The latest Scientific American is all about food and includes the striking fact that there are now more people who are overweight or obese (1.3 billion) than people who are chronically malnourished (800 million). This makes it obvious that the world could feed all its people if we had the right social organisation. It’s closely related to the fact that there are now more rich people (by any historical standard, most people in developed countries are rich) than very poor people (income of less than $1US a day). The overlap here isn’t perfect – most of the malnourished are very poor, but obesity is mostly a problem of relatively poor people in rich countries, and it’s now common in poor and middle-income countries as well.
The main point though is that we have the resources to end poverty. Doubling the income of the very poor would cost about $300 billion a year, which is pretty close to the 0.7 per cent of total rich country income that was promised as a target for foreign aid years ago. We’ve got nowhere near that, and much of what is given doesn’t go to the very poor. Admittedly, there will always be leakage, but if the rich countries were prepared to allocate as little as 2 per cent of their income to a well-planned and well-funded effort, we could surely pull most people out of extreme poverty. The task would be made even easier if the benefits growth in China and India, both of which still have many very poor people) were spread a bit more evenly.
John Quiggin 
Foreign aid of hundreds of billions of dollars to Africa has not changed anything. The solution is not to waste hundreds of billions more.
Well theoretically you are right that if the rich countries were prepared to allocate as little as 2 per cent of their income to a well-planned and well-funded effort, it could surely pull most people out of extreme poverty. But if it were that simple, then poverty would have been history by now.
In many developing countries the institutions are not strong enough to absorb foreign aid:(http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/08/getting-it-righ.html).
As far as Australia is concerned forget about foreign aid, just look at how many economics department have a strong Growth/Development economics group ? (Almost none except perhaps ANU).
I think the biggest challenge in economics is to make poverty history.
China, and to a lesser extent India, had social organisations designed to promote equality. Reductions in poverty have occurred as their societies have been reorganised along less egalitarian lines.
Are policies of redistribution really the right ones to emphasise when your goal is poverty reduction?
The argument hinges on ‘if we had the right social organisation’ to achieve the redistribution you seek. It seems to me that thinking we can deal with global poverty by making transfers – based on a 2% tax – won’t deliver the goods.
The best solution is to open up all areas to trade – on the basis of self-interest – and to promote mutually advantageous trades almost irrespective of distribution. Look how well Australia is doing out of the reduction in poverty in Asia. The outcome has a kind of ‘incentive compatibility’ to it.
World poverty is not being eliminated but it is being massively and quickly reduced as trade is being promoted.
A few thoughts:
Not only do we have enough food to feed everyone, we also use a lot of grain etc to feed livestock which ultimately feeds less people, but there are plenty of rich people who prefer meat.Unfortunately livestock also has very large greenhouse gas emissions (about 11% of Australia’s, 49% of New Zealand’s). There is an FAO report “Livestock’s Long Shadow” http://www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/A0701E00.htm that is worth checking out.
While markets are more efficient that governments at allocating resources in many cases, they don’t recognise the diminishing marginal utility of income. Investing a small amount of money like $300 billion on doubling the income of very poor people is a very smart investment in terms of utility, unfortunately markets may not see it that way.
Eradicating poverty is economically straightforward: open up trade, liberalize markets, promote private ownership, reduce taxation, build strong institutions, etc. There has been more than enough aid to Africa for that.
But in places like Africa poverty is primarily a political problem, not an economic one. Which is why throwing good money after bad is silly. If anything, Australia should be reducing its foreign aid budget, not increasing it.
Mugwump do the math. Convert your “hundreds of billions” into cents per person per day then see if your claim stands up. Be sure to take account of the number of years over which these payments were made.
PrQ,
I would have to agree with mugwump (at least the second comment) and others here.
The long term solution is more trade and openness – not aid. Aid, like other forms of welfare is (IMHO) a good short-term fix – which is why I believe groups like MSF are very valuable.
Long term aid is (IMHO) a contradiction in terms. Long term “aid” creates a cargo cult mentality and promotes corruption, as a good look at its recipients shows. The countries that have fixed themselves are the ones not receiving aid.
But exactly what would that “well-planned and well-funded effort” be? And who gets to decide what it should be, and how to implement it? A considerable fraction of the world’s poverty exists in countries that already claim to have “well-planned and well-funded efforts” to reduce poverty (especially in South America), but it not clear that such an effort is actually working. While I’m skeptical of the ability of economic liberalisation to help reduce poverty in already wealthy countries like Australia, the evidence that it’s working in poorer countries is pretty hard to dispute.
if ‘trade’ were the answer, rich countries wouldn’t have large percentages of very poor people.
