NPR features 3 Chinese Brothers’ Lives that Reflect China’s Growing Income Gap
National Public Radio reporter Frank Langfitt tells a story about three Chinese brothers in Beijing who spent their youth during the Cultural Revolution and lived under one roof for decades. Their lives changed after their home was demolished to pave way for China’s development as the county transformed itself from a socialist economy to a market economy. The starking difference among these 3 brothers’ lives today mirrors the ever growing gap between China’s affluent and deprived. This is a two parter feature by The National Public Radio in which audio versions are available on their website. Read the complete text after the jump.
Brothers’ Lives Reflect China’s Growing Income Gap
Copyright by The National Public Radio
Morning Edition, April 1, 2008 · Three decades ago, most people in China were poor, but their living standards were largely equal. Since then, market reforms have turned China into a nation of winners and losers, with an income gap that is now nearly as wide as America’s.
It’s a gap that plays out in individual families across the country, such as the Gong brothers of Beijing.
I first met the Gongs six years ago, when I was working as a reporter in China. As part of a huge redevelopment project, the government was preparing to knock down their family home in the city’s old alleys.
The three brothers had spent decades under the same roof and had fairly similar lifestyles. But after their home was demolished, they split up and landed on different rungs of China’s economic ladder.
Earlier this year, I returned to Beijing to see what had become of them and their relationships.
‘I Drive a BMW’
Wencong — the middle brother and the most successful one — now lives in a handsome, two-bedroom apartment in the suburbs. It looks nothing like the cramped house he shared with his brothers.
It’s filled with gleaming Ming and Qing Dynasty-style furniture and a giant-screen TV.
Wencong, 57, had just returned from his first trip abroad, to South Korea. And he had bought a new car — a BMW worth $47,000 (U.S.).
It’s no surprise Wencong has done well. He was the most outgoing of the three brothers. And he adapted faster to the shift from a Communist system to one where people profit from their work.
Some people are nostalgic for the egalitarian ways of Beijing’s old alleys, but Wencong mostly complains about how inconvenient they were. Back then, he had to walk down the street to use a public bathroom.
Before work, “there was always a line,” he recalls.
Now, he has a private bathroom, with heat.
Driven by Hardship
Wencong says he lives better because he was driven to. During the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, the government forced him and millions of others to work in the countryside. Describing a decade of hard labor, his eyes glisten with anger.
“When I was sent down to the countryside, I did all sorts of hard work,” he says, spitting out the words. “The dirtiest work, the most tiring work: scooping up dung.”
He returned to Beijing in the 1970s, eager to improve his lot.
As China began to move toward a market economy, Wencong found a niche: selling vegetables wholesale to private vendors. The new system rewarded initiative. He earned bonuses and put in 14-hour days.
“Anything is better than plowing a field,” he says. “So any job I could get, I worked hard.”
A long time ago, when I first met Wencong, he told me another way wholesalers made money: Corrupt ones could falsify invoices and pocket the proceeds.
Now retired, Wencong lives on a government pension of just $180 a month. When I ask how he could afford such a nice car, he becomes defensive and angry.
“I drive a BMW. Is there a problem?” he asks.
Many Chinese suspect the country’s nouveau riche of corruption. I tell him I’m implying nothing and he insists he has done nothing wrong.
No Money, No ‘Brains’ to Play the Market
Before the family home was demolished six years ago, Wencong’s younger brother, Wenju, moved out as well. Today, he is retired, living in a tiny house on the edge of Beijing.
His lifestyle is very different from his wealthier brother’s. Instead of a BMW, Wenju gets around by bike. He heats his home with a coal stove. A blanket hangs in front of the door to keep the cold out.
Wenju, now 49, used to work in a state-owned wool factory. But when China’s economy turned fiercely competitive in the 1990s, the factory went bankrupt.
One reason his wealthier brother has done better is because he has more of a head for capitalism, says Wenju, the youngest of the three Gong brothers. He thinks his brother made much of his money playing China’s rollicking stock market, which has attracted a huge number of small investors.
Wenju, though, doesn’t own any stocks.
“I don’t have the brains to play the stock market,” he says. “And I don’t have the money.”
After Wenju’s factory collapsed, he took up cab driving, but his income kept falling.
“In 2002, you could make a little money,” he says. “Gas was cheaper, more people took taxis.”
But now, he says, more people have bought their own cars — such as Wenju’s brother and his BMW.
In fact, China’s rapid growth has actually hurt cabbies by putting more private cars on the road and pushing up gas prices.
Estrangement Between Brothers
When they lived together, Wenju and Wencong saw each other every day. Now, it’s just a few times a year. Plus, they don’t seem as close.
Chinese New Year is the most important holiday on the calendar — akin to Thanksgiving, when families usually get together.
But Wenju says he will celebrate at home — not with his brother and his big screen TV and new luxury sedan.
