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We live in interesting times : Comments
By Brian Hennessy, published 19/3/2012The Cultural Revolution and feudalism are rarely mentioned in China, but exercise considerable influence over the country.
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Posted by Sowat, Monday, 19 March 2012 11:15:23 AM
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Good article. Informative and concise.
One of the more "interesting" facets of the world's fascination with China and its future, is that we all paint our assessments of them with the vivid colours of our own prejudices and aspirations. It's that sort of nation. Rampant capitalists, blood dripping (metaphorically of course) from their greedy maws, see only the vast potential for their own enrichment, and tremble at every shift in the growth forecasts that Beijing issues. Wide-eyed political idealists search for every sign that China is leaning towards "democracy", and agonize over every report of apparent repression of their people. Greenies exasperate over the... well, pretty much everything that happens in China. Nothing different there, then. Every so often, this gets out of hand. An "entertainer", Mike Daisey, includes in his show a diatribe on the conditions in Apple's China manufacturer Foxconn. Presumably because it panders to the prejudices of his audience that factories in China automatically exploit their workers, to the detriment of American business. A common enough meme. Unfortunately, he invented it. http://www.chicagopublicmedia.org/sites/default/files/Retraction%20Press%20Release%20Final.pdf And his defence? "I'm not a journalist. I'm an entertainer. Therefore I'm allowed to lie." http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/statement-on-tal.html China will do what China will do. It has done so for longer than almost any other society on the planet. We will adapt to it again, just as we have done in every previous generation. The only difference this time is that our world of instant communications has accelerated the dissemination of both information and disinformation. Posted by Pericles, Tuesday, 20 March 2012 7:54:43 AM
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The Labor Party's 'Comrade' Swan and the Treasury mandarins in Can'tberra are risking an awful lot in assuming that China will continue to be characterised by narrowly ill-defined notions of 'progress' and 'growth' of The Economy in China.
With whole cities thrown up by entrepreneuerial 'developers' (of the Gold Coast variety) now standing empty, and social unrest over inequality, corruption and serf-like living and working conditions spreading, just as the global economy has gone off the boil, the notion of internal salvation of their economy via massive consumer spending is fanciful to say the least.
Moreover, as can be observed across the rest of our fragile planet, the ruling class are increasingly divided amongst themselves over just what to do to solve the unsolvable - the contradictions that are endemic to the Capitalist mode of production and exchange.
A good start would be to empty the privately controlled U$, British and Australian prison systems of the 'customers' incarcerated for being poor and smoking pot to ease their plight or stealing to survive (some 2 million in the U$ alone), and round up the Wall Street banksters and their ilk in Europe and Australia, to fill the vacated cells. A far more humane solution than that practiced by Chinese officials who simply execute criminals and those who would threaten the system.