By Monika Weidner, Poly Prep High School
Participant of the China Project 1999
Introduction
Begin a brief discussion with students about why the 20th Century is called "The
American Century." Have students read the following news articles as an
introduction to some of the current issues with regard to changes China
Student Readings
"The Chinese Century?" Earth Times Daily, December 1999
"The New China" Junior Scholastic, Sept. 20, 1999
Advanced Reading
"A Survey of China", The Economist. April 8, 2000
Project
Thematic Journals: Will the 21st Century Be the Chinese Century?
Students will keep a "current events" journal throughout the quarter in which
they will enter clipped news articles, editorials, and photos that relate to
the central question, "Will the 21st Century be the Chinese Century?"
Students should look for articles that relate to technology, globalization,
politics, economics, construction and development, human rights, population,
agriculture, and environment. Each clipping should have a journal entry that
includes basic bibliographic information, defines three unfamiliar words from
each article, summarizes the main idea of the article, and demonstrates how the
clipping relates to the central question. Students should use the provided
journal entry sheets to complete and put them in a three-ringed soft cover
binder.
Current Events Journal Discussion Days: Assign students into small groups to have them discuss
the clipping of their choice. As one student reports, the others should
generate one question to ask of that student or during the general discussion
afterwards. While that is happening, the teacher can go around in each group to
check on the completion and quality of the journals. They should also be
listening for how well students articulate what they understood. At the end of
the quarter, students should write a 2 -3 page paper with a clear thesis
statement, supporting arguments that draws upon specific collected articles,
and includes a bibliography.
Monika Weidner, Poly Prep High School
Participant of the China Project 1999
Lesson 2
Questionnaire
Name___________________________
Topic___________________________
World History Current Events Journal Entry Sheet
Title of Article/Name of Writer_____________________________________________________________
Newspaper or magazine/Date______________________________________________________________
By Andrew Protain
Student of Poly Prep High School
Article
China's Controls on Rural Workers Stir Some Rarely Seen Heated Opposition
By Erik Eckholm
New York Times March 10, 2000
In the space below, write a summary in your own words of the article. If you copy any of the words in the article, indicate this with quotation marks.
This article is about China's control on rural migrants and how there has been some heated opposition to this control. In China, their country farmers trying to migrate to the city and find jobs are very restricted. You are registered in a location and job and can only get a job from a limited number of choices. Recently, these restrictions have grown stricter, causing human rights issues to be raised. Articles were written in the newspaper and people spoke out, City officials say they don't want migrants stealing their jobs and without managing the migrant f low, the capital could be in danger. However, other people say that this blocks economic growth.
Circle the words you didn't understand in the article. Look up at least three of these words and give brief definitions.
stringent- strictly controlled
disparities- lack of equality
jeopardized - endangered
What aspects of the situation or news discussed in the article are unclear to you? What information do you think you should have to help you understand the situation better?
I don't understand why the city officials are afraid that the country workers will steal their jobs while the workers don't have high skills. They are only farmers and cannot be expected to take off ice in high positions. If I had more information about the China's economy, then I might understand the situation better.
Express a personal reaction to this article/image. It can be in the form of prose, poetry or sketch.
I feel that it is stupid to restrict the workers so much. They should be able to work to their full potential and not be held down by the government. I understand that their f low should be regulated, but not as strictly as it is right now. Their job choice should not be restricted at all. If they are better at a job than the people who are already their then they should replace them.
Article text
China's Controls on Rural Workers Stir Some Rarely Seen Heated Opposition
By ERIK ECKHOLM
BEIJING, March 9 - China's long-entrenched controls over where people may live and work have become a subject of unusual public debate here, with critics attacking the stringent efforts by cities to curb the entrance of rural migrants and bar them from choice jobs.
The restrictions hold down economic growth, the critics say, worsen the country's growing disparities -in wealth and violate the basic rights of the rural majority of China's population.
After simmering in academic circles, the debate recently spilled into popular newspapers, a rarely permitted occurrence for a topic so politically charged, perhaps indicating that some high officials also harbor doubts about the controls.
"In a market economy, the right to seek employment is fundamental," Mao Yushi, a leading economist here and one of the most outspoken critics, said in an interview. "If that opportunity is blocked, how can people earn their bread?"
"This issue goes beyond economics," said Mr. Mao, the 71-year-old chairman of the Unirule Institute for Economics, a private group. "It's an issue of human rights."
For decades, China has rigidly registered the residence of every person, and for most Chinese it remains hard to legally move, especially from countryside to city.
As the urban need for low-stalled workers has soared, cities have given out temporary certificates to migrants working in construction, for example. More villagers have streamed in without papers to fill bottom-rung jobs - like garbage sorting, vending and moving goods by cycle -- where they can earn far more that on overcrowded farms back home.
By some estimates, more than 50 million rural people are working in the cities any one time, where they often face discrimination and police harassment.
