TOWN HALL JOURNAL - SPRING 2007
Four Issues Darkening
China’s Bright Future
John Pomfret, The Washington Post’s Los Angeles Bureau Chief and author of Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates, and the Story of the New China, spoke to a sold-out Town Hall audience on November 30, 2006. The event was part of Town Hall’s Clubhouse Series, which take place at our offices and are free to members, and one of our Author Series.
Many observers predict China will become a dominant nation in coming years. Pomfret does not dispute the possibility, but asserts that it depends on, “...a series of bets…that China’s making on its future...”
Pomfret described four significant challenges confronting China. “The first one is that China will be able to continue to liberalize its economic system without liberalizing its political system,” he said. “The second bet is that China is going to be able to get rich before it grows old. The third bet is that China will be able to outgrow or grow out of its serious environmental problems, and the fourth bet is sort of a murky spiritual bet, that a country can become a great nation if it doesn’t really have core values.
“The Communist Party has found itself picking the winners, picking areas where it wants to develop and actually in many cases not
allowing the market to determine. As you look into the future of
China, this type of government policy is actually potentially one of the most serious blocks in China’s development,” Pomfret stated.
“The second issue…is demographic,” he continued. “If you look at China’s one child policy, it has been an extraordinary success. But from another perspective, it’s also been a disastrous success because China is actually going to become the first country that grows old before it gets rich...this is in a country that doesn’t have a social security system, it doesn’t have a Medicare, Medicaid system, and it doesn’t have a [strong] pension system.
“The third bet that China’s making is that somehow it’s going to grow itself out of its environmental problems,” Pomfret alleged. “Sixteen of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China. One-hundred fifty million in China drink water that’s not harmful to their health -- it actually makes them sick. There are many cities in China that have literally disappeared from satellite weather maps, they’re so polluted.
“The final point I want to talk about is the whole issue of core values or social values. Chairman Mao really did his best to destroy traditional Chinese values,” Pomfret said. “Then in ‘76 Mao dies and Deng Xiaoping comes along and he says to the Chinese, remember all that Communist ideology stuff? Let’s forget about it. To get rich is glorious...but in so doing, Deng did not replace the Communist value system with anything new.”
