by Arthur
Someone
said that I was "just back from China" and was going to write something about
China. Here goes.
 |
| Hong Kong |
Technically
I was in Hong Kong, which is now part of China, but it is rather different,
since the agreement for the return of HK to China dictated that the existing
political system in Hong Kong should remain in place for fifty years. It has,
and hasn't, ever since. But Hong Kong is quite useful for China, representing a
hybrid economy, one more palatable to certain outside investment and trade than
China proper is. The government of Hong Kong is more transparent and open to
criticism by the public and the press in Hong Kong. It is an interesting
mix.
The
other thing that is interesting about Hong Kong SRA (Special Administrative
Region) is that one is near enough to the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) to
take a taxi or a ferry into the PRC itself. For whatever reason, the proximity
puts stories about what is happening in China into sharper focus. Not to give
away the punch-line, but China currently has a significant problem with official
corruption… but with a few notable exceptions, no one is supposed to talk
about it, since to do so would be in poor taste. If, however, an official steps too far over the line and causes a world of distasteful trouble, then all bets
are off and they become a whipping boy, who is publicly attacked as a terrible
person and a really, really bad example… then
they are used as a good warning to other officials to clean up their act
and be far more discrete about their sleazy activities. But there is one big problem about being
squeaky clean; one makes significantly
less money, than if one is bent like a pretzel. Part of the temptation is that all of the land
in China remains the legal property of the State. In a sense, that could be
seen as true everywhere else in the world, for example when some other
government (ours included) needs land to build a new highway, so while taking
land from private owners is often rancorous and unpleasant, such land usually
ends up being condemned to allow socially important projects to be constructed.
Given that all of the land in China is assigned somewhat informally, or more
formally on a ninety-nine year lease, what happens in China if a property or
group of properties are needed for an important project? It gets condemned,
without public debate, the owners are moved out (sometimes with a bulldozer),
and the project goes forward. So, what's the difference?
The
difference is that in China a LOT of condemnations have been done during this
last decade of explosive growth in China, displacing hundreds of thousands,
perhaps millions of lower income Chinese, in order to permit the construction of
manufacturing centers and high-end residential complexes. Not public works or
infrastructure projects, though some land has been taken for those uses as well.
In the process of taking land for private and lucrative business endeavors (so
not for public works or infrastructure projects) a new and creative class of
Chinese millionaires and billionaires has been created. It is fascinating to
read an analysis of the career paths of these newly enriched. A surprising
number of them were originally civil servants, perhaps until they realized that
there was some serious money to be made by joining the private sector and
trading off their existing connections to government officials. One of the ways
that critics suggest that these former (and sometimes current) officials (and
their family members) make money is by influencing the officials who have the
power to judge which projects should be condemned, and which should not. It has
been suggested that such choices are sometimes influenced by the transfer of
funds, usually done in indirect ways, sometimes to the deciding parties
themselves, but more often to their immediate family members. Who also get very
rich. Family values, as it were.
In
the US we sometimes use the term "back-hander" to describe such acts of
self-serving generosity, but it would be rude to suggest that there was any
connection between the tawdry corruption seen in some parts of our country with
the current scale of corruption in China, which of course was meant to function
as a "Workers Paradise". Without wishing to be rude, or insulting, there are
some interesting similarities.
The
scale of official corruption in China is causing the Chinese government major
headaches, particularly when officials are being asked to investigate their peers. While that dilemma is being wrestled with, dissatisfaction in China
among the disenfranchised and powerless has been growing. Make no mistake, many
average citizens in China are proud of China's increasing wealth and world
stature, but for those left out of the tangible benefits of recent changes, or
directly impacted by them in devastating ways, while public expectations are
rising, levels of unhappiness about how things are moving and how different
classes are treated by the government is also growing. These concerns appear to
be growing, since the government's efforts to placate or intimidate their
unhappy population has enjoyed no great success. What we are seeing in China
echoes what George Orwell described in his novels "Animal Farm" and
"1984".
You
may well ask, what does all that have to do with Mitt Romney? Romney is by any
measure, one of the elite. When he speaks of running a successful business, one
must ask, "Successful for who?". The statistics on the number of jobs that Bain
Capital has created are exaggerated and self-serving. Coincidentally, they are
as dubious as many current Chinese statistics are. As China is experiencing a
business slow-down, reflecting decreased demand for Chinese exports, massive
mounds of coal are starting to pile up near Chinese power plants that had been
running at full capacity, in support of manufacturing. It recently has been
discovered that District and Provincial Officials were "advised" to report
decreased electrical demands, not as a downturn, but as an "unchanged" level of
energy usage. Why? Critics suggest that “party line” was intended to maintain
an appearance that everything is just going along just fine, move along,
nothing to see here, folks!. Wait, where have we heard a mirror image of that
upbeat story line? I found myself thinking of the current dispute between the
Romney for President campaign and Governor Rick Scott of Florida, and the
governors of Iowa and Ohio. While these Governors would like to boast about
growth and low unemployment in their States, presumably to help them get
reelected, the Romney campaign has asked them to please not mention that nasty
"growth" thing, since it would be better for Romney's campaign to be able to
talk endlessly about how the economy is so terrible and awful because that evil
(Kenyan) President has betrayed our nation and created so, so many laws that
have crippled businesses, instead of letting them run wild across the face of
our nation like rabid wolves. Which is
really what they would prefer to be doing. In short, the Romney campaign
appears to want to employ dishonest and self-serving propaganda that is every
bit as false as the claptrap that the leaders of the PRC are trying repeat over and over again until
their population becomes completely brainwashed, to tamp down the anger of the Chinese people. Romney on the other hand is trying to
generate anger, by repeating lies over and over again, but it really is just the
same technique.
It
doesn't appear that Romney gives a damn about facts, jobs, worker's lives,
healthcare, the economy, our nation's security and indeed, about the world. He
cares about getting elected, whether by telling and retelling demonstrable lies,
overwhelming secret fundraising through Karl Rove's Slush-PAC or through voter
disenfranchisement. What seems clear is
that he and the Republican Party are willing to do whatever it takes, fair or
foul, to take back the White House. That "whatever it takes" ethos is straight
out of the Communist Party playbook. Facts are inconvenient, lives are
expendable, while seizing power is paramount. It will be for the good of all to
seize power by whatever means necessary. John McCain was sputtering the other
day about how the Romney campaign is taking funds from foreign countries, until
someone sat on him and told him to shut up. See, if a Democrat said that it
would be treason and Fox News would talk about it non-stop for a week. Has
everyone got their talking points straight now?
One
is left with an amazing realization that self-proclaimed "conservatives" appear
to be behaving like the cousins to modern-day communists. To heck with calling
Obama a “socialist”, to the GOP that is just a buzz-word. Will they ever realize how morally corrupt
they have become? Will their heads
explode, or will they happily fall into the arms of their well-tailored official
buddies in Beijing and celebrate a family reunion? Or, will they foster
perpetual war, perpetual conflict and an invasion of Iran to keep the world on
edge and the American people concerned and alarmed, in order to permit them and
their families an opportunity to mimic the more corrupt segments of the Chinese
leadership and their creative efforts to cash in?
When
Mitt Romney speaks of Russia as "the gravest threat to our nation" and China as
a nation that must be reined in, is this nothing more a matter of positioning
them as punching bags, in order to gain loyalty by creating fear? In my opinion
that's not diplomacy, that is fraud.
Again, it is something that Orwell warned us to watch out for. Oh, and for issuing those warnings, BBC
kicked Orwell off their staff. Just the
same way that Fox News would fire any of their staff who spoke truth to corrupt
power.
