The great Chinese dissident compares the "China model", which promotes exports by exploiting cheap labour and lack of rights for the population, with the economies of the United States and Europe. Less profits for a few create greater wealth for all: the risk is that Chinese society will explode.
Image by art_es_anna via FlickrWashington – In the previous sections, we talked about the wrongs of the economic development strategy in China since the Deng Xiaoping era. The so called "let some people get rich first" economy which is oriented toward export, is really a strategy of exploiting workers cruelly while letting a few get extremely rich quickly, a strategy that shares the fruit of this exploitation with the Western big business in an effort to buy them out and thus encourage them to lobby the Western governments for the dictatorial government in China. This development model has been boasted as the "China Model" by the Western big businesses. However, this model did not really bring the economic take-off in China. Instead, it has come to a dead end. The poor people resulting from this sick model are becoming an obstacle or stumbling block to the economic and social development in China.
Will the reform of the economic system to be able to break this bottleneck? Certainly not. That is because the abnormal situation of the Chinese economy is caused by the political abnormality in China. Normal development should let the whole society receive the advantage of development in a balanced way as the productivity capacity grows. As the wages grow, the profits increase, welfare improves, and education and health care, etc. will simultaneously increase as well. The increase of the social demand is the original driving force behind economic development, so the growth of production capacity need not worry about finding the appropriate markets. This is true for a big economy in a normal development pattern.
The development of the United States in the past two hundred years is a typical example. When the development of European countries reached a certain level, it significantly felt the insufficiency of the local markets. The wars in Europe in the last four hundred years were almost all due to fights for the market. Or, as famously expressed by Adolf Hitler as Lebensraum, a fight for habitat or living space. After World War II in order to expand their markets Europeans started the European Community, now developed into the European Union. Its essence is to share the larger market instead of going to war. With the push from the United States, the World Trade Organization began aiming to expand a free market in the world by free trade, with the intention of a great expansion of the world market to eliminate the root causes of the war.
Europe's common market has reached its goal. Their joint development has eliminated the original driving force behind the wars in Europe. Now, if someone tells you that a war has just broken out between Germany and France, you will immediately check the calendar to make sure that it is not April Fool's Day. As we all know, such an event is now impossible. Expanded markets not only brought peace, but also a well performing economy, and science and technology development in the European countries. This remarkable transformation makes everyone envy them for being able to heal the wounds of war in only half a century, and even leap into a much more prosperous and advanced stage than before the war. The development of Europe has also brought opportunities in the USA for further development. The rapidly expanding European market is a strong driving force for sustainable development in the US economy.
Why does Europe also bring opportunities to the United States? Why was Europe's own development so fast? It is because Europe carried out a strategy of sharing the wealth with its people during its economic recovery and development period. As people were getting rich the market expanded, thus giving production a momentum for growth. When the production grew, it represented the expansion of the consumer market. As the market expanded, so did the demand for an expansion of production. If Europe and the United States had also adopted that "let some people get rich first" policy to concentrate the wealth in the hands of a few for money laundering or financial speculation, it would not have this half-century of rapid and balanced development.
Why was the development of Europe and the U.S. a fair distribution of development? Because of the democratic governments they have. People have the right to govern politicians. If the politicians become disobedient to the people, the people will vote them out. This authority has been very clear. People will not allow an unfair distribution. Capitalists like the so-called fair market most, which is the fairness to make money. This is the law of the market economy. However, people demand not just a fair market, but also fairness to the people. The market should serve the people and mankind, not the other way around. Humankind should not be a slave to the market and the capitalists.
When there is no fairness in the market, the economic development loses its power. To this day, we know that fairness allows an economic model which is the most likely to encourage people to work hard and with passion. Without social equality, the markets and the powerful capitalists certainly would turn all the workers into wretches less than slaves. The capitalists will drain the blood and sweat of workers, regardless of their lives. This is not wrong from these capitalists' minds: the function of the capital and capitalists in the market is to make money, not philanthropy. The real problem is that today's capitalists are too shortsighted, and want to make money without doing work. They have forgotten that their wealth is based on the population's desire and ability to pay for commodities. Therefore, we need an authority outside of this market to maintain a fairness for mankind. Otherwise, the society will be difficult to maintain.
As we know by now, the democratic system is the most effective system in maintaining the social justice. As the Chinese poem says: the river ducks know the arrival of the Spring from the warming water. Most of the people who live at the bottom of the society know most accurately if life is fair or not. While surveys and statistical data can be cheated and manipulated by money, the feelings of the people cannot be bought. Ultimately, politics is in the control of the people, and politics has to serve the people. The vote is much more honest than empty slogans. Although capitalists always have the means to buy off politicians, sometimes it is hard for them to pretend. Capitalists can never buy most of the people, without granting them fair wages and benefits. Since the political lives of the politicians are in the hands of the people, the buy-outs of the capitalists can only have a limited effect, and it is hard to harm the fundamental interests of the people.
Every day, the Chinese rulers are chanting their slogan of "serving the people". But why do we only see the people serving them? It is because the fates of these politicians are not in the control of our people. In China, politics is the politics of the minority, who try to self-reproduce. Although it is not heredity by bloodline, it is still a succession of gangs. When the public power becomes the private property of that gang, who would care about people's rights and interests? This policy of the political system certainly will help their own "to get rich first" in the short run, but it is impossible to give the opportunities of prosperity to all the people. Therefore, the economic policies of Deng Xiaoping are the inevitable result of an autocratic regime. For these Chinese politicians and capitalists, they do not really need to worry about social stability, as long as they can escape to the West.
