> Yes, China wants to develop its consumer base, but other countries are
> having to respond to the demand for higher wages because of pressure
> from below. Are Asian elites more advanced or are they responding to
> working class pressure that is non-existent here in the US.
For now, East Asian elites are probably less beholden to their own rentiers than to their industrialists, so maybe there's a little more room for token wage increases, but my own feeling is, it's increasingly less about elites and more about the unexpected consequences of the neoliberal media/marketing boom. The East Asian nations spent lots of money building out its digital infrastructure, the original goal being neoliberal competitiveness. But the speed at which digital publics are emerging across the region (and, for that matter, the entire semi-periphery) is breath-taking. Inchoate, messy, hard to track, but spaces of action are opening up.
-- DRR