In January 2022, the discovery of the ‘woman in chains’, a mother of eight shackled and maltreated by her husband in a Feng county village there, generated fresh interest in Ma’s book.^[1] Shocked by the cruelty and indifference to her plight by local villagers and authorities, people turned to Ma’s book for causes of the region’s economic and moral impoverishment—even though the book’s historical scope ends in 1949, the year the People’s Republic of China was established. In 2023, a revised version of the book, now considered a classic in the field of regional socioeconomic history, was published in mainland China. The following is abridged highlights from his interview with the Shanghai Review of Books on 28 January 2024.^[2]

Editors’ introduction

Q1: Back in the Tang and Song dynasties [618–907; 960–1279], the Huaibei region used to be arable and prosperous; it was known as the ‘land of plenty’. But thereafter until the Republican period [1912–49], the region became a so-called inhospitable wasteland. How did this change occur, and why? What was the key turning point in this historical change?

This has to do with water control. Historically, regions were ranked according to their distance to the imperial capital. Every 500 li [roughly 250 kilometres] from the capital, the region’s ranking went down one level. At the centre was the Royal Domain 王畿 [the capital and its environs], then the core regions of the Sovereign Domain 甸服, the Noble Domain 侯服, the Peace-Securing Domain 绥服, the Restrained Domain 要服 and lastly the Wild Domain 荒服. In the past, dynasties focused on developing the Royal Domain and its surrounding core regions, in part because limitations in transportation and communication made it difficult effectively to manage regions further away.

Before the Northern Song dynasty [960–1127], imperial capitals were all located between the Yellow River and the Huai River. Therefore the central government had to ensure the prosperity and stability of the Huaibei area. During the Southern Song [1127–79], the centre of power shifted to Lin’an (contemporary Hangzhou) south of the Yangtze River. Then, in the Yuan dynasty [1271–1368], the capital was moved to Dadu [modern-day Beijing], north of the Yellow River. Huaibei was reduced from a core region to a marginal one. It became a battlefield with neither southern nor northern powers willing to invest in its development. In 1128, the year after Emperor Gaozong 宋高宗 moved his capital to Lin’an [Hangzhou], the imperial official Du Chong 杜充breached the dikes on the south bank of the Yellow River in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the enemy Jurchen army’s advance. Water from the Yellow River flooded southward. The broken dikes were never repaired.

In the Ming dynasty [1368–1644], during the Hongzhi period 弘治 [1488–1505], Liu Daxia 刘大夏, a water management official, blocked the main course of the Yellow River, forcing it to flow south into the Huai River, whose course was very narrow to begin with, and it flooded. Liu did this to protect the Grand Canal [a crucial water transport infrastructure in pre-modern China]. The Ming prioritised the north when it came to water management, including protection of the capital and its surrounding regions (today’s Hebei). The court offered flooded regions tax relief but did not concern itself greatly with the effect of the floods on the lives of the common people. In the early years of the Wanli period 万历 [1573–1619], the director-general of river conservancy Wan Gong 万恭 suggested breaching a levee at Tongwaxiang 铜瓦厢 in the lower reaches of the Yellow River to divert the waters into the Daqing River 大清河 instead. No action was taken, but in 1855, there was a breach at Tongwaxiang, and the Yellow River changed course exactly as Wan Gong had prescribed three centuries earlier.

Q2: We talked about the impact of water control in the Huaibei region earlier. Apart from water control, in your book The Sacrificed Land you also described in detail the effect of grain transport and salt production on the Huaibei region.

During the Ming and Qing dynasty, especially under the Kangxi Emperor [reign period: 1661–1722], grain transport, salt production and water control all centred on Huai’an in Huaibei. Water control was the most costly of all. Under an imperial autocracy, more spending naturally meant more corruption. Frequently, 90 percent of the funds for flood control were embezzled, leading to ineffective flood control. In the Qing dynasty, although eight provinces paid part of their taxation in grains, parts of Huaibei accounted for nearly 40 percent of the whole empire’s grain tribute. The common people had to bear the costs of both the taxes—including corvée labour and providing building materials for water control projects—and the corruption.

Q3: In The Sacrificed Land you used the ‘cult of power’ to explain various social–ecological transitions and transformations in the Huaibei region since 1680. You mentioned that this concept was greatly influenced by Marxist theory. Can you elaborate on it?

I think Marxist theory can explain many things about pre-modern China. It is very useful for us to understand Chinese society. The concept of the cult of power encapsulates Marx’s argument in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that ‘executive power subordinates society to itself’.^[3] In my view, pre-modern Chinese society had no religious traditions in the Western sense. Western religions emphasise the purification of the soul through self-reflection, whereas religious worship in Chinese society is pragmatic and self-serving: people pray to Confucius for good examination results, to the Goddess of Mercy Guanyin for more children and to Lord Zhao the Marshal for more wealth. In essence, religious worship in China is the worship of power. People worship gods and deities because they themselves have no power.

Confucianism assigned scholars the highest social status. But the purpose of studying is to become an official, and only by becoming a high official can you rise above other scholars and obtain power. Even Daoism and Buddhism have hierarchies. In Daoism, the Jade Emperor sits at the top, followed by other deities below him, ranked in a strict order. As for Buddhism, there is a story in the novel Water Margin where Lu Zhishen 鲁智深 [a violent man who eventually attained Buddhist enlightenment] declares his intentions of becoming an abbot, and a monk at the temple tells him that he has to begin by carrying water and looking after the vegetable patch, and work his way up. To sum up, before 1949, the only sacred thing in China was power, which people devoutly worshipped.

Q4: In The Sacrificed Land, you were critical in your analysis of power worship that was prevalent in traditional Chinese society, but you also showed great sympathy for ordinary people. How did this attitude come about?

When I was young, I read novels like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and imagined myself as a big shot like [the poet, general and statesman] Cao Cao 曹操 or Liu Bei 刘备 [founder of the Shu Han kingdom]. But around my third year at university, my perspective changed. After tracing my family genealogy I realised that my ancestors could not even compare to the lowest-ranking figures recorded in the Twenty-Four Histories. In fact, their likes were not recorded in any histories. Since then, I no longer viewed history from the perspective of powerful and famous men. Instead, I imagine myself as one of the corvée labourers building the Great Wall or one of those unfortunates described in a Tang poem about war as ‘bones lying by the banks of Wuding River’, a farmer, or the owner of some small business, squeezed by corrupt officials day after day. Ordinary people form the majority in history. This is also what Marxist historiography emphasises: to study history from the bottom.

I also study history from a regional perspective. Scholars outside China have devised many influential theories about Chinese history, but they are usually inapplicable to the Huaibei region, where I grew up. For example, the theory of ‘involution’ looks at the issue of diminishing returns per unit of labour in agriculture caused by overpopulation. However, the same theory cannot be applied to the Huaibei region. The Huaibei region historically had a relatively small population with a lot of land, but they could not farm it profitably because of constant flooding. During imperial times, the central government deliberately flooded the region again and again. This resulted in constant social turmoil and banditry. Peasants simply abandoned their land, which grew desolate. This had the greatest effect on the local middle class. Wealthy families could afford to keep private armies to defend themselves against bandits, while the poor had nothing to be robbed. The social structure of the Huainan region was dumbbell-shaped, with the richest families at the very top, the common people and bandits at the very bottom, and scant middle class in between. A middle-class household with an ox was the most desirable target for the bandits. A dozen people would rush into your house, snatch your ox, sell it the same evening and divide up the spoils. The common people also faced severe exploitation by officials and landlords.

Q5: You just used the reality of the Huaibei region to challenge the well-known theory of involution. This reminded me of a comparison you made in your book: some regions suffered from capitalism while Huaibei suffered from the absence of capitalism. Could you elaborate?

