Pei- China Is Paying the Price of Rising Social Unrest

China is facing increased social unrest. Social tensions are rising because China is trying to become competitive (or more competitive) in the global market, which is not a simple task. As the government tries to change policies, those policies effect different groups of people, and those people protest the policies. But the government in Beijing is unwilling to address all those problems, which has led to an "unresponsive authoritarian political system with few pressure valves." There is a lot of corruption, which is not a new problem for the Chinese government, for example, when Mao first instituted communist reforms to the Chinese economy, the surplus products of labor were not divided equally because they were distributed according to who contributed more originally, meaning that more wealthy peasants still came out ahead of the less well off peasants.

The economy has also always been a volatile factor that the Chinese government has fought to control. The first communist economic controls instituted in the 1950s led to major famines from 1959-1962 (Guthrie, pg 34). More recently, the extremely fast economic growth rate that China has had for the past couple decades is causing other social strains because the problems that come from that level of growth are being ignored: "environmental degradation, a collapsing public health system and neglect for the poor," to name a few. These problems that stem from economic growth are the root of most of the social unrest that China is feeling. In order for the social unrest to be lessened, the government needs to be willing to compromise on some economic aspects, a course of action that an authoritarian government is not inclined to take.