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Conference provides peek at China’s growing pains
By Shelia Watson
Contributing Writer
A recent trip to Qingdao, China, to attend an education conference gave Arnold Hite the opportunity to observe China’s economic development firsthand.
His impression of the Chinese economy is succinct: “It’s a study in contradictions.”
Hite has a trained eye when it comes to economics. As a professor of economics at Charleston Southern University, he is adept at connecting the dots of sundry observations such as construction cranes crowding a skyline, excess labor on job sites and unmitigated pollution.
“It’s difficult to tell how much of what we see (in China) is a statistical illusion and how much is good policy by the Chinese government,” he said.
“You see fantastic construction everywhere. But when you walk the streets for a closer look, you see construction projects that just stopped. And we saw some buildings being torn down that were otherwise serviceable.
“It’s hard for an outsider to get a sense of how much of that economic activity represents real improvements for Chinese citizens.”
The theme of the education conference was “Globalization: Education, Business, Culture and Health, a Chinese-American Summit.”
The conference was sponsored jointly by Qingdao University and the Consortium for Global Education, a gathering of approximately 50 private U.S. colleges and universities whose goal is to assist in the development of international education.
About 100 people attended the four-day conference, half from the consortium schools and half from Chinese schools along with some government officials, Hit said. The primary topic was exploring student and faculty exchange programs for the purpose of understanding cultural differences between countries that are doing business.
Discussions were held on: global issues of leadership and higher education; international business, economics, finance and entrepreneurship; international studies, communication, culture and language; and public health, aging and nutrition.
One of the presenters was an economist from a Chinese university who spoke on development in China.
“His talk was all about the growth rate in China, which has had a double-digit rate for at least 10 years,” he said. “In the United States this would cause chaos. A couple of years ago, there was a 7 percent growth rate in the United States and people got nervous. There were all kinds of debates about applying the brakes to the economy.
“Since the (World Trade Organization) accepted them (in 2000), it’s been a huge boon to their economy,” he said. “They’re running a trade surplus, but it’s not as large as people suspect. The trade between the United States and China is huge, but they’re running trade deficits with other trading partners.”
China is also accepting a tremendous amount of foreign investments, Hite said.
“These companies are eager to establish a presence in China, and China is welcoming them with open arms,” he said.
A downside of development is unchecked pollution, he said.
“The air is heavy with weird smells like garbage,” he said. “Even in the lobby of the hotel it smells bad. The skyline is hazy all the time, and the water’s polluted too.”
There is an increasing interest in grass-roots groups to fight pollution, he said, but in general, “they’re way behind in terms of income and environmental cleanliness.”
And as incomes rise, pollution will become an even bigger issue, Hite said.
“Pollution is a situation that won’t become important until they’re wealthier,” he explained. “When people are hungry, they aren’t thinking about whether the streets are clean.”
The government designates which parts of the country are suitable for development, with the areas east of Beijing being favored at the moment, he said.
“There’s a lot of development happening in these parts, but there’s a real question of how it’s possible to sustain such a growth,” he said. “So far it looks like they’re managing growth by keeping things highly centralized, with the government controlling almost everything.”
For instance, Beijing is a sailing venue for the 2008 Olympics. The government decided to tear down old shipyard wharfs at the waterfront to build an Olympic sailing village.
“That wouldn’t happen in the United States,” he said. “Just the legal battles and the environmental impact studies would go on for 10 years.”
Hite noticed during his trip a diligence in the general work ethic that is often missing in other parts of the world.
“I visited a job site where there were about 20 people working,” he said. “Something went awry, and the foreman started barking orders. People were scurrying around like crazy trying to correct it. They were probably even more panicked knowing a foreigner was there to see the mistake.”
There were also contrasts on the construction sites that Hite visited.
“You’ll see modern cranes like we have here in Charleston,” he said, “but you’ll also see workers pushing old-fashioned wheelbarrows, moving materials around the job site by hand. From our perspective, these are very labor-intensive and old-fashioned methods, and they’re happening alongside modern construction techniques.”
The country is in transition moving into modern times, Hite said, and right now manual labor is still cheaper than technology.
“It probably makes sense to have old and labor-intensive practices for the time being,” he said. “But I suspect that over the next 10 years, those scenes will disappear.”
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