PRC Political News & Discussions

[JYang]

brijlal, just because you disagree with me doesn't mean you have to be purposefully blind. Or perhaps you just have very poor taste in women?

Just look at em'

http://www.misstibet.com/history/2006/e ... ntestants/



The winner is technically the least fugly. The miss Tibet contestants have always been this way. A bunch of mingers and a passable one who usually wins.

[vsudhir]

brijlal, just because you disagree with me doesn't mean you have to be purposefully blind. Or perhaps you just have very poor taste in women?

Just look at em'

http://www.misstibet.com/history/2006/e ... ntestants/



The winner is technically the least fugly. The miss Tibet contestants have always been this way. A bunch of mingers and a passable one who usually wins.

Or knowing the depths to which the chinis have sunk, a webpage putup by chinis featuring traditional chini glamdolls but with Tibetian names to make the Tibeteans look bad.... The Chinis have perfected the (f)art of firing from proxy's shoulders - Pukesitan, B'desh, Noko and now chini webpages designed to smear Tibetians.....

/Well OK, admittedly thats a longshot but wouldn't put any mendacity beneath the Chicoms these days.

[Ashok]

As a reminder, the purpose of this thread, was, according to the 1st post:

Suraj
Posted: 04 Apr 2006 06:06 pm Post subject: PRC Political News & Discussions
This thread is meant to collect and discuss China-specific political news and information. Both conventional/vernacular news/blog and academic/thinktank sources are fine; the former would be even better since it provides a much better picture of the day to day workings and intrigues.

Potential Topics:
* CPC internal hierarchy and the people to keep an eye on.
* PLA internal hierarchy and the people to keep an eye on.
* CPC and PLA doctrines - political and military.
* PRC foreign affairs.
* PRC internal schisms.

Please do NOT use this for India-China, economic news/discussions or 'Taiwan/Tibet/Turkestan/Klingon belongs to China' flamebait. There are other threads and fora for them. This thread is meant to focus on building our understanding of the PRC political system, from a historical perspective and from a day to day view.
.....

Now how do the last several posts fall into this category?! They add needless & annoying clutter to a well-focussed thread, and are best deleted or posted elsewhere.

[shyamd]

Deepak Lal: Reflections on China
Deepak Lal / New Delhi October 17, 2006
The essential problem facing the Communist Party is to maintain its legitimacy with the growing marketisation of the economy.

I have recently returned from a three-week lecture tour of China, where apart from Beijing and Shanghai, I also took a boat trip up the Yangtze to Chongqing, which showed how the Chinese economic miracle is now spreading inland. In this column I want to summarise various impressions which lead to reflections where China is headed.

The first and most unexpected reflection concerns its new-found interest in India. For the first time since my first visit in 1984, all three universities—Peking, Fudan and Chongqing—wanted me to talk on India’s caste system and current economic prospects. Peking University Press is even bringing out a Chinese language edition of my The Hindu Equilibrium early next year. The main topic of discussion with various young private entrepreneurs I met in Shanghai was again economic development in India. The major point of interest was how a democratic, politically chaotic, socially and ethnically divided country could be matching Chinese growth performance. Often linked to this was the question of how India could have slowed its population growth rate without the draconian coercive population measures China has taken to limit its population. Finally, there was the question of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two Asian giants, and how in particular their emerging multinational companies would fare in the future.

This new-found interest in India reflects growing awareness among China’s elite that despite their spectacular economic performance to date, their economic model might have problems. One reflection of this is provided by the relative savings/investment rates and the resulting growth rates in India and China. With a savings rate twice that of India (42 per cent vs 23 per cent), China’s growth rate in the period 1991-2001 was only a few percentage points higher than India’s (7.5 per cent vs 6.1 per cent p.a.). This shows the relative inefficiency in the use of capital in China, both because of the failure to reform the banking sector, as well as the limited access Chinese private firms (the growth engines of the economy) have to their compatriots’ savings, which, lacking any other alternatives, are still placed in the nationalised banking sector and lent on to the inefficient state-owned enterprises. (See my “A proposal to privatize Chinese enterprises and end financial repression,â€

[Johann]

CHINA AFTER HU JINTAO: THE LOOMING CLASS WAR IN 2010?

With Dr. Willy Wo-Lap Lam

November 1, 2006

Conference Summary

As China positions itself for a greater role in international affairs, a reexamination of how its internal power dynamics influence its international ambitions is needed. Jamestown Foundation Senior Fellow Dr. Willy Wo-Lap Lam addressed the multi-dimensional picture of 21st Century China in a morning lecture on Wednesday, November 1 in The Jamestown Foundation's auditorium. After a brief welcome from Jamestown President Glen Howard, recognized Sinologist Dr. Richard Bush, who is the Director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, introduced Dr. Lam as a seasoned, unconventional analyst of China. A Hong-Kong based Sinologist with more than 20 years of experience in reporting on China, Dr. Lam regularly contributes to Jamestown's China Brief and is also a Professor of China and Global Studies at Akita International University in Japan.

