China Road

by Rob Gifford

  “The start-up phase is from 2004 to 2007.” Jin Rui turns off the PowerPoint projection. “The implementation phase is from 2007 to 2010. And 2011 to 2020 is the improvement and completion phase.”

  I write down the dates in my notebook and wonder how likely it is that they will be met. Certainly the Chinese government, when it sets its mind to a construction project, can generally achieve it with time to spare. But there is also a lot of aspirational building in China, a sort of “build it and they will come” approach in projects like this and in the attitude toward constructing the nation’s extraordinary system of new roads. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors. Build enough shiny buildings, and hope that they will reflect one another and make the place look like Silicon Valley.

  Will Hefei fill up its buildings? Or has it overbuilt, as other cities have overbuilt malls and office buildings up and down the country? Will international companies want to come here? Are the skills of Chinese software engineers really as good as those of their American counterparts? Is there more to it than just the latest hardware? What about the software in people’s heads? Can you become a player in the “knowledge economy” if you restrict the teaching and flow of knowledge?

  I think these questions matter not just for Hefei but for the whole country. If the government can improve the lives of rural people while consolidating the economic growth of inland cities such as Hefei, it may be able to keep China on an upward trajectory. But the questions touch on more than economic growth. They’re about creativity and innovation and the freedom of thought that feeds them, which China at present will not allow. It can build all the skyscrapers it likes, but if it wants to cross over from being a growing economic power to being a creative superpower, it will have to allow something more than just the construction of shiny new buildings.

  My predinner run takes me right into the center of Hefei, which is surprisingly pleasant. A narrow river runs through it, and there are small lakes and a number of attractive parks. As usual I am the only one exercising. Perhaps it’s just the heat, but for a country that regularly ranks among the top three medal winners in the Olympic Games, there always seem to be precious few spontaneous athletic activities going on in China. Sports officials say they are hoping to dominate many more Olympic disciplines in the future. They have announced, for instance, that they are pushing to become gold medal winners in women’s field hockey. I have no doubt they will win gold in every women’s field hockey event from now until kingdom come, but I have never met a single Chinese person who even knows what field hockey is. Sports in China, like capitalism, are noticeably government-led. In the park, I run past a knot of grannies doing a variety of shake-your-booty two-steps to the sounds pushed out by a portable CD player, but that’s about it.

  For dinner, I had been planning to try the revolving restaurant at the top of the Holiday Inn, but I discover that the hotel also houses an Indian restaurant. Sure enough, there is an Indian manager at the door and several Indian chefs making naan bread behind a big glass window in the kitchen. I wave at them, and they grin back. The restaurant is about half full, and as the manager shows me to a table, I ask him how the chicken tikka masalas are going down among the diners of central China.

  “Yes, Chinese people are getting the feel for Indian food.”

  I invite him to sit with me while I wait for my dinner.

  “What do you think of China?” I ask him.

  He smiles and says, “It’s developing very fast.”

  “Faster than India?”

  “Oh yes,” he says.

  “But do you think it is improving the lives of people here more than the Indian government is improving the lives of Indians?”

  “Well, in India there is democracy,” he says, putting his finger on the point of my question.

  “But does that make it better to be an Indian peasant than a Chinese one?” I ask.

  He smiles again. “I think democracy is important.”

  “But is Indian democracy helping to raise the standard of living of the people on the bottom rung of society?” I press him.

  “Yes, I think so,” he says defensively.

  He doesn’t really want to have the discussion, which is a shame, because it’s a discussion I really want to have, especially here in Hefei, where the Chinese government-led model is so much on display. China and India are both huge countries, with populations of more than a billion people, trying to lift tens of millions of farmers out of poverty. Is the more ordered, government-backed, scorching-growth-rate model of one-party China a better one for a developing country than the slightly chaotic, laissez-faire, slower-growth-rate, democratic model of India?

  Most Westerners seem to side with India, I think, simply because of that word democracy. Certainly, democracy has provided checks and balances in India that have prevented the crazy political and economic campaigns that destroyed China in the 1950s and ’60s. That in itself was enough to win the argument for India in some areas during those years.

  But it feels to me as if the word democracy leads us to attribute certain advantages to India that do not necessarily exist. Similarly, the word dictatorship leads us to attribute terrible things to China that do not necessarily exist there. We judge because of the images in our minds and not because of the reality on the ground.

  If the existence of democracy in India meant there was real democracy, with all the checks and balances, and the reduction of corruption, and the freedom to choose, and the delivery of crucial services, such as education and health care, then India would probably still win the argument. But India, like China, is hugely corrupt, and although Indian peasants can help to kick the highest leaders out of office, it appears that the new leaders who come in each time consistently fail to lift the millions out of poverty.

  There are certain improvements in life that go beyond the political system, such as the chance that your child will live to see adulthood, the likelihood that your daughter will get an education, and the probability that you yourself can find a job which does not involve wading up to your knees in a rice paddy for the rest of your life. Chinese statistics are notoriously unreliable, but in many of these areas, even allowing for a 10 to 15 percent exaggeration, China still scores better than India.

