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게시물에서 찾기...reports and analyses

40개의 게시물을 찾았습니다.

  1. 2007/10/17
    中'공산'당 17차당대회
    no chr.!
  2. 2007/08/23
    中國/北朝鮮 (국경지역)
    no chr.!
  3. 2007/07/01
    香港 1997-2007
    no chr.!
  4. 2007/05/08
    중국/베트남 (亞洲時報)
    no chr.!
  5. 2007/03/01
    中國 - '공산주의'..
    no chr.!
  6. 2006/05/15
    反정부...
    no chr.!
  7. 2006/02/15
    中國: 정보전쟁
    no chr.!
  8. 2005/12/21
    美國 vs. 中國
    no chr.!
  9. 2005/11/21
    反차별주의와...
    no chr.!
  10. 2005/04/09
    Possibly the Near Future: East Asian Union
    no chr.!

西藏& 제국주의 #1

Well, according to the int'l media (incl. the Chinese state media, but also CNN, BBC etc.), possibly the "first stage" of the "Tibet Uprising", i.e. the ethnic motivated, racial riots/pogroms is over. Despite the massive worldwide propaganda war - by the "united front" of the int'l bourgeois press, fascist/racist organizations, so-called "NGO's", alternative "left"-liberal and "human right" groups, "socialist" organizations like the SWP in the UK or "All Together" in S. Korea etc. - to support the "Tibetan Freedom Fighters"!


But even the "first stage" of the "Uprising" was a complete "success" - for the first time since twenty years the int'l "public opinion" was forced to listen to the "Tibetan Voice", to its demand for "Freedom and Indepence" - it wasn't "successful" enough. Because the "Tibetan Independence Movement" is - untill now - isn't orgainzed enough.


But, and this leads us to the "second stage" of the "uprising", there are several interested groups (Tibetan nationalist organizations but also "global players"), who would like to see a radicalization movement.


Already last January (2008.01.04) - with the explicit approval of the "God-King", a.k.a. "His Holiness" the Dalai Lama - so-called Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement (TPUM) was founded. The TPUM's major aim: "Direct action to end the Chinese occupation of Tibet"! According to some contributions in the Internet it includes "sabotage, terror attacks and assassinations against Chinese targets". Well, it sounds complete strange, just like Chinese state propaganda..


But today's German (famous-notoriously) bourgeois newspaper Die Welt headlined "The (Tibetan) Youth Wants Weapons". "..the Tibetan youth - in China and the exile - already now is ready for everything. 'We would like to have weapons', Tashi, activist in the Tibetan Youth Congress, is calling. 'We are Tibetans. With T like Tiger, with T like Terrorism.'", he continued." And a few lines later in the article the same "activist" said: " 'We Tibetans were always good fighters. After the Chinese invasion 25,000 Tibetans were trained as guerilla fighters..' " And the writer of the article completed the sentence: "by the CIA". (*)


Well, that's enough for today about the "subject", but - as soon as possible - it'll continued...

 


* Related analysis and articles:

Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth (by M. Parenti)

CIA's Secret War in Tibet (TheHistoryNet)

CIA ran Tibet contras since 1959 (Workers World/WW, 1997)

Tibet and the 3.10 commemoration of the CIA's 1959 'uprising' (WW, 3.19)

진보블로그 공감 버튼트위터로 리트윗하기페이스북에 공유하기딜리셔스에 북마크

티베트 ‘반란’..


Despite the warning of the Dalai Lama to resign as "political leader" (BTW, who elected him as a "political leader"???) the Tibetan ethnic motivated/racist riots, better said attempted pogroms (aka "protests for peace and independence", according to "activists" in S. Korea), are continuing and spreading now to (other) Chinese provinces/towns. For example in Gansu: Here hundreds of horsemen stormed a un-named town (please check out: Protesters storm Chinese town, CNN) - it was looking like bad copy of the Mongolian invasion in the 13th century - and tried to attack schools, police stations and other gov't buildings. The cops used teargas to chase away the rioters, according to the Canadian TV (CTV).


And untill today the int'l media has no (documented) evidence of "brutal violence" used by the Chinese "security" forces. Just check out the stuff of CNN, for example (and they are not using Chinese state propaganda!!). Today's German (bourgeois) daily newspaper Berliner Zeitung wrote on its 2nd page that there is complete no evidence what would "support the thesis of massive and brutal violence used by the Chinese police and military". But, the article continued,  "there are several evidences by independent eye-witnesses that the Tibetan so-called uprising last week turned into ethnic motivated/racist riots".


Oops.. but only two pages later the same newspaper published following cartoon (likely as a proof of its "independent journalism"^^):

 

 

Documented evidences (but not by the Chinese state media!!):

Tourist films Tibet riots (CNN video, 3. 19/14)

 


Yesterday's "protest" in Seoul against the "Chinese occupation of Tibet" (i.e. to demand the establishment of a new Tibetan feudal theocracy):

[3.18] The Tibet Rally (pics) (다함께)

[3.18] The Tibet Rally (video) (MWTV)



Today's latest news: "UK: 'China ready to talk to Dalai Lama'" (CNN) But - possibly - it makes no sense anymore, because the "protestors" - likely - don't listen to him (the Dalai Lama) anymore..

Dalai Lama 'powerless' to stop protests (CNN)

진보블로그 공감 버튼트위터로 리트윗하기페이스북에 공유하기딜리셔스에 북마크

日本: 매일 자본주의

Tokyo dreaming (The Guardian/UK, 9.28)


A growing number of Japanese workers can no longer afford homes of their own. But you won't find them sleeping on the streets, says Justin McCurry. For many of them, 24-hour internet cafes have become a refuge


After a long day's work on a Tokyo building site, all "Eddie" Tanaka can think about is a cold drink, a cigarette and bed. If he can keep his eyes open long enough, he might just be able to fit in a few pages of his Manga comic book before drifting off. It promises to be an uncomfortable night. Tanaka will sleep in the clothes he is wearing. His room is a stuffy booth not much bigger than a toilet cubicle, with wafer-thin walls that don't quite reach the ceiling. And his "bed" for the night is a reclining fake-leather chair.


'Eddie' in the cubicle where he spends the nights in the internet cafe..


Home for Tanaka is Manga Square, a 24-hour internet cafe and comic lounge in the Ikebukuro neighbourhood of Tokyo. It is one of thousands of cafes across Japan that have become de facto shelters for people who can't afford to rent a place of their own: the unemployed and others, such as Tanaka, who depend on daily contracts in construction work to survive. According to a recent government survey of the people the media has dubbed "net cafe refugees", 5,400 people spend at least half the week living in cafes such as Manga Square, though most have little or no interest in the internet. Instead, they are attracted by the low cost of a night's accommodation, an expanding array of services and the sympathetic attitude of cafe owners.


Manga Square, which occupies two floors of a run-down building near Ikebukuro station, looks more like a hostel than a cafe. The exodus from the street begins after 10pm as dozens of mostly middle-aged men, many weighed down with bulging rucksacks, file in and make their way to the free soft drinks or order cheap, grease-laden meals. Today's special is a plate heaving with chips, sausages, a burger, fried fish, rice and shredded cabbage - all for 830 yen (£3.60). There is no small talk as, drinks in hand, they head for their cubicle, making sure to lock the door behind them. A fog of cigarette smoke rises to the ceiling and the silence is broken only by the click-click of computer keyboards and staff delivering food orders.


Tanaka has been dividing his time between internet cafes, capsule hotels and all-night saunas for the past three years since fleeing his home in Saitama prefecture, north of Tokyo, after falling behind on his rent. "I know it's cramped here, but there is no way I could afford the deposit and rent on an apartment, even a one-room place," he says as he devours a Slush Puppie with a plastic spoon. "All the drinks are free, I can use the PC for as long as I like, and there's even a shower upstairs."


For all this he pays about 1,000 yen (£4.30) a night. On days when there is no room at the cafe, or when he craves a little more comfort, he pays a little more and stays at a capsule hotel - a bed and a TV in a room only slightly bigger than a coffin, with communal showers. What little cash he saves goes on occasional trips to a nearby "soapland" - sex shops where the female staff administer soapy "massages" - for 15,000 yen (£65) a time. "Even though I'm penniless, I am still a single, ordinary guy, and I like to play a bit from time to time," he says.


Tonight, though, Tanaka will be asleep by 11pm. He will be up again at 5am and, after a breakfast of two rice balls, a fried egg and a bowl of miso soup, out of the door in search of another day's casual labour. He keeps his expenditure to about 3,000 yen (£13) a day, does not receive bonuses, and has no health insurance or pension. At a town hall somewhere in Saitama prefecture there is a residence permit with his name on it. But as far as the authorities are concerned, Tanaka might as well not exist.


He is one of a growing number of Japanese left behind by their country's recent economic revival. The government survey found that about half of the net cafe refugees worked in low-paid temporary jobs, while 2,200 had no job at all. Those in work earned just over 100,000 yen (£430) a month - about the same as the minimum wage for a 40-hour week, but nowhere near enough to afford a tiny apartment of their own. About a quarter were in their 20s but it is not unusual to find men - four out of five net cafe refugees are male - in their 50s and 60s sleeping in places such as Manga Square.


They are members of a new underclass that has emerged from the economic and social reforms that began six years ago under the then prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi. His enthusiasm for the free market and cuts in public expenditure have widened the income gap, with young people the biggest losers. Last year the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development was moved to voice concern about Japan's abandonment of its egalitarian wage policy. Between 2001, when Koizumi came to power, and 2005, the number of people earning less than a million yen (£4,300) a year rose by 16% to 3.6 million, according to the tax agency. The number of households receiving welfare has soared by 66% to one million in the past decade and youth unemployment, at 8.8%, is twice the national average.


Anti-poverty campaigners say the government figures vastly underestimate the true number of net cafe refugees. The recent survey included only people staying in net cafes at least three times a week, and ignored those who spend other nights in saunas, capsule hotels or fast-food restaurants, or who bed down on the street in big cities such as Tokyo and Osaka.


"Ten years ago I would never have believed we'd see people living in net cafes," says Makoto Yuasa of the Moyai Independent Life Support Centre, a non-profit organisation that offers advice on housing and job-seeking to the unemployed and poorly paid. "But in today's Japan it is a fact of life. These people are basically homeless, even though they are not sleeping rough. If you surveyed everyone with no permanent home, the figure would run into the tens of thousands."


