Photo: Ray Ally
Despite China’s huge population, I guess that less than 1% of its people would know who Ben Bernanke was and that he was voted the Time Magazine Person of The Year in 2009. However I estimate 99% of China’s population would know the person who was one of the runners up in that contest – Mr Chinese Worker.
Mr Bernanke is the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the US. The man credited with reversing the economic decline in the country by pumping millions of dollars into the US economy and saving the global economy from an even worse catastrophic depression.
While Mr Bernanke was busy saving the world, Mr Chinese Worker was busy building the world. One the army of millions credited with helping China’s economy boom and achieving near double digit growth for the last ten years. This year China grew by 9.8%, while the US economy shrunk by 1.8%, but is still the richest nation in the world by GDP.
These two people couldn’t be more polar opposite in terms of job description, position and salary. Mr Chinese worker is employed in the factories, offices and farms across China. This includes more than 150 million migrant workers from China’s rural hinterland who work in low level manual work, often on China’ booming building sites. Earning around RMB 24,000 (US$ 3,500) per year, a mere fraction of the US$193,000 that Mr Bernanke takes home.
The Time Magazine Person of the Year has been running since 1927. Past winners have included Presidents, politicians, scientists and even the Queen of England. The winner judged to have “for better or for worse, …has done the most to influence the events of the year”.
Along with the kudos of the award the winner gets his face to adorn Time Magazine’s year end cover. If Mr Chinese Worker had won, it would of been interesting to see what they would of done. As it could have been a bit crowded trying to fit 800 million Chinese workers on the front cover of the magazine.