Capitalism developed relatively early in the Yangtze delta region. The harm caused by capitalist economic crises in that region has been well studied. However, scholars have failed to examine how places like Huaibei suffered from the lack of capitalism. Under a market economy, businesses experience profits and losses, and prices fluctuate. Farmers can decide whether to plant rice or mulberry according to the demands of the market. In contrast, in places where power is concentrated in the hands of the elite, like Huaibei, everything is subject to their arbitrary decision-making. People have no choice but to endure the greater losses and suffering that result.

In the Dictionary of Political Economy, edited by scholars including Xu Dixin 许涤新, a landlord is defined as ‘someone who rents out land’ while a worker is a ‘landless proletariat’. In reality, proletariats formed the majority of the landlords in the Yangtze delta region. According to research by economic historian Li Bozhong 李伯重, in the 1820s every household cultivated around ten mu [1.6 acres] of farmland in the Yangtze delta region. In many instances, the labour force of the household worked in factories and rented out the land to others to farm, making most landlords working class.

Q6: You used the novel Water Margin to support your research on the social and economic history of the Huaibei region, which reminded me of the book Water Margin and Chinese Society by Sa Mengwu 萨孟武. Can you talk about the reasoning behind it?

I refer to Water Margin in the context of a historiographical method called mutual verification between literature and history. I have two principles in historical research. The first is to identify and critically examine historical materials. The second principle is never use materials that I cannot verify elsewhere. As in a court trial, there must be a chain of evidence. Water Margin and other novels I refer to, like Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, can be classified as ‘social novels’, which supplement historical materials to serve in the chain of evidence.

Water Margin was written in the early Ming dynasty, with modifications and new versions appearing later in the dynasty. The theme song of the 1998 TV series Water Margin sings about ‘a friendship of life and death forged over a bowl of wine’. To offer one’s life in exchange for a bowl of wine or a meal indeed reflects the material scarcity of a famine-stricken society. This was also the social norm of Huaibei society. During an uprising at the end of the Yuan dynasty [1279–1368], a wealthy family only had to slaughter a few cattle and prepare a few jars of wine to incite a mob to murder the county magistrate.

Q7：Some have criticised you for showing too much personal emotion in your book. In the epilogue, you talked about your experiences growing up and studying in Huaibei in stark poverty, as well as the challenges of doing field research in your hometown. Is it right to assume that you brought your personal experience into this book and, to some extent, you wanted to tackle prejudices against the Huabei region and its people?

I do not think there is any historian who writes without any personal bias. Even choosing what to study and which materials to use is based on personal likes and dislikes. Scholars who claim to be purely objective are lying.

I studied at Soochow University in the 1990s. Back then I could barely afford proper clothing. For three-quarters of the year I would wear the same outfit: a khaki military jacket, a pair of track pants, and sneakers with holes in the toes. Poverty was one reason why I was drawn to this subject. Most of my classmates came from the relativity prosperous Yangtze delta region, and I stuck out like a sore thumb. I dared not attend the social dances that were popular at that time, or invite anyone to the movies. My classmates looked down on me, and I gradually discovered from my readings that people from Huaibei had been discriminated against for their poverty by those from the neighbouring Yangtze delta region since the Ming dynasty. However, if you look back further in history, things were different.

The more I read about the Huaibei region, the more perplexed I became: before the Northern Song dynasty, not only was my home region way more developed than the Yangtze delta region, it also produced many noteworthy figures, including the Han general Xiao He 萧何 [257–193 BC] and the Three Kingdoms military strategist Zhou Yu 周瑜 [175–210]. How come a thousand years later, by the time of Emperor Qianlong’s southern tour, he described Huaibei as ‘barren mountains and poor rivers, vulgar men and shrewish women’?^[4] Why have there been so many misunderstandings and prejudices against the Huaibei region? I began doing fieldwork in the region because I wanted to find an explanation for this historical change. I was dissatisfied with what existing history books, models and theories had to say about the Huaibei region.

My background is in history, and I have not received any formal training in anthropology or sociology. So I did not have a carefully formulated plan for field research. I just wandered around looking for answers to the questions that had piled up from my readings. At that time, I was living entirely off my scholarship. To save money, in winter, I lived in a public bathhouse because it was warm, and in summer, I stayed in any cheap guesthouse as long as it came with an electric fan. I was living among street performers and vendors.

The most unforgettable experience was when I went to Feng County for research. As soon as I entered a village, villagers began to follow me, cursing me from behind. I turned around to see what was happening, and I was immediately surrounded by people who started hitting me. More people joined in the beating, all shouting and cursing. It seemed like half the village had come running over. When I told this story to the director of the Xuzhou Salt Industry Bureau, who had also grown up around there, he shrugged and said that was nothing. Their division director had been stabbed by a mob before.

Because I grew up in the Huaibei region and conducted fieldwork there, my research focus and perspectives cannot be the same as those who write about the region while sipping coffee in their studies. For me, it is necessary through research and writing to reconstruct the ecology of the Huaibei society with which I am familiar. I hope my book can serve as a different point of reference and offer readers a new way of thinking.

Notes

[1] Joel Wing-Lun, ‘What have we learned from “the woman in chains”?’, China Story, 9 May 2022, online at: https://www.thechinastory.org/what-have-we-learned-from-the-woman-in-chains/

[2] ‘Interview with Ma Junya’ 马俊亚谈被牺牲的“局部”, Shanghai Book Review, 28 January 2024, online at: https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_26167117

[3] Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852, online at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch07.htm.

[4] When the Qianlong emperor visited Xuzhou, he reportedly uttered the phrase ‘poor mountains and rivers, untamed men and women’ 穷山恶水，泼妇刁民. Although lacking any historical record, the saying became popular when describing the Huaibei region.

The post The Sacrificed Land: Q&A with Historian Ma Junya appeared first on The China Story.

Given his apparent lack of expertise in economic and financial affairs, it has long been assumed that Xi’s forte rests in pulling together a personally loyal clique of capable cadres. A master of Machiavellian-style palace intrigue, within ten years of assuming power, he had ensured that his clique dominated all major offices in the party-state apparatus.

However, both former Foreign Minister Qin and General Li – as well as the disgraced commander and political commissar of the Rocket force, Generals Li Yuchao 李玉超 and Xu Zhongbo 徐忠波 – had been considered Xi protégés. The failure to disclose fully to the public the reasons behind their demise testifies to problems Xi is facing in running the party-military apparatus. The lack of due process in senior-level appointments and sackings under Xi has opened him to criticism by other ‘princelings’ (the offspring of the PRC’s founding fathers). In the run-up to the celebration of the 125th anniversary of former state president Liu Shaoqi’s  刘少奇 birthday, Liu’s son, General Liu Yuan 刘源, published an article entitled ‘Affirm and insist upon the system of democratic centralism; strengthen the construction of organization and institutions’ in the official journal Research on Mao Zedong Thought. General Liu – who reportedly does not see eye to eye with Xi – seems to be critiquing Xi’s dictatorial ruling style. Given that his father was persecuted to death by Mao at the start of the Cultural Revolution, General Liu’s statement might have been more pointed than it seemed.

In general, the party-state apparatus since the 20th Party Congress has been dominated by apparatchiks (political officials responsible for issues including ideology, national security, personnel and propaganda) and not technocrats (often English-speaking cadres who might have been trained abroad in science or technological fields or economics, and who understand economic principles, modern financial tools and international trade). While quite a few of the current Xi-appointed Politburo have at least bachelor’s degrees in technology-related subjects, they have built their careers in party affairs, especially ideology or organisation. The best example is the Vice-Premier in charge of finance and economics, He Lifeng 何立峰, who worked with Xi for more than ten years when the latter was based in Fujian. He has Xi’s full trust, but he is not a technocrat and is a newcomer to policy-making in the areas of finance and international economics. He is therefore a far cry from his predecessor, former Vice-Premier Liu He 刘鹤 (in office 19 March 2018 – 12 March 2023), an economist with a masters degree in public administration from Harvard. Liu He was in charge of negotiations with the United States over tariffs and other financial issues during a particularly tense time in bilateral relations. Liu He was also a close adviser to Xi before retiring. Meanwhile, the older generation of technocrats employed by Premier Zhu Rongji and his successor Premier Wen Jiabao in the late 1990s and early 2000s – including former People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan 周小川 and Minister of Finance Lou Jiwei 楼继伟 – have all stepped down due to age requirements.

