Book review: Tiger Head, Snake Tails

Tiger Head, Snake Tails - China today, how it got there and where it is heading
Simon & Schuster UK
2012
432 pages


In his 1776 work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith observed that “China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous, countries in the world.” At the time of his writing this, it was an apposite summary of one of the great civilisations of mankind. Smith went on to write that “It seems, however, to have been long stationary.” Not so now. Today, the rise of China has become perhaps the dominant narrative of our time. In his superb new book, Tiger Head, Snake Tails, Jonathan Fenby has given us an intelligent and informative handbook on contemporary China, ably explaining its political, economic, social and geopolitical intricacies.

Such a panoramic and all-encompassing work might risk drowning in superlatives, but in Fenby’s hands they help bring this complex country to life. Many we are already familiar with. At 1.37 billion people, the People’s Republic comprises a fifth of humanity. The People’s Liberation Army has 2.28 million active troops, easily surpassing the 1.58 million of the United States. Half a billion people have been lifted out of poverty as a result of significant economic reforms first initiated in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping, the largest increase in material gain history has ever seen. It is the world’s third largest country and second largest economy, with almost all predicting it will surpass the United States by roughly 2020; some think even earlier. It is the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter. In 2009 the PRC contributed to more than half of the world’s total economic growth. It sits on monetary reserves amounting to some $3.2 trillion. It is the largest emitter on greenhouse gases.

This book is bursting with other such statistics, ones that begin to tease out a different yet equally compelling portrait of China. 35 million Chinese people are learning to play the piano. China produces 6 billion condoms a year, and state media report there are around 13 million abortions. There are more blind people in the PRC than there are people in Denmark. 54.6 million are illiterate. China executes more people every year than any other, with 68 crimes punishable by death. And so on.

One of the great merits of Mr. Fenby’s book, however, is to go a very great way in challenging – or at least helping us re-evaluate – some of the lazy assumptions about, and attitudes towards, modern China. Unquestionably it is an economic powerhouse and driver of global growth, but it faces unprecedented short- and long-term challenges, be they social, political or economic. While we can acknowledge that hundreds of millions have seen their personal incomes grow and economic opportunities expand, 100 million still remain in grinding poverty; this figure grows to 250 million if we apply the UN standard of $1.25 a day. The author relates that the wealth gap in China is more pronounced than anywhere in Europe. China’s Gini coefficient – the standard measure of income inequality – is 0.47, “a level generally taken as the point at which social unrest becomes a threat.” This explains in part the 150,000 popular protests China experiences every year, many of them drawing thousands of people, taking to the streets against endemic corruption and pronounced inequality.

This book also gives a far more substantial portrait of the Chinese economy than contemporary accounts of a seemingly unstoppable economic juggernaut might attest. Granted, per-capita GDP in China about thirty years ago was roughly 4 per cent that of the United States; now it is just under 20 per cent. GDP has grown by a factor of ten. But, for one, the U.S. and China have been locked in something of a currency war, with the former frequently raising concerns – or great annoyance – at the latter’s apparent manipulation of their currency. The economic (and, for that matter, the political) system is uncompetitive; growth to a large extent is built on a dependence on property construction, investment and exports; Mr. Fenby documents great swathes of unused property across the country. Any sort of boom and bust could leave the Chinese with zombie banks. Graver still, the economy as a whole is deleteriously unbalanced, a reality conceded by many CCP bigwigs in their interminably long speeches. Corruption, bribery, fraud, graft and smuggling are entrenched and endemic. Corner-cutting on grand infrastructure projects invites danger. Mr. Fenby alarmingly suggests that, when a high-speed train crashed in July 2011, the reported death toll of 39 was chosen by state media quite deliberately – investigations only apply to those accidents resulting in forty or more casualties.

Another great challenge facing China in the future is demographic. Slamming the brakes on natural population growth through the wheeze of a one child policy has resulted in an unbalanced demography in China. The average fertility rate for mothers in the United States is two children per family; in China it is roughly 1.5., but in some areas, such as Shanghai, that number collapses to just 0.5. This then reverberates through the system. The balance between the generations has become unstable (and perhaps even unsustainable); this is coupled in many areas with a marked gender imbalance. Such demographic problems will likely mean both social unrest and hamstrung economic and financial growth in the future.

Though no such work can truly capture the diversity and complexity of such a multifaceted country as China, Tiger Head, Snake Tails is as good a primer as one could hope for. Sweeping statements and generalisations from other commentators have proved unhelpful in helping us analyse contemporary China. No such narratives – whether they are China v America, China as the new Japan, China as the rising red dragon, and so on – are really borne out by the facts, or are quickly made redundant because of their timescales. Better then, as Mr. Fenby advises, to properly observe the many snake tails below the great head of the tiger.