A changing China
Dan Troy
Fr Troy tells us about the Communist Party’s vision for China’s future.
By 2050 China plans to have eradicated poverty, established itself as a world power in science and lifted the average life span of its billion-plus citizens to 80 years.
The social projections are contained in the China Modernisation Report 2006, drawn up by the country’s leading research institute, the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The plan calls for the relocation of 500 million peasants to the cities, huge investment in biotechnology and the addition of hundreds of millions more cars on the streets. If the country can maintain its current 9% rate of economic growth it predicts the average income in China will rise to US$1,300 a month, 10 times the current level.
In the past 25 years of expansion China has lifted an estimated 300 million people out of poverty but there are still more than 80 million living on less than US$85 a year.
There were also warnings of a gap between the growing expectations of social change and the slower reality of economic modernisation as well as the environmental threat of greenhouse gases as China moves to overtake the US as the major cause of global warming.
However the state council has announced plans to boost investment in clean energy and nuclear power.
The Pentagon has singled out China as the only country with the capability to emerge as a military rival. US Congressmen are warning that China’s economy will overtake America’s by 2050.
20 topics not to be mentioned in China
In February the mainland’s State Administration for radio, TV, film and theatre banned 20 areas from debate or undue publicity in the nation’s media.
They include the Anti-Rightest campaign of the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution, the on-going anti-corruption campaign, the media freedom debate, the legal rights protection campaign and any denial of the “historical accomplishment of the Party and Mao Zedong.”
It’s permissible to mention the anti-Japanese Nanking Massacre Commemoration and the July 7, 1937 Incident because they serve the current situation and are not seen as likely to impact adversely on Sino-Japanese relations.
Also censored are the 90th Anniversary of the Russian October Revolution and the collapse of the former Soviet Union and its east European satellites.
Fr Dan Troy works on mainland China.
