667medic,
some interesting points, but the man makes some elemental mistakes in his china-watching. bear with me as i go down some of them- it may get a bit longish.
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foreigners were barbarians beyond the gilded pale who should not be allowed even to learn the art of speaking and writing Chinese.
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exaggerated, given the old writing forms of vietnam and korea, and the constant trade/tribute system institutionalized within imperial china.
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This was a new China that had plainly left behind obeisance to the canons of Confucianism and the later cruelties of Mao.
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confucianism never really disappeared in china, not even during the period of the 1920s. mao (in a similar fashion to chiang kai-shek before him) utilized precepts of confucianism for easier rule while attacking confucianism as feudal thought. now the CCP is doing its best to encourage a neo-neo-Confucianism again.
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A new great power is in the making, but one whose pursuit of its self-interest takes the amorality of power to a new plane. It is not just the Chinese who should be concerned about its institutional and moral failings; all of us should be.
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this is realism in action. big whoop, every other country in the world works through realism, with a few countries seeking to cloak realist actions with either neo-liberalism or international liberalism. only in a very few and limited set of examples do we see states taking action not out of self-interest.
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The maxims of Marxist-Leninst-Maoist thought have to stand, however much the party tries to stretch the boundaries, because they are the basis for one-party rule.
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and that is why the CCP no longer depends on marxist-leninst-maoist thought, instead choosing a hybrid of confucian/nationalist ideology. the "three represents", JZM theory- cheap forms of window dressing.
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Equally, China is reaching the limits of the capacity to increase its exports, which, in 2007, will surpass $1 trillion, by 25 per cent a year. At this rate of growth, they will reach $5 trillion by 2020 or sooner, representing more than half of today's world trade. Is that likely? Are there ships and ports on sufficient scale to move such volumes - and will Western markets stay uncomplainingly open? Every year, it is also acquiring $200bn of foreign exchange reserves as it rigs its currency to keep its exports competitive. Can even China insulate its domestic financial system from such fantastic growth in its reserves and stop inflation rising? Already, there are ominous signs that inflationary pressures are increasing.
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the CCP has, in the last few years, instituted programs designed to boost domestic growth/spending, realizing the limits of export-based trade.
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These ills have communist roots. It is the lack of independent scrutiny and accountability that lie behind the massive waste of investment and China's destruction of its environment alike
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not particularly. corruption, while prevalent in "communist" systems, does not just exist under communism. in another vein, environmental destruction is being caused not by communism, but by untrammeled free-market expansion, with unscrupulous industries dumping their trash into rivers and polluting away. the CCP does, however, hold some responsibility, because up until recently, the ideology has been economic growth above all. now, with economic growth being as high as it is, the CCP is finally realizing the costs of such growth.
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Enterprises are accountable to no one but the Communist party for their actions
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again, not so much to the party but to the local corrupt bureaucrat.
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there is no network of civil society, plural public institutions and independent media to create pressure for enterprises to become more environmentally efficient.
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would have been true 15-25 years ago, but no longer. to be sure, these institutions are still weak, but they exist and are growing.
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where the party second-guesses business strategy for ideological and political ends, is impossible.
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this is not the 1960s anymore! the current party does less second-guessing than japan's LDP did all the way up until the early 1990s (see MITI).
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Chinese consumers need to save less and spend more, but consumers with no property rights or welfare system are highly cautious. To give them more confidence means taxing to fund a welfare system and conceding property rights. That will mean creating an empowered middle class who will ask how their tax renminbi are spent. Companies need to be subject to independent accountability if they are to become more efficient, but that means creating independent centres of power. The political implications are obvious.
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the first evolves naturally, as we've seen in the last 15 years. as for independent accountability, the judicial system is finally developing such.
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It was no 'counter-revolutionary riot' but a demand for freedoms that infected all China and very nearly succeeded.
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yes and no. the protests first started out as being against corruption and inflation; it later expanded to demand civil and political liberties. by the end of the protests- around late may- many of the original protesters either could not camp out at tiananmen anymore, or they felt that they had gotten the message across. the hard-core dedicated ones, seeing the momentum of the protest evaporating, turned to a harder line calling for the overthrow of the CCP.
in the other cities which the author mentions, the line that was the most popular was corruption, and in a few areas, labor organizing. it is interesting to note that the CCP cracked down the hardest upon labor, NOT the students. this is some indication of where the CCP felt its legitimacy was most threatened- and it wasn't the call of democracy.
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all in all, the article brings up some very definite problems that china faces: banking problems, ownership, environmental issues, independent balances of power, legitimacy. the author is certainly right in that a growing middle-class will call for expanding power, and that no one can truly predict the future. however, i do think it is rather sensationalist to proclaim that these problems will lead to the (violent, as the article implies) downfall of the CCP. heck, gordon chang of "the coming collapse of china" fame goes into more complete detail. yet the funny thing is, when the collapse did not materialize, he promised a "coming collapse of china, part 2", to explain what had happened and why china would STILL collapse. and then instead of doing that, he abruptly started a new project on north korea.
the CCP has demonstrated remarkable resilience and, surprisingly, flexibility in the matter. as the author himself points out, the CCP now embraces capitalists to their bosom, something that was completely anathema 30 years ago. this is no new crisis, this is a continuation of one long evolution since deng xiaoping kicked capitalism into gear.