Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory (2010) is the third book of the American writer and journalist Peter Hessler. His fisrt books were River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (2001) and Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present (2006), both referring to his experiences in China as teacher and journalist.

In Country Driving, Hessler reports a period of about six years (2001 to 2006) in which he traveled across northern Chinese counties, mostly alongside the Great Wall, and down to the new factory towns of southern China, such as Lishui, located in the Zhejiang province.

As happened with River Town and Oracle Bones, it was really pleasing to savor the author’s flowing style. During this journey through old villages and new factory cities, Hessler displays a more mature perspective of what’s been happening in China for the last years. He keeps, however, that blessed ability of picking small details that make all the difference — from humorous incidents with car rental companies to the intricate relationships established among the candidates to the post of village party-secretary, Hessler guides the reader to the unknown China of the third millennium.

I found especially amusing the episode when his village friend Wei Ziqi told him how pleased he was that day after negotiating with other businessmen in town. Being a former peasant, it was difficult to him to get good results when bargaining with city entrepreneurs. But... when he drew his cigarette pack out of his pocket, and the others did the same, he realized that he got the best brand among the group. Not an ordinary cigarette brand as his partners’, but a superior one... That was the turning point of the meeting — now he felt really confident and respected, ready for getting the best of them — quite an American-Psycho-card-exchange experience in eastern China...

I think you will agree with me that China is still an extremely complex puzzle for anyone, especially for us, westerners. China has been under constant mutation for the last decades, with no signs of slowing its pace. Who would ever imagine a country formally socialist, exporting industrial goods for the whole world, negotiating in every market around the globe, and still ruled by one and only political party? Certainly this intricate problem doesn’t have a straightforward answer. Hessler knows it. He helps us, however, to get a “macroscale” view of what is happening there, taking, as the starting point for his analysis, the “microscale” day-to-day events, such as the opening of a new factory, the building of a highway, the difficulties to get medical treatment in Beijing hospitals, the relations among villagers during election time, and so many other apparently trifle events.

While describing his experiences, Hessler introduces the reader to some new “phenomena” of the nowadays China, which helps us to get a glimpse of what has been happening there recently. Development Zones, boomtowns, exit-towns and ghost cities are certainly something to think about.

Also called “Special Economic Zones (SEZs)”, development zones are delimited regions, in mainland China, for which the government gives special economic policies and benefits, aiming to boost the industrial production, especially for exporting goods. They were initially developed under the concept of “reform and opening” of Deng Xiaoping in the early eighties. It’s common for the SEZs to offer substantial tax benefits for the new companies established there, as well as investment policies dedicated to attract foreign capital. In consequence, production activities are essentially driven by market forces, not by government planning. This makes the SEZs specially attractive for new entrepreneurs and workers looking for better jobs.

In Oracle Bones, Hessler showed us a little of Shenzhen, the first SEZ established in China. The paradise of the “nouveau riche” in southern China, Shenzhen still attracts thousands of young people, avid for giving a new flavour to their lives. Nonetheless, factory workers usually live in dormitories installed at the same building as the plants, working up to 200 hours per month, most of them with no welfare or health security. Although the salaries are way better than they could ever imagine to earn in rural zones, monthly earnings are extremely low when compared to Europe and America (even South and Central America).

Now, in Country Driving, Hessler talks about Lishui (in red), another development zone established in the Zhejiang province (in orange). Zhejiang is a province known for its one-product cities — one city totally dedicated to socks factories, other to lighters, other to umbrellas, and so on... There, he follows two new “bosses” (as locals call the owners of a factory) that starts producing brassiere rings and wires for underwire bra. By joining them, Hessler is able to show us how fast a company starts inside a development zone, and how fast it can go bankrupt... He also talks about the hiring process, with its lightspeed interviews, fake documents and salary bargains.

As he spends time there, it becomes more and more palpable the main obstacle that China will have to face if it intends to maintain the nation’s economic growth rate for the next decades: human resources. Abundance of human resources can soon turn into China’s Achilles’ heel, unless it starts to be treated adequately and conscientiously, not as a fungible resource or a disposable commodity.

Associated to the development zones, the boomtowns illustrate the speed in which things happen in China. No more than a couple of months are necessary to turn a rural area into an industrial city. Bulldozers and drills work day and night to flat the terrain and make it comfortable to install new plants. Not just a couple of hills and valleys, but hundreds of mountains being put down. Investors come to find new opportunities, workers look for jobs, realtors try to get the best prices for buying and selling “land-use rights” (we should remember that land is not — yet — subject to private property in China...).

In contrast to the boomtowns, other cities have to be emptied as soon as possible - here comes the exit-towns. It occurs due to several reasons, but one of the most common is the building of dams. Besides being the foundation for hydroelectric power plants, dams are alleged important for flooding control in China (despite of many criticisms against this strategy, the government keeps its position). When a city or region is condemned to be flooded, the government relocates people, offering new houses and some amount of money as insurance. Some go to the boomtowns, others go to newly created cities, others try new opportunities in distant cities. That adds to the massive amount of people going somewhere — a country on the move.

There is still something else... Ghost cities are now part of the Chinese landscape. It’s been considered as a property bubble phenomenum, consequence of the rapid rise in real state prices associated with speculation and, of course, exageration... Several cities were built by the government in record time, based upon the expectation of fast development and demand for housing and services. The point is: many spots in China, such as the Kangbashi district, which was supposed to be the urban center of Ordos City, are now empty — almost no people living there, no public services, no traffic, nothing...

Well, these subjects make only a small part of the themes that Hessler discusses in Country Driving. I think you will enjoy the reading!

Rogerio Maciel
May, 2011.