An emerging Chinese model, implication and development of Bangladesh Rajesh Sikder Ph.D. Student China Agricultural University Beijing, P.R. China Email: raj@cau.edu.cn An Emerging Chinese Model China’s development model: The 30th anniversary of China’s reform has been a catalyst for reflection on China’s development experience. The global financial dislocation has heightened this interest. Among the international development community, questions are being asked about the significance of China’s rise for low income countries, for poverty reduction and the delivery of global public goods. There is much to learn from China’s experience, but a unique combination of features makes the search for a ‘model’ or for lessons to extrapolate an elusive one. China’s rise also brings a major challenge to the traditional development community which needs to understand China’s motivations, rooted as they are in its domestic development strategy; and to adapt to China’s presence in low income economies and the alternative development paths it offers. According to Sarah Cook1 what China has achieved was unimaginable thirty years ago, even to the architects of reform. Throughout this period, the leadership has pursued a trilogy of objectives - reform and opening, development, and stability, with stability remaining at the core, the key determinant of the sequence and speed of reforms – when to push ahead and when to retreat. The Party-state leadership has shown responsiveness to innovations that work, allowing space for variation in policy implementation suited to local conditions, moving ahead in small steps but stopping to evaluate and if necessary take a step back if Party control and stability are threatened. These processes are found in reforms starting with the decollectivisation of agriculture and establishment of Special Economic Zones, to the dismantling of state-owned enterprises, relaxations on labour mobility, expanding civil society and personal freedoms, and the reconstruction of a social welfare system more suited to a market economy. Policy interventions respond to specific problems at various points in the process. Where threats of social or political instability are perceived, the leadership tightens central controls or reins back on reform – as for example in the response to the student demonstrations of 1989; in limiting the spread of direct elections beyond village level; and in the constraints placed on autonomous ‘civil society’ associations or other collective forms of organising or protest. Due to its complicated ancient and modern history, the Chinese way or China model of development has to be sophisticated, which help make our perceptions much more sophisticated than the black-white dichotomy of liberty against tyranny or democracy against authoritarianism. China model consists of four sub-systems, they are:  a unique way of social organization,  a unique way of developing its economy,  a unique way of government, and ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 Sarah Cook is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Univesity of Sussex, UK. 1  a unique outlook on the world. As many China specialists already find, the way with which the Chinese society is organized is rather different from those in the West. That is to say, the state-society dichotomy does not apply. Instead, the state is not the kind of state we often see in the West, and the society is not organized in terms of civil societies. The state and societies are intermingled with each other, penetrated by each other into an entity or many entities like waves of concentric circles. The Chinese economy is rather difficult to classify: it’s neither an American kind of liberal market economy, nor a social market economy of European kind. And of course, it is not a Stalinist command economy. It’s an economy with free markets of labor, and free markets of commodities and very soon, of capital flow. The market competitions are so intense that everywhere we see fraud and fakes, like those in the U.S. in its early years of industrialization. On the other hand, we see the state’s very determined intervention in the use of land and natural resources, as well as a few very strong state enterprises, banks, and research institutions, levering domestic and overseas competitions. Are there other options for China, like American way, European way, or the Soviet way? I have to say no, China has to be like this. This model grows out of the trials of error, and will not change simply because other nations dislike it. As is also seen, China’s outlook on the world affairs is rather different from the Western ones. China may or may not consider its socio-economic-political system as superior to others; it does not matter at all. What really matters, in China’s traditional and modern outlook, is to live in peace and harmony with others. China as a driver of global change The extent of China’s impact on the global economy has been widely documented. The size and rapid growth of China, together with its increasing assertiveness, represent a challenge to the established order. If current growth rates are projected forward a further 20 years, and if the rapid growth of India and the other Asian economies are put into the equation, then clearly we are witnessing a fundamental shift in power centers in the global economy, with its consequences for global governance. China’s impact on the world economy has been both rapid and remarkably broad:  The Chinese economy accounted for 2.9% of global income in 1978, reached 4.7% of global income in 2004 and is predicted to reach 7.9% by 2020. Comparing China’s growth process with other success stories in history (such as the United States, United Kingdom and Germany), Winter and Yusuf conclude that ‘‘In terms of an expanding share of world output, China’s growth spurt has been much greater than any other yet seen’’ (Winters & Yusuf, 2007, p. 6). It is not China’s rate of growth which is unprecedented, but rather the size of its economy, which means that its impact is much greater than the previous rapidly-growing Asian economies—Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. 