Question:
On Wednesday, 11/13/2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping stated, "China will move forward with reforms to address problems in the economy, but such reforms require careful planning and cannot be achieved overnight." Chinese television quoted Xi as saying, "Reforms are a means to solve China's current problems..." This came at the conclusion of a four-day meeting held by the Chinese leadership starting Saturday, 11/9/2013. This meeting occurred after seven explosions took place on November 6, 2013, at a regional headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party—the ruling party in China. This incident happened one week after a car plowed into a group of pedestrians and caught fire on a street near Tiananmen Square, the major public square in Beijing which is considered the symbolic heart of the Chinese capital. The question is: We used to hear that the Chinese economy was at its peak, so what does it mean for the Chinese leadership to meet to address economic problems? Furthermore, is there a connection between the explosions and the meeting of Chinese officials to discuss economic matters? May Allah reward you with goodness.
Answer:
Yes, there is a connection, even though China, as is its habit, was quick to say: "The government blamed those it described as Islamic extremists." This is done to divert attention from the faltering economic situation that is driving the Chinese people, especially in rural areas and the heart of the country, toward misery and hardship, thereby pushing them toward violent protest to draw the state's attention to their economic suffering.
These events are considered part of a fundamental trend indicating that China faces deep internal problems that will affect the management of its foreign policy abroad. In 2005, China dealt with 87,000 cases of "social unrest," including general disturbances, demonstrations, and civil disputes. In 2010, there were 180,000 protests, riots, and other mass incidents in China, meaning that protests are on the rise.
The Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in China, which were the primary driver of China's rapid growth, were all established on the eastern coast of China. Everything produced by their production lines is loaded onto ships and exported to the world. As a result, the coastal region became linked to the global economy and witnessed most of China's rapid growth. It also created a new generation of elites, all at the expense of the rest of China. Most of China remains heavily agricultural, with little infrastructure and living in poverty. According to a global study on wealth distribution conducted by the Boston Consulting Group in 2008, only 0.2% of China's population controls 70% of China's wealth. The impact of this poor distribution of wealth is compounded by physical abuse, imprisonment, lax labor laws, very low wages, and the Chinese government's failure to attend to the economic needs of the majority of the population.
China's economic model, which relies on low wages and high foreign exports, is now faltering; the 2008 global economic crisis fully exposed this. A number of experts consider the Chinese economy to be in big trouble. Nobel laureate and economist Paul Krugman said: "The signs are now unmistakable: China is in big trouble. We’re not talking about a minor setback, but something more fundamental. The country’s whole way of doing business, the economic system that has overseen three decades of unbelievable growth, has reached its limit. You could say that the Chinese model is about to hit its Great Wall, and the only question now is just how bad the crash will be." (Hitting China's Wall, Paul Krugman, New York Times, July 18, 2013). Stratfor stated: "Major shifts underway in the Chinese economy that Stratfor has predicted and discussed for years have now caught the attention of the mainstream media. Many have asked when China would find itself in an economic crisis, and we have answered that China entered the crisis a short while ago—a fact not widely recognized outside China, and particularly not here in the United States. A crisis can exist before it is recognized. The recognition of a crisis is a critical moment because that is when most others begin to change their behavior in response to the crisis. The question we have been asking is when the Chinese economic crisis would finally become an accepted reality, such that global dynamics change." (Recognizing the End of the Chinese Economic Miracle, Stratfor, July 23, 2013).
In the last ten years, China has begun to follow the capitalist approach to economic growth, which posits that the measure of economic recovery depends on the volume of production without regard for distribution. If production increases, it means the economy is strong and advanced, even if it all goes to a small group while the rest of the people live in hardship. That is, the focus is on increasing production rather than on the justice of distribution. If China continues on this hybrid path of Communism and Capitalism, it will suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union, which collapsed when it tried to mix Communism and Capitalism. It became like the crow that tried to imitate the walk of other birds; it could not do it and forgot its own walk! This is what could happen to China... unless it realizes the source of the danger and addresses it.
China can survive this crisis by shifting away from its reliance on this hybrid economy and moving its focus away from high exports toward domestic demand from its own people and meeting their needs. Otherwise, 948 million of China's 1.3 billion residents will continue to live on less than $5 a day. Wealth will remain concentrated in a small group that exploits the energy of poor workers, making the satisfaction of the majority's needs unattainable. Production will be dominated by a few people who export it abroad, showing growth in production but an increase in poverty for most people's lives, which drives protest and unrest. Zhou Xiaozheng, a senior professor at the Institute of Law and Sociology at Renmin University in China, explained the true reality in China, saying: "Don't forget that China's current success is based on 300 million people exploiting a billion cheap-wage workers. The unfair judicial system and the unjust distribution of wealth make the challenges even greater."
China must not follow in the footsteps of the capitalist West by attributing every protest and disturbance to "Islamic extremism" instead of searching for the roots of its hybrid economic crisis that relies on increasing and exporting production. This increases the volume of production, but the maldistribution worsens, the poor multiply, and consequently, protests increase. We warn China that if it continues with this "Communo-Capitalist" economic policy, it will follow the Soviet Union and become a thing of the past.
We have not told China "implement Islam and you will be happy," because this implementation first requires the Islamic aqeedah (creed), which they do not possess. However, we tell them not to imitate the capitalist West by focusing on increasing production without improving distribution to meet the needs of the majority of the population who are covered in poverty. Otherwise, an increase in protests is expected due to the worsening economic and intellectual situation, and not because of so-called "Islamic extremism" as promoted by the West. The claim of Islamic extremism falls under the category of political accusations; it is a preemptive move to deflect the serious accusation against China for its occupation of East Turkestan with iron and fire. But all these deceptions, all this cunning, and the twisting of facts will not make Muslims forget China's occupation of Turkestan. Rather, it will, by the will of Allah, return sooner or later to the Islamic Ummah.
وَلَتَعْلَمُنَّ نَبَأَهُ بَعْدَ حِينٍ
"And you will surely know [the truth of] its information after a time." (QS Sad [38]: 88)