Apples and oranges.
Posted on 12/21/2005 5:08:52 AM PST by rdb3
In what is believed to be the deadliest confrontation since the murderous Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, police opened fire last week on a group of protesters in the coastal village of Dongzhou in the southern province of Guangdong, killing three people and wounding 10 others. Some local residents claim that dozens of protestors were killed and scores more wounded. Chinese riot police now patrol the village reinforced by police units from the nearby city of Shanwei.
After a series of initial denials and an unexplained delay of four days, the Guangdong government finally admitted grave mistakes had been made by police. “The commanding officer on the scene mishandled the situation, causing accidental deaths and injuries,” said one government official. The unidentified police commander who gave the order for paramilitary police to open fire has been arrested and is facing unspecified charges – an extremely rare move in authoritarian China.
Contrary to public statements made by Chinese officials, last week’s deadly confrontation was not an isolated “accident.” In truth, the killings are part of a disturbing pattern of behavior by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that has included state-sponsored attacks and oppression designed to subjugate the Chinese people. In a country struggling to create an amenable global image, this approach could ultimately backfire on the CCP, energizing, not demoralizing, an increasingly angry and frustrated population.
Protests Rising
The rapid growth in the number and scale of public protests has gained the attention of Beijing – and they are visibly concerned. Zhou Yongkang, a senior Chinese police official, stated recently that the active prevention of what he termed “mass incidents” was the main task for the Ministry of Public Security in the near future. With protests occurring in over 300 cities and nearly 2,000 counties throughout mainland China, Mr. Zhou certainly has his hands full.
Responding to the rise in civil unrest, Vice President Zeng Qinghong wrote, “One important reason the Soviet Union broke up was that in their long time in power, their system of governing became rigid, their ability to govern declined, people were dissatisfied with what officials accomplished and the officials became seriously isolated from the masses.”
To avoid isolation from the masses and a Soviet-styled collapse, the Beijing government has adopted a three pronged, preventive approach to curb civil unrest that includes; greater government control of technology and the flow of information, the restriction or outright elimination of mass assembly and free speech rights and the targeted persecution of organizations designed to expose state-sponsored abuse, false imprisonment and torture.
Senseless Government Brutality Intensifies
In the most sickening attempt yet by Beijing to suppress civil disobedience; sixteen nuns of the Congregation of the Franciscan Sacred Heart Missionaries were beaten on a chilly November evening in downtown Xian City, Shanxi Province, by a group of 40 armed uniformed men. Five nuns were beaten so mercilessly that they required immediate hospitalization for broken legs and severe eye injuries.
The attack was allegedly triggered by a land dispute between local government authorities and nearly 200 nuns who staged a 1960’s styled “sit-in” in an attempt to defend the “School of the Rosary” from scheduled demolition. All of this comes at a time when Beijing has tightened its grip on the country’s five million Catholics by forbidding them from recognizing the Pope and forcing them to worship underground.
The cruel manner in which Beijing addresses incidences of civil unrest has attracted the attention of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. In December, U.N. torture investigator Manfred Nowak noted that human rights abuses were still widespread in China with authorities using electronic shock, beatings and sleep deprivation against prison detainees accused of obstructing government activities.
But Beijing’s most formidable adversary in their ongoing fight against civil unrest is the explosive growth of the Internet. With the number of Internet users in China estimated to exceed 100 million in 2005, access to the web is spreading throughout large metropolitan areas and into ancient farming communities where young families are learning the benefits of “going online.”
To combat this unwanted phenomenon, Beijing has recruited an army of 30,000 Internet secret police to monitor bloggers and bulletin board operators with the stated goal to “be proactive in developing discussion, increase control and use the Internet debate to our [CCP’s ] advantage.”
Current Society Cannot Stand
In its feverish push to modernize and become a global competitor, the CCP has unknowingly planted the seeds for its own demise. CCP planners have mistakenly underestimated the level of public discontent associated with a reclusive government prone to indiscriminate violence. As a result, the ruling CCP now suffers from a severe case of “terminal paranoia” – fearing all organized challenges to its monopoly on power.
The cracks in the Chinese façade are beginning to show and will become more pronounced in the months ahead. Recent mass protests point to an emerging global juggernaut out of control. Chinese society as it exists today cannot stand, regardless of the enormous wealth the country continues to accumulate.
The expectations of a growing market economy based upon the principles of free enterprise in harmony with Soviet-styled communist ideologies do not, and never will, work. Inevitably, the citizens responsible for the creation of the modern Chinese society will demand not only their fair share of the country’s economic prosperity, but also a role in governing the society they worked so hard to create.
The economic revolution has finally arrived. Could a social revolution be far behind?
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I don't know what's cracking, with news like this:
Survey of China rates economy No. 6 in world
BY JOE McDONALD
ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 21, 2005
BEIJING -- China said Tuesday its economy is much bigger and less dependent on exports than previously reported, issuing new data that analysts said make its roaring growth look easier to sustain and could encourage even more foreign investment.
A new survey of China's economy boosted its official output for 2004 by 16.8% by taking into account emerging service businesses, the government said. It said services' share of the economy rose sharply, while that of manufacturing fell.
The results show China's mainland replacing Italy as the world's 6th-largest economy, trailing Britain and France. China would jump to No. 4, behind only the United States, Japan and Germany, if it added in Hong Kong, which reports its economic figures separately.
The figures mean China's rates of exports and investment are smaller as a percentage of the total economy, possibly easing fears that they were unsustainably high, analysts said.
"The Chinese economic miracle will look less like a miracle and more like a normal country," said Steve Tsang, director of the Asian Studies Center at St. Antony's College at Britain's Oxford University.