The rise of the ‘national security faction’

The only Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) member accompanying Xi during his recent summit with US President Biden on 15 November in San Francisco was Cai Qi 蔡奇. Although ranked fifth in the PBSC pecking order, he controls the police-state apparatus in his capacity as a vice-chairman of the Central National Security Commission 中央国家安全委员会 as well as being its head of the General Office. His formal title is head of the CPC Central Committee Secretariat 中共中央书记处; other members of the Secretariat include the Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong 王小洪 and the Minister of State Security Chen Yixin 陈一新. It is the first time in CPC history that heads of the ministries of public security and state security have had slots on the Secretariat, signifying the centrality of security to Xi’s administration. Moreover, Cai is director of the CPC Central Committee General Office 中央委员会办公厅主任, which controls all party-related decision-making and implementation. The General Office is the nerve centre of the entire party apparatus. It is the first time that a PBSC member has held this critical position. Cai is also responsible for the well-being and safety of Xi in his capacity as head of the Party General Secretary’s Office 国家主席办公厅.

There is speculation that a subtle power struggle has erupted between Cai Qi’s faction of national security apparatchiks and Premier Li Qiang’s 李強 State Council bureaucrats. Li Qiang is ranked No. 2 in the PBSC pecking order, just behind Xi. Yet his performance as premier – in theory the person responsible for the whole economy – since assuming the post this year has been low-profile and lacklustre, especially compared to his predecessor Li Keqiang 李克强, who was deemed a committed market-oriented reformer. Li Qiang has said publicly that the role of the State Council is to implement decisions made by top party committees – for example, the Central Commission on Finance and Economics – headed by Xi. Under Xi’s instruction that party organs should take the lead in policy formulation, the status and power of the State Council has been truncated.

Li Qiang (a former governor of Zhejiang Province, where Xi worked from 2002 to 2007) represents the Zhejiang subfaction of Xi Jinping’s faction. Cai Qi and He Lifeng represent the Fujian subfaction (where Xi worked from 1985 to 2002). Appointments since the 20th Party Congress have demonstrated that the senior cadres of the Fujian subfaction have outnumbered those of the Zhejiang subfaction.

Policy-making mismanagement

Xi’s failures in managing high-level personnel and his apparent lack of success in putting together a team that can reverse the economic slowdown has been responsible for a series of ill-conceived policies, discussed below.

Putting national security concerns above attracting foreign direct investment

The weeks after the Biden–Xi summit in San Francisco witnessed more multinational corporations pulling out of the PRC. The purported ‘smile diplomacy’ pursued by the Xi delegation in the United States produced very little in terms of reviving the domestic economy. Foreign investors and businesses are aware that the Ministry of State Security has stepped up its harassment of foreign firms, particularly those handling due diligence, accounting and consultancy. It has launched a propaganda campaign urging Chinese citizens to report foreign spies, liberally defined, and even issued an instruction warning businesspeople (domestic and foreign) ‘not to short’ the stock market. Several senior staff (including Americans) working for the China-based offices of multinationals have not been allowed to leave the country. Despite repeated requests from the CPC administration, Washington has yet to relax efforts to cut China off from US investment (including wealth funds) and from the global supply chain in high-tech areas such as IT, AI and pharmaceuticals. According to JPMorgan, in the second quarter of 2023, foreign direct investment fell to its lowest level in twenty-six years. It is likely that the pace of foreign direct investment leaving China will further accelerate. Yet even when Beijing talks about luring back multinationals, it has announced no favourable policies such as allowing them a bigger share of the market or giving them more flexibility in moving foreign exchange in and out of China. The Free Trade Zones advertised by the Chinese government in the past few years have failed to attract significant investment from multinationals, meaning that they are not attractive to potential investors in China. Initial public offerings (IPOs) of Chinese firms in both China and Hong Kong have also shrunk in both numbers and size of capital.

Too little too late in saving the real estate sector

It was only in mid-November 2023 that the State Council announced one trillion yuan of low-cost financing to help a select list of struggling real estate firms to restructure their loans and ensure that they complete unfinished apartments already sold to customers. This is a case of too little too late. After Evergrande, the biggest developer in the PRC, announced its insolvency in late 2021, other property firms, including HK-based Country Garden and China Vanke, followed. Yet the party-state apparatus has done nothing to stop these overleveraged firms from continuing to draw huge loans from friendly state bankers and to raise bonds (for which they cannot even make the minimum interest payments). It is understood that these firms pay hefty bribes to bankers and bond issuers for their services. Anti-graft operations have yet to start in earnest.

In September 2023, in response to massive complaints from home buyers – including millions who faced difficulty paying mortgages for unfinished apartments – Beijing dangled the possibility of the state rolling out ‘subsidised housing’ 保障房. Under the so-called Singapore model, by which the government provides good-quality subsidised flats to residents, state-backed housing would play a big role in China’s housing market. This would put to an end the monopolisation of the housing market by developers of expensive ‘commodity flats’ 商品房. At this stage, details are lacking. State Council Document 14 on the this subject simply states that there will be a return to ‘subsidised’ housing. At time of writing there have been no detailed announcements as to who will be entitled to subsidised housing.

Widening social economic unrest

After the official statistics showed that youth unemployment had risen to 21 percent in the first quarter of 2023, the State Statistical Bureau stopped releasing new figures on this sensitive issue. Findings by a Peking University professor claim that as many as 46.5 percent of young people are jobless.

A related point is the shrinking population. Government subsidies amounting to RMB 3,000 or more for urban couples to have a child are not working because raising a child in a city has become prohibitively expensive even for middle-class families – not to mention labourers who are struggling to make ends meet. As with the sudden ban on tutoring schools and restrictions on the hours students can spend on online gaming, it is a case of poor planning and untimely execution of policies. These decisions have not been popular and have hurt business confidence.

As a result of unhappiness with such policies and the economic downturn, protests have increased in dozens of cities and towns. Protestors including laid-off workers, labourers who fail to receive their pay cheque in time, distressed mortgage payers, and depositors who could not withdraw money from accounts with local government banks.

Meanwhile local administrations have piled up debt amounting to 92 trillion. Local-level government bankruptcies means that not only civil servants and teachers but also police and people’s armed police (PAP) members cannot get their salaries. A big chink in the armour of China’s surveillance and police apparatus has appeared. In response, various levels of party cells have asked state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to revive their own security teams, which were active during the Mao years. Called renwubu 人武部 (people’s militia departments), these security teams are paid for by SOEs but also keep an eye on law and order in their areas.

The increasing police-state atmosphere has particularly alarmed members of the 400 million members of China’s middle classes. The increasingly stringent control over the movement of foreign currency in and out of the country has made it difficult for Chinese who want to emigrate to Western countries. But this has not stopped frustrated Chinese from taking dangerous and often illegal paths to leave China. The number of ‘refugees’ or ‘escapees’ from China trying to reach the United States by traversing dangerous terrain in South and Central America testifies to the loss of faith among many Chinese in the communist system.

As of this writing, the Xi leadership has still not convened the much-anticipated Third Plenum of the 20th Central Committee. Usually, third plenums, which discuss economic and sociopolitical policies and reforms, are called in October or November. Xi’s failure to assemble and keep a capable leadership team, or to introduce timely measures to address the nation’s multifaceted problems, have cast on doubt Xi’s ability to remain a ‘leader for life’ – and even, perhaps, the Party’s own ‘mandate of heaven’.

The post The Mystery of Xi’s Disappearing Officials appeared first on The China Story.

