What makes Chinese Rich?

By: Tiara Ulfah

akuntiara5@gmail.com
082365467509

What first comes to your mind when you’re thinking of China citizen or Chinese?
Entrepreneurs and industrials, risk takers, and rich. Those things cross my mind whenever I
think of Chinese. Especially in Indonesia, there are so many rich Chinese having huge
business and tons of money. It’s like most of goods and items in Indonesia are stamped
“Made in China”; from engine machine, cars, phones and even toys. From those issues above,
this article will talk about reasons behind the rich of Chinese.
China is the unofficial name for People’s Republic of China (PRC) which is the most
populous country on earth. It is located in Asia with an eastern coastline on the Pacific Ocean
and has a large variety of climates and landscapes ranging from frozen tundra to tropical
forest. The country which is famous for The Great Wall of China has the oldest civilization
with a recorded history over 7000 years. This country is well known for its ancient and
unique arts such as ceramics, silk painting, and calligraphy. China is also noted as the
birthplace of eastern martial arts so called Kung Fu (British Council,
www.britishcouncil/schoolsonline ).

The way Indonesian thinks toward china is that they are so rich. The truth is when
compared to United States or any other country in Middle East, China is merely a middle
country as a whole. According to World Bank (2015) China is ranked in 67 rates while the
richest country on earth is Qatar. However, from Vancouver in New York, London, Paris and
Hong Kong shopping mall shop assistants are seeing so many Chinese shoppers wasting their
money on hand bags of well known designers much more than ever before. The question is
where does the money come from?

Of course there are some factors that make China has lots of rich citizen. The first
factor is education. According to British Council, the school day in China is much longer for
children, beginning as early as 07.30 and lasting through 16.00 or 17.00, with homework to
complete as well. Children learn Chinese language and literature, mathematics, P.E, art,
music, English, and also moral education and ethics lessons. The students take part in group
exercise every morning in sports ground and have flag raising ceremony where they sing the
national Anthem. All the citizens must attend school for at least nine years, known as the
nine-year compulsory education, which is the government funds (Wikipedia, 2017). Also,
Chinese parents are so concerned with their children education. All they want is the best
education for their children, even better from what they have been in. The point is that China
has given its full attention to the perfection of education system.

Education is not the only factor supporting richness among Chinese, another factor
examining the richness among Chinese is Economic. China’s government is now far by the
creditor of the United States. Never before has a country as poor as China lent so much
money to a country as rich as United States. And never before has United States relied so
heavily on another country’s government for financing. According to Setser (2008), China
reports $1.9 trillion in foreign exchange reserves-roughly two times as much as Japan and
four times as much as Russia and Saudi Arabia- the majority of which is denominated in US
dollars.

Due to its rapid economic gains, China’s wealth boom has occurred over the last
decade. As a result, most of the country’s richest citizens are young and experiencing wealth
for the first time is Chinese. This is in direct contrast to countries such as the UK and US,
where more money has accumulated by being passed down from generation to generation.

This economic development doesn’t come all in a sudden. Earlier in 60’s China had a
corrupt, centrally planned economy that failed China’s people massively. This period is known
as the Great Leap Forward. Because of the past failure of government on the 60’s and 70’s, the
government in China began shifting to a capitalist model based on market pricing of wages and
goods and privatized production, these imbalances began to slowly fix themselves. From the
70’s to 2000’s, this colossal rebalancing was happening and these normalized decades of failed
policies and stifled human capital, and so China grew.

The other factor supporting Chinese financial is its Industry. Ever since long ago,
China has invented many things we still use today, including gunpowder, kites, mechanical
clocks, magnetic compass, and paper making. In the 21st century, the communication industry
is a landmark sector for China in term of innovation. In this sector, not only Huawei and ZTE
become two leading international communication equipment manufacturers, but also has
China established its own flagship international industrial standard, TD-SCDMA (Time
Divisions- Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) for the third generation mobile
phone (3G) (Setser, 2008).
 The rise of China home-grown brands has taken advantage from the advent and
growing popularity of low-cost smartphones in China and they take on track to becoming
known players, both domestically and internationally, in supplying affordable, mid-tier and
even high-end smarthphone, further expanding the territory of their good enough innovation.
Taking a closer look, the good enough innovations have much to do with the new ecosystem
and industrial transformations taking place in China. The migration from 2G to 3G has
brought about the platform-based development and new business models, rendering new
organizing logic between the smarthphone vendors and other important stakeholders. The
point is, Chinese can think of solutions for problem they are facing. There is one good
characteristic of being Chinese-like, money minded. Chinese can turn well enough innovation
to a mass needs.

All in all, there are always some factors behind the richness of one citizen, just like
what happens to China. China’s government cares so much about education of its citizen.
China also has developed and strengthened their economic more than ever before and China
also thinks of solutions to solve industry problem and brings lots of Chinese become richer
people.

References:

Council, British. Twenty facts of China, Did You Know?. Available online on
www.britishcouncil.org/schoolsonline. retrieved on 18 March 2017.

Setser, Brad (2008). China: Creditor to the Rich. China Security, 4(4), Pp.17-23. China.

World Bank (2015). List of countries and dependencies. Available online on

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita