Another reason China is moving toward a more open republic is China’s growing, highly educated middle class. Even most of China’s peasants have seen lifestyle improvements — not as fast as urban areas but there has been growth.
“Growth in (China’s) peasant income, which had reached a rate of 15.2% a year from 1978 to 1984, dropped to 2.8% a year from 1986 to 1991. Some recovery occurred in the early 1990s, but stagnation of rural incomes marked the latter part of the decade.” Source: Asia Times
Between 1978 to 1984, rural income improved almost 100% within six years. That growth slowed to 14% between 1986 to 1991.
Yet, Western critics that blast China for this slow growth seldom mention that rural India has stood still for the last twenty years. There must be an unwritten rule about criticizing other democracies, which is censorship.
China’s Western critics act as if they expect an infant to walk the day he or she is born, and run a marathon, become a rocket scientist and a Nobel laureate all within twenty-four hours.
The China Law Blog said I wasn’t being fair to India when I wrote Comparing India and China’s Economic Engines.
In fact, the West’s Sinophobic critics are the ones guilty of being unfair.
China will open the door to more freedom when China is ready and that door is open wider now than it was in 1976.
I never said “when” China would be finished building a more open, modern republic, and it may never happen until a majority of the people demand it and there may even be bloodshed.
However, the signs are there for anyone who takes the time to look.
When China arrives at that destination is in the hands of the planners, engineers, scientists and architects who lead and rule China—not the Western politicians, the media or Sinophobic critics.
In fact, in 2012, the seventy million members of the Party will have an election and the leadership of China will change again.
However, the West will still refer to the elected president of China’s republic as a dictator without mentioning that in a republic not everyone has the right to vote as it was in America in 1776.
Return to Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – Part 6
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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