Largely ignored by the government until recently, members of this new underclass have had to depend on volunteers for help. Yuasa, who formed Moyai in 2001 after receiving emails from desperate net cafe dwellers, says: "Most of them are denied welfare. They are comparatively young and fit, and are told to go away and find a job."


The labour ministry will start offering employment advice to net cafe refugees next year, but campaigners say the priority should be finding them accommodation, starting with an increase in the number of public shelters to reflect the size of the homeless population, which is believed to be between 25,000 and 45,000.


The young account for many of those who have slipped through the net. While the job situation has improved for university graduates, young people with few or no skills or qualifications - the so-called Neet generation (not in employment, education or training) - make ends meet through badly paid part-time jobs in shops and bars.


The number of 25-to-34-year-olds in nonregular employment stands at around 26%, and is spreading beyond the service sector to include manufacturing, experts say. "Poverty is more widespread among young people than expected. The existence of [net cafe refugees] proves just how difficult working and living is for them," says the Young Contingent Workers' Union, which represents part-time and casual workers.


More than a decade of economic stagnation and corporate restructuring has ripped apart the guarantees, made to their parents, of lifelong employment and seniority-based pay. "The problem is that young people today have nothing to focus their energy on," says Yukie Hori, a researcher at the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training. "Their parents' generation had the student movement and the postwar economic boom, but they don't even have the stability that comes with a proper job. It is harder than ever to find salaried work, so they can't relax and enjoy life knowing that at least their job and pension are secure."


Official figures show that 640,000 Japanese under 35 are classed as Neets. The Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, a private thinktank, estimates that if current trends persist, the Neet population will rise to more than a million over the next 10 years. They include Hiroshi Miyamoto, one of the first people to arrive at Mankitu, an internet cafe in Tokyo's sprawling Shinjuku district, late on a recent Monday evening. The air here reeks of stale smoke, sweat and fried food, but for 380 yen (£1.60) an hour, Miyamoto, 33, is given a private cubicle furnished with a long couch, a PC and a desk lamp. There is a shower room on the premises, and the reception sells soap, shampoo and hand towels for a fraction of the price charged in the high street.


Miyamoto has been unable to find permanent work since he left his home town on Hokkaido, Japan's northern island, three years ago after losing his job as a truck driver. Limited to low-paying casual work, he hasn't been able to hold down any job for more than a few months.


"I get bored very quickly and fed up with the pay," he says. To break the monotony, he divides his week between three or four places in Shinjuku, trying, and often failing, to keep himself to a budget of about 3,000 yen a day. "At first I was really homesick but I'm getting used to it. I even made a friend the other day and we went out for a beer," he says.


But most of the time, Miyamoto's is a solitary existence. He spends any leftover cash gambling on horses or playing pachinko, a type of prize pinball. "I'll be out of the door again at 7am tomorrow looking for work. I know my money won't last for ever. All I can do is keep trying."


Other net cafe dwellers are not so much searching as running away. "I'm a wanted man," says Katsuo Watanabe as he lights a Marlboro on the stairwell at an internet cafe in Ikebukuro. A self-confessed gambler and heavy drinker, Watanabe's life began to fall apart three years ago when work as a day labourer in Tokyo became more irregular and he fell behind on his rent and defaulted on his repayments to loan sharks. The 57-year-old, who, despite his lifestyle, looks 15 years younger, walked out on his wife and daughter and embarked on a life of hard graft on assorted building sites, and evenings chain-smoking and reading comics alone in his cubicle. Still, he tries to stay optimistic about his predicament as he dismisses the regimentation of life "on the outside".


"Japanese society demands that you belong to one group or another and obey the rules," he says. "Here you can be yourself."


Tanaka is similarly sanguine. "I don't think of staying here as a good or bad thing. It's just the way Japan is at the moment. The staff here treat us like ordinary customers. They know why we're here but they don't object at all."


An estimated 75% of Japan's 3,200 all-night internet cafes cater to regular overnight guests, who in some cases have become their main source of income. One chain allows guests to come and go once they have paid their admission fee and provides small rooms with tatami-mat floors to sleep on for just 100 yen (40p) an hour.


Image-conscious cafe owners have also criticised the popular description of their customers as refugees. "There are certainly some [customers] who have a hard time finding regular work, but ... these people are very important customers," says the Japan Complex Cafe Association, which represents about 1,300 internet cafes. "Some reports give the impression that groups of vagrants and homeless people gather at internet cafes every night. The media should be aware that such reports can scare off customers."


Despite reports that the cafes have become hotbeds of crime and prostitution, Tanaka says he has not had a single unpleasant experience in his time living in a cubicle. "Everyone pays their way and I haven't seen so much as an argument, let alone a fight. The worst thing about sleeping here is being kept awake at night by my neighbours' snoring."


Living in a net cafe can be hazardous, though. Many long-term residents suffer from back pain and haemorrhoids, and are susceptible to colds and other viruses. Depression is common, particularly among women, who, according to official figures, make up about 20% of the net cafe population.


Yet an estimated 70% do not have health insurance. "When they fall ill, the most they can do is buy over-the-counter drugs and hope," says Yuasa. "They can't cool down or warm up because they have no bedclothes, and it takes ages for them to recover from something as innocuous as a cold. For people who rely on casual work to make ends meet, that can be disastrous."


Watanabe, meanwhile, is hoping to earn enough money to take his 27-year-old daughter out for a meal, although it seems she would rather he saved any spare cash, most of which, he admits, goes on drink, cigarettes and gambling. "She worries about my health as well," he says. "But it's impossible for me to leave here at the moment. I've nowhere else to go, and even if I did, once people know I am around, they will start demanding their money back. Having said that, I can't go on living like this for ever. Not at my age"...


http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,,2178960,00.html


Related:

Precarious workers and the cyber-homeless.. (libcom, 5.08)

 


진보블로그 공감 버튼트위터로 리트윗하기페이스북에 공유하기딜리셔스에 북마크

中'공산'당 17차당대회

 

The 17th National Congress of the

"Communist" Party of China

(中国"共"党第十七次全国代表大会)


The first/newest articles/comments in the int'l media about the "event" 

you can read here:

How bourses bring democracy to China (Asia Times/HK, 10.17)

Growth is not our only goal, Hu tells Chinese (Guardian/UK, 10.16)

Beijing bluster (Guardian - free comment)

China society far from harmonious (al-Jazeera)

For the latest ("news") about the congress please check out following:

The 17th National Congess of the "Communist" Party of China

중국"공산"당 17차당대회

中国"共产"党第十七次全国代表大会

 



And last but not least..

Congratulations to 17th Congress of CPC (KCNA, 10.16)


The Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea on October 14 sent a congratulatory message to the 17th Congress of the Communist Party of China.
 

The message said the CPC, over the last five years following the 16th Congress, set forth the principle of people first and governance for the people, a view on scientific development, the construction of a harmonious socialist society and other new lines and policies and powerfully aroused all the people in the work to put them into practice, thereby opening an important phase of the cause of socialist modernization with Chinese characteristics and has achieved great successes in the struggle to reunify the whole country and defend global peace.


We rejoice over the achievements made by the Chinese people under the leadership of the CPC with Hu Jintao as its General Secretary and sincerely hope that everything would go well in China in the future, the message said, expressing the belief that the traditional DPRK-China friendship would grow stronger in keeping with the desire and interests of the two parties and two peoples... And so on, and so on... bla, bla, bla... 

 

진보블로그 공감 버튼트위터로 리트윗하기페이스북에 공유하기딜리셔스에 북마크

中國/北朝鮮 (국경지역)

Last week(8.14) Asia Times published following report, written by A. Lenkov (just enjoy it!!):


Two countries, two systems, one porous border

 

 


The border between North Korea and China is more than 1,000 kilometers long. For most of its length the border goes along two rivers: the Tumen (Tuman in Korean pronunciation) and the Yalu (Amnok for the Koreans). Last month I made a trip along the border, and it was a very instructive undertaking indeed.

 

The border bridge between China and the DPRK (Tumen Riv.)

 


I was not alone. The borderland areas are popular with tourists, largely from South Korea. Chinese, usually from those parts of the country adjacent to Korea, come there too. Both Chinese and South Korean visitors love to ride boats that pass just a few meters from the North Korean shore, so people can throw cigarettes to North Korean patrols. Telescopes can also be rented for a few yuan to look across the river and get a glimpse at the neighbors.


It seems that Chinese often perceive these trips as a reminder that their country, in spite of manifold problems, is doing very well, and that there are places that look like a hell even compared with the provinces of northeastern China, which are relatively poor. Generally speaking, many Chinese see North Korea as a bizarre curiosity, a sort of living fossil reminiscent of China under Mao Zedong.


Actually, the borderland areas of both countries can be seen as relatively backward. For North Koreans, the far north of their country has always been the place of exile for people deemed politically unreliable. With the exception of some mines, Pyongyang did not invest much there, and it is no coincidence that the Great Famine of 1996-99 hit the area hardest; the authorities decided to sacrifice the local population as least useful and most expendable.


On the Chinese side, the borderland areas of Liaoning and Jilin provinces are also seen as underdeveloped - to an extent that this is seen as a political issue. However, it becomes clear from the first hours that the difference between what are considered poor regions might be as instructive as the difference between areas that embody success and prosperity.


The largest Chinese town on the Tumen River is small and sleepy Tumen, but this township presents a striking contrast with the impoverished lands across the border.

 

South (DPRK) of Tumen 'City' (China)..


However, a few decades ago, within living memory, the situation was the complete opposite. Until the early 1970s, North Korea was seen from China as a land of relative prosperity, so during the Chinese famine of the 1960s and the subsequent madness of the Cultural Revolution, ethnic Koreans from China often moved illegally across the border for the relative stability and affluence of Kim Il-sung's North Korea. There, at least, people were certain to receive 700 grams of corn every day.


Things have changed much since then: Deng Xiaoping's reforms in China launched an economic boom while North Korea stagnated and then began to slide backward, and by now the Chinese borderland areas have left North Korea far behind. Local Koreans who frequently visit their relatives on the other side of the border tell me that the situation in North Korea reminds them of China in the late 1960s, just after the failure of the Great Leap Forward.


