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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Liatris Spicata who wrote (8297)	3/15/1999 11:21:00 AM
From: Bosco	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

G'day all - Larry, Lawrence [another Larry <g>] can speak better, especially for himself, but here is my take... If the current crop of Chinese leaders understand history at all, yes, there can be a good correlation [not cause-and-effect] between prosperity and liberalization [democracy is a new term for the Chinese until the turn of the century.] In a way, the many dynasties have gone through the many format of taxation systems, albeit they were agricultural based. One such system was called the "Nine Square System" [imagine #] the outer parcels were owned by individual farming families while the center parcel was tended by all eight families as a means of taxation. This system occurs in one of the 2 flowering dynasties. Obviously, given the confucian indoctrination, the peasants did not have similar kind of freedom modern people in many democratic countries enjoy today, but it was freedom from hunger, from excessive oppression and from excessive taxation. It was contention and freedom to excel. You sez, "... Economic reforms were well in place under Deng." Maybe it is better stated "... Corruptions were well in place under Deng." <vbg> Hong Kong has begun its corruption cleansing campaign since the early 70s. It took them a couple of decades to make it palatable. Having said that, I doubt too many people would object to the spirit of your posts, which, as I interpret them, in effect say China is still a long way to make amend. I do not dispute that. My questions are 1) how much time and 2) what approach to take. And, regardless, the China issues have very little to do with whether people here should mix partisan politics with diplomacy, and whether we should give up the american ideals as stated in the Constitution by parading Wen Ho Lee with insinuation but not with actual accusation. In that case, human right violation can be easily flipped! Btw, this is from the horse's mouth... usatoday.com Of course, Zhu is a politician, so his words are no better than other politicians <sg> best, Bosco

To: Liatris Spicata who wrote (8297)	3/16/1999 4:44:00 PM
From: Frodo Baxter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

In my post to you, I already posted what I was responding to: "The "progess" in China in recent years has been material, not in terms of human rights." I don't think it's at all unclear where you stand in this matter. "My entire point was about the lack of human or political rights in China, while I allowed for changes in material circumstances. Your list of economic changes is simply wide of the point." My (and all others' who have posted here) point is that rich people are always more free than poor people. That's why we fixate on the economic changes, as we believe those are proper, nay only, course toward China's development as a capitalist democracy and a strong ally to the US. You deny this thesis in its entirety, "Yes, I gather there have been significant reforms in economic areas. Chinese still lack the most basic of political or human rights." But in any case, even judging things along your lines, you are still incorrect, because you allow for little difference between current and past regimes. Tell me, would you respect them more if they called themselves "free-market reformers" rather than "Communists"? Labels, fables, smables. Maybe they were useful when communism was an ideology that was actually practiced (such as it was). Not today, where leaders of all stripes are judged by their ability to reform, deregulate, liberalize, and uphold the rule of law. Again, I maintain that China has had more of a go at that than say, the French. Look at the so-called democracy Russia. "Democrat" Yeltsin's choice of "crony capitalist" Chermyrdin (sp?) was frustrated by the "communists" in Congress in partnership with "leftist reformers" of the Yabloko party. Yeltsin's failure resulted in the rise of "communist spymaster" Primakov. In any case, the end result is that Russia has a leader whose main objective is professionalism and stability rather than one who looks out for himself and his buddies. Who's the real democrat?