Posted on 08/07/2008 4:41:32 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Pyrrhic Olympic Victory for China
07 August 2008
By Boris Kagarlitsky
For China's leaders, the 2008 Summer Olympic Games were supposed to mark the country's incredible achievements -- a testament to the Celestial Empire's rebirth as a modern world power. Some observers even speak of China as the next global leader that will soon eclipse the waning power and influence of the United States.
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Admirers of the "Chinese miracle" fail to recognize the inherent vulnerability and instability of Beijing's economic model. The new Asian capitalism, marching forward under red Communist Party banners, has combined the most abhorrent elements of both systems -- the harsh, one-party dictatorship coupled with the blind and equally harsh pursuit of profit at any cost, which includes widespread violations of workers' rights.
It would seem that these two negative components of the Chinese economic miracle are the key to the country's competitive advantage in the global economy. But strangely enough, China's problem is that it has become far too successful, and this has blinded its leaders to the country's underlying systemic weaknesses and to the menacing economic crisis hovering over it.
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(Excerpt) Read more at moscowtimes.ru ...
Ping!
Some observers even speak of China as the next global leader that will soon eclipse the waning power and influence of the United States. These observers are idiots. The quality and living span of the "New Chinese Empire" is the same as their products. I give China at best two decades until it's internal collapse. Investors will find cheaper places of production and slowly withdraw the fundament the entire fragile Chinese edifice is erected upon. It has already started. The religious, ethnic and social conflicts will tear China apart from within. They can't continue their march to modernization and wealth while maintaining their Communist Police Terror state. Free Markets in the long term require also social, cultural and individual freedom.
I have written on more or less the same topic on Free Republic here and here.
For more on China's economic situation, try this and this.
Cheers
China does not really seem to have changed much in a couple or three millennia. The People didn’t have much to say about rights and government two thousand years ago. They still don’t. There will be no popular revolution. Little rebellions have been occurring and have been crushed all along, even in the time of the Emperor Mao. They are not popular rebellions. They are ethnically based or village based- on one village- they don’t spread. The one apparent exception, Tien An Men was students and students are more isolated in China than in other countries. A thousand years ago rebellions resulted in all the rebels getting their heads cut off. Now they just shoot them all. Less to clean up.
What you see now could be just a prelude. What can happen may be closer to Taiping Rebellion than TAM uprising.
Indeed could be like the Taiping Rebellion. The Uiger and Tibetan areas are most restive, and the South still much resents the Mongol conquest. The thing rests on Han solidarity and the Red Army.
The propaganda push behind the Olympics has been a wonder to behold. The recently extinct Falun Gong are a constant reminder to the public as well.
The “younger men” faction in the Russian Army are very much concerned with China. Certainly the political strain between the Russians and the “asiatics” goes back thousands of years. Time to be more considerate of Russian concerns, eh?
Then it would, indeed, be Interesting Times.
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