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.
Natural disasters, in an overpopulated country, show geometrically more numbers of people affected than in a poorly populated or moderately populated country: the effects of Katrina in the US pale in the face of yearly Changjiang (Yangze) flooding or earthquakes, such as the one that wiped out more than 50% of the population of Tangshan in 1977 (that is, more than half a million deaths). The crippling and fatalities resulting from these disasters does not appear to inflict much in the way of decreasing the population; there are still too many to deal with. And of course these natural disasters create homelessness, unemployment and increased poverty which further adds to the woes of the overgrown population that the government is at sixes and sevens to deal with--most ineffectively. Everyone in a natural disaster is affected, though the poorer classes suffer the most. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this very same situation led to revolutions, the Republican government, the Guomindang (Kuomintang) and the rise of Communism. 
With overpopulation and the intense competition for jobs, any job, even clothing sales clerk or street side poster-hander-outer, there is a need to create an open space, lessen the tension and anxiety. In a sexist, male dominant society this results in the subjugation of women. They are second class citizens. They are baby-makers--and here China is in paradox since women aren't supposed to make more than one and, thus, they remain in the marketplace--they are pretty things to be pampered and they are paid less if not given the more demeaning jobs, such as street cleaning. Earlier times saw familial abuse as women were only a few steps above the farm donkey or the hamstringing via foot binding: either the women couldn't walk without help or couldn't walk very far. Unfortunately for China, the female birth rate is on the increase, male births declining. True, there will be fewer babies and, therefore, fewer people but there will also be more intense competition in the job market since not all of these women will become mothers or wives. Of course, they could become prostitutes, which would put money back into the economy.
No matter what the government attempts, from the one-child policy (which does not work) to the displacement of parts of the population in the name of modernization (such as with the recent damming at Three Gorges) to the fostered resettling in distant, undeveloped parts of the country, the Chinese government inflicts hardship on its people. Further hardship comes from the policy of not allowing emigration: simply getting out of the country on business or for study is difficult. Many who go overseas for research--scientists and educationists--must pay an inordinate amount of money down on their passport, to be reimbursed upon return. Thus, the government is hamstringing itself; for, by letting people go elsewhere they could reduce the overpopulation problem thereby increasing the possibility of gainful employment and upping the level of existence for the rest of the population--and modernize. True, perhaps, with the freedom to move outside the borders there would be an exodus of the intellectually gifted and elite in search of better salaries, better living conditions; but this problem could be easily overcome.
The country people, the farmers, can't go abroad: no means. They seem to be kept poor and tied to the land. Besides, if enough farmers or farmers' children left the farm, who would grow the food necessary for survival? There's already a problem with farmer's kids gravitating to the city for the very vague, almost nonexistent possibility of a better life--they are at a distinct disadvantage when competing with the city-bred and educated. This raises the unemployment and destitution.
The newly educated, the middle class, the business class, would leave for sure as they are limited in their futures and show a disinclination for creative thinking and development and, thus, an increase in the country's problems. Perhaps this is a justifiable fear, but the solution might be simple enough. Students rich or smart enough will want to leave, as they do now, mostly because their education is so limited, so narrow; but also because of repression, even oppression. With less repression, less punitive control over what is learned, what is possible to learn, perhaps students would not wish so fervently to become immigrants. And businessmen, who hold the purse strings of the country, would prefer to remain at home. But everyone else? Let them go West, old man. Reduce overpopulation, increase productivity and modernization. But, alas, the people cannot leave.
Overpopulation, then, is the cause of many of the ills within Chinese society.
Since this is the case, why is it that China, the Chinese government, that is, the CCP, forbids people emigrating? To keep itself overpopulated only hinders its development, if indeed modernization is development. To maintain overpopulation mandates poverty and Third World status no matter what. Why would the government not wish to better the situation of its citizens? There must be some gain from keeping its people poor, destitute, cynical and self-destructive. Could it be that because of this overpopulation and limitation of modernization that the government --not the people, you understand--benefits? If so, is not the Chinese government simply continuing the anti-humane, people-as-things (to be used), linear thinking that is presently tearing the world apart? What, indeed, has China learned from history even as it prides itself as having a great historical sensibility?
Why is China hamstringing itself?
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Jimsecor is a freelance writer who has travelled extensively overseas, especially Japan and China. He has published in all genre and produced several plays over the years and has taught theatre, writing and literature.
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