Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

[chanman]

For now foreign brand stores - even if full of local products - are highly popular.  Foreign brands command a premium, quality not being a big issue - and a lot of the 'foreign' stuff is Indonesian and Indian junk.

I agree with the comment about currency of information - things are changing quickly.

I wonder how much that has to do with having someone to hold responsible in case of defective products, as well as experiencing staff trained to serve customers.

The thing about a large store is that they have a lot of, well, hostage capital.  The act of spending years and large sums of money to train people and build up a lot of rather nonliquid assets signals that a firm is planning to be there, and be there for a while.  The (literal) textbook example used in my classes was that of old mail-order catalogues showing pictures of large, ornate office buildings or warehouses belonging to the company in question, the idea being that if they ran off with your money, they stand to lose a lot more than they would gain.

Anyway, was traffic any better the last time you were in Beijing?  I've been there once, 5 years ago, and seem to remember lane markings being regarded as optional and large 8 lane x 8 lane intersections being directed by a single Beijing Security guy in the middle (perhaps people are loathe to follow traffic lights?).

Infrastructure, stability, and economies of scale are advantages China has over countries with potentially lower labour costs (Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, etc.), so it would make sense for them to continue to invest heavily in infrastructure, even as they run into power and water supply problems (something shared by most rapidly expanding cities, it seems)

 

[CougarKing]

As of a year ago Carrefour appeared, to me, to be doing much better than WalMart in Beijing.  It was the old location, Location, LOCATION thing: the Carrefour stores are better located, for now.  As Beijing expands out past the 4th and 5th ring roads - and it will continue to do that - WalMart will likely benefit.

For now foreign brand stores - even if full of local products - are highly popular.  Foreign brands command a premium, quality not being a big issue - and a lot of the 'foreign' stuff is Indonesian and Indian junk.

What about Japanese "junk", or rather knockoffs of those Japanese goods, whether they be electronics or clothes or whatever? hehehe...you can probably find them in the Silk Market (xiu shui jie), known for those pirated goods, but last time I heard from a friend that had been there recently that it had been buldozed down...

Perhaps to make way for a new Mitsukoshi or Takeshimaya chain mall like they have in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan? ;D

To think I bought a knockoff of a top Rolex watch there for only 150 Kuai/Yuan and the day I get back to North America, it ceases to work!

Campbell,

As for Walmart (or should I say "Wu" mart- you'll get the joke if know a little Bei jing hua'r, hehehe), they should face some growing competition in Hong Kong at least- I'm not sure about other Chinese cities- from this competitor called "Welcome" Supermarket, which I believe is an Australian-owned chain.

Anyway, was traffic any better the last time you were in Beijing?  I've been there once, 5 years ago, and seem to remember lane markings being regarded as optional and large 8 lane x 8 lane intersections being directed by a single Beijing Security guy in the middle (perhaps people are loathe to follow traffic lights?).

Last time I was in Beijing, I thought the traffic was not that bad- at least not bad compared to Manila or Bangkok's traffic problems until recenlty. The overwhelming number of Volkswagen brand cars, such as VW "Bora" which looks like a "Jetta" , was almost as annoying as that moronic vendor who shouted "BEI JING WAN BAO/Beijing Nightly Newspaper" outside my dorm for a number of nights.

Surprisingly I heard of a new Beijing law enacted for the municipality calling for the outlawing the use of Bicycles within Beijing, probably to encourage the use of more cars...which doesn't make sense at all. I did notice some considerable construction near the Third Ring Road area of Chaoyang district where I stayed at in the Study Abroad program through my university, but I assumed that had more to do with the Olympics Preparations...

Here's an interesting note comparing Beijing at its height with Taipei- while Beijing at one point had more bicycles than cars, Taipei, on the other hand is a city full of scooters! SCOOTERS everywhere and the whole freaking city from the 101 building to Yangmingshan seems to resemble a huge parking lot since cars are parked in every conceivable nook and cranny since it is apparent everyone just wised up to using scooters instead!  ;D

 

[Edward Campbell]

Part 1 of 2

Here, reproduced from the July/August 2007 Foreign Affairs under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act, is another take on economic/political systems – to add to liberal and conservative democracy, illiberal democracy, illiberal kleptocracy, etc:

It’s long so it’s in two parts.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86405/azar-gat/the-return-of-authoritarian-great-powers.html

The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers
By Azar Gat

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007

Summary: Liberal democracy, led by the United States, may have emerged triumphant from the great struggles of the twentieth century. But the post-Cold War rise of economically successful -- and nondemocratic -- China and Russia may represent a viable alternative path to modernity that leaves liberal democracy's ultimate victory and future dominance in doubt.

Azar Gat is Ezer Weizman Professor of National Security at Tel Aviv University and the author of War in Human Civilization.

THE END OF THE END OF HISTORY

Today's global liberal democratic order faces two challenges. The first is radical Islam -- and it is the lesser of the two challenges. Although the proponents of radical Islam find liberal democracy repugnant, and the movement is often described as the new fascist threat, the societies from which it arises are generally poor and stagnant. They represent no viable alternative to modernity and pose no significant military threat to the developed world. It is mainly the potential use of weapons of mass destruction -- particularly by nonstate actors -- that makes militant Islam a menace.

The second, and more significant, challenge emanates from the rise of nondemocratic great powers: the West's old Cold War rivals China and Russia, now operating under authoritarian capitalist, rather than communist, regimes. Authoritarian capitalist great powers played a leading role in the international system up until 1945. They have been absent since then. But today, they seem poised for a comeback.

Capitalism's ascendancy appears to be deeply entrenched, but the current predominance of democracy could be far less secure. Capitalism has expanded relentlessly since early modernity, its lower-priced goods and superior economic power eroding and transforming all other socioeconomic regimes, a process most memorably described by Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto. Contrary to Marx's expectations, capitalism had the same effect on communism, eventually "burying" it without the proverbial shot being fired. The triumph of the market, precipitating and reinforced by the industrial-technological revolution, led to the rise of the middle class, intensive urbanization, the spread of education, the emergence of mass society, and ever greater affluence. In the post-Cold War era (just as in the nineteenth century and the 1950s and 1960s), it is widely believed that liberal democracy naturally emerged from these developments, a view famously espoused by Francis Fukuyama. Today, more than half of the world's states have elected governments, and close to half have sufficiently entrenched liberal rights to be considered fully free.

But the reasons for the triumph of democracy, especially over its nondemocratic capitalist rivals of the two world wars, Germany and Japan, were more contingent than is usually assumed. Authoritarian capitalist states, today exemplified by China and Russia, may represent a viable alternative path to modernity, which in turn suggests that there is nothing inevitable about liberal democracy's ultimate victory -- or future dominance.

CHRONICLE OF A DEFEAT NOT FORETOLD

The liberal democratic camp defeated its authoritarian, fascist, and communist rivals alike in all of the three major great-power struggles of the twentieth century -- the two world wars and the Cold War. In trying to determine exactly what accounted for this decisive outcome, it is tempting to trace it to the special traits and intrinsic advantages of liberal democracy.

One possible advantage is democracies' international conduct. Perhaps they more than compensate for carrying a lighter stick abroad with a greater ability to elicit international cooperation through the bonds and discipline of the global market system. This explanation is probably correct for the Cold War, when a greatly expanded global economy was dominated by the democratic powers, but it does not apply to the two world wars. Nor is it true that liberal democracies succeed because they always cling together. Again, this was true, at least as a contributing factor, during the Cold War, when the democratic capitalist camp kept its unity, whereas growing antagonism between the Soviet Union and China pulled the communist bloc apart. During World War I, however, the ideological divide between the two sides was much less clear. The Anglo-French alliance was far from preordained; it was above all a function of balance-of-power calculations rather than liberal cooperation. At the close of the nineteenth century, power politics had brought the United Kingdom and France, bitterly antagonistic countries, to the brink of war and prompted the United Kingdom to actively seek an alliance with Germany. Liberal Italy's break from the Triple Alliance and joining of the Entente, despite its rivalry with France, was a function of the Anglo-French alliance, as Italy's peninsular location made it hazardous for the country to be on a side opposed to the leading maritime power of the time, the United Kingdom. Similarly, during World War II, France was quickly defeated and taken out of the Allies' side (which was to include nondemocratic Soviet Russia), whereas the right-wing totalitarian powers fought on the same side. Studies of democracies' alliance behavior suggest that democratic regimes show no greater tendency to stick together than other types of regimes.

Nor did the totalitarian capitalist regimes lose World War II because their democratic opponents held a moral high ground that inspired greater exertion from their people, as the historian Richard Overy and others have claimed. During the 1930s and early 1940s, fascism and Nazism were exciting new ideologies that generated massive popular enthusiasm, whereas democracy stood on the ideological defensive, appearing old and dispirited. If anything, the fascist regimes proved more inspiring in wartime than their democratic adversaries, and the battlefield performance of their militaries is widely judged to have been superior.

Liberal democracy's supposedly inherent economic advantage is also far less clear than is often assumed. All of the belligerents in the twentieth century's great struggles proved highly effective in producing for war. During World War I, semiautocratic Germany committed its resources as effectively as its democratic rivals did. After early victories in World War II, Nazi Germany's economic mobilization and military production proved lax during the critical years 1940-42. Well positioned at the time to fundamentally alter the global balance of power by destroying the Soviet Union and straddling all of continental Europe, Germany failed because its armed forces were meagerly supplied for the task. The reasons for this deficiency remain a matter of historical debate, but one of the problems was the existence of competing centers of authority in the Nazi system, in which Hitler's "divide and rule" tactics and party functionaries' jealous guarding of their assigned domains had a chaotic effect. Furthermore, from the fall of France in June 1940 to the German setback before Moscow in December 1941, there was a widespread feeling in Germany that the war had practically been won. All the same, from 1942 onward (by which time it was too late), Germany greatly intensified its economic mobilization and caught up with and even surpassed the liberal democracies in terms of the share of GDP devoted to the war (although its production volume remained much lower than that of the massive U.S. economy). Likewise, levels of economic mobilization in imperial Japan and the Soviet Union exceeded those of the United States and the United Kingdom thanks to ruthless efforts.

