> On the other hand -- China has a flourishing digital commons?
Yeah, Dennis wants to have it both ways, or lots of ways actually, whatever it takes to bolster his BRIC valorization (which has replaced the pro-Europe/East Asia line he spouted up until very recently): There is, as he says, increasing protest--"space" for which, he intimates, is granted by the (development) state, rather than insisted on by workers--but what they are protesting is exactly the closing of the commons and their own further immiseration, which is demanded by international investors and gladly carried out by said heroic developmental state, not the flourishing of them. Somehow workers' declining fortunes and control are interpreted as proof that China is "quietly democratizing." It's all quite dizzying logic.
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: "dredmond at efn.org" <dredmond at efn.org>
>
> Well, many Beijingers have more economic security and state-guaranteed
> benefits (access to health care, education) than their comparable peers in
> New Delhi. On the other hand, certain formal rights of political
> organization and mainstream media expression are more developed in India,
> though China has been quietly democratizing from within -- e.g. there's a
> flourishing digital commons and plenty of spaces of dissent and
> discussion. And Singapore isn't some totalitarian dungeon, it's a First
> World service economy with reasonably free and fair elections.