Eradicating poverty is economically straightforward: open up trade, liberalize markets, promote private ownership, reduce taxation, build strong institutions, etc.
if this is such a foolproof strategy for eradicating poverty, why has it never been tried?
Here is a link to study about India
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/hsop-iia090407.php
Excerpt:
“It has been known that countries with rapidly developing economies may experience a double-disease burden that results from undernutrition and overnutrition. People living in poverty experience diseases that result from a lack of resources, while affluent individuals may suffer from diseases that result from an abundance of resources.
Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the University of Bristol have examined the extent to which income inequality is predictive of this double nutritional burden in India. They found that people living in Indian states with high levels of income inequality experienced a greater risk of both under- and overnutrition, even after adjusting for various demographic, economic, and behavioral variables.
The researchers found that for every three percent widening in a state’s income inequality between the most affluent and the most poor, the risk for being underweight increased by 19 percent and the risk for being obese increased by 21 percent.”
Al, I’m in Beijing at the moment. Only those suffering the most extreme marginalisation in our society (the homeless, indiginous people in the worst camps) could realistically be described as materially poor when you compare it to the average Beijing resident.
On another topic, corruption in aid programs seems to be a massive problem, both from the providers and the recipients. See this for a tale of local chiefs taking the cream, and this, for how US Government aid seemed to be more about creating an oversupply of a cash crop than helping poor farmers.
[i]Eradicating poverty is economically straightforward: open up trade, liberalize markets, promote private ownership, reduce taxation, build strong institutions, etc.[/i]
Which are the countries that have successfully gone from poor to (relatively) rich in the past half century? Which countries have gone in the other direction? Which policies were at work in either case?
The greatest success stories are concentrated in East Asia, where export-oritented state-led development nurtured the nascent manufacturing sector, and land reform redistributed economic opportunity to allow for the growth of a sizable domestic consumer market. The opposite track was followed in Latin America (and the Philippines), with much worse results. The world-historical horror story is that of shock-therapy Russia, where poverty exploded, life-expectancy plummeted and economic development was reversed for more than a decade generation following the sudden introduction of neoliberal policies.
I live in China too Robert. I’ve always been struck at how obesity is almost non-existant in the middle aged and older generation here. There are a fair few pudgy kids, though not as many as in Oz though. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I returned to Australia after being in China for 2 years – the people are huge! Not surprising considering the meat, starch and dessert rich Western diet – and making dinner the biggest meal, right before bedtime.
Re corruption and waste of aid moneys – most of the aid recipient, impoverished third world nations were until the second half of the twentieth century ruled by those same first world nations now describing themselves as aid ‘donors’. (It’s worth noting here that most ‘aid’ funds are in the form of loans or sums tied to purchases from the ‘donor’ country, and that for many years the amounts ‘given’ have been dwarfed by the amounts transferred as interest, but that’s not my point). This rule was not benign – the wealth of the first world – the ‘old money’ – was in large part accumulated by theft and enslavement of the populations of what are now aid recipient countries. The process continues, with environmental vandalism such as deforestation and dumping of toxic wastes, and unconscionable conduct by, for example, drug companies.
First world ‘aid donors’ meanwhile have intervened militarily to reverse such reform measures as are advocated by Gerard, eg land reform, principally in the Americas (Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua) but also in Africa and Asia, principally under the guise of fighting the Cold War. Any third world nation seeking to buck the system of exploitation is under severe threat of intervention (Venezuela, Chile, Iran). It suits the corporate interests of the first world for the third world to be ruled by corrupt oligarchies built on the rotten foundations established by the imperial powers in the first place. So we shouldn’t be too surprised to find that that’s how they’re ruled.
I don’t read Prof Quiggin as necessarily advocating a straight transfer of cash to Africans. Isn’t his point simply that there is, in principle, enough resources in the world to eliminate hunger? That is, we do not face a resource constraint. The constraint lies elsewhere – political, moral, or perhaps just a lack of imagination.
It seems likely that, in the not too distant future, hunger will be eliminated from the world. But today, there are people who are hungry. Perhaps the challenge is really a short-term one, not long-term. What can we do today to help the hungry in the world who are currently with us? The wealthy and prosperous among us in this 21st century may perhaps have a unique opportunity to do something worthwhile that future generations cannot – i.e., feed the poor.
