Chapter 6 Chapter Five Special Zone

"Many young people in our village have gone to the mainland to work," Li Yun (pseudonym - author's note) said to me while sitting behind the counter of his pharmacy, "I also worked in Shenzhen, manual labor, dirty It's tiring, but the income is higher than what I earn from running a pharmacy now." Li Yun is about twenty-six or seven years old, and works as a village doctor in a Miao village in Wuzhishan, Hainan Province.At this time, I realized for the first time that Taiwanese are not the only ones who use the term "Mainland". "Then why are you back?" I asked, sitting on a bench by the counter, teasing his three-year-old son.

"After all, I have studied medicine for several years, and I don't want to waste it." He replied. "Then why don't you find a job in a big hospital on the mainland?" "I came from a cottage, and I don't know anyone in the mainland. If I could find a job in a big hospital, I wouldn't do that kind of physical work." He said with a wry smile. But his copycat drugstore business is really not very good.Within three or four hours of our conversation, he only made one deal: a woman in typical Hmong costume brought a coughing boy to his pharmacy, and Li Yun asked his mother What, while listening to the child's chest with a stethoscope, I couldn't understand the Miao language they were talking about, but the mother and child took the medicine and seemed to leave without paying.Afterwards, Li Yun explained to me: "She said she has no money on hand now, so she will use credit first."

Li Yun is also from the Miao nationality, but he can speak fluent Chinese. His speech, behavior and dress are no different from the Han people in the city on the "mainland" side, but they are very different from his brother sitting next to me. Seems to be from two worlds. Li Yun's brother is only three or four years older than him, but he looks like a 40-year-old middle-aged man. He also worked in Guangdong Province on the other side of the "mainland". What's more, I have to do physical work, and what I do is the hardest work of construction workers. My elder brother’s Chinese sounded very difficult to me, and I had to help my brother explain: “Speaking poor Chinese is also one of the reasons why my elder brother finally returned to the countryside to work in agriculture. Of course, the main reason is that the work on the construction site, both It’s dangerous and hard work, and you can’t do it for long. Hey, come back after earning a few years while you’re young.”

"I heard from my elders that in the past it was people from the mainland who went to Hainan, but now it's people from Hainan who go to the mainland." On the plane to Hainan, a young man sitting next to me said to me. My neighbor is also studying at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou on the "mainland" side, and returned to Sanya, Hainan to visit his parents during the May Day Golden Week.He told me that he would definitely not return to work in Hainan after graduation: "There are still many more opportunities in Guangzhou and Shenzhen than in Hainan." It is said that in China, there is a relatively simple criterion for measuring whether a province is poor or rich: whether it is mainly a place for sending or receiving migrant workers.For example, the most famous sources of migrant workers in China, such as Henan, Anhui, Sichuan, Hunan, and Jiangxi, are all relatively poor provinces; while farmers in coastal developed provinces such as Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shandong, if they leave home Most of the part-time workers will work in big cities in the province, and even if they go to other provinces, they are mostly doing business.Of course, the rich and poor mentioned here are relative terms. As for the peasants in the abjectly poor lands, they can't even raise travel expenses, so they can only stay at home and farm.

Hainan used to be the largest special economic zone in China, and it was also a popular inflow destination for mainland immigrants: not only migrant workers from other provinces, but also a large number of urban elites in the interior, but now Hainan has become an outflow destination: not only Hainan farmers who went to work in the mainland, as well as urban youths on the island and talents returning from the mainland.In the new century, there is probably only one special type of "immigrants" left who still flow into Hainan: college entrance examination immigrants.The paradox of historical development and economic laws is embarrassing.

"Those mainlanders flocked to Hainan at that time, enclosing land and building houses, and then ran back to the mainland one after another, leaving a lot of unfinished buildings." In Haikou, the capital of Hainan Province, a female grocery store owner pointed to the complained to me in Mandarin with a strong Hainanese accent. The basic framework of the building still exists, except for the roof, window panes, exterior painting, and of course the popularity. It stands there eeriely like a huge specimen of human anatomy.The textbook explains the "unfinished building" in this way: "A building that was stranded due to a broken capital chain in the bubble economy."

"Most of the mainlanders who came to Hainan back then left. There are not many people like me staying behind." Lao Yang, who runs a restaurant in the Yangpu Economic Development Zone in Hainan, said with emotion.There are not many customers in the restaurant, and Lao Yang, the owner, actually has time to watch me eat and chat with me. Lao Yang is a native of Shaanxi, and he was also coerced by the "waves" that surged in the late 1980s due to the establishment of Hainan province and the establishment of special economic zones.He witnessed the whole process of the rise and fall of Hainan's economy and the ups and downs of the population in the past 20 years: "I followed the tide all the way. In 1988, when Hainan was established as a province, I resigned from Shaanxi and came to Haikou. In 1992, Yangpu signed a contract, and I drove from Haikou again. To Yangpu. Hey, to be honest, a small Yangpu is a microcosm of Hainan. In the beginning, people had high expectations for Yangpu’s economic prospects, and gold diggers flocked from all over the country. It's almost there. I have tried many things, but they all failed. Now I can only rely on this small restaurant to maintain a basic survival. When the number of customers is so small that I can't afford my own meals, I should leave, like a farmer in Hainan Same, go to Guangdong and work for others.”

