4.8—China and its Neighbors Today

1. 4.8—China and its Neighbors Today

2. Vocabulary • Single-party state—a country in which one political party controls the government

3. “Communist” China • As we learned on Tuesday, China is a “communist” country in that the government used to own everything. However, it has been selling things it owns off—factories, farms and businesses—to individual producers and consumers over the years, so it’s not really appropriate to call it a communist country anymore. • However, the Communist Party—the group of people that took over China in 1949—still rules the country. China has elections, but only people from the Communist Party are allowed to run. We call this kind of government a single-party state. Other political parties are outlawed.

4. “Communist” China

5. Non-Communist “China”--Taiwan • When Mao Zedong took over China in 1949, the leaders of the old Republic of China fled to an island off of the coast of the country. That island was then referred to as Formosa, but is today known as Taiwan. • Taiwan used to be a dictatorship, like China, but was never communist. It has always had a market economy. In the past 20 or 30 years, however, Taiwan has become more democratic, and unlike China is considered a multi-party state. • China and Taiwan do not get along one another—each claims it owns the other country—but no war breaks out because the United States is an ally of Taiwan and has promised to protect it from Chinese attack.

6. China and “China”

7. Vocabulary • Wage—money people are paid for work • Life expectancy—the number of years people live on average in a given area • Illiterate—not being able to read and write

8. China: Developed or Developing? • There is a large gap in the standards of living for people living in China depending on whether they live in rural or urban areas. • If all you ever saw of China was its urban areas, you would probably assume it to be a developed country. The wages of people living in urban areas, while low, have grown dramatically in recent years. People living in rural areas, however, either have very low wages or make no money at all and farm to feed themselves for a living. • China has built thousands of factories to make things to sell to the rest of the world, including electronics, clothing, toys, etc. These farms have made the factory owners (either the government or private producers) very wealthy, and by providing jobs to people have raised the standard of living for city-dwellers as well.

9. Urban China

10. Rural China • The Communist Party has focused on developing China’s urban areas—that’s why they have higher wages and overall higher standards of living. • Rural China, on the other hand, has been ignored by the government for a variety of reasons. There, life expectancy is much lowed than in cities—as much as 10-15 years lower—and between 20-40% of the population is still illiterate, compared to only 4 or 5 percent in cities. • Worse yet, rural China has suffered more from the one-child policy, as poor farmers need more people to grow more crops, so these people need more kids than the government has allowed.

11. Rural China

12. China: Developed or Developing? • The gap between the standards of living of rural and urban China is getting wider, not narrower—every year city-dwellers do better, while people in rural areas either don’t do any better or things get worse. • How would you categorize China: as developed, developing, or something else? Why? • What would you guess is the effect on this gap on migration inside China? What about emigration?

13. Vocabulary • Hydroelectricity—electricity made by water power

14. Natural Resources and the Environment • As we have discussed, China is a large country—large enough that most of the natural resources it needs are located inside the country, and few resources have to be imported. • However, China faces a significant environmental problem: it needs a lot of electricity for its 1.3 billion people, and the consumption of fossil fuels has made Chinese cities incredibly polluted. For this reason, China has been looking for sources of clean, renewable energy to solve its electricity and pollution problems. • One example of this search is the Three Gorges Dam, built between 1994 and 2009. It is the largest hydroelectric dam on Earth, and provides much clean energy to China. It has caused some other problems of its own, however:

15. Video! The Three Gorges Dam

16. Assignment On a separate sheet of paper, answer the “Chart Skills” questions on pages 639, 641 and 643.