Don't fool yourself Clouseau. The old paradigm is alive and well and thriving in the Orient. What do you think is sinking the Japanese banking industry, the entrenched, corrupt old-boy network in which banks, and industry as a whole, are continually bailed out by the government which has always been the servant-boy of industry long before World War II. Even Greenspan fears the Japanese banking system is going belly up, which it is.
Okay, why Japan when the subject is China and CAOL? I mention Japan because the Japanese and the Chinese, though avowed enemies, share the exact same mind set, one that is based on Confucianism. It is a social system based on hierarchy, a vertical social order in which the emperor (the gov't) is top dog. That being the case, the guy on top craps on the guy below craps on the guy below him. The U.S. model of freedom and business (everyone equal on a horizontal plane) has no place in this age-old vertical hierarchy. There is no such thing as individual rights. Period. Forget it. I know. I worked in the orient for five years and butted heads with this system more times that I care to recall. If, as a foreign business entity, you do not acknowledge that the old paradigm is alive and well, if you fail to realize that you have to beg and scrape to the guy above you in the pecking ordering, god help you 'cause ain't nothing going to get done no matter how hard you yell and scream.
In China the government is on top. Always has been. Always will be. That being the case the gov't can crap on anybody they want below them, business, religious, take your pick. Why do people rarely fight back? They do - they crap on the guy below them! The guy below, having no rights, spends his entire life waiting to get on top so he can crap on the guy below him. This is the old-age paradigm. It is alive in China, Japan, and Taiwan. This is what CAOL is up against and it is a wall.
Might the Chinese government threaten to nationalize the ISP system? Damn good question. I heard on NPR yesterday that the Chinese government is cracking down - eliminating! - cable channels such as ESPN and some of Rupert Murdoch's channels because - because!! - they are eroding the Chinese government's monopoly - monopoly!! - in the cable industry! Heard all this on NPR's BBC news hour.
The worst thing we can do about China is assume we are playing on a level field. We are not. As for CAOL? Let's just hope they have the government in their back pocket. Preferrably both. |