Only during the Cold War did the Soviet command economy exhibit deepening structural weaknesses -- weaknesses that were directly responsible for the Soviet Union's downfall. The Soviet system had successfully generated the early and intermediate stages of industrialization (albeit at a frightful human cost) and excelled at the regimentalized techniques of mass production during World War II. It also kept abreast militarily during the Cold War. But because of the system's rigidity and lack of incentives, it proved ill equipped to cope with the advanced stages of development and the demands of the information age and globalization.

There is no reason, however, to suppose that the totalitarian capitalist regimes of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan would have proved inferior economically to the democracies had they survived. The inefficiencies that favoritism and unaccountability typically create in such regimes might have been offset by higher levels of social discipline. Because of their more efficient capitalist economies, the right-wing totalitarian powers could have constituted a more viable challenge to the liberal democracies than the Soviet Union did; Nazi Germany was judged to be such a challenge by the Allied powers before and during World War II. The liberal democracies did not possess an inherent advantage over Germany in terms of economic and technological development, as they did in relation to their other great-power rivals.

So why did the democracies win the great struggles of the twentieth century? The reasons are different for each type of adversary. They defeated their nondemocratic capitalist adversaries, Germany and Japan, in war because Germany and Japan were medium-sized countries with limited resource bases and they came up against the far superior -- but hardly preordained -- economic and military coalition of the democratic powers and Russia or the Soviet Union. The defeat of communism, however, had much more to do with structural factors. The capitalist camp -- which after 1945 expanded to include most of the developed world -- possessed much greater economic power than the communist bloc, and the inherent inefficiency of the communist economies prevented them from fully exploiting their vast resources and catching up to the West. Together, the Soviet Union and China were larger and thus had the potential to be more powerful than the democratic capitalist camp. Ultimately, they failed because their economic systems limited them, whereas the nondemocratic capitalist powers, Germany and Japan, were defeated because they were too small. Contingency played a decisive role in tipping the balance against the nondemocratic capitalist powers and in favor of the democracies.

AMERICAN EXCEPTION

The most decisive element of contingency was the United States. After all, it was little more than a chance of history that the scion of Anglo-Saxon liberalism would sprout on the other side of the Atlantic, institutionalize its heritage with independence, expand across one of the most habitable and thinly populated territories in the world, feed off of massive immigration from Europe, and so create on a continental scale what was -- and still is -- by far the world's largest concentration of economic and military might. A liberal regime and other structural traits had a lot to do with the United States' economic success, and even with its size, because of its attractiveness to immigrants. But the United States would scarcely have achieved such greatness had it not been located in a particularly advantageous and vast ecological-geographic niche, as the counterexamples of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand demonstrate. And location, of course, although crucial, was but one necessary condition among many for bringing about the giant and, indeed, "United" States as the paramount political fact of the twentieth century. Contingency was at least as responsible as liberalism for the United States' emergence in the New World and, hence, for its later ability to rescue the Old World.

Throughout the twentieth century, the United States' power consistently surpassed that of the next two strongest states combined, and this decisively tilted the global balance of power in favor of whichever side Washington was on. If any factor gave the liberal democracies their edge, it was above all the existence of the United States rather than any inherent advantage. In fact, had it not been for the United States, liberal democracy may well have lost the great struggles of the twentieth century. This is a sobering thought that is often overlooked in studies of the spread of democracy in the twentieth century, and it makes the world today appear much more contingent and tenuous than linear theories of development suggest. If it were not for the U.S. factor, the judgment of later generations on liberal democracy would probably have echoed the negative verdict on democracy's performance, issued by the fourth-century-BC Greeks, in the wake of Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian War.

Edit: format

 

[Edward Campbell]

Part 2 of 2

(Reproduced from the July/August 2007 Foreign Affairs under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act.)

THE NEW SECOND WORLD

But the audit of war is, of course, not the only one that societies -- democratic and nondemocratic -- undergo. One must ask how the totalitarian capitalist powers would have developed had they not been defeated by war. Would they, with time and further development, have shed their former identity and embraced liberal democracy, as the former communist regimes of eastern Europe eventually did? Was the capitalist industrial state of imperial Germany before World War I ultimately moving toward increasing parliamentary control and democratization? Or would it have developed into an authoritarian oligarchic regime, dominated by an alliance between the officialdom, the armed forces, and industry, as imperial Japan did (in spite of the latter's liberal interlude in the 1920s)? Liberalization seems even more doubtful in the case of Nazi Germany had it survived, let alone triumphed. Because all these major historical experiments were cut short by war, the answers to these questions remain a matter of speculation. But perhaps the peacetime record of other authoritarian capitalist regimes since 1945 can offer a clue.

Studies that cover this period show that democracies generally outdo other systems economically. Authoritarian capitalist regimes are at least as successful -- if not more so -- in the early stages of development, but they tend to democratize after crossing a certain threshold of economic and social development. This seems to have been a recurring pattern in East Asia, southern Europe, and Latin America. The attempt to draw conclusions about development patterns from these findings, however, may be misleading, because the sample set itself may be polluted. Since 1945, the enormous gravitational pull exerted by the United States and the liberal hegemony has bent patterns of development worldwide.

Because the totalitarian capitalist great powers, Germany and Japan, were crushed in war, and these countries were subsequently threatened by Soviet power, they lent themselves to a sweeping restructuring and democratization. Consequently, smaller countries that chose capitalism over communism had no rival political and economic model to emulate and no powerful international players to turn to other than the liberal democratic camp. These small and medium-sized countries' eventual democratization probably had as much to do with the overwhelming influence of the Western liberal hegemony as with internal processes. Presently, Singapore is the only example of a country with a truly developed economy that still maintains a semiauthoritarian regime, and even it is likely to change under the influence of the liberal order within which it operates. But are Singapore-like great powers that prove resistant to the influence of this order possible?

The question is made relevant by the recent emergence of nondemocratic giants, above all formerly communist and booming authoritarian capitalist China. Russia, too, is retreating from its postcommunist liberalism and assuming an increasingly authoritarian character as its economic clout grows. Some believe that these countries could ultimately become liberal democracies through a combination of internal development, increasing affluence, and outside influence. Alternatively, they may have enough weight to create a new nondemocratic but economically advanced Second World. They could establish a powerful authoritarian capitalist order that allies political elites, industrialists, and the military; that is nationalist in orientation; and that participates in the global economy on its own terms, as imperial Germany and imperial Japan did.

It is widely contended that economic and social development create pressures for democratization that an authoritarian state structure cannot contain. There is also the view that "closed societies" may be able to excel in mass manufacturing but not in the advanced stages of the information economy. The jury on these issues is still out, because the data set is incomplete. Imperial and Nazi Germany stood at the forefront of the advanced scientific and manufacturing economies of their times, but some would argue that their success no longer applies because the information economy is much more diversified. Nondemocratic Singapore has a highly successful information economy, but Singapore is a city-state, not a big country. It will take a long time before China reaches the stage when the possibility of an authoritarian state with an advanced capitalist economy can be tested. All that can be said at the moment is that there is nothing in the historical record to suggest that a transition to democracy by today's authoritarian capitalist powers is inevitable, whereas there is a great deal to suggest that such powers have far greater economic and military potential than their communist predecessors did.

China and Russia represent a return of economically successful authoritarian capitalist powers, which have been absent since the defeat of Germany and Japan in 1945, but they are much larger than the latter two countries ever were. Although Germany was only a medium-sized country uncomfortably squeezed at the center of Europe, it twice nearly broke out of its confines to become a true world power on account of its economic and military might. In 1941, Japan was still behind the leading great powers in terms of economic development, but its growth rate since 1913 had been the highest in the world. Ultimately, however, both Germany and Japan were too small -- in terms of population, resources, and potential -- to take on the United States. Present-day China, on the other hand, is the largest player in the international system in terms of population and is experiencing spectacular economic growth. By shifting from communism to capitalism, China has switched to a far more efficient brand of authoritarianism. As China rapidly narrows the economic gap with the developed world, the possibility looms that it will become a true authoritarian superpower.

Even in its current bastions in the West, the liberal political and economic consensus is vulnerable to unforeseen developments, such as a crushing economic crisis that could disrupt the global trading system or a resurgence of ethnic strife in a Europe increasingly troubled by immigration and ethnic minorities. Were the West to be hit by such upheavals, support for liberal democracy in Asia, Latin America, and Africa -- where adherence to that model is more recent, incomplete, and insecure -- could be shaken. A successful nondemocratic Second World could then be regarded by many as an attractive alternative to liberal democracy.

MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY

Although the rise of authoritarian capitalist great powers would not necessarily lead to a nondemocratic hegemony or a war, it might imply that the near-total dominance of liberal democracy since the Soviet Union's collapse will be short-lived and that a universal "democratic peace" is still far off. The new authoritarian capitalist powers could become as deeply integrated into the world economy as imperial Germany and imperial Japan were and not choose to pursue autarky, as Nazi Germany and the communist bloc did. A great-power China may also be less revisionist than the territorially confined Germany and Japan were (although Russia, which is still reeling from having lost an empire, is more likely to tend toward revisionism). Still, Beijing, Moscow, and their future followers might well be on antagonistic terms with the democratic countries, with all the potential for suspicion, insecurity, and conflict that this entails -- while holding considerably more power than any of the democracies' past rivals ever did.