"Hey, a province can't get rich just relying on tourism. Tourism makes people prosperous but not rich." In Sanya, the southernmost tourist city in Hainan, a Hunan "brother" from "mainland" drove a car, While explaining to me the regional economics he understands.Above his head, a mascot made of Mao Zedong's portrait swayed with the bumps in the road. Yes, the tourism industry has only enriched a few seaside resorts like Sanya, while the towns and villages in the hinterland of Hainan are still very poor, and even the coastal towns like Haikou and Yangpu, where mainland "sea trespassers" flock to, Now there are also some signs of decline, depression, and neglect.In today's Hainan, except for a few tourist cities such as Sanya, there are still some migrant workers from other provinces. Most of the areas in Hainan are not so much places for immigrants as immigrants, but rather places for immigrants.

In 1988, Hainan was established as a province and became the largest special economic zone in China.At that time, Hainan seemed to have the best timing, favorable location, and harmonious people. Timing: China’s economic reform has been launched for ten years. China’s high-level decision-makers intend to make Hainan the second Taiwan Island, so they have given Hainan a very special and preferential special zone policy; Geography: Hainan is close to Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and the Pearl River Delta, and is located in the Greater China Economic Circle It is located in the center of the "Golden Triangle" area of ​​China's economic development; Renhe: A large number of talents have poured into Hainan to seek gold. There is a saying that "one hundred thousand talents go to Hainan".

So, what is the reason why Hainan has not been able to take advantage of the rapid economic development of the "Golden Triangle"? “There are many reasons for Hainan’s decline, including poor leadership and wrong choice of economic development strategy,” Mr. Mao Yushi, a famous economist and chairman of the Unirule Economic Research Institute, told me in an old building in Xicheng District, Beijing. , "I have been to Hainan many times, and I have also discussed this issue with local people. After Hainan was established as a province, it has suffered many blows: the car smuggling case was exposed, which was a blow; and then the real estate bubble burst, which was another blow."

But according to Professor Zhou Chunshan of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, the main reason for Hainan's decline is the lack of industrial development. "As the saying goes, no job does not make you rich. Hainan's tourism industry is well-known, but the tourism industry is prosperous but not prosperous. It is wrong to rely too much on tourism and neglect manufacturing." Professor Zhou said "prosperous people do not prosper". , which is similar to what the Hunan farmer "Brother" I met in Sanya said that "people are prosperous but wealth is not prosperous". When Zhou Chunshan was interviewed by me in his office, he compared Dongguan, Guangdong with Hainan, trying to explain his theory of "no work, no wealth": "In Hainan, whether it is car smuggling, real estate boom, or too much emphasis on The tourism industry is driven by the mentality of making quick money and easy money. Dongguan is different. Although it does not have as much publicity and media attention as Hainan, it has steadily attracted foreign investment. From the beginning, no one was optimistic about it. Once the processing industry started, it turned out to be a new way to get rich." Professor Zhou also pointed out that there was a lot of controversy in Hainan over the issue of surnamed capital and surnamed society, and whether the development of Yangpu was a betrayal of the country, which affected the determination of foreign investment and also caused itself to lose valuable development opportunities.Later, in 1992, during the *Southern Tour, China opened up in all directions, and Hainan did not have much advantage.Zhou Chunshan recalled, "At the beginning of the development of Yangpu, many mainland talents flocked to Yangpu, including many of my classmates and acquaintances. I wanted to go but couldn't go! But now they have all come back." "21st Century Business Herald" editorial board member Jin Cheng also felt the same way: "I have several friends who were originally in Hainan and later came to Guangdong." When Jin Cheng accepted my interview in Guangzhou, he analyzed the lessons of Hainan in this way: "Hainan's mistakes It is mainly due to the wrong choice of industry. It faces the same dilemma as Zhuhai. It may be more suitable for tourism itself, but for tourism, the financial benefits are limited. Without financial resources, it is impossible to promote the process of industrialization. Hainan There have been some improvements in the past two years, such as large-scale petrochemical projects, which have boosted Hainan’s economy, but Hainan’s foundation is too weak, and it was originally an undeveloped area.” Indeed, from the end of the 1980s to the mid-1990s, China's "media darling" was Hainan, not Dongguan; the dream of China's urban youth elites was also to "break into Hainan", and those who went to Dongguan were all from rural areas The so-called "blind flow".But in the past 20 years, things have changed and stars have changed, and Dongguan and Hainan have changed places. This time I went to Hainan for an interview. I once met a young male waiter from a rural village in Wenchang, Hainan in a restaurant in Haikou. I asked him how much his income was. He looked around and saw that the boss was not there. It’s only half of what it was when I was working in Dongguan.” "Then why did you leave Dongguan?" "I went back to my hometown in Wenchang for the Spring Festival. The owner of this restaurant is my relative, and asked me to come over and help out temporarily. After finishing this part, I still have to go back to Dongguan to work." He flirted with me, and hurriedly packed up Leftovers at my table, back in the kitchen. It turned out that his boss had come out of the kitchen.