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The Myth of Homogeneity in Japanese Race Relations, Demographic Momentum, and Projected Economic Role

6/21/2012

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ALLISON HIGHT - 22 JUNE 2012

When China last surpassed Japan’s economic output to become the second largest economy in the world in 2010, reactions in Japan were mixed: while many celebrated the success of a fellow East Asian country and acknowledged China’s role in the development of their own economy, others regretted the regressive fall.  Although the change in placement was due more to China’s relentless growth than any major shortcoming of Japan, it does serve to add to the world’s growing conviction that Japan may not possess the resources necessary to remain competitive in an increasingly globalized society.  In the past several decades, the country’s population growth has slowly leveled out, peaking in 2005 at 127.7 million, and is expected to decline to 105 million by 2050 (Usui 37).  This decline includes a distinct shift in demographics, for as the latest baby boom generation passes the age of sixty-five and women have fewer and fewer children than in the past, an increasingly large elderly population is becoming dependent on a shrinking working body.  Currently, there are approximately three workers to support every elderly retiree; by 2025, that number is expected to fall to two, a far cry from the 11:1 ratio that existed in the 1960s (40-41).  Still, although the numbers look bleak, by themselves they do not necessarily spell out Japan’s economic ruin.  Rather, it is the addition of Japan’s strict immigration policy that severely limits its ability to compensate for this demographic shift with foreign workers that bodes ill for the country’s future global competitiveness.  Indeed, “[t]he Japanese government, which adheres to the myth of Japan as an ethnically homogenous nation that is not and never has been a country of immigration, has one of the most restrictive immigration policies among advanced industrialized nations” (Tsuda 13).  Although so far “Japan is an international anomaly in that it succeeded in its post-war industrialization and economic modernization without depending on foreign labor” (Brody 32), many believe that its restrictive policies are finally about to backfire.  At the heart of the country’s strict laws is the cherished ‘myth of homogeneity’ that firmly believes in the value of a one-size-fits-all culture, language, and ethnicity.  Within the context of this myth, then, this paper explores the research question, what role has Japan’s pure ethnic perception played in their immigration policy in the past and how will it affect its future role in world affairs?  Because we live in a time that is rapidly becoming globalized, it is crucial to examine this question to understand the different future roles Japan has the potential to play and how the country should proceed to reach the most desirable outcome for both itself and the world as a whole.

The myth of racial homogeneity arose naturally because of Japan’s 200 year isolation period.  Of course, after opening its borders again, the country’s past policies of separation were not immediately followed with strong movements to integrate foreigners into society or immediate globalize, so it has been relatively simple to maintain a culture of perceived ethnic “purity.”  Today, the “Japanese national identity built around the notion of racial purity and cultural integrity developed in part because of Japan’s geographical isolation as an island nation and in part because of conscious political efforts to create a mythology of a ‘pure’ ethnic nation” (31).  This idea mainly manifests itself in two ways: first, there remains today a strong societal value of homogenized behavior as well as culture.  There is little emphasis placed on the individual, and people instead derive their worth and usefulness from their ability to work as part of a team.  Uniforms are widely used in both early education and the adult workforce, and form is emphasized over function to acknowledge people’s commitment and duty to those around them.  Second, “[e]thnicity, language, and culture are the keystones of Japanese self-image and national identity” (32), and the discourse surrounding each of these three elements necessitates discussion of the other two as well.  During the colonial movement, for example, the government justified its exploits by emphasizing the unique superiority of the Japanese ethnic identity that was composed of several different Asiatic races and cultures (Shin 332).  Because the Japanese language contains a similar mix of various Asiatic influences, this idea became bound up in both the language of the people and the nation’s domestic cultural practices as well.  Today, the three elements are so closely intertwined that they are practically interchangeable, and each is still considered an integral part of the Japanese identity.

