Crisis Management

China’s record of 30 years of 10% annual GDP growth creates an illusion of continuity. In fact, its political and economic systems have endured a series of dramatic crises that threatened to undermine or reinvent the China model, but instead, reinforced the boom. “Reform and opening” itself was born out of the CCP’s legitimacy crisis following the death of Mao Zedong, and early reforms were justified by the need to rapidly catch up with East Asia's newly industrialized countries. The Tiananmen crisis of 1989 initially triggered state repression, but ultimately led to a renewed burst of marketization and privatization. The East Asian financial crisis of 1997-8 reinforced Bejing’s caution about fully opening its financial system, but also spurred even greater foreign trade, and foreign exchange reserve accumulation, in the 2000s. The global downturn of 2008-9 exposed China’s structural imbalance, but massive stimulus spending and a cheap currency allowed China to export its way through the downturn, once again giving policy-makers confidence that each crisis was an opportunity to advance the China boom.

People Who Fall Behind Will Be Beaten

Period: Emancipation

An Opportunity to Question the Whole Existing System Luo Yan People Who Fall Behind Will Be Beaten Cai Guoqiang China's Opacity Protected it from Crisis John Bussey No Dispensation from The Laws of Economics Stephen Roach Share

Cai Guoqiang Artist Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China, and lives and works in New York. He studied stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute from 1981 to 1985 and attended the Institute for Contemporary Art National and International Studio Program at P.S. 1 in New York. His work is both scholarly and politically charged. Accomplished in a variety of media, Cai began using gunpowder in his work to foster spontaneity and confront the controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China. While living in Japan from 1986 to 1995 he explored the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, leading to the development of his signature explosion events. These projects, while poetic and ambitious at their core, aim to establish an exchange between viewers and the larger universe. Since September 11th he has reflected upon his use of explosives both as metaphor and material. “Why is it important,” he asks, “to make these violent explosions beautiful? Because the artist, like an alchemist, has the ability to transform certain energies, using poison against poison, using dirt and getting gold.” Click to expand collapse transcript So, at that time, the Chinese government made a big move, and that was to announce that people who fall behind will be beaten. This slogan was posted everywhere, it was an acknowledgement that China was behind, to awaken the Chinese people to the enormous economic development and technology gap between China and the West, to face a hard reality, that China was still being beaten. Because China was beaten, for 100 years, beaten by the Eight Allied Forces, beaten by Japan, beaten so badly that a lot of people embraced socialism. Because, finally, we could rule our own country, the country was peaceful, there was no foreign troops living inside this country. Whenever we look at Japan, we think its economy is well developed, but there are still American forces stationed there, and the same was true of Taiwan. So, Chinese people were very proud of this point. So, for the government to announce this distance between China's technological and economic development in this manner, using the slogan "people who fall behind will be beaten," was something that really woke up a lot of ordinary people in China. Add New Comment comments powered by Disqus

Cite this Source >> “People Who Fall Behind Will Be Beaten | Cai Guoqiang | The China Boom Project.” The China Boom Project. The Asia Society Center on US-China Relations. 1 June 2010. Web. 07 December 2024. <https://chinaboom.asiasociety.org/thread/40/117>. Related Essay Watch a film about Cai Guo-Qiang's latest gunpowder painting, Odyssey, at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.>> Map the interviews Click on the map to see where inteviews took place