So sad to start writing the answers for this tough question, hopefully it would not happen as I have projected painfully for several years. The future would be worse than ever in human history and I don't know if Chinese people could keep their homeland to grow enough food for themselves and if the world could cope with the shock from this miracle nation.... and I am praying the dragon boat would not hit the iceberg as quick, and as hard as TITANIC....
Since the new China was born in 1949, we have a dream to be a superpower in the world, to be not a sick- east Asian people, to be richer than Britain and U.S.A and to regain the ancient glory of great empire of Central Nation...... Decades and decades, following the lead of Communist party, Chinese people are working together try to build their garden homeland, and learned to believe that they are living in the paradise and the other nations are living in the hell wait us to save them.... After years and years education, China has become the most united nation in the world and may be the only county that the citizens will stand firmly with their government and to protect their government, their country and their Chinese identity with their lives... A real powerful People's government and Peoples republic ....
We have almost achieved every glorious goals in our recent history, Chairman Mao told us that USA was a paper tiger and we could beat them, we did beat them twice at Korea and Vietnam, and pushed two US presidents out of their office, Mao told us that we would surpass Britain and USA, and we did produce more steel than any country in the world once, Mao told us that we need more workers, and we did make a 1,3 billion population from only 0,4 billion less than forty years... With the sweeping power as the "wind of Autumn to blow the falling leaves" we destroyed all of the old Chinese culture and transformed China to the brand new greatest nation with millions and millions dead because of the shortage of food which was broadly blamed as the results of natural disasters ... Still Chinese people love their government, love their long live Chairman Mao, and long live Communist party and would to protect their captain with their life...
The show was continuing, Chairman Den took over the steer of this giant dragon boat when the greatest nation and happiest people in the world were hungry to death, the Chinese Style socialist economic reform was launched and the land was redistributed to the peasants to grow their own food and this great man started to "touch the rock to pass the river" and took more than one billion Chinese people's future at risk to start his experiment, and once again the loyal citizen gave him the fully supports as they always do to their empire government. He wanted China to be modern, to be rich and said "To be rich is glorious!", " The private township and village level factories should be developed and promoted"... A real problem started.... With the fully support of his people, in every corner of this great land with every people under his lead started their small factories and small business, suddenly the countryside became the wonder land for workers in the city, and millions city citizens would like to go to countryside or resign from their jobs in the state institutions in order to have their own business adventures, we called "down to the sea" millions of small factories were built up in days, and the historic agricultural country turned to a huge factory; the economic experiment zones were setup in the east coast and the special people setup their west style companies in these cities to do business with west countries and banded the ordinary Chinese people to enter this Chines lands with the excuse of " let part of Chinese people be rich first!" And again the Chinese people allowed it happen. With the super power and special policies given to these Window cities, almost unlimited resources were poured from all of the country to these 10 special experiment field, the world saw the beautiful and brand new China with thousands of skyscrapers after it closed its door right after the second world war. The world mummer: " Watch out, the Chinese lion is waking up"...
Amazing spectacle is going on .... President Jiang, took back HK from UK, followed Den's direction, turning the country to the world factory and tried desperate to join WTO. The government started to privatize the state corporations, capitalize the education systems, the medical systems and the farm land... "we will double our GDP in every ten years" what a bulled goals! We achieved this goals in less than ten years, and doubled again and again.... "We will have 9% GDP growth rate every year", than we did have a very stable 9% GDP growth rate for twenties years along with the thousands of corrupted government official heads cut off or put in jail, in 21st century China is becoming the engine of the world economy, and replaced Japan as the leader in Asia, " Wow, look at Chinese miracle!" " The next superpower will be China", " in ten years China will pass USA become the world biggest economic power" and China will hold 2008 Olympic games to show the world an other wonder ....
Money, money, money and money is everything in China, for money we could do anything, no rule of law, no ethics, no culture, no sympathy, no love, once again, money and capital becomes the new belief of Chinese people like what they believed capitalism is evil thirty years ago told them by the same party... they are thinking of making money all day long, and they are buying the most expensive cars, clothes, houses, watches, TVs, everything could show their wealth. Look at Shanghai! Beautiful, our Chinese people are rich now.....
Are we rich now? Are we stronger now? Are we really created a miracle?
What a stupid question! Most of the people will laugh at me and try to figure out if I am insane, how dare you could challenge the reality and achievement in China now? How dare you could ask this question when everybody see the booming economy in China, the modern Shanghai, and the rising power of Chinese government in the political world, and see all of the foreign leaders such as France, German and Russia rush to China and competing doing business with China?
Yes, how dare I? Each time I have to explain why to so many desperate friends who wants to participate Chinese booming and try to rush to China to grasp a piece of gold there, I noticed that it is more and more difficult to let them understand, and I sadly acknowledged that not so many people noticed the disaster is coming close silently and coldly...