This myth of homogeneity has had profound influences on Japan’s immigration policy and foreign worker populations over the years.  Although occupants of many different countries have had difficulty integrating into Japanese culture both culturally and lawfully, the two groups of Koreans and Nikkeijin have been particularly affected because of their relatively large numbers.  First, during the colonial era, harsh policy made it impossible for many Koreans to continue their occupation as subsistence farmers, forcing them to search for employment in Japan instead (Mori 156).  Most of the workers who came to the country were young men who intended to stay only long enough to save some money and therefore had little motivation to integrate into Japanese society or compete for high-level jobs.  This population segment became more firmly established in the 1930s when Korean women were recruited for work in Osaka’s spinning industries and families began to take root.  By 1940, the number of Koreans living in Japan exceeded 1.2 million (157-158).  When the country had its independence restored in 1952, however, Japan denied this ethnic group citizenship status, even for those who had at this point resided in the country for decades as a result of the country’s colonial legacy.  The Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act of the same year provided a limited avenue to citizenship, but then only as one of eighteen categories of foreigners that in many ways only served to reinforce their social status as ‘outsider’ (2).  Even after the country’s 1990 Immigration Reform, which slightly improved foreigners’ integration into the cultural framework of Japan, some still make a strong argument that

[o]fficial immigration and immigrant policy in ‘ethnic citizenship regimes’ suggests that ethnicity is the critical factor in framing questions of membership [. . .] [E]ven those long-settled in the country like [. . .] the Korean minority in Japan, are discouraged, through restrictive policies on naturalization, from becoming citizens.  They are, regardless of the length of their stay and intentions to remain in the country, always ‘foreigners’ since they are ‘unassimilable.’  It is ethnicity rather than language, culture, or even religion that bars these residents from full inclusion in society.  (Brody 28)

While this argument does reinforce the strong Japanese connection between ethnicity, language, and culture, because it also contains the implication that it is possible to acquire at least the latter two – providing a small window for potential assimilation – it emphasizes the strength of the Japanese insider/outsider binary and how easily both of these factors are trumped by ethnicity.  Debora Ortloff further explains that Japan’s immigration policy has “traditionally been based on jus sanguinis, the principle that one’s nationality at birth is the same as that of one’s biological parents.  These boundaries of nationality and citizenship close the door to many long-term, non-national residents” (447), including not only the Korean population but also those of Chinese descent who also began their residency prior to WWII and in some cases, the small population of mixed ethnic descent.

Even those who did manage to naturalize continued to face discrimination in the workplace, including companies that blatantly refused to hire workers of Korean descent (Shin 226).  This strong discrimination had the interesting effect of forcing many Koreans to hide their national background, for “[a]s a means of survival, many immigrants submitted themselves to cultural assimilation. Many used Japanese names, a legacy of Japanese colonial assimilation policy, to disguise their ethnic identity to avoid overt racism” (Shin 336).  Today, some parents still shelter their children from the knowledge of their original ethnic descent in the hopes that ignorance will smooth the way for assimilation and integration.  Although this technique has proven successful in many individual cases, overall it adds to the insider/outsider dichotomy, because “[t]he marginality of these colonial immigrants and their acculturation created an illusion of Japanese homogeneity which helped to reify the new Japanese national self-image as a homogeneous nation and justified the exclusionary structure of Japanese society” (336).  If the only perceived way to become an insider is to renounce any remnant of non-Japanese ethnicity, even foreigners who do manage to naturalize will not be able to help bridge the divide between the two, simply because their naturalization will not be visible to either the individual or the government.  Though unique because of its members’ long residential status in Japan, the Korean struggle for inclusion is representative of all foreigners’ hardships.