  You’re twice as likely to lose a child in India before the age of five. If you are Indian, there is only a 60 percent chance that you can read. If you are Chinese, the chance is 93 percent. If you are an adult woman in India, that goes down to 45 percent, whereas in China, according to Chinese government statistics, 87 percent of adult women can read. Income per capita is double in China what it is in India. The life expectancy in India is lower than in China (sixty-three to seventy-one). The list goes on.

  In China in the early days of reform of the 1980s, people used to say, “To get rich, first build a road,” and the instruction, though a crude oversimplification, has much truth in it, as I’m finding all the way along Route 312. China’s infrastructure is decades ahead of India’s. In 2005, China invested seven dollars in infrastructure for every dollar that India spends.

  In short, the Chinese government has till now, in some areas of life, undeniably delivered basic services and provisions in a more complete way than the Indian government. (One brief footnote, of almost no importance alongside the life-or-death discussion of infant mortality: the model also applies to sports. China’s government-led sports program achieved sixty-three medals at the Athens Olympics, thirty-two of them gold. India won one medal in Athens, a silver in shooting.)

  There are now two big questions for China, though. First: Is it all crumbling? The peasants such as Wu Faliang, with whom I had spoken the day before, say that it is, that Old Hundred Names must now pay for health care and education, and that the government has stopped providing the very services that speak so well of its development model. The rural boom of the 1980s and ’90s has ended, and despair is creeping back. One sign of it is the increase in the suicide rate, especially among rural women. China now ha
s the highest rate of female suicide in the world, and suicide is the number one cause of death among women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four.

  The second question is this: Is it all worth it? The cost of a government having absolute power to push through its policies is immense. Of course, it’s admirable that the Communist Party has been able to implement extensive vaccination programs and literacy drives, even though it may make its statistics look better than they are. But the flip side is that the government can push through policies that are not necessarily to the benefit of ordinary Chinese people. It can still decide how many children its citizens may have. It can destroy historic parts of ancient cities for redevelopment. And it can approve and build projects such as the Yangtze River Dam that require the relocation of more than a million people. Even more controversially, it can still engage in a murderous campaign to suppress a relatively harmless spiritual group, such as the Falun Gong. In most areas of Chinese life, there are few constraints on the power of the state if it wants to intervene, so everything depends on whether the policies the state wants to pursue are beneficial to the people or not.

  In India, the cost of some restraint on the government is a slower growth rate, and many Indians seem prepared to put up with that, if it means that lunatic political movements such as the Cultural Revolution can be avoided. Indian democracy may not be perfect, but at least independent labor unions are allowed, and some of them have teeth. India also has a free press, which can act as a watchdog on governmental bad behavior. In China, the press is more free now on social and economic matters, but it can easily be muzzled by the government on any sensitive issue.

  In the end, though, there is one crucial difference between China and India, and a perfect example of it is coated in black tarmac and runs east and west through Hefei. China is a brutal place to live if you are on the bottom rung, but there is an exit. And, just as important, there is a real possibility of a job at the other end. India’s 1.1 billion population is rapidly catching up with China’s 1.3 billion. But India has only about 10 million manufacturing jobs, compared with about 150 million in China. So there are simply more opportunities in China to improve your life (and I haven’t even mentioned India’s restrictive caste system). The growing service sector in India—in software development, in call centers and service centers—is great if you are already middle class and speak English. But what about possibilities for the hundreds of millions of illiterate peasants? It seems to me that India is trying to reach modernism without passing through the Industrial Revolution.

  Now, as the cost of manufacturing rises in China, we are starting to see some manufacturing relocating to India. The country’s retail sector is opening up too, and India is in the midst of other major economic changes. So it may be that, in the near future, more opportunities of escape from rural poverty will be provided, in which case the balance will tip in India’s favor.

  I’m really disappointed that one of the only Indians in central China does not want to have this conversation with me. So in the end, I have the conversation with myself over dinner, and I conclude that I do not want to be a Chinese peasant or an Indian peasant. But if I have to take a side, despite all the massive problems of rural China, I’ll go for the sweet and sour pork over the chicken biryani any day of the week.

  7. “Women Hold Up Half the Sky”

  “How old are you, boy?” asks the policeman.

  “Twenty,” replies Little Wang.

  “Let me see your driver’s license.”

  We have both stepped out of the car, and the policeman glances suspiciously at me as Little Wang leans back in to find his documents.

  “You’re going to have to come to the police station,” says the officer. “Get back in your car and follow me.”

  Little Wang glances at me, but we realize we have no choice.

  A hundred miles west of Hefei, the four lanes of Route 312 have become two as the road crosses into Henan province and the traffic thins out. There are plenty of long-distance buses and blue trucks on the road, plus the occasional minivan on local business and a few sleek black Audi A4s, the modern-day palanquins of government officials. But there are few personal cars. The landscape is green and flat.

  Little Wang was trying to drop me at the city of Xinyang, 250 miles from Hefei, and return to Hefei in one day, so as we entered Henan, he had put his foot to the floor. Soon, a siren had wailed and a police car had appeared behind us, flashing us to pull over.

