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Brighter Outside the Beijing Beltway
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18943 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1991 |
3,449 Words |
| Author
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Roy F. Grow
Roy F. Grow is chair of the Political Science Department at
Carleton College in Northfield Minnesota and president of the
board of directors of the Midwest China Center. His book
Competing in China: Japanese and American Firms in a New
Market will be published in late 1988. |
There is a feeling of siege in downtown Beijing. A heaviness and lack of forward motion have settled in, from the tall buildings that serve as headquarters for the big ministries and economic agencies to the low-slung complex near Tiananmen Square that houses China's senior officials.
All throughout 1990, ministry officials, provincial leaders, and agency heads debated the outlines of China's next five-year plan--the eighth since 1953. The debates have been fractious and inconclusive, pitting ministries against factory managers, Beijing politicians against provincial governors, and old-line industries against the new entrepreneurs.
With their failure to agree on China's next five-year plan, officials seem to be hunkering down and waiting for something to break the logjam that has clogged Chinese economic life since the late 1980s.
Gone is the ebullience of the mid- and late 1980s when almost anything seemed possible. Gone are the days when ministry officials could be seen in all of the joint-venture hotels, closing deals with foreign businesspeople, and when scores of young Chinese poured into the capital every day to make their fortunes.
Now there is a wariness at the center of the city, almost as if people are waiting for the other shoe to drop or looking, perhaps, to see what will happen when one of the octogenarians dies.
In 1990, I returned to China for the first time since just before the 1989 demonstrations began in Beijing. During the months that followed my return, I talked to people in ministries and think tanks, in provincial and county agencies, and in urban factories and rural collectives.
What I had heard were reports of increased regulation of the economy and worsening conditions in the industrial, transportation, energy, and financial sectors.
I came away with the sense that the economic outlook for China is missed: The Chinese economy seems to be getting both better and worse at the same time, depending on where you look.
There are, indeed, bleak factories with large numbers of underemployed workers, and managers who feel overwhelmed by the bureaucratic logjams that have been created in the wake of the events of June 1989. But
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