China: Communist in Name Only

Last year for three weeks the wife and I toured China.

During the tour, we spent several days in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Xian, Guilin, Hong Kong and other cities and towns. We hiked The Great Wall; saw the Terra Cotta warriors; attended a lecture by a victim of the Cultural Revolution; and meandered along the Yangtze for five days, cruising through and beyond the massive Three Gorges Dam.

Throughout the journey my overwhelming sense was that this didn't look like any communist country I'd ever seen (and I've been to the USSR, GDR, Czechoslovakia and Hungary--well before the Iron Curtain collapsed). No, every step of the way I saw a country that is capitalist in the purest sense of the word.

I'm not surprised by the fact that there are 106 billionaires in China--second only to the U.S. I'm not surprised that IPO's from China are the latest Wall Street darlings. I'm not surprised that China is subtly expanding its sphere of influence, establishing a footprint in Africa--intrigued and attracted, of course, by the continent's plentiful resources.

I'm certainly not surprised by the daily reports filtering out of China about the country's execrable pollution problem... A calamity of biblical proportions that--if unchecked--will unalterably affect not just China but our entire planet. After all, that's Capitalism, right? Expanding markets, exploiting resources, building wealth.

Much has been written about China (Douglas Fairbanks is a excellent source). I'm certainly not qualified to add to the scholarly works, be they historical, economic, sociological, or otherwise. My purpose with this blog entry is merely to offer a perspective on China that can be gleaned only by going there and experiencing how China is embracing and manifesting capitalism.

Ironically, our story begins with Western sickness. One of the people on our tour got sick, and she had to go to the hospital. Our tour guide explained this to us, adding that she had to pay for her care, in advance, as is customary in China.

At that, our jaws collectively dropped. Ever the provocateur, I said, incredulous, "You mean the hospital wouldn't treat her before they knew she had the money to pay for her treatment?!" (Much to the wife's chagrin, throughout the tour I seized every opportunity to ask Chinese people, through a guy on the tour who spoke Chinese, how they felt about Mao.)

The tour guide nodded, explaining: "Yes. In fact, because insurance is in its infancy in China, patients don't just automatically get treated--like they do in the U.S. You have to prove you have the money for treatment before a doctor will treat you." Whereupon he proceeded to tell us a story about a woman from his village, pregnant with twins, who prematurely went into labor.

Her family took her 30 miles to the nearest hospital, her condition deteriorating as each mile passed. When she arrived at the hospital, she was in bad shape (typical Chinese understatement). The family did not bring money and so could not prove they were able to pay for her treatment.

She died unattended in a hospital hallway. The twins died in her womb.

Imagine such a thing happening in the U.S., where treatment is BY LAW provided regardless of ability to pay. Not so in China, where capitalism in its purest, rawest form is manifested every day.