China spans globalization's wealth and poverty

pic here

Trudy Rubin op-ed in Miami Herald via WPR's Media Roundup.

Notion that China contains all four "worlds" of globalization.

I've typically tried to capture this notion by saying that, to make America China's true demographic/economic equivalent, you'd have to invite all of the Western Hemisphere, plus most of Sub-Saharan Africa to come and live inside our territory (we are roughly the same geographic size as China at 9.5m square kilometers).  That way you'd have quite a chunk of rich people, a big middle class, and a huge impoverished rural population.  

Oh, and to make it like China, you have to keep America's pop distro still overwhelmingly concentrated along the coastlines--as it is today.

Rubin leverages the notion of multiple worlds from a Chinese academic (Hu Angang), who says China's "first world" are the coastal cities, and its "second world" is a somewhat affluent belt just inside the coastal line.

That combo makes up about 300m of China's 1.3B.

The "third" and "fourth" worlds are just belts that exist farther inland, with the impoverished western provinces accounting for the bulk of China's most impoverished--and most Muslim and most restive.

So it's a series of north-south bands; the farther in you go, the poorer it becomes.

Old chart, but you get the notion.

Point being, when you think of China, be impressed with the first and second worlds along the coast, but remember that a billion Chinese are still to join that party--by and large.

Thus, China doesn't exactly buy into the notion of being our economic peer--just yet, and really won't have that mindset for a long time. It will also justify all manner of mercantilism and protectionism and tough trading on the basis of needing to make economic development spread inland.  

Without it, the Party fears the growing inequality inside China will tear the place apart.