People's Democracy

  Eight Days In China - II

Subhashini Ali Sahgal

Seen in the picture is Prakash Karat and to his right is Zhang Gaolin, secretary of Shandong CPC Provincial Committee

SHANDONG province is one of the most developed provinces which lies roughly halfway between Beijing and Shanghai. It has several hundred kilometres of coastline. The third largest port in China, Quingdao, is situated in the province, contributing greatly to its prosperity and advance. In GDP terms, Shandong ranks second among the provinces in China. Agricultural productivity in the state has also increased substantially, especially in the field of vegetable production. Vegetables grown here are exported to different parts of the country. There are also important industrial establishments in Shandong. It is, therefore, a province with varied forms of economic activity and our visit there which lasted four days gave us much information about the different ways in which China is progressing.

We arrived in Jinan, the capital of the province, from Beijing. It is a city with a 2000-year old history, home to many natural springs and ancient Buddhist temples. We had a meeting followed by dinner hosted by the secretary of the CPC Shandong provincial committee, Zhang Gaolin. He informed us about the all-round progress made by the province since the reforms began in the eighties.   

In a separate meeting, standing committee member of the Jinan Municipal Party Committee, Yin Lugian, explained various aspects of party work.  As part of the tremendous education campaign that is taking place all over the country, the Party Municipal Committee and the Party School are engaged in educating all Party members. They plan to cover all members in three batches of six months duration. In the first batch, 1,30,000 party members working in government and public enterprises were already covered. He said that the work of each party unit was assessed annually and help and support to the poor as well as intervention to settle petty disputes was being emphasised a lot. Women members comprised 22 per cent of the total party membership and their participation in political life and leadership was being stressed.

There were quotas for women in all government bodies. Many of the party cadres had also completed the 6 months training and had greatly benefited from it. Not only was there a marked improvement in their methods of work but their interaction with the people had also improved.  He described to us in graphic terms that they were now overcoming what was described as a ‘difficult gate to enter’ (access to the authorities by those with a problem) where the first obstacle was the ‘long face’ sported by the person in authority and the second was his reluctance to listen to and solve problem!  Now they have started interactive TV programs in which people can phone-in with their questions and problems and the officials have to respond. People can also give suggestions and ideas about various issues and they are listened to and analysed.  Urgent suggestions are implemented immediately while complex ones are analysed within a fixed time-limit.

From Jinan we went to Weifang a large city that is a county (district) headquarter.  It is the Kite Capital of the world and hosts an annual International Kite Festival.  It is home to industry, tertiary industries and also to agricultural farms. Here we went to visit the very large Foton Factory where tractors of different sizes and horsepower, harvester combines and other machinery associated with agriculture are produced. It is a State-owned factory that was started in 1998 and is spread over 600 hectares of land. It employs 7000 workers of whom 1000 are women.  Most of the workers own their homes with the help of low-interest loans that they have received from Foton. The women workers are entitled to upto one year’s maternity leave with full wages. There is a nursery for their infant children on the premises. The workers also get highly subsidised meals and their wages ranged from 1200 – 1300 Yuan per month (1 yuan = 6 rupees).  We went around quite a few shop floors and were impressed by the clean and airy sheds.

From Weifang we drove to the nearby Shouguang county which is where 2/5ths of all the vegetables consumed in Beijing are grown. An international Vegetable and Fruit Fair is held here every April.  On the way, we stopped and visited the Weifang Science and Technology Vocational College which has 16,000 Undergraduate and Diploma students. It is run by the county government. Of the 1200 teaching staff, 24 are from India. The college also has a joint venture with a software company that has 17 employees from India working here. We met some of the Indians working on the software joint venture and they told us (in Hindi) that they were extremely impressed with the working conditions and with the kind of hard work that the Chinese teachers and students and the head of the institution put in.

In Shouguang county, we went to the village of Sanyuanzhu where a model farmer of the country, Wang Leyi lives.  He is the chairman of the elected Village Council and is the inventor of the local version of a greenhouse. This consists of a tunnel constructed of bent bamboos which is covered with plastic sheets and inside which every kind of vegetable is grown.  In the winter, the plastic is covered with matting whenever there is no sun and, as soon as the sun comes out, the matting is removed. The extensive use of this extremely inexpensive greenhouse has resulted in farmers’ incomes rising to 15000-20000 Yuan a year.  After a talk with Wang, we walked around the village where we saw that all the houses were in the process of extensive renovation - building materials, floor tiles,  roof tiles, sanitary fittings etc. were lying in heaps in front of many of the houses.  The signs of prosperity were unmistakable.

Our next halt was the beautiful port city of Quingdao, formerly a German settlement. Here, the old, red-tiled roofed bungalows, set in gardens and lining the hillside that stretches up from the beach, have all been preserved and no high rises have been allowed in this older part of the city. All the new construction is confined to the other side of the city. The port city is extremely prosperous and we appreciated what the party secretary of Quingdao, Du Shi told us when we met with him.  He said “We have to use the city’s earnings to help the rural areas and also help rural workers to come to the city. Agriculture has to be modernised and retailing of agricultural produce encouraged.  All this has to be done so that rural and urban development take place simultaneously.”

Our last stop in China was Shanghai. From the airport, we went straight to the small house, which has now been converted into a museum, in which the first National Conference of the CPC was held in 1921 when membership of the party was 52 members and of them 13 were delegates to this conference. The museum is one of the few reminders of the past in the pulsating and very modern city of Shanghai. Over the last 15 years, its newest district, the district of Pudong has been built and developed and it is now home to a new airport and the fastest train in the world which can move at a speed of 700 kms an hour. Senior representatives of the People’s Government of Pudong gave us a very detailed and interesting account of how the plan to build this district was successfully implemented.  The Pudong district is a showpiece with gleaming towers housing offices of the top companies in the world and a manufacturing zone with a variety of production units. The entire district has been built on 110 sq kms of which 45 sq kms were agricultural land.  So the first problem was how to acquire this land and to rehabilitate those who were cultivating it.  The younger people were all given jobs once industries were set up in Pudong. Those between 40-50 years old were given simple jobs and light work by the government.  For example, many of them are now gardeners. The older people have been given pensions.  In addition to this, those who were handed over the land had to pay compensation at high rates and the displaced were all given accommodation. 

In Shanghai, we also visited the Bao Steel Corporation, a State enterprise which is the biggest steel producer in China.  It produced 21 million tones of steel in 2004. It is a very huge establishment which has wharfs to receive iron ore and then conveyor belts to transport it to the sophisticated workplaces where it is converted into steel and then shipped all over China and the world. We were happy to learn that the chairperson of the corporation is a woman.

After a ride on the superfast train, it was time for us to take our leave of a society for which it is an appropriate symbol. The leaders of China are striving to build a ‘socialist market economy’ – an experiment which is of the greatest significance for all who wish to see the socialist system in China build a modern, just and prosperous society.

 (Concluded)