Through the Beijing Summer Olympics of 2008 the Chinese government presented an image of a nation deeply linked to its past and increasingly confident and engaged in the world. The picture was one of power, orderly growth and development. Yet the same year also saw a major protest in Tibet, devastating natural disasters and consistent protests as the Olympic torch made its way around the world. How do we make sense of this complex society that is undergoing the kinds of changes that many of us can barely imagine? Reforms have impacted on every aspect of economy, society and state and have produced new winners and losers. A great place to start unraveling this fascinating puzzle is the latest edition of The State of China Atlas. All our futures are bound up with what is happening in China, and this book is a welcome resource for anyone seeking to understand the momentous changes taking place. As the saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words, and this is certainly true with this wonderful volume. The maps are well chosen and provide all the information that is needed by anyone wanting to get to grips with China. Even for those who have studied China for many years, the maps present new insights. For students, the Atlas is a dynamic and exciting way to bring China alive. It contains so much useful information on every topic crucial to China’s development and is a key reference work. The authors have even found a way to capture the Party-State in visual form, no mean achievement! What is revealed in these pages is a China where multiple realities operate beneath the facade of a unitary nation-state. Not only does the terrain range from the huge oceans to the east, the massive plateau to the west and the surrounding mountains that have helped China retain a certain insularity, but also the peoples of China, the climate, its industry and its agriculture show tremendous diversity. The State of China Atlas shows how, since 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has placed its stamp on this varied terrain. The CCP’s vision of a modern state and its policies of industrialization have had a marked impact on the physical structure of towns and countryside as well as on people’s lives. On taking power, the CCP laid out a vision of the future that was inspired by the Soviet Union. A modern China would be one that was urban and industrial, with production socialized. The private sphere was to be destroyed and the rural sector was to be placed in service of the industrial push. This produced an ugly urban landscape, and even historic cities such as Beijing had much of the grace and charm ripped out them. The industrial push made smokestack factories a familiar part of many cities, with little or no idea of zoning and protection of green areas. The countryside was also transformed, culminating in the commune movement in the late-1950s. Campaigns to boost grain production led to mountain slopes being cleared of trees, and good grazing land being plowed under. Rural industrialization led to more forests being ripped up to produce steel in “backyard furnaces”, much of which was useless. Despite such attempts to produce a dull conformity, China remained full of contradictions and variety, and these have been allowed to blossom again since economic reforms were promoted with such zeal from the late-1970s on. As the Atlas shows, these reforms have touched on every aspect of Chinese life, changing the appearance of both rural and urban China, while binding the two closer together than in the Mao years. Cities are less homogeneous than before, and the drab Stalinesque town centers have been transformed with the rise of gleaming, glass-fronted skyscrapers housing luxury offices, shopping malls and the ubiquitous McDonald’s. These buildings, and designer brands such as Gucci, are the new symbols of modernization, and much of the old architecture that survived the Maoist blitz has been bulldozed out of the way. Communities have been broken
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up and scattered in the name of modernity. Much of the new building that is not commercial is to reify state and party power with many, new, gleaming, marble-decked buildings constructed to house the local party, government and judicial organs of the state. Beneath the high rises, the Chinese streets are home to a much more diverse life. The markets, restaurants and discos are signs of the new entrepreneurship, or of official organizations moonlighting to make a bit of extra money. The restaurants are filled with the beneficiaries of reform: the private entrepreneurs, those involved in the new economy, the managerial elites, the politically well connected and the foreigners. There are also the millions of migrants who have poured into the cities from the countryside to build the new urban “nirvanas”. They staff the construction sites, work as waiters, shop assistants, masseuses, and in the less acceptable areas of vice and prostitution. Yet not all have been blessed by this tremendous boom and economic growth. There are the new urban poor who have been laid-off from the old state-owned factories or who have no children to look after them in old age. And, as the Atlas shows, the cost of economic growth is higher levels of traffic congestion, air pollution and water contamination. The countryside has also changed, with the collectives broken up and farming responsibility placed back with the households. This has allowed more diversification in agricultural production and has permitted millions to leave the land to find more remunerative work in the small township factories, the construction sites of big cities, or in the joint venture factories of South China. Those who move are the young, the fit and the adventurous. Those who remain to tend to the farm and household chores are the elderly, married women, the children, and the sick. The leadership under President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao has launched major programs to try to deal with regional inequalities and to improve the living standards and access to basic services for those who have not benefitted so well from reforms. These changes not only impact on China but have worldwide ramifications. China is now the largest recipient of foreign direct investment in the world, most multinational corporations have a China strategy and many countries are trying to align their own production strategies to meet China’s development. China’s economic trajectory, with its incumbent energy increases, is altering global markets for natural resources, and prices will be increasingly determined by projections of China’s needs. The financial crisis of 2008 showed clearly how China’s fate is intertwined with that of global economic health, and there will be consequences that move beyond the purely economic. Already, Japan is badly affected by industrial emissions from China, and the country is a major producer of greenhouse gases. Decisions made in China affect other nations in unexpected ways. For example, the ban by the Central government on logging in southwest China is eminently sensible, but has not stopped China’s desire for raw wood for its domestic and export markets. This is leading to an increase in logging not only in surrounding countries such as Laos, but even in those as far away as Brazil. The State of China Atlas provides a good starting point for trying to unravel the consequences of these changes. It is not only informative but also fun to read and look at. It is highly recommended for all those interested in the momentous changes taking place in China. Tony Saich Daewoo Professor of International Affairs Harvard Kennedy School, November 2008
The 2008 beijing olympics represented an important statement by an emerging regional and world power. China is culturally, economically, linguistically and politically relevant to the global community. It is a huge, complex and contradictory geo-political entity that has taken its place in our collective consciousness on its own terms. Nonetheless, China still remains mysterious to many people. Media spectacle, commerce and extended trade relations do not entirely counteract the unknowability of profound difference. So how is China known in the contemporary world? Whilst, in the international imagination, China is bound up in extravagant symbols of development and capital, its minority peoples and most of its provinces are hardly known. Most people think of the “centralizing kingdom” (zhongguo), as it has been conveyed through classical art, Tang poetry, revolutionary meetings and the killings in Tiananmen protests of 1989, through to sparkling business districts in Shanghai, the spectacular historical epics of films by Zhang Yimou, and the woeful faces of Sichuanese survivors and their rescuers during the earthquake of