Posted 2/28/2011

CHINA IS FRAGILE

China, despite its great size and apparent power, is very fragile. As fragile as the terra cotta warriors in the picture.

Within weeks after completion of the thousands of warriors and their tombs, the emperor died. Freed from years of slave labor, the peasants then descended on the tomb, destroying the terra cotta warriors and setting fire to the massive wood pillars and the superstructure overhead. The roofs collapsed and the terra cotta warriors were smashed. Those that you see in Xian have been assembled from small fragments. (Humpty Dumpty is a western concept.)

The huge "Great Wall" failed in its mission of protecting China from northern invasion. Mongols and other invaders swept around and over it, with seeming ease, to plunder China of its enormous riches. The Mongols even established their own dynasty, which governed China for almost 100 years. The Great Wall now lies in ruins except for a few places where it has been restored to serve as a tourist attraction.

Between 1405 and 1433, Admiral Sheng He made six magnificent exploratory voyages along the coasts of China, Southeast Asia, India and Africa. Although he commanded 137,000 men and great armadas of huge ships, he failed to establish a single colony. His navy was larger than the combined navies of England, France, Portugal and Spain – all of which would colonize much of the known world. As one of my Chinese students said, "Sheng He didn't do anything for us."

While China is rich in over 4,000 years of history, its governments have been very fragile – prone to a pattern of rising, growing corruption and falling to rural revolutionists or outside invaders. If you deduct the 500 years that China had no central government, there were 38 dynasties, each of which averaged only 84 years in duration. The current Communist government is entering its 62nd year.

The current government was established by Mao Zedong, whom the West regards as a Communist revolutionary. But in China, Mao is also viewed as a rural revolutionary. As a result, the fear of rural unrest continues to motivate most of the decisions and actions of the Communist Party.

China has a huge population, one-fifth of all the people in the world. But this fact makes China weak, as well as strong. Having 20 percent of the world's people presents huge problems because China has only 5 percent of the world's arable land.

Although the Party promised food self-sufficiency many times, that pledge has long since been broken. As China's soil keeps blowing away each fall, cropland becomes scarcer and scarcer. China is drawing down on its reserves of corn, and Beijing has become a huge importer of American soybeans. With China experiencing drought across six provinces and rapidly falling water tables, American wheat farmers will gain a ravenous buyer for their crops. Due to uneven food distribution and great poverty, many Chinese are going hungry. China is constantly coping with food riots, which could morph into large uprisings.

China's rapidly growing middle class numbers more than 300 million, but this carries its own set of problems. The middle class loves pork, not grain. Yet it takes seven bushels of soybeans to produce one bushel of protein. This puts more pressure on the rural poor as grain is diverted from humans to animals.

If you visit Beijing, you will find 175 golf courses, and luxury hotels with ponds and fountains. Water looks very plentiful. But Beijing is located in a drought area with dangerously low water tables. Where does all that water come from? The farmers in the land north of Beijing have been denied water for four years now. Wheat production has dropped sharply, putting more pressure on the food supply.

China's artificially cheap currency is really good for its export business, but it is terrible for its import business. The cheap Yuan makes China's imports artificially more expensive. Because food, oil and raw materials are imported, consumer prices are rising sharply. Many of its poor spend 50 percent of their incomes on food. For them, rising food prices tend to result in hunger – and dissatisfaction with the Communist Party.

Water shortages not only crimp agricultural production, but health as well. Millions do not have adequate drinking water. Widespread river pollution prevents families from dipping a bucket into a nearby river. After a rain, peasants run to puddles in potholes and scoop water out of the road into buckets.

Hungry people tend to riot. Thirsty people tend to kill.

The Communist Party is made up of 70 million very nervous people. They all stare over their shoulders at the more than 800 million rurals who seem to grow less and less satisfied as time goes on.

China's "harmonious society" is looking more and more fragile.

Next article: China Weakening Under the Weight of Corruption

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