With the publication of his new book, Chinese Politics in the Hu Jintao Era: New Leaders, New Challenges, Dr. Lam spoke on the contrast between the reality of the social conditions in China and the "harmonious society" envisioned by Beijing. As the income disparity between the rich and poor and the development gap between the eastern coastal and western hinterland regions continue to widen, Hu's administration has struggled to react, facing continued Party corruption and cronyism. Dr. Lam began the discussion by giving a brief history of Hu's rise to power from a rather inconspicuous position in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Deng Xiaoping - as party chief of Tibet - to his present position as president. Dr. Lam drew on Hu's personal history of having worked in the poorer, hinterland provinces of China in order to better explain the motivation behind Hu's bold yet faltering scientific theory of a "Harmonious Society."

Having seen the dire poverty of China's rural provinces first-hand and having methodically studied early Marxist political theory, Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao created the socialism-based scientific theory for fostering "harmony" among the growing special interest groups and political factions in China. Yet there are two intrinsic characteristics of the CCP, Dr. Lam pointed out, that are undermining Hu's reform efforts. First, the Communist Party has lost its qualifications to rule; it is no longer a "fair" arbitrator between the rural and the urban. Instead, it has degenerated into being a "Black Referee," as Dr. Lam so aptly put it. A biased "party of the people" that engages in land grabbing and bribing is incapable of redressing the poor conditions of China's education, healthcare and property rights systems. Dr. Lam's second criticism was directed toward the absolute lack of political reform. He argued that China does not necessarily need Western-style political reforms such as a full-fledged democratic system, but rather needs popular reforms that would extend representation in the Party to the rural and the poor. With over 86,000 mass incidents and demonstrations just this year, China faces extreme social unrest.

Dr. Lam concluded his lecture with a discussion on the status of the Communist Party in 2012. He pointed out the four groups that he believed are currently being groomed for the future leadership of the CCP: the former members of the Communist Youth League who had served under Hu's directorship; the "princelings" or sons and daughters of current senior party cadres; influential businessmen from the oil, automobile and financial industries; and finally "returnees," which refers to the Chinese business and political leaders who have been educated abroad.

Willy Lam is right - the CPC leadership decided after Tianmen that it wasnt going to mess about with village/hamlet elections, let alone allow non-Party candidates run in such things.

Every time that option has been brought up since then its been rejected.

Instead the leadership are going to try and balance the technocrats and crony capitalists within the CPC by grooming and promoting Party cadre who are popular among ordinary people in their villages or provinces.

It wont be that hard as it sounds- mafiosi are often extremely popular in their patch. They emphasise their local roots, they take time to be seen to be 'giving back', and they take care to do favours to ordinary people.

[Tilak]

Dollar soft on China plan to diversify reserves
Saturday, November 11, 2006

[quote]TOKYO: The dollar held near a two-month low against the euro on Friday after China’s central bank said it had a clear plan to diversify its $1 trillion in foreign exchange reserves.

The market wasn’t sure if the diversification suggested by central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan on Thursday meant the selling of dollar assets, but that uncertainty put pressure on the US currency and helped spur the euro to a record high against the yen.

“There’s a sort of dollar weakness bias in the market at the moment especially given the China diversification story and also the political backdrop in the US,â€

[Tilak]

China launches 'one dog' policy
From correspondents in Beijing
November 09, 2006

BEIJING has launched a "one dog policy" in an effort to curb a sharp rise in rabies linked to the ballooning population of unregistered canines.

"Each family is permitted to raise one dog,'' the Government said in a website statement announcing the new policy.

"Large dogs, ferocious dogs and the unregulated raising of dogs are not allowed.''

Rabies has emerged as the biggest killer among infectious diseases in the country over the past five months, according to the official media.

China's health ministry recorded 2254 cases in humans in the first nine months of 2006, up 26 percent over the same period last year.

At least 318 people died from the disease in September alone, putting rabies' deaths ahead of those caused by AIDS and Hepatitis B.

Last month China's central Government launched a massive national campaign to register and inoculate dogs after a series of rabies-related deaths resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of canines.

The Beijing regulations apply only to the city centre but list wide-ranging restrictions on dogs in public places.

Rising wealth in China has led to a boom in dog ownership, but most dogs are unregistered and not inoculated due to high registration fees and costly rabies shots.

Up to 150 million dogs are estimated to be unregistered and unvaccinated in China, the China Daily reported last month, a figure that will make efforts to wipe out rabies problematic.

Of an estimated one million dogs in Beijing, only around 450,000 were registered, the paper said.

In the southern city of Guangzhou, only 1000 of the city's 50,000 dogs were registered, it said.

China already implements a "one child family planning policy'' aimed at slowing the growth of its human population, which is the world's largest at 1.3 billion people.

[aditya]

Rabies has emerged as the biggest killer among infectious diseases in the country over the past five months, according to the official media.

Those would be the people who get mauled by the state's attack dogs while protesting against being evicted from their own homes?