Nikkeijin – or foreigners of Japanese descent – though the literal opposite of long-term Korean residents in terms of ethnicity of belonging and homeland, have had remarkably similar experiences when attempting to naturalize to the country.  These individuals began to enter in large numbers after the 1990 Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in response to a growing need for foreign workers to fill in gaps left by the native population.  In the past, Japan had explicitly prevented unskilled workers from immigrating to the country, and although the 1990 reform did not wholly change this stipulation, it did create a “back door” method through which unskilled workers could enter (Brody 41).  Although this slight policy change allowed over 300,000 Nikkeijin to return to Japan, the majority coming from Brazil, little national effort was put forth to smooth the workers’ integration into the country.  As these individuals began to enter in large numbers, two contradictory positions on their perceived role in Japanese society arose.  First, there existed a widespread assumption that integration and transition for these individuals would prove simple, and there would soon be little difference between Nikkeijin and Japanese nationals.  This idea ultimately proved false.  Despite their ethnic background, many of the Nikkeijin were several generations removed from their Japanese origins, and although a number had enrolled in Japanese language classes back in Brazil, the language barrier proved a large obstacle to their assimilation (Ortloff 453).  Japan did revise their “Lifelong Learning Promotion Law” in the same year as their immigration reform to promote adult learning, but they failed to provide any adjustments to cater to the needs of the newly-arrived foreign workers.  As a result, even though Nikkeijin were not subjected to the racial discrimination and hiring bias that the Koreans suffered, because they were largely unskilled coming in and were forced to remain so because of the strict language and cultural barriers, they were restricted to the margins of society, filling no role but that of the manual laborer by which they had originally been tempted.  Second, however, the 1990 Immigration Act that paved the way for the Nikkeijin’s migration exhibits calculated exclusion.  The Act expanded the number of 1951 immigrant categories from eighteen to twenty-seven, and one of those added carried the exclusive label of Nikkeijin.  As Shin argues, “[b]y creating a differentiated visa category exclusively for Nikkeijin, the Japanese state attempted to maintain its national self-image as a racially and ethnically homogenous nation” (338).  Contrary to what was advertised to the foreigners, this “suggests that [the national government] view[ed] the Nikkeijin as short-term guest workers rather than residents” (Ortloff 458), a mindset only exacerbated by some of the Nikkeijin’s own personal beliefs that their stay in Japan was temporary (461).

Ultimately, neither one of these attitudes proved positive in welcoming and integrating the Nikkeijin into Japanese society.  The former, that of assumed integration, was not only demonstrative of the Japanese government’s tendency to view “foreign workers strictly as labor power to be regulated and not as people with human rights and needs” (Tsuda 4), but in the specific case of the Nikkeijin, was a further indication of the extreme emphasis placed upon ethnicity in Japan and the perceived connection between ethnicity, culture and language.  Because the Nikkeijin had Japanese roots, people presumed that their ethnic background would automatically fill in any cultural gaps and often refused to change their mind about the matter even as this assumption proved sadly false.  The second attitude strongly reinforced the idea of Japanese ethnic purity.  Arguably, under the ideas and ideals of the country, the group of people easiest to integrate into Japanese society would be foreigners of Japanese descent.  To create an atmosphere where not even these individuals are welcome in the long term is to emphasize cultural purity as well as ethnic purity.  The Japanese population in Brazil was large enough and existed for short enough a time that many people stayed within the bounds of the Japanese community and did not intermarry with Brazilians.  Although theoretically this could have provided the opportunity for the Japanese government to see returners as still ethnically “pure,” they chose instead to focus on the different cultural influences – for WWII-era assimilation policies caused many to adopt Brazilian practices and beliefs – and in doing so, created an even stricter set of criteria for people to fulfill to be considered properly Japanese (Ortloff 453).

Even as developing solutions for ethnic and racial difficulties remained largely ignored on the national level, though, local movements have gained considerable precedence in the last several decades.  Exemplary among these efforts has been the establishment of the “Committee for Localities with a Concentrated Foreign Population,” an organization that “unites sixteen cities in their efforts to deal with immigration issues” (Tegtmeyer Pak 68).  Since its formation in 2001, the Committee has made deliberate efforts to emphasize the value of foreign workers’ contributions to Japanese society and to create potential avenues to nation-wide policy changes.  Adult education programs are also developing on the local level to incorporate the needs of foreign residents, and, tellingly, there is a direct correlation between “the availability of adult education services” and “the degree to which foreign residents [. . .] have been accepted and incorporated into the existing social service and educational infrastructure” (Ortloff 460) because “where there are long-standing and dominant national languages, language proficiency is the first step toward political, economic, and cultural participations” (450).  As one would expect, language acclimation largely affects residents’ comfort level in society, quality of relationship with fellow community members, and potential to rise higher in the workforce, so while these programs are still small, they have already had significant positive effects on individuals and communities.

