A Discussion of the Rules and Strategies within China's Transportation System
As of the latest 2010 Census, which is the best *approximation of a country’s population at the moment (disregarding Chinese politics of public access to veritable statistics), about 20% of the world’s population is from China. That’s 1 in 5 people, ultimately summing/nearing to ~1.4 billion people. Chongqing is not only the largest municipality in China, but also in the world, in which 32 million people live within an 82,300 km2 area (comparable to that of the UAE, which is populated by only 14% of Chongqing’s population). In other words, China’s population is dense (more so in certain areas than in others, indeed). Currently, the government is in the process of infrastructural reconstruction and development, along with designated areas for rapid urbanization, which has attracted more jobs (and thus more people) to these already concentrated areas.
Now, with such a large (and densely localized) populace, national regulation, management, and support of this physical body (in itself) predisposes the nation to a slew of difficulties. Even more so, these difficulties are enhanced by the mere nature of human’s higher-order thinking capabilities in conjunction with the stifled population. I have chosen to focus on the difficulties that have arisen in China’s transportation system.I have found that there are two main sources to the problems that arise in China’s transportation system:
1. The large population (as previously introduced)
2. Rapid Demand for Infrastructural Development (at the expense of quality and support for the unpredicted magnitude of the current quantity, being populace).
Note of Style: To ensure organization of this discussion, I will focus on these main two problems and address them individually, but in a topic-centered manner to simultaneously maintain clarity.
PROBLEM 1: THERE’S JUST SO MANY PEOPLE
Methods to Deal with Problem #1:
A. Public Transportation
- trains, subways, taxis
Though the use of public transportation systems is effective in offering a means of travel to support such a large social body, there are associative problems that arise within the operations of the systems themselves when under the pressure of this large population.
One problem is the amount of pushing and the cutting of lines that one often encounters in China (of which is the likelihood of such behavior is directly proportionate to the location’s population density). I remember when I was on the bus going from Fengdu to Chongqing, I underestimated the amount of force that I was told to use to push my way through the crowd and onto the bus. Being that there was only one narrow entry onto the 40 passengers bus, and 80 people each waiting anticipatively for the open-swing of the doors with a non-time designated ticket in hand, the warned shoving was more like a vicious battle of much squeezing, clawing, trampling, minor beating, and the occasional spitting…. all of which was happening amongst the sweaty, dirt-infested herd of bodies (I include myself in this category).
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We're talking quantity, not quality... |
In most cases, if you bought a ticket for a particular seat on a public bus in China (with a designated time to leave), and if it was taken when you got there, then you probably weren’t going to be able to sit there. In other words, when the bus is full, it goes. China’s public transportation system is not so much worried about individual problems in this sense, but more so about serving the needs of the public. After all, it is public transportation…. Thus, the public is being served by the transportation system before the individual (whereas, in America, it rule applied to public transportation has culturally bred intricacies that suggest the opposite). In terms of efficiency, these social rules and strategies are imposed to do what is necessary to allow for cost-effective mass transport. In America, however, this sort of body-pile up slash warring herd (onto the bus) of people would …. But then again, we have more space available per person (and of course, the individually-centered culture of America would not be so keen to allow for such a method of social transport).
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Appetizing |
Additionally, the poor quality (borderline broken-down state) of the minivans or buses used for public transportation can be attributed to the pressure to serve the large population. The government is currently in the process of using a decent percentage of funds, set aside for transportation, to build more roads, pedestrian cross-bridges, increase the width of roads, and/or to build/renovate other transportation systems….rather than increasing the quality of the buses, which is of lower priority. China, in short, is not worried so much about the quality of the vehicles within the transportation systems, as they are about the efficiency of the system of transportation in itself. The crappier buses/vans/vehicles are kept so that they can have a larger number of transport vesicles to fill and move people in. The pressure of the large population supports this reasoning, and the existence of the trickling-down “problems” that we may encounter (like broken-down minivans and rickety public buses) if looking from a different cultural lens. The notion of a problem is heavily subjective and susceptible to cultural influences and thus cultural specificity. In America, we have the physical and financial space to direct our attention to quality instead of quantity…. Primarily because of the decreased population and resultant demand for public transport. With such a high leisure consumption, the average American greatly risks developing higher expectations for goods/services and the attached expectation of quality in what is being provided. Granted, we (most often) maintain the availability of personal choice to participate in or refrain from this kind of high expectation, though this increases the room for things to not meet these elevated expectations of quality and for more "problems" to exist…. even more so when such an average American would travel outside of the U.S. to, say, China.