So does the greater power potential of authoritarian capitalism mean that the transformation of the former communist great powers may ultimately prove to have been a negative development for global democracy? It is too early to tell. Economically, the liberalization of the former communist countries has given the global economy a tremendous boost, and there may be more in store. But the possibility of a move toward protectionism by them in the future also needs to be taken into account -- and assiduously avoided. It was, after all, the prospect of growing protectionism in the world economy at the turn of the twentieth century and the protectionist bent of the 1930s that helped radicalize the nondemocratic capitalist powers of the time and precipitate both world wars.

On the positive side for the democracies, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire stripped Moscow of about half the resources it commanded during the Cold War, with eastern Europe absorbed by a greatly expanded democratic Europe. This is perhaps the most significant change in the global balance of power since the forced postwar democratic reorientation of Germany and Japan under U.S. tutelage. Moreover, China may still eventually democratize, and Russia could reverse its drift away from democracy. If China and Russia do not become democratic, it will be critical that India remain so, both because of its vital role in balancing China and because of the model that it represents for other developing countries.

But the most important factor remains the United States. For all the criticism leveled against it, the United States -- and its alliance with Europe -- stands as the single most important hope for the future of liberal democracy. Despite its problems and weaknesses, the United States still commands a global position of strength and is likely to retain it even as the authoritarian capitalist powers grow. Not only are its GDP and productivity growth rate the highest in the developed world, but as an immigrant country with about one-fourth the population density of both the European Union and China and one-tenth of that of Japan and India, the United States still has considerable potential to grow -- both economically and in terms of population -- whereas those others are all experiencing aging and, ultimately, shrinking populations. China's economic growth rate is among the highest in the world, and given the country's huge population and still low levels of development, such growth harbors the most radical potential for change in global power relations. But even if China's superior growth rate persists and its GDP surpasses that of the United States by the 2020s, as is often forecast, China will still have just over one-third of the United States' wealth per capita and, hence, considerably less economic and military power. Closing that far more challenging gap with the developed world would take several more decades. Furthermore, GDP alone is known to be a poor measure of a country's power, and evoking it to celebrate China's ascendency is highly misleading. As it was during the twentieth century, the U.S. factor remains the greatest guarantee that liberal democracy will not be thrown on the defensive and relegated to a vulnerable position on the periphery of the international system.

www.foreignaffairs.org is copyright 2002--2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All rights reserved.

I agree with Gat that Germany, 1870-1918 and 1932-45, and China post Deng Xiaoping were/are authoritarian capitalist polities.

I’m not sure Russia is or ever was; Russia seems chronically unable to ‘do’ politics or capitalism – some sort of oligarchy, ‘managing’ both the government and the economy has been the tradition for about 1,000 years.  ‘Command economy’ has dominated since Peter the Great.

I also agree that authoritarian capitalist regimes can, and have, excelled at the rational commitment of resources, education, work force mobility and so on – just (only almost?) as well as democratic capitalist societies have done.

Command economies, which is what Russia had for about 300 years, until 1990, cannot (at least never have) been able to manage (for any reasonable period) anything as well as any capitalist economy.

I think gat misclassifies Singapore as a “nondemocratic” state.  The ‘problem’ for modern liberals like Gat, is that Singapore is a highly conservative society and in such societies consensus is all important.  That 85% of the (85%) Chinese majority vote the same way, time after time, does noit mean that Singapore is ‘nondemocratic.’  Rather it means that Lee Kuan Yew (and now his son, Lee Hsien Loong) understood how to develop and, politically, exploit an acceptable consensus amongst most of the Chinese – that guarantees majority government after majority government, election after election.  It is not that Singapore is ‘nondemocratic,’ it is that it is conservative.  In terms of democratic institutions and the rile of law Singapore is probably more democratic than are nearly half of  NATO’s members.

I disagree with Gat’s thesis that China and Russia might form an authoritarian capitalist ‘New Second World.’  My guess is that Russia, being an illiberal society will drift back towards some sort of oligarchy.

China is a more interesting problem.  I think (but the modern history of capitalism is too short to be anything like sure) that capital craves some sort of political ‘say’ or, at least, discourse with government.  Capital and capitalists want to be able to operate in a fairly safe environment so they want/need e.g. a consistent rule-of-law based political system which is something which only democracy does well.  Thus, Singapore’s success: maybe the governing party doesn’t change (rather as the Liberal Democratic Party has governed Japan, almost non-stop, since 1950) but the rule-of-law is equally consistent as are people’s rights, including their right to property.  Hong Kong is enjoying similar success for similar reasons: capital prefers Hong Kong to Shanghai because the rules are consistent in Hong Kong.  That, consistent and equal application of the rule-of-law to all, governors and governed alike, is the sine qua non of democracy.  Elections are the way we assure ‘government with the consent of the governed’ – there may be other ways to accomplish that but the rule of law must be there, no matter how consent is measured, or democracy will crumble.  So long as China wishes to remain capitalist it must:

• Provide consistent, fair and equal ‘rule of law’ for all – workers, capitalists, farmers and the new mandarins, too; and

• Allow the people, including the capitalists, to influence socio-economic ‘outcomes.’

When a society does those two things it starts to look democratic.

 

[a_majoor]

I suspect Edward is right about Russia, and if she does harbour renewed Imperial ambitions, they will probably have to be directed at the "near Beyond"of the Trans Caucus and central Asia (with the added problem of US forces staged in the "Stan's" and formal or informal alliances being formed between the United States, some of the 'Stans and Mongolia). China has several hurdles to overcome (many of which have already been discussed on this thread, particularly the Urban/Rural divide, systemic corruption and the coming demographic crunch ["China will grow old before she grows rich"]).

I am not as sure of the author's thesis that "authoritarian capitalist" societies can be viable long term challengers. All authoritarian societies tend to be brittle and unable to respond to unexpected stressors. The biggest stressor is the growth of the middle class inside the society, this is the thesis of Georges Lefebvre's "The Coming of the French Revolution". http://www.amazon.com/Coming-French-Revolution-Georges-Lefebvre/dp/0691007519 The middle class are the true drivers of revolution, they have acquired some wealth and position in society which is threatened from both above (the aristocrats or oligarchy can attempt to confiscate the wealth through arbitrary taxes and regulation, or freeze the middle class out of opportunities through favoritism and "crony capitalism") and below (the poor can come in overwhelming force and steal what the middle class have; the "rich" can withdraw into secure cantonments, deploy security forces ranging from the Army and Police to private retainers, or simply pack up and leave). The middle class therefore have the need to grasp the levers of power so they can protect themselves and their wealth.

Incidentally, liberal democracies have always been more powerful than their competitors, historical examples range from Athens fighting against the Peloponnesian  League (Sparta and her allies, bankrolled by the Persian empire) for nine years after the destruction of her army and fleet, England and the United Provinces (the Netherlands) able to maintain themselves against the vastly superior financial and manpower resources of Imperial Spain or the Republic of Venice (a city state) holding its own against the vastly larger and richer Ottoman Empire. Relative to their competitors, the named powers were far more liberal and democratic for their time and place than the rival empires.

I suspect the real long term threat to us is internal, as our societies become increasingly illiberal through such factors as "political correctness", out of control bureaucracy and government agencies (and governments) becoming more opaque and less accountable to the people. So long as there are powerful formal (as in the United States) or informal (as in the UK) institutions and conventions that transcend personal ambitions and "petty politics" ( and can continue functioning if a Ronald Reagan or a Bill Clinton are in charge) then we will retain our freedom. Of course, this takes lots of hard work, something not much in evidence these days.

 

[CougarKing]

I think gat misclassifies Singapore as a “nondemocratic” state.  The ‘problem’ for modern liberals like Gat, is that Singapore is a highly conservative society and in such societies consensus is all important.  That 85% of the (85%) Chinese majority vote the same way, time after time, does noit mean that Singapore is ‘nondemocratic.’  Rather it means that Lee Kuan Yew (and now his son, Lee Hsien Loong) understood how to develop and, politically, exploit an acceptable consensus amongst most of the Chinese – that guarantees majority government after majority government, election after election.  It is not that Singapore is ‘nondemocratic,’ it is that it is conservative.  In terms of democratic institutions and the rile of law Singapore is probably more democratic than are nearly half of  NATO’s members.

I disagree with Gat’s thesis that China and Russia might form an authoritarian capitalist ‘New Second World.’  My guess is that Russia, being an illiberal society will drift back towards some sort of oligarchy.

China is a more interesting problem.  I think (but the modern history of capitalism is too short to be anything like sure) that capital craves some sort of political ‘say’ or, at least, discourse with government.  Capital and capitalists want to be able to operate in a fairly safe environment so they want/need e.g. a consistent rule-of-law based political system which is something which only democracy does well.  Thus, Singapore’s success: maybe the governing party doesn’t change (rather as the Liberal Democratic Party has governed Japan, almost non-stop, since 1950) but the rule-of-law is equally consistent as are people’s rights, including their right to property.  Hong Kong is enjoying similar success for similar reasons: capital prefers Hong Kong to Shanghai because the rules are consistent in Hong Kong.  That, consistent and equal application of the rule-of-law to all, governors and governed alike, is the sine qua non of democracy.  Elections are the way we assure ‘government with the consent of the governed’ – there may be other ways to accomplish that but the rule of law must be there, no matter how consent is measured, or democracy will crumble.  So long as China wishes to remain capitalist it must:

• Provide consistent, fair and equal ‘rule of law’ for all – workers, capitalists, farmers and the new mandarins, too; and

• Allow the people, including the capitalists, to influence socio-economic ‘outcomes.’

When a society does those two things it starts to look democratic.