Perhaps the poor (or at least the hungry) will not always be with us.
Last time I looked (which was admittedly over a decade ago) about 80% of Australian aid was actually spent in Australia – aid to the Australian private sector – and any benefits (or otherwise) that accrued to developing countries were more or less incidental.
Aid is not the cause of corruption. North Vietnam lived on Soviet aid for decades, while corruption only began to be a problem when the aid began to be cut off; i.e., when the market reforms began. The same thing happened in China – basically because in emerging markets political authority becomes a tradable commodity. The solution to the corruption problem is thus not to cut of the aid, but to cut off the dictators. However, we won’t do that as long as they keep buying our guns and butter.
Even if all the aid to Africa actually went to people who need it, since when has giving people money cured poverty?
I could give every impoverished African $1000 today, and in a year’s time most of them will still be just as badly off.
You need to build strong economies in these countries. You need to invest in infrastructure, education, institutions, rule of law, so that these countries can start to contribute to the global economy. The aid received so far is more than enough for that. But to make it happen you need good leaders who want to see their nations improve, not leaders who pocket the aid for themselves and continue to oppress/murder their own people.
In short, given Africa’s startling lack of success under self-rule, it appears they need a modern form of colonialism.
gerard, the Asian countries are “neoliberal” too. Nowhere is as capitalist as Southern China.
Russia was a huge screw up you could see coming a mile off: you can’t introduce free markets without rule of law. I don’t know who was responsible for that but they should be strung up. However, Russia will eventually recover.
Africa is in an entirely different league. Most African nations are simply going nowhere.
So was the dumbest parental commandment ever “finish your dinner, there are children starving in africa”
Melanie,
To an extent I have to disagree. AusAID now includes in its mantras ‘First, do no harm’. This is an admission of failure in the past, courageous in its own way and certainly not part of a western conspiracy to create and tie down client states.
The country I live in has an annual aid input of 3-4 times its GDP. There is certainly some corruption here but it’s not big bikkies, although it is often reasonably blatant. It is also sometimes successfully prosecuted. Life expectancy is very low.
Having set the scene, the key health problems in the country are protein malnutrition leading to obesity and diabetes in the poor, and poor diet/poor exercise regimes leading to obesity and diabetes in the rich. There is little in the way of a ‘middle class’.
Aid is not the answer, but neither is trade. There is a relatively open trading regime and as I noted above aid comes through in buckets and sloshes around the economy. I actually think education is the key, letting people know what they should produce and eat, and why (high carb crops need protein and vegetable supplements). This is quite achievable but would require a change in focus within the education, aid and political communities and a generational change in food attitudes.
Firstly, before talking about aid, don’t forget the enormous flows of capital from the developing world to the first world in the form of repayment on odious petrodollar debt accrued (usually under kleptocratic dictatorships) during the 70s and 80s. Unconditionally canceling all of this debt is the logical first step.
Everyone ought to know that most ‘aid’ is actually a subsidy to domestic industry in the doner countries. It is usually tied to projects undertaken by companies based in the doner countries or tied to purchases of goods from the doner countries, sadly these goods are often arms. People shouldn’t think that this type of aid is a misguided strategy, it works quite well for what it is supposed to achieve – business welfare for the doner countries. This is what the doner countries want, it is also what the dictators want. A much more effective method of aid would be along microcredit lines, with small loans or grants direct to the community, but as this would not enrich the rulers of either the doner or recipient countries it is not of interest to them.
gerard, the Asian countries are “neoliberal� too. Nowhere is as capitalist as Southern China.
I am quite aware of how capitalist China is. Go to an emergency room in China with blood pouring out of your head and the first thing they tell you to do front up at the reception desk with a wad of cash. If you don’t have cash on you then you can bleed to death on the floor for all they care. It’s absolutely disgusting, capitalism at its very worst.