[Singha]

would the following comments be true:

PRC interior was not colonized by the EU powers. they contended themselves
with controlling the key ports like shanghai and having a weak emperor in peking

Inspite of this vast hinterland and reputed 'fighting instincts' of the chinese the only real revolt of sorts was the boxer rebellion, which was easilu put down by a colonial army. they never even managed to overwhelm the foreign quarter....something that indian revolutionaries did a few times in 1857 (cawnpore ?)

During WW2 Japan occupied a chunk of north china. neither the KMT or CCP were able to mount determined field level resistance. both ran way with tails tucked between legs into the interior, leaving the area free for IJN to rape and pillage as they saw fit.

While the indian army with other allies like UK and Aus managed to return to Myanmar and inflict some painful defeats on IJN, the chinese divisions did nothing of note to pressure the japanese. they however showed the traditional ability to mobilize large labour gangs to soak up the Hump airdrops!

while India showed the way to other colonies in 1947 and most of said colonies had a peaceful handover of power to the locals during 1950s, the KMT and CCP fell upon each other and indulged in a bloody civil war.

Not content with decade+ of bloodshed the CCP leader, The Great One himself then set out on counter revolutionary purges that killed much of the PRC elites or chased them out.

Between these purges, great leap fwd and cultural revolution he killed millions and brought the nation to ruin inspite of decent people and natural resources.

PRC's chestnuts were pulled from fire in 1971 by Unkil who later in 1970s anointed PRC as the Local Munna and started the trend of offshoring the manufacturing, giving it a free run until mid-1990s when evidence of the PRCs real intentions and growing teeth/appetite were clearly visible.

They have showed flashes of strategic competence in
- blasting the H-bomb and opening way into P5
- taking on US in Noko regardless of casualties
- managing not to get slapped around by USSR
- hooking up with Pak in early 1980s to secure south flank

As outlined above they have mostly been incompetent , cowardly and
murderous....

but overall, if Unkil had kept the gate closed in late 1970s there'd be no
Deng revolution. only US had the market and ability to absorb imports in that era. EU was nonexistent and closed block.

So would it be fair to say PRC is Unkils pet anaconda who was fed milk when small, but has thereafter gone feral, broken its cage and now roams the forest beating up and terrorising the smaller fauna?

[Singha]

would appreciate comments from abhicheckcc and other truants here.

[kgoan]

. . . other truants here

You called?

It's a very nice take on things. One that should be promoted widely.

No point in leaving the field open for only the PRC drones or gora think tankers and academics to spout their spin.

Lets play the subaltern (non-quiet type) and get out our perception and version too.

[pradeepe]

Singha,
I am not sure how they got into the "reputed fighting instincts" lore as you say. I must have slept during that class.

[Lalmohan]

china is like india, when the centre is strong, the country is strong. by the time the colonialists showed up, the centre was in disarray and internal issues kept them busy, allowing the whites with superior military technology and systems to set up shop and extract their pound of gold

japan merely repeated the pattern in the name of access to raw materials

[Singha]

"reputed fighting instincts"

well this is created first by the HK film industry. If you note, perhaps all the best known films including bruce lee have been martial arts. seldom you see the artsy gareeb kisan bhookha oppressed lore from there.

[Lalmohan]

Singha saar, the works of Yimou Zhang are more Satyajit Rayesque in their portrayal of the plebian angst...

Ju Dou


not to mention featuring the delicious Gong Li...

[svinayak]

would the following comments be true:

PRC interior was not colonized by the EU powers. they contended themselves
with controlling the key ports like shanghai and having a weak emperor in peking

china is like india, when the centre is strong, the country is strong. by the time the colonialists showed up, the centre was in disarray and internal issues kept them busy, allowing the whites with superior military technology and systems to set up shop and extract their pound of gold

China even under occupation still kept its political center Intact. Read the book by Panniker - Asia and Western Dominance.
The Chinese people owed their allegiance to their own monarch even under foreign occupation. They always communicated among each other and did not reveal about themselves to the outsiders. They have loyalty to their Chinese culture even seen till today. The Chinese elite have never become mental slave until the communist revolution took over that country.
But they could never fight the war and were really defeated. This symptom is still evident in the contemporary China.

Once the communist took power they created a monarchical CPC leadership party for the entire country which people obey. Hence they prefer one party system.

India on the other had lost its political center many centuries ago and during the brief period of 1707 to 1799 was not able to recreate the political center. The 800 years of foreign rule has created the Indian elite who are a mental slave which is seen even today.
Under the fragmented political system Indian elite and commons succumbed and adopted the foreign rulers religion, culture and language. Hence the Indians were not loyal to their Indic culture.

