China is one of the biggest countries in the world and has the most number of people in a single country. Today, China is divided in to two regions, the main region which is People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China which is commonly known as Taiwan. China is one of the countries that have the oldest civilization and richest culture in the world.
Even today, Chinese still use the language that was developed six millennia ago.The People’s Republic of China, an Asian country, has an underestimated population of 1. billion people as of 2003 (National Bureau of Statistics, 2003). It has the largest in the world and the target of different industries, each hoping to get even a small percentage of its buying population. Because China had the largest population, four from the world’s greatest inventions were Chinese. These inventions were paper, compass, printing and gun powder (Peterson 2002).
This paper will try to analyze the social and economic situation of the country as well the problems being encountered by Chine in the socio and economic aspect.But before the paper goes to the social and economic problems side, it is better to discuss a brief description of China and relate these descriptions to the social and economic status of the said country. The geography of China is mostly plateaus and mountains. The country has also land for agricultural purposes. China is one of the leading exporters of rice in the world. Because of the vast land area of China, it can provide rice for its own citizen as well to other countries.The climate in this country has many variations from different places. The north part of China has an ambient temperature of more than 300C, the central part has a temperate temperature with very hot summer and winter and the south part has a tropical season with very hot summer and placid winter (Peterson 2002).
The culture of China will also be examined because it has to deal with the current social and economic situation of the country. Confucianism is the most wide used philosophy in the country.The culture of China was molded through the teachings of the Confucius philosophy. Social problems of China Social instability has relation with poor economic performance of a country. When a country like China is experiencing poor economic growth, the result will lead to the citizen of a given country will have social unrest.
Some of the problems that are accounted with social unrest are rallies, riots, strikes, demonstrations, and protests. Studies had been conducted to determine the social instability of China in the year 2006.From 1993 to 2004, the number of incidence that was collected by the study regarding on the increase of social unrest incidence of China were from 8,700 to 74,000. This is a huge increase because it happened between ten years only.
Another significant increase in the number of incidence in connection with the social unrest is the increase in public mass disturbance with an increase of 6% from 2005 to 2006. This was reported by Ministry of Public Security of the country (Minzner 2007).Because of the current situation of the country in social instability, many concerned citizen had addressed these problems to the parliament institution and authorities to make actions that will lessen the social instability of China as the social unrest which is the main effect of social instability. The issue regarding on the situation of China had been noticed by other countries. As noted by an American academic (Minzner 2007), “By the early 21st century, social unrest had become a normal feature of Chinese society. ” But what are the causes why many Chinese go to social disturbances?The main reason why there are such mass protest is the conflict between two clans or ethnic groups while other do mass disturbances because they are not satisfied on the way the government manage the country or the government performance is not well done. The masses, which are composed mainly by the society of China, are not satisfied on uplifting their current situation thus they will inform the government on their current bad situation by making mass rallies and riots.
They believe that they have the power to force the government to make necessary actions that will raise them in poverty.China is also known to be a corrupt country. Many of its citizens are aware of this situation and their only action that will stop corruption in the government is by doing rallies in the street and mass disturbance.
Unions of workers are the key players in this case. Many Chinese workers are experiencing official corruption, excessive taxation, unpaid back wages, and inadequate compensation. Forced urban demolitions caused also the increase of social grievances. The government of China also manipulated the legal procedures and do not follow the standards set by the Justice department of the said country (Minzner 2007).The problems of the social instability of China and the citizen discontent regarding these issues reflects a range of problems, including ongoing economic transitions, weak legal protections for citizen rights, and a limited social security net for the poor and disadvantaged. From the given causes of social problems of China, economic instability is considered as one of the main factor that affects it.
Economic problems of China There are many that were conducted to determine the economic basis of China on the social unrest on the said country.Albert Keidel who made the research on 2005 on the effects of economy to social unrest in China proposed two hypotheses that will lead to its conclusion. The first hypothesis of Keidel was the impact of many economic reforms that were done to the country. This includes market-based modernization. Many were discontented on what the government of China made. And the second basis of Keidel on the dissatisfaction of many Chinese regarding on the economy problem of China was the widespread enterprise and malfeasance supplement.Even tough the country is now experiencing an economic growth for the past few years; still the number of incidence of social discontent did not decreased (Keidel 2005).
But what is the current situation of the economy of China? The study also included the current situation of the economy of China. The wages of the most workers of China are experiencing low and not paid wages. The large population of China greatly affects the economic performance as well the social unrest of the Chinese people.Because of the fast growing population, the country leads degradation of land and resources, pollution, and detrimental living conditions.
The country is now experiencing labor shortage because many Chinese decided to go to other countries where they will be paid on higher wages. Once such article printed in the New York Times in April, reported that labor shortages are pushing up wages making Chinese-made products less of a bargain. It reported that international manufactures are already talking about moving their factories to lower-cost countries like Vietnam.