Campbell,

You forgot to mention that after Lee Kuan Yew "stepped down" Minister Goh Chok Tong took his place for quite a while as  Singapore's head of state while Lee groomed his son Lee Hsien (Xian) Long to eventually assume the position. However, like many of China's retired CCP and State leaders, such as Deng Xiaoping before he died, these "retired" leaders often controlled, or at least greatly influenced the current leaders from the background.

BTW, you have yet to comment on this other post of mine regarding China's using Singapore's example as template for a stable polity, as demonstrated by Bei Da Professor Dr. Pan Wei with his "Rule of Law Regime" concept:

With all due respect, you probably mean "they are NOT YET a superpower", but from the current rate their economy is growing, they will be a superpower within the next 50 years, provided the Chinese Communist Party can keep stability. During my study abroad program in Beijing, a  Bei Da professor named Dr.  Pan Wei once lectured to us that he foresaw Chinese GDP per capita and standard of living reaching on par with US incomes and standard of living by the mid 2020s. And mind you, this guy is considered to be more of a moderate. He advocates that in order to keep power without sacrificing economic growth, that the Beijing govt. must follow a system similar to that of Singapore, which also has a One-Party System as well as a prosperous economy. Dr. Pan Wei advocated what was called a "Rule of Law Regime", which called for the following features:

1.) A one party-system which had  a civil service which advanced through Merit
2.) an independent anti-corruption agency like those agencies both Singapore (the CPIB) and Hong Kong (the ICAC) has
3.) though it was a one party system, there was a separate judiciary

Singapore's CPIB info
http://www.cpib.gov.sg/aboutus.htm

Hong Kong's ICAC
http://www.cpib.gov.sg/aboutus.htm

Dr. Pan Wei's "Rule of Law Regime"
http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/content/qy59mu0p3fpfqx3j/

Source: Pan, Wei (2003). Toward a Consultative Rule of Law Regime in China
In Journal of Contemporary China, 12(34), pp. 3-43.
Location: Journal of Contemporary China

Thus China's CCP wanted to use Singapore's People Action Party as an example of how a one-party regime could survive in a modern world where the trend was thought to be going toward multiparty, liberal democracies.

Thus, the CCP is observing and adapting, while ensuring that nothing interferes with the nation's continuining economic prosperity. The large amount of corruption in China's govt. may indeed make that govt. a "house of cards", but if the CCP consolidates like Singapore's PAP did under all those decades of prosperity under Premier Lee Kuan Yew, then the CCP may yet survive and make China a superpower.  The fact that the Chinese also makes a large portion of Singapore's current population makes their system more attractive to Beijing, since it proves it can work with Chinese people.

(One more thing...Dr. Pan Wei obviously profits from his political consultation to the govt., since he drove an Mercedes SLK to class)

 

[CougarKing]

New Chinese "Jin" (or Gold- not the name of a major dynasty, but a kingdom in one of the warring state eras of China's long history) class SSBN spotted on Google Earth...the real thing, mistaken identity or a wooden mockup made to intimidate the US?
http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceandsociety/2007/07/the-jin-class-s.html

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
BTW, you have yet to comment on this other post of mine regarding China's using Singapore's example as template for a stable polity, as demonstrated by Bei Da Professor Dr. Pan Wei with his "Rule of Law Regime" concept:

Sorry, CougarShark, I didn’t think you were soliciting my commentary.

As I understand Prof. Pan’s thesis in “Crossing the River”, China will chose ‘rule-of-law’ over conservative democracy because, in his words: “Traditionally, Chinese society has not been divided by social classes. It was a society of small family farms that lacked a history of class struggle for representation. Citizens expected to sustain a neutral, self-restraining, and meritocratic government, so power politics according to either status or majority rule had little room in Chinese society.”

I have no argument with that.

(Nor, by the way, do I object to Pan’s analysis of American policy and its impact on China of America as, under the poor leadership of President George W. Bush, “a previously “benign hegemon” is becoming an oppressive tyrant that suffers opposition almost everywhere in the world.  Such a foreign policy will ultimately cause the decline of US power, and it may not succeed in precluding China’s emergence from a new decade of political reform. Instead, belligerent confrontation will only lead to an escalation of tensions—a result that neither China nor the United States really desires. What is needed for the future is the cooperation of both states: a reformed and emergent China, and a powerful United States that pursues its potential for genuine and valuable leadership in international justice.”  But many, in America, will object.)

There is no question in my mind that the matter of the utmost urgency is corruption and instituting systems like CPIB and/or ICAC are necessary steps to get to a regime where capital can be invested in reasonable legal security.

Pan does not suggest how the Chinese will, as I think they must, jump the “government with the consent of the governed” hurdle.  I do not think capital (and the ‘ordinary’ people who own and invest it) will go on for too long without having some say in how it is used.  It is all well and good to remove the corruption, that provides ‘security’ but ‘best use’ requires consultation and that is best managed in some sort of democracy.

 

[CougarKing]

Campbell,

You forgot to mention that after Lee Kuan Yew "stepped down" Minister Goh Chok Tong took his place for quite a while as  Singapore's head of state while Lee groomed his son Lee Hsien (Xian) Long to eventually assume the position. However, like many of China's retired CCP and State leaders, such as Deng Xiaoping before he died, these "retired" leaders often controlled, or at least greatly influenced the current leaders from the background.

BTW, you have yet to comment on this other post of mine regarding China's using Singapore's example as a template for a stable polity, as demonstrated by Bei Da Professor Dr. Pan Wei with his "Rule of Law Regime" concept:

I was just correcting my own typos...LOL

Thank you for your response, Campbell.

 

[a_majoor]

More about China. Interesting how apologists for China do their "fact checking"

http://stevejanke.com/archives/235000.php

Let's not blame China for everything...but if it is China's fault, then blame away

Lyn Cockburn, writing for the Edmonton Sun, argues that too much effort is being expended on demonizing China. She proves her point on China not being the source of all ills by bringing attention to a toy recall unrelated to China, and to international incidents that are unrelated to China. Having established that the press is suffering from tunnel vision, she wants more focus on Darfur and less on China.

Problem #1: The toy she discusses in detail is manufactured in China.

Problem #2: Those international incidents involved China.

Problem #3: China in primarily responsible for the lack of action in Darfur.

Problem #4: The editor at the Edmonton Sun seems to have gone missing.

I can infer the last one based on the sad lack of factual correctness in this column.

Lyn Cockburn of the Edmonton Sun has written a column today on the current fashion to blame everything bad on China. She points out that China is not the only country where people make mistakes or do bad things.

Her point is, well, obvious.

At this point, the column seems like filler, but then she tries to make her point by describing an American toy that explodes:

    For example, in North America right now, some 80 products - food and toys in particular - have been recalled. This week, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency warned the public not to consume Great Value brand Original Chili with Beans and Hot Chili with Beans for fear of botulism contamination.

    And here's but one example of a recall of a dangerous toy, the Sky Rangers Park Flyer Radio Control Airplanes, made in Colorado. The hazard report warns that these toys can explode. The company has received at least 45 reports.

    Yet the publicity over China's shoddy products is so pervasive it leads us to believe China is the only country in the world with this problem.

Excellent point. So China makes shoddy, even dangerous, products. But even the Americans can make toys that explode in a child's hand. Except...the Sky Rangers Park Flyer Radio Control Airplanes is not made in Colorado.

The Sky Rangers Park Flyer Radio Control Airplanes is made in China:

    WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

    Name of Product: Sky Rangers Park Flyer Radio Control Airplanes

    Units: About 21,000

    Distributor: Estes-Cox Corp., of Penrose, Colo.

    Hazard: The airplanes are launched by hand and can explode near the consumer’s head, posing a risk of temporary hearing loss and injuries to eyes, face and hands.

    Sold at: Hobby stores and other retailers nationwide from September 2005 through December 2006 for between $20 and $40.

    Manufactured in: China

Good one, Cockburn.

To be fair, she says not enough attention has been paid to Libya and Pakistan as sources of problems. In Libya, there is the issue of the Bulgarian medics accused of injecting children with HIV. Why is no one criticizing the EU talking about normalizing ties with China now that the medics, imprisoned for 8 years, have finally been released?

Good question. The answer is that the normalization was part of the price of getting those people released.

    Some news reports referred to the partnership deal between Libya and the European Union as something to "complete a process of normalizing its ties with the West."

    Translation: "We've finished torturing these people, so can we talk about getting all sorts of trade benefits from the EU now?"

And what was China doing while these people were still in a Libyan jail? Signing contracts to build pipelines in Libya, taking advantage of the vacuum that existed while the EU refused to do business in Libya.
And what of Pakistan, asks Cockburn?

    And if we insist on having a demon to demonize, what's wrong with Pakistan with its tolerance for the Taliban?

If Pakistan feels it can resist Western pressure to cut off ties with the Taliban, it might be because Pakistan feels like it has a powerful patron that will support it in the face of Western criticism. Pakistan's new patron? China:

    There are about 8,500 Chinese working in Pakistan, almost three times the size of Americans in the country. Of these, 3,500 are engineers and technicians assigned to a variety of Sino-Pakistani projects. The remaining 5,000 are engaged in private businesses. China’s investment in Pakistan has jumped to an all-time high of $4 billion. Its companies make up 12% -- 60 of 500 – of all the foreign firms operating in Pakistan. Chinese presence in Pakistan has grown dramatically since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, which brought Beijing and Islamabad together to build a naval-cum-commercial port at Gwader, a coastal town in Baluchistan. The Gwadar port alone, where construction began in 2002, employs 500 Chinese engineers and technicians. This growing Chinese presence forces Beijing to go beyond diplomatic niceties to protect its human and non-human interests in Pakistan.

