Anybody here not convinced that China's on the extreme right?

[Bush loves Jiang]

I'm waiting...

[impeach the gop]

1. Why do you think nixon and henry the serial killer were so Pro China

n/t

[Bush loves Jiang]

2. It was still Stalinist back then...

They just knew their fascist party on Taiwan was soon to be over.

[AP]

3. Chavez says that China is a friend of the left, if I remember correctly.

Why do people think they're extreme right?

[Bush loves Jiang]

5. Chavez said that?

I guess it's forgiveable: He's too busy saving Venezuela's ass from the extreme right to bother learning about the ties between Bush and Jiang.

[Dirk39]

11. In the world we live in...

I guess even for Chavez like for others, it's more about China being a kind of counterbalance against the USA. They might be bastards, but they're our bastards...
Comparisons are needed to make things clear, but this comparison is a bit unfair towards China. It's a totalitarian regime, but it's not a puppet regime. Chavez doesn't sit on his computer posting at DU, he and his people have to make sure that what happened to Allende in Chile will not happen to Venezuela.
Dirk

[JailBush]

4. Here's what scares me:

Given that the NeoCons want to rule Earth, it's comforting to know there are strong nations that can stand up to them, like China. Granted, it would be better if China was also a GOOD nation, but better bad and free than just as bad and under the Neocon jackboot.

But the NeoCons don't necessarily equal America. They're largely a corporate power that exploits its own citizens, partly through outsourcing. So, what if America's corporate powers teamed up with China's corporate powers - and/or the European Union's corporate powers - to create a Super Corporation without national boundaries or allegiances that rules the world?

That's one reason, George Bush, Inc. needs to be stopped in its tracks. Gulf War II isn't about patriotism or national defense - it's a steppingstone to even bigger and more destructive wars.

[democracy eh]

6. China is the new model.

There was always a myth that capitalism=democracy, and that democracy and capitalism had a symbiotic relationship on each other. where one goes the other follows. trade with CHina, democracy will follow.

wrong

China has proven that you can have explosive capitalism without democracy and with severely restricted freedom. I guess it you want to use the right/left terminology, it is a corporate fascist like W's (or his puppeteer's dream.

5 or 10 years ago very few would have dared pull s___ like the Patriot Act because of fear or what it might do to the market and our capitalism/ democratic ideals. We thought the only alternative was the Soviet model - no democracy / no capitalism. China has proven that wrong. Now Russia and the West are drifting towards China's example.

It also proves that the right/left continuum is too simplistic for these times.

[Bush loves Jiang]

7. I believe...

That some of the old guard will team up with the 3rd wave of democracies to forge a more progressive future.

I'm just not sure we as a human race can afford such an epic struggle.

[Dirk39]

9. Wow...

I was just occupied trying to describe this and now, you've stolen my post! Seems to me that only few people see this and esp. Americans are still so brainwashed from the cold war (Sorry,sorry, sorry, I didn't write this), that like pavlovs' dog, they still just bark "communism, totalitarism, socialism, no freedom" when someone is pressing the china-button.
Capitalism goes allong pretty well with fashism and totalitarism. But besides, there might be a lot we don't understand about a culture that's thousands of years old, without studying it - what I never did.
Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Nay]

10. Thank you, Dem Eh. I have been saying this for years and

everyone thinks I am a crackhead.

Democracy and capitalism DO NOT have to automatically go together. The whole idea that people had to be "free" before they would make capitalism run well had been blown out of the water by the Chinese, who have a slave capitalist state. A corporate state, just like the one Bushie would like to make for you and me -- all the money to the ones on top, and slavery for the rest of us. That is why they are shipping well-paying jobs overseas -- just to show us they don't HAVE to treat us as anything but slaves, and if we don't like it, well, too bad. They are developing new markets in China and elsewhere, and in a few years, they won't even care if we can't buy any of their stuff.

[Old and In the Way]

13. Have you been to China?

"China has proven that you can have explosive capitalism without democracy and with severely restricted freedom."

I've been going to So. China since 1990. I have never witnessed any act of repression. People talk quite openly about whatever is on their mind. Those in the local government that I've met don't seem hellbent on ruining what seems to be a very good thing for the people there. What I do see scares me......a very young, dynamic society that has a desire and drive to move China into the 21st century and escape the Maoist era of their parents and grandparents.

Now, if you're talking about Taiwan....now there's a country that is as nationalist as I've ever seen.

[Dirk39]

16. That's very interesting...

and I don't have any reason to doubt your impression. But how does this go along with the repression against a free use of the internet, how does this go along with the radical repression against those, who did demonstrate for more democratic rights. I'm not the kind of guy, who simply puts his fingers into his ears, whenever China, or - on a completely different scale - Cuba is mentioned, just shouting "freedom of speech, democrazy, free trade"-bla bla bla.
Without justifying the actions of the chinese government, my strongest impression is: the West and mostly the USA is using the ideology of free speech and democrazy to force their hegemony - and it's hard to think of any words being more empty and instrumentalized than these in the world we live in. And it's not about democrazy against totalitarism, it's more about Fox-TV against their own propaganda.
Maybe they just have to take a look on Russia today. The life-expectancy -rate is 5 years lower than before Gorbatchev. No democrazy, no free speech, no free elections, corruption everywhere. And it needs the arrest of a corrupt beneficiary of the privatisation to hear the US-government talking about human rights, freedom, democrazy blablabla again. It's just to obvious.
Dirk

[Old and In the Way]

18. "Freedom" is a most interesting idea, I think.

