"Taking the Measure of Rot"
by Doug Henwood
from Left Business Observer, 10/31/10
http://brechtforum.org/taking-measure-rot
In which he said, in part,¡°Meanwhile, the Chinese have been building high-speed rail like crazy, and are surging forward in solar and other green technologies. In a piece on the Chinese rail effort a few weeks ago, the Financial Times led with a vignette of Arnold Schwarzenegger shopping for equipment in Shanghai, as the paper put it, ¡°looking for trains, technology and funding for the planned high-speed upgrade to his state¡¯s rail network, much of which was built in the 19th century by Chinese labourers.¡± The Chinese rail sector, it¡¯s worth pointing out, is dominated by state-owned firms. I was in a crazy TV debate with a Tea Party¨Cstockbroker type recently who was talking up how China is now more capitalist than we are. I don¡¯t want to say that China¡¯s still state-heavy system is socialist exactly, but it is a lot more effective than our haphazard nonsense.¡±
^^^^^^^
I disagree with the TP - stockbroker¡¯s assertion on that China is now ¡°more¡± capitalist than the U.S. and quite agree with Doug Henwood on that China¡¯s state-heavy system is NOT exactly socialist.
State-owned economy does not necessarily imply socialism. Old Germany, England, and now France all have heavy state-owned industrial system, Bismarck and Japan under U.S. occupation both had dispossessed proprietor¡¯s land properties but none was socialist. One of the necessary conditions for socialism is the proletarian political line and the regime must firmly in the hands of people. People should have direct control of the means of production. Today¡¯s China satisfies neither of the conditions. To be succinct, socialism existed in China only in Mao¡¯s era, especially during the Great Proletarian Culture Revolution (1966-1976.) Revolutionary politics line is more strategically important than economics in a socialist country, at least that was the Chinese Communist experience summed up during the Revolution and especially after the coup d¡¯¨¦tat debacle of 1976.
As to why China¡¯s construction and/or development ¡°is a lot more
effective¡± than other capitalist countries, I like to remind the list-members that this is nothing new to the locals, China since 1949 has always been more effective, even including the now officially much discredited Culture Revolution era. Based on data released by National Bureau of Statistics of China (http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjgb/, 2008) in the socialist twenty-five years period of 1952-1977, the average annual rate of increase of GDP (in Renminbi) was 6.5% under Mao¡¯s leadership; in the capitalist period of 1977-2007, it was 9.9%. The latter period for the capitalist thirty years was a notoriously high currency-inflation period. The net rate of increase is much lower than 9.9%, probably no more than 7%, possibly at 6% (a 40% discount) at the best due to high inflation rates. The former socialist 25 years made a solid foundation for the latter capitalist developments. Without the socialist construction and development, Deng Xiao Ping, the founding father of the faux CCP, and his ilk would have no chance to make any effective capitalist development. An additional primary factor was the capital investments of the overseas Chinese (controlled by foreign capital) and later on by foreign capital itself. The latter-day Chinese bureaucratic-comprador capitalists took advantages of the ready-to-go capitals to enrich themselves by skinning the Chinese workers to the bone. National developments are the by-products of complicit inhumane economic exploitation and political oppressions with their overseas Chinese and foreign monopoly capitalist masters. A third factor was Ronald Reagan¡¯s major policy shift that prepared for re-industrialization of China and de-industrialization of the U.S. in order to rake in super-profits from China and semi-colonies elsewhere under the truculent re-colonization strategy until today.
The Western media journalists and commentators have exaggerated the capitalist China¡¯s advancements and usually neglected to mention its socio-economic-environmental costs. Their capitalist masters prefer a fictionally advanced China to discomfit the workers¡¯ aspiring wage increase. A so-called second large economy has dumfounded the liberal, progressives and leftists alike in that capitalism is as bright in its future as long as the sun still rises. Exhilarants are rare these days and the only ones available to the public are Germany and China. I do not know much about the former ¨C whether the reported Germany GDP increasing rates are genuine, the reported increasing rates of the so-called second large economy are exaggerated. Other than the very high currency-inflation factor as mentioned above, there are other delinquent factors as well. One of which is that the annual increasing rates of GDP are calculated based on provincial and local data, which are oftentimes severely falsified by the provincial and local authorities for the purpose of promotions to higher offices, grabbing more power and therefore more gray (or illegal and corruption-related) incomes, some of which have ¡°escaped¡± overseas or offshore. Newspaper reports estimated the aggregated gray income in 2009 at $800 billion. Mark