December 30, 2004
WAITING FOR THE MARSHALL PLAN:
Disparity of Change: China's Northeast, once the nation's proud industrial belt, has lagged behind other areas in seizing on market reforms and is suffering high unemployment. (Don Lee, December 30, 2004, LA Times)
The contrasting picture on Corruption Street illustrates the challenges Beijing faces as it pushes to revitalize the once-proud industrial belt, crack down on bribery and fraud in government and regain the trust of people living in a region with the highest unemployment rate in China. [...]"In the Northeast, the big problem is that we don't have a lot of private economy in manufacturing and high-end service businesses such as finance and accounting," said Song Donglin, deputy director of the economics school at Jilin University in Changchun, a center of China's auto manufacturing.
Lack of access to financial services discourages outside investment, he added, and makes it difficult for laid-off workers to find jobs or start businesses.
"If the Northeast cannot develop," he said, "it will impose very negative influences to the sustainable development of China's economy."
Realistically, such massive revitalization is only likely to follow the devastation of a war. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 30, 2004 9:21 AM
Well, at least our northeastern industrial belt still has some finance and accounting jobs, even if home-buying is on the decline.
Posted by: John at December 30, 2004 3:20 PMThe centrifugal nature of Chinese society has resulted in some areas like Canton being modernized while others like Manchuria and Hunan languish in the past. In large sections of the nation, the living conditions of ordinary people have remained unchanged since the Ming Dynasty.
A similar phenomenon could be seen in Tito's Yugoslavia, where Slovenia was virtually modern while Serbia languished in Stalinist torpor. Disintegration soon followed the collapse of the center's ability to maintain the force necessary to preserve the union. There is no reason to think that China's fate will not be similar, and that we have already seen their high water mark.
Posted by: Bart at December 30, 2004 4:05 PM