Straight Talk
The Middle Kingdom
Downtown Kunming
China is not what you expect, whatever you are expecting. It was certainly nothing like I expected even though I traveled to it with very few solid preconceptions or well-formed ideas about what I would find. Nevertheless, it still took me by surprise. I suppose that I had expected to see cities similar, in developmental terms, to the best of the sub-continent, perhaps, or, at the most comparable to Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur. But the two medium-sized cities that I visited (China has at least a dozen larger) were closer in feel and pace and modernity to Singapore, or what I would imagine Tokyo or Hong Kong to be. Big cities look pretty much the same anywhere in the world, once they have passed a certain developmental threshold, and both Kunming and Dalian clearly passed this a long time ago. What I found were sparkling clean, spacious, visually stunning, absolutely modern metropolises, with wide, well-paved, uncrowded boulevards and avenues, and attractive, well-constructed apartment buildings. The shopping and central business districts could have been anywhere in Europe or North America. Sure, there were some depressed parts of the cities: block after block of smoke and ash coloured cement and cinder-block public housing complexes in parts of Dalian, and smaller, more cramped, more dingy apartment buildings, with peeling paint and dusty windows, in parts of Kunming, but these were more similar to council estates in Europe or projects in the US than to the squalid slums of the third world. They were drab and depressed but not cess-pools of disease and despair. In both cities I visited, cranes dotted the sky-line, glass and steel sky-scrapers as well as high quality brick and cement structures of charm and grace were everywhere to be seen, all the streets were metaled and paved and in superb condition, there were no mud or dirt roads or make-shift bamboo or tin shacks. Everything was cheap. Everything worked. There were no crowds anywhere. Trees and parks and promenades abounded. Traffic was smooth and orderly. The cities were well-planned and easy to navigate. There were many nice places to go and an atmosphere and environment conducive to doing so. Of course, this is not the whole China story. I am sure that rural China, specially in the western part of the country, is an entirely different story. I am sure that life is far grimmer there. But, be that as it may, the cities were still impressive far beyond expectations. Not for a moment was I expecting cities of charm and character. Not for a moment did I expect the air to be so clean or the streets so uncrowded. The people were not what I expected, either. They seemed pretty content and comfortable, as far as can be gathered by casual interaction or merely by watching them go by in the street. They were friendly, open, and helpful. No English, of course, but they tried their best. One armchair dissident I sat next to on one of my flights was perfectly happy to share, at some length and considerable wit, his decidedly low opinion of his government. The young people, specially, were no different from their counterparts anywhere else in the world. The notion of China as a world apart has to be rethought. From the point of view of Bangladesh, China is a massive success story. Moving so many millions out of poverty and so many from rural to urban areas is a staggering achievement. In countries such as ours there is no more crucial challenge than to ensure a decent standard of living for the millions below the poverty line, and in this regard there is surely much for us to learn from China. So what are the lessons to be learned for Bangladesh? China, I suspect, is something of a Rorschach test, with each person seeing something different and taking away a different lesson from the experience. Many, to be sure, will take away from the China miracle the lesson that developing economies need to be guided by a strong government that brooks no opposition, and that China is a shining example that economic advancement should trump individual rights and freedoms. I am not so sure, though, that that is the right lesson to learn. Certainly there are advantages to a one-party state with limited rights to oppose the government. Sure, it must be nice to be able to draw a line between two points and say: go build a road here. Sure, it helps if you are able to relocate people from entire rural districts to distant cities without a murmur of dissent. Sure, there are benefits to be able to take unpopular but necessary action from time to time without having to worry unduly about public opinion. But it should not be overlooked that the parts of China that are doing the best are precisely those which have the greatest autonomy, and not just economic autonomy, but political autonomy, too. The parts of China that are most open to the outside world and receptive to new and foreign ideas. The parts where the old-style communist social and economic order is being swept aside. The young Chinese I met were almost all, to a man (and woman) open and open-minded. They read Adam Smith, watch CNN, and surf the internet. They were not shy to speak their minds and be critical of their government. They were curious about other countries. They were individuals with a fully developed sense of their individual identity and right to determine their own destinies as they themselves saw fit. Democracy, as it is commonly understood, may take time to establish itself. But the culture of questioning and argument and dissent is alive and well. Individual freedoms are by no means absolute, but there appears to be a growing respect and demand for them. I do not think this process can or will be reversed and I think that this opening up of the Chinese mind will continue to propel itself forward of its own inexorable momentum. I think. For me, the lesson to be learned from China was quite different. For me, the most remarkable thing about China was how well it seems to have come to terms with modernity. Bangladesh and China have many of the same characteristics. We are a traditional, rural, largely agricultural society. Our pastoral culture is well developed and sophisticated. China's is no less so. It is no less ancient, no less grand, no less proud. Nevertheless, China has recognised that it must change. And it is changing without feeling that it is compromising its age-old culture and identity. The men and women I saw on the streets were farmers and herders one generation back but have made the transition to urban life, where they work happily as shop assistants and factory workers, taxi drivers and typists. This is the brave new world. I heard time and again that China had understood that in today's world there was no way they could raise rural incomes sufficiently, and so that in the next decade we will see the migration of 300 million from rural China to urban centres. It will be the biggest migration in human history. We will have to do the same. This is the first year that the majority of the world's population is to be found in urban not rural areas. Soon, more Bangladeshis will live in cities than in villages. This will be a difficult and wrenching transformation for us. But the Chinese have accomplished it, and created attractive and spacious cities brimming with jobs and opportunity to accommodate this transformation. We must do the same. In China I see no hang up about moving away from ancestral values and ways of life. I see no hang up about modernity. I see no hang up about young people adopting an urban life-style. I see no hang up about people abandoning the old ways of doing things and the traditions of their fore-fathers. Today's China is different from the China of the past, but the Chinese do not feel that the societal and cultural transformations they are going through make them any less Chinese. Nor does it. They are merely coming to terms, with as much grace as is manageable, with the 21st century. Bangladesh would do well to do the same. Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.
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