State and Democracy (was Re: Who Killed Vincent Chin?)

[Doug Henwood]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

>I think that China has a very good chance of becoming like Taiwan,
>Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, and Indonesia and is trying to do so by the
>same means.  Not a rosy picture.

Taiwan, Singapore, and Korea, while not workers' paradises, did 
achieve substantial industrialization and massive improvements in 
material living standards in a relatively short period of time. It's 
hard to think of any precedents for or rivals to them in economic 
history, in fact. Hong Kong is a small city-state in an odd location 
that's hard to see as a reproducible model, leaving aside the 
question of whether reproducible models exist at all. Indonesia is a 
mess. So which will China be like?

Doug