But industrial development in China, as in other successful East Asian economies was and is tightly guided by the state – in marked contrast to the ‘Washington Consensus’ policies that were imposed on Latin America and Russia to disastrous effect. Today in China there are enormous tarrifs on imported goods, the yuan is traded within a narrow band and the financial market is heavily regulated. Many of China’s dominant companies remain wholly or partially state owned. Much of the development in recent decades across every sector came from the growth of township enterprises, which are not quite state owned nor privately owned, but protected and subsidized by the state. Liberalization came gradually at the margins. During the 90s, employees of state owned companies were given paid leave of years at a time to allow them to start their own businesses, and if these businesses failed, they were given their old jobs back – a state subsidy for enterprise that was enormously successful. We often hear about the huge non-performing loans of China’s state-owned banks – these loans are actually the equivalent of Keynesian subsidies to industry. Also, let’s not forget All of the successful East Asian countries followed a path of State-led development, notably in resisting liberalization of capital markets, subsidizing and protecting key export-oriented industries. The unsuccessful examples opened their markets to imports from the developed countries – unsuprising that they could never develop an industrial base themselves under such conditions. Visit South Korea, then visit the Philippines, and you can see for yourself the results.
Russia was a huge screw up you could see coming a mile off: you can’t introduce free markets without rule of law. I don’t know who was responsible for that but they should be strung up. However, Russia will eventually recover.
Read Stiglitz’s account of the IMF’s role in the rape of Russia. They should indeed be strung up. The people responsible for that catastrophe are the same people that advocate free markets liberalism tax cuts blah blah blah as the solution to every problem everywhere in the world. Russia is now recovering because it is turning away from this strategy and taking back control of its hydrocarbons.
Gerard obviously thinks that economic development is bad because it doesn’t produce perfect outcomes.
Gerard, have you actually been to Southern China? Can you name a single product with a higher tariff than that which could be found on the same product in Europe? I can’t, but I can a name a hundred that don’t — so I assume you are just making that up. Also, this idea that the state is supporting umpteem people I assume is part of your imagination too. Unemployment is one of the biggest problems in China, and has been cause in part by these enterprises closing. I could further add that its also hard to work out why these non-performing loans were given. You’re assumption is that they were given to stimulate industry, but my assumption is that a large chunk of them were simply due to poor lending practises and outright corruption (still quite common). Its easy to lend excessive money — just look at the situation in the US right now.
Gerard obviously thinks that economic development is bad because it doesn’t produce perfect outcomes.
I’m confused – how did you arrive at that interpretation?
Conrad, I am actually a Chinese resident and have been for more than 2 years. I live in Qingdao, Shandong province, in eastern China. I have only been to a southern China a couple of times, but I gather that the tariffs are the same countrywide (excepting Hong Kong SAR). I don’t know the situation in Europe and I can’t make a comparison, but I guess that Europe puts tarriffs on goods manufactured in China because of their much lower cost, wheras in China the same effect can be achieved with more modest tariffs due to China’s already low incomes and undervalued currency. The products that have high import duties in China (I am going by comparison between their prices in Hong Kong vs. the mainland) are generally things that are considered luxury goods. Posh brand name clothing, jewelry, electronics, coffee, imported foodstuffs, automobiles all have high taxes on them. I’m not saying this is good or bad – Chinese products are generally of inferior quality and these taxes make them more competitive than they otherwise would be. As for the SOE, they have indeed been downsizing and many have closed down (often for the better considering the cesspits of corruption that many of them were) but they still account for a large fraction of China’s economy – it’s a more complex situation than you assume. The township enterprises are another factor and constitute a backbone of the economy in many rural areas. As for the banks, I am not assuming that the non performing loans were given for this or that reason – only pointing out the continuing role of the state in China’s economy. These state owned banks would probably collapse if they weren’t supported by the central government, and their collapse would have severe knock-on effects across the entire Chinese economy, making the current situation effectively similar to a state subsidy to industry in a country where the government proper taxes and spends less than some industrialized countries. My point is that it’s not a situation of pure communism vs. pure capitalism.
I’m confused – how did you arrive at that interpretation?
“I am quite aware of how capitalist China is. Go to an emergency room in China with blood pouring out of your head and the first thing they tell you to do front up at the reception desk with a wad of cash. If you don’t have cash on you then you can bleed to death on the floor for all they care. It’s absolutely disgusting, capitalism at its very worst.”
I still don’t see how pointing out the fact of China’s disgusting medical system equates to an argument that development is bad because it doesn’t produce perfect outcomes. Development in general and China’s medical system in particular are quite different things, and I was simply pointing out that I am under no illusions that China is a success story for ‘socialism’, despite the intense involvement of the Chinese state in the Chinese economy. No system that left the treatment of medical emergencies up to the ability to immediately produce cash on the spot can be considered ‘socialist’.
gerard, it is really a question of transient vs steady-state. The neoliberals are correct in advocating free market, low taxation policies as the best steady-state regime for maximizing human welfare. In that they are and have always been far ahead of the socialists.