    Pakistani authorities never spare any effort to safeguard China’s interests. Soon after the abduction of seven Chinese on June 23, Islamabad decided to lay siege to the Red Mosque, whose radical clerics were behind the sordid affair. On July 2, barely a week after the abduction, the government ordered 15,000 troops around the mosque compound to flush out the militants. On July 4, it arrested the leader of the militants, Maulana Abdul Aziz who, in an ironic twist, is believed to have close relations with Pakistani intelligence agencies. After apprehending the leader, government troops moved to choking off the militants’ supplies of food, water, and power. But as soon as word of the revenge killing of three Chinese on July 8 reached Islamabad, it created a “perfect storm” for Gen. Musharraf. Embarrassed and enraged, he reversed the troops’ strategy and ordered them, on July 10, to mount an all-out assault at the mosque, in which Aziz’s brother and his deputy, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, together with as many as 1,000 people, was killed.

    This is not the first time that Musharraf did Beijing’s bidding.

    U.S. pressure on Pakistan to clear the region of the Taliban and al-Qaeda has forced Pakistan into an ever-tighter embrace of China. Musharraf's crackdown on the Lal Masjid, a potent symbol of this strategic Sino-Pakistani alignment, also sent a blood-soaked message to religious militants that Chinese interests will remain off-limits. Musharraf is not apologetic about defending Chinese interests in Pakistan and punishing those who dared to harm them.

She wants people to start worrying about Darfur more and China less, and points to the Sky Rangers exploding airplane and Libya and Pakistan as proof that we should stop worrying about China so much. Cockburn seems to think that Darfur is somehow disconnected to China:

    But when the demonization of China starts to push the horrific situation in places like Darfur out of the news spotlight, then something's out of whack.

But I thought China was responsible for much of the suffering in Darfur?

    Last week Wang Guangya, China's ambassador to the United Nations, made a formal statement on Darfur that calls into question China's claim to be treated as a responsible international player. Mr. Wang began by saying that China wants U.N. peacekeepers to be deployed in Darfur, calling this a "good idea and realistic option," one that should be done "as soon as feasible." But then he went on to explain that China was refusing to support the U.N. resolution calling for such a deployment. Unless China changes its position, the result may well be tens of thousands of civilian deaths.

    Mr. Wang argued that China could not support the resolution because Sudan's government was not yet ready to accept U.N. peacekeepers on its soil. But the reason that Sudan is refusing to allow in peacekeepers is that it has faced little international pressure to do so. The United States and its European partners have called upon Sudan to let the U.N. force in. But China, which has enormous leverage over Sudan because of its investment in Sudanese oil fields, has failed to push the Sudanese into accepting the "realistic option" of a U.N. deployment. Indeed, China lobbied hard and successfully to prevent Russia from supporting the peacekeeping resolution, further undermining pressure on Sudan's government to allow in peacekeepers.

    At the end of last week's statement, Mr. Wang lamented that the United States and Britain, the two sponsors of the peacekeeping resolution, "have failed to earnestly heed China's sincere efforts." What efforts, precisely? If China really is sincere about its desire to see peacekeepers in Darfur, it should tell its allies in Sudan's government to call off their military offensive and accept U.N. peacekeepers immediately.

Lyn Cockburn, when China is no longer the mired in issues like exploding toys, the propping up of Libyan despots, the manipulation of a key player in the war on Terror, and in the lack of action on African genocides, then China will stop being the centre of attention.

But as far as I can tell, focusing on these issues requires focusing on China, and being very critical of China.

In the mean time, keep cranking out these winning columns. Soon your editor will be back from vacation or will be returned by the aliens who kidnapped him or will be thawed from his cryogenic slumber or whatever. When he does, he might start demanding a modicum of factual accuracy in your writing going forward.

 

[Pte AJB]

I stumbled across this documentary entitled “The Tank Man” and found it to be most excellent. http://joox.net/cat/44/id/1452500 It offers a concise summary of issues facing China today. It may not contain any new information for some of those who have been posting here, but is an excellent watch nonetheless.

I found the last fifteen minutes (the whole is 1:15) particularly interesting as it raises the issue of the partnership between American multi-national corporations and the CCP. Highlighting notable cases where American information technology has contributed to the arrest and persecution of political activists. If you have some time to spare this is definitely worth a view.

 

[tomahawk6]

Here is some food for thought for those folks who feel that China is going to be a rival to the US. They have some serious economic and social problems that will continue to fester until upheaval occurs.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070819/china_inflation_fears.html?.v=3

Food Prices Fuel China Inflation Fears
Sunday August 19, 2:05 pm ET
By Joe Mcdonald, AP Business Writer

China's Sharp Jump in Food Prices, Which Have Risen 15.4 Percent, Fuels Inflation Fears

BEIJING (AP) -- Grocery shopping has become a painful experience for Zhang Xueyi. Meat prices have risen 50 percent in the past year, and eggs and other products are not far behind, forcing the 31-year-old railway technician's family to spend a third of its $400 monthly income on food.

"If prices go up more, we have to pay. We'll cut back somewhere else," said Zhang as he hefted bags of eggs, vegetables and rice from the market down a narrow Beijing lane.

After a run that has seen sizzling growth top 10 percent for four years, analysts say China's supercharged economy is facing strains that could break out into an upsurge of inflation.

So far the worst damage has been confined to food prices, which jumped 15.4 percent in July over the same month a year ago and drove overall inflation to a decade-high 5.6 percent. But wages are rising too, as are the costs of oil and electric power. Record-setting exports and a stock market boom are sending cash flooding through the economy, stoking demand for goods.

The Chinese economy "might have entered a region where we should be on guard," said a central bank official, Zhang Tao, quoted last week by the state newspaper China Securities Times.

If the trend goes unchecked, the impact could be felt abroad as consumers who depend on China as the world's low-cost factory have to pay more for appliances, shoes and other goods. Pinched Chinese consumers might spend less on foreign goods, widening a yawning trade surplus that has strained relations with Washington and other trading partners.

Economists say the latest price spike is due mostly to temporary shortages of pork, the staple meat whose price soared 86 percent in July from a year ago.

Pressure is growing in energy, where Beijing is holding down retail prices by blocking state-owned gasoline and power companies from passing on higher costs, said Nicholas Kwan, an analyst for investment bank CLSA in Hong Kong.

Chinese oil refiners are losing $5 per barrel of oil that they process into gasoline or diesel, he said.

"I think it's just a matter of time until they have to bite the bullet and raise domestic prices," Kwan said. "Otherwise they risk an artificial shortage because oil companies will refuse to refine oil into gasoline if they are losing money."

Wages rose 21 percent in the first quarter of the year over the same period of 2006, according to the government, as companies competed for labor. Even that rise might not reflect the extent of pressure faced by employers, because those data cover only government companies, not the booming private sector.

"There's very little spare labor for manufacturing now, so we think we're seeing more wage pressure," said Stephen Green, senior economist at Standard Chartered Bank in Shanghai.

Add to rising costs the "wealth effect" produced by a stock market boom. The country's main stock index is up more than 70 percent this year, making speculators rich on paper and fueling spending.

Exporters already are struggling with the steady rise of China's currency, the yuan, which has pushed up the U.S. dollar prices of their goods by almost 10 percent over the past two years.

The price surge has alarmed Chinese leaders, who remember that 1989's Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests were driven in part by anger at raging inflation that exceeded 18 percent a year.

Premier Wen Jiabao has ordered urgent measures to boost food production, promising farmers free vaccinations and other aid to raise more pigs. Local authorities have been ordered to subsidize the grocery bills of poor families.

Beijing has raised interest rates three times this year to cool the boom and avert a rise in inflation. After seeing the July price data, economists said they expect another rate hike shortly.

Until now, intense price competition in a Chinese market filled with low-cost goods has prevented makers of most goods from passing on rising costs to consumers. But economists say struggling companies might finally be forced to stand their ground and rise prices.

Last week, the government said an investigation into rising food costs found that makers of instant noodles illegally colluded to push up prices by up to 40 percent.

An official of a noodle trade group defended the increase as a response to rising raw material costs that have slashed profit margins to as little as 1 percent.

"If we don't lift the prices, there will be no profit," the official, Meng Hesu, was quoted as saying.

 

[CougarKing]

China- Dysfunctional Nation? Well I think this article hits on the right points when it comes to political, social and economic issues facing that nation.
(I only partially pasted it here, but the rest of the article is available at the source link below)
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/BrokenChinaADysfunctionalNation.aspx

[Broken China: A dysfunctional nation
Beijing can't clean up the environment, rein in stock speculation or police its companies. Here's why the country's problems could keep it from becoming the next superpower.

When the bureaucratic machinery of China rolls into action, it is a sight to behold.

A mayor announces a plan to reclaim hundreds of acres from the sea and build a massive industrial complex.

A few years later, busy factories and roads stretch as far as the eye can see, families are living in thousands of new apartments and 10,000 workers have launched phase two (see " '4 Manhattans a year' ").

This is the side of China that awes the outside world.

The country's extraordinary ability to mobilize people and capital to accomplish daunting feats in record time is the reason it has averaged annual growth of 9.5% for three decades. It is why China is an export juggernaut in everything from T-shirts to TVs, has the world's fastest-growing consumer market (see "Keeping Up With the Wangs") and has amassed enough wealth to snap up South American mineral reserves, IBM Corp.'s (IBM, news, msgs) personal-computer division and a big stake in private-equity company Blackstone Group (BX, news, msgs).

Will Beijing complete all of the stadiums, expressways and hotels in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics? Count on it. It's also a decent bet China will achieve its goal of winning the most gold medals.

Why, then, is it so hard for this same government to crack down on exporters of dangerously tainted seafood, toothpaste and medicine despite years of warnings by local and foreign experts?

The relentless headlines about unsafe products from China reveal a scary truth: Probe even a little into the Chinese economic miracle, and glaring administrative failures abound. Product safety is just one aspect of Beijing's inability to enforce needed regulation in everything from manufacturing and the environment to copyrights and the capital markets.

