To: Taikun who wrote (54054 ) 10/6/2004 7:21:30 PM From: Seeker of Truth Read Replies (1) | Respond to Wait a moment, this term "old system" is downright confusing. Do you mean Chiang Kai-shek's way, masses of starving peasants, landlords saying that their trees are too valuable so the starving peasants may not eat the leaves, four influential families practicing crony capitalism with Chiang, suppression of student movements with spies and arrests? Or do you mean the way after 1948? As I understand it, but I can't be as clear about it as some expert, which I'm not, Deng Hsiao Ping brought about an economic revolution by asserting that it was okay to hire people and make money, i.e. practice capitalism. But the political side, i.e. the party knows best, the state is omniscient, never arrests innocent people, etc. has been the same, so far as I know until very recently where some villages have elections and there's an attitudinal change implied there. It's not as electrifyingly different as the economic change. But there's great hope, especially in the minds of optimists like me. Far in the future the question of how to muzzle the capitalists, how to restrict their power so they don't grab the state, is an open question. It's far away.