But how a country transitions to the ideal steady-state from whatever broken social system they currently operate under is a much more difficult question, and there the neoliberals have not exactly covered themselves in glory. Of course, the socialists are even worse: they typically advocate no transition at all.
China is certainly being smarter than the IMF in Russia. But China also unnecessarily (IMO) suppresses all political dissent. That will also eventually change: you can’t stifle the political views of 400,000,000 university-educated citizens.
The point in question is economic development in the malnourished third world – obviously the best ‘steady-state’ model is of no interest since a steady-state is the opposite of what is needed in such situations. Transition from poor to rich has never occured by following the neoliberal path. The comparison with ‘socialists’ depends on what you mean by socialist since such a huge range of policies are either self-described or described by others as ‘socialist’, and they range the entire gamut from effective to catastrophic, moral to abhorrent. Like the Chinese suppression of political dissent for example. Is it socialism? Or is it the type of autocratic regime that China’s elite needs to keep the have-nots in their place?
The 400,000,000 university-educated citizens, China’s relatively lucky, well-fed urban-middle class, may well be quite glad to live without political rights in order to keep a lid on the billion strong poor. In actual fact, the political views of the Chinese middle-class are mostly the same blend of apathy, indifference and passive acceptance that usually exists in middle Australia. Trust me there’s no new Tiananmen coming from today’s urban youth – they’re generally too busy cramming for exams, playing online computer games or reading the latest celebrity gossip, or bootlicking their way into a half-decent (by Chinese standards) job to have any spare time for politics. And since the Chinese economy has changed their world unrecognizably from the abject poverty they grew up with as kids in the 1980s, they are mostly content to let it go as it’s going.
Mugwump, you sound like you use the term neo-liberal as a religion, not a bunch of theories.
Gerard, you keep complaining about the CHinese medical system — but its quite reasonable in comparison to similarly poor countries. They have doctors, after all, which luckily rich countries like Australia don’t seem to be able to take all of. Also, no doubt its true that the Chinese suppress political dissent, but its also true that they are basically moving toward a system that will put themselves out of power, they’re just not doing it as fast as other countries — and why should they? as you even note, things have been going comparitively well since the 80s. Also, you are incorrect in saying the current system keeps the have-nots out of the money. Hundreds of millions of people have come out of poverty, thats why things have been stablish. Another thing you probably don’t realize is the difference between the central government and the state government. A lot of the problems are caused by the latter of these (and the huge beuracractic heirarchy underneath them), not just the central goverment.
No, the medical system here is not reasonable and can never be called reasonable. Here’s what happened in my city a few months ago (my city is one of the most prosperous in northern China, in some places you could mistake it for a first world city) – a police-man came in with a pregnant wife who was bleeding and in terrible pain, something had gone wrong, the doctor said come back with 3000 yuan cash (that’s triple the average monthly salary). The man obviously didn’t have 3000 on him and begged the doctors to take care of her first but they turned him away. He had 1000 cash at home, the banks were closed, he had to call all of his relatives to raise the 3000, by the time he went back to the hospital his wife was dead. He took out his gun, killed the doctor and then killed himself in the waiting room. That’s just the most extreme example. The medical system has been totally deregulated and now operates for profit with appalling results. Doctors in China are businessmen first – they will diagnose you with problems you don’t have to make more money, and prescibe you medicines you don’t need (they get a cut of any sale of medicine from the medicine company, which is often selling pure garbage and passing it off as medicine). if it’s clear you have no money they’ll shunt you out the door telling you everything’s ok. I was told by a doctor that when seemingly well-off women in labor come in doctors often tell them they need to get a ceasarian if they want their baby to live – even when it’s a bold faced lie and they don’t need one – simply because a ceasarian is four times the price of a regular delivery and makes them more profit. Pharmacists are even worse, anyone can be a pharmacist in China, and will try and rip you off at any opportunity. There are no regulations here and that is not even a matter of the country being rich or poor. Now back in the 1970s everybody had access to some form of subsidized medical care, even if it was very primitive, it did make a life or death difference to some people. Now China is much richer, it could afford some sort of medical system that at least didn’t leave people to die on ER floors for want of cash-in-hand. If that’s the situation in the prospering cities, you can imagine what’s its like in the countryside – when you get sick you take care of it yourself, don’t even dream of trying to see a doctor. Cuba is much poorer than China but there’s no comparison when it comes to the medical system. I could go on about the educational system here too, where academic success often depends on bribing professors and the legal system where a lawyer’s job is usually to deliver gifts to the judge on their clients’ behalf.
