China Crisis?

It has been an extrordinary week for Ordinangst who has been in been in Beijing on Business. Spending a chunk of time in China, a lot of it with Chinese people, has been enriching and bewildering at the same time. Ordinangst spent one evening with a Chinese man, whose story is typical of the “new” China…born the second brother to farmers in the North East of the country, he studied hard at school (which is free in China to the age of fifteen – consequently literacy rates are very high), and ended up studying Economics at Beijing university. Now he is the head Chinese economist for a large Spanish bank. Fluent in Spanish and English as well as Mandarin he now sends money back home to support his parents (who no longer farm because of this support). He is the only one in his family who has left the province he was born in, and although his two brothers went to university, his three sisters (who all married farmers) did not, because there was not enough money in the family to afford it.


One or two things struck Ordinangst very hard about this man’s story. First, the rate of social mobility in China is absolutely extraordinary. This is evidenced by a rapid movement to the cities (Shenzhen, for example, which was a small fishing village just over the border from Hong Kong twenty years ago is now a City of over 20 million people where an awful lot of the world’s computer hardware – including I-Pads and Xboxes are manufactured). This brings with it some fundamental economic imbalances that are a cause for concern, and Ordinangst suggests, should perhaps be a subject for our prayers. A rapidly ageing population caused by the one child policy which still exists which could cause the Chinese economy to implode in a few years’ time. A significant gender imbalance in children and young people caused by the desire by most Chinese couples – to have a boy rather than a girl. Ordinangst shudders to think (and certainly didn’t dare ask) what happened to all those baby girls. A population of around 1.3 billion in a country that has the agricultural land to support 800 million currently and less in the future as more farmland is engulfed in urbanisation. A situation where young people are leaving rural areas en masse to go to the cities, leaving the vital farming roles to parents and grandparents who are unable to cope with the physical demands of farming. A potential environmental catastrophe caused by the insatiable (and understandable) desire by the Chinese to have their first fridges, cars, computers, modern housing – all of which will cause a very significant extra load on the world’s demand four natural resources, for oil and for water and will dramatically increase carbon emissions. And lastly the ever present risk that the rural poor will become disillusioned by the imbalance in wealth that is rampant in China now and there will be another revolution. The rich in China are spectacularly rich and have an insatiable demand for western luxury goods – Ordinangst counted three Gucci stores within a hundred yards of his hotel – all the more astonishing when you realise that import tax on luxury goods in China is 100 per cent – so luxury goods (including Bentleys, and Bugattis) are twice as expensive as they are in Europe

One piece of good news in all this is that Christianity is growing helter-skelter in China. Ordinangst remains worried about the state sponsorship of both the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches. Of course, we should all keep an eye on a government who is omnipresent and controlling (more about that in another blog or two). But there is no doubt that Jesus is breaking through – both in the State Churches (some of which are enormous) and in the Underground. One of Ordinangst’s friends managed to find an underground Church to go to (Ordinangst was very cross that he only told him about it afterwards) – seven people celebrating mass in the home of a priest who has been sent out there by a Western missionary society which was, apparently, incredibly moving.