Nowhere else is the difference as easy to see as in Dandong, a booming Chinese city just across from the North Korean city of Sinuiju. Dandong, with a population of some 2.4 million, is much larger than Sinuiju, which has 300,000 inhabitants. Dandong and Sinuiju are connected by a single bridge across the Yalu River sparsely used by both cars and trains. While more popular with tourists who like to go on it to snap pictures of North Korea, the bridge also serves as a transportation link between North Korea and outside world.

 

Dandong in China, just opposite of NK's Shinuiju..


Back in the 1970s, the two cities looked much the same, but now the difference is truly striking. The Dandong riverfront presents a spectacular picture of the post-socialist economic boom: highrise apartment complexes and office towers are being built everywhere, and a large river island is being turned into a resort development. The riverfront has been completely taken over by restaurants and hotels, as well as piers for small cruise boats (the thrill of going near the foreign shore seems to be irresistible to many Chinese).

 

Dandong, the bridge between the North and the South (NK)


However, the Korean riverbank is empty and bare, with only the roofs of few derelict buildings, three or four stories high, to be seen behind the trees. An abandoned Ferris wheel serves as a reminder that leisure activities can take place in North Korea, too. The Korean riverbank is also a resting place for few rusty boats that probably have not touched the water for years, but otherwise it is empty. There have been reports about some construction going on in Sinuiju. This indeed might be the case, but no traces of any economic activity can be seen from the Chinese side of the river.

 

The same in the night time.. (right China, left..^^)

 


This contrast becomes even greater at night. Compared with Beijing and Shanghai, Dandong is not brightly lit, but it still has its share of city lights. The other shore is in complete darkness, and only some distant lights hint at a place where the local statue of Kim Il-sung is located (the Dear Leader's statues are brightly lit until late evening). The bridge that connects two cities looks surreal: at night it appears as if it abruptly ends in the middle of the river, since the Chinese half is lavishly decorated with colored lights, while the North Korean half of the bridge is unseen in darkness. One can only wonder what the inhabitants of Sinuiju think when they look at the other side, seeing bright lights in night and mushrooming buildings at daytime. After all, most of the new apartment complexes in Dandong look luxurious even compared with the government quarters in Pyongyang, let alone the buildings in the city of Sinuiju.


So it comes as no surprise that many North Koreans illegally move across the border to find work and refuge in China. Around 1999, when the disastrous famine stuck North Korea, the number of such refugees reached an estimated 200,000-300,000. Nowadays, the number has shrunk considerably, even though old figures are often uncritically cited by the world media. It is believed that some 30,000-50,000 North Koreans are currently hiding in China.


Why did their numbers go down recently? There are few reasons for that. To start with, a remarkable improvement of the domestic situation in North Korea played a role, but most of people with whom I talked in China last month agreed that the major reason for this change is the revival of North Korean border security in recent few years. Until 2004 or so, North Korean authorities usually turned a blind eye to the mass exodus of their people to China. Perhaps they believed that the border acted as a security valve by letting some people out. It is also clear that at the height of famine and economic disruption, they had no resources to control the border at the necessary level.


It seems, however, that most policies are initiated by the North Korean authorities, not by their Chinese counterparts. For most of its length, the border is in essence unguarded on the Chinese side. There have been reports about Chinese patrols or even fences being erected in the area, but it seems that such measures are taken only occasionally and in some relatively small areas. I traveled 300km along the border, and only once saw a military patrol (four or five uniformed men were sitting in the shadows near a small truck, obviously having fun). Marked police cars were encountered four or five times, and no checkpoints were ever seen.


Local Koreans insist that the Chinese authorities generally ignore border issues. According to them, a North Korean refugee has some chance of being arrested only if he or she is unlucky or does not know how to keep a low profile, but the overall probability of arrest is not very high.


The physical obstacles for a trespasser are not too formidable either, since the border waterways are both shallow and narrow. The Yalu in its lower sections is broad, but the Tumen remains a narrow stream for nearly its entire length, and the upper parts of the Yalu do not form an impressive obstacle for any border-crosser. For most of the border's length, both waterways can be easily waded over in many spots even by old or infirm people.


This creates an ideal environment for smuggling. Indeed, the area is frequented by North Korean traders. Until a few years ago, most of them were illegal border-crossers. In most cases they did not try too hard to avoid detection, since bribing the border guards was a better strategy. North Korean guards are ready to receive 800 yuan (US$105), an equivalent of their annual salaries, from professional smugglers to allow them to move bulky merchandise almost openly.


However, since about 2003 some North Koreans have been allowed to apply for permission to visit China regularly and come back with merchandise. On the other hand, all ethnic-Korean residents in Yanbian autonomous prefecture, home to many of the Korean-Chinese in Jilin province, now can go to North Korea any time they wish. Ostensibly, the goal of such trips is to meet relatives on the other side of the border, but it is an open secret that nearly all trips are, first and foremost, trading expeditions.


Of course, customs officials expect their fair share of both legal fees and bribes. Corruption in North Korea is shocking even to Chinese visitors, who are not exactly used to a clean government.

 

Yanji..


A Korean-Chinese who occasionally goes to visit his relatives described his usual experience: "They are so greedy. Officials take bribes in China, too. But perhaps nowhere in the world are the officials so hungry for bribes as they are in North Korea. At customs, they slowly go through the luggage and sometimes put aside a few things they like, and then they say that those things are not allowed into North Korea. This is the hint, and I have no choice but to tell them to take those things, some clothing or small items. And it is a tradition that everybody who checks you should be given some foreign cigarettes. Last time I took five cartons of cigarettes with me, and only one carton reached my relatives. All others I had to give away to the officials."


A particular role is played by the chogyo, North Korean citizens who permanently reside in China. This is a relatively small group, some 5,000-10,000 people (well below 1% of the ethnic-Korean community in China), but their economic and social role is out of proportion to their numbers. Their unusual legal standing allows movement between China and North Korea almost at will, and this means that they have great opportunities for very profitable trade.


A similar group, known as hwagyo, consists of Chinese citizens who are allowed to live permanently in North Korea. Hwagyo is a Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters that are read as huaqiao in Mandarin and used to describe overseas Chinese. There are also only a few thousand hwagyo, and in North Korea they enjoy a number of privileges, including the right to go overseas with relative ease. Nowadays, as my interlocutors never failed to stress, the hwagyo have become the most prosperous social group in North Korea. Being a hwagyo means to be rich, and this wealth comes from involvement in lucrative cross-border trade, both legal and illegal.


In a shopping mall in Dandong, I came across a shop that bears the proud name of a "joint Korean-Chinese venture". This is an excessively grandiose name for a small operation jointly run by two women in their 50s. One of the two owners is a chogyo while another is a hwagyo. This makes a perfect partnership. They can go back and forth to North Korea, even visiting Pyongyang when necessary.


The shop trades in paintings by North Korean artists who are willing to sell their works very cheaply. The buyers are overwhelmingly South Koreans who are happy to pay for the North Korean exotics. The works might look kitschy, but there is no doubt that they were produced with remarkable technical skill. The entrepreneurial ladies visit major fine-arts academies and state-sponsored institutions in Pyongyang, placing orders there.


Next to their shop one can see a number of others, also run by North Korean petty capitalists (often with hwagyo or chogyo backgrounds), that also sell North Korean souvenirs to South Korean visitors. It is remarkable, however, that the topics are quite non-political. Only after some explicit demand can a sales clerk produce something more politically charged - say, a Kim Il-sung badge (probably not a real thing, but a Chinese imitation).


Both Dandong and Yanji have shops that specifically cater to the tastes and demands of North Korean merchants and visitors. Usually, such shops are clustered on the same street, creating a sort of North Korean market area. The shop signs tell what the North Korean wholesalers usually buy: household goods such as refrigerators or television sets, calculators, notebooks, pens and other stationery items, mechanics' tools, fans and telephones, as well as small power generators and batteries - in recent years a measure of self-reliance for power supplies has become an important sign of an affluent household in North Korea. They also sell fashionable clothing and footwear, often to be copied by North Korean manufacturers.


Another major item of the illegal trade is the videotapes and discs with foreign movies and shows that are increasingly popular in North Korea. The North Korean authorities try to restrict the inflow of foreign, especially South Korean, movies, but the profits are too high. The North Korean population wants entertainment, and has had enough of biopics depicting the great deeds of the Dear Leader, Great Leader and their august family. In most cases, entrepreneurs in China record the South Korean serials that are shown by the local TV networks almost daily, and then sell the recordings to the smugglers.


The border is also a major source of information for North Koreans. Since the 1960s, the North Korean authorities have exercised information control that is exceptional even by communist standards. North Koreans can go to prison if they are discovered to possess radios with unlocked tuning. All foreign publications (including those from "fraternal" communist regimes) are sent to the closed sections of the libraries, to be accessed only by the carefully selected owners of special permits, and even a trip outside one's native county is impossible without formal permission. Until recently, this system held, but changes in the borderland areas brought about a gradual disintegration of the North Korean information blockade.


Throughout the past decade, an estimated 500,000 North Koreans have been in China, overwhelmingly in the borderland regions, both legally and illegally. They have seen Chinese reforms, and they do not buy the official North Korean propaganda anymore. They are also skeptical about statements by Beijing ideologues who still describe China as a "socialist society". For them, modern China is an embodiment of capitalism, pure and simple, and also a demonstration of capitalism's efficiency and success.


A representative of a small non-governmental organization who has worked in the area for a decade told me how North Korean low-level officials typically react to China during their first visit: "They literally do not sleep their first night. They are overwhelmed by this prosperity, these lights, this abundance of food, this relaxed behavior of people." One has to keep in mind that this particular NGO operates in Tumen, a city that is clearly poor and underdeveloped by Chinese standards.


In many cases, North Koreans can see signs of Chinese success even without crossing the border. At nighttime, the bright sky over the Chinese towns is seen for dozens of kilometers, and in daytime one can easily see the many construction sites on the banks of the border rivers.


