Monday, December 10, 2007
Beijing
Chairman Mao still seems to be a big word over here. I'm afraid we thought of him as rather a 'Chairman Mo' (remembering the long past comedian Roy Rene - 'Mo McCackie' of McCackie Mansions) in view of his 'thoughts' which were somehat crude aphorisms, rather along the lines of a passe comedian's wisecracks - almost 'detournement', one could say - but OTOH in some ways I suspect I take him more seriously than the Chinese themselves often do.
Educated Chinese, who may feel they owe much from the country of China which they will never find a moral right to receive, openly suggest that whilst Chairman Mao was a great man and did much for the Chinese people, eventually he lacked the knowledge, ability and specifically the sophistication that was needed to run a modern China. I'm not so sure. I think that further revolutions may have been necessary for more than the obvious reasons. I look at the flea markets of Beijing today and somehow can't see most of the people working there ending up better off in the long term. China is a kind of Thatcherite leap forward. There is too much competition in those stalls and markets and Thatcher's redundant people basically never made a go it, but the 'small businesses' simply took a little of the sting out of the sack - and the UK could roughly afford all this, what with the other shenanigans going on. The whole of China probably cannot afford this sort of thing.
The tipping point may really be a war with the US - and in Australia I saw ore train after ore train, with half of Australia seeming to be carted away (with no firm future price guarantees) under the noses of Aussie 'Pig Iron Bob' (Menzies) types to turn into ha'penny knick knacks for deeply indebted Americans - and believe me, the USA is in hock up to the eyeballs with China and is in a 'can't pay - won't pay' situation. With liars like Bush being believed, a war may be the only way to get both countries out of the economic shambles they are in because of the lunacy of the homespun Marxist and Capitalist dogmas they each seem to hold so dear, and which are simply not good enough for modern conditions. Both America and China badly need an economic overhaul, and for US politicians the only way seems to be war or isolation.
I give China a marginally better chance than America - if the US turn their back on their own people - Gustavus Myers ("History of the Great American Fortunes") being just one classic example - the US still has hundreds and thousands like Donald Trump and call that "democracy" and "free speech". China at least had Chairman Mao, and hopefully others of that ilk now. That's not economics, and I have no way through. But what does look important could lie in educating the masses in China, by carefully committing to a reduction of censorship and improvement of chances of free speech and personal rights to individual assessment - without running the country in a way half way between Rupert Murdoch and Joe Stalin, which seems more likely.
Its all very difficult and when in NZ I felt that the whites over there seemed to be on their way to becoming no than poorly paid servants of a new Chinese wealthy upper-middle class - presumably 'refugees'. As one of my aboriginal friends put it to me many years ago "we don't want the Asian criminals over here in Australia too, the white criminals we already have are more than enough
Educated Chinese, who may feel they owe much from the country of China which they will never find a moral right to receive, openly suggest that whilst Chairman Mao was a great man and did much for the Chinese people, eventually he lacked the knowledge, ability and specifically the sophistication that was needed to run a modern China. I'm not so sure. I think that further revolutions may have been necessary for more than the obvious reasons. I look at the flea markets of Beijing today and somehow can't see most of the people working there ending up better off in the long term. China is a kind of Thatcherite leap forward. There is too much competition in those stalls and markets and Thatcher's redundant people basically never made a go it, but the 'small businesses' simply took a little of the sting out of the sack - and the UK could roughly afford all this, what with the other shenanigans going on. The whole of China probably cannot afford this sort of thing.
The tipping point may really be a war with the US - and in Australia I saw ore train after ore train, with half of Australia seeming to be carted away (with no firm future price guarantees) under the noses of Aussie 'Pig Iron Bob' (Menzies) types to turn into ha'penny knick knacks for deeply indebted Americans - and believe me, the USA is in hock up to the eyeballs with China and is in a 'can't pay - won't pay' situation. With liars like Bush being believed, a war may be the only way to get both countries out of the economic shambles they are in because of the lunacy of the homespun Marxist and Capitalist dogmas they each seem to hold so dear, and which are simply not good enough for modern conditions. Both America and China badly need an economic overhaul, and for US politicians the only way seems to be war or isolation.
I give China a marginally better chance than America - if the US turn their back on their own people - Gustavus Myers ("History of the Great American Fortunes") being just one classic example - the US still has hundreds and thousands like Donald Trump and call that "democracy" and "free speech". China at least had Chairman Mao, and hopefully others of that ilk now. That's not economics, and I have no way through. But what does look important could lie in educating the masses in China, by carefully committing to a reduction of censorship and improvement of chances of free speech and personal rights to individual assessment - without running the country in a way half way between Rupert Murdoch and Joe Stalin, which seems more likely.
Its all very difficult and when in NZ I felt that the whites over there seemed to be on their way to becoming no than poorly paid servants of a new Chinese wealthy upper-middle class - presumably 'refugees'. As one of my aboriginal friends put it to me many years ago "we don't want the Asian criminals over here in Australia too, the white criminals we already have are more than enough
# posted by uv : 5:56 AM
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