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The Associated Press: Deaths over housing lead to China reform call about 11 hours ago
- "The interests of the companies and people are sharply contradictory. So
  increasingly, more demolition cases end in a horrible way," Shen Kui, the
  professor who came up with the idea for the letter, told The Associated Press.
Keeping the ‘R’ Where It Belongs in BRIC | Opinion | The Moscow Times about 11 hours ago
- Although the BRICs were unable to decouple from the fallout of the international
  crisis, they have shown resilience.
The Associated Press: Vietnam orders Russian submarines, fighter jets about 14 hours ago
- Vietnam also invited Russia to help build its first nuclear power plant,
- Russia's Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed Defense Ministry official as
  saying Russia will sell Vietnam six diesel-electric "Project 636" Varshavyanka
  submarines for a total of $2 billion. The submarines are also known by their
  NATO nickname, "Kilos."
  
  Interfax also quoted an unidentified Russian official as saying that Vietnam
  would purchase 12 more Sukhoi Su-30MK2 fighter jets for $600 million, in
  addition to eight others it has already ordered.
The National Interest about 14 hours ago
- Despite his breathless title, Martin Jacques is not so sure. On the one hand,
  “China . . . is destined to become . . . ultimately the major global
  power.” On the other hand, “the challenge posed by the rise of China is far more
  likely to be cultural in nature” than political or military. But on further
  consideration, “As China becomes a global power, and ultimately a superpower,
  probably in time the dominant superpower, then it, like every other previous
  major power, will view the world through the prism of its own history and will
  seek, subject to the prevailing constraints, to reshape that world in its own
  image.” But then again, “For perhaps the next half-century, it seems unlikely
  that China will be particularly aggressive”; “for the next twenty years or so .
  . . it will remain an essentially status-quo power.” But after all, yes:
  “China’s mass will oblige the rest of the world largely to acquiesce in China’s
  way of doing things.”
  
  Such zigzag logic characterizes many of Jacques’s arguments. Will China
  democratize? Very likely: “it seems reasonable to expect serious moves towards
  democratization within [a twenty-year] timescale, possibly less.” But not
  necessarily: “the weight of what might be described as Confucian orthodoxy is
  likely to make it more difficult.” But probably so: “In the long run it seems
  rather unlikely . . . that China will be able to resist the process of
  democratization.” But still maybe not: “it is pointless to think that China is
  going to change and adopt Western cultural norms: the practices and ways of
  thinking are simply too old and too deeply rooted for that to happen.” Yet once
  again, yes: “It is . . . likely that within any of the longer time-frames [being
  considered] there will be profound political changes in China, perhaps involving
  either the end of Communist rule or a major metamorphosis in its character.” And
  finally, no: “it is inconceivable that Chinese politics will come to resemble
  those of the West.”
- At the level of abstraction to which Jacques rises when discussing politics and
  foreign affairs, it would be hard to distinguish Chinese culture from that of
  Russia, France or America. All these nations are proud of their histories, value
  their family systems, like social order and seek national security. At that
  level of abstraction, China in fact is no different from any other state.
- 19 more annotations...
- - Besides Confucianism, the Chinese tradition includes Legalism, Taoism,
    Buddhism, and other philosophies and religions.
  - Such tensions have opened the way for culturally Chinese people to advocate
    liberalism and democracy—and in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan, to bring such
    values into practice. The monolith is a myth.
  - Moreover, cultures are no longer pure, if they ever were. They are
    hybrid—increasingly so under conditions of globalization. China reopened to the
    outside world only thirty years ago and has been absorbing foreign influences at
    a rapid pace. Chinese urban society is intoxicated with foreign food, sports,
    clothing and music. Chinese kids love foreign toys, cartoons and TV shows. This
    process is only beginning. If the culture of the Japanese samurai was no bar to
    industrialization and democracy—and as Jacques points out it was not—then why
    should the teachings of Confucius, who lived two thousand five hundred years
    ago, have created an iron cage that limits China’s possible future relationships
    with itself and the world?
  - What does make China different, with respect to the features of domestic
    politics and foreign policy that concern Jacques most, can be best understood in
    terms of its institutions and geostrategic circumstances, not its culture. The
    reason China is undemocratic is not because it is culturally fated to endure
    authoritarianism, but because—among a series of reasons, for there can be no
    simple answer to a puzzle like this—its existing institutions are well
    entrenched and adaptive, the ruling party hangs together, the system is able to
    recruit and empower technocrats, the bureaucratic promotion system motivates
    local officials to work toward state goals, and the government knows how to make
    effective use of its propaganda and police systems. If these institutions decay,
    the system will change. The reason China exercises so much influence on its
    neighbors is not because of “the return of the tributary system”—after all,
    China exerted little real influence on its neighbors under this millennia-old
    arrangement—but because of its size and wealth. Its power would simply decline
    if its economy shrank. And, the reason China does not seek to acquire the
    territory of its neighbors is not a tradition of ruling through indirect
    influence, but because it is surrounded by settled areas and robust states that
    offer no space into which to expand—a feature that is unlikely to change.
