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SusanofO -> RE: Can you still express feeling patriotic as a U.S. citizen? (9/12/2007 8:33:40 AM)
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Cwner59: I don't seem to remember mentioning I am a total non-fan of any sort of governmental regulation (did you read this enire thread?) Well, I really appreciate most facets, and advantages of Capitalism.
The citizens in much of China also live on an average salary of about $140 a month (if that) and have much of their career choices (and even their pro-creative and religious choices) dictated to them by their government. They are slowly becoming fans of Capitalism (in the larger cities), in a very limited sense, you are correct (probably, IMO, because they ar so sick of extreme Socialism, or Communism, depending on your definition of the regime they've lived under for so long). But most of the financial gain from their economy, and its use, still is controlled by the government there, not its individual citizens. Over 80% of their expansion in the 1990s was due to foreign investors using their country to manufacture foreign goods (China makes most of the world's children's toys, for example).
You are of course, entitled to your own opinion, re: How advantageous this is for the citizens there, or the citizens in the U.S.
But IMO, China is home to some of the ugliest labor practices in the world. And I am very grateful I don't live there. Take a look:
This essay has been excerpted from "War for Wealth: The Global Grab for Power and Prosperity", Germany's best- selling book by Gabor Steingart.
In Germany, the obligation to redistribute wealth is explicitly stated in the constitution. It stipulates that society must use energy created at the productive center to warm those who might otherwise be freezing at the margins. The United States is similar: The government, together with the respective companies, provides a social net for the firms' current and former employees. Indeed, the biggest pension funds in the world are to be found in the United States.
In China, the state has another function entirely: It acts as a firewall between society's center and those at the fringes in order to ensure that nothing from the boiling core is ever allowed to cool at the outer edges. The retreat of state-controlled industry meant bidding farewell to the social net -- a notion Karl Marx would have despised.
When Deng Xiaoping took over leadership of China's Communist Party in the mid-1970s, he described the country as being in an "advanced state of socialism." But he didn't like what he saw and instead decided to set the country back a step to what he described as the "first stage of socialism." The reforms he pushed through ensured that virtually all of the country's social pacts were broken.
Life-long employment contracts were replaced with temporary contracts, and firing workers became a possibility. If employees refused to buy the apartments their companies had provided for them, they were simply forced out. In the private sector, social welfare was ignored right from the outset. It was left up to the family -- or nobody at all -- to take on the social responsibility the government and companies had abandoned. Since then the state has stood ready to defend the separation of the haves from the have-nots with force. And the China of today is home to the ugliest labor market practices in the world.
Giving property more rights than people
Still, the Chinese Communist Party listens to the desires of its subjects and even pays lip service to them. In its 11th five-year plan, which provides an economic and social blueprint for China from 2006-2011, Beijing laid out its goal of building "a harmonious socialist society" by 2010.
But the truth is that the Communist Party has just set up the biggest subsidy program for capitalists the country has ever witnessed. Such support existed before, but in secret, almost conspiratorially. It is now part of the government's stated goals.
The Chinese communists are making no secret of their shift in mentality. The constitution has even been amended -- a message to everyone that this is no reform, but a revolution. Until March 2004, the state had been responsible for the "guidance, control and regulation" of the private sector. The state was the big brother that disciplined and badgered private companies -- it carried the carrots and sticks. The new constitution has, for the first time, declared private property to be a private matter.
Property is now defined as inviolable. Even inheritance will be protected in China in the future. Article 11 of the recently approved constitution even calls on the state to serve the private sector and to provide "encouragement and support" to the capitalists. The redistribution of privately earned wealth for the good of society, as the German constitution stipulates, is thus transformed into a state responsibility for protecting the private sphere. Capitalists are the new ruling class and property in China is now bestowed with more rights than the people. Indeed, no other country in the world courts its entrepreneurs to the extent that China does.
Death has even been accepted as an unpleasant but inevitable side-effect of rapid Chinese economic growth. According to Western estimates, there were around 100,000 fatal workplace accidents in China in 2005 -- some 10,000 of those the result of mining accidents. These are the largest such fatality figures that any country has ever reported. Another dimension often brushed off as a side effect is child labor. To promote exports, a significant part of the economic boom, around 7 million Chinese children are sent out to work. In Asia as a whole, that figure is around 130 million. They weave carpets, carry heavy loads, build plastic toys -- but most of all, they drive down prices.
ved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH
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