A decade ago if you asked people in Beijing what tourists would be taking pictures of in 2008, Mao Zedong’s domineering portrait which looks down on the sprawling Tiananmen Square would almost certainly have come out on top.
But in terms of photo-taking opportunities, the years have not been kind to The Great Helmsman. The face of China’s capital has been transformed and visitors today are more likely to be taking snaps of the space-age Bird’s Nest Stadium along with some of the shiny new skyscrapers which have sprung up over the past 10 years.
It may not have been a coincidence that Mao’s face was replaced by China’s showpiece Olympic Stadium on the special issue 10 yuan notes created for the Games.
The Middle Kingdom has come through remarkable change and met the goals it set a decade ago to gain access to the World Trade Organisation and host the world’s biggest sporting spectacle.
Now, with the Games a fading memory, China faces new challenges as it strives to make its mark in a dramatically changed world, while coping with the country’s own – often huge – internal issues.

Virtual China

More than 49 million bloggers populate the mainland’s cyberspace and there are 253 million netizens according to June 2008 data from the China Internet Information Center.
An impressive number considering the first Chinese computer went online in the 1990’s. Although half of the users are in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong, it’s impossible to ignore this anonymous mass which grows on average by more than 70 million new netizens each year.
Pierre Haski, a French journalist who has been based in Beijing for many years, published a book in May this year about the web in China where he analyses the internet revolution over more than a decade of change.
From the fear of letting an unknown virtual space enter the country to today where more and more citizens have become successful bloggers, the author details how the web is at the centre of a “more global political equation for China”.
Speaking to Macau Business, Haski describes an internet “grey zone” for public expression among Chinese. Despite strict controls, China has tolerated cyber public opinion which can at times be very vocal and even embarrassing for the government, the French journalist says.
The fourth generation leaders are getting online, Haski recalls: “China’s people were surprised when for the first time prime minister Wen Jiabao made reference to issues being discussed on the internet.
Three years on, forums were opened for questions to the government during the National People’s Congress in March this year. While this can in no way be described as “web-based democracy”, Haski stresses the importance of the web “as a tool for the government to guage public feelings and diffuse crisises before they explode’’.
For example, the recent tainted milk scandal registered more comments and opinions on forums and blogs than in the official media. But if the dimension of this problem is large enough to worry the central government, smaller and local questions can quickly become national issues via the web as happened with the “nail house” story in Chongqing in 2007.
As a means to an end, the internet entered China as one tool for economic development. Today China is the world’s number one telecom market. Haski says: “The government has had to adapt to a new situation they created themselves.”
But the author concludes: “For the moment, the calculated gamble taken by the government has paid off, with the positive aspects weighing much more than the negative.”
China’s internet-mobile nexus cannot be underestimated – the country now has more than 580 million mobile users.
The technological revolution has changed the way China’s people communicate. SMS, online chats, messenger, networking, video, e-mail, have connected the nation – and this is only the start.

Time to change

Many years of double-digit GDP growth have given China the confidence it needs to develop. Despite disputes with countries like the United States, China managed to become a member of the WTO and to liberalise access to its markets.
However, the situation remains fluid in some areas. Especially now with the world economy in crisis, China will have to deal with its own slowdown. According to Caijing, China’s main economic and finance magazine, the country will have to make some structural changes.
The export-reliant model – which has worked so far as exports have increased at a 20 percent a year rate – may soon have to change.
Aware of the changing pace of growth, and even more so after May’s Sichuan earthquake, in July Wen Jiabao held a closed-door meeting with eight top Chinese economists. The GDP growth slowdown, rising unemployment rate, future risks for small and medium enterprises (SME’s) and the need for a domestic driven economy were all subjects on the agenda. Boosting domestic demand will be a must for 2008, a view that is becoming the consensus.
The World Bank predicts GDP growth for China this year of around 9.8 percent. Some analysts have higher expectations, some lower but all agree there will be a decrease.
But the Chinese economy cannot be described as weak although the central government is well aware of the changes ahead.
In early September in a surprise decision, the government cut interest rates for the first time in six years in a bid to stave off domestic fears of an economic crisis.
As expected the development boom was stronger in Beijing than in the rest of the country. But just as the some of the negative effects of GDP growth were visible in the countryside – post-2008 development will be a challenge for the whole country.
Beijing has plans to help the small and medium entrepreneurs who are the main employees away from the biggest cities.

Dealing with history

“The importance of the Olympic Games is more psychological than practical” says a Beijing finance teacher who prefers to remain anonymous. Giving Seoul 1988 as an example, the teacher says: “In South Korea the impact was bigger as the economy was much smaller than China’s.”
Outside Beijing, the momentum of 2008 was mainly a show on TV during the opening and closing ceremonies.
The fast-paced development of the capital has had knock-on effects for the rest of the country, with new highways, railways, infrastructure projects spurring change in the countryside.
But the distance to Beijing is still long – and to paraphrase the famous Chinese saying – the Emperor is far away.
After May’s earthquake, the Communist Party leadership went to Sichuan, watched by a media given unprecedented access. The party chiefs needed to see the devastation close-up, but the exposure revealed in stark detail the huge gaps that exist between development in the cities and in the countryside.
Since 2004, Premier Wen Jiabao has been focusing on rural development. The message for the cities is clear – people have to trust the government and boost their consumption. In the countryside there is still space for innovation as the Premier pointed out but the lack of good infrastructures continues to deter many entrepreneurs.
Haski remembers a story he wrote in 2001 about the parents of a little girl from the north western province of Ningxia who didn’t have the money to pay for their daughter’s studies.
In a chain reaction, money arrived first from French readers who wanted to help her, and they ended up helping the school as well. The girl, Ma Yan, was interviewed on CCTV and became a mini-celebrity.
The director of her school in a small village in Ningxia was asked what the school needed most, “computers” he quickly answered. “If our students leave the school without ever touching a computer we will be creating ignorance for the 21st century.
China now has to think how to increase the speed of connection to this message.

by Maria Joao Belchior in Beijing