But any mention that China might have serious problems was blamed simply on poverty, and the article always added that China would either soon (or someday) have enough money that whatever the problem was wouldn't be a problem. That was how a crisis in medical care in some remote province was described. If there's been any mention of AIDS being transmitted to blood donors in the Chinese press, I'm sure that's how it has been treated.
About the only truly positive development I saw was some new (largely superficial) anti-pollution laws, and even those were couched in terms of how China was now rich enough to shut down some of its coal plants and clean up its worst messes. No mention of what anyone on the streets of any major Chinese city could see: a sizeable part of the population already suffers serious respiratory problems.
There seemed to be a pervasive notion that if only China could keep up economic growth, it could outgrow all its ills, and all the mistakes and problems would be buried in the past. And the public bought into this in a big way. When I had visited Warsaw Pact Europe before 1989, no one ever seemed to buy into the idea that the state was doing fine and the problems would all just go away. People didn't really seem to want capitalism, and they weren't always sure what they wanted, but I can't remember ever talking to someone who didn't think something was fundamentally wrong. Even in Vietnam, I had no trouble finding people who thought something was deeply wrong with the country.
I still haven't quite managed to figure out why its different in China.
Scott Martens
-----Original Message----- From: Thomas Seay <entheogens at yahoo.com>
>I wish those assholes from Workers World Party would
>print the following in their damn ragsheet. Sorry
>that I dont have the time to translate, but this is an
>article taken from the French leftist daily
>"Liberation". It's
>about the way a bunch of chinese villagers got AIDS
>(most likely while selling their blood) and their
>treatment
>(or lack thereof) from the the Chinese health
>authorities. For example, when a health director
>finally did meet with the villagers to talk about the
>disease, all he could say was:
>
> «Vous allez tous mourir, les uns après les autres...»