Some backasswards reporting from the Post (I meant to say) on China
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett
Here's the bit:
A Chinese City's Rage At the Rich And Powerful: Beating of Student Sparks Riot, Looting"
By Edward Cody Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 1, 2005; Page A01
CHIZHOU, China -- Liu Liang, a slightly built computer student with big glasses, was home in Chizhou for summer vacation. At about 2:30 on the hot afternoon of June 26, he was pedaling his bicycle by the downtown vegetable market on Cuibai Street.
Driving down the same street in his new-looking black Toyota sedan was Wu Junxing, deputy manager of a hospital in nearby Anqing. Wu, accompanied by a friend and two bodyguards, had come to Chizhou that day to attend opening ceremonies of a new private hospital and, associates said, survey the market to judge whether he should invest in his own facility.
Liu's bicycle and Wu's shiny four-door sedan collided, sending Liu crashing to the ground. Almost immediately, witnesses said, Liu, 22, and Wu, 34, began arguing over who was at fault. In the heat of the dispute, they said, Liu damaged one of Wu's side-view mirrors, prompting Wu's muscular bodyguards to burst from the car and beat the skinny young man senseless, leaving him bleeding from his mouth and ears.
The beating, part of a minor traffic incident on a slow Sunday afternoon, ignited a spark of anger. The spark became a riot, evolving over eight chaotic hours into an expression of rage against the Chinese Communist Party's new fascination with businessmen, profits and economic growth ...
Why I don't like this reporting: it makes it seem like it's capitalism that's the culprit behind the rage, when in reality, it's the rigidity of the political system that's far more at fault. A multiparty system that processes such rage (like our Dems-against-the-rich and the Republicans-against-big-government) keeps both the political and economic scene cool. The problem in China is not the economics, but the inability of the politics to keep up. It isn't the CCP's "fascination" with businessmen, but that it seems to be losing touch with the workers. In a multiparty political system, the out-party reaches for that rage. In the single-party state, it's mob violence or nothing.
Edward Cody usually is more astute than this. He loses his context here.
Full story at: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/31/AR2005073101163_3.html
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