China is a big deal. China knows it. The world knows it. With the words “rising superpower” often attached as her qualifier and with the globe’s second largest economy, it is easy to forget just how crucial the word “rising” is.
It is undeniable that China’s economic growth is impressive. With economic growth inevitably comes greater power as the world’s economies come to depend on each other. But even with a steadily growing GDP, the CIA World Factbook reports that 2.8 percent of the Chinese population lives below the poverty line.
That translates to roughly 37,243,956 Chinese people who, even factoring in the lower costs for goods, have difficulty making ends meet. Given this figure, it’s hard to say that the U.S. is in danger of losing its superpower status any time soon. Is China taking over the world? Not really.
While the complex realm of China’s economy is far beyond the scope of this article, I wonder how rich and how powerful a country can be with more people below the poverty line than the entire population of Canada. Do a country’s people have to be as strong as its economy for it to truly hold superpower status?
I lived in Beijing for the last three years. Every day I passed the guard on my street who made seven yuan a day (roughly $1), standing outside the massive houses of ex-pats and wealthy Beijingers. My grandparents live in a concrete apartment that’s never the right temperature because they refuse to turn on the heat or air conditioning. They have to turn on the water boiler in order to have hot water to shower; blame it on Cultural Revolution era savings hangover. My grandfather is a physician, and my grandmother is a nurse. On pension, they are considered above the Chinese average income of $2,025, as calculated by World Bank in 2006. The lack of a strong safety net in China explains why Chinese people save so much money and have been accused by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke of being in a “savings glut.”
China’s economic growth is certainly lifting people out of poverty and increasing the relative wealth of most citizens, but there is still a long way to go before we can compare the living standards of the Chinese to those of Americans. Sitting in Beijing’s central business district, I’ve seen more designer bags and expensive cars than I’ve ever seen on this continent. But even with remarkable economic growth and its status as export king to the rest of the world, I don’t think a country can be a superpower with so many living in poverty.
The United Kingdom’s development funding for rural China has been cut altogether, as reported by The Guardian in October 2010. This means that the U.K. thinks China is strong enough and rich enough to support itself. China is trying to even out its income inequality, but deeply rooted cultural issues – like conflicts in Tibet and XinJiang (think America and the Native Americans) – may need grassroots development that foreign aid can provide. The Chinese like to show off their wealth, but China doesn’t yet have the human wealth and living quality to become a first-world country.
I’m not trying to argue that China is not going to become a superpower because it will in time. I’m not trying to argue that China is not a force to be reckoned with on the global arena because clearly, it is. It is simply premature at this time for China to flex its muscles and act as rich as it would like the world to think. Even strictly in terms of economics – human rights and democratic values aside – the time has not come. China is a big deal, but not yet a big shot.