You know there’s a saying that if you live in China for one month, you know enough to write a book about China. You live here for a year and you know enough to write a paragraph. Live here any longer and you know enough not to write anything – the place is just too big, complicated and dynamic to be properly represented in a few or even hundreds of sentences.
Hundreds of millions of Chinese have come out of poverty, and it happened here and not in other ‘democratic’ Asian countries. Of course, the miracle has not been evenly distributed, and the fact that hundreds of millions have come out of poverty doesn’t change the fact that hundreds of millions have not, or are doing so at a much slower pace. Of course, considering the size of the country and the state it was in just 50 years ago, this is hardly suprising and the country has done well all things considered, and would have done better if the Cultural Revolution hadn’t intervened. But you’ve never been to China or even read much about it if you are unaware of the divide between the city and country, enforced by the hukou registration system that keeps internal migrants as second class citizens. In China the difference between being born in Shanghai or in rural Gansu province is as wide a difference as can be imagined in terms of access to jobs, education, nutrition or the possibility of moving up in the world, one is closer to New York and the other to Africa than they are to each other. You can spot a mingong (rural migrant) from a mile away simply by their shorter stature that comes from lack of nutrition. But as bad as it is here, it is still better than what exists in neoliberal countries like the Philippines. Since the fourth generation came to power half a decade ago the central government has pledged to build a “New Socialist Countryside” and Hu’s official ideological program for the country is a “Harmonious Society”. This campaign is an admission by the government itself – won by the tens of thousands of protests by fed-up rural folk in recent years – that the current system is not harmonious and they have to start at least pretending to be spreading the prosperity.
A bit funny how you say I probably don’t realize the difference between the central government and the state government, since China doesn’t have states, but I get your point and you’re right that most of the problems that make people angry (tens of thousands of protests against local governments in 2005) with the supremely corrupt local governments, local bureaucracies and police forces and local elites who terrorize opponents with the threat of jail time or physical beating at the hands of hired thugs. The central government is by and large seen as well intentioned, but ‘unaware’ of what actually goes on. I think they are quite aware, and on occasion they do step in to discipline the local governments, but there are power struggles within the top leadership as well and different factions rely on the support from local governments and don’t want to alienate them. Due to the restrictions on the media and civil society in China there is precious little understanding of the complex workings of the Chinese political system either here or outside the country.
I don’t know if they are moving toward a system which keeps them out of power actually. They are doing everything they can to avoid the prospect of a ‘Chinese Gorbachev’ and unfortunately what happened to Russia after his reforms allows them to justify their hostility to political liberalism. There are a lot of middle aged normal Chinese people here who are all for what the government did in the 1989 crackdown – because they say “Look what happened to Russia.” The Communist Party is going to stay in power until it either splits up from the inside or until some alternative national movement brings it down and I don’t see that happening in the forseeable future. I simply can’t see the Chinese middle-classes campaigning for a one-person one-vote democracy when they know that the peasantry is so much poorer than they are and might possibly vote for a redistribution of wealth.
Gerard,
1970 was approximately year zero for CHina, as you seem to realize. The fact that there are hospitals is better than the fact there are not (why not try India or Indonesia as a comparison). Simply because they are corrupt (like everything else in China is — as is true of many big third world countries), is no real surprise. I’m completely aware how the medical system currently works (i.e., turn up with the money), and how much of a pain it is to do almost anything, but in the end, comparing it to fully functional systems like Australia is not an especially fair comparison. Also the education system is not as bad as you say. Its one of the reasons for the new found prosperity — some of the universities are quite fine, and primary school education is supposed to be free now (I realize its the thought that counts). Again, the comparison needs to be done to similar sized countries with similar problems (India, Indonesia, Pakistan) not prosperous Western ones.