The same Communist Party apparatus so proficient at censoring the Internet can't keep peddlers in the heart of Beijing from selling knock-off Callaway golf clubs and fake iPods despite solemn promises to Washington since the early 1990s about enforcing intellectual-property rights. Shanghai's stock exchange may be one of the world's hottest and may boast a state-of-the-art paperless trading system. But it was a casino when it opened in 1990 with eight listings, and after years of flaccid regulation, it's an even bigger casino with 1,118 (see "China's Olympian stock-market sprint").

Beijing proclaims all sorts of green initiatives, yet heavily polluting new factories and coal power plants keep going up (see "How long can China pollute for free?"). The party has talked for decades about building a social safety net, yet as the working population ages, the government isn't investing nearly enough to head off looming crises in health care, education and pensions. China spends more than Japan on research and development, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, but its record of innovation is underwhelming.

Economy is at 'a critical point'
China observers dismiss these flaws as the growing pains of a nation making a breathtakingly fast transition from a command economy to a free market. But it's becoming clearer that these and other structural problems aren't being addressed.

The same policies that have been so successful at boosting the gross domestic product by developing export industries and public-works projects, it turns out, undermine initiatives that might move China's economy to a higher level. In its pursuit of growth at all costs, China has skimped on investments needed to provide basic, affordable health care and the regulatory machinery that can enforce environmental, safety and corporate governance regulations nationwide.

Taking the "made in China" out of one's life is harder than it sounds. Sara Bongiorni documents her family's attempt in her a recently published book.

Solving these shortcomings will require a massive shift of the resources that are now being plowed into capital projects. Though Beijing would like to cool the economy (see "The China Syndrome"), however, it is wary of doing anything that would slow the high growth needed to generate jobs for the millions of youths pouring into the work force each year, especially with a pivotal leadership conference scheduled in the fall.

"China's economic-development model was based on the simple concept of expansion of production," says economist Chen Xiushan of People's University in Beijing. "This model has reached a critical point."

A more intractable problem is China's power structure itself. Although Beijing holds a monopoly on politics, local Communist Party officials enjoy wide latitude over social and economic affairs. They also have huge professional and financial incentives to spur GDP growth, which they often do by ignoring regulations or lavishing companies with perks.

Broken China: A dysfunctional nation
Continued from page 1

August 17, 2007 -- 16:20 ET
As a result, China has built a bureaucratic machine that at times seems almost impervious to reform. Even if Beijing has the best intentions of fixing problems such as undrinkable water and unbreathable air, it is often thwarted by hundreds of thousands of party officials with vested interests in the current system.

Beijing knows it must change course. China's $1.2 trillion in foreign reserves -- the most ever amassed by any country -- and soaring trade surplus may seem like signs of strength, but they're actually evidence of an overreliance on exports, weak domestic consumption and a primitive financial system (see "China: Tons of money, wanton waste").

And a dearth of social services makes a widening income gap between urban and rural areas politically explosive. Conjuring ancient Confucianism, President Hu Jintao harps repeatedly on the need to attain a "harmonious society," implying that China today is anything but.

What do Chinese teens want?

In March, Premier Wen Jiabao labeled the economy "unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable."

Some reforms are under way
To their credit, Chinese officials have unveiled a blitz of corrective measures. Regulators this year shut more than 180 illegal food producers. A directive ordering government agencies to use legitimate software has helped cut the share of pirated programs to 82% from 92% in 2001. Beijing is launching health-care initiatives, trying to tame the runaway stock market and passing stringent environmental rules. And in 2006 alone, nearly 30,000 officials were prosecuted for corruption.

If this reformist agenda fails, watch out. The working assumption from Washington to Tokyo is that China is on a trajectory to become a modern market economy and a responsible global citizen. But if its problems persist, the world will have to keep living with a giant trade partner that can't guarantee safe products, control piracy or curb pollution. China could keep growing rapidly for years, but a scenario of dysfunctional administration calls into question whether it will really become an economic superpower with world-beating corporations that challenge the West in innovation -- a Japan Inc. on steroids.

China doesn't lack the finances to fix its shortcomings, and it has the legal structure for regulating the environment, health care and worker safety. What Beijing does lack is the will to overhaul a political structure that gives party officials down to even the smallest villages huge influence over many facets of economic life.

"The laws in China compare with some of the best in the world," says activist Liu Kaiming, the founder of the Migrant Workers Community College in Shenzhen. "But it is not able to enforce the laws fully because local governments are focused on pleasing the big bosses in companies."

What's more, few of the country's enterprises are proving they can move beyond low-cost commodity goods and succeed on a global stage with innovative products, a function of both their limited managerial vision and flawed high-tech policies from Beijing.

The roots of China's ersatz capitalism go back to devil's bargains made in the 1980s and '90s to accelerate China's takeoff. Late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping declared it was OK to "get rich" (see "Luxe life in China"), a green light for legions of cadres to discard their Mao suits and rush into business, often by setting themselves up as middlemen or grabbing stakes in communal assets.

Not my father's China

Beijing also granted great latitude to provincial and local officials to manage development and social services such as education and health care. The two requirements: Remain loyal to the party and meet high economic-growth targets.

Taking the "made in China" out of one's life is harder than it sounds. Sara Bongiorni documents her family's attempt in her a recently published book.

The system spans China's 657 municipalities, 2,862 counties and 41,636 townships. Because roughly 70% of a typical official's annual performance assessment is based on GDP growth, says Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a China expert at the University of Michigan, the cadres shower local businesses with perks. These can include access to cheap credit, land, licenses, protection from competitors and exemptions from regulations. The opportunities for graft are staggering.

"What is unsaid, but understood, is that if your locality becomes wealthy, so do you," Lieberthal says. "Instead of the Chinese Communist Party, it ought to be called the Chinese Bureaucratic Capitalist Party."

Broken China: A dysfunctional nation
Continued from page 2

The fuzzy nature of corporate ownership in China heightens the conflicts of interest. Officially, state enterprises account for just one-third of the economy, compared with 80% two decades ago. But that statistic is misleading because it includes only companies directly controlled by ministries in Beijing.

In truth, many companies have financial ties to county, city and township governments. In some respects, that policy of giving members of China's immense bureaucracy a personal stake in growth has worked brilliantly. Big-ticket industrial projects get finished in record time, and infrastructure is smoothly put into place. Daniel H. Rosen of the Institute for International Economics estimates that while it takes four years to build an aluminum smelter in the West, similar projects can take less than a year in China.

Why there are roadblocks
These communist capitalists, though, have evolved into a powerful and wealthy elite with an enormous stake in the status quo. Truly private capital markets would strip officials of their power to reward cronies with bank loans and stock market listings. Copyright enforcement might do wonders for China's software industry, but it's blocked at the local level by cadres more interested in safeguarding the jobs and profits that flow from knock-offs.

Although Beijing gives provinces funds for schools and health clinics, much of that money winds up elsewhere. The National Audit Office has reported that 10% of audited central government funds -- including money allocated for pensions, health care and unemployment -- are diverted into illegal loans to companies, construction of posh government buildings and other questionable investments.

"All the things we see as competitive advantages for China now are translating into disadvantages," Rosen says.

Beijing is doing what it can to rein in rogue players. On July 10, Zheng Xiaoyu, the former commissioner of the State Food & Drug Administration, was executed for accepting bribes of about $850,000 from eight drug companies seeking quick product approval. Worse, on his watch the agency gave the green light to many flawed drugs, including an antibiotic that killed more than 10 people. The Shanghai party secretary, Chen Liangyu, was fired last year after being accused of plowing $400 million in pension funds into real-estate projects and toll roads. And in September, authorities discovered that two senior executives at a state-owned insurer had deposited $4 million-worth of premiums in the bank accounts of friends and family.

These high-profile punishments serve as a warning, and enforcement is improving. But the central government still struggles to impose its will on local officials nationwide. China's State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) employs about 300 people at its headquarters in Beijing, while about 60,000 employees are scattered at environmental protection bureaus across the country.

Those numbers may look impressive compared with the U.S. EPA, which has a payroll of 17,500. But those 60,000 environmental watchdogs report to provincial and local governments, which tend to favor economic development over green considerations. A 2006 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says that while pollution fines are rising, they're usually far below the cost of installing equipment to cut pollution. And authorities often negotiate down the charges.

"For the sake of their own political scorecards, some local officials have joined forces with businesses seeking windfall profits," Pan Yue, SEPA's deputy chief, told the China Daily on July 3.

How things don't work
To understand how bureaucrats and business leaders flout SEPA's rules, take a trip to Lake Taihu, the source of drinking water to 2.3 million residents of the city of Wuxi.

In the 1990s, as industry sprang up on the lakeshore and Taihu grew more polluted, authorities ordered local factories to clean up their waste water. In 1999, local officials said the problem had been licked as factories installed treatment plants. But those new facilities were often idled as companies refused to shoulder the cost of operating them, and factories continued to dump untreated waste into the lake. The situation worsened until this spring the lake turned an iridescent green.Taking the "made in China" out of one's life is harder than it sounds. Sara Bongiorni documents her family's attempt in her a recently published book.

"I'm angry with the government because it can't solve the pollution problem," says Lydia Li, an executive assistant at a foreign-owned manufacturer in Wuxi. In May, she says, she had to buy nearly 50 gallons of bottled water after yellowish water smelling of sulfur started running from her tap.

Oversight of food production in China is similarly troubled. The State Food & Drug Administration employs 1,700 people, but 80% of China's food producers -- about 350,000 enterprises -- have fewer than 10 employees and often lack any real understanding of safety standards. Again, there's little local incentive to crack down on scofflaws.

"If local governments close all the companies that violate food safety regulations, a lot of workers will lose their jobs," says Luo Yunbo, the dean of the food and nutrition college at China Agricultural University in Beijing.