In context of Japan’s economic status and rapidly aging population, though, critics, scholars, and politicians argue that these small, local efforts are far from what Japan needs to stay competitive on the global market.  These carefully measured groups of foreigners brought in to work temporarily may stabilize the country for a time, but data analysts predict that if Japan’s economy and population continue to grow at a similar rate, there will be a labor shortage of 10 million workers in 2025 and 20 million in 2050 (Mori 92).  To compensate, the same number of foreign workers would need to be brought in at the rate of approximately 400,000 workers per year.  While this would certainly stimulate the economy and provide opportunities to both provide greater care for the elderly population and turn around overall population decline, the approach is highly controversial and would certainly transform current Japanese society more drastically than anything past changes have done.

However, there is also much debate over whether such a radical plan is even feasible in the current set-up of Japan.  Because of the strong cultural values of homogeneity and the group over the individual, Japanese middle schools, for instance, are sites of incredible “assimilationist pressures and deculturalizing education for non-Japanese students” (Ortloff 449).  Few bilingual schools exist (Brody 110), causing many foreign children to be sent outside of the country for education purposes, and those that do exist are usually either incredibly expensive or volunteer run.  Adult foreigners report “language difficulty, isolation, and prejudice as their primary concerns at work” (64) and housing discrimination based on status and ethnic background is rampant.  Further, “[f]oreigners, or gaijin, are seen as so completely outside of Japanese society that their rights have generally not been addressed in Japanese law” (6), and as a result, they hold very little political power.  All of these issues are only “compounded in Japan by a general unwillingness to even acknowledge the substantial non-Japanese population, and by underdevelopment of research, education, activist, and political organizations to address and push for solutions for Japan’s foreign populations” (Ortloff 464).  Of course, an influx of 20 million foreign workers would act as a natural catalyst to change, and no doubt currently marginalized segments of the population would gain much influence as their numbers increased.  To what extent would the Japanese government start such efforts, though, and to what extent would foreigners have to demand that they be given rights?  The answer remains unclear.  Although the current Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, has expressed interest in attracting more and diverse foreigners to the country, as of yet his words sound little different from the lip service that politicians have given the issue in the past.  It appears that the nation stands at a crossroads: “The effects of the globalization of international economies, as well as the globalization of human rights norms, have caused a collision in Japan between traditional conceptions of membership and citizenship on the one hand, and new policy initiatives promoting ‘internationalization’ on the other” (Brody 1).  It remains to be seen in which direction Japan will proceed and how they will strike a balance between tradition and modernity.

One final possibility does remain: if job conditions grow as dire as data analysts currently predict they will, there is a high likelihood that the events of the 1980s, when Japan last had a large shortage in the labor market, will repeat themselves: the country will experience large amounts of illegal immigration (3).  Although more difficult to enter than most countries considering its island status, the prospect of people increasingly overstaying their visas is a tangible outcome of the current situation.  Though certainly not the most desirable of options, especially considering Japan’s past history of extremely harsh treatment of discovered illegal foreigners, it is one of many possible turns of events that the government will have to consider when moving forward in the years to come.

Considering its strength throughout the years, it seems unlikely that the belief in the value of Japanese homogeneity will disappear anytime soon, even if large amounts of foreign workers are brought into the country.  In the past, this conviction has driven the nation’s immigration policy, educational approaches, and behavioral norms.  While preserving the perceived purity of Japanese blood is certainly desirable on several levels, especially considering the long and rich history of the people, it may finally be time to push past the boundaries of ethnicity and embrace the integrative aspects of globalization that appear to be becoming increasingly inevitable.  Although as the Nikkeijin can attest, such integration will not be easy, and tensions and supremacy struggles are bound to arise, it may be the best option if Japan wants to continue to thrive on a global level.


Works Cited

Brody, Betsy.  Opening the Door: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Globalization in Japan.  New

York: Routledge, 2002.

Mori.  Hiromi.  Immigration and Foreign Workers in Japan. New York: St. Martin’s Press Inc.,

1997.

Ortloff, Debora Hinderliter and Christopher J. Frey.  “Blood Relatives: Language, Immigration,

and Education of Ethnic Returnees in Germany and Japan.”  Comparative Education Review 51.4 (2007): 447-470.  Web.

Shin, Hwaji.  “Ethnic Legacy of Ethno-Racial Inequality in Japan.”  Theory and Society 39.3/4

(2010): 327-342.  Web.

