How China is Hamstringing Itself

First, what is "hamstringing"? Tying up the legs, forcing the thighs together to keep an animal--a pig? a cow?--from running. Tigers and lions hamstring their prey by swiping at the tendons in the leg, thus bringing them to ground.

There is a muscle in the back of the thigh called, in common parlance, the hamstring. When an athlete damages this muscle, he is not able to play--to run or react--until he has healed. It might be said that "to hamstring" is to stop or halt progress, to make ineffective or powerless. Thus, if you hamstring yourself, you are inhibiting your own activity or, in this case, development.

Why would anyone, any country, want to stand in his own way? Why would China, so rich in history, purposely inhibit its growth? As with Mao's policies in closing off the country and his manifesting the Cultural Revolution, thus getting rid of the needed intellectuals.

Perhaps there is no "purposely" about it. Perhaps it is simply a case of not learning from history, which seems to be a universal if not ubiquitous human foible. The Chinese have had ample opportunity, not only in their own long history but in watching the rest of the world's historical industrial mistakes. Still. . .some would maintain that, in China, these mistakes are continuing to be made--perhaps even more egregiously. One of these might be "the mandate of heaven" judgment that has come down upon the fallen dynasty--every dynasty that's ended--since the beginning of written history. It's always the same loss of "the mandate of heaven" so it's not too far fetched to say that nothing has ever been learned. Of course, it could also be argued that human nature is a constant, never-changing thing--a rather depressing, even cynical observation: it's always been this way, it always will be. Amen.

A couple modern Chinese writers have had their hands slapped for saying openly that there is no difference between the present government and any prior dynasty. In Rip Van Winkle, Washington Irving's satire was most obvious when he noted that the sign over Rip's favorite inn when he returned from sleeping through the Revolutionary War was the same as before only the color of the coat had been changed. The old adage has it that you can dress a monkey up but it's still a monkey. Nationalist Communism = clothing; overpopulation = monkey.

Then again, perhaps there is a purpose to self-hamstringing. As with most neurotic behavior, there is a reward, a gain, regardless of how destructive it might be--because once there was with such behavior. Breaking habit would get in the way of even the most distant possibility. Self-destruction looms like a Lovecraft shade. Besides, why would anyone want to be different?

In the 19th and early 20th century, China resisted modernization, which included industrialization--and not by political caveat; that came later. This resistance was both intended and unintended. Intended because the Chinese, whether Qing ruling elites (many of whom were not Chinese) or the newly foreign educated elites, wished to save China. Keep it not so much as it was but away from deviation from moral and virtuous (Confucian) principles. Unintended because of one over-riding factor: overpopulation.

Population in any country is very important because of several characteristics. In old and modern China these characteristics are overwhelming. In China, then and now, overpopulation is a major problem--and a major hurdle to modernization, what we tend to think of as bettering a people's lot.

The most obvious effect of overpopulation is unemployment with an incremental increase in destitution amongst the poorest. Thus it is that people will take any job just to have an income. A little money coming in is better than no money at all--except for an American who would rather have no money than "lower" himself. This makes for an abundance of cheap labor. Businessmen enjoy this. They get rich off the sweat and blood, the life or death of this seemingly inexhaustible resource. When a worker weakens, sickens or dies, there is always another to take its place. Truly, modern businessmen are Confucian merchants in his social hierarchy: they are at the bottom because they make their living off of the labor of others, not working themselves.

    With such an unlimited supply of cheap labor, there is a natural tendency to resist industrialization, for with industrialization comes machinery that not only makes a job easier but also cuts down on the number of people it takes to do the job. Industrialization creates, in an overpopulated country, more unemployment because there is no need of labor-saving devices. Therefore, modernization stagnates because it is believed that along with modernization must come industrialization; this might be a misconception. However that may be, an overpopulated country is a labor-intensive environment and the labor is cheaper than buying the equipment and setting it up. Unemployed labor is governmental, socially expensive.

    Because there are more people than jobs, living, the making of a living, becomes brutish and uncertain. It is cut-throat, for nobody trusts anybody else, worthy motives being suspect; a kind of paranoid cynicism predominates. And, indeed, the Chinese rarely disclose personal information or deep wishes to other Chinese for fear of being taken advantage of. Every association relates to a job. Life is making money. Life is always on the knife edge of being a losing proposition. Indeed, people tend to lose confidence in the future: it's always been this way, it will always be this way, why strive?

    Degree holders in China get caught up in this vicious job seeking, too, for they find they have no jobs and must take what's available. This is true for the Bachelor degree holders as well as the Master's degree holders, despite the graduate school examinations-- different for each school--being made to fail prospective students. Aside from holding the number of Master's down in an environment that does not need them, this is also a very classiest, elitist endeavor, for those who go to less prestigious, less heavily endowed, less expensive colleges are at a distinct disadvantage. The more so since there is corruption in the schools and in the getting of jobs.

    Overpopulation, creating the intense drive for employment and therefore life, results in people stooping to any means to assure success. Students plagiarize, they buy test answers or test takers; they become someone's favorite, make friends "in the right places" to assure themselves of an adequate future. Even the schools cheat: padding grades, giving answers to the better students and, of course, once a Chinese is in college, she will be graduated no matter what. Thus, there is a surfeit of incompetents, of incompetence in overpopulated China and most all of them manage to find employment, more often than not via some connection or some monetary exchange. Again, elitism, classicism plays into this, for only the more well-to-do have the ability to buy their future--including entrance to the right school. What is so different from the impoverishment of the majority of the population in earlier dynasties? The farmers, of course, lose big time-though they are legally allowed to have more than the governmental mandated one child. After all, you need people to work a farm, right? Eighty percent of the Chinese population lives outside the city.