[Prem]

would the following comments be true:

PRC interior was not colonized by the EU powers. they contended themselves
with controlling the key ports like shanghai and having a weak emperor in peking

china is like india, when the centre is strong, the country is strong. by the time the colonialists showed up, the centre was in disarray and internal issues kept them busy, allowing the whites with superior military technology and systems to set up shop and extract their pound of gold

China even under occupation still kept its political center Intact. Read the book by Panniker - Asia and Western Dominance.
The Chinese people owed their allegiance to their own monarch even under foreign occupation. They always communicated among each other and did not reveal about themselves to the outsiders. They have loyalty to their Chinese culture even seen till today. The Chinese elite have never become mental slave until the communist revolution took over that country.
But they could never fight the war and were really defeated. This symptom is still evident in the contemporary China.

Once the communist took power they created a monarchical CPC leadership party for the entire country which people obey. Hence they prefer one party system.

India on the other had lost its political center many centuries ago and during the brief period of 1707 to 1799 was not able to recreate the political center. The 800 years of foreign rule has created the Indian elite who are a mental slave which is seen even today.
Under the fragmented political system Indian elite and commons succumbed and adopted the foreign rulers religion, culture and language. Hence the Indians were not loyal to their Indic culture.

Acharya, Not all of them and not all is lost: the flame has been kept alive by few which our Psuedos are trying to extinguish in ernest. The blame is all ours, BR needs to step in for as counter force to Commie,psuedos,missionaries and anarchists. We need our own social engineering for coming generation.

[abhischekcc]

would the following comments be true:

PRC interior was not colonized by the EU powers. they contended themselves
with controlling the key ports like shanghai and having a weak emperor in peking

China has a dualistic character - it has always faced the challenge of balancing between a rural, introverted, parochial, agricultural and militaristic north, and a cosmopolitan, extroverted, confident, mercantile and open south. The north usually stays the centre of political power too.

During colonisation, the western powers co-opted the mercantile south against the weakened north. The chinese who partnered with them, prospered.

CHinese strategic culture is centered around avoiding direct conflict at any cost. Much like their martial arts techniques. So, they will pin prick their opponents just to test them.

If you look at the alliances they have built (Pak, NK, Iran), and how they use them against their Chief opponents (India, Japan, US - respectively). All of their tactics are predisposed to avoid any real harm on China proper.

We on BR (as many others) often assume Chinese to be past masters of real politic, but they have their blunders. And all of them stem from the fact that the CCP mis-estimated the tolerance level of their opponents. And for that reaon, I feel that a little bit of irrational behaviour on our part will keep the Chinese off balance.

(I am happy. after several months I seem to be cracking the Chinese Strategi culture).

------------
One of the best kept secrets of modern world is how weak china is militarily.

-----------

Not content with decade+ of bloodshed the CCP leader, The Great One himself then set out on counter revolutionary purges that killed much of the PRC elites or chased them out.

Genocide of one's own people is standard operating procedure of totalitarian regimes in their weak periods.

----------

PRC's chestnuts were pulled from fire in 1971 by Unkil who later in 1970s anointed PRC as the Local Munna and started the trend of offshoring the manufacturing, giving it a free run until mid-1990s when evidence of the PRCs real intentions and growing teeth/appetite were clearly visible.

I feel SEA drug money has more to do with Chinese growth than any other factor.

[svinayak]

Not content with decade+ of bloodshed the CCP leader, The Great One himself then set out on counter revolutionary purges that killed much of the PRC elites or chased them out.

Genocide of one's own people is standard operating procedure of totalitarian regimes in their weak periods.

This is due to the communist indoctrination which they have interpreted that all their past failures is because of Confucius thought process.

[Johann]

Singha,

only a few disagreements

+ Those who did occupy the Chinese heartlands - the Mongols and the Manchus were absorbed by China, along with their non-Chinese territories.

In short China has a history of using its own total defeat and subjugation to expand! This is one of the reasons why many Mainland Chinese are willing to buy CPC propaganda that portrays the Republic of India as a continuation of the British Raj.

+ Communism in the Maoist era 1949-1978 killed tens of millions in spasms of self-destructive madness, but paradoxically it also brought huge improvements to the living standards of rural peasants. A hundred big and little things that peasants did not have became commonplace - major increases in average calorie intake, major increases in life expectancy (nutrition improvements plus public health drives that supressed many infectious killers), huge increases in literacy, and simple material things like shoes, furniture, two or more sets of clothes, etc which became available to the majority.

The problem was of course was that there were limits to how far communist economics could take China. Mao was happy with the idea of a utopian rural china protected by the megaton warhead on ICBMs and its human waves. Deng and Zou Enlai on the other hand feared the consequences if China did not keep up technologically and economically with the other leading powers.

+ America did not rescue China after 1971-72. The Soviets were more afraid of the Chinese than vice-versa, in fact by the 1970s they feared the Chinese more than the West. It was the Soviets who repeatedly sought reconciliation, and the Chinese who repeatedly rejected it. That was more or less the pattern from the mid 1960s onwards.

China played the America card against the Soviets. In exchange the PRC retreated from the export of communist revolution and radicalism.

+ The first wave of prosperity in Deng's China came not from factories, but from the fields by reversing Stalinist collective farming. Farmers were allowed to profit from sales over and above their quota. Many invested the money to start small businesses.

