Photo Essay on China’s Underclass

Thanks to Dan at tdaxp for forwarding the link. Draw your own conclusions; I think that China’s transformation to a capitalist economy will mean, on balance, that fewer people live in these conditions. You need only think of North Korea to see that. Regrettable as these scenes are, they will disappear sooner if China continues to industrialize. The problem is that China’s transformation to capitalism is warped by the strangling tentacles of a corrupt state.

This scene, of police confiscating a sweet potato-seller’s bicycle for the sake of creating a “modern” appearance, was the one that incensed me. From some of my other readings, I suspect scenes like these are emblematic of the broader corruption in China, and the real flaw in its economic transformation–the fact that China’s ruling party controls its businesses and thus won’t use its legal system as a fair arbiter between the people and the state.

It may not be fair to blame China’s ruling party for the fact that poverty and inequality exist there, but it is fair to blame the government for poverty that exists because the government has rigged the system to enrich itself at the expense of the people.

Contemplate the conditions in Chinese society for a moment: rapid industrialization, the resulting expansion of inequality, the collapse of the state’s social welfare system, the spread of information technology that undermines government control of the media, the demise of the state’s messianic ideology, an aging population, the growth of multiple religious sects and churches to fill the spiritual void, the widespread perception that the ruling party is riddled with corruption, and a complete lack of faith in courts that should be resolving these grievances peacefully.

China may be the perfect revolutionary storm unless the government can open its system gradually enough to vent those grievances–through tolerance of public debate and the bottom-to-top expansion of electoral government–without triggering an explosion. Given the regime’s stubborn clinging to its authoritarian ways, that seems increasingly unlikely.