Wen Teijun, dean of Renim University in Beijing, has been documenting the world's agrarian history and turmoils. He initiated the New Rural Reconstruction, a social movement to address the rural agrarian crisis in China at the start of the 21st century. He is perceived as the symbol of the alternative people’s perspective that values people’s history. His works analyse the impacts of capitalist model of growth on rural areas. China is an example he always cites. He was recently in Delhi to give a public lecture and spoke to Jitendra on China's environmental crisis, its model of economic growth and the lessons in it for the world. Some excerpts:
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How has the capitalist model and monetization of natural resources impacted the environment in China?
In 1992, China reformed its monetary system. Before 1992, China had a barter system even in cities. A big budgetary deficit happened in the beginning of 1990s, and liberalisation started when the economy was in crisis. For this reason, China was not concerned about environmental matters. It became matter of concern later on. In crisis, you need to recover and reduce people’s sufferings first instead of talking about the environment.
The common people are not going to respond to your environmental concerns if you are unable to restore their lost livelihood. The crisis was too serious. Till the mid-1990s, around 45 million workers were laid off. That was a very big challenge. They needed jobs. And monetization of resources was the result of this crisis. The workers had low salary, so domestic demand was low.
Then China started producing to meet overseas demand. For that, you need to import a lot because the West needs standardized commercial goods. Not like domestic demands where whatever you produce, it gets consumed in the local market. Western countries have institutions of standardization. In an international market, one needs to meet these standards.
So when you start working for Western societies, you need to change your way of production; you need to change the track of industrialization. This type of consumption led to wastage of goods and products on large scale.
It started harming the environment. Environmental problems have increased.
In your view, which model of development is the most environment-friendly?
In my view, Cuba is the most environment-friendly country. This is because Cuba has not been relying on industrial economy.
India has not been industrialised like China. India has less heavy machinery industries as compared to China. So India has been less polluting in comparison to China. If India starts industrialisation at China’s pace, it may produce more pollution and risk its environment.
Is India following China’s model of growth and development?
I don’t think so. There is basic difference between both the economies. Chinese workers don’t need government assistance as social security.
If you compare the labour cost, Chinese labour is only about salaries. Whereas, in India and other similarly situated countries employees give part of their salary as social assistance; the salaried are taxed for setting up social security umbrella to cover the whole society. India has pension and other social security funds.
China, on the other hand, undertook land reform. India didn’t. In China, every villager has land. They are middle class in their village; they possess houses and children get free elementary education. They don’t want to become urban citizens. In cities, they need to become working class, downgrade their status and become salaried class in the city. Nobody wants to downgrade their social status. The urban mainstream wanted to keep them as labour class to serve their own ends.
The Chinese villagers only came to the city for earning cash at the time of building homes, getting married and to fund higher education of children. They periodically come and return to villages.
This is the basic difference. In India, large number of people are landless and they live in distress economy and migrate to city in search of livelihood and need to pay for social security facility.
China had struggled to distribute land rights to their peasants in 1940s when India was negotiating with the British government for their Independence. China faced lots of land riots, millions of people died, something India has not seen, except in a few states. All East Asian countries like Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Korea and Indonesia have basic similarities in that they undertook land reform (in their early days of Independence). They all easily industrialized and established advanced institutions.
Should the Chinese model be adopted by other countries?
I can at least say that the Chinese model of development would never be universal. China has not yet given any model to the world which can be replicated.
Through your social movement (New Rural Reconstruction), how have you been countering urbanization?
I think urbanisation is not a good choice. I prefer “townisation”. It is a new strategy of China to invest in small towns. It would act like a bridge between rural and big cities. I think it is a kind of choice to invest in small towns, create infrastructure and engage rural and local people.
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