Unravelling the host of contradictions that embody modern China

Published on Wednesday 7 May 2008 22:02

I SUPPOSE every nation has its own contradictions, but my recent visit to China seemed to throw up more than most, and perhaps if we understand these, we can begin to understand some of the mysteries of modern China.

Perhaps the first contradiction which hits hard is the contrast between the obvious evidence of pollution, and cleanliness of the streets. We spent two weeks in the southern city of Guangzhou, in temperatures between 23 and 28C most days, yet never saw the sun. Many buildings were externally dirty beyond belief, similar to many of our buildings in the last century, before smokeless zones were introduced, but next to them one would find very smart new buildings. Street rubbish bins had openings for recyclable and non-recyclable materials.

The people, too, provided contradictions. Formal dealings were almost always fearfully polite – I heard voices raised in anger only once. We were waiting in the rain outside our hotel for a taxi during the rush hour when a dispute arose over who had the right to one that eventually arrived, resulting in shouting and fisticuffs. But normally, everyone we encountered remained inscrutably polite in the face of complaints – and the Chinese are well used to complaining if service is not up to standard, if the price is too high, or if the food is not up to scratch.

This brings me to another contradiction: food. It is of vital importance to the southern Chinese; restaurants can be huge and many people eat out most evenings – perhaps not too difficult when a really good meal costs 3, and you can get by with a perfectly adequate one for 1. Yet you hardly ever see an obese Chinese; I was told it was beginning to be a problem, but try as I might, I never saw an obese child, and I did visit a school with 1,800 students.

City traffic is something to behold. The traditional picture of streets swarming with bicycles is a thing of the past. They certainly exist, but no longer dominate. Buses proliferate, along with taxis and private cars. Petrol is cheap – about one third of what it is here, so taxi fares are very low. But the collision rate must be pretty high and my host told me the authorities are concerned at the high casualty rate. Taxi drivers change lane willy-nilly, while cyclists are allowed to ignore red lights. This can be very confusing for the pedestrian, who is invited to cross a street by a green light, only to find himself attacked by cyclists from both sides. Yet nobody blew their horn, and no-one showed any sign of road rage.

One must expect to see such contrasts in a country that has relatively recently adapted to modern industrialisation. Nowhere was this more obvious than at the airports and on the underground. All three airports we used were models of efficiency and cleanliness. Passports weren't needed to check in baggage – after all, we still had to go through passport control, even for an internal flight, so check-in queues never seemed very long. The planes were comfortable, and when we arrived at the other end, our luggage was on the conveyor belt in the baggage hall before we reached it.

The Chinese seem pretty law-abiding – perhaps because they have not yet been able to adapt to the permissive society, and perhaps because the woolly liberals who have spread political correctness throughout western society have not yet managed to gain much influence. But one incident did amuse us. We were on the way to the airport in a taxi to catch an internal flight. The driver stopped to get some petrol, and while he did so, he removed his number plates, and brought them inside the taxi before driving on. When we asked him why, he replied innocently: "Oh, there are speed cameras on this road, so I just remove them so that I'm not caught!"

We live in the internet age, but I didn't expect to find that a computer and free broadband came with my room. This made it easy to communicate with family and friends, but it also gave us access to what was happening in the world – or so we thought. I was puzzled that some days I could access the BBC news page, while other days I could not. Then it dawned – we were in the middle of the Tibet crisis, and whenever there was a lead story on Tibet, I could not access the news page. So I tried The Scotsman. I don't know what The Scotsman has done to offend the Chinese, but I could not access it at all throughout our stay. Yet young Chinese apparently know how to get round this problem, and I was reliably informed they all knew exactly what was happening in Tibet – and to the Olympic torch.

Perhaps the most fundamental contradiction of China is its attitude to religion and capitalism. My host was a member of the Communist Party – if he had not been, it would have been impossible for him to have become manager of an oil refinery. He is also a practising Buddhist, and saw no contradiction in being so. When I asked him how he coped during the Cultural Revolution, he smiled and said: "We just worshipped in the privacy of our home." The same attitude relates to capitalism; after all, the Chinese have a wonderful history as traders, and if there's a profit to be made, Marxist principles take a back seat. Pragmatism rules.

China is going to be the world's dominant economic force in the next 20 years. If it can control its growth and the rising aspirations of its population, and continue to live with its contradictions, it will easily outpace the West. If we are to survive economically, I suggest we do all in our power to understand what is going to become the most powerful nation on earth. We ignore it at our peril.