What is more important, the Chinese borderland serves as a conduit of information about South Korea. The South Korean presence in the area is remarkable, and at any given moment one out of 10 Korean-Chinese is in South Korea, working, studying or doing business there. Therefore, the border-crossers soon learn that South Korea, routinely depicted in the official Northern media as a living hell, is actually richer than China, which looks to them like a perfect paradise. They sometimes buy and secretly watch "subversive" South Korean movies and shows that are frequently broadcast by the local Chinese stations. This new information is penetrating the North, and recently it has become clear that even the notoriously shameless and inflexible North Korean propaganda machine has had to change its tune somewhat to adjust to this new knowledge.


The border is not really sealed anymore. The difference in living standards is large and growing, and this can be easily seen. We can only surmise when the effects of this new situation will be felt, but there are good reasons to believe that the borderland areas will play a major role in the future of what is now known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/IH14Ad01.html

 

 

Related article:

The gentle decline of the 'Third Korea'

 

 

 

 

진보블로그 공감 버튼트위터로 리트윗하기페이스북에 공유하기딜리셔스에 북마크

香港 1997-2007

 

Today, Hong Kong(中華人民共和國香港特別行政區) will have been under Chinese "rule" for ten years. "Can the capitalist pearl (*) continue to shine under Communist Party rule?", the German (bourgeois!!!) magazine Der Spiegel asked.

 


Hong Kong Reinvents Itself, Yet Again (Der Spiegel, 6.29)


The red mailboxes with the image of the British crown were removed, the last batch of stamps with the likeness of Queen Elizabeth II was printed and 1,200 portraits of the monarch were removed from government offices. All evidence of the Queen had been removed by the time the final act began, exactly 10 years ago: Britain's farewell ceremony in Hong Kong, the colonial power's grandest goodbye.


July 1 marks the 10th anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to China.
Many wept when the Union Jack was lowered for the last time. Chris Patten, the last British governor, who had introduced democracy at the last minute in Hong Kong after around 150 years of colonialism and who was disparaged in Beijing as a "whore" in return for the gesture, fought back his tears while his wife and their three daughters wept freely. Even Prince Charles, the guest of honor, pressed a handkerchief to his eyes as he boarded the royal yacht, the "Britannia," turning around to wave one last time.


It was shortly after midnight on July 1, 1997 when the representatives of the old order left Hong Kong, whose name means "fragrant harbor." The jewel of the Empire, with its $69 billion in foreign currency reserves, was handed over to the communist rulers of the People's Republic of China, the most sumptuous dowry since Cleopatra. The symbolism of the moment could hardly hide its historic significance, heralding the decline of an old world power and the rise of a new one.

 

Please read the full (very long: 6 parts) report here!

 

 

 

* Where at least 1 Million people (from 6.7 Million citizens)..

 ..are living in extreme poverty!!

 

 

 

More articles/reports about the "re-unification":

CNN's interactive Special



Ten years after Hong Kong returned to Chinese control (Guardian)



Hong Kong's democrats worry.. (IHT)

Thriving Hong Kong capitalism in Communist embrace



 

HK bourgeois media:

十年.. (明報 special)

十年.. (文匯報 special)

 

10th Anniversary.. (Special Report/Gov't of the P.R. of China)


HK: Mass rally...

 

..and swimming for democracy

 


Related:

1967, Hong Kong Uprising

History of Hong Kong


 

 

 

 

진보블로그 공감 버튼트위터로 리트윗하기페이스북에 공유하기딜리셔스에 북마크

중국/베트남 (亞洲時報)

About two weeks ago Asia Times (亞洲時報) published following - in my opinion - interesting article:

 

Why Vietnam loves and hates China
 

For more than 2,000 years, Vietnam's development as a nation has been marked by one fixed and immutable factor - the proximity of China. The relationship between the two countries is in many ways a family affair, with all the closeness of shared values and bitterness of close rivalries.


No country in Southeast Asia is culturally closer to China than Vietnam, and no other country in the region has spent so long fending off Chinese domination, often at a terrible cost in lives, economic development and political compromise.


China has been Vietnam's blessing and Vietnam's curse. It remains an intrusive cultural godfather, the giant to the north that is "always there". Almost a thousand years of Chinese occupation, between the Han conquest of Nam Viet in the 2nd century BC and the reassertion of Vietnamese independence as Dai Viet in AD 967, marked the Vietnamese so deeply that they became, in effect, an outpost of Chinese civilization in Southeast Asia...

 

Please read the full article here!

 

 

 

Citadel Gate, The Imperial City in Hue/Vietnam

 

 

 

 

Beijing, Meridian Gate, the front entrance

to the Forbidden City (Imperial Palace)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


진보블로그 공감 버튼트위터로 리트윗하기페이스북에 공유하기딜리셔스에 북마크

中國 - '공산주의'..

 

 

 

Already in January (1.21) I mentioned a title story in the (leading bourgeois) German magazine Der Spiegel about the present P.R.China. 

Now here you can read the English translation:

 

Does Communism Work After All? (*)

 

 

 

China is securing an ever-bigger share of the world market with the methods of a planned economy. Competitors and economists alike are astounded by the country's seemingly unstoppable march to becoming a global economic superpower. The development has left many wondering: Does communism work after all?

 


Nine men dressed in dark tailored suits meet behind high, Red walls. Their secret meeting place in downtown Beijing is called Zhongnanhai, or "Middle and Southern Lake." Once part of the Forbidden City, Zhongnanhai was a place where emperors, concubines and eunuchs would spend their days concocting court intrigues. Some of the buildings from those feudal days are still standing today, joined by functional, gray and white structures built when the Chinese Communist Party established its headquarters here.


The nine men -- who constitute the Standing Committee of the Communist Party's Politburo, the most-powerful political body in the Middle Kingdom -- meet in the southern section of this refuge. Their discreet meeting is businesslike. The group's members were not elected by the people and they are not interested in being observed while governing. Cameras are banned and there is a conspicuous absence of jovial pats on the back or ready smiles for the evening news.

 
None of the members of this sombre squad is known for his charisma. President Hu Jintao, 64, the head of state and Communist Party leader, and his eight colleagues are stiff technocrats. Hu, the son of a tea merchant from Jiangsu Province, holds a degree in hydroelectric engineering. The others are trained in fields like electrical engineering, metallurgy or geology.


But the discussions and decisions made here within the ranks of China's Politburo affect the well-being of 1.3 billion Chinese -- and increasingly the rest of the world. If the Middle Kingdom were not a country, but rather a giant company -- let's call it Red China, Inc. -- then the Politburo would be its all-powerful board of directors.


And if Hu were not a communist official but rather a capitalist corporate boss, he would find himself inundated with job offers worldwide. Competitors in the capitalist West can only dream of the successes he and his fellow communist leaders cum business executives have achieved.


Hardly a day goes by on which Asia's giant, Red corporation does not report new and dazzling business figures. And the more helplessly Western heads of state -- from United States President George W. Bush to German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- attempt to reform their traditional market economies, the more enviously the capitalist world eyes China's frenzied growth, all the while asking itself: Does communism work after all?

 


China's speedy ascent to become a global economic superpower is troubling to many: to the industrialized nations of the West because they fear for their jobs; to politicians because the global balance of power is shifting; and, last but not least, to economists because it is so puzzling to them.


Economists' theories are based on the recognition that market forces alone drive economic growth. The state's only role is to ensure that competition functions and that no one is able to abuse his power in the marketplace to an inadmissible degree.


A Midas touch


For these economists, the fall of the Iron Curtain offered glaring proof that their hypotheses were correct. Indeed, planned economies in Soviet bloc countries were failures, creating poverty instead of affluence and leaving industrial wastelands in their wake. Yet China is flourishing. With a blend of a planned economy and unbridled capitalism that you won't find mentioned in any textbook, the country is capturing world markets and achieving double-digit growth year after year.


Hu and his Red board of directors appear to have something akin to the Midas touch. With their country, which amounts to a gigantic, low- cost factory, they have already managed to accumulate more than $1 trillion in foreign currency reserves. In theory, at least, the communist People's Republic of China, has now joined the United States, the global capitalist superpower, in deciding the fate of the world's leading currency.


In 2005, China leapfrogged over France and Great Britain to become the world's fourth-largest economy. The country's new spot in the rankings came as the result of an omission on the part of its communist bosses: Already blessed with so much growth, they had simply forgotten to include a large portion of their giant service sector in China's economic statistics.


American sinologist Roderick MacFarquhar is astonished by China's performance. "Never before," says MacFarquhar, "has so much wealth been created by so many people in such a short time span."


If China continues to grow at the same pace, it will oust Germany as the world's third-biggest economy in only two years, perhaps even dethroning the United States from its leading position one day. In 2005, China was already the US's second-largest goods supplier and Japan's largest. Not satisfied with being No. 2, Beijing's strategists are continuing their plans to shower the world with inexpensive products such as T-shirts and DVD players -- and, increasingly, with Chinese high technology.


A fast-developing tech sector


China recently surpassed Germany in the number of patents it registers. With its latest five-year plan, the country's Communist Party has set itself an ambitious goal of catapulting China to world-class heights in the fields of science and technology. According to the plan, Chinese probes will orbit the moon next year and land on it by 2010. China's space ambitions also include a bizarre aural spectacle: Its lunar orbiters will transmit 150 pop songs back to earth, including a Chinese tune titled "We Love our China."


The Communist Party's economic successes aren't its only impressive achievement. Chinese cities are safer than places like São Paulo or Bogotá, and they seem cleaner and more orderly than the slums of Nairobi or Soweto in South Africa. Beijing and Shanghai boast a lively cultural scene, and broadband Internet access is already taken for granted in the country's major cities. Mobile phone reception is even available in small villages.


Communist Party leader Hu and his Politburo colleagues aren't the only ones behind the changes that have swept across this vast country. True, they are responsible for coming up with the overriding strategies behind China's economic miracle, and for this task they take the necessary time -- hours that Western politicians waste doing the rounds on talk shows. But the Politburo also routinely solicits advice and reports on the latest global trends in science and business -- on issues running the gamut from biotechnology to health insurance -- from academics in so-called "study sessions." This being a communist land, these sessions would of course be incomplete without the requisite lectures on China's revolutionary history and Marxist theory.


The State Council, China's cabinet -- headed by the pedantic and schoolmaster-like 64-year-old Prime Minister Wen Jiabao -- deals with the day-to-day business of government. The cabinet meets at least three times a month, as required by law, in a building located a stone's throw from the offices of the Politburo. Meetings are graced with tall beauties dressed in red outfits and white gloves, who serve cabinet members green tea from the Wuyuan district in Jiangxi Province.