One could make a case that their experience of freedom is increasing as ours seems to be getting curtailed. When the votes of 500,000 more Americans are discounted to favor the opposition, I wonder how well our own democracy is.

I've actually had one person I know in Zhongshan sign up on the DU...so they haven't figured this site out yet....

I think that as more freedom is experienced, more is demanded. How the government loosens this as their society evolves will be of great interest to the world, I think. But in context to where the general population was 30-35 years ago, it is absolutely mind-boggling of the bloodless revolution that has occurred.

But there are organization hierarchies at play in China that reflect the uniqueness of their culture. Certainly, there are interesting changes going on (the woman's role in modern society vs. traditional male-dominated social structures jumps out at me).

Those that are in business in China seem uninterested in government, except for how it affects business. More than one person has said, "oh, wait ten years, it will catch up".

Obviously, the government understands the hand that feeds it these days. Still extremely bureacratized (customs in particular), but even there I've seen remarkable changes. 10 years ago, getting a visa in PRC was a 90 minute ordeal. If you weren't traveling with someone who spoke Chinese...forget it. They had a crappy Polaroid camera and they'd take like 50 pics of you (could never figure that out). Now, they speak English, seem friendly (not suspicious), have a digital camera...the process takes 10 minutes.

We have a bar in Zhongshan....we never are hassled by the police (and we are one of the few westernized bars there). I never see a military presence there. Once in 15 years of travel have I seen a convoy of military vehicles. I just don't see this heavy-handed repression that some posters claim. And just about everyone I've met are extremely happy with their lot in life....maybe because there are many who still remember what things were like under Mao.

[Dirk39]

8. Hard to judge...

Hello from Germany,
I think it's historical wrong, to judge cultures without recognizing their history. I think even Maoism was a kind of exotic mixture of chinese traditions and a strongly defamiliarized folkloristic marxism. Mao was a great poet...
But on the other hand, these cultures were directly confronted with global capitalism and our western cultures.
What's really somehow surprising is that the ideology of capitalism, linking a "free market" to democrazy as if both would emphazise and condition one another, did reveal itself as being nothing but an ideology and propaganda as much as stalinism and leninism were before, supposing that countries that never developped capitalism could jump directly into socialism.
Now China somehow represents the worst of both worlds. I don't know, what history will made out of this, but now, China is a brutal capitalistic system that strongly protects the countries economy - whatever costs the chinese people will have to pay for this - against global capitalism, making sure, their local bourgeoisie will profit.
They are still using the totalitarian and authoric political structures of stalinism, but now to protect their protectionist capitalism. Facing the fact that the whole ideology of a globalized free market is nothing but ideology that has no other purpose than to guaranty the hegemony of mostly northamerican, european, japanese and canadian corporations and banks to dominate the world, they might be right about their use of political power to defend their bourgeoisie.

As a counterpart against Europe and the USA, this might be of value in the globalized world we live in, but I don't want to think about, what this means for the chinese proletarians.
Just some thoughts,
Dirk

[Old and In the Way]

14. China's biggest problem, going forward, IMHO-

is managing rising expectations by the have-nots. Their per capita growth is mind boggling, but that is affecting only about 1/10 of their entire population. Still way too many without and they can't move where the jobs are. I think there are many places in China's interior provinces where there is great civilian unrest because the industrial miracle has not happened. Getting into the coastal cities/provinces is controlled as China's attempt to manage their growth.

[Octafish]

12. Tiananmen Square -- Who's Side Were You On?

Remember, the pro-Democracy protesters jammed Tiananmen Square about the time Big Commie Gorbachev was in town. The crowds wouldn't leave and embarrassed the host Chicom government big time.

Shortly after Gorby left, the Chinese tanks rolled in and over as many pro-democracy protesters as they could. The survivors they rounded up and sent to be re-educated.

A couple of weeks later, Poppy Bush sent Brent Scowcroft and some other NWO types to clink champagne toasts with the communists. You know, no hard feelings...business is business...what's a little crime against humanity amongst fiends?

[Djinn]

15. capitalism doesn't just mean

that you let people make money - there are supposed to be certain requirements aren't there - like a free market, can anyone show me a democracy that has a fully free market??

shouldn't I be able to buy coccaine from a local store?
shouldn't import/exports be free and without tarrifs and protections?

China may have allowed people to make more money and invest more I don't know if that makes them capitalist I'm also not sure that as long as they can keep trading that democracy is ineveitable.

[kodi]

17. yes, i've always admired a government that runs over its people with tanks

the communist party in china is run by gangsters, not heroes of the revolution.

[Old and In the Way]

19. How about Kent State? Or Jackson State?

Is China automatically an evil country because they fucked up once? It wasn't the whole country that ran over that person....it was one, probably stressed-out 2nd Lt. Hey, I'm not disagreeing that Tiannamen Square was a major black eye and ugly in it's repression. There is room for lots more improvement, too. But I'm not sure they stand alone as some kind of evil repressive State. And I think they've made tremendous inroads in opening up their society since that day....

I understand that the export of jobs fuels a lot of this animosity towards China, but why pick on the majority of people there that are just trying to play by the rules that we've spent the last 50 years jamming down their throats?

It is a tad ironic that we've fought these wars in SE Asia to fight evil communism, now we are reaping the bitter fruits of winning.