To achieve the first centennial goal the Party needed to address rural poverty since the highest concentrations of poverty were in the countryside. In 2013 Xi Jinping launched the ‘targeted poverty alleviation programme’ 精准扶贫 which shifted poverty targeting from regions to households.[1] Once target households were identified, each was allocated a government official who was tasked with lifting household members above the absolute poverty line of RMB 4000 (US$620) per person per year. Their careers depended upon it. Assigned Party members would try to help people find jobs, sell their produce, and sometimes simply gave people money. The Party also directed government agencies to invest in rural infrastructure and provide grants to rural areas where there were large numbers of poor households. Local government leaders who failed to eliminate poverty in their jurisdictions would not be eligible for promotion.

In 2021 Xi declared ‘complete victory’ in the struggle against extreme poverty, announcing that 99 million people had been raised above China’s official poverty line as a result of the targeted poverty campaign. The announcement enabled Xi to claim that his first centennial goal had been met, even though the livelihoods of many hundreds of millions of farmers remained very modest. China’s official poverty line of 4,000 yuan ($620) a year is equivalent to $1.69 a day, which is less than the World Bank’s threshold of $2.15 a day, and far below the World’s Bank recommended national poverty threshold for upper middle-income countries such as China, which currently stands at $6.85. If applying this threshold, barely half of China’s population would sit above it, as former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang observed at a 2020 press conference.

Following the 2021 declaration of victory, Xi Jinping set his sights on a new campaign — ‘rural revitalization’ 乡村振兴 — to consolidate the gains of the targeted poverty campaign and transform China into an agricultural superpower. Investment in rural revitalisation programs is intended to increase farmers’ still relatively low incomes, which will be essential if the Party is to achieve Xi’s second centennial goal. As Document No.1 (2023) noted, ‘the most arduous and heavy task of building a modern socialist country in all respects still lies in the countryside.’

Since its launch in 2021, the significance of rural revitalisation for China’s national development strategy has become increasingly apparent. Rural revitalisation matters for ‘dual circulation’ — China’s plan for future growth to be driven as much by consumer demand as by exports. It matters for employment – new rural enterprises are being touted as job-generators for new graduates. It also matters for ‘common prosperity’ — the need to address the still wide gap between rural and urban incomes. And in the wake of US-China tensions and heightened concerns in Beijing about China’s high dependence on food imports, rural revitalisation matters for food security. The program also intersects with the Xi Jinping administration’s economic policy slogans ‘green development’, ‘ecological civilization’ and ‘beautiful China’. Rural revitalisation envisions beautiful and sustainable villages where people will want to live and visit.

Xi’s second centennial goal includes a vision of China as an ‘agricultural superpower’ 农业强国. Party documents emphasise the need to modernise farming practices and develop new agricultural technologies. Document No. 1 (2023) outlined nine tasks for China’s ‘rural revitalisation’, including the stabilisation of grain supply, increased domestic production of key agricultural products such as soybeans, and the expanded use of modern agricultural technologies. Investments in rural infrastructure will continue under the program, but most government subsidies will be directed toward new local industries.

The Party’s plan for achieving its ambitious rural revitalization agenda is to put itself in charge. Document No. 1 (2023) emphasises the important role of the Party in rural governance, calling for full implementation of policies empowering the village Party branch to lead the village (in place of the elected village committee). Village Party secretaries are now required to take over the formerly separate position of village leader under a Party policy known as ‘two burdens on one shoulder pole’ 两副担子一肩挑. This policy requires township officials to orchestrate village elections to ensure that the village Party branch secretary wins. Because the village Party secretary frequently now stands unopposed in such elections, only minor positions, such as deputy village head or village accountant, are contested.[2]

The Party has also used a law-and-order campaign to chase ‘undesirable’ candidates out of consideration for village leadership. The campaign to ‘Sweep Away Black and Eliminate Evil’ 扫黑除恶 ran from 2018 to 2020 and has now been streamlined into local government and police work. In rural areas the campaign targeted ‘village tyrants’ 村霸 who had built their own independent kingdoms and amassed power outside of the ‘state governance system’. Villagers who had been ‘dealt with’ as part of the campaign typically became ineligible to run for village office.

During the week of 24-28 April 2023, the CPC’s Central Party School organised its first nation-wide training program for China’s village leaders. Offered via video link, and run through 3,568 classrooms across the country the training covered five main topics: ‘developing and strengthening the village-level collective economy’, ‘Party-building leading rural governance’, ‘doing in-depth and detailed mass work’, ‘strengthening village party organisation into a solid fortress’, and ‘building a beautiful, Red village’. A Xinhua news report of the training cited Kong Qingfan, Party secretary of Tongfa Village, Qing’an County, Heilongjiang. According to Xinhua, Party secretary Kong ‘believes that the village Party organization secretary must truly become the “leading goose” of rural revitalisation, and the grassroots party organisations must truly become the “backbone” of the people, shouldering their mission and responsibility in line with the [Party’s] original intention (i.e., original revolutionary spirit, chuxin 初心).’

To further strengthen Party organisation at the grassroots the Party has dispatched a plethora of cadres from government agencies and public institutions, including universities, banks and State-owned Enterprises (SOEs). Xi Jinping has revived and expanded the position of First Secretary 第一书记 who are deployed from outside the village and whose mission is to strengthen the leadership and management capacity of the village Party branch and village Party secretary. First Secretaries are meant to serve as trainers, mentors and ‘missionaries’ of the Party. According to the National Rural Revitalisation Commission, in 2023 more than 400,000 First Party Secretaries and supporting work team personnel were deployed across 26 provinces. The First Secretary is typically supported by a work team 工作队 — a mechanism the Party uses to support the rapid take-up of major policy initiatives, which means millions more public sector employees are being rotated into China’s villages to forge ahead with the Party-led rural revitalisation agenda.

By putting the Party back in charge, the Xi administration’s approach to governing the countryside is consistent with the Party’s wider recentralising agenda, but in the countryside it represents a break with four decades of rural governance in which self-governing village committees and directly elected village leaders played a lead decision-making role in village affairs. While Party secretaries remained a strong presence in some villages where they were known as the ‘first hand’ 一把手, the Party’s presence was otherwise much diminished in the post-collective countryside.

In reasserting its authority in China’s villages, the Party has created new risks and challenges for itself. For one, it will not be able to shift blame for policy failures to village leaders or village committees since Party representatives now control those positions. Although the Party has criticised corruption and cronyism by elected village leaders, it is not clear how village Party leaders, working in the same social and cultural milieu and under similar pressures and constraints, will be immune to such behaviours.[3] Second, the costs of grassroots Party building are staggeringly high- just the salaries of 400,000 deployed Party functionaries in 2023 alone would cost an estimated 24 billion yuan (US$3.4 billion) before costs of deployment and administration.[4] Millions of First Secretaries and work team members have been mobilised to strengthen the Party’s grassroots capacity to lead the rural revitalisation agenda, but effective capacity building will take years and the costs of deployment will place an increasing strain on fiscal resources, especially if China’s economy continues to tank as it did through much of 2023. The strain is felt most acutely by local governments that are heavily indebted and unable to raise new revenue through land sales as they did in the past.

Most importantly, rural revitalisation calls for innovation and entrepreneurship in agriculture and agribusiness. The last time the Party inspired such innovation in the countryside was in the 1980s when it disbanded the communes and got out of farmers’ way. Rural China then took off and kickstarted the Chinese economic growth miracle.[5] It is unclear how a centralised approach to governing the countryside will encourage private investment and cultivate innovation in rural business and technology. If the Party continues with the top-down grant-making schemes that were rolled out for previous rural campaigns farmers will absorb the funds, but it will not necessarily generate sustainable new initiatives.

In imagining China as an agricultural superpower, Xi Jinping and the Party leadership have dared to dream big. But in sending the Party in to take charge, they have followed a playbook that has become standard since Xi came to power. Whatever the political or policy problem — the Party organisation will fix it. To guide Party functionaries in their work, in October 2023 the Party Publicity (formerly Propaganda) Bureau released yet another book of quotations by Xi Jinping. Titled Extracts from Xi Jinping’s Discourses on Grassroots Governance, the book highlights the importance of Party intervention to ‘improve the system of governance in the countryside’.

