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Posted on 03/23/2008 11:32:02 AM PDT by Clintonfatigued
This is the aspect of China that does not seem to change, despite our liberal progressive conviction that it must. In the 1990s, China watchers insisted it was only a matter of time before China opened. It was precisely this current generation of technocrats, not schooled in Soviet-style communism, who were supposed to begin reforming the system. Even if they didn't want to reform, the requirement of a liberalizing economy would leave them no choice: The growing Chinese middle class would demand greater political power, or the demands of a globalized economy in the age of the Internet would force China to change in order to compete.
Today this all looks like so much wishful thinking -- self-interested wishful thinking, to be sure, since, according to the theory, China would get democratic while Western business executives got rich. Now it looks as if the richer a country gets, whether China or Russia, the easier it may be for autocrats to hold on to power. More money keeps the bourgeoisie content and lets the government round up the few discontented who reveal their feelings on the Internet. More money pays for armed forces and internal security forces that can be pointed inward at Tibet and outward at Taiwan. And the lure of more money keeps a commerce-minded world from protesting too loudly when things get rough.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
A fairly accurate editorial from an unlikely source.
Thus the wisdom of denying the Cold War demands of the "progressives" wishing to help their socialist brethren and the demands of the internationalist Republicans wishing to get richer by transferring technology and pouring FDI into the U.S.S.R..
Both demanded(!) that we help the "moderate" Soviets lest we play into the hands of the hard liners in the Soviet Union, there'd be war and it would (of course!) be our fault.
Add another score for "the Greatest Generation." Cold war or hot they knew how to win.
Also there's this niggling detail about the "free traders'" capitalist paradise, China.
Washington and other western governments hoped extending a hand to Red China by bilateral trade and contacts would benefit both the west and China, plus move Red China to a more democratic and more benevolent way of governing.
Well, the results are in and the fact is Red China has hooked the capitalists and consumers in the west on cheap goods from China—a sort of crack cocaine type of being hooked. Red China’s governing clique has not moved an inch towards a more just or kind government. A Chinese citizen who objects to harsh autocratic rule gets jail or a bullet in the head. We weep for Tibet, but eagerly buy Chinese shoes, sportswear or electronics.
The People's Police and the PLA thank you, gaggle and YaHu!
China is also no longer a communist country, in any meaningful sense of the word. It’s present political and economic system has a great deal more in common with the pre-Revolution China, with Communist party members standing in for the mandarins.
This top-heavy system of giving supreme power to those utterly incapable of wielding it wisely led to repeated changes of the “mandate of heaven,” also known as revolutions, in which a new family or dynasty would gain control.
In a few hundred years, the Revolution might not look like such a huge change from previous Chinese history after all. The biggest difference is that in traditional China, while the mandarins always ran everything, the Emperor was always above even the mandarins, and could interfere at his whim to shake up the system.
Mao was an Emperor in the old style, with the Cultural Revolution not all that different from previous shakeups in Chinese history. But in today’s China the mandarins are in complete control, with no Emperor over them to keep the system from becoming too set in its ways.
We have often had a wrong impression of life in communist countries, that because politics controls life much more strictly, that people are more interested in politics. Actualy, it seems that it breeds disinterest, because they know they can't do anything about it anyway. Given the immmediate desire to make money and escape poverty, people who protest and want to change the system are actually viewed as dangerous boat rockers who are possibly threatening their ability to get out of poverty.
However, most of them do seem to have good moral and ethical beliefs not all that different from us, and I do think that after their extreme poverty is a distant memory like our depression, that they will have political and social upheavals and deconstruct their communist system. I think it will be more like the US with the civil rights movement, but the civil war and reconstruction had to happen first.
Gee.. even Senator Feinstein's profound apologies "on behalf of the American people" for our mean 'ol lumbering four-engine airplane knocking that cute little jet fighter out of the air didn't help -- it didn't help us but it probably saved a lot of her family's fortune.
bttt
The problem with such "wishful thinking" as Mr. Kagan styles it is that it was supremely dangerous folly.
We have now built Red China into a regional power, and one that is now rapidly becoming a world power. Building belligerent, arrogant totalitarian states into world powers is such massive folly that it will have repercussions for many generations.
Indebting ourselves to such a disgusting state was even greater folly; instead we should cease all normal trade relations with Red China. Not only would it at least stymie some of their growth, but we are markedly credulous to continue any trust in food or medical products from Red China.
Bill Clinton did more for China’s national security than that of his own country.
Interesting article - thanks for posting.
I was reading an old article from an MSM source yesterday and even it acknowledges that Clinton’s ChiCom donors were conduits for the PLAN’s military intelligence agencies.
In response to the title, Sherman Logan’s post #7 is a very accurate reflection of what’s happening/will happen in that “worker’s paradise.”
Pinging Jack Russell/Made in china ping list
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