Will Hutton (London Observer 3/20): Mao's children seek their fortune

[Jack Rabbit]

From the London Observer (Sunday supplement of the Guardian Unlimited)
Dated Sunday March 20

Mao`s children seek their fortune
It is inevitable that just as they are embracing capitalism so the Chinese will have to address their political system
By Will Hutton

After the sack of Nanjing in 1841, then imperial capital of China, the British secured what the Chinese still call the unequal treaty; Britain won control of Hong Kong and the right to trade freely in opium; the Chinese got nothing. And it was at Nanjing in 1937 that the Chinese were again and more bloodily humiliated by foreigners. The Japanese murdered an estimated 300,000 civilians and soldiers in an atrocity whose calculated, indifferent cruelty rivalled a Nazi death camp, but to which the world has been curiously indifferent.

Yet today this once decaying symbol of China's century-long weakness is at one end of a booming 250-mile-long corridor of factories and worker flats; at the other end sits the throbbing mega-sprawl of Shanghai.

China is beginning to meet the economic expectation that it has long promised but never delivered, due to a phenomenon that dare not openly speak its name. Capitalism, a distinctive and more socially minded Chinese capitalism but capitalism none the less, is irreversibly taking root in the world's most populous, and communist, country. Nothing is likely to be the same again. Nanjing's ambitions, and its capacity to meet them, is tribute to that. As the deputy director of the city's economic commission explained to me, it aims to become China's number one knowledge city. It has 37 universities. A state-of-the-art metro system with bullet trains begins operation this autumn. The plan is to combine this extraordinary infrastructure with the opportunities of globalisation to make the city's three core industries - automobiles, petrochemicals and ICT - super-competitive.

I asked him and a group of businessmen he had arranged for me to meet if there was any going back. None they nodded in unison. Nobody in China had any other prospectus than more of what was so evidently working.

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[pretzel4gore]

1. ricksaws and bicycles and plain sexless tunics not enough?

thinking of global resources...the limits etc, we hope the chinese don't aspire to american style sol (standards of living)....10's of thousands of dollars worth of junk is necessary for basic comfort over here (in golden mountain)....hopefully the chinese people consider the impact of their..gluttony before they start indulging!

[Jack Rabbit]

2. That's always bothered me about the prospect of China's prosperity

No one wants to ask them to live in poverty for the good of the rest of us. However, the idea of a billion people living like Americans is scary.

I know that doesn't sound very well-disposed toward Americans, and I hate saying it. The idea of a wasteful consumer society that large is horrifying. It causes one to question American values, and I don't mean that in a sanctimonious way. It makes me wonder what I can do to be more conscious of what I use.

[pretzel4gore]

3. and it's not just china!

there are 6 billion of us, and everyone should have what they need...at least. It's obvious the choice made by the 'omnipotenti' (they're only omnipotent when it comes to ruining, wrecking, destroying smashing killing hurting etc) is in favour of the few haves against the countless wannna haves! It's pointless to be pessimistic about this (and doing so probably just entertains the freeper/rwingnuts/kakaka'ers etc) so the only solution is to try to carry on, i guess...one benefit of the 'reagan bush' phenomenon is this: the western intellectual tradition that was once so hard to argue with regarding western intellectual superiority isn't hard to argue with now....lol! bush is their 'leader' and a table dancer like condi 'rice-a-phony' (:)) is the secretary of stairways, or whatever the hell it is! haha....old aristotle should be rolling over in his grave! he and plato once argued that democracy couldn't work because the stupid got to elect the stupider, and the wise men were thus marginalized...now the silly frigging 'wise men' have themselves chosen a rube who is held in contempt even by winos. and that's good, in a way

[Jack Rabbit]

4. That sounds like sentiment out of a Vonnegut novel

It has always amused me how Plato's ideal state has forever eluded us. Ruling classes have always claimed to be the "aristocrats" of their age. In the end, whether they call themselves the best because of physical strength, prowess in military affairs, ownership of land or ownership of the means industrial production, they have turned out to be no different than Plato's tyrants.

And so it goes is the refrain of Slaughterhouse Five, with the implication that Billy Pilgrim and the other characters can do little about it. At the same time, Vonnegut admires heroism, such as that of Derby when he called the traitor Campbell a "snake." But in the end, there is nothing to do but live in a cage for the amusement of creatures like Tralfamadorians, beings we cannot see nor understand because for them past and future is little different than up and down.

If we're going to save the planet, we'll have to be more active and not be so willing to live our lives in gilded cages on Tralfamadore. While I'm not a Marxist, I think something Marx said is appropriate. It is the last of his Eleven Theses on Feuerbach:

Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

If we don't change the world, we will not survive.