Posted on 12/10/2012 8:35:09 PM PST by DaveTesla
If merely having free market aspects to your economy is enough not to be considered communist, then no country in human history ever was communist. Take the Soviet Union (please). They switch from rapid and immediate collectivization to the NEP, which was a free market reform measure, to save themselves from foundering before they really got going. They also never were able to destroy their currency, which had been the plan. Turns out its usefulness wasn’t just “false consciousness.”
That is not to say all totalitarian or nearly so leftist one party states are the same. There is a continuum from Hitler/Mussolini to Pol Pot. China falls well within the communist range, I’d think. Especially given where they came from. Hitler could push his country to the left from the Bismarckian welfare state to naziism and be fascist. You cannot emerge from the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution into fascism by letting a few businesses do their thing here and there. That’s just not enough liberalization.
Yes, it is quite common. Thomas Friedman, he of “the world is flat,” I remember wishing we could be China for a day to cure the recession, or something. More likely he wishes he could liquidate his enemies.
If the Chinese truly meant to renounce socialism, surely they would’ve changed their constitution to match that. Red China is of course still a one-party state. The constitution is basically a reworking of the Soviet constitution, with all the supposed “rights” granted to the people (except for really important privileges like habeas corpus). The stronger Red China gets economically, the more it will be able to switch over to these socialistic goals in earnest; pandering to foreign corporations is a means to this end. Like the Soviet NEP.
In a very narrow present-minded perspective, Immelt is correct. The average education level of the Chinese is low. Can you imagine trying to tell them they can vote and have free choice? Look at the Middle East countries that we have shoved democracy too, they are voting the very groups back into power that will simply take away their choice. Sometimes it’s hard for us (middle-class Americans) to conceptualize how democracy could be a bad thing. When we tried to introduce it into Mongolia (or maybe it was Tibet), tribal leaders went on a killing spree simply because they were told they were “free”. The people just weren’t ready for democracy yet.
The solution is to slowly introduce these concepts by bringing in education to the general populace. It’s slow and takes generations, but it builds like a snowball and eventually the people will make the choice for themselves to want democracy. Religious institutions and relief groups are the best tools we have to bring education to these kinds of countries. When they can bring education to the brainwashed poor and raise the education level of the average person, they will choose to want democracy. I know waiting that long seems impractical and even allowing a current regime to continue to persecute or even slaughter their own people sounds asinine, but again, look at the countries where we forced them into democracy.
From another perspective, look at our own school system. The libs run it and have been lowering our IQs for decades so that they can slowly convince the populace that big government should be running things for them. If the libs can be so successful at that here, you can understand how effective the opposite teaching could be in countries like China.
I see the Chinese flag on your profile page.May I ask if you've ever lived there or are you of Chinese ancestry? I'm just trying to get a bit of perspective.I think it should be said that I also visited Guangzhou,as well as Foshan,in 1980.There certainly is a huge difference between what I saw in 1980 vs what I saw in 2010.Thirty years ago,no glass skyscrapers and thousands of bikes...two years ago,many skyscrapers and lots of Buicks (among other makes).But what I saw two years ago,apart from the skyscrapers,strongly suggested a very dismal and difficult life...a life that doesn't come within light years of equaling what I've see in Hong Kong.And yes,I understand that not all the people of Hong Kong live like those who stay at The Peninsula.
Although your perspective may well be far more valuable then mine the question occurs to me...even if there are 10,000 billionaires and 500,000 millionaires in China right now how do the middle third of Chinese live? Something tells me that the answer is "not very well at all".Correct me if I'm wrong.
Millions in China live in abject poverty.
So did our government until the socialists and communists
gained control of things!
Legally owned? The USSR's nomenklatura lived quite well without benefit of legal title.
A joke going around about Leonid Brezhnev's mother, who was still alive when he rose to the top job, illustrates this confusion about communism and property:
Brezhnev's mother came to visit her son."This is my house," said Brezhnev, showing her around. "And this is my car. And that's my swimming pool. And this" — he shows her some photographs — "is my second house. And this is my airplane. And this is my villa on the Black Sea. And this is my yacht."
His mother gasps in wonder. "You do live well, Lyonechka," she says. "But I am nervous for you. What if the Bolsheviks come back?"
In fact, the Bolsheviks withered away as soon as their revolution succeeded. They were replaced by a totalitarian dictatorship which based its legitimacy on the myth of communism.