Given how much of China was rural and agricultural you can imagine what a boost it was. It increased both harvests and prosperity in a way that orthodox communism had never been able to sustain.

The accelarating trend since the 1990s of Party officials grabbing land for factories, infrastructure and real estate development has undermined much of this kind of grassroots, individually driven success.

+ Investment in the PRC in the 1980s did not come from the West. It came from the Chinese diaspora in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and SE Asia. It also came from Japan who had an antagonistic relationship with the Soviets (which predated the Cold War by half a century), and also wanted to pay unofficial reparations (ie without apologies) to Mainland China to smoothe relations.

The first wave of profitable commercial consumer goods manufacturing was to a) the internal market b) the second and third worlds. Simple things like pencils, plastic buckets, sandals, etc.

The profit came from the low cost of labour and the artificially low cost of state extracted natural resources.

+ The PRC's second wave of opening-up came in 1992. That is when the US and Europe began to be economically tied in to China. The second wave, like the first came from Deng's personal initiative. Not only did he like Zhou Enlai see it as vital to Chinese power, it also served the vital task of breaking China's diplomatic isolation after Tiananmen Square. It is the precisely opposite strategy that other isolated regimes like Burma took.

[Sri K]

Singha,

Communism in the Maoist era 1949-1978 killed tens of millions in spasms of self-destructive madness, but paradoxically it also brought huge improvements to the living standards of rural peasants. A hundred big and little things that peasants did not have became commonplace - major increases in average calorie intake, major increases in life expectancy (nutrition improvements plus public health drives that supressed many infectious killers), huge increases in literacy, and simple material things like shoes, furniture, two or more sets of clothes, etc which became available to the majority.

Are you sure that this was not communist propaganda? Everything I have read (which is not much, I confess) indicates that real improvement in the rural areas occurred only after Deng initiated reforms.

[Johann]

Sri K,

Life was hard in the Maoist era, very hard. The improvements experienced by Chinese peasants, particularly in the interior is a reflection of how bad things were in the warlord era, the Taiping rebellion, etc when famine and hoarding was the rule rather than the exception.

The combination of semi-feudal agriculture and low levels of domestic production meant that the majority of Chinese peasants had low incomes, and there wasnt much they could afford to buy.

Public health is something that a communist government can actually do quite well when its so inclined. So is mass literacy. 1950-1958 and again 1961-1966 were years of a lot of productive work. The 1969-1976 alternated between stagnation and progress depending on which faction of the CPC had the upper hand.

[Tilak]

Harper uncompromising despite China's snub
November 15, 2006

[quote]ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Prime Minister Stephen Harper hinted Wednesday that Chinese President Hu Jintao cancelled an upcoming meeting in Vietnam because he intended to question China’s human rights record, specifically the case of Chinese Canadian Huseyin Celil, who is in jail in China.

Harper, traveling to the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference, said Canada values its trade and business relationship with China, but “I don’t think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values. They don’t want us to sell out to the almighty dollar.â€

[Singha]

Johann, the diaspora in ASEAN who had already been exporting to US did kickstart the shenzhen revolution.

But...

Unkil could have killed it right there by refusing to trade in products from a hardcore commie country. If cuba or ussr had setup lowcost factories would US have purchased from them? No.

It was part of the 1971 'agreement' that in exchange for leaving the USSR camp, US would open trade and strategic benefits to PRC.

onlee problem is PRC is turning out to be a much more insidious and durable threat to the US than the one-dimensional threat from USSR.

[ramana]

GD, That why the British think that SD does not have a long view and is usually condesending of US foreign policy initiatives as amatuerish efforts.

[KrishnaK]

Johann,
What exactly did the former Soviet Union fear about China ?

[akutcher]

u dint ask me but my guess is 1.3 billion chinese each with a cheap copy of AK-47

[ArjunKarn]

Johann,
What exactly did the former Soviet Union fear about China ?

The cavalier attitude of Mao(Old China) towards Nuclear Weapons:

http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/news/fall2004/gavin.html

Four decades ago, the threat posed by a nuclear-armed China under Mao Zedong was far more terrifying than anything Iraq’s Sadaam Hussein or any current rogue ruler could muster. China—with a population of more than 700 million in 1964—had already fought the United States in Korea, attacked India, and threatened Taiwan, Indochina, and Indonesia. It supported violent revolutionary groups around the globe whose goals clashed with U.S. interests. Mao’s internal policies had led to the death of millions of his own citizens, and he had already declared that nuclear war with the United States was not to be feared. According to Mao, “If the worse came to the worst and half of mankind died, the other half would remain while imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist.â€

[Johann]

Krishna,

As Arjun said it started with Soviet alarm over Maoist ideology which was quite similar to Kim Jong Il's attitude in its complete willingness to accept self-destruction, only scarier since it was combined with China's size and reach.

There was more to it though, which kept the Soviets quite fearful of the Soviets even after Mao's death in 1976 and the rejection of Maoism in 1978.

+ One of the things Mao did (and Deng refused to rule out) was threaten to tear up the old Sino-Russian agreements going back to the 17th century.

