The Forum > Article Comments > Divergence grows between China and the West - part I > Comments
Divergence grows between China and the West - part I : Comments
By Xu Sitao, published 31/12/2008The rest of the world fails to appreciate China’s concerns over its own domestic challenges.
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Posted by Romany, Tuesday, 6 January 2009 8:22:43 PM
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Fortunately for me, living in Ningbo, the only tattered people I see are the professional beggars whom I used to feel terrible about until I found out what a well orchestrated business it is.
But yes, China has historically under spent on Social Security. Yet don’t you think things like the subsidies to farmers to enable them to buy appliances in order to modernize traditional farming techniques - and extending this to domestic appliances - at least a step in the right direction?
Let’s not forget either that the US$43million in poor relief is being applied in conjunction with the raising of the poverty line. A move long overdue in Australia.
Citing road death/accident statistics from 2004 however, is, I think, a little misleading. The fact that the rate has dropped steadily since then, (at 10% for the last two years running) could subsequently be overlooked. Actually the numbers of fatalities when taken as a percentage of the average number of vehicle and passengers on the road always strikes me as kinda miraculous considering everything. Especially as the number of cars on the road has increased more than 10% in ’07 and ’08.
Yes, as local economists stressed even before this crisis hit, it would be unrealistic to expect a continuation of the 8% growth But if the expected trade surplus figures released recently either prove sound or even come in somewhat under, given all that’s happened, I remain confident that China will manage to scrape through this crisis in a better position than many commentators predict.
I do agree that more money on education would be money well spent, but I understood that the raising of the age for compulsory education came as part of a total reform/monetary package?
As you say there’s no quick fix: in a country as big and with such a population – vast numbers of whom live in remote communities - all the proposed educational reforms are going to take quite a while to kick in.
But I am constantly encouraged that, albeit slowly, China is taking steps forward and not backward.