Even in transition, Chinese transformation is unstoppable

As China's leadership handover is completed this month, the challenges facing the country are formidable.

Even the outgoing premier, Wen Jiabao, was not shy to outline some of the biggest issues the new leaders of the world's most populous nation have piling up on their in tray.

Chief among them is the appalling pollution, high levels of inequality, acute corruption and a growth model that is, to use Wen's own words as he addressed this month's National People's Congress gathering that marks the leadership transition, "unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable."

Turn the clock back a decade and the list of pressing issues was not very different. Few of the problems are new, and none yet threatens to seriously destabilize the country to an extent that could topple the ruling regime.

China has confounded critics who predicted imminent collapse, and it will likely continue to do so, just as it will also disappoint those hoping for rapid political reform.

Both Wen and the country's departing president, Hu Jintao, spoke throughout their decade in power of the need for a softer, more measured approach to development.

For all the discussion about balancing the environment with GDP growth, the country continues to invest heavily in fossil-fuel power generation - even if its nuclear and wind energy projects are more often discussed - and there is little or no progress toward the environmental cleanup the country so badly needs.

Local authorities are obsessed with their latest GDP growth figures and happily run a coach and horses through environmental regulations, indicating a change will not come swiftly.

As a result, much of eastern China now enjoys 21st-century infrastructure while at the same time being cursed with the kind of poisonous air and polluted waterways that many western societies dealt with at least half a century ago.

Likewise, Wen's frequent talk of political reform - although never a call for a full participatory democracy - has come to nothing, suggesting he is either a lone voice among a sea of conservatives or, as many believe, just an actor. Given his family's wealth was recently revealed to be a staggering $2.7 billion, it is hard to believe he is sincere.

But China's pressing issues cannot be thrown into the long grass for ever, even if the vested interests within the corrupt and self-serving governing elite who have enriched themselves through the vast state-owned corporations and other enterprises might want this to happen.

Over the past decade, the communications revolution has transformed the country and created a citizenry that continues to become better informed.

The education system still indoctrinates Chinese people with a distorted view of recent history, painting their nation as the eternal victim of rapacious foreigners, and the Communist Party as the savior, helped by a state-run press that continues to do the party's bidding.

Internet news services and microblogs, however, mean younger generations have a better understanding of the problems facing their country. Large numbers of Chinese are studying abroad, and this changes the way some of them view the system at home.

Also, as the middle class gains in strength and its values align more closely those in developed nations, expectations will increase. The people will not remain satisfied with their newfound wealth indefinitely, not least because there is a limit to how long China can continue the fast-paced growth it has enjoyed over the past three decades.

The widespread disenchantment and cynicism over issues such as corruption is not going away. The Communist Party will face increasing pressure to permit a stronger and more independent judiciary, although as yet party cadres have shown little appetite for allowing any serious rival organ of power to develop.

Similarly, demands for clean air and water will also increase - not trifling matters considering air pollution is thought to kill 400,000 a year. The authorities have already acknowledged their importance by allowing a more open discussion of the acute environmental problems the country faces.

Progress on these issues, however, is likely to be measured in decades or quarter-centuries rather than years.

Yet resistant to change though it may appear, the Communist Party has already overseen changes over the past few decades that have amounted to a revolution when set against the brutal system that prevailed under Mao Zedong.

Society is far more open than it was. The Communist Party may control a vast web of internal security, and state investments into this field continue to increase, but individual freedoms in terms of where people can live, work and travel have increased dramatically. On a day-to-day level, for most people, China is not the oppressive police state depicted by the sometimes one-dimensional coverage of foreign media.

The country is also starting to invest more heavily in health and social welfare systems, creating a society that, while still suffering from large disparities between social classes, will slowly become more equitable. Already, hundreds of millions have been lifted out of grinding poverty, a trend that will continue as development spreads further across the west of the country.

Hu may have not been the reformer many hoped he would be, and Wen may have failed to back up his speeches with actions, but even under them the country has continued along a path of transformative change, one that seems likely to endure under new President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang.

- Daniel Bardsley is The Prague Post's business editor and former China correspondent for The National, Abu Dhabi

Daniel Bardsley can be reached at
business@praguepost.com