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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Major ideological debate underway in China |
| 2006-03-12 |
| For the first time in perhaps a decade, the National People's Congress, the Communist Party-run legislature now convened in its annual two-week session, is consumed with an ideological debate over socialism and capitalism that many assumed had been buried by China's long streak of fast economic growth. The controversy has forced the government to shelve a draft law to protect property rights that had been expected to win pro forma passage and highlighted the resurgent influence of a small but vocal group of socialist-leaning scholars and policy advisers. These old-style leftist thinkers have used China's rising income gap and increasing social unrest to raise doubts about what they see as the country's headlong pursuit of private wealth and market-driven economic development. The roots of the current debate can be traced to a biting critique of the property rights law that circulated on the Internet last summer. The critique's author, Gong Xiantian, a professor at Beijing University Law School, accused the legal experts who wrote the draft of "copying capitalist civil law like slaves," and offering equal protection to "a rich man's car and a beggar man's stick." Most of all, he protested that the proposed law did not state that "socialist property is inviolable," a once sacred legal concept in China. Those who dismissed his attack as a throwback to an earlier era underestimated the continued appeal of socialist ideas in a country where glaring disparities between rich and poor, rampant corruption, labor abuses and land seizures offer daily reminders of how far China has strayed from its official ideology. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #14 Not another Mendiola post... And Anonymoose, I meant a typical bureaucrat (not Guan Di; different ideogram). |
| Posted by: Edward Yee 2006-03-12 23:20 |
| #13 Ala the 2005 Chinese defense white paper, the CCP intends to everything it can to maintain the power and control of Communism and Socialism in China - the Chicoms admit in the paper that China's endowments, no matter how improved or modernized, will always be insufficient for her still-growing population. This is why they desire a minima of 1/2 of CONUS-NORAM, and desire to exterminate a minima of 200M of America's 300M population. As Rummy said, in paraphrase, the Chinese Communist penchant for Commie central/State planning and regulation is incompatible with their desire for national/ universal modernity. As long as the Chicoms do their best to preserve vestiges of Stalinism and Maoism, etal, the Chicoms should NOT expect to achieve normal parity or superiority ags the USA- West until close to, or at the Year 2100, not 2050 let alone 2030. This is why 9-11 happened -amongst other precepts, for the Ultra-Left and anti-Americanists 9-11 and the GWOT is meant to destabilize and slow down the still-expanding American hyper-power so that Russia-China have a better chance of catching up and modernizing without resort to mutually destructive, cost-prohibitive, self-defeating anti-USA war in the near/short-term. America is induced to create global empire while ultimately "volunteering" or being mil forced to give up its national sovereignty, national affairs-poicies, and endowments to a group of America-managing world states/OWG includ Russia-China. The Commies win by getting everything for nothing, or at minimum "collateral/incidental" losses. In Clintonian Washington, FASCISM > for 2008 DUbya is BUSHITLER whom needs to be wiped out; is a mere problem-prone LIMITED COMMUNIST-SOCIALIST with a heart of Gold and whom needs Motherly guidance to save his arrogant Male Brute molester soul and show him the path to Global MarxHeaven. AND IFF HER ARROGANT MALE BRUTE FASCIST BOY DOESN'T LIKE IT, MOTHER = MA BARKER AND HAVE HER BOY PC KILLED OFF, FOR THE GOOD OF THE WORLD = HERSELF. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-03-12 22:59 |
| #12 Guan-Di, Edward? |
| Posted by: lotp 2006-03-12 21:37 |
| #11 [/ideological parroting as bad as the leftists'] Part of the reason for the not-apparent Western-style democratic sentiment -- just trying to get through another day is hard enough. How could the cities of China take an overnight influx of 200 million people? Anonymoose, a reply from a hypothetical guan: "What 200 million people?" |
| Posted by: Edward Yee 2006-03-12 21:33 |
| #10 Zhang Fei: I don't disagree with you at all. But as you say, your cities are enormous. Where could you put a massive influx of people from the countryside? China already has a demographic phenomenon the US never experienced: a massive transient population. This astounding situation has no precedent anywhere else, and while it appears stable in the short term, I suggest it is symptomatic of a national condition that no matter the cause could turn nightmarish. In post-WWI America, the expression was "How can Johnny stay down on the farm, now that he has seen gay Paree?" It was a cathartic moment when many of America's farmers just gave up and migrated to the big cities, ready or not. How could the cities of China take an overnight influx of 200 million people? |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-03-12 14:53 |
