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Opinion | China's poverty hinders its growth

Qiao Song, songq@muohio.edu

The poverty and backwardness in China have already been thrown far away behind people's heads. For example, the United States' news media has begun to switch tones from negative to neutral reporting Chinese news. The New York Times and USA Today have an increasing number of Chinese economic reports instead of arguments on human rights occupy more columns. A few American economists named a new term, "China's threatening power," when the world suddenly began to focus on the soaring economic development in China, and President Barack Obama pushed Chinese government to raise the Renminbi value in the 2010 G20 Seoul Summit.

When talking about China, most people just know the big cosmopolitan cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. However, there are 23 provinces, four direct-controlled municipalities, five autonomous regions and two special administrative regions distributed in every corner in China. The truth is not all of them are like Beijing or Hong Kong. There is a very big gap between the rich and the poor, which is widening each year. While a business tycoon owns several luxurious houses in different regions or even in different countries, a large number of peasants are still living in shabby soil-made rooms. Those people who sit comfortably and drink coffee in the office and worry about the ups and downs of the stock market have it easy compared to some households that are suffering from hunger and just manage to get some food for the next meal. So will you still insist that China's development threatens the world and turn a blind eye to reality?When President Obama, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and other countries' administrative officials came to China, they all stayed in Beijing or Shanghai. However, Catherine Ashton, the European Union's first female high representative of the union for foreign affairs and security policy, chose to visit Guizhou Province, one of the poorest and most underdeveloped areas in western China, rather than prosperous regions. She is a wise woman, knowing how to get a balanced and comprehensive view of the real rural China from a small area.

There's also a one-sided view that China should take the same responsibilities as other developed countries do to relieve the world's disasters of poverty, global warming, resources shortage and energy supplies. As a matter of fact, China is a developing country with a huge population, severe unbalanced economic development and remarkable regional differences. It's unrealistic for China to save the world's economy, let alone believe its power will spread to other countries.

As a business major at Miami University spending four or five years in the Farmer School of Business, I ask Miami students, "Would you like to become an independent thinking person or would you just want to follow others' voices? You spend $12,198 or more every year not for listening to what other economists talk about on Wall Street, but for cultivating your own profound thinking system and making your voice heard some day in the future."

As a journalism major as well, I know my job is to respect the truth. That's why I could not sit still and read some news reports targeting America worrying about China's growth and boosting up China's economy. We should dwell upon the hot topic profoundly and try to figure out our own ways of interpreting and understanding the world.