Not so far from our memoir that the SARS scared almost everybody in the world, the Sand storm swept China several times and forced Korea, Taiwan even Japan to close the schools for days, the electricity shortage shocked the country triggered by the shutdown of hydro plants due to the dry out of rivers, the start of the most beautiful season "golden fall" "golden voyage week" " National day" was covered by heavy smog in northern China alarmed the natural and environmental disasters bell. Made it even worse, almost no cities has sufficient portable water for the municipal use for years and all of the rivers are heavily polluted and have already turned into a real sewer system for the booming industrialization. Beijing has to borrow portable water third time this year from the reservoirs in Shan Xi and He Bei province which are facing water dry out situations for many years, and ShangHaineses have already stopped drink their tap water since last century, from North to though Song-hua jiang, Hai river, Yellow river, Huai river, Yang-zi river and Zhou jian river have been all heavily polluted, and the pollution has gone far to the sea, the Bohai sea will become a dead sea less than a decade projected by Chinese government...
If the water pollution is only the phenomenon of the section near the city, we could have less concern, however, if the pollution is from the streams which form these rivers, it is really no chance to survive, the truth is that China has no where can hide the thoroughness of industrialization, and they have factories everywhere it could have thanks to the united power of great Chinese government and Chinese people, and still they are building the world factory to replace every competitors...
No oil, we could import from Russia or somewhere, no money, we could have the money from the people who want to benefit the booming economy in China all over the world, no technology, we could get it from the world, no food, we still could buy from Canada and USA, but if we don't have portable water, for 1,3 billion people what we can do?
No safe portable water, the disease will come sooner or later and we saw SARS; no clean rivers, the agriculture industry will die and we saw the shortage of the food output; less and less water in the rivers, the grass and forest is dying and land will turn to desert and we saw the sand storm already;
The massive countrywide wild industrialization, not only dry up the water, but also poluted the air. Millions of new vehicles are entering in the heavy population cities and joining the coal power plant and heavy industry to use up the fresh air have turned all big cities in China to the smog centers...
The damage has been done, the rivers and lands have been polluted, and based on the current knowledge, to reinstall the capacity of this nature resources, hundreds years will be needed with the condition to have zero pollution today, and use up all of the GDP we generated these years which is far short to the needs, no body has intention to even think about this only option left for us... So life is going on, show is going on......
But still, many people believe that we are rich even though we paid a high environmental price! They believe that this is a must process for every developed country, and we could rebuild our environment with our wealth in the future like the others, and it is said as " be rich first then we will treat the pollution later". I do not know if we minus our environmental price from what we got these years and still could get a positive result, chances are negative!
Like what professor Lang-xian-ping mentioned, there are no miracle economic growth in China, we just redistributed our nation's wealth and moved the all of our savings to some special beneficial groups which belong to " the part of Chinese people be rich first " also named corrupted government officials and gangs of these groups. In order to redistribute the resources and wealth, these people need the inter-media, which is the superficial spectacular economic growth.
Giant projects which concentrated in real estate industry was the first tools used to stolen the nations wealth, by constructing the billions $ projects, the officials could get billions of rebate from the contractors which come form the bank savings controlled by the government, the bigger the better, the modern the safer no mater if these construction projects usable. Then the high way project, then the dam, the airliners, the nuclear plant, and then the Olympic games project!
The second tools are the state owned corporation privatization with the beautiful name "floating" by floating the state institutions, with the help from the banks, they switched the state assets under the name of the executives of these firms, Mr. Lang has many articles talking about this smart scheme!
By these spectacular schemes, the world see a everyday modernization of the city facilities and redesign of the skyline, and a booming country, which is real a conspiracy to hide the robbing the peoples savings at the banks, that is why our states banks have so many bad debts from no where, and will go bankruptcy at any moment!
The officials who are working in other sectors have to use their power to generate their wealth, and achieve the objective of the 9% GDP growth every year, how? The education department started to industrialize the education industry and make money from the education, sky rocket tuition fees are introduced to the universities, and different fees such as sponsorship fee are introduced to high school, elementary school and even daycare! The medical systems are also capitalized by introducing many rewards program to increase the revenue of the hospitals and a small ill like catch cold could use up thousand yuan for the drugs...
Why Chinese products are cheap? Not because of the labor is cheap, not because the RMB is under valued. It is because the factories run by the corrupted entrepreneurs never paid the for the Chinese environmental cost, resources cost, and never want to pay Chinese people as pay to the west countries workers thanks to the money driving only culture which only see money, money, money,....
The natural power of the human beings, the uncontrolled government officials are trying everything they can to grasp money and wealth before they get caught or lose their power, that is why even the president of the country did not want to quit when the term was finished! From the bottom to the end the country is sank into a corruption culture and the everybody is desperate to grasp anything they can before the sky is falling down, and the boat hitting the iceburge.....
A miracle? Or an illusion? Let's see....