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Not-so-appetizing |
Also, transportation companies in China are not going to want to pay for nicer buses, since that would translate to greater financial costs than benefits for them. It's not like in the US, where the quality of the vehicle (along with the system) will hurt your company's amount of clientele...
B. Illegal Minivans
In order to legally use a minivan for public transport, there is a huge tax that one must pay to the government in order to provide this type of public transportation service, and for that to be supervised and regulated under a private company. The completed payment of this tax is identified by a specific sticker that is placed on the minivan’s windshield (usually top-corner of passenger side).
Along with this annual tax payment fee to legally operate private minivan company is an elevated price for minivan license plates (with respect to that of compact cars)…. (perhaps this is because of the greater number of seats in a minivan than a compact car). However, one would think there would be a decreased price for minivan license plates since minivans would encourage carpooling (and decrease the amount of low-occupancy filled vehicles). Nope. Ya pay more.
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Legal Minivan for Public Transportation (notice the tax-completion stickers on windshield of passenger-side) |
I personally think that this increased fee is to discourage people from buying the minivans (or any private mode of transport, for that matter)… and to subsequently encourage the use of alternative modes of public transport. It just takes too long to attain a license plate (refer below to a detailed description of this in the "side note")….Thus, this latency would ultimately provide an strong incentive for people to revert to using public transportation, most of which is government-funded. In turn, this disincentive to purchase privately-owned vehicles helps to keep the regulation of transportation (and of the Chinese body) within the CCP’s realm of control, I suppose. I don’t mean that in a bad way, might I add. It may be more efficient to use public transportation systems anyways, depending on the traffic conditions and transport system efficiency… oh it get’s so complicated.
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Illegal Minivan for Public Transportion (yes, that's us loading our stuff in the back) |
Interestingly, this convoluted situation allows for leniency to exist within the rule that all minivan public transportation services must be privately owned and must pay the required tax to legally operate such a business…. We find that an unwritten rule takes higher precedence, which is as follows:
*personally owned minivan public transportation provision is illegal, but cops who witness such illegality will let it slide if you are not being disruptive to the larger whole of the social body. (This lift of enforcement is attributed to matter that the population is too big to strictly enforce such laws (it would be inefficient to do so), and especially since these illegal public transportation systems are actually helping in serving and transporting the already problematically large population).
SIDE NOTE:
**It is incredibly hard to get a license plate in China. When people buy a car, they risk not being able to drive that car for quite a long time, since attaining the plate is such a slow process (there is a huge line). This difficulty and waiting time is different in certain areas. In Chengdu, the queue is especially long. Also, because the government has just recently reconstructed their city’s circle (road system), new regulations had to be imposed on the vehicular bodies during the 3 months of reconstruction by enforcing the “last # rules.” This is when the last digit on your license plate determines what days you can legally drive on the road. For instance, during the Olympic games (in Beijing) and World Exposition (in Shanghai) owners of vehicles alternated between odd and even last license plate numbers everyday, for permission to drive on the roads. Normally, in Beijing, 2 license plate last numbers are allowed per day (say 3,5 on Monday or 6,7 on Tuesday, etc…). Unlike Beijing, Shanghai offers an auctioning process of queue numbers, so people can pay large sums of money to get lower queue numbers or to cut the front of the line.
C. Taxis
Purchasing and operating a taxi is both expensive and limiting. It costs the private taxi company about 9,000 yuan per month to license the company’s taxi services, in which this money is linked to a governmental organization. This government tax is so high now that taxis must charge a surcharge, to disperse the pressure of this 9,000 yuan tax onto the customers and their pockets, instead of their own.
This surcharge, in turn, makes short trips more expensive, since the starting price of a taxi ride is 10+ yuan…. After a specific distance or time, the charging fee is about 1.5 yuan more for every additional 3km (the standard meter charging rate), which is less expensive than paying the 10 yuan starting price for a shorter distance (since the amount of yuan per km is greater).