Russia/USSR can not effectively fight a two-front war in Europe and the Far East at the same time. India's own 2-front problems pale in comparison to Russia's. The Russians are also fundamentally weaker in the East than in the West. They have been painfully aware of these things since 1905, and extremely insecure about it.

+ The PRC became an incredibly dangerous ideological competitor to the USSR *within* the communist world, weakening Moscow's hold on the other Communist Parties. The Chinese rebellion encouraged Albania, Romania and North Korea to go their own way. Soviet control over North Vietnam was tenuous in the 1960s and 70s, conditional on Soviet support for the North Vietnamese war effort, etc. In many countries the Communist Parties splintered and weakened because of Maoist/pro-Chinese supporters. It was like Stalin's problem with Trotsky, only bigger, since Trotsky didnt have money in exile.

Deng was not as energetic about promoting CPC ideological challenge to the CPSU as Mao was, but the experience of the 1960s and 1970s remained traumatic to the Soviets, especially since by Deng's time the 'Eurocommunism' embraced by the large French, Spanish and Italian communist parties had broken from Moscow and sounded a lot like the CPC - advocating a mixed economy, condemning the Soviets in Afghanistan, etc, etc.

[Johann]

Johann, the diaspora in ASEAN who had already been exporting to US did kickstart the shenzhen revolution.

But...

Unkil could have killed it right there by refusing to trade in products from a hardcore commie country. If cuba or ussr had setup lowcost factories would US have purchased from them? No.

It was part of the 1971 'agreement' that in exchange for leaving the USSR camp, US would open trade and strategic benefits to PRC.

onlee problem is PRC is turning out to be a much more insidious and durable threat to the US than the one-dimensional threat from USSR.

- The 1971 Sino-American breakthrough was pretty limited. There were no trade or scientific/educational spinoffs, etc. Mostly what they did was end mutual hostility and agree to disagree on a range of issues, while defining the scope of possible diplomatic cooperation against the Soviets. The real breakthrough was that the two establishments stopped regarding themselves as irreconcilable enemies.

+ Sino-American breakthrough in terms of direct tangibles was in December 1978, when diplomatic relations were established. It is after that point Mainland students, legal emigres etc began to stream in to the US from the PRC. That is when the Chinese and Americans actually began to actually trade intelligence on the Soviets, discuss the possibility of US arms sales to China, etc. That is when PRC exports of any sort began to the US.

+ The US was not the most important market for the first Deng explosion of private production of consumer goods. It was the internal market, thanks to the disposable income of agricultural profits. Then it was the communist and third worlds which accepted the low quality, and even lower prices of Chinese goods as good value for money.

+ If the Soviets had moved as quickly as the PRC did in 1992 and offered European, American and Japanese *companies* the same oppportunities as the CPC did, the USSR would still be here today. Pressure from US companies, German, Japanese, French and British competition would have forced the USG to open the way, given Gorbachev's political concessions (ie ending the Cold War).

China's pitch to Western companies in 1992 was profit - we have cheap labour, we are close to major markets, we will become a huge market, and we can make things happen for you in this country overnight. So please, come build your factories. Sell your goods worldwide, and sell them to our growing Chinese appetites.

The Soviet offer was more political than economic. It was made to Western govts rather than Western companies.

The USSR had a much smaller population, and not a particularly plentiful labour surplus. The Soviets wanted Western govts to loan money to modernise Soviet state owned factories which would then produce goods for internal consumption, and for some export.

The difference between Deng and Gorbachev is that Gorbachev and his economic advisors a)werent sure about they were doing, and b)were incredibly hasty.

The combination of confusion, lack of realism and hasty change at the top doomed the Soviets. Gorbachev in particular wanted to preserve the state-owned dominance of the economic system as far as possible, while liberalising the political side.

Gorbachev could have copied the Chinese model by introducing competitiveness in to the agricultural sector, the *biggest* consistant failure of the Soviet economy (its biggest black hole), and a huge source of political discontent. He chose not to.

[Sanjay M]

Why PRC continues Japan-baiting:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/17/ ... dmatsu.php

[Sanjay M]

Atlanticists worried about China eating into Europe's former colonial backyard to mine resources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/magazine/19china.html

Tsk, tsk. What happened to the days when all Europe cared about from China was its Airbus purchases?

[Raju]

http://xiando.org/books/b/sp/li.html

[satya]

http://economist.com/countries/China/pr ... +Structure

Even before the programme of economic reform and opening began in the late 1970s, the Chinese economy was characterised by the unusually large share of industrial production in gross output value: in 1979 industry accounted for almost 50% of officially measured GDP. This was particularly striking because so much of the workforce remained on the land. Reforms in the early 1980s initially increased the relative share of the agricultural sector. Driven by a sharp rise in the procurement price paid for crops and what amounted to the semi-privatisation of agriculture, the share of agricultural output in total GDP rose from 30% in 1980 to 33% three years later. Since then, however, the share of agriculture has fallen fairly steadily, and by 2002 it accounted for only 15.4% of GDP. During the 1980s, as agriculture's share in GDP fell, that of the growing services sector rose: the share of tertiary industry in total output increased from around 21% of GDP in 1979 to over 30% ten years later. The relative share of the services sector has since remained steady, and the continued shrinkage in the relative contribution of agriculture has been reflected in a larger share for the industrial sector, which in 2002 accounted for around 51.1% of GDP.

