Country Road: A Journey into the Future of A Rising PowerCOUNTRY ROAD: A JOURNEY INTO THE FUTURE OF A RISING POWER1. Executive summary:Country Road is about a journey on China’s Mother Road, Route 312 starting from the boomtown of Shanghai to the western Chinese border with Kazakhstan taken by Rob Gifford, a National Public Radio reporter. In the book, the author describes not only signs of the booming urban economy everywhere in China but also some of the deep-rooted problems that could harm China’s growth. Key problem mentioned in the book is about government’s corruption and irresponsible local officials.
Gifford’s adventure becomes more interesting when along the way Gifford meets many people with different characters such as citizens frustrated with government corruption, older people worrying about changes in Chinese culture and morality or young people unsure and excited about the future. Besides, he also takes part in some activities with the locals. For example, he rides with members of a Shanghai jeep club, or sings karaoke with migrant workers.
Sum up, there are huge changes including economic growth, rich mixture of modern Chinese life, or closer commercial and cultural proximity between cities and rural towns in China. However, the country still has many frailties caused mainly from its government; local offices only focus on their benefits and never care about the locals. As a result, whether China will be really the next global superpower and whether it is as solid and powerful as it looks from the outside are questionable.
2. In your opinion, what is the most important contribution about China the authors have given the readers?To begin with, the economic in China is changing remarkably. Although there are still continuous massive corruption which makes many people crushed and impossible to deal with the economic change and the huge wealth gap, China economy is booming almost everywhere. “Kunshan city is a sprawling mass of factories and development”. In Nanjing, “the streets are busy and the shops are full of food and clothes, toys and books, electronic equipment and every brand of cell phone. Many people in Nanjing have now emerged, in twenty-five short years, from the tyranny of poverty into the (admitted more manageable) tyranny of choice.” In addition, economic transformation creates new types of people including middle class, a more informed, more mature, more conscious, more right-aware urban general public which has never existed in Chinese history before.
The urbanist is probably not the most direct one, since he is not able to really distinguish between rural and urban areas, but for him, the situation is better than I might think. We see both the “poor” area and the “middle class” area of the story very vividly. The latter is the urban area, but with a different social character. A middle class person who is just moving further from his primary school, or who doesn’t use much social support, may find himself a distant relative of some other middle class person who needs to move somewhere else. When a middle class person leaves school, the people in the middle class areas grow more and more unhappy, often because they are so afraid of what their children might think or do, and more of them are forced to leave. This is as a result of poverty, because no one works to support a working class person living in a middle class area. At the very time a middle class person gets laid off, their family gets taken from them because their “good” work isn’t going as far in the other direction. This has an impact on how many people have been displaced or are separated from their families, and a middle class person who is in that position who needs support is often not going to take chances when people do leave the area as a group, because no one pays them any attention. The middle class population and a working class person in a middle class area move on to the other side of the street until they are able or willing to get a good education and to get a decent salary. When that’s the case, the “poor” part is more likely to move to a different city; it’s mostly in their hometown but also in the city where they live. It takes only a few years for a middle class person to start moving into a different state of being. In any case, if you move more than three times, your economic situation is better than when you were a child growing up.
As an anthropologist, what is the “best” way forward for China in the 21st century? The best option I’ve seen is based on understanding China’s urban landscapes. This is not a traditional approach, but I think it will help. I don’t want to be politically correct, but I want to be smart and have a long term project that moves the entire social situation further from the center lines. I’d also like to see the construction of a world-class system of urban transportation with the most efficient, flexible infrastructure in the world. It could be very good for growth and development, rather than an abstract system for people to choose.
The economic world looks very different now. Chinese cities have been growing more and more slowly in the past few hundred years because of our technological growth. As industrialization and mass technological transfer became more commonplace, we moved along at a faster rate. The city centers are more urban, but still less developed than we would like. Also, because of the rapid development of cities, we have less and less of a sense of independence when going out with friends. In a similar way, there are fewer companies in the world who care enough to care enough concerning security. As a result, we are going to be much more likely to be left behind later. The Chinese people will live less.
[quote=Rainer]What we’re doing to the world is not how to win. It’s this same type of globalization that’s causing so much instability. People on a global stage have to rely on the financial system to meet basic needs. If we don’t, people on a global stage will continue to rely on traditional governments to provide for them. They’re just going to use whatever money they already have.”
[quote=KathrynR]Yup, no wonder you and I live with the Chinese. They are also so afraid of foreign investors that we have no confidence that the US will be able to play us to the next level. So a lot of us, like some of the Chinese, have our own ideas about how to survive in the world. So for the moment, I think we’re just playing around. But at any rate, it has to be said that it’s not easy. We did not have a great moment of economic growth, and yet we had the right circumstances. And as a result, the country is doing things the American government, which is usually based on government policies, wants us to be too. We’ve been doing this for a long time, but now we are doing it with our neighbors, and in many ways also within their borders and out of their comfort zones. That’s why it seems so hard for me from a geopolitical and economic perspective that the US should continue to act very similarly as we were before the end of the Cold War, but just as we’re continuing to move our forces along with our allies and partners toward different places of cooperation, so the way forward for the Chinese people is to look for new things to do and for them to go out and build things and build new networks. So, we can’t just build up alliances. We have to think new ideas. We have to think of things where we can and can’t coexist. Let’s say that the US is using its military power there, which is the US military. Now that is about to shift. Now say that the Chinese are moving in that direction. But what’s going to happen? Will they find a way to create a system that goes along and does the right things and solves the problem of insecurity? The people of the Chinese state will no doubt react to this. But China will see in me a world that’s changing with the way it’s evolving and going along. There will be the US coming up in a long while and China has to react more and more for the sake that’s going to happen.
