generalspeaking

Manufacturing Dissent

In an immense bureaucracy, within a state where the collective is powerful and the individual is deemed to be part of the collective, harmony is achieved when there are no complaints, when people reason and respond like cogs in a wheel, just as ants in a colony, or worker bees in a hive do, all for one, and one is non-existent. When farmers or villagers are displaced because the state requisitions property that has been in their singular possession for generations, there is no recourse.

Which is what happened with thousands of Chinese who were dispossessed of their heritage land entitlements and holdings when the flooding of once-productive agrarian societies in the vicinity of the Three Gorges Dam were informed they would have to re-locate. There was little-to-no government buy-out, recompense to allow impoverished farmers and villagers to find productive land for themselves elsewhere, where they could feed themselves and their families.

They were victimized in the name of progress. Sacrificed to the future of the greater good of the country. Not all that long afterward, but long enough for people to lament what they had lost, and to bitterly decry their fate, cracks have appeared in the massive dam, the weight of which is enough to cause small earthquakes to occur from time to time. With the potential for huge damage should the dam walls be breached beyond emergency repair to avoid catastrophe.

People living in villages where local Communist party authority seizes land that has been legally in possession of the village or local farmers no longer simply accede to the authority of the powerful. China has been experiencing large numbers of areas of the country erupting in protests. Where people have become alert to the prospect of a chemical factory set to be built in their vicinity that will impair their health through exposure to deadly fumes, through the poisoning of their lakes and rivers.

Certainly it presents as a difficult balancing act to administer the affairs of a large state with a diverse and widespread population of over 1.3-billion people. Because of the enormity of that challenge, China values nothing so much as the concept of 'harmony' and harmonious relations between itself and its people. And where once this state of being seemed to exist because people were intimidated by an authoritarian state and its police and military, Chinese have become more bold in expressing their discontent.

When a disastrous earthquake took countless lives in remote villages and the rescue operation was slow to non-existent, and people became aware that the schools that were built for their children by local, corrupt authorities in Sichuan with sub-grade materials and inadequate engineering, caused the deaths of countless children, the rage throughout China seemed to mark a turning point.

News now seems to get around far better than previously, thanks to social electronic media.

When milk is tainted by the addition of plastic chemicals to give it more body, and children become ill and die, the intolerable is no longer tolerated.  Property that was once appropriated by the state with the owners given no compensation now results in the dispossessed waging loudly-vented and embarrassing-to-the-government protests. Protests that will be heard abroad, not simply internally.

People objecting to exposure to toxic waste as a result of factories producing chemicals simply allowing run-off to contaminate nearby water and land, protest loudly now, impervious to the resulting accusations that they are 'disturbing the peace', for harmony above all, must be achieved. Many of these inconvenient protesters, refusing to go away, to shelve their grievances, to dismiss their appeals for justice are now hauled off by police.

The new premier of China has exhorted his Communist Party cadres and the government elite to battle corruption. Corruption is wide-spread, and it is endemic, enduringly so, at all levels of society and government bureaucracy. The result has been that lifestyles of the influential and powerful have become more discreet; not less corrupt and self-availing and entitled, but  evasively less noticeable. Quiet pampering is now in style.

Demanding an independent enquiry into scandals of contaminated food products, of slave labour by abducted and guarded men and children, can result in charges and sentencing to prison for disturbing the peace. China has triumphed in achieving economic success, marrying Communism with capitalism, Chinese-style. It works very well for a burgeoning middle-class, now satisfied with their altered lifestyles.

Not so much for those whom the rising tide of prosperity has failed to lift out of poverty and persecution, disappointment and lack of entitlements to basic human rights. China will soon overtake the United States as a producing powerhouse. It is set to overtake America in terms of influence on the world stage.

Even while it has polluted its air quality, its soil and its waterways, and the health of its people.

Labels: China, Economy, Human Relations, Human Rights, Marketing

posted by Pieface @ Monday, May 06, 2013