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Is China a model for India?

Is China a model for India?

Author: M. V. Kamath
Publication: The Organiser
Date: October 14, 2001

In recent weeks efforts to compare India with China, very unfavourably, have been very marked in certain intellectual circles. China's economy has been increasing by leaps and bounds, Chinese cities look even better than western cities while India continues to struggle is the charge frequently made. Forget China, India cannot even attract as much foreign investment as little Vietnam, one Member of Parliament was heard to say derisively. In an interview to a national paper Arun Shourie sought to rebut some of these accusations. "People talk of Vietnam's success-do you know that 16 per cent of all foreign investment in Vietnam since 1988 is in agriculture? Will we (in India) allow this?" he asked. Vietnam, he went on has a tax rate of 32 to 45 per cent for domestic firms but it would be 10 per cent for firms with foreign investment. Would this be acceptable in India, he wanted to know. Further he said, China executes 12 people each day while in India we can't prosecute even a man guilty of stealing electricity. What is the truth about China? This has been stated with remarkable frankness by a resident correspondent of the South China Morning Post in Beijing in a book entiled The Chinese. The author, Jasper Becker tells as how urban China with its booming coastal cities and special economic zones use slaves in sweat shops to produce low priced goods and terrorise people.

Unlike in India where anybody could go anywhere to live, in China the law is strict about rural people migrating to urban areas. Shri Shourie spoke about 12 people being executed in China every day. According to an Amnesty International Report of 1999 quoted by Becker, throughout the 1990s more people have been executed or sentenced to death in China than in the rest of the world put together. The report contained evidence of 6,100 death sentences and 4,367 executions during 1996 alone. Birth control is strictly enforced. Becker says over 300,000 officials are employed by the Family Planning Services to try to ensure that the number of people born each year is according to plan. Sanjay Gandhi, were he alive, would have heartily approved of this. Writes Becker: "The vast and coercive machinery was responsible for 8.7 million abortions in 1981, 14.4 million in 1983. In the much tougher climate after 1989 the state launched another big drive in which 10 million people were sterilised in one year." Let Shri Vajpayee try that to see what next will happen to the BJP.

The State manages the economy. In 1989 China had 3,000 leather factories. Seven years later there were 20,000 employing 1.5 million workers. By 1998 China was producing 20 per cent of the world's leather shoes, some 2 billion pairs a year. Then came the slump. Writes Becker. "Even before demand slumped in the Asia Pacific region, Chinese manufacturers housed staggering amount of unsold goods: 1.5 billion men's shirts, 300 million pairs of leather shoes, 20 million bicycles, 10 million watches and 700,000 motor cycles." The only way to dispose of these and other accumulated goods was to push them into India and other countries by questionable means. And what about labour and labour laws? Becker writes: "A South Korean electronic factory (in China) kept its workers, on duty continuously for more than twenty four hours. Some fell asleep during a ten-minute break and were ordered to kneel in front of the manager while others had to keep their hands raised in the air for ten minutes."

Indian MPs who are shown round the prosperous east coast industrial development areas return wide-eyed at what they had seen. But writes Becker, "in a mountainous area of 240,000 square miles, home to 80 million people, half the population earns less than US $20 a year (around Rs 900). In China 350 million out of 1.22 billion people live below the poverty line. Becker says: "It is true that India certainly looks poorer, especially in its crowded cities. However, in China the police keep the rural poor out of the cities. No one can enter a Chinese city without permission and those that do so are soon caught and expelled."

How happy the Shiv Sena in Mumbai would be if it would be allowed to do the same! Corruption apparently is rampant. Money is quickly made. Taiwanese who set up over 4000 companies in Guandong in the 1990s operated outside the law most of the time, employing mostly young peasant women. In Shenyang at the heart of China's heavy industry belt workers were forced to subsist on handouts of just 129 Yuans (US $15) a month. At the present exchange rate that would be a monthly salary of Rs 700 or thereabouts. Mumbai's Municipal sweepers make four times that amount if not more-and they work even less hours. State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) are in bad shape. By 1997 even the Workers Daily was describing the SOEs (our Public Sector Units) as a "bottomless pit" with debts totaling 4 trillion Yuans. In one state, Lianing half the 10 million workers had lost their jobs in the 1990s. In China's northernmost province 70 per cent of 4,000 SOEs "were effectively, if not legally bankrupt" and a third of the 900,000 workers had been laid off. By the end of 1999, the percentage of SOEs running at a loss had risen from 40 per cent in 1998 to 50 per cent in 2000. In one state, Shenyang, the figure was 55 per cent. China's four main state banks were saddled with 'non-performing loans' and were technically bankrupt. Arun Shourie obviously does not know how lucky he is! At the end of 1999 China announced that seven steel firms would be allowed to go bankrupt, including the Shenyang Steel Company which had, in fact, stopped production years before! In 1998 it was reckoned that two thirds of China's defence industry capacity lay idle. China's battle tank production had slumped to fewer than a hundred per year. In order to keep things going no wonder China supplies Pakistan tanks and other defence equipment. Becker describes the conditions of teachers, doctors and hospitals that would make their counterparts in India feel superior! The cost of medicines has apparently risen a hundred fold and in some cases two hundred fold. China spends upto US$ 3.5 billion a year importing western medicines. Is Becker exaggerating? Is he a China-hater? But anyone is open to question his facts-and so far apparently they have not been questioned. China is still a dictatorship. In 1998 the Government planned to reduce the number of Ministries from 40 to 29 and have the number of Central Government staff to 4 million. 'There was no protest. In China, protest is unheard of. Would Vajpayee dare to do what his counterpart in China can do? We in India live in a different culture where individual freedom is respected. We have stiff labour laws. In China workers who work 8-hour shifts promise to work for 12 hours without asking for overtime. As Arun Shourie told his interviewer: "If our MPs agree to this, India will overtake China." Let us be glad we live in India-for all its myriad problems. At least we are a free people.
 


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