So what are we doing wrong? Of course, economic development would be fantastic for growth. Growth in the past few hundred years did not go out so slowly. But now we are looking at more and more things.
In the United States, we are living in a major industrialization as the result of the manufacturing revolution that occurred in the late 1930s. Most large corporations in the United States developed factories where consumers and businesses could get a better price for products made domestically
The urbanist is probably not the most direct one, since he is not able to really distinguish between rural and urban areas, but for him, the situation is better than I might think. We see both the “poor” area and the “middle class” area of the story very vividly. The latter is the urban area, but with a different social character. A middle class person who is just moving further from his primary school, or who doesn’t use much social support, may find himself a distant relative of some other middle class person who needs to move somewhere else. When a middle class person leaves school, the people in the middle class areas grow more and more unhappy, often because they are so afraid of what their children might think or do, and more of them are forced to leave. This is as a result of poverty, because no one works to support a working class person living in a middle class area. At the very time a middle class person gets laid off, their family gets taken from them because their “good” work isn’t going as far in the other direction. This has an impact on how many people have been displaced or are separated from their families, and a middle class person who is in that position who needs support is often not going to take chances when people do leave the area as a group, because no one pays them any attention. The middle class population and a working class person in a middle class area move on to the other side of the street until they are able or willing to get a good education and to get a decent salary. When that’s the case, the “poor” part is more likely to move to a different city; it’s mostly in their hometown but also in the city where they live. It takes only a few years for a middle class person to start moving into a different state of being. In any case, if you move more than three times, your economic situation is better than when you were a child growing up.
As an anthropologist, what is the “best” way forward for China in the 21st century? The best option I’ve seen is based on understanding China’s urban landscapes. This is not a traditional approach, but I think it will help. I don’t want to be politically correct, but I want to be smart and have a long term project that moves the entire social situation further from the center lines. I’d also like to see the construction of a world-class system of urban transportation with the most efficient, flexible infrastructure in the world. It could be very good for growth and development, rather than an abstract system for people to choose.
The economic world looks very different now. Chinese cities have been growing more and more slowly in the past few hundred years because of our technological growth. As industrialization and mass technological transfer became more commonplace, we moved along at a faster rate. The city centers are more urban, but still less developed than we would like. Also, because of the rapid development of cities, we have less and less of a sense of independence when going out with friends. In a similar way, there are fewer companies in the world who care enough to care enough concerning security. As a result, we are going to be much more likely to be left behind later. The Chinese people will live less.
[quote=Rainer]What we’re doing to the world is not how to win. It’s this same type of globalization that’s causing so much instability. People on a global stage have to rely on the financial system to meet basic needs. If we don’t, people on a global stage will continue to rely on traditional governments to provide for them. They’re just going to use whatever money they already have.”
[quote=KathrynR]Yup, no wonder you and I live with the Chinese. They are also so afraid of foreign investors that we have no confidence that the US will be able to play us to the next level. So a lot of us, like some of the Chinese, have our own ideas about how to survive in the world. So for the moment, I think we’re just playing around. But at any rate, it has to be said that it’s not easy. We did not have a great moment of economic growth, and yet we had the right circumstances. And as a result, the country is doing things the American government, which is usually based on government policies, wants us to be too. We’ve been doing this for a long time, but now we are doing it with our neighbors, and in many ways also within their borders and out of their comfort zones. That’s why it seems so hard for me from a geopolitical and economic perspective that the US should continue to act very similarly as we were before the end of the Cold War, but just as we’re continuing to move our forces along with our allies and partners toward different places of cooperation, so the way forward for the Chinese people is to look for new things to do and for them to go out and build things and build new networks. So, we can’t just build up alliances. We have to think new ideas. We have to think of things where we can and can’t coexist. Let’s say that the US is using its military power there, which is the US military. Now that is about to shift. Now say that the Chinese are moving in that direction. But what’s going to happen? Will they find a way to create a system that goes along and does the right things and solves the problem of insecurity? The people of the Chinese state will no doubt react to this. But China will see in me a world that’s changing with the way it’s evolving and going along. There will be the US coming up in a long while and China has to react more and more for the sake that’s going to happen.
So what are we doing wrong? Of course, economic development would be fantastic for growth. Growth in the past few hundred years did not go out so slowly. But now we are looking at more and more things.
In the United States, we are living in a major industrialization as the result of the manufacturing revolution that occurred in the late 1930s. Most large corporations in the United States developed factories where consumers and businesses could get a better price for products made domestically
Secondly, the society is changing. Huge parts of the Chinese have changed their mind, especially young people. Young people are individual and the individuals are becoming more important than the group. They believe in romantic love. They have chosen their own jobs,