Enzo Michelangeli wrote:
>
> Precisely my point. Why a territory under foreign domination does so much
> better than the sovereign motherland? Failing to provide a convincing answer
> to such a fundamental question may be very dangerous for a government.
British Hong Kong was way behind Chinese Shanghai until after WWII. After WWII, China had to face a U.S. embargo for 35 years while she fought a war in Korea and one by proxy in Vietnam, against the world's most powerful war machine, plus having to retore a country torn to pieces by a decade of harsh Japanese occupation. Singapore was just a sleepy British naval base until the Cold War. Geopolitical factors played a big role in the post war prosperity of these two cities more than their belated adoptation of capitalism.
> Ah, so this is the answer that the Chinese leaders give to their children:
> they are richer than us because they stole the money. Does this fairytale
> apply also to Taiwan or Singapore?
That's how the British got their capital, smuggling opium into China and the HK native were the local dealers. Opium revenue build the British navy/merchant marine fleet that permitted her to dominate world trade. The English tea that the Americans dumped in Boston Harbor came from China. The American fought a War of Independence to get their land. Give me one example where big time national wealth is accumulated by hard work rather than by force.
> Anyway, the free-market propaganda must have infected their minds as well,
> at least when they are on HK soil. For example, here is what in 1994, Zhou
> Nan (then director of Xinhua News Agency in HK, and certainly not a liberal)
> was saying, blasting the pension scheme proposed by Chris Patten:
The Zhou Nan - Patten argument was not about economics. It was a purely political argument using economic policy as a vehicle. The very essence of the dispute centered on Britian, typical for all her final days in her colonies, wanting to leave HK with a sham free enterpirise tradition that never existed. Up until the Joint Declaration in 1982, HK had high tarrifs for all foreign goods, including Chinese goods. The only exception was for British goods. There was in addition the technical monopoly of peculiar British standards in all equipments used in HK, British measurments, rail gauges, even screw threads, so non British equipment were not usable. WE could not even buy Italian cars. The entire financial sector was controlled by 5 British firms and 3 British banks. People who argue your point of view are simply unfamiliar with Hong Kong history. There were no free press unless the criticism was direct against British enemies. There was not civil right protection for Chinese. Dogs and Chinese not allowed in public parks. Until 15 years ago, there were widespread anti-Chinese segregation in HK. Chinese were not allowed to buy houses above mid-level. So don't tell me about the benefits of colonial capitalism. Patten parading himself as protector of freddom in HK is comparable to Hitler posing as liberation of Poland.
During a century and a half of British rule, the Hong Kong authorities had never tolerated political, or press, or even economic freedom that conflict with British interests. Many of Hong Kong's despotic laws remained on the books until July 1, 1997, including those granting the appointed Governor dictatorial powers in limiting press freedom and in dealing with insurgency. The British were only belatedly and desperately trying to dismantle these laws in the final months of their century-long rule. Until recent years, even an audience in a movie theater did not enjoy the personal freedom of remaining seated at the end of a movie during the compulsory performance of "God Save the King", the British national anthem. Such a passive expression of personal dignity was deemed criminal and the offense carried a jail sentence under colonial Hong Kong law. During the long, dark era of despicable colonialism, the voices of conscience in the West were busy touting the doctrine of the White-man's burden. Now the same voices are touting freedom and human rights. As for economic freedom, British firms had always enjoyed undeserved favoritism from the Hong Kong authorities. Up to 1997, new public infrastructure projects costing tens of billion of dollars of public funds controlled by the government openly favored British contractors. Even American businesses historically suffered discriminatory treatment by the British-Hong Kong authorities. For example, American cars were subject to high and unfair tariffs while British cars were imported to Hong Kong freely. Such practices, which could not even be classified as protectionism because Hong Kong did not make cars, continued long after World War II, and ended only when Britain was finally forced to permit free entry of American goods into the colony in exchange for U.S. help in shoring up the crumbling British Empire as part of a global anti-Communist Cold War strategy.
>
> So why every now and then there is a new campaign against corruption? Was
> the mayor of Beijing thrown to jail just as an exercise?
The mayor of Beijing incident was a power struggle between the Shanghai clique and the Beijing clique. The corruption bit was just a pretense. You should know that.
> If returns on investment were as large as you say, nobody would
> produce a single pin in America or Europe anymore.
They don't. Have you noticed everything we buy in New York is made in China?
>
> On the opposite, the political shift in China that has attracted
> their investment precisely by allowing higher returns. And of course,
> speaking the same language is an additional facilitating factor.
You can't have both sides of the argument. High returns or low returns in China, take our pick, but not both. My point was overseas Chinese capital get lower returns than Western capital, everyone know that. Hong Kong brokers Western capital, its gets high returns. But when pure Chinese capital is involved, even fom HK, the returns are much lower.
>
>
> The industrial society, in its early stages, does produce more pollution
> than rural life, but after a while it also produces the resources necessary
> to clean up. And interestingly, the masses, who know what it means to be
> poor in the countryside much better than starry-eyed intellectuals do,
> prefer to it the problems of urban life, even at these early, polluted,
> exploitative stages.
>
Is that an argument for pollution, that poor people will put up with it?
>
> If you want my opinion, one of the major reasons why attempted
> implementations of socialism keep failing is that socialists appear to
> consider overproduction as a structural flaw, whereas abundance is precisely
> what people need and want. In short term, falling prices cause discomfort to
> some, but they are just the expression of the fact that higher volumes of
> product require less labour (largely due to technological factors). Seeing
> in them the end of the world because it reduces the workers' bargaining
> power is short sighted: first of all, because workers are also consumers,
> and they WANT abundance at low prices. Secondly, because lower wages simply
> express diminished demand for certain types of jobs, and the right answer is
> to upgrade the workers' skills, and if possible fostering their
> entrepreneurial attitude, not preserving the existing production
> relationships in a salaried job framework for fear of dismantling the
> "revolutionary class".
Socialism has not had a real chance to prove itself in the modern world. It will require many more trial and learn phases, just as capitalism did since the Rennaisance. I would not sell socialism short just becuase the bastardized soviet model failed, or even if the Chinese characteristic model should fail. It will probaly fail many more times before the world finds a appropriate model, but new models will evolve, because human capcity for cooperation and sharing is greater than greed and exploitation. That is the meaning of civilization.
Peace with progress
Henry
>
>
> Cheers --
>
> Enzo