Leila: China is quickly becoming a dominant world economy but we know the country experiences difficult changes along with its growth.
Jean Philippe Beja: The political system is not really able to establish channels for the expression of discontent.
Leila: Welcome to watchmojo.com, I’m your host Leila. Jean Philippe Beja conducts research on China and he took the time to let us know its paramount challenges in the 21st century.
Jean Philippe Beja: One of the consequences of the economic growth has been the development of inequalities, social inequalities and these have been developing quite fast in the last 20 years. Most people who have been instrumental in the so-called Chinese miracle, our workers who came from the countryside, they are like immigrant workers so they can be kicked out at anytime and this is what is happening for example at the Olympics. Social inequality and the almost disappearance of communist ideology has left a void in spiritual life in China. Of course communist ideology was imposed on the people. The leadership still repeats the old slogans in order to be promoted inside the party. You also have to repeat old slogans but no one believes in it, so there’s a crisis of faith. The political system is still very much the old one, you still don’t have any real input from the people, no free elections, no real freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of demonstration. When there is a contradiction somewhere, you have more and more violent clashes especially in the countryside but also when urban dwellers are expelled from their apartments in order to delve new buildings. Another aspect of this political system is that corruption flourished. Local leaders have almost absolute power. Many small towns have lot of real estate and the real estate companies are usually linked to the local leaders. What they try to do is to take the land from the peasants in order to develop it without giving adequate compensation to the peasants. As the local government controls the police, controls the justice, it’s very difficult for ordinary citizens to be heard. They will revolt and there will be a violent clash or they will go to the provincial capitol in order to complain about the local leaders but very often, the provincial level doesn’t solve the problem so they will go up to the center obviously knows that local leaders are corrupt. Sometimes it will give satisfaction to the people who complain and sometimes the people who complain are taken back to their locality and they will be put into prison.
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