2   China contributed 28% to the increase of global GDP during 1990–2005 (the United States: 19%; Rest of OECD: 18%). If rapid growth is maintained, it is estimated that China could account for 37% of global GDP increase during 2005–20—more than all the OECD countries together (Dollar, 2007). The OECD Economic Survey of China predicted that it will overtake Germany and the United States to become the world’s largest exporter by 2010 (reported in the press, 17 Sept 2005). China is producing major shifts in global financial flows and in worldwide trade and investment patterns. The question, ‘‘What does the rise of China mean for my country?,’’ is gaining importance around the world (Winters & Yusuf, 2007, p. 1) Implication for the development of Bangladesh: Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has praised the Bangladesh development Model, saying that the steady development Bangladesh achieved through ideas like micro-credit and its economic policies particularly in agriculture production has brought peace and stability to the country. The principal goal of the Bangladesh Government’s development vision is to eliminate poverty and inequality by raising the standard of living of its population through providing them with food, employment, education and health services. To achieve this goal, the government prepared and implemented PRSP, NSAPR (National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction) 1 and 2. The government has also adopted a long term vision for the development of the country which will be reflected in the long term Perspective Plan (2010-2021), under preparation by the government. In the light of the long term vision, the government has identified five priority areas for medium term action: (i) maintenance of macroeconomic stability and control over commodity price hike in the face of the present global economic crisis; (ii) effective action against corruption; (iii) sufficiency in power and energy; (iv) elimination of poverty and inequality; and (v) establishment of good governance. Bangladesh has made significant progress towards attaining the MDGs by 2015. Bangladesh has successfully achieved gender parity in primary and secondary education. The country is on track to achieve the targets of halving the proportion of people living below the poverty line and suffering from hunger, net enrolment ratio in primary education, and reduction of child mortality. There are some lagging areas like primary school completion rate, adult literacy rate, access to safe drinking water by the rural people, and maternal mortality ratio which indicate the need for sustained government efforts and generous donor support. To improve governance, the Government, over the last few years, has undertaken some incremental steps towards reform in five core areas. These are: (i) improving public expenditure and financial management; (ii) reforming public administration; (iii) strengthening revenue mobilization; (iv) establishing an independent Anti-corruption Commission, Election Commission and reforming Public Service Commission; and (v) separating Judiciary from Executive branch and reforming the civil justice system. Over the last few years, Bangladesh has made improvements in key human development indicators. According to human development report of the UNDP released on October 2009, 3 Bangladesh ranked 146 among 182 UN member states with the human development index score of 0.543 which is + 0.008 points than the previous index. Bangladesh is among the countries which are considered to have achieved medium human development. The country has made substantial progress towards universal primary education. School enrolment rate is now around 92 per cent. Proportion of male and female education is 48.6:49.1. Literacy rate is 52 per cent. Gender disparity in education has been reduced through implementation of female stipend programme during 1990s and 2000s in the secondary level. This has increased the number of girls in the secondary education which has now become more than 50 per cent. The government has introduced stipend programme in the primary and the higher secondary levels also. Infant mortality has been reduced to 43 per one thousand births in 2009 which was 66 in 2000. Life expectancy on average is 67 years. Deadly diseases (e.g; HIV/AIDS) are very minimal. The government has taken steps for prevention of HIV AIDS through various motivational programmes. Malaria and tuberculosis is almost under control and the incidence has been reduced. References: Winters, L. A., & Yusuf, S. (2007). Introduction: Dancing with giants. In L. A. Winters, & S. Yusuf (Eds.). Competing with giants: Who wins, who loses? (pp. 1–25). Washington, DC: World Bank Dollar, D. (2007). Asian century or multipolar century? Paper presented at the Global Development Network Annual Conference, Beijing (January). Website http://findarticles.com/p/articles/tn_bus/?qt=Bangladesh UN site: http://www.un.org/wcm/webdav/site/ldc/shared/Bangladesh.pdf 4