Why Many in China Sympathize With Occupy Wall Street

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/10/why-many-in-china-sympathise-with-occupy-wall-street/247356/

Back in the land of Internet freedom. One thing that struck me on this last trip to China was the repeated questions I received about how to interpret the "Occupy Wall Street" movement in the U.S. The Chinese interlocutors weren't asking out of a sense of schadenfreude. Well, only the Chinese version of the Global Times gleefully emblazoned its front page with the predictable headline "Anti-Capitalism Shakes the World". No, they seemed to be inquiring out of a sense of concern for their own lot.

That's because unlike the "Arab Spring," the "We are the 99 percent" movement isn't about revolution or regime change, but about contesting a system that seems less fair than imagined and less equal than ought to be. It doesn't take much for many Chinese to see parallels in their own socioeconomic conditions, where vast and unsustainable inequality is probably the leading potential destabilizing factor facing the country. Everyone from those in the middle-class to cab drivers feel viscerally this sense of inequality or unfairness. I had a highly educated government think tanker ask me if I thought it was fair that someone like herself, who would be considered an "elite" in any society, can't foresee how she can afford an apartment -- a common question these days. And it's not simply the existing gap in wealth and equality, it's that large swathes of the population -- migrant workers for example -- literally cannot see a path by which they can plausibly join the ranks of elite urban society. This will be the crux of the challenge in absorbing another 300 million or so people -- equivalent to the entire United States -- into Chinese cities over the coming decades.

An illustration of the plight of the rural Chinese bumpkin/semi-migrant is captured in this essay that is apparently circulating the Chinese blogosphere (h/t to China Hush; Chinese version here). It is from someone who has "made it" into the elite world to which she/he aspired. The account is highly effective, and resembles the personalized stories that proliferate the "we are the 99 percent" website -- it is titled "I fought for 18 years to have a cup of coffee with you":

[DonCoquixote]

1. a sad quote from the article

"During a macro-economics class, a classmate attacked blue collar workers who'd been laid off, and unemployed high school dropouts: "80% of them are where they are because they don't work hard. They chose not to specialize in something when they were young, so they can't get jobs now! Those kids are perfectly capable of studying and working. I've heard that a lot of students use their holidays to make thousands to pay their tuition." You can't find a person who knows less about the struggles of rural China than this classmate of mine"

It sounds like America, in all the wrong ways.

[Marazinia]

2. It's Fear

It's fear. The middle class always fears the poor. What stops them and makes them think differently is to ask them what will happen if every poor person does go to school, study, and get a good, white collar job?

Who will grow the food?

Who will clean the toilets?

Who will make the cars and run the power plants and do all the other dirty, dangerous, and low paying jobs that the middle class doesn't want to do?

Then ask why the people who do those jobs are kept poor, without proper healthcare, housing, or any comforts in life. What right do the middle class have to mistreat those who do the necessary work that the middle class doesn't want to do?