Red China, Inc.'s central nervous system


In addition to Wen, this inner circle of the Chinese government includes four deputy premiers, five members of the State Council (including one general) and a secretary general. Comprised of eight men and two women, the group directs and coordinates the work of 28 ministries and commissions, including the country's central bank and its central auditing authority. It also presides over an immense number of government agencies, including China's official news agency, Xinhua, the Academy of Sciences, the customs agency, the weather bureau, an agency in charge of grain production and distribution and -- not to be overlooked -- the Administration of Government Offices, which provides high-ranking officials with living quarters, cars and vacation homes.


All the elements in the network that make up Red China, Inc. come together in Wen's State Council. The body controls daily life in China with a plethora of decrees, memorandums, plans, measures and responses. In the month of September alone, it issued a decree on the "Administration of Payment of the Automobile Sales Tax," approved "Basic Regulations for the Electricity Market" and organized "Safety Inspections of Dams that include Power Plants."


A decade and a half after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a communist country appears to be relentlessly transforming itself into an economic superpower. Its recipe for success is, at first glance, the five-year-plan -- one which dismayed Western politicians have routinely dismissed for such features as its ban on private ownership of land and its manipulation of currency exchange rates.


Having your cake and eating it too


But five-year plans are only one side of the coin in China's vast realm. The other is a wildly unfettered capitalism geared solely toward naked profit. And when it comes to turning a profit, hardly anything seems sacred anymore, not even for China's communists. The Great Hall of the People in Beijing is a case in point. If the National People's Congress doesn't happen to be in session or President Hu isn't using the magnificent building -- with its more than 300 rooms and enormous paintings depicting scenes from the revolution -- to receive foreign dignitaries, the government simply rents it out. Recently, US automaker Ford used the building to unveil its latest line of car models, and fast food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken opted for the elegance of the Great Hall to hold a meeting of its more than 2,100 Chinese restaurant managers.


Ironically enough, while economists in Europe and the United States advocate "less government" and "open markets" as a response to globalization and the Chinese challenge, the Marxist-Leninist party that rules China blatantly avails itself of every advantage of capitalism while steadfastly refusing to give up state control over the economy.


ICBC, a major Chinese bank, recently conducted the biggest initial public offering in financial history, floating shares worth the equivalent of $22 billion on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges. In a win-win situation for China's communists, the bank's value rose to more than $200 billion, and yet Beijing retains control over ICBC. The country's three largest telecommunications companies are also state-owned. Two years ago, the Communist Party simply reshuffled senior executives among the three companies.


Is China, one of the most undemocratic nations on earth, setting an example for democratic countries on how to effectively solve problems? Do China's successes fly in the face of every critic and skeptic who believes that Marxism-Leninism and capitalism are as incompatible as the devil and holy water?


China calls this odd construct a "social market economy with Chinese characteristics" -- a term that already hints at tremendous ideological flexibility. After all, a market economy cannot be socialist at the same time. And the term "Chinese characteristics" is more than vague.


In fact, the Chinese Communist Party has shown great skill in repeatedly reinventing, making cosmetic changes to and even chiseling away at its construct of ideas. As flexible as a bamboo grove in the wind, the Communist Party is constantly replacing the content of its propaganda slogans.


All changes aside, the name "Communist Party" is kept in place, like a familiar façade, behind which the country's leaders long ago redefined their supreme political goals. Today, their objective is to build a great and strong China, a nation that can no longer be humiliated abroad and plays an important role on the international stage.


"Whatever the party calls itself, its most important job has always been to transform the country from a semi-feudal and semi-colonial state into a modern society," says economist Shi Shaomin of the state-controlled Chinese Society for Economic Reform.


Discovering the rule of law in China


The revolutionary class struggle, traditionally a communist party's bread and butter, vanished from the official rhetoric long ago. On the contrary, President Hu Jintao's speeches are peppered with talk of a "harmonious society." It doesn't seem to trouble Hu that this concept is borrowed from the feudal-era philosopher Confucius, whose teachings were ostracized under Mao.

 


The "Theory of the Three Representatives," the brainchild of Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, now allows the party to accept private business owners as members. Instead of the class struggle, the official vocabulary is filled with words like "democracy, equality, justice, earnestness, friendship and vitality," and with phrases like the "rule of law."


This democratic-sounding verbiage conceals the concept of an elite party that uses laws and regulations -- and no longer a complicated army of class-conscious but incapable Mandarins and a tangled mass of directives and decisions -- to rule its people and country as efficiently as possible.


With more than 70 million members, the Chinese Communist Party (or "Party of Common Ownership") is the world's largest political party. It governs one-fifth of humanity and yet it remains a secretive organization comprised of countless "leadership groups," commissions, research centers, central offices -- and even a "Central Committee for Protecting Secrets."


The Communist Party and the country's bureaucracy are so tightly intertwined that party members enjoy the same privileges as government officials -- from pension rights to health care. Important functionaries even bear the title "minister." Indeed, anyone who is not a member of the party's exclusive club doesn't stand a chance of building a career in government.
 

In a party that insists on its sole claim to power and staunchly upholds its dogma of "democratic centralism," career changes from the private sector are generally frowned upon. Hu consistently maintains that China is and remains a "democratic dictatorship of the people."


A gold rush mentality


One would think that a market economy could hardly flourish within such an authoritarian system. But precisely the opposite is true in China, a country consumed by a kind of gold rush mentality reminiscent of the pioneer days in the United States. Although the party and central government determine the overall direction, just about anything is allowed that the 70 million party members and their fellow Chinese can concoct to stimulate China's economic miracle. After all, continued growth virtually guarantees the party a stranglehold on power. And economic growth, be it in Beijing or elsewhere in the country, is what counts in this land of myriad contradictions.


It certainly counts in Shanghai, where the party is one of 60-year-old Xu Weihu's favorite topics. He has been a member throughout his working life -- first as a simple laborer and now as head of SVA, a state-owned electronics manufacturer. With its flat-screen monitors, SVA is part of the elite in China's high-tech industry. Xu greets visitors at his company's headquarters, a castle-like building complete with Neoclassical columns, that is meant to embody the pride of achievement -- and both the company's and China's claim to the future.


Dressed in a blue suit and red tie, Xu talks like a Western business executive. But he tires of his stiff outfit within a few minutes, removing his tie and tossing his jacket onto a chair. Stripped down to his plain blue shirt, he now looks more like a normal party official -- which is exactly what he is, because he fills two positions within the company, that of CEO and the important post of party secretary.


Xu routinely tests his employees to ensure that they are firmly behind the party's key theories, including the dogma of a "harmonious society." This is extremely important, says Xu, because SVA can only contribute to industrial growth if the party maintains order within the country.


Xu has been performing this patriotic duty as head of his company since the mid-1990s, when SVA was created out of a merger of several state-owned businesses. In those days the Chinese were still producing bulky television sets for a market in which they were practically the only player.


But when China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, SVA suddenly found itself vying with foreign competitors. In order to arm the company against the competition, SVA entered into a partnership with Japanese electronics manufacturer NEC to produce high-quality, flat-screen TVs.


Although the Japanese provided the technology for SVA's virtually dust-free factory, where many of its 3,400 employees work clad in white, spacesuit-like clothing, this is only the beginning of a long march to global leadership. That might explain why Comrade Xu hardly mentions NEC's role in the venture, instead preferring to tout "socialism with Chinese characteristics."


But what exactly is socialist about SVA, a company whose CEO is indistinguishable from his Western counterparts when it comes to pushing for low costs and high profits? Xu chooses to ignore the question, instead focusing on what he and his party consider to be more important: that his company is Chinese.


Reclaiming lost ground


China is on the rise, intent on reclaiming a position to which it believes it is entitled. For centuries the former empire, the birthplace of printing and gunpowder, was a leading power -- both politically and economically.


China's descent from power began in the 15th century, when the country suddenly isolated itself from the rest of the world. The West forcibly put an end to that self-imposed isolation in 1842. Since then various groups have tried to revitalize China, beginning with Qing Dynasty reformers loyal to the emperor, followed by Republicans and finally the Maoists. But Deng Xiaoping, the legendary reformer who died in 1997, was the first to embrace pragmatism to bring about a Chinese rebirth. "Whether a cat is black or white makes no difference," he told his fellow Chinese. "As long as it catches mice, it is a good cat."


Deng, a short, wiry man, had had enough of the failures of Chinese communism when he announced his new policy of liberalization and reform in 1978. He had witnessed the Great Chairman Mao Zedong's 1958 plan to dispatch China on his Great Leap Forward, his declared goal having been to surpass Great Britain and eventually the United States. But the main outcome of his ludicrous mass campaign was that millions of Chinese starved to death.


In the wake of Mao's disaster, it was up to Deng to revive the economy. But instead of thanking him for his efforts, during the course of the Cultural Revolution Mao banished Deng to the eastern Chinese city of Nanchang in 1966, where he was forced to work in a tractor factory. The building is a museum today.


The workbench where Deng used rudimentary tools to file parts is on display in the museum. From his workspace, he could read Cultural Revolution slogans covering the walls, like: "Strive for strength using your own power." Sitting at his workbench in a drafty factory building, Deng must have felt that approach to communism was nothing but irony.


Tapping the energy of a billion Chinese


Although Mao eventually rehabilitated Deng, he only managed to regain his power after the dictator's death in 1976, when he began to unleash the energy and creativity of a billion Chinese.


Putting enough food on the tables of Chinese families was his first priority. Once the Communist Party allowed agricultural collectives to grow grain and vegetables and keep the profits, China's markets began thriving again.


China also abandoned the model of the Soviet Union, its former ideological counterpart. The Russians had once pointed the way for China's communists in developing heavy industry. Using the Stalinist model, Soviet advisors were sent to China to develop steel combines and factories to manufacture trucks and machinery.


But when Mao sent the Russians home in the late 1950s, the former allies became bitter ideological foes. Their paths also diverged when it came to the economy. China's communists were well ahead of the Soviets in launching economic reforms. The Chinese had one decisive advantage over the Soviets: Their agriculture had not been collectivized for as long as that of the Soviet Union. When Beijing loosened the reins on its rigid planned economy, ordinary Chinese were already capable of taking the initiative needed to produce abundant harvests.


