China, a Pandorah's Box of the West's own creation.

[Joe Chi Minh]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/live/live.html?in_article_id=502371&in_page_id=1889

Until the pathological miscreants who lead the West finally prompted China to abandon its Communist regime, in favour of "mad-dog" Anglo-American capitalism, British people who had worked there as teachers, for example, used to remark that they had never come across such a happy, law-abiding people as the Chinese people. It seems that Communism superimposed on their traditional Confucian values was largely responsible.

The leaders of the ever more degenerate, putatively Christian West, however, could not bear the thought of a China that fed, clothed and housed almost a third of the world's population within its borders, particularly since they seem to have been so happy and relatively stress-free. A modicum of dignity even for its poorest.

But, finally, the dam broke and Western leaders got what they wanted - except the Chinese leaders were too wily to allow the West's biggest businesses and their top executives to displace themselves and their own families - much to the hurt and outrage of the former, of course.

Now, read this article on the part being played by the Chinese in Sudan... and tremble. It seems Armageddon may be beckoning more animatedly than we might have thought. What would it take for an armed confrontation between the Chinese and their Moslem proteges and the Christian and post-Christian West and their proteges in the South of the Sudan - seemingly less well supported - to occur?
Or would our leaders decide that discretion being the better part of valour, bullying the bulliable in the Middle East is the better or, anyway, safest option?

[Fredda Weinberg]

1. I wish people wouldn't confuse communism & capitalism. One is political, the other

economic. China remains a communist state ... with a mixed economy. From what I've learned from my Chinese classmates, the change after Mao was inevitable and welcome.

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. I assume your class-mates are living in the US? Now, why would that be?

And why would they have welcomed the "change"?

Has it OCCURRED to you how many billions of poor, rural workers there would be in China! Who, given democratic elections, would vote back the old Communist regime in a flash!!!! Who are now flocking to the cities in the vain hope of finding work? And if they find it, to be paid a pittance, but now with the welfare-state kind of benefits of a Socialist society vanishing at a rate of knots. Well, that's almost a tautology, isn't it? An anti-Social-ist society predicates a Thatcherite non-existence of society, doesn't it?

Don't quibble with me about terminology. Are you suggesting the "change" as you so sweetly put it, did not arise as a result of a seismic ideological shift?

[Fredda Weinberg]

6. Ilene went back and forth to her family ... decades ago, we knew

this relationship was coming. We were studying computer engineering together, but her future was in international trade. Since then, I haven't met another Chinese classmate who thought change after Mao was anything but inevitable. They saw us ... now they're getting what they can.

Please don't idealize rural life. I've done my shift and it's heavy, dirty, endless and preferably avoidable. Food doesn't come from grocery shelves and sometimes becomes whatever you can dig out of the ground. Since the introduction of cities, rural populations have flocked and while communist regimes can control behavior, such control comes with ever increasing costs that eventually become unsustainable. You can't hold back rising tides forever.

[Joe Chi Minh]

8. I'm not idealising rural life. I'm just unspeakably enraged by you monied people who seem to think

that billions of poor people aren't worth the tiniest fraction of the monied people who live the life of Reilly, and can never have enough. If anything the reverse is the case, as you will see in the next life. Worldy intelligence will be utterly utterly worthless. It was a very humble means to potentially noble ends for those who understood its purpose.

You worldlings control the media, control everything, and end up believing your own publicity. I can't believe the deceitfulness of that comment of yours. "Please don't idealise rural life!" Nothing could be further from the truth. The rural poor have always suffered terribly, as you well now. The Communists in China (sic) mitigated their suffering, until the evil Western leaders finally had their way. Or at least, substantially.

"...it's heavy, dirty, endless and preferably avoidable" is the key phrase of yours. But, oh.. it's not enough for you to get off the lower rungs of the ladder, everyone else down there has to be given the bums' rush! Some cretin was gibbering about Tianman Square just now, and I'll bet you're like-minded. Never mind the toiling billions to whom the Communists somehow managed to give a minimally decent standard of living and the concomitant modicum of dignity, as Chavez, is trying to do in Venezuela, though as a Roman Catholic.

[Union Thug]

5. But communism implies sharp economic differences

from the Capitalist economic system. I know it's opening a big can of worms, but it's also technically incorrect to say that China (or the SU) is/was 'Communist' unless one accepts a singluar definition that looks more like authoritarian state capitalism than anything Marx or Engels spoke about. The difference between Communism/Socialism and Capitalism is primarily in the ideas about the distribution of wealth and power. The ways in which these philosophies play out can end in Fascism and Stalinism, or they might become right wing democratic republics, or Scandinavian welfare states.

I think the Capitalists of the West have run a very powerful disinformation campaign that has resulted in creating a public that couldn't tell you the difference in political or economic philosophies that differentiate Fascist and Communist thought. In both cases, people see only the authoritarianism of the most influencial players (think Hitler and Stalin) and often believe they are the same thing.

[Fredda Weinberg]

7. It is, after all, the dictatorship of the proletariat. IOW, no individual

rights whatsoever. The state was meant to wither away once the feudal societies adapted to modernity, but we can argue whether the troika system used by the Red Russians would always prevail over the aristocratic Whites. In any case, no one represented the lumpen proletariat.

But the elite never forgot the public so to a greater or lesser extent, societies remain stable. This is sufficient evidence that they've reached an appropriate balance and can withstand changes that don't fundamentally threaten the nature of the regime.

At least, this was our consensus. The model has worked so far.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. They were so happy that a bunch of them

gathered in Tianenman Square just to celebrate.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. Tiny is the word, bud! A tiny bunch of would-be wreckers. And now their

dream's come true. Well, bully for them! They can afford an even better life-style! Wow! How great is that!