"It would mean the economy's ability to continue at the current rate of growth is better," Tsang said.
The figures were released by the National Bureau of Statistics, which said it surveyed 30 million businesses, including restaurants, karaoke bars and others in booming service industries.
The new data put China's 2004 gross domestic product, the broadest measure of trade in goods and services, at nearly 16 trillion yuan ($2 trillion). That was up 2.3 trillion yuan ($285 billion) from numbers previously reported.
"Based on these figures, we can have even more confidence in our long-term fairly fast and sustained economic growth," Li Deshui, director of the statistics bureau, said at a news conference.
Even more important could be the finding that Chinese consumers are spending much more than previously thought, fueling economic growth and reducing reliance on exports, economists said.
Based on the new data, exports fell from 34% of the economy to 29%, cutting China's "very high export dependency," Jun Ma, chief economist for Greater China at Deutsche Bank, said in a research report.
Ma's report said such evidence of strong consumer spending could encourage planners to stimulate even more growth in services, creating new opportunities for foreign investors.
Copyright © 2005 Detroit Free Press Inc.
Apples and oranges.
Do you actually believe the numbers China puts out?
"As a result, the ruling CCP now suffers from a severe case of “terminal paranoia” – fearing all organized challenges to its monopoly on power. "
Wow, just like our Dems and MSM! ;)
I only wonder which will come first, the bank failures, or the widespread civil unrest.
Actually, I don't, but then this news is coming from many sources, it's actually quite scary. About the civil unrest, well, if they have a booming economy, I think they'll have more resources to put these people down. The Russians were broke when they flopped. Unlike the case with China.
The civil unrest is about the govt. taking land for businesses. It is not apples and oranges.
The way I figure it the accounting and reporting practices in China will amke Enron look honest and above board.
I only hope you are right. I'd love to be wrong, but China's economy is booming, as reported by most countries trading raw materials for finished goods with it.
Enron was booming to until about 6 months before the fall.
In the most sickening attempt yet by Beijing to suppress civil disobedience; sixteen nuns of the Congregation of the Franciscan Sacred Heart Missionaries were beaten on a chilly November evening in downtown Xian City, Shanxi Province, by a group of 40 armed uniformed men. Five nuns were beaten so mercilessly that they required immediate hospitalization for broken legs and severe eye injuries.
The attack was allegedly triggered by a land dispute between local government authorities and nearly 200 nuns who staged a 1960’s styled “sit-in” in an attempt to defend the “School of the Rosary” from scheduled demolition. All of this comes at a time when Beijing has tightened its grip on the country’s five million Catholics by forbidding them from recognizing the Pope and forcing them to worship underground.
Enron got caught by the govt. In the case of China the scamming is being done by the govt. There is no one to stop them.
Don't underestimate the power of the chineese peasant.
Unlike the peasantry of early America, Chinese peasants are unarmed against a govt. that a modern army. If the Chinese govt. decides to any uprising will be quelled with violence and overwhelming force.
In mainland China, there are two Catholic Churches (actually, two of every kind of church) - one is officially approved by the Bolshie government and the church bishops, priests, etc. do the govt's bidding (think of a bolshie version of dhimmi status), the other is the underground church. Was the same under the Soviet bolshies in the old USSR and old Soviet satellites in Europe. Stalin permitted (during WW2) a limited number of clergy who were actually KGB agents that reported people after confession (depending on what they confessed). Real Christian clergy of every Christian group (and observant Jews for that matter) were savagely persecuted.
The upward revision of China's GDP hasn't changed anything in the grand scheme of things, there is no sudden unaccounted growth in China's economy / wealth or fancy accounting tricks. It's just an adjustment of calculation method.
Is due to a switch from production method to expenditure method of collecting economic statistics. Production method doesn't measure properly the size of private economy and services economy, the expenditure method is pretty muched used by everyone else on the world, so China is just adjusting to the norm.
in very basic terms, this means whereas China previously calculated GDP based nominally on manufacturing output and is now adding the service economy into the GDP. So roughly speaking, the 40% adder can be viewed as saying 40% of China's economy is domestic service economy - this may actually still somewhat the low side - for comparison, the same calculation for India is 50 - 52% domestic service economy in the GDP.
The reason the 40% figure may be low is that much of China's service economy (retail, restaurants, beauty shops, car repair mechanics, streetside fortune tellers ... whatever have you) is cash based and there is rampant under reporting (for tax avoidance) of cash transactions in the service sector. In many retail shops in China, if you offer to pay in cash and not ask for an official government VAT receipt you can easily get another 10% discount of the offered price (consider VAT tax payment would have been 17%, the retailer still come out ahead). Also, a significant percentage of the investment in the service economy is in a shadow economy that's private and cash based (there is a long tradition in Chinese society where people, ususally with clan or family relationships or come from the same region, will pool money together to lend to each other for various enterprises and even for flipping real estate) to bypass the scrunity of the State and incidentally doesn't get counted in the official banking and investment statistic.
It also does ease some (although certainly not all) of worries and concerns raised regarding China's reliance of export driven manufacturing economy or the under-performance of the credit (rather than cash) driven State Owned Industries and Banks.
The free traders who want to do business with China remind me of those appeasers who wanted to do business with Hitler in the 1930's.
Five nuns were beaten so mercilessly that they required immediate hospitalization for broken legs and severe eye injuries.
Reminds me of Hitler's brownshirts attacking the jews.
As I said, those free traders who now want to trade with China remind me of those appeasers who wanted to trade with Hitler in the 1930s.
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