Also, simply saying that hundreds of millions of people are in poverty, and there are weird restrictions on their movements (despite hundreds of millions coming out), is not exactly solving problems for anyone. Having the prosperous areas simply swamped would destroy the infrastructure which has generated the current prosperity. I’m sure the central government would love to solve the problems of inequality (which is why it didn’t take tax from country areas anymore — quite a good move), and to work out how to keep unruly provinces in line (like Guangdong) but they’re just not simple problems to solve. I think they probably think they have done a good job given the circumstances (although I personally, I think its really mainly the people that have done a good job — showing where you can get if the government just stops screwing things up as much). It is also the case that the central government allows the provinces to do pretty much what they please — it isn’t the case that you have massive central planning like the old Soviet times. Thus the fact that medical services are crappy in some provinces is because the provinces cannot supply those services. The alternative would be the central government to take over the health care sytem (reminds me of Australia right now), which I find hard to imagine working for 1.3 billion people.
ALso, this idea that everything is restricted is incorrect. Its surely the case that the official media is heavily censored, but thanks to the internet, the flow of information is essentially now unstoppable — something which the communist party just has to put up with — and allows (with the occasional person arrested as a scape-goat). I remember when SARS broke out, and the central (?), Guangdong (?), local (?) government was trying to hide it. This news reached HK unofficially well before the news really broke, and everyone started to get paranoid. I tend to think they would do a favor to themselves these days by not censoring the official sources, its just that they’re paranoid.
yeah I see your point. I know the Chinese government can’t supply 1.3 billion people with a European standard universal healthcare.
The comparison with India or Indonesia is a fair one, but these miserable countries don’t even have any pretence of being functional societies, unlike China which shows what is possible in the way of development. Regarding healthcare, I prefer the comparison with Cuba. This country is much poorer than China but can manage a healthcare system that at least doesn’t prevent doctors from saving a person’s life without directing them to make a cash-payment with the hospital receptionist. China is much richer now than it was when it did have basic universal care, and when exactly does a country become rich enough to start providing for this fundamental human need? Back in the days of ‘year zero’, even when the country was incomparably more wretched, there was at least some form of basic coverage, that vanished in the reforms. In fact, what I am complaining about is a specific policy in Chinese hospitals which is “no treatment without upfront payment” policy. Many urban Chinese are insured and will get some portion of the money back, but that’s not the point – the point is that without cash in hand you won’t be treated for fear that you are uninsured – maybe an illegal internal migrant – and the hospital will lose money on treating you.
The absolute absence of medical care in the countryside is gradually being recognized I admit. Some people say Hu is a ‘leftist’ compared to Jiang – I think the Communist Party knows what’s best for itself. Last year the government did announce a new program to cover the countryside with the same type of system that existed until the reforms. This will be implemented over the coming decade as part of Hu’s “New Socialist Countryside”, but the proof will be when the funds come through and we see where they end up. They also executed the former head of the drug administration for approving harmful medicines for bribes, although its ridiculous to pin the systemic problem on him.
Education and legal system are better than in India and Indonesia. They are definately improving. Some provinces are far ahead of others and within provinces there are huge differences as well. But some of the local government are outright mafias. Media is not allowed to touch anything that would make a government official of even very low rank look bad, unless and until that official has been fired by a higher official. This restriction of information is a huge impediment to progress, but it is loosening. The internet is changing things, and the Communist Party is quite wary about this. It’s being pushed into being more responsive to people’s demands without countenancing the possibility of a multi-party system or official freedom of speech. The country is also so big that a social fire can often be doused either by carrot or stick before it spreads. People having the freedom to fume in monitored chat rooms is one thing, but long-term independent political organization is another thing. The Party is already putting a bit more bite into the national labor organizations (much to the displeasure of the Western corporations that are based here) to prevent the rise of an independant trade union movement. I think the Party can probably keep up the act for at least a couple of generations to come, and life will gradually improve for the Chinese as it has been doing, but who can predict the future?
Elementary education is free for kids whose parents are registered in the city where the school is. Schools are legally not allowed to take migrant workers kids.
I think you don’t understand the meaning of steady-state vs transient. A steady-state political/economic system is simply one which is fairly constant.
If a country currently has a bad political/economic model, steady-state or otherwise, they obviously should be attempting to transition to a good model, most likely a steady-state one (I know of no good political/economic models that are in a state of constant and rapid change).
Between the bad and good steady-state models, there is a period of rapid change – a transient period. The countries that are actively improving the welfare of their citizens are all heading towards more-or-less the same good steady-state system (although there is a wide variation from AustraloEurosclerosis to American individualism and free enterprise), but they’re following very different roads to the same destination.