“It’s not very convenient,” Wenju says. “This year, it’s impossible. I don’t have a car.”
Morning Edition, April 2, 2008 · The three Gong brothers grew up in an old neighborhood amid Beijing’s alleyways during the 1950s and ’60s. It was the era of the “iron rice bowl,” when the government provided everything: housing, health care and education.
The regime began smashing that rice bowl in the 1990s, turning communism on its head and creating a new, competitive economy with winners and losers.
The two younger Gong brothers — Wencong and Wenju — adapted to the new economy in their own ways. But the third one, Wenbiao, didn’t make it.
I met the Gongs back in 2002, when I was working as a reporter in Beijing. The government was knocking down their old neighborhood as part of a huge redevelopment project.
Life Lived Looking Backwards
In January, I returned to China to see Wenbiao’s wife to find out how things unraveled.
Sitting in her cramped kitchen, Qian Lihua, 57, explained what happened after the family home was demolished. Wenbiao’s brothers took their compensation from the government and bought homes on the outskirts of town.
But instead of looking forward — as his brothers did — Wenbiao and his wife went backwards.
They couldn’t afford housing prices in Beijing, so they moved to Inner Mongolia, where they had spent the Cultural Revolution during the 1960s and ’70s.
The Cultural Revolution was a catastrophe that cost at least 1 million lives. But it was also a time when people were equal and the couple missed those days.
They bought a big home and lived off the land, tending cabbage, potatoes and tomatoes. They opened a dumpling restaurant, but soon Wenbiao fell ill and began losing motor skills.
“He couldn’t use chopsticks or a spoon,” Qian recalls. “He was unable to write.”
Worried about his health, the couple returned to Beijing.
Lack of Health Care Compounds Problems
Wenbiao was scraping by on a tiny pension of $28 a month. The state-owned factory where he had worked had gone bankrupt years before and he was left without health care.
In April 2003, he suffered a stroke and was admitted to a hospital. Under communism, his factory would have paid for everything. But in China’s new economy, there was no government program to help someone like him.
“He stayed half a month; the problem was financial,” Qian says. “Afterwards, he left the hospital and died in July.”
Qian says without treatment, he just slipped away. She thinks if he had had insurance, he might have lived.
Qian has her own health problems these days. She worked at the same factory where her husband had, so she lost her health care, too. She broke her foot years ago, but could never afford to have it set.
She rolls back her sock to reveal a swollen ankle. The skin is purple, black and orange.
“In these last few years, while my husband was sick, it especially hurt,” she says. “Still, I had to push him in a wheelchair to see doctors. After he died, I couldn’t walk.”
In New China, Family Ties Frayed
The Chinese have always relied on family for help. But the country’s economic boom has broken up many ancestral homes and some people have drifted apart.
During my trip, I talked to Wenbiao’s two brothers.
Wencong — the middle brother — has done the best since leaving the old family home. He has a nice apartment in the suburbs and a new BMW.
He says the brothers got on well as kids.
“When we were young, everything was quite good,” he recalls. “We took care of each other. The older took care of the younger.”
But later there were strains.
Wencong, 57, succeeded in China’s emerging market economy, working as a food wholesaler. He bought the latest and best home appliances. Wenbiao, the eldest brother, became jealous and refused to let his son watch Wencong’s new TV.
When Wenbiao became ill, Wencong did not lend him money, but their younger brother, Wenju, did.
“I’d just built a house,” recalls Wenju, 49. “I didn’t have much money. I gave him about $700.”
Wenbiao’s widow, Qian, still owes Wenju $500.
“Sometimes he says, ‘You don’t have to pay it back,’” she recalls. “I feel really embarrassed. I have nothing to say when I see him.”
Qian lived for more than three decades under the same roof with her brothers-in-law. After her husband’s death, she celebrated just one Chinese New Year with them.
“The first year, his little brother called and invited us to come,” she says. “But after that, he never called again.”
Nostalgia for the Old, Communal Way of Life
One day, I met Qian in the old neighborhood. The house she shared with the three Gong brothers was leveled more than five years ago. Today, the area is a high-rise apartment complex.
She says the transformation is so dramatic, the only thing she recognizes is an old tree.
“When I came in, if it weren’t for the tree, I wouldn’t know I had ever lived here,” she says.
Qian says the new apartments are an improvement over the old family home. For instance, there are flush toilets. But Qian misses the days when several generations lived together.
“The living conditions weren’t very good,” she says. “But affection between family members was especially warm.”
I ask Qian who is responsible for her husband’s death. I wonder if she’ll blame the Chinese government or her brothers-in-law, but she doesn’t.
Last year, the government began providing some health insurance to older, unemployed people — the people left behind in China’s sprint towards a capitalist-style economy.
Qian is grateful for this and says it shows officials do care.
She just wishes her husband had lived long enough to benefit from it.