  He is kicking himself for breaking the speed limit. “It is always dangerous crossing into another province,” he says as we follow the police car along the road. “The police just lie in wait for you, knowing they can find something wrong with your car and fine you.”

  I point out that he was exceeding the speed limit by quite a lot, and he admits he was but says they would have found something wrong anyway. “That’s how they supplement their salary,” he says.

  Little Wang is very concerned as we approach the police station. I tell him not to worry, to be extremely penitent, and to let me do the talking. I have been arrested several times around China for reporting without permission, and the bottom line is the police might shout a bit, but they will never harm a foreigner or his driver if they are together. Here, they do not even know I am a journalist.

  When I arrived in China as a reporter, I imagined a great web of officials, all in contact with one another, the customs people at the airport who check your bags talking to the public security people who tap your phones, who talk to the local officials in the places where you visit. In fact, it is nowhere near as sophisticated. The Chinese state security apparatus is very decentralized and quite disjointed. It can be unpleasant to a foreigner when it wants to be—if you are caught investigating something very sensitive—but even then, local officials often choose not to report you further up the chain of official command, for fear that they will look bad for having allowed you to be there in the first place.

  At the police station, there is more surprise at the arrival of the foreigner with the funny sandals and the dirty feet. I can’t imagine there have been many passing through here lately. Certainly there seems hardly any reason for a foreigner to come to this part of China.

  The police chief, clearly the bad cop of the outfit, takes over the case from our officer, saying immediately he may have to confiscate both the license and the car of my young driver. Little Wang is sitting fretting in the corner.

  “Confiscate the car?” I exclaim, trying to strike a tone somewhere between Please-sir-don’t-do-that and I’m-a-foreigner-don’t-even-think-of-doing-that.

  He starts to write down what happened while we sit there watching.

  The other policemen want to talk to me, and as the chief is writing, one of them asks if I like basketball.

  “Yes, I do,” I reply.

  “Who is your favorite player?” he asks me.

  “Oh, Yao Ming, definitely,” I say.

  “He’s good, isn’t he?” says the officer. “We like him too.”

  “He’s better than any of the Americans,” I say, realizing that flattery may be the quickest way out of this particular hole.

  His buddies join in, with their analysis of the ups and downs of the NBA, and then we switch to European soccer, and how Manchester United is doing, and, as always, they want to talk about the former England captain David Beckham, who they all know is married to Victoria, otherwise known as Posh from the Spice Girls.

  The mood lightens a little, so I launch into another apology to Mr. Bad Cop on behalf of Little Wang and explain how it was all my fault. Foreigners get a lot of leeway with Chinese police. Ordinary Chinese people get none. Bad Cop points out again how serious an offense it is and even pulls out his rule book.

  “Do you read Chinese?” he asks.

  I nod. He opens the book at the page where it is actually written, enshrined in Chinese law, that the fine for speeding is “between 500 and 2,500 yuan” ($70 to $300), thus conveniently leaving it up
to each policeman how much to charge and pass along and how much to keep for himself.

  In the end, it takes two hours of humility on my part, and form filling on his part, not to mention further discussions about the Houston Rockets’ defense, before we are released. Bad Cop forces Little Wang to sign a form admitting his guilt and stating that the fine is seventeen hundred yuan. That’s roughly two hundred dollars, more than a month’s salary for Little Wang. I pull out my wallet, pay the fine, and we politely thank the police and leave before they change their minds.

  We pull back onto Route 312 and Little Wang drives much more slowly after that. But his hopes of dropping me in Xinyang and getting back to Hefei before nightfall have gone.

  Chairman Mao once said that “revolution is not a dinner party,” and he wasn’t kidding. Mao destroyed China. Quite apart from the staggering number of deaths caused in the Great Leap Forward, and the lives ruined by the Cultural Revolution, he decimated the intellectuals, annihilated China’s cultural heritage, and encouraged parents to have large families, resulting in a population explosion that is still being dealt with today. The census of 1953 found the population of China to be just over 580 million people. Now, at around 1.3 billion, it has more than doubled.

  However, in two areas there is no denying the overall improvements Mao made. The first was public health and life expectancy. The edge that China has over India in basic health statistics is largely attributable to the campaigns in the early years of Maoism. In 1949, average life expectancy was just thirty-five years. By 1975, it was sixty-three. Today, it is seventy-one. The infant mortality rate was halved in the first five years of Mao’s rule and today is one-eighth what it was in 1949.

  The second area in which Mao improved life was the status of women. He famously said that “women hold up half the sky” and set about making sure they did. Right up until the Communists came to power, in 1949, women were being bought and sold as wives, as they had been for centuries. It was not unusual for wealthy men to have three or four wives. But suddenly, all of that changed. Women were given jobs in factories. Some earned positions of responsibility. The propaganda machine saturated society with posters of women standing shoulder to shoulder with men in the revolution. The reality was not as perfect as the propaganda made out, but it was a huge improvement.