[SunkenCiv]

Coal-to-liquid solution for energy woes
The StraitsTimes ^ | July 19, 2004 | David Dapice
Posted on 07/20/2004 9:27:15 AM PDT by Baby Bear
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1174878/posts

[spinestein]

"The benefit is that over a billion people in China get a chance to live a better life. That's what capitalism is all about."



There are now over 1.4 billion people in China and as the country shifts from 3rd world to 1st their birthrate goes down. In the modernized parts of the country they have stopped having as many children (and this is independent of the mandatory abortions) while in the backwater areas the birthrate remains high.

Their new free markets and emerging freedoms are not illusions. The Chinese government knows that if they do not continue to relax their infringement of the citizens' liberties and continue to allow more access to private property and ownership of business and accumulation of wealth (slow though these reforms may be)then they are afraid that they will be dragged out of their palaces and strung up by those 1.4 billion people.

Just this year, the Chinese government changed their communist constitution and they now allow private ownership of business with the owner allowed to keep the profits. You might think "big deal" but I will bet that within the next decade China is a genuine capitalist democracy with an elected government accountable to the people, who would rather trade with the rest of the world than have wars with them.