Tegtmeyer Pak.  “Cities and Local Citizenship in Japan: Overcoming Nationality?”  Local

Citizenship in Recent Countries of Immigration: Japan in Comparative Perspective. Ed. Takeyuki Tsuda. Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006.

Tsuda, Takeyuki. “Localities and the Struggle for Immigrant Rights: The Significance of Local

Citizenship in Recent Countries of Immigration.”  Local Citizenship in Recent Countries of Immigration: Japan in Comparative Perspective. Ed. Takeyuki Tsuda. Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006.

Usui, Chikako.  “Japan’s Demographic Future and the Role of Foreign Workers.” Local

Citizenship in Recent Countries of Immigration: Japan in Comparative Perspective. Ed. Takeyuki Tsuda. Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006.


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China’s Economy Booms: People See Few Benefits

10/12/2011

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BARON LAUDERMILK - 12 OCTOBER 2011

The world has silently envied China’s incredible economic progress since the late 1970s. Westerners cringed with jealously when China came out as the world’s new economic engine after the United State’s economy tanked in 2008. China’s newly built capitalist  economy guided by a one-party system is impressive, even for people who despise the Chinese government and its radical polices. To the average Joe, China seems to be building cities as large as New York city every year. And it seems that China’s bull market economy will be charging into the future without any problems. 

Even at many U.S. universities, it appears that the Chinese students are the most affluent people around. They seem to be the new Joneses.  At Ohio University, the Chinese students have reaped the benefits from China’s economic miracle. Many students stare in awe when they see a young Chinese student cruising in a brand new Mercedes Benz through the forests and Appalachia of Athens, Ohio. I have heard American college students say, “Those Chinese people are so lucky, their economy is making all the Chinese people rich.”

Unfortunately, the Chinese undergraduates in Western universities, whose’ families typically come from high government positions or state-owned industries, do not begin to represent the whole Chinese population. In Shanghai (average annual incomes are much higher than in almost every other city in China) , the salary of a average Chinese family just reached $10,000  a year in 2011. Earning this income, even if a family saves two- thirds of it, would still not enable to the family to send their child to the West. So the questions become, are the middle class and lower class Chinese people seeing this new wealth to the extent Westerns think they are? How is inflation affecting their savings? Are their wages rising in proportion with the economic gains? What is preventing Chinese people from buying up Western goods? 

There is no doubt that since China’s entrance into the globalized world people are better off than they were before 1978, under Mao Zedong’s leadership. The unemployment rate in China is relatively low compared to the developed nations and wages are going up. Coastal factories in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou are popping up every day, and minimum wages are skyrocketing. Surprisingly, and contrary to what many people believe, an overwhelming number of factories are raising wages because they are having difficulty finding full-time employees. Luckily, much of the rise in wages on China’s coast are incrementally and surely trickling out to all the different regions, including Tibet and Xinjiang, two of China’s poorest provinces. So yes, the Chinese people are seeing a rise of wages across the country, but the average salary in China is still low compared to the  United States and European standards. The average wage in southern China is only about 75 cents an hour. 

But China’s low employment rate and rising wages do not mean Chinese people buy many of the new goods and services that are typically found in the West, such as cars, homes, laptops and smart phones, because Chinese people save a huge portion of their money. Why are they saving their money when the economy is booming? Here are five good reasons: (1) China’s volatile market puts off investors. To be more specific, savings interest rates are low. (2)The rise of inflation is much higher than saving account rates (3) The soaring price of food. (4)The lack of a dependable social net. (5) The rise of housing prices. 

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is keeping interest so low that it cannot keep up with China’s rising inflation. The New York Times interviewed a couple in Jilin, China, who could not afford to own a home even though they made $16,000 a year, which is much more than the national average. This partly due to the fact that Chinese savings account rates are only three percent while China’s inflation is over six percent. The couple in Jilin, as with millions of other Chinese households, are skeptical of China’s unstable stock market, so they save more than two thirds of their money.