Most importantly, Chinese reformers avoided the "shock therapy" to which Russia was subjected after the collapse of the Soviet Union, explains economist Wang Jue of the Communist Party's school in Beijing. At first the party permitted only small private businesses in villages and rural centers, providing much-needed employment for a surplus of farmers. Deng Xiaoping's motto in revitalizing his huge country was to "cross the river by feeling one stone at a time."


The Chinese entrepreneurial spirit was also allowed to reawaken in special economic zones in the south and along the coast. Deng deliberately set up these zones in the south because this was where many Chinese had once fled from the communists to capitalist Hong Kong or Taiwan. It was also the region to which they were now returning, patriotic investors who quickly sensed an opportunity to turn a profit. Using low-wage workers, they produced toys and cables for electronics in their factories at a fraction of the costs incurred by producers in the Asian tiger countries.


And that was only the beginning. Even though China's aging leader wasn't entirely sure of how he was going to modernize the country, Deng didn't care much about the details. A pragmatist, his goal was to make China at least as powerful as the United States.


In 1979 Deng became the highest-ranking Chinese statesman since the founding of the People's Republic to visit the United States. The world was amused by the short, good-humored communist who was even willing to don a cowboy hat on a visit to Texas. But Deng's schedule was carefully planned, including as it did visits to NASA, automaker Ford and aircraft manufacturer Boeing. The West was dumbfounded. Did China intend to adopt the US's capitalist ways? This was clearly not the case, as Deng and his Communist Party comrades demonstrated when they visited Japan, China's neighbor with its unique blend of socialism and market economy, and city-state Singapore, an equally idiosyncratic fusion of a police state and a market economy. But wherever they went, China's Red strategists carefully examined the models they witnessed to determine what would best suit their goal of keeping the Communist Party in power.


Deng had no intention of relinquishing the dictatorship of the party. He believed this was the only system capable of protecting his giant country from chaos. To keep the Communist Party in power, he reasoned, the Chinese would have to become affluent. But how could they catch up with the superior West?


One option was protectionism, of the sort practiced by Japan's MITI, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, feared in the West. Under MITI's leadership, Japan had insulated itself against Western competition and, from its lucrative domestic market, flooded the world with cheap TVs, cars and computer chips. But this was relatively easy for the Japanese, who already looked back on almost a century of industrialization. By contrast, China in 1990 was still groaning under the weight of completely outdated state-owned businesses, including steel mills and aircraft manufacturing plants that had been built with Soviet assistance in the Stalin era.


Opening the door to foreign capitalists


The leap to modernity would have been unachievable without the West, and so the Chinese employed a proverbial approach with which they had always prevailed against superior adversaries: they played one barbarian off against the other. China opened itself up to foreign capitalists, allowing them to compete over which of them would enjoy the privilege of transferring modern technology to its state-owned enterprises.


The foreigners came in droves, lured by cheap labor, low taxes and the promise of a huge market. They raved about affable Communist Party leaders who were nothing if not accommodating when it came to feeding them projects worth millions after spending nights drinking with their future business partners. In order to gain access to the same kind of business in Europe, investors could spend endless hours negotiating with officials, unions and environmentalists.


The Communist Party slipped into a new role in its history. Like some powerful gatekeeper, it teamed up foreign companies with local partners, with which they were to modernize Chinese industry. Foreign companies have amassed $318 billion in investments in China since the 1980s, including $72.4 billion in foreign investment the country managed to attract in 2005 alone.


In strategically important industries -- cars, steel mills and power plants -- the Chinese enacted laws to compel foreigners to train their future Chinese competitors and essentially render themselves redundant in the long term. A tremendous redistribution of knowledge took place. And when Western companies were unwilling to hand over their intellectual property voluntarily, the Chinese simply resorted to illegal piracy -- another example of "socialism with Chinese characteristics."


The agency foreign companies fear


Though initially limited to a handful of special economic zones, China's capitalist experiment has spread throughout the country since the 1990s. Nevertheless, Beijing's Red planners have consistently kept a watchful eye to ensure that the party does not lose control over the country's industrial revolution. The planning agency at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in Beijing has played a key role in this effort.


At 8 a.m. every workday morning, the NDRC's 890 bureaucrats stream into its gray brick building topped with a traditionally curved gable Chinese roof. Ma Kai, the head of the agency, and his key lieutenants appear at the agency's doors in black Audis. Everyone else arrives on foot or by bicycle, and casual wear is common. Before heading to the office, some employees quickly and clandestinely take flyers from street dealers who offer fake expense receipts. For only 8 yuan, they can buy fake "receipts" redeemable for 100 yuan apiece.


The agency is feared among foreign companies because it has the last word on major projects. The NDRC emerged from the Planning Commission, which was created in 1952 and once dictated harvest quantities to farmers and production volume to factories.


A delegation from a Hong Kong energy company interested in drilling for oil in northern China waits in front of the large gate to the building, which is guarded by military policemen. The businessmen have brought along thick files with which they plan to convince officials at the agency that their project will not jeopardize China's national interests.


"Swarm out," comrades


The work of Bo Xilai, 57, China's trade minister, revolves around planning and monitoring. Bo is the product of a communist family. His father, Bo Yibo, stood alongside Mao Zedong on Beijing's Tiananmen Square when Mao proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China in October 1949. This makes Bo one of the "red princelings" -- a term used for the sons and daughters of well-deserved comrades who, riding on the coattails of their parents, rose to prominence as local party luminaries or heads of state-owned enterprises.


But Bo also owes his success to his own achievements. As the governor of the northeastern Liaoning Province in China's so-called rust belt with its many bankrupt state-owned enterprises, Bo attracted German automaker BMW to the region. As part of the deal, he also required BMW to help its joint venture partner, local automaker Brilliance, to turn its own mid-range sedan, the Zhonghua, into a success.


"Zou Chuqu," which loosely translates as "swarm out," has been Beijing's rallying cry since the late 1990s in its efforts to stimulate the Chinese economy to acquire brands and expertise abroad. Bo's ministry provides a catalog of guidelines to support Zou Chuqu and ensure that every Chinese executive knows exactly where the shopping trip is headed. One of these destinations is Germany, where the government wants Chinese businesses to invest in electronics and pharmaceutical factories, as well as in shipping and trading companies.


It may seem vague, but the gist of the policy is to ensure that state-owned banks are aware of the kinds of projects they are to finance with low-interest loans. Sometimes China's pace of development is even faster than its planners could have dreamed. In one high-profile example, computer manufacturer Lenovo scored a major coup when it acquired IBM's PC division in late 2004.


But the Zou Chuqu policy has also had its share of missteps. In 2005, objections in the US Congress prevented the Chinese state-owned energy conglomerate CNOOC from acquiring US oil company Unocal in a case that angered Beijing's bureaucrats. Although they approved of CNOOC's strategy, the company's zealous director's overly hasty approach generated opposition against China among the Americans.


Joining the global elite


Despite such failures, the Communist Party is sticking to its guns because the productive tension between plans and reality, between communist dogma and flourishing businesses is spurring on the Chinese economic miracle. Indeed, officials at the ministry of trade keep lists of industries they want to see joining the global elite.


China also has plans to build its own large-capacity jet, and to do so it is forcing Boeing and Airbus to produce their parts in the same factory in Xi'an. In return for agreeing to purchase new aircraft from Airbus, the Chinese convinced the European consortium to assemble its A320 model in China in the future. Airbus's savings as a result of the deal are minimal, but the know-how China will acquire in return is likely to be phenomenal.


Assembly of the A320 will begin in Tianjin in 2008. The northeastern Chinese city was awarded the contract after competing bitterly with Shanghai and Xi'an. This is the way Red China's model for success works. While the planning is up to Beijing, the provinces compete over investments.


Wang Rong, 48, is the party leader in Suzhou, an hour and a half west of Shanghai. Suzhou's former claim to fame was its location as a picturesque riverside town on the Yangtze River and the old Imperial Canal, a Chinese Venice complete with narrow canals and stone bridges. Today Suzhou is a booming industrial city with a population of about 10 million.


"I didn't get enough to eat as a child," Wang says. Thanks to Deng's reforms, he later managed to attend university in the Netherlands. With his Western experience, Wang doesn't come across as a typically pigheaded party functionary, but rather as the head of a modern service company. "The party's responsibility," he says, "is to help companies."


Wang is a politician whose primary interest is to draw investments to his constituency, and his showcase project is a huge industrial park planned by experts from Singapore. The concept for the facility was dreamt up in Beijing, but local party leader Wang was responsible for bringing the park to Suzhou. Today, the corporate logos of the likes of Bosch, BenQ and Samsung line the city's multilane, straight-as-an-arrow boulevards, where cameras monitor traffic at intersections. Party leader Wang's main objective is to develop local industry.
 

He praises a locally made microchip, the Dragon Chip, almost as if it were his own achievement. Wang clearly relishes telling the story of its success. There was a businesswoman from the country named Qian Yuebao, he says. Her textile company, Menglan, was making more money than she knew what to do with. Wang acted quickly, applying his own, pragmatic motto: Whatever the central government doesn't forbid, we go ahead and do. Wang convinced Qian to invest in the production of a microchip developed by the Chinese Academy. Today the Dragon Chip counts among China's proudest high-tech achievements.


All across China, local party officials like Wang are promoting development, constantly fighting on the side of progress -- and, in doing so, on the side of company executives.
 

The same phenomenon is happening in places like Guangdong and Shenzhen, the birthplaces of China's economic miracle in the 1980s. The highway to Hong Kong is lined with scores of low-cost producers of textiles, cables and electrical outlets. The whole world shops here in China's southern export region, which has become such an important supplier that the US corporation IBM moved its global parts procurement center to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. An army of slave-wage workers, many of them young women hardly older than children, work long hours in the region's neon-lit factories. Migrant workers sleep in crowded dormitories in apartment buildings adjoining the factories. All that distinguishes the residential buildings from the factories is the laundry hanging from the windows to dry.


The workers' patience seems limitless. Rarely do they refuse to work, and when they do it is to protest about sub-standard food or poor living conditions. And when that does happen, the factory bosses promptly contact the party, which sends in the police. Strikes have been forbidden in China since 1982, when the communists removed the right to strike from the constitution.