With the Party in charge, the success of China’s ambitious rural revitalisation campaign will likely mirror the success of the country’s wider economic policies, over which the Party is asserting increasingly centralised control. It begs the same question that we might ask of the economy more broadly as China emerges from the ravages caused by COVID-19-related restrictions: can a centralised and tightly controlled political system provide the conditions necessary for the leap to high incomes and advanced economic development?

Notes

[1] For a discussion of earlier approaches to poverty alleviation in China see Ben Hillman, ‘Opening up: The Politics of Poverty and Development in Rural China’, Development Bulletin 61 (May 2003): 47-50.

[2] Zhao Tan, ‘First Democracy, Then Centralism’: The New Shape of Village Elections under the ‘One-Shoulder Pole’ Policy, paper presented at the Australian Centre on China in the World, 9 August 2023.

[3] On informal power and the limits of formal institutions in the countryside see Ben Hillman, ‘Factions and Spoils: Examining Political Behaviour within the Local State in China’, The China Journal 64 (July 2010): 1-18.

[4] This estimate is based on the assumption that each First Party Secretary and work team member earns a salary of 5000 yuan per month. Salaries are likely to be higher in many cases.

[5] Jean C. Oi, Rural China Takes off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform, University of California Press, 1999.

The post From Poverty Elimination to Rural Revitalisation – The Party Takes Charge appeared first on The China Story.

How does China compare to these other countries trapped at the middle-income level? Since the beginning of reforms under Deng Xiaoping in 1978, China has undergone remarkable development. After four decades of strong economic growth, China has become the second largest economy (in terms of nominal GDP), the largest exporter and the second largest importer in the world.[1] However, China’s growth, even with double-digit growth rates, has relied heavily on unskilled labour. Most of the workers who have fuelled the country’s rise come from rural villages and have never gone to high school. For all of its investment in physical infrastructure, for decades China failed to invest enough in the education and health of a large share of its people.[2]

One key factor that may account for disparate development paths among nations is education. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in 2015, in countries that graduated to high-income status (i.e. they escape from middle income), 72 percent of the working age population (18–65 years)[3] had completed secondary education when the country was still at middle-income status. In countries stuck in the Middle-Income Trap, the share of the working-age population with a secondary education is much lower—only 36 percent on average.

Having a large supply of educated workers ensures that enough talent exists to meet and drive demand for high-value goods and services that drive an economy when it becomes a high-income one, thereby sustaining growth. When too many unskilled workers are squeezed out of upgraded industries, their wages tend to stagnate or fall, curtailing demand and hampering growth. This eventually leads to serious social problems, such as higher rates of unemployment and increased crime and social unrest. Nations with socially polarised work forces also suffer from political instability.

Shortcomings in education and health threaten China’s growth

Education attainment metrics help reveal China’s potential future development and growth trajectory. The share of uneducated workers in China’s labour force is larger than that of virtually all upper middle-income countries. According to China’s own 2015 micro-census data,[4] there are between 450 to 500 million people in China between the ages of 18 and 65 who have never attended one day of high school, which is 70 percent of the labour force. This makes China one of the least educated middle-income countries in the world.

A large population of uneducated workers was not a problem while China was moving from low- to middle-income status. Unskilled labour was in high demand. Unskilled wages were low, and low-cost manufacturing and construction were growing. But China’s growth model has been changing over the past decade or more. Unskilled wages are much higher, so foreign investors have begun to shift their attention towards other countries with cheaper labour. China’s own massive push to automate (also to avoid having to pay for labour that became increasingly expensive since the mid-2000s) also is rendering low-skilled workers redundant. Construction jobs have tapered off as investment in infrastructure cools as well. China’s unskilled workers may become increasingly unemployable (and have actually begun to see wages falling) as the economy upgrades.

The only destination for China’s unskilled workforce — new entrants to the labour force and laid-off workers alike — is the informal (or blue-collar) service sector. Data from the 2018 China Statistical Yearbook shows that informal employment is currently the fastest growing sector in China, increasing from 33 percent in 2004 to 56 percent in 2017.[5] A rising supply of unskilled workers (along with only moderately growing demand for services) means stagnating wages. With strong demand for skilled work in the white-collar sector, higher wages are going to those with higher levels of education. This result appears to have a large number of similarities to what happened in Mexico in the 1990s (although there are differences): Mexico had solid macroeconomic performance, export success and an accumulation of physical capital. However, despite these strengths, the nation’s poorly educated labour force and the emergence of a dominating informal economy swamped and dragged down the development of the formal economy. Despite rapid growth in the 1970s and 1980s (which ended with Mexico being admitted to the OECD as a rapidly developing upper middle-income economy), Mexico has almost experienced no growth since the mid-1990s and today is a clearly a stagnant middle-income nation!

Recognising the critical need for secondary education, China’s government has expanded access to high school throughout the country in the mid-2000s.[6] High school attainment among the youngest cohorts in the labour force is close to 80 percent. But hundreds of millions of less educated people will remain in the labour force for the next thirty years.[7] The government will face huge challenges trying either to retrain workers or to provide a social safety net.

The quality of China’s expanded secondary school education is also uncertain. Almost all low-skilled labour comes from rural areas, where school and health systems are under-resourced due to the legacy of national policies.[8] The household registration (hukou 戶口) system played an important role in the widening of China’s rural/urban disparities. The system was introduced in the 1950s as a way of managing labour and population flows in an economy that was being run by central planners (as opposed to markets). Although hukou-related restrictions on labour mobility were relaxed gradually after the early 1990s, the system continued to limit educational, health and employment opportunities for rural hukou holders. Moreover, historically higher shares of public investments in infrastructure and services have been channelled towards urban areas in China. As a result, many of China’s new secondary school graduates attended poor-quality vocational high schools and are not learning the maths, science, computer and language skills that China will need in the future in its labour force if the nation graduates to high-income status.

Systemic shortfalls in education and the health of young children in rural areas may also render many young people unprepared to learn complex skills as they age. Large-scale field studies showed that more than a quarter of Chinese school children were anemic; one out of five were myopic (and did not have eyeglasses); and one out of four children had intestinal worms. Soil-transmitted helminth infections are a threat to the nutritional status of children and their cognitive development.[9]

Increasingly, studies recognise that early childhood (up to three years old) is a sensitive and critical stage, foundational for lifelong human development.[10] In the international literature, delays in early childhood development have been associated with decreased cognitive functioning and lower labour productivity in adulthood.[11] Empirical evidence from China specifically demonstrates that the rural/urban education gap in the country emerges during the first years of life,[12] when rural children start lagging behind in their development. A systematic review and meta-analysis calculated that the risks of delay to early cognitive development and language function for children younger than five years of age in rural study sites across China amount to 45 percent and 46 percent, respectively.[13]

A safe home environment with sufficient learning opportunities, healthy nutrition and responsive caregiving are essential for healthy development during early childhood. An optimal home is a clean and safe environment, sensitive to the nutritional needs of young children and equipped with developmentally appropriate objects, toys and books that provide opportunities for children to play, explore and discover. However, survey results have shown that parental investment in cognitively stimulating parenting practices and child nutrition in rural China is low. No more than 25 percent of the rural caregivers in large-scale field surveys in rural China report frequently reading or telling stories to their young children.[14] Another study in China’s rural areas found that no more than 30 percent of the caregivers provide a diet for their children that satisfies the WHO’s minimum dietary diversity criterion.[15]

Parenting training programs focusing on cognitive stimulation can benefit the developmental opportunities of young children in developing countries.[16] Pioneering studies from the 1970s and 1980s, with long-term follow-up, include the Jamaican Nutrition and Cognitive Stimulation Program (or Reach Up and Learn). They found evidence of lasting positive impacts of small-scale parenting interventions on a range of adult outcomes,[17] including lifetime educational attainment. The promising results incentivised researchers and policymakers in the 2010s, in particular after the United Nations introduced Target 4.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which would ‘ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development by 2030’, to replicate such interventions in resource-poor settings around the world. Over the past decade, evidence from randomised controlled trials has confirmed the effectiveness of parental training experiments in resource-poor settings in a range of developing regions, including in rural China.[18] Therefore policymakers no longer debate the effectiveness of parenting programs, only how quality child and family services can be delivered cost effectively, sustainably and at scale.

