Nice NYT piece on dangers of inequality inside China
Monday, February 11, 2013 at 9:20AM 
Appears in NYT Opinionator blog after print edition. Writer is former Singaporean reporter/photojournalist.
Part of a series on inequality.
A snippet:
With the “rats” and “ants,” the trash collectors, cobblers and couriers, it took time to build rapport and trust. But it was even harder to get wealthy Chinese — perhaps like rich people everywhere — to open up. Most live in gated, guarded communities on the outskirts of the city, and socialize behind closed doors. A few months ago, I was granted rare permission to photograph inside an exclusive club in Beijing for high rollers, and only at a party where some members were in costume.
The migrant workers and the poor mostly accept that life is unfair, at least for now.
“There is no difference between me and the people who live in the posh condominium above,” Zhuang Qiuli, 27, a “rat tribe” pedicurist who lived in a basement apartment, told me in Beijing. “We wear the same clothes and have the same hairstyles. The only difference is we cannot see the sun. In a few years, when I have money, I will also live upstairs.”
I was just struck by the sun reference. Other big driver in China is, of course, the pollution, which is why, on many days, nobody gets to see the sun.
As always, the similarities to the populism of the Second Industrial Revolution in the US are striking.
Reader Comments (4)
Big difference being the Chinese have a lot more at stake in the environmental side of the needed changes. After decades of the one-child policy, every young person killed or crippled by pollution or other problems is a threat to their future prosperity.
The big shots may be figuring this out, too. Most or all of the coverage on this week's LinkAsia was from Chinese TV stations along this very theme.
In many ways China looks to be heading back to the future. The description of such a chasim seperating the classes, echos past dynasties where privledged Mandarins curried favors as they lorded over the masses. China's move to foster nationalism might be a move to deflect anger away from the pampered few, and towards the hated Japanese. One other driver is this from The Atlantic, profiling the poor marriage chances for many Chinese men. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/chinas-new-bachelor-class/273040/
I know by personal experience during visits, of seeing high preformance cars with government licence plates, speeding against traffic on busy city streets, with a twenty-something Rayban glassed dandy behind the wheel. Never once did I ever see anyone challenge them for blowing red lights or forcing others off the road.
Access to the sun a measure of status? It is menacing how closely parts of our world that I can now walk through resemble the fictional cityscape depicted on-screen in Blade Runner. The future truly is old.
What seems to upset people most is not wealth per se, but wealth acquired through connections to the government and without any other real qualifications.