When Hasbro Ireland announced 140 job losses at its factory in Waterford on Thursday, it cited competition from China as a principal reason for the decision. It was a reminder that China is no longer an exotic, faraway place. What happens there has an intimate effect on all our lives. From job security to the price of petrol, from movies to global warming, few aspects of life are unaffected by China's emergence as a 21st century power.
While many of those effects may, from a western point of view, seem negative in the short-term, it is worth remembering that the potential lifting of over a fifth of the world's population out of poverty and into freedom is a good news story of epic proportions. If China can navigate its difficult passage from isolation and authoritarianism to prosperity and democracy, it will be one of the most important developments in human history.
That passage remains a rough one. As Fintan O'Toole has shown in his reports from China in this newspaper, the very success of economic reform over the past two decades has created a population that is no longer grateful for the small mercies of subsistence and survival. Chinese people have essentially the same aspirations and ambitions as westerners do. They want a good job, a decent place to live, education and opportunity for their children, security for their old age. With the emergence both of conspicuous personal wealth and of an awareness that China is becoming a global economic giant, those aspirations are turning into expectations.
The problem is that China is a paradox, the world's first poor economic superpower. The aggregate wealth of 1.3 billion people means that China is well on the way to being one of the world's richest economies. But over 400 million Chinese people still live on less than €1.50 a day, and China's per capita GDP is one 25th that of the US. China, moreover, cannot continue to develop in the way that western economies did: its fragile ecological balance and the global environmental crisis mean it must move rapidly towards a more innovative, technologically sophisticated economy.
To narrow the gap between rich and poor, the Chinese government needs to rid itself of corruption and exploitation and build a welfare state. To develop a more advanced, sustainable economy, it needs a skilled, informed, creative population. Neither of these can be achieved without substantial political reform. It is unrealistic to expect a democratic Big Bang and it is certainly arguable that China needs strong and stable government to see it through its transformation. But an independent and transparent justice system to underpin human rights, a gradual expansion of democratic participation and the encouragement of informed public debate are not merely realistic possibilities but urgent imperatives.
Over the next decade, the political system in China can gradually align itself with a changing society, or it can become ever more remote from it, creating an inevitable crisis. We must hope that the first option is taken.