekly Standard is focused on what they think should happen moving forward, which is fine.
Looking backward you really aren’t describing China in 1978 very well. Life expectancy was already quite high, and I don’t think starvation per se, was much of an issue.
I think this is especially astute in terms of the tendency of Westerners, or to be more specific, the First World to use the circumstances of a developing country, communist state, or the like as a receptacle for its own insecurities. There is a large incongruity, for instance, in the thinking of those who continue to call for the end of embargo with Cuba, but on the other hand called for a similar trade boycott with South Africa, and now with China. Because each nation’s oppression carries a different pet issue, racial apartheid and religious repression respectively, they do not actually serve as serious calls to moral arms, but rather the personal political barometer of the individual who picks up the cause. For as I suspect is the case with Cuba would be a similar tragedy elsewhere: no amount of trade restriction succeeds in bullying a tyranny into changing its ways and, in fact, accomplishes just the opposite.
This makes me wonder: Kerry, how much money would you accept in return for a signed statement saying that if you ever criticized the Republican party, you could be legally thrown in prison?
“Because each nation’s oppression carries a different pet issue, racial apartheid and religious repression respectively, they do not actually serve as serious calls to moral arms, but rather the personal political barometer of the individual who picks up the cause.”
Peter-
There is a lot of truth in what you’re saying, but regardless sometimes sanctions, or other punitive action work (or have good prospects to work), and other times they basically have no chance of accomplishing their objectives.
South Africa wanted and needed to be connected to the world economy and thus sanctions made a lot of sense. Sanctions against Cuba are not only ineffective, but probably counter productive.
Obviously people are often motivated by irrational reasons in regards to their support or opposition to sanctions against a country, but there is no inherent contradiction between supporting sanctions in one country and arguing that sanctions against other countries is wrong.
Track down the essay China Without Tears. It illustrates what might have happened had the US not interdicted Chang Kai Shek’s desire to finish off Mao.
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Tas, you missed the point of the essay. The point was that Chiang’s attempt to conquer the whole country and defeat the Communists in the Northeast was his great mistake. If he had kept them bottled up in the Northeast, they would have built a small Soviet client state and the Nationalists would have controlled the rest of the country. As soon as he invaded, his position was pretty much irretrievable, regardless of American intervention.