Before 1978 , i cannot see how agriculture with less than 30% share of GDP assured the rural population [ around 70% population being rural] with disposable income to allure the western MNCs ?

To me it seem from very start Chinese economic reforms were meant to make it a global factory rather than a global consumer for processed goods .

[shyam]

Am I the only one who feel that few recent articles in Economist about PRC economy appear to be lifafa articles? Lifafa might have contained money from PRC and not the article itself.

[Raju]

Chinese elites have been linked to the global NBJPRIe for long. No big deal to plant a few articles in a few western journals owned by the western NBJPRIe

[Raj Malhotra]

I personally think Chinese GDP growth rate is inflated by around 2% per annum.

[Tilak]

X-Posted from Geo-Politics Thread.

Sudan: China's Investment - Destroying Communities
Ali Askouri
December 14, 2006

Before Sudan's independence in 1956, the nation's economic relations with China were insignificant. Despite good diplomatic relations, the level of cooperation between the two countries hardly figured on Sudan's foreign-trade sheet. From independence up to the early 1990s, Sudan exported cotton, sesame, and metal scraps to China. In exchange, Sudan received small arms, fabrics and other textiles. At one point, however, in the early 1970s, the Chinese built what they called the 'Friendship Hall' - a grand conference hall on the Blue Nile's western bank, a few hundred metres from the confluence of the White and Blue Niles at Khartoum. Available data showed that Sudan's total debts to China up to 2001 totalled US$67.3 million, of which China wrote off 63 per cent in 2001.

In 1989, however, there was a military coup in Sudan. Led by Islamic officers and widely supported by the National Islamic Front, the junta declared a holy war on the Southern Sudanese rebels who were fighting the central government at the time. The main objectives of the coup were:

• to crush the rebels

• Islamicise and Arabise the southern part of the country

• forcibly unite the South with the rest of the country

• establish an Islamic state.

To achieve its objectives the junta set out to exploit the country's vast oil reserves, discovered by Chevron in 1978. The country was opened up for Islamist investment and many Islamic groups came to the country with huge amounts of money. However, it soon became apparent that these groups lacked the necessary technical expertise required for such ventures. Consequently, not long after they had settled, the junta expelled them under various political pretexts.

As a result of a trade and financial boycott by the donor community and international financial institutions, Sudan was facing bankruptcy. To overcome these economic difficulties, the junta began feverishly looking for an influential business partner who could extract oil and mobilise other natural resources to lubricate its atrophying economic muscles. Given its recent human rights records, the human and material costs of any investment were never issues that the junta was going to care about. Indeed, the junta had shown exceptional cruelty towards the civil and political rights of citizens, even those who did not antagonise the junta. It was therefore expected that violations of rights would become excessive when civil and political rights collided with the junta's declared agenda.

Following its experience with the Islamists groups, the junta wanted its business partner to have the strength and ability to withstand political pressure from Western 'imperialist' countries; the stamina and determination not to be bothered by the protests of human rights groups; and, above all, to be a heavyweight international player that Western imperialist countries would find hard to force out of the country through political pressure.[/b]

China's long-term strategy for Africa

Numerous events in different African countries since the beginning of the 21st century have show that there is a long-term Chinese strategy to control and exploit Africa natural resources, particularly oil. The Chinese strategy is propelled by China's growing internal demand for oil as a result of its rapid economic growth. The key African countries targeted by the strategy include, but are not limited to, Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, Chad, Algeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Ghana. Although the current economic development status of these countries cries out for development targeted at improving the lot of the impoverished masses, this is not the motivation of Chinese economic assistance. Following a top-down economic development approach, Chinese economic assistance to these African countries has encouraged elitism, deepened social and class divisions and widened corruption. Economic assistance seems targeted to reward or bolster whomever is in power, regardless of how they got there. While many African societies struggle to further democratic values and strengthen respect for human rights, there is no doubt that Chinese economic assistance is encouraging dictatorships and tyranny in Sudan, Chad, Zimbabwe and elsewhere.

Chinese leaders keep repeating the misleading statement that China does not interfere in the internal affairs of the countries it deals with. This statement is untrue, provocative and insulting to many Africans who are aspiring to further democratic values. China interferes deeply in the domestic affairs of its partners, but always to the benefit of the ruling group. A recent meeting between the Sudanese president and his Chinese counterpart revealed the extent of China interference in domestic Sudanese affairs in favour of the ruling junta. Addressing his Chinese counterpart, the Sudanese president stated: 'The relationship with China has been fraternal, brotherly and excellent. Our relation with China is built on mutual benefit. China has always supported the unity of Sudan. When our relations became problematic with the international financial institutions, we turned to China. Relations with China have enabled us to overcome economic difficulties.' The Chinese president has expressed support for the Sudanese president's concerns about United Nation troops being sent to the Darfur region: 'China is sympathetic to Bashir's objections against peace-keeping forces'.