Originally, the registration system was part of Communist social planning and helped China avoid the growth of huge urban slums. But many economists now see the controls as costly interference in the labor market ‑ punishing more than half the population while propping up urban wages. That protection of urban workers is, of course, one strong reason the government clings to its policy, especially at a time of growing urban unemployment and fears of worker unrest.
The debate surfaced this winter after Beijing said it planned to reduce the number of migrants in the city by several hundred thousand, from more than two and a half million believed to live here along with 10 million official residents.
It gained energy in December, when the Beijing government published a list of 103 job categories from which migrants are legally barred including service jobs in hotels, tourist guiding, accounting and corporate sales or planning.
Then in February the central government issued an emergency call for cities to limit the number of migrants moving in.
Mr. Mao and a few other economists attacked the restrictions in print~ while several newspapers have asked probing questions in editorials and featured personal pleas from migrants.
On Feb. 22, in a typical example, The China Business Times asked in an editorial whether the limits on rural workers would slow economic growth. "It is understandable that urban administrators, facing employment pressures from laid‑off workers, will want to play up local protectionism," the newspaper said. But shouldn't more senior officials, it asked, consider the national picture?
Days later, The China Youth Daily carried a commentary by a reader who had returned from years in Japan, saying.: "I can't believe what I'm seeing and hearing. A country that is enthusiastically demanding to join the World Trade Organization is treating its precious labor resources as a burden and inhibiting the economic interests, the very livelihoods, of tens of millions of rural laborers.'
After the Chinese New Year holiday in early February, when many migrants returned home to see their families, The China Economic Tunes noted that residents of Beijing and Shanghai had suddenly faced inconveniences: Nannies were scarce, milk deliveries were halted because of the lack of delivery men and coal bricks were hard to find.
"Put baldly," the paper said, city officials "don't want migrants stealing local residents' rice bowls." But in fact, it said, many vacancies in the Beijing labor market had gone unfilled because "Beijing locals turned up their noses at them."
But without careful administration of the stream of migrants entering Beijing, one city official said in response, the stability of the capital could be jeopardized.
"That could be terrifying," he said.
Answer 2
By Dan R., Student of Poly Prep High School
World History Current Events Journal Entry Sheet
Article
Clinton Is Seeking Trade Deal With China By End of Month /11/2/99
David Sanger / The New York Times
In the space below, write a summary in your own words of the article. If you copy any of the words in the article, indicate this with quotation marks.
The main ideas of this article were president Clinton was trying to work out an agreement with China to get them in to WTO. Although it is not said in the article, this plan backfired when massive riots broke out in Seattle. But the objectives of the meetings were the same as the upcoming ones - ways to convince the House to vote yes therefore accepting China into the WTO. Another major point of this article is the clauses put on them such as “being required to abide by the groups extensive rules on opening markets.” Also, there will be many other differences between this agreement and the last.
Circle the words you didn't understand in the article. Look up at least three of these words and give brief definitions.
Arbitrate-to decide as an arbitrator
Implicit-understood though not directly expressed
Provision-the act of giving
What aspects of the situation or news discussed in the article are unclear to you? What information do you think you should have to help you understand the situation better?
I think this article would have been much in-depth and easier to understand if the previous trade agreements were given. Also, if China’s current trade agreements and restrictions were given, it would have made the article a lot easier to understand.
Article text
Clinton Is Seeking China Trade Deal by End of Month
By DAVE E. SANGER
WASHINGTON-- After a series of secret exchanges with Beijing over the last two weeks, the White House is hoping to close a deal by the end of this month that could pave China's way into the World Trade Organization, even if Congress cannot pass judgment on the agreement until next year.
Spurred by a telephone call from President Clinton to President Jiang ZeMin of China late on the night of Oct. 16, the United States and China have since engaged in what one official called an "intense set of interactions." Nonetheless, senior administration officials say, there is only a 50-50 chance that they will be able to close the deal, which Clinton regards as his best shot at stabilizing American relations with China during his last year in office.
The White House has not described the two leaders' conversation nor an internal strategy debate presided over by the White House chief of staff, John Podesta, about how to close the elusive deal. But according to Chinese and American officials, Clinton offered during the call to make the first move to break a long stalemate in the talks, volunteering to send China's leaders the details of an agreement he characterized as Washington's bottom line.
The details of that offer are being closely guarded, but areas up for discussion include telecommunications, financial services, textiles and sanctions in retaliation for the dumping of exports, among others.
The initiative indicates how desperately Clinton is trying to put back together the far‑reaching China trade deal he walked away from in April, a move his aides say he deeply regrets.
While some in the White House say the April terms would still not satisfy the administration, one top official remarked last week that "if we could get it again, we'd probably take it and run."
