Independent scholar and China specialist Dr. Anne Thurston gave us a lecture entitled “The Other China: Same Country, Different Worlds?” at the center on October 18, 2007.

 

In this lecture, Dr. Anne Thurston pointed out that many current narratives of China are skewed. People come to China and stay in big cities such as Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing. They then bring back a partial image of China, which mainly pertains to China’s urban middle class. However, in doing so, they neglect China’s grassroots.

 

Through her current study on China’s grassroots, Dr. Thurston believes that the majority of Chinese people are still poor. By the World Bank’s standard, moderate poverty is 2 dollars per day and extreme poverty is 1 dollar per day or less. In China, the government’s definition of extreme poverty includes only about 1/4 of those included in the World Bank’s definition of extreme poverty. There are about 200 million Chinese who earn less than 60 cents a day and about 500 million Chinese who earn less than 2 dollars a day.

 

Dr. Thurston then talked about the individual and nongovernmental organizations in Qinghai Province. These organizations try to address the major problems in this area such as the difficulty in fetching water and the lack of education. The proliferation of NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) in China surprised Dr. Thurston. She spoke about one particular NGO she worked with in Yushu, Qinghai province, and showed many pictures of people living in that area. One picture showed a little poor girl watching soap opera about a wealthy family in Shanghai. She interviewed the girl and the girl considered the story mere fantasy. The poverty stricken area enjoys a marvelous mountain landscape, but the poor condition of the roads has restricted the development of that area. About 50% of Yushu’s population are nomads. Because of the degradation of grassland, the nomads who moved about in search of pasture in the past now have to resettle in towns. The local government provides them with houses and 500 yuan each family per month, which amounts to very little if there are many children in the family. The NGO’s concentration is on education and they teach students at one local primary school. What is special of that school is that there can learn both Tibetan and English. In other schools, students must learn Chinese and have the option to choose either Tibetan or English as the other language to learn.

 

Students showed strong interest in the topic and asked a lot of questions at the end of the lecture, pertaining to the roles played by Chinese government and NGOs and the comparison of Chinese and American poverty situations.

 
                                                                                                                               written by QiuShanshan