The Forbidden City, located at the center of Beijing municipality, was the seat of power for 24 emperors
from 1406 to 1911. It took thousands of artisans and 14 years to complete the
colossal complex spread over 720.000 square meters with 9.000 bays of halls and
rooms which become a symbol of China’s monarchial grandeur built on the blood and sweat
of its toiling peasantry. Significantly, however, the main entrance to the
imperial city, Tiananmen or the Gate of Heavenly Peace, connects the past with
the present in a curiously fatalistic manner.
Indeed, the wealth gap in
Chinese society has increased phenomenally with the difference between the
wealthiest and the poorest having risen from as much as four times in 1978 to
almost 13 times today.
So, what we have in China today is tremendous economic freedom without
political empowerment of the citizenry. Corruption and nepotism are logical
outcomes of this situation. And the middle class is too tiny to influence the
system. According to one estimate,
middle-class groups with income ranging from 2,500 dollars to 10,000 dollars
per year constitute less than five percent of the population. By contrast,
lower income groups even in wealthier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai,
Shenzhen, and Guangzhou do not earn more than 900 dollars a year. About 60
percent of China’s population still lives in the countryside, with
per capita income less than 300 dollars per year.
Having said that, one cannot
ignore China’s huge population base of 1.3 billion people. Even
at five percent, the country’s middle-income segment numbers at 65 million
people. These people are the architects of the future China which, many observers predict, will be the major
economic powerhouse of the world by the end of the decade. A glimpse of this
can be had in Beijing’s scores of multi-storey shopping malls where
customers literally trip over each other to move ahead. Its huge and
fashionable hotels are crawling with guests, as are its eating houses, bars and
discotheques.
And the Forbidden City is not so forbidden anymore. It is one of China’s major tourists’ attractions where hundreds of
hawkers accost visitors and shove tourist books in their faces, quoting prices
with huge margins for bargain. Finally, China is waking up from decades of slumber.
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