On average though, the taxi drivers in China earn a net dollar product of about 90 yuan per day (location/situationally dependent, of course), after taking into account the price of petrol.
Additionally, the price of petrol in China is controlled by the government and is not parallel to the national price of petrol. With any increased price of petrol, there will be an increased price for everything else in taxi-related payments…. most of the time, it’s the citizens who ultimately have to pay for that difference.
Further, air conditioning costs about 1 yuan per km2… as for which customer’s get that A.C….? Well, that’s more complicated… in terms of class status, social/cultural background, and personal financial levity- and that’s disregarding the factors affecting the driver’s final decision… but, I will say, that overall, foreigners do get special attention… especially Americans. In other words, China wants to maintain a good “face” to visiting Americans in their homeland… so those within this special category most likely have a better chance of getting special A.C. attention. |
No, they don't get run over. |
It’s often the case that two people split paying for the taxi and licensure expenses to save money because it’s so expensive to be able to legally work as a taxi driver… and the marginal benefits are limiting, in terms of how much one can financially expand within this profession. Also, this dual-sharing allows for a temporally split management of the taxi’s services… one person does the day shift and the other does the night shift (which is 20% more expensive since there is less of a demand during those hours… so the price of a taxi ride will be higher to cover the taxi driver’s personal costs (petrol/[A.C]) for driving you)).
*Interesting finding: for the most part, you can't call in for taxis in China, since the taxi drivers need to make their own money... thus, it would be time consuming and fiscally inefficient to make bookings with people (the taxi driver would have to risk decreasing their economic efficiency of travel (distance wise) and time (waiting time) for them to meet your needs of a scheduled pick-up. And what about no-shows? The companies that do such scheduled pick-ups, as a result, have extremely high price rates for their customers to cover their costs and ensure proper economic benefits.
**Thus, as you can see, the government makes this tax fee so high to prevent people from seeing taxi driving as an attractive job. With so many people present, if there were not a high tax, there would be more professional cab drivers and more vehicles on the road, and perhaps more problems for the already imbalanced system of transportation in China. This tax is a way to help regulate the amount of taxi drivers (the supply) to match the amount of customers (the demand), given the amount of resources and transportation services/space that is available. That high tax is also being used to pay for roads. Fun fact: 60% of the public toll roads (distance-wise) are in China. Woah.
As in all governments, there exists a level of corruption. In China, corruption is preventing this large sum of money (collected from the high fee to provide legal taxi service) from being resourcefully used to rebuild roads and infrastructure (poor supervision is a huge contributor to this problem of corruption in China.)
D. Trucks
Legally, the maximum weight of cargo is 20 tons per truckload. Legally…that is.
But the truck drivers (intentionally directed to do so by their respective truck companies) overload their trucks to carry an average of 40 tons of cargo to save petrol (by carrying more cargo per trip). These directions, in turn, make the truck drivers drive more slowly due to the increased weight of the truck, and disrupt the flow of traffic. Indeed, the truck drivers will be fined by the cop… but it’s no issue since the boss will pay for the ticket fee. Even if truck driver’s license were taken away, the boss will get it back. Drivers also get paid by how many trips, to and from, they make. In conjunction with their boss’s coddling of their ticket fees (which removes a fear of police authority), the drivers will drive crazily/aggressively fast and during times when they are fatigued in order to make more trips…ergo more money. Malcolm Gladwell discusses in his NYT best seller "Blink" the accuracy of our subconscious impressions and those "intuitive" feelings that we sometimes have without realizing why exactly it is that we have them. So, that weird feeling we get about passing trucks… it's justifiable.
Stemming from this corruption, we find yet another unwritten rule. This unwritten rule, however, is more driven by corruption and financial manipulation than efficiency for the larger social body (as we saw with the unwritten rule for illegal public mini-van service).
Unwritten rule: If cops see a crazy driver or overloaded truck, then the police will just fine them (to get the money), and then let them go….instead of charging the drivers with points (which they'd get back with dirty money anyways).
