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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (45463)	2/1/2004 11:33:43 PM
From: energyplay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

The governments of Burma and what government there is in Sudan are a long way from representative of their people or country. Much of Africa is a kleptocracy. The governments there are not like Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, or Thailand. IF you bribe the local government, their nominal opposition, and provide some security training, weapons, and some minor intelligence help on their opposition (while also subtlely funding some selected opponents) you have a rather activist form of neo-colonialism. As a result, you can get resources priced below market - possibly indirectly and hidden. Look at the looting of Russian resources for some examples.

To: RealMuLan who wrote (45463)	2/11/2004 3:14:56 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Yiwu, back on China and its robbery: <by robbery, I mean to get something for nothing and it is against the host's will. This is the case for all the imperialist robbery happened in China bet. mid-19th century to mid-20th century. > The biggest crime and robbery by China, has been the theft of the lives of billions, whose lives have been squandered in struggling in poverty rather than creativity and progress. 1.5 billions or maybe even 2 billions. For half a century, MAD Maoistic Mania kept the country in penury. In China, they now say Mao was 70% right but 30% wrong. They are being inscrutably polite. My guess is more like 20% right and 80% wrong. Those hordes of lives were blighted, lived in hutongic abject poverty, when for 4 decades they could have been importing capital and exporting goods and becoming wealthy as they have been doing since they started having both black and white cats to catch mice. Plenty of people chanted the mantras of Mao in the good old days. I walked in a queue with many people who were obviously feeling more than curiosity to see Mao's mausoleum, with hundreds of people buying plastic flowers to leave inside, which are then obviously taken right back outside and sold again. There was obviously a great deal of nationalism and feeling of belonging. I don't know how much of it is Stockholm Syndrome and how much a free and clear mind - we are all prisoners of our experiences and unless really given a different point of view, find it very difficult to understand how little of our attitudes and ideas are really self-determined. In NZ, comrade Clark is revered by many. Our position way down the OECD charts seems not to matter to them [we used to be at the top]. One older guy in particular I was following into the mausoleum and he seemed like Rip Van Winkle from another time. He obviously was part and parcel of the whole scene back in the day and there was an air of ineffable sadness about him, as though he would climb on the funeral pyre like an Indian widow committing suttee. My mother was enamoured of China and thought Mao and his mates were doing great things for the people. I have got a lot of 35mm slides from my parents' trips there in the 1970s, which they could only do as card-carrying members of the China Society nzchinasociety.org.nz I've got an autographed copy of Rewi Alley's book nzchinasociety.org.nz Our third daughter's common-law husband's father was from China. He managed to escape in the early 1970s by swimming to Hong Kong and Freedom. He made a few attempts, and the distance to swim was apparently quite a long way. I'm sure some people died in such attempts. That drama was thanks to the Maoistic idea that citizens are prisoners. I believe they can leave now, [there sure are plenty here, crashing their cars and acting more arrogant than Americans used to - the young rich F.O.B [fresh off boat] Chinese, not the older good ones and their offspring]. It was sad to see that poor boy in Beijing working ridiculously long hours, pathetic pay, few options, no family with him, hoping some foreigners will show up to pay him. That's thanks to Mao's mantras which have not yet all been ditched. In fairness, the boy is better off than he would be in the freedom of democratic India where they really know how to do poverty in a big way. There's a lot more to life than freedom. Food for a start. I'd prefer to be poor in China than India [for now anyway], though India has figured out that capital flow inwards is a good idea - it only flows in if it can escape again, unless it's just buying a service, such as software outsourcing. Mqurice