No sooner than you enter Beijing airport that China begins showing its muscles to its visitors. The airport is not only humongous, but it is also designed in such a way that makes other airports around the world appear miniscule in comparison. Whereas it takes you a couple of minutes to get to the luggage section in other airports, you are bound in Beijing to take a train for several minutes to get to the luggage section. China has always made it clear that it relies on vastness and multitude for its world image. The ‘Forbidden City’ which used to be inhabited by the emperors, for instance, is a city within a city.
The Chinese have the full right to brag about the magnitude of their country in both area and population, but they can hardly hide their soft spot for the West, as their capital is nothing but a replica of western capitals. Were it not for the Chinese words written on buildings, one could hardly tell if one is in China or in any other western country. Funnily enough, Asian countries claim looking East, whereas in fact they are all looking West.
China, in particular, seems enamoured of the West economically. When it began copying western capitalism, it tried to outdo it by the look of things. Had the great Chinese leader Mao Zedong, whose body is mummified and shown in the ‘People’s Hall’, that his country has metamorphosed into a flagrant capitalist one, he would have certainly shed tears of blood over the socialist revolution for which he sacrificed a hell of a lot of Chinese people. Dear Mao, Beijing and its Chinese sister cities easily outdo American and European cities with their unbridled capitalist fervour. If one only compares the number of luxury shops in London, Paris and new York with their counterparts in Beijing, one would certainly be shocked, as the Chinese capital beats them all. Hundreds of shops sell luxury goods all over the capital. But surprisingly enough, they are much more expensive than their western counterparts because of the horribly high taxes imposed on them by the Chinese government.
Chinese capitalism seems fiercer and much more exploitative than the original western one. Money has become the master of all Chinese activities and tourists would certainly miss the cheap prices of London, Paris and Rome when they roam around in Beijing. Whereas one can spend all his time in Hyde Park of London, can visit the British Museum and the natural History Museum — all for free — one has to pay for entrance to a public park in Beijing. And with regard to museums and tourist places, you have got to pay a fortune to see them, especially if accompanied by a family.
Surprisingly enough, a tourist has to pay even for the deposit office or the cloak room if he or she is not allowed to carry a camera, as is the case when one wants to visit the tomb of Mao. And sometimes, you have to pay a bribe to the guys monitoring the tourists entering Mao’s tomb.
There is no doubt about the fact that countries should get money from tourists to maintain their tourist sites, but reasonably, so that they do not burn holes in tourists’ pockets. In a word, nothing is for free in the presumably socialist Chinese state, even for the Chinese. Many countries teach children for free, but this is not the case in China. Parents in many parts have to pay for even elementary education and if they can’t, their children remain illiterate, which actually means that millions of people, especially the impoverished parts of China cannot send their children to school.
China might appear to the outside world as a flourishing and highly developing country, as almost everything is made in China these days, but in reality, it is a very poor and backward country. Only about 20 per cent of the people are leading proper lives in the coastal cities, whereas about 80 per cent of the people in the faraway areas are impoverished peasants who have never seen a car. And if they saw one, they could hardly know how to open its door, claims a specialist in Chinese affairs. He goes even further to say that only about four hundred million Chinese people are living reasonably well, whereas the rest are not, because they hardly enjoy any social, economic or political rights. That is why millions of Chinese peasants migrate annually to the coastal flourishing cities. It is estimated that more than a hundred million people leave their villages and cities to the prosperous areas each year, which will definitely lead sooner or later to very serious social and economic troubles.
Faisal Al Qasim is a Syrian journalist based in Doha.