In Sudan, Chinese support for the government has undoubtedly undermined all the efforts of the opposition to effect change in the government, thereby extending its rule despite the clear political indications that the junta would be unable to rule the country without heavy Chinese economic and military support. It is therefore not surprising that Chinese economic aid to the Sudanese junta has come at an extremely high human cost in Southern Sudan and Darfur, where the number of lives lost and communities displaced has become an internationally recognised tragedy.

History of China-Sudan relations

As early as 1992-94, hundreds of Chinese, allegedly employed by Chinese intelligence, started to appear on Khartoum streets selling cheap consumer products directly to the people. Some of these people became involved in house construction while others set up small commercial companies. The tens of thousands of Chinese workers who were later recruited for the construction of the oil pipeline and other mega-infrastructure projects were gradually moved into Sudan this way. In those days the phenomenon of hundreds upon hundreds of young Chinese (mostly men in their 20s) who neither speak Arabic nor English, crowding the dusty streets of Khartoum selling combs and headscarves to people was the talk of the city. Apparently it was hard for the local people to understand how a young chap could fly in from Shanghai to sell combs and deodorants on Khartoum's streets in order to make a living!

Inside China, the rapidly growing demand for oil pushed China to venture into Africa looking for opportunities. 'The reality that China faces is that it will need to become a net importer of oil by the year 2000 if it is going to continue with its modernisation plans,' wrote Cleophas Lado of the University of the Western Cape.

Indeed, endowed with its vast recoverable oil reserves, Sudan was a great opportunity for China. Equally, for the Sudanese junta, China - given its exceptional ability to condone human rights abuses alongside its heavy-weight ability to develop large-scale projects - represented the ideal partner with whom to strike a deal. 'It is very much a symbiotic relationship between China and Sudan, where China is in desperate need of a secure source of oil over the long term, while Sudan needs the external credit, investment and market for its oil.'

Lado describes a few of China's investments in Sudan: 'China has invested heavily in the country. China has initiated $20 billion worth of development and infrastructure projects involving dams, hydroelectric power stations, textile mills and agricultural schemes. China has promised to contribute $750 million in the construction of the new Khartoum International Airport, and another $750 million for a new dam on the Nile near in the Northern Province.

Approximately $100 million has been spent by the Chinese on textile plants, and $500 million on a recently constructed oil refinery. China also provided Sudan with over $12 million in soft loans to fund a fishing project in the Red Sea. Other economic ties have involved arms transfers between Beijing and Khartoum. China has supplied the Khartoum government with arms since 1985, with transfers between 1985 and 1989 totalling $50 million. China became one of the GOS's [government of Sudan's] principal arms suppliers in 1994 and remains so today.

In addition to Lado's list of Chinese projects in Sudan, China is upgrading the Khartoum oil refinery from 50,000 barrel/day (b/d) to 70,000 b/d at a cost of US$350 million. As part of the Merowe dam project (also being built by the Chinese, see below), the Chinese won a second contract for power towers that will transport electricity from the dam site to Khartoum and Port Sudan. The contract signed by Harpin-Jilin and CCMD is worth about US$460 millions. This is in addition to a bridge project downriver from the dam site costing US$10 million

While China claims that it does not interfere in internal politics, the distribution of these projects reveals that China is immersed in the internal politics of Sudan up to its neck. However, Chinese immersion in internal politics is meant to appease the ruling elite, with minimal analysis of the economic, social and environmental feasibility of the proposed projects. For China, whoever happens to be in power is a friend of China as long as they will guarantee China access to resources.Indeed, the opportunistic nature of Chinese policy in Africa is very obvious. It has led, as discussed below, to massive internal displacement and is associated with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives - tantamount to genocide in many parts of Sudan.

Displacement and human rights abuses in oil producing areas

Currently most of Sudan's oil is produced in the Upper Nile area. The Dinka and Nuer people are the main tribes living in the area. To ensure the safety of the oil installations, the government adopted a scorched-earth policy carried out by the army and splinter groups from the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement, used by the government as proxies to carry out its depopulation policy of the area
.....

[Raju]

China Leader Begins 8 Country Tour of Africa

attempt to influence Africa with an eye on oil and minerals

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070130/ap_ ... ina_africa

[sanjchopra]

Taiwan anthem played for China officials

A diplomatic gaffe marred Saturday's inauguration of a China-financed stadium on this Caribbean island when a band performed the national anthem of Chinese rival Taiwan.

Chinese Ambassador Qian Hongshan and scores of blue-uniformed Chinese laborers who built the $40 million Queen's Park stadium as a gift were visibly uncomfortable as Taiwan's anthem echoed inside the 20,000-seat venue.

Ouch!!! that definitely hurts...