(Minghui.org) There have been some saddening headlines in Chinese news recently, including a sudden migration of elephants northward from their ancestral habitat, a decrease in China’s population, and a murder case at a prestigious university. Some people attribute this to the limited resources in China, but many of them stop their questioning there. What is the deeper cause for this scarcity of resources?
Below we examine these three headlines in isolation and search for the root of the issue.
Recent Social Events
On April 16, 2021, a group of 17 elephants left their rainforest homes in Yunnan Province to travel northward. After about a month and a half, 15 of this caravan arrived in Kunming, Yunnan's capital city.
Scientists believe this was caused by the destruction of the elephants’ traditional habitat: people kept cutting down the natural rainforests to plant rubber and tea trees for profit. Since the elephants could not find enough food in their home forest, they had to forage in nearby farmland for corn and other agricultural plants.
This has led to many conflicts between human and elephants, which resulted in economic loss and even injuries. So this time the elephants went further to Kunming, about 300 miles away.
Low Fertility Rate
China’s 2020 census showed that the fertility rate for Chinese women of childbearing age is only 1.3, well below 2.1—the rate needed to stabilize China's population size.
The CCP encouraged families to have more children from the 1950s to 1970s. This created a huge population boom. In 1980, it switched to the infamous “one child” policy to control population growth. Many tragedies happened to pregnant women and their families as the CCP enforced that policy through brutal methods.
China’s fertility rate dropped below 2.1 in 1991. Now as the population boom generation starts getting older, China is facing the prospect of population decrease, coupled with an aging society.
The officially released 2020 census data still showed a net increase in population size, but there are some doubts that Beijing fabricated the numbers to cover up its already-declining population.
Population growth is vital to China, a country that provides labor-intensive manufacturing to the world. If its labor market shrinks, the cost of labor will go up, which in turn forces manufacturing costs to increase. Companies will likely move production out of China to countries with larger labor markets.
In fact, this has happened before. China saw an increase in labor costs in 2012 when its wage growth beat out the growth of its labor market.
Seeing the economic impact of its actions, the CCP tried to reverse course. It allowed and even encouraged families to have two children in 2015. In 2021, it created the three-child policy, promoting the benefits of having three children per couple.
However, many young people are hesitant to have more children, as prices for real estate and schooling have skyrocketed in recent years.
A Murder Case
Jiang Wenhua, a young professor at the Fudan University School of Mathematical Sciences, killed his school’s Party Secretary Wang Yongzhen on June 7, 2021.
An alumnus of Fudan University, Jiang obtained his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in the U.S. and conducted postdoctoral research at the National Institute of Health and John Hopkins University.
After returning to his alma mater, he worked on a three-year tenure track at Fudan University from 2016 to 2019. However, he didn’t get tenure at the end of this period, and was instead offered two more one-year extensions. As it seemed that he could no longer renew his contract with Fudan, he felt that the head of his school had been discriminating against him all along and then killed him.
This tragedy is a reflection of the “tenure or departure” practice in China’s university system. Many other countries also have similar practices, but since they have a true market economy, young professionals without tenure status have opportunities to move to another university or join the industry.
However, a good job was hard to get in China. It depends on many things beyond a person’s skill set and capability; his network and how much he could spend to bribe the relevant officials are big factors. As a result of this, many people become desperate when they seem to hit a dead end.
The Real Cause of These Social Problems
These events, on the surface, appear to be caused by the scarce resources in China. Many other social issues seem to be related to this cause as well, including rising education and healthcare costs, the separation of migrant workers and their children due to household registration limitations, and so on.
However, what was the cause of scarcity to this degree? For this, we have to take a look at the ruling CCP and how they've monopolized the wealth of a nation.
The CCP has established a big public service system. “Public servants” have the power to spend taxpayer money at their own discretion.
On top of that, the CCP has established a gigantic party structure that's superimposed on the public service system. The CCP officials do not directly contribute to any initiatives of their own; their duties usually involvement “management” in very loose terms.
As a result, the Chinese people support a heavy political apparatus. Zhou Tianyong, a researcher at the CCP Central Party School, reported that in 2005, the ratio between Chinese taxpayers and government staff was 18:1. Some people think that the ratio is closer to 12:1 now. That ratio in the Western countries is typically several hundred to one.
Phoenix TV reported that China’s government spending is 40% of its GDP. The CCP spends heavily on its military and its many “stability” campaigns. China is the country with the most surveillance cameras globally, all to monitor its own people. The CCP also spends generously on benefits and perks for its officials, such as healthcare, lavish meals, cars, and travel.
