A Tale Of Two Chinas

This story was written by CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen

The New York Times recently did a story about yet another new shopping mall being built in China, which already has the largest shopping mall in the world in Beijing.

As the Times' David Barboza wrote about the malls of China:

"Chinese consumers arrive by bus and train, and growing numbers are driving there. On busy days, one mall in the southern city of Guangzhou attracts about 600,000 shoppers."

Think of it this way: Boston has a population of about 600,000. It's as if everyone evacuated for the day ... just to shop. Everyone.

When people come to visit China, they are often swept away by the skyscrapers of Beijing and Shanghai, by the big-city streets clogged with new cars, and not a few of them BMWs or Mercedes Benzes.

They see an urban population with money to burn, looking hip and well dressed.

But they don't see the other side. They don't see the villages or the urban neighborhoods with unheated, one-room houses that lack plumbing. They don't see people who have no new clothes to wear. They don't see people for whom owning a car is a lifelong dream unlikely to ever be realized.

There are a lot of people in China - try about 900 million peasants out of a population of 1.4 billion - who may never see the inside of a shopping mall. They are too poor.

The average annual income for a peasant farmer is roughly $1,200. If he owns a car or a pig, he's doing well. On that income he can (barely) support his family.

But he's not going to the mall.

China has a long history of revolt and rebellion, of changing emperors and dynasties, of coming together and then breaking apart.

The most recent unification came under Mao Zedong. It is worth remembering that he gathered a fervent following because of economic disparities in China. His masses were the peasants, fighting the established order in a time when there was a huge disparity between the lucky few who were rich and all the rest.

It was "all the rest" who helped Mao take a country.

Let us not suggest that there is a revolution brewing out there. There isn't. At least, there isn't at this particular moment.

The Chinese government is trying to reduce the wealth disparity by doing things like cutting taxes for farmers. That puts real money back into a peasant's pocket.

And, to be honest, while poor peasants may not be shopping for Gucci bags at the next new mall, their life is improving. As long as today is a little better than yesterday, things will remain stable.

But if China's gangbuster economy slows, the poor will feel it first and feel it hardest.

That is the tightrope act China's leaders are walking. As China's recent history shows us, when the disparity between rich and poor becomes too extreme, you can lose the masses.

Lose the masses, and you can lose China.

And now you know what keeps China's leaders awake at night. Not those who can shop 'til they drop. But those who can't.