Double-digit growth may not solve its social problems. China needs a cooperative governance model in order to mobilize its social sector for the way forward.
In a humid summer evening in Zengcheng, a town in Guangzhou, Canton province in Southeast China, several hundred people have gathered in the streets. This is no summer carnival. The crowd marched through the town centre with sticks and stones, pushing over police cars and setting the local government buildings on fire. Riot police were sent to dispel the angry people with tear gas and water guns, but the crowd didn’t seem to be scared off. Joined by more, the rioting crowd soon expanded into thousands. The violence level also elevated as the night deepened. Out of town on the national highway, traffic stopped, vehicles stopped, stoned and burnt down. The rioters didn’t retreat until the fully armoured police vehicle showed up.
It took days for the riot to be pushed down. Leaving the town dysfunctional in smoke and fire marks, glasses broken, public facilities destroyed, and many shops and vehicles in the streets burned or damaged. Most of the rioters were migrant workers from Sichuan Province. They took to the streets because of rumours floating around of a pregnant street vendor from the same province who was beaten to death by local security guards. Though the city government immediately refuted the rumour by inviting both the lady and her husband on a broadcasted press conference and proving them safe and sound, the riot still went on for days afterwards before it could be sufficiently controlled. This underscored the deep dissatisfaction among many migrant communities.
Richer, not necessarily happier
In the past decade China’s economy has been growing at a double-digit annual rate on average. Its GDP per capita has soared by more than four fold to US$4283 in 2010. Skyscrapers built, roads and bridges constructed, cars packed on city streets, the country’s landscape is changing rapidly and dramatically. But people don’t seem to be getting happier at the same time. They are more concerned about the social problems that increasingly affect their lives. Before the government had put economic growth as their primary goal, many other issues were deprioritised or put on hold. Now it appears consequences have grown serious enough that they can no longer be ignored. In 2011, the Chinese government budgeted RMB624.4 billion (US$96.54 billion) for public security expenses, a 13.8% increase on the previous year, and the second consecutive year it has surpassed the national military expense. The public security expense is also called Weiwen, or “stability maintenance expense” in China, as it is mostly used to calm down incidents like the Zengcheng riot. In recent years, stability maintenance has even replaced economic development to become the primary goal of many local governments. As officials often say in China, “stability trumps everything.”
Not scarcity, unequal distribution
The current Chinese government has done a remarkable job in poverty alleviation. Since it took office in 2003, absolute poverty has dropped markedly. However the number of people in relative poverty (with 50% or less of the median income) grew from 12.2% of the population to 14.6% between 2002 and 2007. The widening gap between the rich and the poor is causing more and more tension among the different income groups. At the heart of this issue is the urban-rural divide.
The Hukou system, or registered residency, was once used to stabilize the geographical distribution of population, applied to both urban and rural residents. However the peasants get a far worse deal receiving hardly any welfare benefits, on top of the fact that job prospects in the countryside are dismal. Due to that reason, in the past two decades hundreds of millions of Chinese peasants have migrated into cities in search of better working opportunities and better pay. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, in 2010 there were as many as 242 million migrant workers across the country.
Although migrants moved to cities, their residential status cannot change. The rural hukou prevents the migrant workers from enjoying pension, healthcare and other social securities in the city. Often they cluster in slums, do the low level labour work, and are discriminated by local urban dwellers. With little education, a lack of social activities and little means for living, migrant workers are regarded as an unstable factor of the society by many. This is true especially when they realize how little they have got for how much they have given, and try to fight for more fair and equal treatment. The vast majority of the rioters in Zengcheng are migrant workers in textile and manufacture industries.
People’s view of local government
In recent years, social unrests or riots in China seem to be happening more and more frequently. In the first six months of 2011 alone, there have been at least nine such incidents of large scale reported. Most of the riots are directed at the local governments for violating individual rights and interests. The credibility of the Chinese (local) government is at an all-time low, as people no longer believe that the problems can be solved through normal means. One of the extreme cases is the incident of Qian Yunhui, a village head mysteriously killed by a construction truck in 2010. In this case whatever the local government declared, the public tended to believe the opposite.
Much of the criticism has been on the institutional dishonesty of the government. The corruption of power and the collusion of public and business sectors are believed to be the roots of much of the social problems. In many cases, the government is seen to be colluding with big corporates in labour-capital conflicts or even violating the interest of its people. Recent conflicts in land expropriation that have led to riots and deaths provide stark examples.
Many argue that the problem is a lack of independent monitoring schemes. The anti-corruption bureau, China’s force to monitor the behaviour of its officials, is a government body under the lead of the People’s Procuratorate. The internal monitoring and procuratorship have proven difficult to stay natural and uncorrupted. Particularly this internal anti-corruption system is regarded as a weapon for individuals to wipe out political enemies. Those who got punished are not seen as getting what they deserved for misbehaving, but “not playing the game well” and “messing with the wrong guy”.
The path ahead
For a long time, the Chinese have believed that as economic growth continues at a consistent rate, most of the social problems will automatically go away. This hasn’t happened for the past 30 years.
Going forward, the Chinese government needs a change in mind-set. In the past the government has gathered all the power to micromanage the social activities, which left little space for independent social groups and organisation to grow and achieve autonomy. Furthermore a top down approach is both costly and inefficient. The government needs to shift from a controlling strategy to a cooperative governing one. Instead of micromanaging and monitoring at the individual level, it should nurture and support the growth of social organisations. It should focus on providing platforms and channels to engage and mobilise societal forces, such as mass organisations, residential/villager committees, NGOs, rights-protection organisations and philanthropic organisations. On the grassroots level, such organisations have more direct access and influence, more credibility, and provide wider approaches to tackle social issues. These organisations can act as partners or contractors of the government to provide their services and expertise. Coming a long way of centralisation of power, the first steps might not be easy for China, but it would be necessary.
Having no proper channels to participate in social management, citizens’ will often direct negative emotions towards the governing body. In the cooperative governance model, such energy is redirected and utilized in a positive way. This would remove a heavy load from the government’s shoulder and may further prevent emotions from accumulating into potential threats. On July 4th, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs announced that local NGOs no longer need to be attached to a government body to be legitimate. In the past they needed to be registered under the management of a government department. This is ironic for “non-government organisations”, which also explains the ill development and malfunctioning of Chinese NGOs. With losing control of NGOs, there is hope that the Chinese government will give more power back to the social forces and co-managing the country through the resulting synergies. After all, given the current social tension and potential consequences, there is not much to lose.