The southern Chinese province of Guangdong is considered to be the epitome of exploitation, and not just by Western trade unionists. For Chinese party officials, it is a temporary but unavoidable phase in the country's history -- a collective sacrifice that is required to help China develop into an economic superpower. And in the land of Confucius, what the wise authorities believe to be correct must indeed be the right approach.


If China's planners have their way, Guangdong -- this huge, dusty, malodorous factory -- will one day become an elegant laboratory for the country's budding high-tech industry. But this dream can only become a reality for some in a region where it will be up to the party to continue finding unskilled work for an estimated 14 million new migrant workers streaming into its cities year after year.


Xu Zhibiao, 52, is in charge of the future in Guangdong. The general director of the city's information industry department, Xu is literally beaming with happiness, and with good reason. Guangdong's party leader and governor recently paid him a visit in his office, where they promised him funding and experts.


Xu occasionally travels to Silicon Valley, the California model, to shop for ideas. Xu says that many of his US counterparts envy him for his position. When the party steps in to help, its assistance comes quickly and without bureaucratic red tape. With this support Xu was able to build a state-of-the-art computer laboratory complete with talented young engineers and brand-new IBM equipment. The government uses the laboratory to help local companies develop their own software for their products. The party employs similar methods to fuel its economic miracle throughout China.


Nevertheless, the Chinese Communist Party is constantly torn between its own claims to greatness, the challenges of a globalized world and its Leninist traditions. It rules a country that is both poor and rich, a country in which very few people have adequate social insurance, a country that has devastated its environment, is plagued by deeply corrupt officials and threatened by citizens who are becoming more recalcitrant every day.


Armani suits replace Mao jackets


China is becoming increasingly difficult to control. Despite their immense power, the days are long gone when Communist Party leader Hu Jintao and his comrades -- unlike Mao in his day -- could enforce their will by decree into every last corner of the party.


To avoid open disputes, Beijing's leaders must resort to the tactics of maneuvering, fine-tuning, bargaining and scheming. Hu himself is in the process of expanding his power by placing his confidants in key positions. Those are just a handful of the efforts made to ensure that people continue to toe the party line. All party officials in high-ranking positions in the central government or in provincial administrations are required to attend training sessions at the central party school for at least one week each year. The party also operates schools throughout the country. All party officials in key administration positions are required to be ideologically rearmed once every five years.


The times are even changing at the central party school. Harvard professors occasionally teach at the school, and 300 senior party officials periodically attend refresher courses in political science and economics at elite American, French and British universities. Indeed, Armani suits replaced the Mao jacket long ago. Some officials already feel more at home at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland than in the Communist Party's neighborhood committees.


Nowadays, the party is also admitting representatives of private enterprise into its ranks, a movement put in motion by former President Jiang Zemin's "Theory of the Three Representatives." In the past, the party welcomed only the representatives of workers and farmers.


In taking these steps, the Communist Party is conforming to real conditions in China. The number of state-owned enterprises declined from 238,000 in 1998 to 150,000 in 2003. And although these companies received 65 percent of all loans -- from primarily state-owned banks -- they were only responsible for about one-fourth of total industrial production in China.


Conversely, private companies were busy adding party officials to their payrolls. In the eastern Chinese Zhejiang Province, business owners are hiring retired party officials at monthly salaries upwards of €10,000, hoping to take advantage of the former officials' ties to the party and government agencies.

The Central Institute of Socialism in Beijing is responsible for making sure that non-party members, especially the heads of privately owned companies, remain faithful to the party's ideology. In the lobby of the institute's multistory complex, which includes a hotel and lecture hall, a large mural depicts Mao alongside the representatives of all major social groups.


Balancing capitalism with communism


A fascinating experiment is underway in China. A system is practically being reinvented from scratch, and no one can predict what it will look like one day. Even the Communist Party is divided when it comes to central ideological issues. How capitalist can China become? And how much socialism or communism -- whatever the specific meaning of these concepts is today -- must the party include in its official line?


Many party intellectuals fear that their country is already drifting inexorably towards capitalism, thereby gradually losing its ability to fend off foreign companies. Zhao Ying, of Beijing's Institute for Industrial Economy, shares this view.


Zhao spent three months in seclusion at a state-owned guesthouse near the Beijing airport, analyzing the conclusions that about 2,000 experts from all industrial sectors had compiled in special reports. Zhao's own conclusion is that "major sectors of our industry, especially in production, are insecure." What he means is that Chinese industry is urgently in need of technological improvement to be able to prevail against Western competition.


When Zhao sounds the alarm, China's leaders listen. The professor was one of the strategists who, beginning in the mid-1980s, presided over the development of a Chinese auto industry with the help of foreign joint ventures. At the time, the central government established the underpinnings of a plan to merge more than 100 automakers into a small number of powerful giants, including Shanghai Automotive, Volkswagen's joint venture partner, which has plans to rank among the world's six largest automotive corporations by 2020.


At first the plan worked like clockwork, as the foreigners transferred more and more technology to the Chinese. By imposing high duties on the importation of cars and parts, Beijing forced Western auto companies to increasingly relocate their high-value production to China. In 2004 the planning authority, NDRC, pushed the domestic auto industry to develop its own brands.


Nevertheless, things are moving far too slowly for China's Red planners. The political leadership has been pushing for rapidly opening up the country since the mid-1990s, and especially after China joined the WTO in 2001. As a result, Zhao, the industrial economist, went to Europe and Japan to study industrial policies abroad. His experiences taught him that China must develop far more of its products independently, including its weapons technology. Most importantly, it must secure its economic independence by developing its own patents and its own industrial standards.


Zhao recently wrote a book that triggered a heated debate, unusual for a party that has traditionally preferred to settle differences of opinion on the quiet. But this time the dispute erupted on the Internet. The Communist Party employs about 30,000 censors to patrol the world of cyberspace. They block access to all kinds of Web sites the party considers to be potentially threatening. But this time the attack came equipped with politically correct arguments. In his blog, patriotic businessman Xiang Wenbo voiced his criticism of plans by the Carlyle Group, a US company, to acquire Xugong, a Chinese competitor that manufactures construction machinery. Chinese anger over what was perceived as an American invasion quickly caused a stir on the Internet. The patriotic debate even made waves at the NDRC's summer conference.


Planners from the agency's 31 provincial administrative units normally spend two days meeting in Beijing, where they sit in long rows and diligently jot down everything Ma Kai, NDRC's Beijing director, says in his elaborate presentations. But this time the delegates were more interested in discussion, leaving Ma Kai with no choice but to extend the meeting by an additional three days. The conference ended with a compromise, which Ma then presented to the State Council. Although the party intends to retain its control over strategically important state-owned enterprises, it also needs foreign investors to bring in money and technology. The Chinese gross domestic product may be growing steadily year after year, but it still amounts to only about one-sixth of US GDP.


The debate over the protection of property is closely tied to Chinese fears of foreign influence. China's communists face a dilemma. On the one hand, their economy needs modernization. On the other hand, they are painstakingly attempting to bridge the growing gap between rich and poor created by real capitalism with old Red slogans.


Given this approach, it should come as no surprise to the leadership when left-leaning members take the party at its word, ideologically speaking. In fact, last spring they almost managed to disrupt the ritual of the National People's Congress in Beijing, the rubberstamp parliament whose almost 3,000 delegates normally toe the party line on virtually every issue.


Growing unrest


A group led by Gong Xiantian, a Beijing law professor, forced the government to postpone a law designed to protect private ownership of Chinese real estate. Gong argued that because the law did not stipulate that "socialist property is inviolable," its drafters were guilty of "copying capitalist civil law like slaves." But Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had good reasons to support the reform, which would have given farmers the right to own their land. Indeed, the reform is urgently needed. With the state as the official owner, local Communist Party officials and village heads hold title to the land, which in many cases enables them to arbitrarily confiscate pastures, fields and gardens to build office buildings, residential developments, golf courses and industrial parks. A toned-down version of the law will be resubmitted to the People's Congress in March.


Party officials often offer local residents ridiculously low compensation for the expropriated property, while in turn cashing in on commissions the government pays to real estate companies in which they or their relatives often hold financial stakes. By engaging in this practice, local officials create resentment against the party. In 2005 alone, the Chinese authorities officially documented 87,000 incidents of social unrest in the People's Republic, mainly in rural areas.


Such unrest remains largely hidden from Western politicians and businesspeople. When they travel to China, they are deeply impressed by the speed and resolve with which Chinese politicians act, the effectiveness of their decisions and their openness to reform.


A new highway, a new factory, a new residential development? To the outside observer, it seems to take only days for the authorities to give the go-ahead for development, and suddenly fields are being flattened, houses razed and infrastructure installed. But appearances are only part of the truth in China. Contrary to the commonly held belief that a dictatorship must automatically have a strong center, Beijing's government is weak. The Communist Party leadership and ministers are often unable to enforce their decisions against the interests of powerful state-owned enterprises and provincial fiefs. At all levels, ranging down to the village supervisor, officials interpret documents bearing the "Red letterhead," as central directives are called, as they please.


A Chinese proverb handily sums up the fate of orders from Beijing: "A clear sunny day in the central government becomes a cloudy day in the countryside. When it rains in the provinces, people in the cities drown in the floods."


As a result, the Communist Party has been unable to improve safety in the country's coalmines, despite the fact that hardly a day goes by when miners are not buried alive or killed in explosions. And despite Prime Minister Wen's teary-eyed laments over the fates of the victims, the front of mine owners and local officials stands rigid like the first Chinese emperor's army of terra cotta soldiers.


Trouble slowing growth


Attempts on the part of the government, fearful of an overheated economy, to slow down the frenzied pace of construction in the real estate sector are also in jeopardy, as provincial officials and mayors defy the central government's directives and continue to build new residential neighborhoods and trade fair centers.


For local officials development is the only way to secure jobs in their regions -- and to produce handsome profits for themselves and their relatives, as well as for local construction companies. Despite the central government's instructions to reduce lending, banks issued loans amounting to 2.76 trillion yuan (€276 billion) within the first nine months of last year -- an increase of almost €80 billion over the same period in the previous year.