Broken China: A dysfunctional nation
Continued from page 3

August 17, 2007 -- 16:20 ET
The misplaced economic priorities explain the decrepit state of social services. Top leaders have been pledging to provide basic public health-care and retirement plans since they began downsizing giant state enterprises in the 1980s, dismantling the "iron rice bowl" of cradle-to-grave benefits. But responsibility was divided among different ministries, and funding of social programs was delegated to local governments.

Compared with spurring growth, social services got short shrift. It would cost Beijing around $40 billion, a sum it could easily afford, to set up a national health-care system similar to Britain's, figures Huang Yanzhong, the director of the global-health-studies program at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

"But I'm not optimistic," Huang says. Responsibility is fragmented among too many competing ministries in Beijing, and at the local level, cadres still are judged on GDP growth. "If you try to tackle this with policies rather than deep changes in political institutions, the government won't be able to bring accessible, affordable health care," he says.

So many people go without. Huang cites government surveys showing that nearly half of Chinese say they can't afford to visit a doctor when ill, 70% lack health insurance and 30% refuse hospitalization due to cost. And the system is corrupt. Hospitals earn most of their revenue selling drugs and get kickbacks from pharmaceutical suppliers, creating an incentive to over-prescribe. The Chinese news media are filled with stories such as that of a 75-year-old cancer patient in Harbin who was billed more than $500,000 for imported medicines, many of which were found to be unnecessary.

Meddling by party officials is hobbling China's stock markets, too. The booming Shanghai Stock Exchange, started in 1990 to raise funds for state enterprises, boasts first-rate facilities, and shares have nearly tripled since 2005. In the first five months of this year, companies raised $17 billion, and issues that will likely fetch tens of billions more are in the pipeline.

But despite some improvements in oversight, trading remains volatile, weakly regulated and driven by rampant speculation. That's in large part because the exchange has evolved little from its original mission. Markets are supposed to allocate capital efficiently to the best companies. But in China, notes Carl E. Walter, the managing director at JPMorgan Chase (JPM, news, msgs) in Beijing, "the primary function remains funneling money to state-owned companies."

Again, it comes down to the cozy relationship between government and industry...
(ARTICLE CONTINUED AT LINK)

 

[tomahawk6]

I dont see China as a nation rather its more like an empire held together by the military and security apparatus. If the communists went away tonight would China remain as it is today ? I think not. It is too large and diverse to be ruled from Beijing. In a post communist world some type of federal system might work but I suspect it would splinter much as did Yugoslavia.

 

[3rd Herd]

Tom,
you also have the story hitting the media up here about the pollution factor for the up coming Summer games. Right know they are restricting traffic depending on even or odd licence plate numbers. Some of the masses are not to happy about that one. Additionally,
Canada already has medical/monitoring staff in place doing  hourly/daily tests. There is also some complaints coming out about event schedules as they are trying to schedule events around the worst pollution times. I do not think any records will be set.

 

[CougarKing]

I dont see China as a nation rather its more like an empire held together by the military and security apparatus. If the communists went away tonight would China remain as it is today ? I think not. It is too large and diverse to be ruled from Beijing. In a post communist world some type of federal system might work but I suspect it would splinter much as did Yugoslavia.

I'm afraid I must DISAGREE with you, T6.

China may be just as ethnically diverse as past ill-fated ancient empires in history, such as the Roman Empire which stretched from Spain to present day Israel and Palestine, but one must not simply dismiss the Chinese case as another Yugoslavia waiting to happen.

This is because that even though all these different provinces have their own dialects, such as the Cantonese of Guangdong province, the Shanghainese, and Sichuanese as well as the Hui Ren of the inner provinces, they all ethnically identify themselves as Han Chinese. While China does have so-called ethnic minorities such as the Tibetans and the Uighurs and so forth among the 50 or so "Min Zu" recognized by PRC law, Han Chinese still comprise the overwhelming majority of those people who populate all of China's provinces and vastly outnumber all the other minority populations.

Thus, since most of these people identify as Han Chinese regardless of region or dialect, this concept of a single "Chinese nation" is so ingrained within them and their culture from centuries of rule of dynasty after dynasty that I doubt even the collapse of the PRC/CCP Regime in Beijing will mean the end of a single China. A foreigner who spends time trying to study Chinese culture will notice that while there are slight differences between the culture of the people of Hong Kong and Beijing, besides the dialect, as well as the rest of Han China, they all still identify with a single Chinese culture. The Waishengren of Taiwan (those whose forefathers retreated there with the Nationalists in 1949), the large Chinese community of Singapore as well as all those Chinese expatriate communities all over the world all identify with a single Chinese culture, regardless of their political affiliation belongs to Taipei, Beijing or the adoptive nation. Thus, this is why I don't see China splitting up as Yugoslavia or even the Soviet Union did, because of the cultural strength of Han Chinese identity.  This is also why the Waishengren of Taiwan, such as former Premier Lien Chan and another GMD leader named James Soong, eventually see Taiwan as reuniting with the mainland.

The only exception, or rather, the only instance I see where any Han Chinese are starting to split away from that mainstream Chinese identity are possibly Taiwan's Benshengren who are native Taiwanese, but still Han Chinese, whose shared history with China was abruptly severed when Taiwan became a territory of Japan between 1894-1945; when Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist soldiers went there in 1946, they found a thoroughly "Japanized" Chinese province, which led to conflicts between the Taiwanese and the soldiers such as the infamous "2-28 Massacre".  Although the native Taiwanese/benshengren have gradually gained power within the ROC/Taiwan, there is still a lot of historical resentment among them towards the Waishengren/mainlanders who still live among them and who prefer reunification, as well as a growing desire for independence among the benshengren. Singapore might also count as an exception from the sheer number of Han Chinese who live there, as well as the power they continue to hold within the PAP-ruled govt., though they consider themselves outside China's sphere of influence, unlike Taiwan.

The CCP is just another notch along the many so-called dynasties who have ruled China, which ascribes to the Chinese concept of history as "cyclical" where regimes/dynasties rise only to fall later depending on how long they hold llegitimacy. So, essentially the only difference between the CCP and previous dynasties (except for the Guomindang-ruled ROC when it was on the mainland before the retreat to Taiwan) is the fact the party derives its mandate not from heaven, but from the continued stability and economic prosperity it currently maintains.  However, it will only be a matter of time before the CCP loses its llegitimacy; what will replace it, whether it will be the ROC/Guomindang returning to the mainland from Taiwan (unlikely) or some other regime still remains to be seen.

 

[a_majoor]

While you have shown a powerful "centralizing" argument for China based on shared history and culture; Chinese history is a cycle of central empires followed by "warring states". Don't forget the most recent "warring states" period was during the first quarter of the 20th Century, and Tiawan is the last remmnant of that period.

As mentioned before, there are many powerful forces which are pulling against central authority; a growing demographic imbalance, regional disparities in wealth and development, the rising Islamic population in the Western regions, ecological decline (especially where it affects agriculture) and so on. The article highlights the inability of the government to provide flexible and timely responses to problems, and some of the perverse incentives which cause and amplify problems.

Now we will be spectators seeing if history and culture are strong enough to hold the centre, or if the accelerating spiral of problems will pull things apart. My own suspicions are China will "fracture", but not disintigrate as dramatically as Yugoslavia. The situation will be more like the pan Hellenistic civilizations that grew up on the ruins of Alexander the Great's conquests; ambitious men may indeed fight each other for power on the borderlands, but there is also enough shared history, cultural and economic ties to keep them looking at each other rather than the outside world.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Interesting to see how others feel about China.

From the NYT
August 21, 2007
New Power in Africa
China’s Trade in Africa Carries a Price Tag
By LYDIA POLGREEN and HOWARD W. FRENCH
KABWE, Zambia — The courtyard in front of the Zambia China Mulungushi Textiles factory is so quiet, even at midday, that the fluttering of the ragged Chinese and Zambian flags is the only sound hanging in the air.

The factory used to roar. From the day it opened more than 20 years ago, the vast compound had shuddered to the whir of rollers and the clatter of mechanical weaving machines spooling out millions of yards of brightly colored African cloth.

Today, only the cotton gin still runs, with the company’s Chinese managers buying raw cotton for export to China’s humming textile industry. Nobody can say when or even if the factory here will reopen.

“We are back where we started,” said Wilfred Collins Wonani, who leads the Chamber of Commerce here, sighing at the loss of one of the city’s biggest employers. “Sending raw materials out, bringing cheap manufactured goods in. This isn’t progress. It is colonialism.”

Chinese officials and their African allies like to call their growing relationship a win-win proposition, a rising tide that lifts all boats in China’s ever-widening sea of influence.

This year, China pledged $20 billion to finance trade and infrastructure across the continent over the next three years. In Zambia alone, China plans to invest $800 million in the next few years.

From South Africa’s manganese mines to Niger’s uranium pits, from Sudan’s oil fields to Congo’s cobalt mines, China’s hunger for resources has been a shot in the arm, increasing revenues and helping push some of the world’s poorest countries further up the ladder of development.

But China is also exporting huge volumes of finished, manufactured goods — T-shirts, flashlights, radios and socks, just to name a few — to those same countries, hampering Africa’s ability to make its own products and develop healthy, diverse economies.

“Most of our countries have been independent for 35 to 50 years,” said Moeletsi Mbeki, a South African entrepreneur and a political analyst. “Yet they have failed to develop manufacturing for a variety of reasons, and for the Chinese that’s a huge opportunity. We are a very important market for China.”

On the one hand, Chinese imports give Africans access to goods and amenities that developed countries take for granted but that most people here could not have dreamed of affording just a few years ago — cellular telephones, televisions, washing machines, refrigerators, computers. And cheaper prices on more basic items, like clothing, light bulbs and shoes, mean people have more money in their pockets.

