China: How do you have Capitalism

[serryjw]

without freedon to create what you want and reap the financial benefits of it?

[K-W]

1. The same way we have it.

And just like us most of the economy is owned by a relative handful of powerful individuals and the ruling political party is closely tied to that group.

[Liberal In Texas]

2. I believe it's called WalMart....

Seventh largest trading partner of China. Bigger than India or the UK.

Don't go to WalMart.


Nuff said.

[FM Arouet666]

3. I wonder how linked capitalism is to freedom.

I was recently in Beijing, and I can tell you, China is on the road to capitalism, with a vengeance. Huge multinational hotels, every luxury car dealership, Ferrari, Lamborghini etc, couture fashion, and renovation on a scale I have never seen.

The regime has also recently cracked down on pseudo-scientific elements and is promoting education and science as a means to propel the masses into China's renaissance.

What about freedom? Yes, Tienanmen had plain clothed police, and no one protested anything. In some ways I felt like China was the wild west, you could buy anything, do anything, as long as you did not conflict with the regime. Freedom constricted to the ideals of the state, true freedom? No... But consider...

The affront by the GOP and it's base on our freedoms. The attack on our media, what happened to the the unbiased media. The attack on the arts, NEA grants protested, "Bush Monkeys" taken down from a gallery, the wave of FCC fines for unacceptable displays or speech, hate radio, the news media parroting GOP propaganda with almost no intelligent debate, paid GOP stooges posing as legitimate reporters at news conferences. If you are in favor of nationalism, your christian, support the GOP, work in support of corporate America, you have freedom. If you don't, you will find resistance. China and America are moving toward a similar system.

Fifty years from now, I would suspect that the two countries will be very similar. Corporate controlled, capitalist regimes with tight manipulation of the media and forms of expression. China will improve human rights while ours will erode, the middle ground being reminiscent of Guantanamo bay, or Abu Garib. The notion that America is ideologically superior because of our freedom and our history is nonsense. I fear that American and the world is moving toward a dark period, an antithesis to the renaissance or the age of enlightenment and the emergence of the nation state.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

4. I would recommend to all DUers if you can to visit China. Just driving

around in Beijing and Shanghai boggles the mind, and sets one to thinking what might happen with this country in the next 20 years or so.

Simply seeing some things is sometimes way more powerful than any news article you can read.

[FM Arouet666]

5. Amen

But don't drive, they are the worst drivers in the world. I have driven in Manhattan and all over Europe, and Beijing and Shanghai scared the hell out of me, I took cabs, and they scared the hell out of me. :evilgrin:

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

6. I don't know if you speak Chinese, but the best and most fun conversations

were with cabbies cruising around in the cities. That was my "man in the street" perspective. Second best were talking to some students at Beijing U. Very cool.

I like looking at old crap as much as the next guy but the most fun thing of travel is to talk to ordinary people living in those places if you can.

[FM Arouet666]

7. Absolutely, the most insightful part of my trips to Asia

I do not speak Chinese, but my wife does. We would wonder around the Hutong, and talk to the people in the street. I agree, the cabbies were a most entertaining source of information. My wife was shocked when she learned that most Chinese probably thought she was a prostitute because she was with a La Wei (spelling? Chinese for foreigner).

[rman]

8. In China, as in the US, most people do not benefit from capitalism

In a winner-takes-all system there are bound to be a lot of losers.

[FM Arouet666]

9. And in China, they are easy to find

People living on a few hundred U.S dollars equivalent per year, trapped in poverty. What I wonder is, how a nation which holds human rights in such high regard, allows companies to go to other countries to exploit cheap labor. Our constitution states that every man (person) has a set of inalienable rights, and according to right wing nut jobs these are from God, influencing the founding fathers. So why does the U.S not mandate that U.S corporations extend these humanitarian principals to their workforce in other countries?

Oh, wait, because American rights are for Americans only, it is the right of capitalism to exploit the masses, and most are not white christians, so who cares?:evilfrown:

[Old and In the Way]

12. It's all relative.

Remember that those few fundred dollar a month incomes were <$100/year incomes 15 years ago. I doubt that you'd find many Chinese who think in our perspective. Do they want more? Absolutely. But their economy does allow a person to live reasonably comfortable on those salaries.

I'm 52 and I've met a few Chinese about my age. When we discuss our youth, I've heard many, many stoies about starvation diets and grinding poverty. These people remember their childhood and none too anxious to return to the good old days.

There are lots of problems in China, probably the biggest being managing rising expectations. There are still millions and millions of Chinese living in the interior provinces who have not seen the economic miracle that the coastal provinces have enjoyed. They want in on it, but are restricted from moving to those areas. Those few hundred dollar a month jobs that seem outrageously underpaid by our standards, are in great demand by those who have no wage at all.

[Old and In the Way]

10. Totally agree.

Capitalism is alive and well in China. As it has been for thousand of years. We tend to forget that the great social-political experiment of Chinese communism was basically a 35 year failed experiment.

In my travels through Southern China, I was amazed by the degree of capitalism. There are countless garage-type operations that are housed on the street level of the aparetment buildings there. I've seen people selling furniture in one garage, food in the next, a vehicle repair shop in the next, a tiny restaurant in the next, Bridgeport machining centers in the next, plastic pipe sales in the next...and so on, and so on, and so on, ad infinitum.

Obviously very inefficient, but very capitalist in nature.

[Blue Wally]

15. Same way in Vietnam

I was there in 1993 and it was pretty grim with large scarcities. In 1995 and 1998, I was back there and swa the same degree of economic activity. You would go out walking at night and you would hare a nosie and look into the first floor of someone's house and see a punch press hammering away chunking out a product or see people assembling vanity shelves out of a mirror and plastic. Once the dead hand of marx is removed, it is amazing how productive and enterprising people are.

[Old and In the Way]

13. You should have seen the road system 15 years ago.....

No stop lights, no dividing lines, no control at all....total anarchy. I agree if they've made the changes that they have in the past 15 years....where will it be in 20 years? It boggles my mind as well.

I went to Shenzhen 15 years ago. It basically was the first mainland Chinese village that you entered, via the Hong Kong rail system. It was an old fishing village, maybe a few hundred thousand people. At that time, it became designated as a special economic zone. Today, it has somewhere around 6-7 million and there is some of the most advanced architecture in the world. Truely a 21st century city that didn't exist 15 years ago.

[The Zanti Regent]

11. Milton Friedman lied.

He was the asshole who said that Capitalism and Freedom were interlinked. That liar kept saying that after he unleashed his disciples in Chile under Pinochet.

[Old and In the Way]

14. I agree with your assessment.

Our economic/political standard of living is going down...theirs is going up. We'll probably equalize in the middle. I can understand the reallocation of economic resources, I can't accept that we need to move towards a one party political system.

[serryjw]

17. Thanks everyone......I have not

traveled outside this country so my perspective is limited. The next 2 decades will be fascinating..hope I'm still here.

[Deja Q]

16. I hope they read your post. They could make themselves VERY RICH.

Unless they plan on watching the US disintegrate slowly, of course... and, like watching Jiffy Pop brand pop-corn on the stove top, watching it slowly can be more fun.