China Road

On Monday I attended a book talk by NPR correspondent Rob Gifford, whose book China Road chronicles his two-month journey along Route 312 (similar to Route 66 in the U.S.) from Shanghai to the Kazakhstan border. The event, held at the Beijing Bookworm, was packed with journalists and Sinophiles, so much so that many of us had to listen to the audio from the next room.

“My experience in China” books are a dime a dozen, but it’s a good concept and Gifford made an interesting presentation. He read one passage that took place in 2005, around the time the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith was released. He’s walking along the road in a small town when he comes across two young Chinese men, who strike up a conversation. He asks them what they do for a living and is caught off guard when they show him their product samples and tell him they’re the Gobi Desert representatives for Amway. He later accompanies them to a meeting aimed at recruiting more Amway salesmen. I couldn’t really afford the book, so here’s a loosely paraphrased excerpt:

Ren Wei stood up in front of the room. He thanked everyone for coming, thanked Teacher Hu and finally thanked Our Foreign Friend, Mr. Smith. I wasn’t sure what to think. Perhaps they thought every foreigner was named Smith, or perhaps, even in the Gobi Desert, they were confusing me with Brad Pitt. The 20 or so people in attendance continued in turn, each one thanking Ren Wei, Teacher Hu and Mr. Smith.

Then Teacher Hu rose to speak. “My grandchildren will remember my name,” he said earnestly, “because I will change our family’s fortunes. I will make money. But I will do more than that. I will give back to society, maybe build a school – because we all have a duty to give back to society, dui bu dui?”

“Dui, dui, dui,” the crowd nodded approvingly.

Teacher Hu continued to build momentum, articulating the Chinese Dream: “You can have the car, the apartment, the respect. You too can succeed. You too can be empowered. Don’t settle for cha bu duo. Don’t settle for ‘more or less.’ You deserve better.”

The book is filled with anecdotes like that. Gifford concludes that China can continue to pursue its current political and economic course in the short- to medium term, but risks imploding if it experiences an economic shock or other adverse event that interrupts its astonishing growth. As long as people’s lives are improving every year, even marginally, they will tolerate China’s shortcomings; otherwise, the whole system could come crashing down. The example Gifford cited was Indonesia, which put up with Suharto for 30 years but swiftly toppled him after the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

In the long term, however, China faces larger problems. Chinese universities are churning out 5 million graduates each year, but even its booming economy can’t employ them all. University graduates are working as street sweepers in some cities. What happens when you have an educated and underemployed population? This does not portend well for the CCP.

China Fun Fact: According to World Bank figures, China has lifted 400 million people from poverty (less than $1/day) since 1978.