“There is no doubt China has been good for Zambia,” said Felix Mutati, Zambia’s minister of finance. “Why should we have a bad attitude toward the Chinese when they are doing all the right things? They are bringing investment, world-class technology, jobs, value addition. What more can you ask for?”

But across Africa, and especially in the relatively robust economies of southern Africa, there are clear winners and losers. Textile mills and other factories here in Zambia have suffered and even closed as cheap Chinese goods flood the world market, eliminating jobs in a country that sorely needs them.

The Chinese investment in copper mining here has left a trail of heartbreak and recrimination after one of the worst industrial accidents in Zambian history, a blast at a Chinese-owned explosives factory in Chambishi in 2005 that killed 46 people, most of them in their 20s.

“Who is winning? The Chinese are, for sure,” said Michael Sata, a Zambian opposition politician who campaigned in last year’s presidential election on an anti-China platform. He lost, but with a surprisingly strong showing, and his party, the Patriotic Front, won many seats in local and parliamentary elections in Lusaka, the capital, and the Zambian industrial heartland, where China has made its biggest investments.

“Their interest is exploiting us, just like everyone who came before,” he said. “They have simply come to take the place of the West as the new colonizers of Africa.”

Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Lusaka did not respond to repeated requests to discuss the country’s role in Zambia. But Chinese diplomats across Africa and top officials in Beijing have emphasized the money and opportunity they bring to Africa. In Zambia, for example, government officials say that the Chinese are sending dozens of workers for training in China and that their investments will create thousands of high-wage jobs.

Measured in some ways, Zambia’s economy is booming. Copper prices have soared from 75 cents a pound in January 2003 to more than $3 a pound this year, driven in large part by Chinese demand. That demand has pushed Zambia’s long-dormant copper mines into record production.

China’s Nonferrous Metals Corporation, a state-owned company, purchased rights to develop a mine in Chambishi, in the heart of the copper belt, in 1998, and it plans to build factories in an export processing zone that will bring as many as 60,000 jobs, according to government officials.

But China’s growing presence in global trade is wiping out thousands of jobs in countries with fledgling manufacturing sectors like Zambia and South Africa.

Despite relatively low wages in many countries, African manufacturers find it very hard to compete, arguing that China’s currency policies undervalue the yuan and give Chinese exporters a huge advantage.

Many industries in China also benefited at various points from subsidies and free or low-cost government financing, making their costs lower. Beyond that, there are major infrastructure problems in Africa, where industry struggles with inadequate roads and railways, and unreliable electricity and water supplies.

“So who do you blame?” said Martyn J. Davies, director of the Center for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. “You can’t blame China for being too competitive. China is doing what every other emerging market is doing.”

The textile and clothing industry, one of the engines China used to fuel its own economic expansion in the 1980s, has been particularly hard hit in Africa. For decades, African countries exported large quantities of clothes and textiles to developed countries under a trade agreement intended to protect European and American markets from competition from China and others, while encouraging exports from the world’s poorest nations. But the trade provision, the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, expired in January 2005, putting these countries in direct export competition with China.

Africa found itself once again on the losing end of globalization. If copper is Zambia’s bread and butter, manufacturing should have been its main meal — just as many economies across the globe have progressed from producers of raw materials to low-tech manufacturing and beyond, a well-trod path to development.

Ms. Zimba, 40, a quality-control worker at the plant here who asked to be identified only by her common last name because she feared losing her termination benefits, first got a job at the factory in 1989, after moving to Kabwe from the depressed eastern region of the country with her brother.

She earned a little less than $100 a month, as well as free health care and a pension, and a little three-room house in the workers’ compound. But since she lost her job, her family’s standard of living has plummeted. The water was turned off, and Ms. Zimba does not know where she will come up with next semester’s tuition for her 20-year-old daughter’s trade school.

“We will see what God brings me,” Ms. Zimba said.

For Ms. Zimba, the transition from salaried work to selling goods for pocket change in the market is a devastating setback to a grim fate she thought she had escaped — her mother was widowed when Ms. Zimba was 15 and reduced to selling in the market as well.

“I am right back where I started,” Ms. Zimba said.

As for the Chinese, she bitterly refers to them as “briefcase investors.”

“They just fill their briefcases with our wealth and leave,” she said.

Such anti-Chinese sentiment has been brewing here for several years. When China’s president, Hu Jintao, visited Zambia earlier this year he received the usual red carpet treatment from his Zambian host, President Levy Mwanawasa , but the reception from many ordinary Zambians was nasty. A trip to the site of China’s big new investment, Chambishi, had to be scuttled entirely because of fears of unrest, and the circumstances of the industrial disaster there are still not entirely understood.

The mine at Chambishi had for decades been run by the government, and had limped along while copper prices slumped in the 1980s. When the Non-ferrous Metal Mining Group bought the rights to develop the mine in 1998, local residents cheered, hoping for new jobs.

In 2003, Keegan Chibuye got one as a mechanic at the mine, a job he was grateful to have in a country where even skilled men like himself struggled to find work. Mr. Chibuye’s sister, Vennie, 27, also found work for the Chinese, as a computer specialist at an explosives factory on the mine’s grounds. Ms. Chibuye was the eldest of seven, and her parents had sent her to Britain at great expense, to a technical college in Derbyshire, where she earned a diploma in information technology. A brother, Mwape, got a job as a casual worker in the explosives factory, for a little more than a dollar a day, to save money for college.

Keegan Chibuye said he had concerns about the way the Chinese managers were running the mine almost from the beginning. “They were careless,” he said. “Safety was not their priority. Everything was about productivity no matter what.”

On April 20, 2005, Keegan Chibuye heard an ear-splitting boom that would shatter his world — a huge blast at the explosives factory.

There was almost nothing left of Vennie and Mwape left to bury. Virtually all the bodies had been incinerated. Only fragments were buried just off the main road at the graveyard built by the Chinese owners — a finger, an ear, a bit of scalp. As the 46 headstones testify, most of the workers were young, born after 1980.

Officials of the company that runs the mine did not respond to repeated telephone requests for an interview to talk about working conditions and safety at the mine. But at the Chinese workers’ compound in Chambishi, Han Yaping, who identified himself as the company’s human resources manager, said that the company hoped to help Zambia develop.

“China works here in cooperation with Zambia,” Mr. Han said in English. “It is friendship.”

Asked why the wages at the mine were lower than those paid by other companies, Mr. Han said that Zambian workers had limited skills and no experience with technology. By way of example, he said, a Chinese worker trying to remove a screw would use a screwdriver.

“But a Zambian worker,” he continued with a chuckle, “he use his finger.”

A look around the compound for Chinese workers illustrates why China is able to do business so profitably in Africa. While Western companies must provide relatively plush and private accommodations to attract expatriate workers, the Chinese employees at Chambishi live in barracks-like conditions, several to a room. A table for table tennis and a dusty soccer field are the only recreational facilities.

“We like simple,” Mr. Han explained.

Many African scholars and political leaders say Africa has no need for the colonial baggage and paternalism of the West, and they welcome the Chinese approach of cowboy capitalism. “Let the Chinese come,” said Mahamat Hassan Abakar, a lawyer in Chad, a former French colony in central Africa with deepening ties to China. “What Africa needs is investment. It needs partners. All of these years we have been tied to France. Look what it has brought us.”

In South Africa, dozens of clothing and textile companies closed, according to trade organizations representing manufacturers. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost because of Chinese imports, and in response the government negotiated temporary voluntary restraints on some items.

But Iqbal Meer-Sharma, deputy director of South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry, said that the clothing industry was ultimately less valuable to South Africa than the other benefits of its growing relationship with China.

“We’ve always known we have a dysfunctional relationship with the West,” Mr. Sharma said. “Now with China we have a relationship as equals. They don’t look down on us. They are not condescending.”

In an era of ruthless global competition, Mr. Sharma said, Africa should stop trying to compete with China at what it does best — producing cheap goods for export — and find other ways to compete instead.

In the meantime, many Africans are caught in limbo.

Clarissa Fabrik, 19, lives at the edge of Atlantis, a depressed industrial town in South Africa’s Western Cape. She had hoped to earn an engineering degree, courtesy of the scholarship fund from her mother’s clothing workers’ union benefit package. But her mother’s factory closed, and now she is trying to teach herself basics from a textbook on industrial electronics when she is not at her retail job.

“I don’t know what the future will bring,” she said.

Lydia Polgreen reported from Kabwe, and Howard W. French from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/world/africa/21zambia.html?ex=1345348800&en=2e3548b6d1803348&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

 

[Kirkhill]

Today, only the cotton gin still runs, with the company’s Chinese managers buying raw cotton for export to China’s humming textile industry. Nobody can say when or even if the factory here will reopen.

“We are back where we started,” said Wilfred Collins Wonani, who leads the Chamber of Commerce here, sighing at the loss of one of the city’s biggest employers. “Sending raw materials out, bringing cheap manufactured goods in. This isn’t progress. It is colonialism.”

Gandhi, who used to dress pretty nattily when he was "at the bar" (as did Nehru and Jinna), started to wear his dhoti as a protest against the shirts made in India from cheap Cotton made in Manchester from Egyptian Cotton and then sold back to the Empire.  He called it colonialism.  Today we call it trade.  He got his wish and India became a basket case for 60 years until they started putting all that Dipper socialist nonsense behind them.

The difference between then and now are the terms of the trade.  I still don't accept that the Chinese will give their "trading partners" as good a deal as Gandhi's "partners" gave theirs.

 

[LakeSup]

Charles Krauthammer said this week:  (parphrasing)  The Chinese found out that they could commit genocide in Tibet and the world would give them a pass....but you don't mess with Elmo.