China’s government has announced its intention to steer China on a path of ‘people-centred development’ towards Common Prosperity. In 2010 China became the second largest economy in the world after the United States, and claims to have eradicated extreme poverty in 2020. Despite achieving these milestones, 600 million Chinese had a monthly per capita income of US$140 or less in 2020, and regional and rural/urban inequalities have widened over the past decades.[19] In the face of these remaining challenges, China’s central leadership has promoted the phrase ‘Common Prosperity’ 共同富裕 since 2020. This signals an intent on the one hand to curtail income inequality and excessive wealth accumulation by individuals and on the other to help people achieve a better standard of living.

Investing in the developmental opportunities of disadvantaged children is crucial to improve equality of educational opportunity and social mobility and to build the large, high-skilled labour force China will need to support a strong, innovation-driven economy in the future. Providing young children with a fair start in life is crucial to address the ‘principal contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life’ that China’s society faces today. This principal contradiction was highlighted as the main stumbling block that needed to be tackled for further social development by Xi Jinping during his report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2017.

Why we should want China to succeed … or at least not to fail

The risks of a stagnating China would reverberate far beyond its shores. China’s sheer size — one-fifth of the world’s population — means that what happens there will have outsized implications for foreign trade, global supply chains, financial markets and growth around the globe. There are political perils, too. An economically insecure China might boost nationalism to maintain legitimacy. No assessment of China’s growth is complete without considering the implications of China having hundreds of millions of underemployed people in its economy for the foreseeable future.

Notes

[1] Junsen Zhang, ‘A survey on income inequality in China’, Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 59, no. 4 (2021): 1191–239.

[2] Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell, Invisible China: How the Urban–Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.

[3] OECD, Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators, Paris: OECD Publishing, 2016.

[4] Niny Khor, Lihua Pang, Chengfang Liu, Fang Chang, Di Mo, Prashant Loyalka and Scott Rozelle, ‘China’s looming human capital crisis: Upper secondary educational attainment rates and the middle-income trap’, China Quarterly, vol. 228 (2016): 905–26.

[5] Scott Rozelle and Matthew Boswell, ‘Complicating China’s rise: Rural underemployment’, Washington Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 2 (2021): 61–74.

[6] Yu Bai, Siqi Zhang, Lei Wang, Ruirui Dang, Cody Abbey and Scott Rozelle, ‘Past successes and future challenges in rural China’s human capital’, Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 28, no. 120 (2019): 883–98.

[7] Rozelle and Hell, Invisible China.

[8] Zhang, ‘A survey on income inequality in China’.

[9] Chengfang Liu, Renfu Luo, Hongmei Yi, Linxiu Zhang, Shaoping Li, Yunli Bai, Alexis Medina, Scott Rozelle, Scott Smith, Guofei Wang and Jujun Wang, ‘Soil-transmitted helminths in southwestern China: A cross-sectional study of links to cognitive ability, nutrition, and school performance among children’, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, vol. 9, no. 6 (2015): e0003877.

[10] James J. Heckman, Giving Kids a Fair Chance, Boston: MIT Press, 2017.

[11] Susan P. Walker, Susan M. Chang, Amika S. Wright, Rodrigo Pinto, James J. Heckman and Sally M. Grantham-McGregor, ‘Cognitive, psychosocial, and behaviour gains at age 31 years from the Jamaica early childhood stimulation trial’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, vol. 63, no. 6 (2022): 626–35.

[12] Lei Wang, Wilson Liang, Siqi Zhang, Laura Jonsson, Mengjie Li, Cordelia Yu, Yonglei Sun, Qingrui Ma, Yu Bai, Cody Abbey, Renfu Luo, Ai Yue and Scott Rozelle, ‘Are infant/toddler developmental delays a problem across rural China?’, Journal of Comparative Economics, vol. 47, no. 2 (2019): 458–69.

[13] Dorien Emmers, Qi Jiang, Hao Xue, Yue Zhang, Yunting Zhang, Yingxue Zhao, Bin Liu, Sarah-Eve Dill, Yiwei Qian, Nele Warrinnier, Hannah Johnstone, Jianhua Cai, Xiaoli Wang, Lei Wang, Renfu Luo, Guirong Li, Jiajia Xu, Ming Liu, Yaqing Huang, Wenjie Shan, Zhihui Li, Yu Zhang, Sean Sylvia, Yue Ma, Alexis Medina and Scott Rozelle, ‘Early childhood development and parental training interventions in rural China: A systematic review and meta-analysis’, BMJ Global Health, vol. 6, no. 8 (2021): e005578.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ai Yue, Nianrui Zhang, Xueyang Liu, Lei Tang, Renfu Luo, Meredith Yang and Scott Rozelle, ‘Do infant feeding practices differ between grandmothers and mothers in rural China? Evidence from rural Shaanxi Province’, Family and Community Health, vol. 41, no. 4 (2018): 233–43.

[16] Sean Sylvia, Nele Warrinnier, Renfu Luo, Ai Yue, Orazio Attanasio, Alexis Medina and Scott Rozelle, ‘From quantity to quality: Delivering a home-based parenting intervention through China’s family planning cadres’, Economic Journal, vol. 131, no. 635 (2021): 1365–1400.

[17] Walker et al., ‘Cognitive, psychosocial, and behaviour gains at age 31 years from the Jamaica early childhood stimulation trial’.

[18] Dorien Emmers, Juan C. Caro, Scott Rozelle and Sean Sylvia, ‘Early parenting interventions to foster human capital in developing countries’, Annual Review of Resource Economics, vol. 14 (2022): 169–92.

[19] Zhang, ‘A survey on income inequality in China’.

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Chief among these was brokering a deal between Saudi Arabia – a long-time staunch US ally – and Iran on 10 March 2023 in Beijing for the two countries to restore diplomatic relations. This achievement shocked Washington. The United States had long been dominant external force in the Middle East and had brokered key developments there from the Camp David Accords in 1978 to the Oslo Agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) of 1993. The last three years had seen the Abraham Accords where the United States brokered the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Morocco and Sudan.

China, a long-time observer and trader in the Middle East, is now suddenly a key player and peacemaker in the region, a mark of its rising position and influence in the world. The Saudi-Iran deal signals that the United States cannot take its dominance in the diplomatic sphere for granted. Many other countries are prioritising good relations with Beijing and hedging their diplomatic strategic bets.

This has been most marked in the Global South, particularly in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. In South East Asia, much of ASEAN seeks to avoid choosing between China and the United States as tension has developed between the two major powers. Other regional players, including Australia and Japan and increasingly the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Philippines have strengthened their alignment with US strategic goals while continuing to build and stress the importance of economic and other ties with China. Though China’s role as a de facto supporter of Russia in the Ukraine war has strained relations with much of the European Union, during his 5-7 April 2023 visit to China, French president Emmanuel Macron said that Europe should not automatically follow the United States get ‘caught up in crises that are not ours’. On the subject of Taiwan, Macron advocated a course of ‘strategic autonomy’ for the European Union.

A second significant example of the development of an alternative non-Western grouping is the BRICS, comprising of the large developing countries Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. At the BRICS meeting in South Africa in late August, the BRICS grouping announced the admission of six new members in a decision widely interpreted as an attempt to reshape the international order and provide a counterweight to the United States and its allies. From January 2024, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will join the grouping in a move described by China’s President Xi Jinping as ‘historic’. The significance of this expansion is the development of a non-Western grouping with significant political and economic power and with China as one of its central members. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the BRICS grouping will collectively account for 32.1 percent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2023, more than the G7’s share of 29.9 percent of global GDP. With addition of the six new members in January 2024, the GDP of BRICS will grow to 36 percent of global GDP. The grouping with its focus on de-dollarisation, promotion of local currencies for global trade and finance, and the admission of new members, mostly accords with Beijing’s agenda.

