Wednesday, October 24, 2007
CHINA: EMERGENCE OF THE NEW CLASS
The 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party has just ended, with a roll-out of the new members of the Standing Committee of the Poltiburo of the Central Committee of the party. Identified among those as the current leading candidate to succeed newly reentrenched leader, Hu Jintao, is Xi Jinping, identified by news reports (WaPo) as one of many "princelings" in newly powerful positions, in his case, son of Xi Zhongxun, a former Politburo member and Vice Premier. Just as in North Korea, with Kim Il Jong succeeding his father, and the children of the ruling Nomenklatura coming to power in the later stages of the former Soviet Union, we see The New Class reproducing itself in the PRC. (Of course in the US we cannot complain to much with our succession of Bushes.)
I can't imagine a more critical generation of Chinese leaders.
ReplyDeleteChina IS everyone's future. Climate change, population growth, the future of capitalism, the future of the world's forests.
"..Some of the largest swaths of natural forest left on the planet are being dismantled at an alarming pace to feed a global wood-processing industry centered in coastal China...At the current pace of cutting, natural forests in Indonesia and Burma -- which send more than half their exported logs to China -- will be exhausted within a decade, according to research by Forest Trends, a consortium of industry and conservation groups. Forests in Papua New Guinea will be consumed in as little as 13 years, and those in the Russian Far East within two decades...."
Forests destroyed in China's race to feed global wood-processing industry
The Washington Post, Sunday April 1, 2007
from the 19th, husunzi:
ReplyDeleteSick of the 17th p4rty c0ngr3ss? I'm sick of this escalation of !n+3rn3+ control.
http://www.chinastudygroup.org/index.php?action=blog2&type=view&id=48&PHPSESSID=ebad8ae63fa18bfcc4c6bcff34755c75
juan, That's a bit too enigmatic for my uneducated self. Explain yourself, please.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, how's this for irony? Bush the 2nd is reported in the NY Times to have prepared a speech for some Cuban ex-patriots gathering wherein he insists that the Cuban government make more serious efforts towards democracy. It seems that he sees something inherently unacceptable about the current likely succession of Raul as the head of state. The Chinese tyrants he has no qualms about. The Saudis are just fine as they are. It's Cuba that leads the world in tyranny.
The coming Chinese great depression?
ReplyDelete"..To summarize, the likely candidates for a trigger to the Chinese depression are (1) a worldwide currency, banking, or derivatives crisis, (2) a U.S. recession, (3) the containment of runaway inflation, (4) the disappearance of Chinese trade surpluses, and (5) an oil supply crisis.
CHINA'S GREAT DEPRESSION by Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D. September 2, 2004
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/petrov/2004/0902.html
Jack,
ReplyDelete'sick of the 17th p4rty c0ngr3ss...' is the title used by husunzi and related to the tighter internet controls imposed ahead of and into the party congress.
It's funny how the Bush dynasty epitomizes, I believe, every possible pattern of corruption: they have industrialists, bankers, arm dealers, politicians and, of course, the CIA.
ReplyDeletePutin is constantly scoffed at for being in the past a low-level KGB empolyee ("when I look into his eyes I see the letters K, G and B" Mccain said recently), but no one has ever said anything like that about Bush-41 who actually became president after serving as a head of the CIA.
abb1
It is interedsting to note that as we procede further along the road in Globalization World our most beloved allies and trading partners include the most totalitarian regimes in modern times. Strangely enough our most strenuous "believers" in the exportation of democracy seem only to be concerned with the weakest and passive of those governments. What was the last war tha Cuba started? How about Iran? Who did they last invade?
ReplyDeleteA warning today from Australia's right-wing treasurer. About another Asian tsunami.
ReplyDeleteLook out for the tsunami, says Costello
Jessica Irvine and Peter Hartcher. October 26, 2007
http://www.smh.com.au/news/federalelection2007news/look-out-for-the-tsunami-says-costello/2007/10/25/1192941243214.html
A 'New Class' to die for.
ReplyDelete"Many are dying. They have fatal occupational diseases.
Mostly they are young, in their 20s and 30s and 40s. But they are dying, slow difficult deaths, caused by the hazardous substances they use to make products for the world -- and for America. Some say these workers are paying the real price for America's cheap goods from China.
[...]
The toxins and hazards exist in virtually every industry, including furniture, shoes, car parts, electronic items, jewelry, clothes, toys and batteries interviews with workers confirm. The interviews were corroborated by legal documents, medical journal articles, medical records, import documents and official Chinese reports.
[...]
The Chinese Ministry of Health in 2005 noted at least 200 million of China's labor force of 700 million workers were routinely exposed to toxic chemicals and life-threatening diseases in factories. "More than 16 million enterprises in China have been subjecting workers to high, poisonous levels of toxic chemicals," the ministry said at a conference on occupational diseases in Beijing, which was reported by the state-controlled media. The ministry particularly blamed "foreign-funded" enterprises that exported goods.
China has more deaths per capita from work-related illnesses each year than any other country, according to the ILO. In 2005, the most recent year for which data are available, 386,645 Chinese workers died of occupational illnesses, according to Chinese government data compiled by the ILO and cited in the July 14, 2006, Journal of Epidemiology. Millions more live with fatal diseases caused by factory work, other epidemiologists estimated in the article.
The number of workers living with fatal diseases does not include those who suffer amputations. ..."
Clipped from a multi-part, Oct 2007, article by Pulitzer winner Loretta Tofani:
American Imports, Chinese Deaths
@ http://extras.sltrib.com/china/
juan,
ReplyDeleteThis may be looked at as a new and more effective means of population control insituted by PRC's benevolent government. The economic growth associated with this particular method of population control is simply an unintended consequence which the chinese leadership and their extended families are enjoying. It's all for the good of the chinese people, who we all know were living in abysmally over crowded circumstances and now can enjoy the benefits of toiling away in a worker's paradise. Or does that come in the after life. Which ever. Paradise awaits those who toil for little, but the benefit of their betters.