One of those who refused to obey Beijing was Chen Liangyu, 60, for many years the head of the Communist Party in Shanghai, and a member of the powerful Politburo in Beijing. Chen managed the city of 18 million as if it were a privately owned corporation. He is alleged to have generously tapped into the government pension funds -- into which Shanghai's citizens had entrusted roughly $1.2 billion -- to invest in the construction projects of friends who were property developers.


Corruption also runs rampant when it comes to building new neighborhoods, factories, airports and highways. Communist Party officials have the power to award contracts, and they utilize their power to fill their own pockets. Researchers at the State Council, the Academy of Social Sciences and the Communist Party's central university determined that of the 3,220 Chinese with assets totaling more than €10 million, 2,932 are relatives of senior party officials.


In the end, Hu and his Beijing allies decided that Shanghai's Communist Party leader was acting too independently and they removed him from his position. The power struggle shows that this major Asian power continues to employ the methods of Stalinist political commissioners to retain control over its increasingly complex economy. In a market economy, the central bank and government would cautiously curb an economic boom with the tools of the interest rate and fiscal policy. Its efforts would be supported by incorruptible watchdog organizations, including securities regulatory authorities, audit courts, trade unions, consumer organizations, citizens' groups, the judiciary and the media. But in China, this land of extremes, the determining factor is either the law of the party or the anarchy of the market -- but hardly anything in between. This explains why the Communist Party in Beijing ultimately dispatches the inquisitors of its disciplinary commission.


Chen, the former Shanghai party boss, initially disappeared from the scene, without being formally charged by a state prosecutor with any crime and without being given the opportunity to defend himself in public against any charges.


Lessons from China


Does learning from China mean learning how to win? In some respects, the country could certainly serve as a role model for developing countries. The Chinese communists rescued about 300 million people from poverty -- a number unprecedented in history -- with their reforms. The signs of affluence are everywhere, and not just in Shanghai and Shenzhen, where luxury boutiques like Gucci, Louis Vuitton or Versace attract a growing middle class. The Chinese boom even extends into the country's more backward interior, to places like Chengdu or Chongqing. The number of Chinese dollar millionaires is growing steadily, with 320,000 Chinese already worth an average of $5 million. The rich are among the Communist Party's most loyal supporters because it protects their affluence. And the army of migrant workers moving from the countryside to construction sites in the cities is also unlikely to rise up against the Communist Party. As long as life improves by a fraction each year for every Chinese citizen, the Mandarins will continue to enjoy the mandate of heaven.


And what about democracy, human rights and environmental protection? The Asian Tigers also used authoritarian means to whip their economies into shape, with similar approaches taken by South Korean and Thai generals alike. And as long as the Tigers managed to keep up their labor-intensive mass production of products like T-shirts and television sets, collectively growing their economies in the process, the system worked. But as they began producing more high-tech products and becoming more tightly woven into the global network, it became more and more difficult to simply direct their increasingly complex economies by decree from above.


The "Asian miracle," previously lauded by the World Bank, collapsed during the 1997 Asian economic crisis. As is happening in China today, in many cases state-controlled banks had stimulated the construction of factories and real estate with cheap loans. But then Western investors pulled their money out in panic, fleeing from what they perceived as "crony capitalism." The International Monetary Fund forced the Asian Tigers to bring their tangled financial structures up to Western standards, and in Indonesia the crisis led to the collapse of the Suharto regime.


In China, state-owned banks have also amassed billions in bad loans. When will the bubble burst? This is a constant topic of conversation in the exclusive hotel bars in Beijing and Shanghai where foreign businesspeople tend to gather for after-work drinks. Unlike the Tigers, the People's Republic does not have a freely convertible currency and, for this reason, is better equipped to fend off the advances of speculators. China also has huge, underdeveloped hinterlands at its disposal. Given these conditions, the economy could theoretically continue to boom for decades.


But even if China keeps on growing and avoids major crises, the Red planners face the question of their own existence. The more self-confident domestic companies like computer manufacturer Lenovo become, the less they need the party -- much in the same way that Japan's Sony Corporation shed its reliance on the MITI long ago.


Zhang Jun, a professor of economics at Fudan University in Shanghai, does not see a contradiction between the state's planning role and the fundamental superiority of the market. For Zhang, the state's role is merely a tool to help China successfully complete its historic transition into a market economy.

 

 

Related articles:

Migrants suffering for China boom (Guardian)

China's New Left calls for a social alternative (NYT/IHT)

 

 

* Please don't forget that this article was published in a BOURGEOIS magazine!! And of course the present situation in the PRC has nothing to do with socialism. And the communism, btw, nowhere - not even in Albania (^^) - was happen until now!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

진보블로그 공감 버튼트위터로 리트윗하기페이스북에 공유하기딜리셔스에 북마크

反정부...

This leaflet we, migrants in S. Korea, published about two years ago..

 

This System Has No Error, Just It Is The Error!


Certainly you ask yourself why we, in contradiction to you, are shouting slogans against Roh, why we are fighting against the current government.

 

Perhaps you know, that we, migrant workers fight against government’s policy of human hunting and mass deportation, for releasing of our comrades, imprisoned in detention centers, facing deportation – only because they, like us, are activists for our rights as workers here in South Korea. Also we’re fighting for to achieve labor rights and the right just to change our work places. And last but not least we’re struggling for legalization. So, just we want human rights, but the current government refuses to meet our demands, just they treat us like animals!


But we are not the only people, suffering under government’s repression:


Remember what was happen last Friday with the rally of disabled activists! Just because the government don’t like the activities of “not nice looking” people, they send the riot cops to arrest them!


Or remember last year: against the will of more than 80 per cent of the Koreans the parliament voted to send the troops to Iraq (the suggestion came from Roh personally!). But instead to listen to the will of the voters, the government sent the riot cops to beat the protesters bloody up.


Or what’s with SOFA? Even though the government knew about the fact that the U.S. even didn’t want to negotiate the matter, they promised a better SOFA. And of course nothing changed yet!


Remember the pre-election promise to make “worker friendly” policy? The reality begun at least on the end of last June when thousands of riot cops stormed Yonsei Univ., hunted and arrested at least 1.700 railway workers unionists.


Or in October last year when riot cops broke up nearly every workers demonstration, only minutes after they begun…


The list is very long! So, why we should defend this government?


We only should defend ourselves, our interests. Our interests in a life without to fear to get no jobs, to be threaten like slaves or to sent in a ongoing aggression against innocent people in Iraq. We should fight for free education and health insurance, for same payment for man and woman, Korean and migrant workers.


But to achieve this we cannot trust in the corrupt ruling parties – no matter how they call themselves, if they are on power you cannot distinguish anymore between them and their predecessors!


LET’S FIGHT TOGETHER FOR A WORLD

WITHOUT EXPLOITATION AND OPPRESSION!

ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE, ONLY

I

KCTU

F YOU WANT AND FIGHT FOR IT!

명동성당농성투쟁단

http://migrant.nodong.net/sitin




 

 

 

  leaflet for 탄핵무효"activists"  이주지부 2004/03/31 1000 24

 

 

진보블로그 공감 버튼트위터로 리트윗하기페이스북에 공유하기딜리셔스에 북마크

中國: 정보전쟁

Today's Guardian(UK) published following article:

 

China's old guard warns censors of 'social disaster'

· Ex-aide of Mao Zedong attacks media crackdown
· Web statement escalates row over free speech


A group of retired senior officials and academics, including Mao Zedong's former secretary, yesterday called for more openness, warning China's propaganda department that the media crackdown "could sow the seeds of disaster for political and social transition".

In a rare sign of friction between the old and new guard of the Communist party, the 13 cadres, many of whom were once leading opinion formers, said the closure last month of the pioneering liberal publication Freezing Point was a "major historic incident".

Their joint statement, published on an overseas website, was all the more remarkable because it was signed by officials who formerly helped dictate the country's propaganda policy. Among them was Hu Jiwei, the former editor of the Communist party mouthpiece, People's Daily, the former propaganda official Zhu Houze, the retired deputy head of the Xinhua news agency, Li Pu, and the former head of the China Youth Daily group, Zhong Peizhang.

In a move escalating the information war between the propaganda department and advocates of free speech, they called on the government to publish China's murky media laws, to "demolish every method of news censorship", and to protect the professional rights of the media. "Depriving the public of freedom of expression is bound to give rise to confrontation among the masses and lead to turbulence," they said.

Despite their former positions, many of the signatories have a record of refusing to be gagged. Li Rui, a former member of Mao's inner circle, was sent to a gulag in Heilongjiang province for several years because he dared criticise the disastrous policies of the Great Leap Forward.

Although it has been some years since the signatories held positions of power, it is unknown for such a group to jointly criticise the government so publicly. Zhang Sizhi, China's most famous lawyer, said those involved felt compelled to act in light of the media crackdown.

The methods of control of the propaganda department of the Communist party are anything but transparent. Chinese journalists say they get given lists of stories they cannot make public. Those that disobey risk arrest, the sack, or closure of their publications.

Yet journalists are constantly pushing the boundaries. Freezing Point, a supplement of the China Youth Daily, has published stories on official corruption and social inequality. Its editor, Li Datong, a veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests, issued an open letter last summer that forced the propaganda department to abandon plans for a bonus system designed to reward journalists according to how often they were praised by government officials.

The publication was shut down last month for "viciously attacking the socialist system". The editor said the authorities' actions were illegal. "This is an abuse of power by the propaganda department. It goes against the constitution." He compared the struggle over information to a guerrilla war, with the media and the authorities each probing for weaknesses on the other side.

In the past two months, censors have fired the editors of the Beijing News and the Public Interest Times. Yesterday, the government announced regulations for internet cafes and entertainment venues, barring use of any "audio and video products or electronic games that might harm national security and incite hatred toward other nationalities".

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 32 reporters are in Chinese prisons. In its 2005 world press freedom index, Reporters Without Borders ranked China 159th out of 167 countries.

Yesterday the Xinhua news agency reported that 115,000 members of the Communist party were punished last year for bribery, influence peddling and other offences. With thousands of often violent protests occurring in the provinces, the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, has warned of growing social instability.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,1710025,00.html

 

About the same issue written by AP you can read here:

China's Media Crackdown Draws Fire 


진보블로그 공감 버튼트위터로 리트윗하기페이스북에 공유하기딜리셔스에 북마크

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