What was different in China was that the rulers figured out that communist central planning is not an effective way to organize an economy. They continued to call themselves communists, but in fact transitioned most of their economy to capitalism. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping invented "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics", which was actually market capitalism, with profit and loss and private enterprise. The reforms resulted in decades of 10 percent growth, transforming the country.
Optimists predicted the authoritarian regime would not withstand the changes brought about by such growth. However, the Party has proven to be quite adept at allowing economic freedom while brutally repressing whomever it feels threatened by.
For the entire planet.
For centuries to come.
"But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science." - Winston Churchill
We are there.
I agree 100%.
In fact, I think you could accurately say that Stalin and Mao owned their entire countries and everything and everyone in them.
Their successors never had that sort of absolute power, but they did quite well for themselves.
The Chicoms still call themselves communist, and they obviously still have some of the characteristics of that system, but it isn’t really logical to describe “actually market capitalism, with profit and loss and private enterprise” as being communist in any real sense of the word.
China’s history is at least 3000 years long. In all that time, they’ve never had anything even vaguely resembling what we call democracy, civil rights, secure private property or rule of law.
From that perspective, the present Chinese system has a lot more in common with the traditional Chinese approach than to the Communism of Stalin or Mao.
A Command Economy appeals to some executives.
Easier to make people do as they are told, with no messy problems like letting them do what they would like to do with their lives. You know, the Pursuit of Happiness and all that.
Immelt is demonstrating that he has a very limited vision and little intellectual curiosity. Success in business doesn’t mean that someone has the slightest interest in or appreciation of American values outside of the sphere of business.
This is what the future holds.
For the entire planet.
For centuries to come.
“But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.” - Winston Churchill
We are there.
“Immelt is demonstrating that he has a very limited vision and little intellectual curiosity”
Does that then explain why GE earnings went flat when Immelt became CEO, compared to his predecessor Jack Welch?
I don’t think it has much of anything to do with how Immelt runs GE. But it has a lot to do with what he sees as the proper role of government.
I have several friends who first visited China in the 80s and the difference they see since then are astounding.
You have seen the Shanghai 1990-2010 picture I presume?
Here is one paired with Detroit from 1949 to 2011.
The contrast is stark.
http://www.occidentaldissent.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/shanghai-detroit.jpg
I first went to China in 2008 and was in Beijing for a while then with the Olympic construction in high gear, and visited 4-5 other cities.
I have been working on a contract with a Chinese company for 2-1/2 years now. I work in Zhengzhou which is a middle of the road Chinese city of 7 million or so. During this time I have visited 7-8 other Chinese cities. I never been to Shanghai though, and only was in Hong Kong back in 2008.
-— The US has nine cities <1 million. China has over 160.
Just the other day about 6pm I drove past one of the two new iPhone factories FoxConn opened in ZZ to make iP5, and it was like being outside a bus terminal, 100’s to maybe 1000+ young Chinese in the street, some buying food from vendors carts, others walking to and fro. Maybe it was mid-shift or maybe a shift change, I don’t know for sure.
The two FoxConn plants opened in ZZ in the last couple of years, now employ about 120,000 in building iPhones.
There is definitely a wide range of incomes and lives in China, and the lower rung is much lower than in the US on the bottom end. They are cold in winter and it is hot in summer, but they have food to eat now as opposed to the Mao era.
The country is simply not the same now as before Deng Xiaopeng.
I think you also still need to exclude village and agrarian life and livelihood from the city and developed/developing China. This part of China is like this par of every third-world country except it is in China, so for example they are better off than African villages/villagers. Maybe even India - haven’t been to India so I cannot say.
The wealthy in China are like the wealthy everywhere, and their numbers are growing faster than here I think.
The big push in China now is to grow a middle class, and that is part of how they are trying to steer their economic planning.
City laborers and shopkeepers have a hard life for sure, but this is where we get to being on par or overlapping the US in the 30s-40s in the lower economic city life, and maybe Europe post-WW-II.
Overall, there is a rising tide. The folks with big boats are floating high and wide, but even those with dingys and canoes are being lifted (if I can stretch the analogy a bit).
Oh, BTW...
I was born in Texas. My father was born in Texas. My grandfather was born in Texas. My great-grandfather came from “the old country” into Galveston as a boy, sometime in the 1860’s. My great-grandmother was my great-grandfather’s second wife, and was Cherokee.
No China ancestry...
He does not need to move anything to China to avoid US Taxes. GE already pays no US taxes. US corporate tax rates are too high, so GE reports its income as earned in other countries with lower rates or no corporate taxes.
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