2004 Small steps, but very fast - the WTO-column

What has changed with president Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao a full calendar year in charge? The question came up more than once in the past week now 2004 is nearing its end. Unlike the dramatic events in 2003, including SARS, 2004 has been a less eventful year. Fortunately, I should add, but change can be seen enough.

Aids is no longer covered up, like under the previous regime, but firmly addressed. There were days in Shanghai, you could not come home without a handful of free condoms. The death penalty, one of the few remaining really hot issues in China’s international relations, came on the agenda, and the convicted can now appeal at the People’s Supreme Court. Religious freedom will be guaranteed, and jury’s in the court system will be reformed.
People were very fast to point out that these and other legal reforms did not mean that much, since most of the time they were already part of the legal system and sometimes even part of the constitution. The point is of course that those legal guarantees did not mean that much in the past. It is a common practice in China to start a discussion about an issue by rephrasing legal provisions. That in itself is a chance for change, since in the past all these issues were almost considered to be taboos. That is certainly over.
Next question is of course, is it really going to make a difference? In the case of the implementation of the WTO-regulations, the central government pointed at the severe problems it saw in convincing local government departments about the importance of this change. For those familiar with China that is no news: government departments in China have a strong tradition of autonomy and much of the change in this country should be seen as efforts of the central government to regain lost regional influence, or local resistance against those efforts.
Legal changes in Beijing are in the best case the start of a process, and the future has to prove whether they can be firmly rooted.

One of the clear successes of the past year, has been the gradual improvement of life at the country side, at least to such a degree that millions of farmers decided staying home was smarter than joining the sweatshops in Guangdong. While under Jiang Zemin a 400 million Chinese were lifted out of poverty, his efforts focused mainly on the larger cities. Those have effectively developed into economic engines and a comparison with India – where politics is traditionally geared towards the country side – shows that this was a smart choice.
That caused outside China much criticism, as the gap between the rich and the poor grew. But since more people became rich and fewer poor, even in those years, that never triggered off the social unrest the outside world sometimes expected. It is reversed, prolonged economic growth and effective efforts of the government to relieve the pressure on the country side has caused more social unrest than ever.
Poverty has never been a great way to empower people. Change is more often triggered of by people who know they can make a change, for example by not showing up at work anymore.
Foreign and domestic companies have discovered this already, sometimes in the hard way, as HR-managers suddenly have become this year a hot commodity. A very well-paid hot commodity, that is. It might only be the beginning of much more change.
Strength and wisdom for 2005: a lot of us will need it.

Fons Tuinstra