China’s Diplomatic Initiatives

A suite of major initiatives serves as the basis of China’s new approach to diplomacy. These include the Global Security Initiative (GSI), the Global Civilisation Initiative (GCI), the Global Development Initiative (GDI) as well as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The GSI opposes Western ‘hegemonic’ dominance in the areas of international security, promoting a central role for the United Nations and emphasising non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs and sovereign equality under international law. The multi-billion dollar BRI launched by Xi Jinping in 2013 aims to improve China’s connectivity with the world through infrastructure and investment. The United States and other Western countries have criticised the BRI as merely a mechanism to spread China’s geo-political and financial influence throughout the world. The success of many of the projects have been mixed, but it is certain that the BRI has expanded China’s influence, especially in the Global South. Of the 152 countries that signed BRI memorandums of understanding, 52 are in Africa, 40 are in Asia with the rest in the Middle East, Latin America and Europe. The BRI also appears to have increased Chinese exports to the member countries.

Taken together, these initiatives aim both to enhance China’s global influence and build a diplomatic and security architecture to rival the US-led system of multilateral alliances, and institutions. They also aim to enhance China’s role as mediator or peacemaker in regional conflicts.

Other important bodies that are non-Western focused in which China plays a significant role in include BRICS Plus, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), and a range of summits that China holds with groupings such as the China-Arab League Summit, the China Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Summit and the China-Africa Summit.[1] There is also the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which China put forward to the World Bank in 2016; by 2023, it had over one hundred members, including Australia, a Triple-A rating and some US$100 billion in capitalisation. These are all part of a suite of organisations and initiatives which are beyond US and G7 influence. The GSI and the other initiatives together with the BRI provide an alternative to the US-led rules-based order and are attractive to many countries especially in the Global South.

Riyadh and Tehran to Beijing

In the past, China was satisfied to trade and observe in the Middle East, an area where US influence was politically and militarily dominant. However, China is now the largest trading partner of most GCC countries, including Saudi Arabia. China has backed this economic influence with active diplomacy. Xi Jinping made a high-profile visit to Riyadh in December 2022, during which he participated in the first China-GCC Summit on 9 December and the first China-Arab States Summit that same afternoon. Most participants at these meetings were expressly focused on building relations with Beijing as a hedge against dependence on the United States. Most countries, however, were conscious that the United States was still the most significant defence partner in the region. There have also been several announcements recently of large scale Saudi-Chinese investment deals worth more than US$10 billion. On 5 September 2023, the Bank of China (BOC) opened its first branch in Saudi Arabia in a move to expand the use of yuan in the growing number of economic deals between the two countries. Saudi Arabia is China’s largest source of crude oil imports, with 87.5 million metric tonnes (641 million barrels) shipped in 2022. BOC is the second Chinese bank to open branches in Saudi Arabia after the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), which has branches in Riyadh and Jeddah. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi went to Beijing for 14-16 February 2023.

Many Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, admire China’s four-decade record of deploying state capital to achieve profound economic change while tightly managing social and political change. China’s experience challenges US insistence that only liberal systems can produce economic growth and stability. As Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner, with growing economic influence in the Middle East and friendship with Iran, China was a logical partner for the mediation process.

China the Peacemaker?

Chinese officials describe facilitating the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran as a successful example of the GSI at work. The discussions that led to the 10 March 2023 accord began in the Middle East. Iraq and Oman hosted talks between 2020 and 2022, but the accord needed China’s imprimatur to finalise the deal. It was impossible for Washington to plays its traditional role of mediator in this case because, after four decades of mutual hostility, the United States still does not have diplomatic relations with Iran. Another factor was that, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, long-term US-ally Saudi Arabia is seeking a more independent foreign policy, and rebalancing its relations with the major powers including China.

Additionally, in contrast to the Trump administration and family’s close relations with and support for the Saudi royal family, which didn’t waver even after evidence linked the Crown Prince to the killing of journalist and US resident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, the Biden administration has hardened its policy towards Saudi Arabia. While campaigning in 2019, Biden said he would make Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’. When the Saudis cut oil production after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fuelling global inflation, Biden threatened ‘consequences’. US policy and rhetoric only helped to open the door for Beijing. Iran has good relations and a strong economic relationship with China. A close economic relationship with both countries based both on economics and China’s new ambitious foreign policy made China the natural partner to secure the deal. In addition, China’s new influence in the region was achieved without the use of military coercion, in contrast with the US record of the use of military force and coercion to resolve differences with Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and other countries.

China has relished its role bridging the gap between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Beijing continues to seek to pay the role of mediator and peacemaker. It has put forward a peace plan for the Ukraine War and is seeking to play a role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although there are serious doubts it can achieve much in either case.

A Chinese emissary, Ambassador Li Hui, visited Kyiv and Moscow from 14 to 18 May 2023 with a plan announced by Beijing in April to end the fighting between Russia and Ukraine. As the plan did not call for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory, Ukraine rejected the proposal. The proposal was politely received in Moscow but not accepted by President Putin. Although the Chinese intervention was broadly welcomed it did not provide a way forward for the ending the war. Nonetheless, again it was an example of China projecting itself on the global stage as a positive player.

On 18 April 2023, China offered to broker peace talks between Israel and Palestine. On 13-15 June 2023, Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas visited Beijing, where he welcomed China’s involvement. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on 26 June 2023 that he will make his fourth visit to China as prime minister at the invitation of Beijing before the end of 2023. However, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is a vexed one and despite having good relations with both Israel and the Palestinians, the Chinese are unlikely to make much progress. The gesture is undoubtedly also aimed at strengthening the positive perception of China in the Arab World and the Global South.

China’s Power is Rising Globally

China’s power and influence is also rising in Central Asia. On 18 May 2023, at the inaugural China-Central Asia Summit attended by the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Xi Jinping announced 26 billion yuan (US$3.8 billion) of loans, financial support and non-reimbursable funds for the five Central Asian republics and a new gas pipeline to China from Turkmenistan. Xi also met individually with each of the five presidents. Each of the five republics are active members of the BRI. Bilateral trade between China and the Central Asian republics reached US$70.2 billion in 2022. As China’s power has risen in Central Asia, it has remained careful to not cut across vital Russian interests. China’s centrality to the power structure in Central Asia is also ensured by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the fact that both Russia and China face competition from the US-led West. China’s partnership with Russia is based on common interests and economic complementarity that has become even more important to Russia since the start of the Ukraine war. Russia is increasingly becoming a junior partner in what is proving nonetheless a durable relationship.

From 12 to 17 April 2023, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva visited China and called for an end to US dollar dominance of the world’s financial systems. This reflected a growing trend towards countries moving to reduce their dependence on the dollar as a reserve, exchange or accounting currency in certain areas of the world. For countries in the Global South including Brazil, this is driven by efforts to avoid US sanctions and the Biden administration’s control over microchips. In reality, however, only a small percentage of the world’s financial system uses the Chinese yuan and other non-Western currencies as the basis for reserves and exchange. Nonetheless, there is some appetite in parts of the world for moving beyond the control of the US dollar and to adopt the yuan.

China Hasn’t Surpassed the United States yet

Chinese activism is based on a sense that the global role of the United States is declining and China’s is rising. While there is some evidence of shifting strategic power balances it would be wrong to discount the remaining power and influence of the United States. President Biden has made it clear that the United States is determined to compete with China for influence and strategic power. In terms of military power and economic and financial heft, the United States remains the world’s leading power despite the rise of China, the multipolar world and groupings like the expanded BRICS. While the United States remains the single most powerful country in the world, the global strategic environment is increasingly multipolar and de-dollarisation is increasing, facts recognised by much of the world. China with its Global Security Initiative and its suite of other projects and initiatives has become a significant challenger to the US and Western hegemony in the Global South and in regions long dominated by the United States like the Middle East.