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There's a fluffy, white dog by his feet. |
Lastly, large and medium sized trucks, even if they are non-goods or people transporting trucks, are not allowed in most well developed cities. This restriction has the benefit of reducing noise, dust, traffic, driver speed (since smaller trucks are less likely to be used for transporting goods and thus be overloaded…), and in turn increasing safety and efficiency of travel on the city’s inner roads system. It also means that larger trucks will have to drive on the public-toll roads, which means more yuan for the government.
PROBLEM 2: RAPID DEMAND FOR INFRASTRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT
Justification for the occurrence:
When the roads were constructed, the government and subsequent overseeing road companies were not thinking so much about the pending spike in population. More so, they were focusing on increasing infrastructure quickly, to support that rapid increase of the mainland’s population (and especially in the more densely populated regions, like the cities). This spike in population was attributed to Mao's encouragement of increasing the proletariat, working middle class (meaning more people) during the period of the Cultural Revolution. The priority was not so much about making the roads maximally efficient and of great quality, but rather for the road system to first be built.... Now, however, this hasty construction of roads has caused a lot of problems, pressuring them to rebuild their road and other transportation systems to meet the efficiency needed to support the demands of the country’s travelers.
SOCIAL ECONOMIC QUALITY (of roads)
The social economy of China is rather poor since many people try to avoid or disobey laws, underground, to compensate for the government taxes or to make more income..... There is just so much corruption in the road system, in that it’s not about the best price for quality or planning services like it most often is in the U.S.
Sometimes construction companies would manipulate buyers into purchasing their cheaper construction plans by offering sexual services in turn for business. This type of exchange, however, negatively impacted the quality of the roads since, often times, the companies who offered such sexual manipulative business trades were the less competitive companies (with either lower quality or quantity of the supplies/tools needed for the construction of durable roads). The result would be construction of lower quality roads that were damaged more easily than the roads built by more expensive (less corrupt) road companies.
This type of exchange was attractive to buyers since buying less expensive road construction labor allowed the buyers to purchase more of this less expensive labor and make more roads… sacrificing quality for quantity. There’s a trade off… the pressure of the huge population’s need for transportation services makes addressing this trade-off difficult.
BEEPING
The horn: Designed for people to know you are approaching.
In the past, when cars were first made and released in China, only the very rich owned cars, while other less-affluent members owned horses for traveling. Since cars, when they were first released, were so expensive, they were most often sold to the royal or upper classes. Thus, people would respectfully allow the car (with the most likely upper-class occupant) to pass, since the royal-attachment and association to the car had been made by the nature of the expense of the item and those who had the opportunity to purchase it. Further, introducing these cars offered a new way to express one’s social and economic status.
However, overtime, as the car was made more and more financially available to the middle class, people would often overuse the horn, since they were so proud to be able to afford such a luxury item, which was only available to royalty in the past.
Yet, another aspect that contributes to the exchange between cars and pedestrians was that of fear. Pedestrians would let the car go first because they don't want to get hit (Indeed, they may have thought (subconsciously or not) about their safety and/or the trickle-down effect of an injury if they were to be hit by the car, which would decrease their efficiency as a worker…. They’d make less income and have less to provide for their family, perhaps.)
So in judging whether or not the person should cross the street, one needs to weight the costs and benefits of all of these options. Also, is the driver new? If so, perhaps their level of competency is not as good as someone with more driving hours under their [seat]belt…. Bad pun.
So a sort of test might be done:
The driver will drive at a faster speed and/or beep (quantity range is expansive)..... If the pedestrian is scared, the person will see that the car is speeding up and will let the car pass. If the car seems to be slowing down, then person will know it's ok to pass.
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THE TEST |
**Bravery can make the walker win the test, indeed. They should be decisive though. One “trick” is for the pedestrian to not directly look at the driver, which would then make them susceptible to the test, losing to the driver, and subsequently not being able to cross. Instead, the pedestrian can use their peripheral vision to judge the proper actions to take while crossing the street in a way that is advantageous to them.
Though it is socially acceptable to overtake other cars on the road, most drivers do so in a way that is slow (and thus safer). With those that do such in a fast, more aggressive manner, it is normal for others to beep since this kind of behavior is seen as rude, selfish, and dangerous.
