A comparison between China and the USA is increasingly becoming tougher. Earlier, the major distinction used to be the fact that the US was the leading capitalist country, whereas China was a major communist bloc country.
After the bringing down of the iron curtain and the fast progress under globalization, this distinction has been reduced to that of degrees, with China all set to assume the role of leading economic power of the world. Hannon (2005) says that most discussions about the impact of globalization on Asian countries essentially center around one country, i.e., China.
Despite the fact that China had a difficult ideological history and its entrenched structures to stave off, it comfortably overtook other Asian countries in recording economic growth in the past decade and a half. In fact, most of the transition countries (erstwhile communist countries that are making a transition from communist politico-economic system to free-market economies), including communist giants such as Russia, look forward to emulating the transition model adopted by China.
“While strategies followed in much of the rest of the world paid little attention to institutions, to what I have called the organizational/social capital, China embarked on an evolutionary transition, which transformed much of the existing institutional structure”(Stiglitz,1998). As Hawkins (Centralization) says,” In recent publications, some Western scholars have used the term “decentralization” to describe the nature of evolutionary reform in different sectors of the country.”
In the US, the society is much more of a melting pot concept where international communities and cultures arrive, exit, and work on the basis of competitive skills. Chinese society, on the other hand, has always been a polarized society. There have been distinctions of class and caste which have been ingrained pretty deep in Chinese society for a long and since the Mongol Yuan Dynasty devised the discriminatory society in China, which divided people in China into four groups, in a caste-like system. It hardly needs stating that what China is and how it will develop is of major importance for all of us.
China is not only a culture that has contributed in different ways over a long period to world cultures but is today one of the most populous and potentially powerful countries in the world (Price, 1997). It was in present-day China that a brand new discriminating caste society was consciously built with an intended objective to ensure political control in human flows as well as economic exploitation.
The tool for economic exploitation was the so-called agri-industrial price scissor differential, namely, the peasants would surrender their grains to the government at a pre-fixed price. This caste society was crueler than the Indian caste system or South Africa’s apartheid in that babies, at birth, were predestined to be in the same caste of the mother and had no prospects of marrying outside of the caste (i.e., peasants) and therefore were locked in the consummative manner in the vicious circle. Since peasants don’t have the means of changing their status quo, they are destined to live in their caste not only for their lives but for generations.
The employment opportunities and the work avenues available under the free US system of capitalism were astounding. People moved through two to three major lifetime vocations before they retired. In China, the work and employment opportunities were highly restricted-particularly for the peasant class. The only possible chances of ’emancipation’ would be: 1) joining the army; 2) enrolling in colleges (but in that period, most could not get to go beyond junior high schools).
When they left their hometown villages, they would either wind up in the mines where they die in a cave-in or in deliberate setup (by which the mine owners cheat the insurance money out of the deaths), or in the sweatshops where they work for 12-16 hours per day for menial pay. Forever slaves and coolies, they were termed ‘mang liu,’ i.e., aimless drifters and the police could round them up at random and expel them from the cities and towns whenever a clean street is needed for celebrations of the national day and the like.
Where was the question for higher education for such people and their children? The social norms had reduced a major part of society to this state. It was the Cultural Revolution which seemed to take their cudgel. However, it was only chimerical as the Cultural Revolution came hopelessly mixed with the propagation of ideology and was more intent upon perpetuating the political will rather than improving a lot of proletariats. The social class structure, where the underprivileged was a majority, needed a much deeper treatment. It warranted the generation of economic activities for such people and raising of their income levels and standards of living.
Consider, for instance, how and through what exact process such lowly placed proletariats could ever have obtained ready political assessments for entry into higher education institutions. Essentially even Cultural Revolution bypassed them and ended by benefiting those who could obtain political assessments.
Because of the democracy and capitalism, the US federal system of the polity became easily accessible to highly aware US citizens, and the Federal facilities were systematized through a Federal structure where all citizens could avail of such facilities at the prevailing market rates or subsidized rates as the case may be. China’s communist governments tended to pay salaries and subsidies only to city dwellers. Some estimates reckon that China’s city dwellers, though numbering 20% or less, had cornered about 80% or more of consumption.
If political will perpetuated the socio-economic abrasion on such a large scale, where was a question of such strata ever aspiring for higher education? Instead, food and other basic necessities would be their desired objects. Official statistics in China regarding the unemployment rate never reckoned the peasants fully. Census data reveals that of about 1.3-1.5 billion Chinese, 70-80 percent of China’s population is peasants. Of these, some 20% of the Chinese peasants were unemployed, and that’s equivalent to 160-200 million peasants. And, this is still China’s status quo today even though Mao had been dead for 25 years (counting from 1976 to 2001).
Chinese society places considerable merit on academic achievements. The origin of this preference is often traced to Confucius, who advocated the necessity of the hierarchy of people and choosing rulers for the cause of societal discipline; however, his system was ‘based not on hereditary status but on individual merit’ (Ho, 1962, p.6). Confucius’ ideal society was a hierarchical society in which all had opportunities to access education and those excelling occupying the top echelons of the hierarchy (Ho, 1962).
References
Hannon, Brent. (2005).Asia lags west in most key aspects of globalization. The Asian Wall Street Journal, 2005.
Stiglitz, Joseph E.(1998). Second-Generation Strategies for Reform for China. Speech at Beijing University, Beijing, China, 1998
Hawkins, John N..Centralization, Decentralization, Recentralization: Educational Reform in China. Journal of Education Administration. 38 (5):442-454.
Price, R.F. (1997). Social justice and education in China. In T.J. Scrase (ed.). Social Justice and Third World Education (pp. 163–180). New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc.
Ho, P. T. (1962). The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368-1911. New York: Columbia University Press.