ChinaTravel Article
Travelling in China
The Forbidden City, located at the
center of Beijing municipality, was the seat of power
for 24 emperors from 1406 to 1911. It took thousands of
artisans and 14 years to complete the colossal complex
spread over 720.000 square meters with 9.000 bays of
halls and rooms which become a symbol of China’s
monarchial grandeur built on the blood and sweat of its
toiling peasantry. Significantly, however, the main
entrance to the imperial city, Tiananmen or the Gate of
Heavenly Peace, connects the past with the present in a
curiously fatalistic manner.
Indeed, the wealth gap in Chinese society has increased
phenomenally with the difference between the wealthiest
and the poorest having risen from as much as four times
in 1978 to almost 13 times today.
So, what we have in China today is tremendous economic
freedom without political empowerment of the citizenry.
Corruption and nepotism are logical outcomes of this
situation. And the middle class is too tiny to influence
the system. According to one estimate, middle-class
groups with income ranging from 2,500 dollars to 10,000
dollars per year constitute less than five percent of
the population. By contrast, lower income groups even in
wealthier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen,
and Guangzhou do not earn more than 900 dollars a year.
About 60 percent of China’s population still lives in
the countryside, with per capita income less than 300
dollars per year.
Having said that, one cannot ignore China’s huge
population base of 1.3 billion people. Even at five
percent, the country’s middle-income segment numbers at
65 million people. These people are the architects of
the future China which, many observers predict, will be
the major economic powerhouse of the world by the end of
the decade. A glimpse of this can be had in Beijing’s
scores of multi-storey shopping malls where customers
literally trip over each other to move ahead. Its huge
and fashionable hotels are crawling with guests, as are
its eating houses, bars and discotheques.
And the Forbidden City is not so forbidden anymore. It
is one of China’s major tourists’ attractions where
hundreds of hawkers accost visitors and shove tourist
books in their faces, quoting prices with huge margins
for bargain. Finally, China is waking up from decades of
slumber.
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