| #9 Trouble is, China doesn't have enough inland metro areas to fill with these farmers. That is, its cities are already full, it needs new cities. Not ironically, the jobs in creating these new cities provide much of the employment to those going to live there. We built Chicago, Cincinatti, Cleveland, St Louis, and many others overnight from nothing in our agricultural heartland during our industrial revolution. If the Chicoms would institute property rights and the rule of law, they could do the same. Gong Xiantian is just another Socialist mass-murderer pretending to look out for the "people" while condemning them to poverty and suffering. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2006-03-12 14:14 |
| #8 China is diving head first into capitalism. Wait till they realize that they are held captive by the regime. They will want to travel and spend their new wealth in the world's vacation spots. At first, the well connected will be allowed to leave, then more and more until the curtain is torn away. Like the man said, communism doesn't work. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2006-03-12 13:38 |
| #7 Peasants in China are not allowed to move to the cities. Those who do so are, technically-speaking, illegal immigrants. What the provincial officials in China's manufacturing hubs do is simply look the other way. But the reality is that most of the manufacturing workers in Chinese cities are illegal immigrants. This kind of central government interference in basic things like where its citizens are *allowed* to live and work is an example of the kind of micro-management I mentioned above. The central government has said that it will phase out the residency permit system. But it's not there yet. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2006-03-12 13:33 |
| #6 Anonymoose: But their #1 problem is demographics. They just have way too many damn peasants. 90% of the American population in 1790 was composed of farmers. The farms weren't huge as they are today either - this was way before the era of mechanized farming. China's cities are huge. Shanghai is 15 times the size of NYC (that's all five boroughs, not just Manhattan), but only has twice the population. China doesn't have too many peasants - it has too many aristocratic officeholders micro-managing the lives of its citizens for personal fun and profit. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2006-03-12 13:23 |
| #5 What a nightmare that country is. Going through a hundred years of economic development in a fraction of that time (think of the US since the 1890s, compressed into two decades). Following the US model, what needs to radically happen next is a major demographic shift from the countryside to metropolitan areas. Small farmers must be replaced with modern scale agribusiness. Trouble is, China doesn't have enough inland metro areas to fill with these farmers. That is, its cities are already full, it needs new cities. Not ironically, the jobs in creating these new cities provide much of the employment to those going to live there. They are making enormous environmental projects to combat their terrible problems, such as a gigantic dust bowl, floods in the South and droughts in the North. This is good, too. But their #1 problem is demographics. They just have way too many damn peasants. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-03-12 10:18 |
| #4 There is no (large) country in the world in which capitalist institutions thrive that does not spread the wealth around. As much as I'd like to dismantle the entire Federal government apart from the Department of War, redistribution is inevitable, and one can only try to limit the damage to incentives and efficiency. |
| Posted by: Perfessor 2006-03-12 09:45 |
| #3 How about a trade. Chinese pro-capitalist party members for the Democratic party members of California. The Chinese couldn't do more harm to the California economy and the Dems certainly can help end the 'Chinese Miracle' economic growth and adhere to the tenants that all property belongs to [us] the state. |
| Posted by: Glising Chaviling8280 2006-03-12 08:33 |
| #2 There may be a "gap" between rich and poor, but that is much better than the Communist gap between the powerful and the powerless. |
| Posted by: Listen To Dogs 2006-03-12 07:53 |
| #1 Article: The critique's author, Gong Xiantian, a professor at Beijing University Law School, accused the legal experts who wrote the draft of "copying capitalist civil law like slaves," and offering equal protection to "a rich man's car and a beggar man's stick." The correct response would be to point to the Communist Party's copying of Soviet Marxist ideology like slaves. Except that this would delegitimize the Communist Party. I think the government can defang its leftist critics by handing real title to farmland over to the peasants who currently till it, with the proviso that it cannot be sold for a certain period of time. But that would deprive too many corrupt officials of the right to take land for free. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2006-03-12 01:01 |