Despite the increasing multipolar nature of the world, both Beijing and Washington see their great power competition as the fulcrum of international relations as countries are increasingly encouraged to line up with one side or the other. Australia and regional countries like Japan and the Philippines have clearly declared their adherence to Washington. Many other countries especially in the Global South seek to maintain a balance between China and the United States and hedge against both countries. Other rising powers like India seek to follow their own independent strategic and economic paths and are wary to a degree of both Beijing and Washington. With a period of competition and uncertainty ahead, much of the world, especially the Global South, would welcome a world without US primacy. Perhaps the accord between arch rivals Riyadh and Tehran is a harbinger and a foretaste of the future Chinese role in a contested strategic world.

Notes

[1] Shanghai Cooperation Organisation members are: China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

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This university took just twenty-four hours to build. Planning started one day in late June with a post on China’s major social media sites claiming that if every one of the some 3.43 million year twelve students from the provinces of Shandong, Shanxi, Henan and Hebei were to donate 1000 yuan each (roughly AU$200), then there would be enough money – 3.43 billion yuan (roughly AU$ 73.1 million) – to fund a new university. [1]

The post surfaced at a time when China’s high-school students, having survived the gruelling National Higher Education Entrance Examination (known colloquially as the gaokao) earlier that month, were applying for universities. What started as a light-hearted joke soon became a channel for students who felt locked out of China’s extremely competitive university admissions system to express their grievances.

Within a day, a website for the university was launched, designs and mottos were selected for the university’s logo, followed by drawings of the university’s main gates and dormitories. There was even a mouth-watering menu for the university canteen. Twenty-four faculties were created, offering over 430 majors, from standard STEM courses to niche subjects like pickle-making. The Tang dynasty poet Du Fu 杜甫, an illustrious native of Henan province, was chosen as the university’s first honorary vice chancellor. In the autumn of 761, after a wild storm had destroyed the roof of his straw hut, leaving his family shivering through the cold night, Du Fu penned lines that all Chinese schoolchildren now learn by rote:

If one could have a great house of a million rooms —

Sheltering all the empire’s shivering scholars, their faces lit up with joy —

A house not shaken by wind or rain, solid as a mountain —

Alas! When shall I see that house stand before my eyes?

Then, even if my own hut was destroyed, and I might freeze and die, I should be satisfied. [2]

For the creators of SHU, this verse of Du Fu’s perfectly encapsulates the goal of this fictional university, which, as a mock admission brochure makes it clear, is to ‘lift all students from the injustice they face, and to ensure every student from the four provinces has the opportunity to attend university.’ The injustice refers to the relative scarcity of higher education opportunities in the provinces of Shandong, Shanxi, Henan and Hebei, despite these provinces having some of the largest student populations in China. In 2023, the number of students from the four provinces made up about a quarter of the 12.91 million students taking the gaokao. And yet, the four provinces only house two of China’s thirty-nine elite universities (collectively known as ‘985 universities’, based on the date when the central government announced the building of a number of world-class universities in May – the fifth month – 1998). Both elite universities are located in Shandong, China’s second largest province. China’s third, sixth and eighteenth largest provinces (Henan, Hebei and Shanxi) do not have a single elite university. In comparison, a combined total of 100,000 students from Beijing and Shanghai sat gaokao this year, roughly 0.8 percent of the national total, and yet there are twelve elite universities in Beijing and Shanghai, nearly a third of the thirty-nine elite universities.

Because universities in China have admission quotas favouring local students, having a higher concentration of elite universities in places like Beijing and Shanghai means that students whose household registration or hukou 户口 is in one of these cities face much less competition. A study based on university admissions data from 2020 found that in order to be admitted into either Peking University or Tsinghua University (both located in Beijing), a student in Beijing had 48,450 competitors, while a student in Henan faced 1,157,600 competitors, making admission twenty-four times less likely.

A similar admissions system linked to one’s hukou exists for China’s high school entrance exam. In July this year, this triggered an angry protest in Xi’an province by parents of middle-schoolers against ‘returning students’ 回流生, that is, students who have studied in other parts of China, but returned to Xi’an where their hukou is located to compete with local students for admission to a good high school. In rumours circulating before and during the protest, parents have claimed 40,000 out of the 110,000 students that took the high-school entrance exam in Xi’an this year came from the neighbouring Henan province (where competition to get into good high schools is fierce). In response to the protest, an official report claimed that there were only 3,608 ‘returning students’ taking part in this year’s high school entrance exam.

Inequality in China’s education system is by no means new. A 2013 joke posted on Weibo was funny then as it is now:

In Beijing: ‘Dad, I got a 530 [on the gaokao], 53 points higher than the lowest qualifying score for top-tier universities!’ ‘Great job, son! Let’s go to Shanghai for our vacation!’

In Shandong: ‘Dad, I got a 530, 20 points lower than the lowest qualifying score for second-tier universities!’ ‘You’re not so bright … Don’t go [to college]. Get out of here and go become a migrant worker in Shanghai.’

In Shanghai: ‘Dad, I got a 330. Send me abroad.’ ‘Okay, son. Go get an MBA, then come back and help me. I got another group of migrant workers from Shandong this year.’ [3]

A decade later, this joke appears even closer to life given China’s rising youth unemployment rate. The difference is that it was still permitted to discuss the education gap openly back then. When former premier Wen Jiabao 温家宝 expressed his concern at seeing fewer students from a rural background attending universities and vocational colleges in 2009, it was headline news on Xinhua News, China’s official state news agency. In comparison, even though it was a joke, discussions relating to SHU were quickly censored on China’s major social media platforms and the mock website was shut down. When reporters brought up the topic during a press conference, Deputy Education Minister Wu Yan吴岩 responded with impenetrable officialese, promoting netizens to comment that AI could have done a better job:

We too have taken notice of the issues concerning ‘Shanhe University’. Faced with the new situation of higher education entering a new stage of popularisation, as well as new challenges and issues in serving regional economic and social development, the Ministry of Education will continually optimise the structure and layout of higher education resources. We will support the central and western regions, especially provinces with large populations, to expand the scale of higher education resources and optimise the type and regional structure…[4]

The harsh reality of China’s unequal university admissions system has stopped many students from even dreaming of attending a good university. Instead, they devoted their energy to imagining a university of their dreams. And yet, even as a fantasy, SHU’s vision appears somewhat distorted on a closer examination. Contrary to the humanistic spirit expressed in Du Fu’s poem, creators of SHU have made it extremely difficult for students from outside the four provinces to gain admission, stating that they will need to have scored at least 700 points (out of a perfect score of 750) in their gaokao. Moreover, despite its emphasis on democratic rule, the draft version of the university charter states that, ‘all decisions have to be made through democratic centralism’ 民主集中制, a concept first proposed by Lenin in 1921 and is best ‘translated’ by George Orwell as, ‘all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’. The Communist Party of China (CPC) continues to promote democratic centralism as their guiding principle. After SHU’s prototype website went down, a few new websites sprung up, one even replaced the university’s original motto from ‘erudition’ 博学 and ‘thirst for knowledge’ 求知 with the twelve ‘socialist core values’. Despite what some commentators may say about SHU being a powerful symbol of how people in China can still spontaneously organise online despite heavy censorship, posing a threat to the ruling authority, in truth, the authorities have little to fear. They have already moulded the way Chinese students dream.

Notes

[1] The initial post online made a mathematical mistake and claimed this scheme would raise 34.3 billion yuan.

[2] Translation slightly modified based on Florence Ayscough’s version, accessed online at: https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/thatched-house-unroofed-autumn-gale

[3] Translation by Yiqin Fu in ‘China’s Unfair College Admissions System’, The Atlantic, 19 June 2013, online at: https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/06/chinas-unfair-college-admissions-system/276995/

[4] This speech was translated using ChatGPT.

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