China Revisited - 1992
Fifteen years after my first visit, I returned to see how the awakened post-Maoist giant is faring with capitalism. By Seah Chiang Nee
January 24, 1992

Part Three

Beijing - China has always had a chequered history of tremendous ups and downs, of political upheavals, interspersed between periods of relative calm. Passions had a way of changing dramatically, quickly.

The China I saw was thriving, its people enjoying a standard of living few had thought possible even a decade ago.

This was made possible by the abandonment of its excessive politics, its preoccupation with ideological purity at home and abroad and its replacement with a relentless pursuit of wealth.

This disappearance of centuries of fiery politics was the biggest change that I could see between 1976 and today.

Fifteen years ago, driving through some cities and their suburbs, I could hear loudspeakers in factories and farmlands blaring out calls for political meetings during lunch-time.

From six to 60, no one was spared from the country's revolutionary zeal. A finger would be pointed at you at one of these meetings and your views would be sought.

You could not refuse to take sides or say you had no views. Your answer had better be right. This was the country whose hearts - not the minds - of 1.1 billion people was to beat as one.

Today, the only loudspeaker messages would be from a shopkeeper blaring out his wares at some street junction.

China wants to do business with the world, to take advantage of a flourishing Pacific Rim. That's the way to overtake the Americans.

Asians, at least for the moment, make good trading partners because they do not judge China the way America and Europe do over the Tienamen disaster. They don't mix politics with trade, don't harp on human rights.

Still China wants investment, trade and technology from the West, and - most of all - it needs access to its market.

But judging from the past, can today's prosperity in China last? What is its future? In fact, how much has changed in the country?

For me China will always be a vast, timeless country, like a huge lumbering beast, for which economic and social changes - unlike politics - come slowly.

Timeless rural China

Rural China remains like it was in ancient days.

In some of its modern museums, I have seen pictures of farmers tilling their land with their buffaloes centuries ago. I would then go into the countryside and see exactly the same methods of farming.

There were no tractors or machines like in Japan or planes spraying crops - only buffaloes and humans looking like so many tiny ants from afar.

None of the airports that I've visited during my recent trip were computerised. For a large country, this is distinctly disadvantageous.

At Kwangchau, a security officer checked our passports against a huge book containing thousands of presumably blacklisted names in hand-writing, a long tedious process most other developing countries rely on computers to do within seconds.

This relative lapse of simple technology was also apparent at Quilin, which opened its new airport to the world only two months before our arrival.

There were no lights, only an escalator which was not working, forcing us to lug our luggage through flights of stairs.

Many things have not changed. Millions of Chinese have never seen a train let along travel in one. Many still live in mud-packed houses, too poor to afford wood.

China is one of few countries, which give an impression that time has stood still. Bits and pieces of the country are well off; others live like their forefathers did centuries ago - in abject poverty.

Floods and drought still condemn millions to occasional misery - and death.

The location a Chinese lives in still - like it was centuries ago - determines whether he is to live well or badly. It was like that 1,000 years ago; it is still so today.

Out: Outdated theories

But the biggest change is obviously in the minds of the government.

In my last visit in 1976, China was worried about war with the Soviet Union, but most people had, in my view, some ill-informed ideas of how it could defend itself.

A Russian attack against China would need a huge invading force, at least one million troops, an official told me with confidence. "We will not resist. We'll let them in, surround them - and chew them up."

I felt a sense of disbelief.

The world had changed, but China had not - at least in 1976. The sort of guerilla war used Mao Zedong to defeat the large Kuomintang army surely could not sustain a Russian attack.

For one thing, the Soviets would, I told myself, probably just pushed the nuclear button rather than risk a million soldiers attacking a huge country like China.

So it came as no surprise to me when a post-Mao government decided to modernise its armed forces as one of four modernisations, placing the emphasis on technology.

Today, with Mao amounting to little more than a passing memory for many young Chinese, the army doesn't talk of guerilla warfare but of high technology weapons.

I left the country in 1976 with a lot of awe and one question: "Will Maoism survive with Mao?"

Writing in the Straits Times, I concluded: "In a decade - perhaps two - extremists will be isolated and a moderate civil service and a powerful, moderate military leadership take over.

"They will increasingly guide China away from ideological idealism and romanticism of the Yenan cave days to face the world of technological, scientific advance."

This answer came to me as we were crossing back into Hong Kong from Lowu border as I watched a Peoples' Liberation Army soldier snap to attention at a departing Mr. Lee Kuan Yew.

Despite the communist party's claim that the party controlled the gun, my assessment was that it was the other way round. China's future would depend on the soldiers, who were paid more than most other workers.

This would, in my view, buy their moderation, give them a stake in ensuring stability for the future against extremism.

The army's importance remains undiminished, proven during the Tianamen trouble. But another crucial factor has taken over.

Future: On education

With the changing world, I believe that China's future will now depend extensively on its youths, its students and how fast they can imbibe Western science and technology.

Every Chinese I spoke to told me that education was the priority of the Chinese family today, with English being the most important foreign language.

Over the decades, the moderate post-Mao government sent out hundreds of thousands of its young men and women to the West to learn. Many have returned to serve government and foreign MNCs based in China.

But many are staying out in a new academic dilemma caused by the Tianamen killing. Many had openly supported the pro-democracy movement back home, refusing to return home fearing persecution.

However, recent reports said their anti-government fervour is reportedly declining and some are ready to return.

China, in short, has many problems that befit its size. The most pressing is to cater to a quarter of the world's population whose numbers and expectations of life are rapidly increasing.

If left alone on its own, its future will be less uncertain. But it is not.

Opening the country up to the world will expose itself to the vagaries of global changes, good or bad.

From the vast country, hundreds of millions will flock to the cities looking for work which is often not there. They pose a big potential for upheaval.

In the better-educated, more worldly-wise cities, the young will exert liberal demands. This is inevitable.

The potential for violence can be on a scale the world has never seen before. But, in my view, the Communist Party cannot be an everlasting answer either.

Most Chinese I met have declined, with good reasons, to discuss the future of the Chinese Communist Party with me.

Those who spoke on politics, however, said China will face testing times after the end of communism in East Europe, the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The government is obviously concerned these troubles will spill into China's own frontier provinces.

Above all the end of the cold war has created a crusading monster. With Moscow's dramatic decline in power, the world's only remaining superpower, America, may become tougher to handle.
By Seah Chiang Nee