The time of greatest American leverage in striking a deal is fast approaching, as Clinton prepares to open a meeting of the world's trade ministers in Seattle on Nov. 30. That session is expected to set the agenda for a new round of global trade talks that will take years - and which China can only help influence if it is clear that it is about to join the group that sets the terms of world trade.
Negotiations on China's entry into the World Trade Organization and the predecessor General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade have been going on for more than 13 years.
Once China is in the organization, it will be required to abide by the group's extensive rules on opening markets ‑‑ meaning it would have to allow in far more foreign investors, farm goods and providers of services. That would likely result in a boon for American companies, which have been lobbying bard for this agreement. But it would also reduce Washington's ability to impose its own sanctions on China because the Chinese could use the trade forum's court to arbitrate disputes.
Since Clinton's phone conversation with President Jiang, trade officials have been working to put together the draft of an agreement, based on the American understanding of the deal that did not come to fruition in April.
But the process is made harder by continuing disagreements between China and the United States about exactly what concessions China's prune minister, Zhu Rongji brought with him on that trip.
Moreover, the White House's decision to publish a long list of those concessions so inflamed some powerful Chinese business executives and their political patrons that Beijing has been forced to pull back, according to people informed on the negotiations.
For example, it is no longer clear that China is still willing to let American companies own 51 percent of its telecommunications providers. But if the United States trade representative, Charlene Barshefty, struck a deal that gave American phone companies less of an inroad into the booming Chinese communications market, she would have to make the case that she had extracted other concessions that went beyond China's offer in April.
"They clearly still want a deal and want it soon," an administration official who has been in touch with the Chinese said recently. "But its becoming clear it won't be exactly the same deal. The politics have changed."
One of the questions that the White House has not yet resolved is whether Jiang is still committed to striking a deal, especially at a time he is under growing economic pressure at home. Clinton was frustrated in New Zealand early in September, when the Chinese president was slow in restarting negotiations.
His Oct. 16 call was followed a week later with a trip to China by Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers. While Summers was not sent to negotiate -- President Jiang and China's top trade negotiators were all in Europe -- he saw Prime Minister Zhu, and after a three hour meeting reported that the embattled Prime minister was still committed and eager for China to join the trade organization. The competitive pressure created by opening China's markets, Zhu once again told Summers, would help spur China's own reforms.
But the pragmatic prime minister's domestic political adversaries have seized upon the list of concessions the White House published in April to help undermine a deal. And American diplomats say Chinese leaders seem concerned that Clinton, in the last year of his presidency, lacks the ability to push a deal through Congress.
Both houses would have to approve a change in the Jackson -Vanik amendment of the mid- 1970's, which requires Congress to review China's trade status annually, a vote that gives many in Congress a chance to voice their disapproval of China's human rights record, its posture toward Taiwan, or its ballooning trade surplus with the United States.
Favored trade status would be implicit in any deal that got China into the World Trade Organization.'Nu*Munder one scenario being discussed in Ms. Barshefsky's office, Washington would reach an agreement with China but invoke a seldom‑used provision of World Trade Organization rules that would prevent the Chinese from enjoying some trade benefits with the United States until there was a vote in Congress.
"I think we could get a deal through Congress even in an election year," Representative David Dreier, Republican of California, said in an interview last week. "If American industry says it's a good deal, I think that would be enough."
Ms. Barshefiky is being unusually tight-lipped about the talks, which would be the biggest trade deal in her tenure and a major part of Chnton's foreign policy legacy. She does not want to appear too eager to strike an agreement, always a dangerous negotiating stance. And her influence in the White House remains murky: Her advice that Clinton take the April deal was overruled, after then-Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin and other officials said it could not get through Congress.
Monday, though, Ms. Barshefiky said she expected formal talks with China to resume this month. "We have got to see," she said, when asked about the possibility of a deal. "I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist."
"There is quite a bit of work to do as we look ahead," she added, noting that China would also have to conclude deals with Canada and with Europeans and Latin Americans, though these might follow whatever agreement was struck with Washington. Some officials close to Ms. Barshefsky say she may travel to China before the Seattle trade meeting if there is sufficient progress to suggest that a deal could be wrapped up in time for Clinton to announce it at Seattle.
Ms. Barshefsky has two big hurdles to clear. One concern is textiles: At a moment when the United States is urging other countries to drop trade barriers, she is under pressure from members of Congress representing textile‑manufacturing states to force Beijing to agree to an extension on import quotas and tariffs on Chinese fabrics. China is resisting, but may agree in return for other concessions from the United States.
Then there is a bigger stumbling block: Beijing's insistence that Washington give up its ability to invoke sanctions against Chinese products that it determines are being dumped at below‑market prices in the United States. The matter is considered vital by labor unions, which insist that anti‑dumping measures are critical to saving factory jobs. They are already putting pressure on Vice President Al Gore, who has courted them assiduously, to protect their interests in any deal.
Gore, his aides say, has no intention of getting near the Seattle meeting.