Food prices are soaring. The prices of  pork, vegetables, edible oil, flour and even rice are all seeing drastic rises, making households’ budgets tight. Chinese people cannot spend their money on new gadgets and clothes when more than half of it is going towards food. Inflation is not the only reason that is pushing up the price of food. Flooding in southern China is wiping out important crops. A flood in Zhejiang province in June 2011 damaged more than 241,600 hectares, and 432,000 hectares in total have been affected by flooding across the country. The constant rise of prices is making Chinese people stash as much money as possible until the market indicates stability. Currently, there are no signs that food prices are going to decline in the near future. Despite the CCP’s price controls that were implemented in November 2010, the increase in food prices will not end any time soon.

One would think that as the Chinese economy develops, as China buys trillions of U.S. reserves, and as the Chinese government modernizes its military, that it would also funnel some of its new money towards its people in a social safety net. In the last three decades, the CCP eliminated its, “Iron Rice Bowl” socialist policy, which guaranteed people a steady job and  retirement benefits, and instead shifted its economy to a more individualistic, take-care-of-yourself type of economy. This has forced Chinese people, even those reaping the prosperity generated by China’s economic boom, to take care of their aging parents, and to save for their own retirement.

Homes throughout China, especially its largest cities, are as expensive as in London and Tokyo. IMF figures demonstrate that a 70- square meter home in Beijing costs 20 times the average households’ income. A survey done by the People’s Bank of China in September, 2011, found that 76% percent of residents saw housing prices as too high, and a large portion of them believed that the prices would keep rising. The possibility rising housing prices across the country will not persuade its Chinese to spend more money on foreign goods. To the contrary, the very idea that housing prices may rise in the near future will compel many Chinese people, young and old, to save money.

The above five reasons why Chinese people are not spending money shows that the economic boom has not allowed the majority of the population to enjoy its benefits. Actually, China’s middle and lower classes are paying for the wealthy elites to live their extravagant lives. The average Chinese couple’s saving account rates are low so the banks can funnel that money into real estate. Inflation is high for the average person, it does not affect the government officials or corporate leaders as much. The lack of a social net increases the feeling of insecurity in the people, but keeps taxes on businesses low. And housing prices are making it virtually impossible for someone earning an average wage in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou to purchase a home, but real estate speculators are becoming rich. Ninety-nine percent of Chinese people are paying for the other one percent to do whatever they want, and buy whatever they want. This situation appears to be very similar to that of the United States.

If the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can find a way to encourage its people to spend, it will kill several birds with one stone. It will alleviate the West’s anger that China’s government and people save too much and don’t buy international products, and it will also mitigate the protest and dissent against the CCP growing among struggling households, a problem the CCP desperately wants to solve.

The CCP can increase spending by building China’s middle class. It can do this by allocating more funding to its social net to secure children and elders at the minimum. 

A health care system which covers children and elders will allieve working young and middle aged workers’ worry about their children’s and parents’ health care, so they will spend more money on consumer goods. The CCP must ensure its people that housing, food and education prices are stable, and will not see random price hikes in the near future. The majority of Chinese people save a huge portion of their money to purchase a home, but if housing prices could be lowered people could spend more money on products, thus encouraging domestic spending across the board. 

Finally, it is important that the CCP focus on increasing wages in both the private and the public sector while controlling the rise of inflation. If the CCP can secure a confident middleclass, the lives of average Chinese people will become drastically better. This will calm the West, bring security to the Chinese people, and even bring some legitimacy to the CCP regime. 

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Is China Ready for Democracy?

7/11/2011

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BARON LAUDERMILK - 11 JULY 2011 - BEIJING

The vast amounts of literature about the possibilities of China’s one party state transitioning to a democratic government can fill a small living room from the floor to the ceiling. Politicians are still are debating whether or not democratic revolution in China is inevitable. But a question that is just as important but frequently overlooked is the question of whether or not the Chinese people are prepared to operate and maintain a transparent, thriving, democratic government.

The dominant Communist Party’s most influential leaders have publically discussed the Chinese peoples’ desire to govern themselves. On September 23, 2010, Wen Jiabao, China’s Premier, told CNN “The peoples’ wishes for, and needs for, democracy and freedom are irresistible.” But even this bold statement, which is dangerous even coming from a Party member, has been blown off as just talk.

For a long time now, experts on Chinese politics have been saying that Wen Jiabao’s remarks about democracy do not actually mean that the Party will just hand over power to the masses, but rather that political reform will come when the people are ready for it.