In addition, all the big companies in China are either state-owned or have ties to government officials. The CCP officials thus put billions of yuan in their own pockets through its presence in these companies.
Another big revenue source for the CCP is land. In most countries, individuals own land, while the government taxes real estate transactions and properties. But in China, the government owns the land. The local government then charges huge premiums on leasing the land for real estate development. People buying the properties only have the right to the land for 70 years.
What's more, the CCP obtained the land through by robbing the Chinese people.
Before the CCP took control of mainland China, the people owned the land. The CCP categorized village residents into different classes based on how much land they owned: landlords, rich peasants, medium-rich peasants, and poor peasants. All these people could own some land and could save money from their hard work to buy more land.
After taking control over China, the CCP conducted a “land reform” campaign along with class struggle sessions in villages. It labeled the landlords, rich peasants, and medium-rich peasants as evil, calling them the “exploiting class.” It organized the poor peasants to hold many meetings to denounce these evil people and take their land. In many cases, the CCP even led the poor peasants in killing the landlords and rich peasants.
The poor peasants divided the confiscated lands among themselves, without paying a penny. Like this, the land was stolen from the original owners.
Shortly after, the CCP confiscated the land from the poor peasants. It issued an order to form cooperatives at the village level. All the land suddenly changed hands again, from the peasants to the CCP. The poor peasants lost not only the land they took from the landlords, but also their own land.
Thus, the CCP stole the land from the peasants. It did similar things to the city dwellers, as well.
Now the local authorities in China have profited 58.5 trillion yuan ($9 trillion USD) from leasing land to real estate developers. But it only gives 3 trillion yuan back to the peasants.
If we go by the tax model used by many other countries, that is, if the peasants owned the land they worked and the government taxed property transactions, we find that the peasants have been woefully under-compensated. If we assume the CCP charges 40% on the sales price (which would be the highest in the world) then the peasants should keep 60% of the 58.5 trillion yuan, or 35 trillion yuan, to themselves.
That means, on land alone, the CCP has taken 35 trillion yuan from the peasants. And that exploitation continues as the government keeps selling land leases.
As a result, people in China do not have much left to themselves and have to fight for every possible resource to survive. That has led to some of the disheartening events mentioned above.
Lou Jiwei, former finance minister, admitted that land, labor, and capital are the most important factors of production; that the two separate economic systems (urban vs. rural) has become the force leading to China's economic downfall. He also mentioned that the government’s inability to solve the housing and education problems for the 376 million migrant workers coming to work in cities have brought about a series of social problems.
China’s prime minister Li Keqiang stated last year that there are 600 million Chinese people whose monthly income is less than 1,000 yuan ($155 USD), or less than 12,000 yuan a year. It may sound inconceivable for the world's second-largest economy to have so many people struggling below the poverty line. But that's because the CCP keeps a lot of the wealth they've generated from being distributed back to them.
If we give the land back to who it really belongs to, the Chinese people, there would be 35 billion yuan for 1.4 billion people, or 25,000 yuan for each person. That will dramatically improve the living standards of the Chinese people.
Once the Chinese people get what originally belonged to them, they can spend more, and the Chinese economy will grow. Many social problems, such as education and healthcare, can be resolved in a better way. People can even plan for a more harmonious life.
The book Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party stated that the Communist Party has nine traits: evil, deceit, incitement, exciting the worst of society, espionage, robbery, fighting, elimination, and control. What the CCP wants is not for the Chinese people to prosper, but rather to exploit them again and again.
Waking Up
The CCP’s rule has caused many tragedies in China. The CCP has taken a huge toll on the Chinese people's own properties, their health, their children, and their environment.
The CCP hailed the year 1919 as the “Chinese awakening.” The communist ideology was spread into China that year and many young people, out of their love for China, were deceived by the communist theory and adopted it as a solution for China’s problems. This led to the establishment of the CCP in 1921.
After seeing the CCP’s true nature—brutal in-fighting and cheating—several early CCP leaders, who had helped to grow the CCP, abandoned it. This includes Chen Duxiu, co-founder and the first General Secretary of the CCP; Qu Qiubai, the CCP’s top leader in 1927; and Zhang Guotao, a regional Soviet chairman and military leader.
To Chinese people nowadays, seeing through the CCP's true nature and rejecting its ideology is the real awakening. The Chinese people who have lived through the CCP-created disasters, including the Great Famine, the Cultural Revolution, and the Tiananmen Square Massacre, do not want these tragedy to repeat themselves again.
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Category: News Commentary