Sometimes people can overuse their horn, especially when the costs of getting in an accident (and the associated expenses) heavily affect the driver. I remember this one public bus driver who would beep repeatedly every time he was about 100m from the upcoming vehicle. Perhaps he wanted to ensure that the driver wasn't falling asleep or wanting to change lanes (with a forgotten blinker). This beep-dependent bus driver would also beep whenever he changed lanes, despite whether or not there were cars on this long, vehicular empty highway.
It’s interesting to point out how I upset I became after endured so much of the driver’s beeping. It was to the point where the more times he beeped, or the longer each beep was, the more angry and irritated I become… In other words, I had eventually become hypersensitive (negatively, that is) to the beeps…or even just one beep. I believe that that kind of frustration stemmed primarily from my culturally specific pre-association between a beep and an invasion of personal space (being that the beep took place in America, where the individual is praised. In my opinion, this overload of praise is sickening).
Therefore, this beep has completely different interpretations, depending on the whereabouts of one’s cultural background. In America, a beep is most often an extension of one’s personal space following an invasion of one’s personal comfort zone…. When this personal space is invaded, most Americans take this invasion so personally as if it has affected and offended them to the point where they dwell on it and attempt to inflict the same amount of, if not more, castigation onto the original inflictee. Yeah… there’s just not time for that in China. For the average Chinese, a beep means more like “I’m here, you’re here, let’s find the most efficient solution to get around each other.” There are simply too many people in China to allow for them to colonize their own personal space to the extent that Americans generally do.
Additionally, Chinese philosophy (that was embedded in the foundation of Chinese society) encouraged a collective mentality that fosters communal bonding and openness to those around you, rather than focusing on oneself and individual desires like Americans tend to do (and can afford to do, given the amount of leisure consumption and production in our economy…but also of which is interwoven within our cultural and political norms.) Indeed, in China, the individual has a different notion than that that rings in America. In China, there is a Confucius saying in which “the nail that stands-out is hammered down.” This saying is not meant to stifle one’s unique range of talent, but to guide such in a way that doesn’t transfer into an “over-expression” or extensively outward colonization of space that is not parallel to that of the cultural, which is especially relevant in a country where space is already extremely populated and limited in it’s carrying capacity for economic viability. I particularly enjoy this kind of culturally interwoven mindset that heavily exists most appreciably within the Chinese social body, since it is more comfortable for me to interact and be within this kind of environment, than to successfully thrive in America and adopt the respectively attractive norms of individualizing and outwardly occupying space. I must also note the appropriateness of the symbolic reference to infrastructural development (nails/hammers) in the previous quote that is so prevalent within the regulatory forces governing China’s social body.
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Rickshaw Restin' |
This kind of transportation game is even more complicated if we add in different variables such as vehicle size, vehicle type, vehicular color, vehicle brand (class status), proportion of metal to “human-ness” of mode of transport….. and then we can compare the situations between a generalized American versus Chinese cultural perspective (with political, social, and economic attachments). *Something cool to look at is how the cultural notions of individualism effect these situations…. And levels of “dehumanization” between these two cultural lenses… muhahaha. JAMZ.
Real Brief List of OTHER PROBLEMS/TOPICS of China’s Transportation System:
CHINESE DRIVING TEST
The test is extremely basic. Beforehand, people are told to read a pamphlet that discuses the content of the test. No driving courses are required. There is a written test on computer, followed by a driving test on road (only like 4 steps), which is similar to what we have in terms of raw organization… the Chinese driving test, again, is extremely basic though and there is not much responsibility taken by the government to instruct new drivers (like with any Drivers-Ed programs that we have in the U.S.). The classes are offered, but they are not mandatory. Interestingly, it was only10 yrs ago that people merely had to pay 700 yuan to get their license. That was it. Indeed, most of the drivers currently driving on the road are included in this section of non-instructive driver’s licensure…. So, there continues to exist many poor driving habits.