This attitude that the Party has toward its lower classes can be seen from the beginning of the Chinese civilization until the present. Up until the 1950s, the Chinese state read and spoke a language not understood by the average worker, and made decisions for the merchants, farmers and scholars without much of their input. Since the birth of the Chinese civilization, the state has always been an authoritarian one.

Then the question becomes: When is a society ready for a democracy? I would argue that the most successful democracies that have peaceful elections, with low levels of corruption, have many economic and societal similarities with China, but are not completely the same.

Until China develops a stable middle class and a functioning rule of law, China will not be ready to establish and maintain a successful democracy. In fact, if one of these criteria is missing, a democracy in China could possibly bear a negative outcome for the Chinese people.

The middle class in China is rapidly growing. Last year China took the number two spot of the largest GDP in the world, right behind the United States. The Chinese economy has been growing between 7-10% a year for almost the past thirty years. And just recently, China became the world’s largest manufacturing nation in the world.

The past few times I was in Beijing, the capital of China, the first thing I always noticed was the fact that there were fewer bikes on the streets than the last time I came. In 2009, Chinese people bought 7 million cars, and in 2010, more than 8 million were sold. From my own perspective, I could easily see bikes and motor-pads almost completely replaced by automobiles within fifteen years. Clearly, a middle class in China is rising, and at an unprecedented rate.

Of course, it is easy to see Prada bags, 2011 Audis, and flashy new skyscrapers when you are in the heart of China’s capital. But if you step outside of the big city, you can find millions of struggling families.

In reality, China’s emerging middle class is still fragile, fickle and its future is uncertain. Even in 2011, the urbanized population is just under 50%. Every year China experiences thousands of protests by people who are demanding higher wages, improved working conditions, and better health benefits. The Chinese government is now attempting to appease the upcoming middle class by providing more government jobs, by utilizing green energy, by building cheaper housing for migrant workers and city dwellers, and by keeping food prices cheap and inflation low. Until the middle class becomes economically stable, a democracy in China would be unstable.

Many studies have demonstrated that having a strong rule of law is closely correlated with having a transparent democracy (there are contradictions to this theory). Currently, the rule of law in China is capricious and still works in favor of the Communist Party’s interests rather than for justice, human rights, and equality. Under Chinese law, people are not judged the same, particularly if someone challenges the authority of the Party.

Although the Chinese constitution claims to protect the rights of its people, it has frequently violated them. The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (1982) states in Article 36 that religion in China is protected by the state and that the government may not discriminate against religious practices. However, the Party has frequently bypassed or ignored this article in the constitution and has quelled Tibetan protest, oppressed the religious Uyghurs in Western China, and has silenced many underground Christian churches. The Party typically claims that these groups were undermining its quest to “build a harmonious socialist society.”  It is difficult to imagine a functioning substantive and procedural democracy when a group or party is able to control how justice is implemented across the state.

I do recognize that since China’s entrance into the world economy in the 1970s, China has made great strides in establishing a functioning economy, building a middle class, and more or less, beginning to protect certain human rights. But this is not enough to maintain a functioning democracy.

As one can see in India, Venezuela and Japan, without a middle class, one party can dominate politics and prevent other parties from fairly competing for key offices. If China did happen to slide into the status of a democratic nation, it would be a shame if it happened too early. Until the people are able to feed and work for themselves, and fairly fight for basic human rights in the courts, a democracy in China is a pipe dream.

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World Bank Structural Adjustment Programs in Cambodia and Ethiopia: Why They Have Failed and How They Can Succeed

6/16/2011

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This essay considers the flaws of standard World Bank SAPs and then examines the particular cases of Ethiopia's SAP and Cambodia's LMAP. The essay concludes by advocating change in the design of SAPs and an increased level of SAP transparency and third party investigation.

For the moment, please follow this link to access the essay. The World Report hard drive has been temporarily compromised (no financial or personal data is at risk)  and until such time as these matters are fixed, this essay will not be available under this blog. Our apologies, and thank you!
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    ABOUT THE AUTHORS: FAR EAST / SOUTH EAST ASIA:

    Baron Laudermilk is the CSO of the organization and also works as a financial analyst based out of Beijing. His work considers Chinese domestic policies and U.S. policy options in the Far East world.
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