Yesterday noon, WEAI hosted the last of its Brown Bag Series, "Reporting China." The cozy lunchtime talks took us from Tibetan, Chinese, American, to a UK journalist perspective, through a range of media from television to print. Wrapping up the series was "Is China As Strong As It Seems" with Rob Gifford, London Bureau Chief, National Public Radio.

As Rob Gifford describes in his new book, China Road, two themes of hope and despair run through China today: the hope of an Amway salesman, who invited Gifford to a sales meeting in the Gobi Desert, and the despair of a resident in Xingxingxia at a water shortage caused by corrupt local officials sealing up the only freshwater well for miles around.

But Gifford says we don't generally see the "fault lines." These are problems and contradictions emerging now in China.

One fault line is the communist party's desperate need to keep the economy growing. While communism is "dead as an ideology in China," the communist party's legitimacy is entirely hinged on China's economic performance.

The Chinese also face a spiritual problem. Bars are full, nightclubs are full, churches are full. Gifford read Myron Cohen's oft quoted lines to make his point,
"...for much of China's population being Chinese is culturally much easier today than it ever was in the past, for this identification no longer involves commonly accepted cultural standards. Existentially, however, being Chinese is far more problematic, for now it is as much a quest as it is a condition." Although Cohen's article is from 1991, having covered China for six years, Gifford explains Cohen's analysis still holds true today.

For rural China, much of the benefits of the revolution have been lost. They have to pay the full price for health care and education. When Gifford asked what they do when they get sick, one resident answered, "If I get really sick, I just go home and die."

Why not give the people a social safety net by putting the money directly into a health care system so that people don't have to save 50-60% of their income to fallback on when they get sick? Gifford had asked himself. It turns out that idea would make local officials aflush with money and worsen corruption.

The development is real, but there are staggering human costs. Gifford explains, this is not to say that 400 million people lifted out of poverty is not an incredible achievement-it is an amazing achievement-but at what cost? Gifford saw hope in the band of youth biking from Lanjo to the Kazakhstan border for fun. Then he turned to a photo he took of three HIV positive men in a village shut down by the government because the villagers were infected with HIV from a government-sponsored blood-selling scheme.

Another fault line is that despite the recent rise in their living standards, many Tibetans simply don't want to be ruled from Beijing, and they populate almost the whole western half of China. China is in a race against time to make these people Chinese. Educating them can do the trick, but at what cost to the local culture?

It remains to be seen what the flow of information and the internet would mean for China. Gifford flipped to a photo of monks, just out of prayer, playing war games in an internet café across the street. Does the internet make China stronger since China can know what people are doing, or does it make China weaker now that people can find out things they didn't know before?

The environment is also a growing problem. China needs double digit growth but that is sowing the seeds for massive problems in China.

Next, how will China continue getting enough resources? It needs oil from Sudan, and Gifford says most of China's international behavior is driven by China's need for resources.

So, is China as strong as it seems? Gifford is more optimistic for the short term than he was in his book, but China is indeed more brittle and fragile than it appears.

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Source: Myron Cohen, "Being Chinese: The Peripheralization of Traditional Identity," Daedalus 120 (2) (Spring 1991): 133.