J-WALKING
Is illegal. But, similar to the illegal mini-van public transportaion, there exists an unwritten rule. A cop will allow J-walkers to pass and not approach or fine them if the J-walker is not intervening with the flow of traffic (and if it would be more cost efficient (than beneficial) for the police officer to leave their station and fine the J-walker than to stay within the zone of traffic and perhaps fine another vehicle, that would ultimately result in a larger sum for the police officer.) It was actually pretty funny. I J-walked like 20 meters from a cop, unknowing whether or not I was able to do such, and there was a local walking next to me. She too was unaware of the cop’s presence, but after seeing the cop, she chuckled and hurried slightly across the street… good thing she was with a foreigner who can play the “stupid American” and who is able to reap the many benefits from China’s desire to maintain good face to the outside world. |
Walking in between traffic, nbd. |
DRUNK DRIVING
Drunk driving was, in the past, only a 2-3 year penalty in prison and a fee. Sometimes, people were even able to bail themselves completely from jail by paying a larger fee (class privilege). This large fee would be given to the government, who would then approach the drunk driver’s afflicted family members and convince them to forgive the drunk driver… However, this kind of lenient punishment gave the Chinese government a bad name (the information spread quickly through the internet). Thus, in order to re-create good face within the Chinese government and to the outside world, the government compensated for the lenient penalty with one of severity, in which one drunk driving offense would result in a permanent loss of license (even if you were DDing and didn’t kill anyone, the attached monetary fine is what can change in parallel to the severity or harm done within the criminal act.)
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Rickshaw terror (due to the two American passenger’s individualized values) |
** Interesting Point:
The government doesn't gain that much of a fiscal benefit from the drunk drivers since drivers who are under the influence of alcohol are usually driving directly home or within the city (and thus very short distances from the bar/party to their home). So the drivers will not be traveling on any taxed roads (which are what bring money to the government).
However, the social repercussions (damaging people's sense of security in public space and leniently enforcing drunk driving crimes that cause foreigners to look badly upon China) are uniquely toxic to the people's image of the government and thus the regulation that the government has on its social body. So they just banned it completely and made the punishment very severe to ensure a clean rinse of such drunk driving offenses from China.
ULTIMATELY/ON AVERAGE
Despite the comparably larger and denser population, China has less accidents and traffic than that of the U.S. Now that’s pretty amazing. I theorize that this is largely attributed to the differences in social, cultural, philosophical, and political values between the U.S. and China. In the U.S., in which we are grown in a culture that is overwhelmingly encourages the individual, Americans tend to be distracted by themselves and their own concerns, whereas in China, the concern is more outward and towards others. Thus, on the road, if a person were to beep loudly or slowly cut in front of someone, it would be likely for an American to interpret this as a personal offense on them, or for them to feel obliged to express an individual, emotionally stirring concern (say that of disgust, indignation, or hatred). This desire for self-expression to the “rage roader”, in turn, causes that person’s brightspot of consciousness to attend mostly to these emotionally-stirring thoughts that pertain to individual concerns, and will thus make the person less able to attend to the concurrent happenings on the road after this event. On the other hand, if that event were to take place in China, the average Chinese driver would most likely not becoming emotionally stirred (in order to maintain good face) in the way that the average American would, and thus, their brightspot of consciousness can continue to attend to what is happening on the road. This kind of composure that is seen in Chinese drivers (gained from the surrounding cultural, philosophical, and political influences) would make the driver much less likely to get distracted (and get in an accident) than the average American.
SOME CLOSURE
I remember how excited I was once I figured out how to cross the roads of China that I had at first experienced as a vehicular zone of death, (unless interrupted by the familiar traffic lights). It’s all interconnected (I mean, such is usually the case with everything…). China’s collectivist culture, philosophical roots, and political pressures serve to guide the rules and strategies of the roads through the social body’s understanding of how to attend and manage this unique form of organization of space and time. If you just take it slow (using your peripheral vision to guide you across when possible), with no sharp movements, you will be able to cross the road by incorporating yourself within the system’s interwoven strategies and rules of the game’s culturally enriched history and practically-driven system of Chinese transportation.
- Tones
…4th tone, that is.
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She'll be O.K. |
*Special thanks to Jeremy Teissere and Amze Emmons, my two professors during this trip without whom none of this learning experience would've existed... which calls for a HUGE thanks to my Dad for giving me the opportunity to go to China... and to come home :) As well, a giant panda's daily bamboo's worth of thanks (which is a crap load... literally) to Kevin (Zhong Hua) the best tour guide eva, who was the most prominent factor in writing this blog and helping me see these trends in Chinese Transportation and culture. Gan bei to you all.