  - The fact is, however, that though Jacques wants to “ponder what the world might
    be like in twenty, or even fifty, years’ time” most of his predictions are of
    things that are already happening, and none of which is cause for histrionic
    alarm. Jacques says that Chinese history will become familiar to people around
    the world; Beijing will emerge as a global capital; China’s cultural influence
    will spread; less powerful countries will tilt toward China; China will
    influence global taste through the power of its market; Chinese will think of
    themselves as racially superior; overseas Chinese will identify with their
    homeland; China will invest beyond its borders and influence the world financial
    system; China will refrain from invading its neighbors; China’s
    authoritarian-capitalist system will be seen as an alternative
    political-economic model; China will promote its idea of moral values; more
    students around the world will learn Chinese; Chinese universities will rise in
    global rankings; Chinese art and film will reach global audiences; and, Chinese
    food and medicine will be appreciated worldwide. So what’s new?
  - China is, for now, as Jacques notes, a status quo power. It contributes more to
    the general welfare than it detracts. It has acquired a long list of overlapping
    interests with the West. Engagement worked.
  - . The rise of China and the decline of America are like yin and yang in his
    argument: one is entailed in the other. But is this zero-sum view of power
    correct? Or has the rise of China in many ways also helped America stay
    strong—both economically and as a strategic actor in world affairs—by supporting
    our prosperity and cooperating (however balkily or incompletely) in our primary
    security goals?
  - If the United States has to deal with China and other large powers with the
    acknowledgment that their interests are not identical to ours, and that this
    means we cannot simply compel them to do what we want, is this surrender—or just
    a return to realism?
  - ALARM IS all the less necessary because China at the top of the international
    economic pecking order will be different from any of its predecessors.1 First,
    Beijing’s lead will not be built on technological supremacy but on demographic
    preeminence. Although the Chinese economy will continue to advance
    technologically, unless the other high-tech nations stop competing, in a wide
    range of fields China will not surge ahead of them in the way that
    nineteenth-century England or twentieth-century America did. It will be the
    biggest economy because it has the largest population. On a per capita basis it
    will still be relatively poor.
  - As well, China’s prosperity will remain interdependent with the prosperity of
    its global rivals such as the United States and Japan. Unlike Spain competing
    with Portugal in the sixteenth century, the Dutch Republic competing with
    Portugal and Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or Britain
    competing with France in the nineteenth century, Beijing will not get ahead if
    its rivals do not. Nor will China be able to prosper like nineteenth-century
    colonial powers by exploiting and impoverishing other societies. Other
    countries’ decline or destruction will not help Beijing.
  - Finally, China will not be able to gain energy or commodity security through
    conquest in the way of past empires, or by creating spheres of influence
    uncontested by other powers, in the manner of nineteenth-century
    neocolonialists. Barring the collapse of other strong powers, there will be no
    vacuum into which to expand. Neither conquest nor domination is an option. China
    will have to get hold of the resources that it needs through economic means.
    Balance of power with other major powers rather than expansionism will be the
    formula for sustaining prosperity when China is the world’s biggest economy. If
    things continue as they are, the changes that we face will be less revolutionary
    than the ones that have already come to pass.
  - Although these predictions are less zero sum than Jacques’s, they are as
    cautious as his in the sense of predicting more of the same. Such on-path
    predictions are always the safest kind to make, because most of the time things
    do continue moving in the same direction. The problem is that they do not do so
    forever.
  - But democratization could also make China’s policies more nationalistic, both
    vis-à-vis its internal minorities and toward outside powers like Japan and the
    West.
  - A military regime, if one took power, would be more assertive about territorial
    disputes.
  - But the international environment which is currently so favorable to China’s
    rise is full of possibilities that could make life more complicated for Chinese
    policy makers and offer power-balancing opportunities to the United States
  - It would shift the relative power balance in China’s favor but confront it with
    numerous new problems, such as the insecurity of the energy supplies and sea
    lanes of communication that the United States currently protects.
  - China cannot do anything either to prevent it or—as strategists in Beijing are
    fully aware—make it happen.
  - Climate change will probably hurt China more than the United States by
    exacerbating the already critical water shortage that afflicts the northern half
    of the country. As long as humanity survives, a lot of us will be Chinese. But
    the heavy burden of population on the land, and a geostrategic position
    surrounded by other large and heavily populated states, means that China will
    remain in numerous ways more vulnerable than the United States or Europe.
  - But if the American project to rule the world after the fall of the Soviet Union
    proved to be a chimera, how much more illusory would any such project be on the
    part of a country as vulnerable, for all its accomplishments, as China. What
    China aims for is not world rule, but multipolarity. That is a reachable goal.
http://lepotentiel.com//afficher_article_archive.php?id_article=90118&id_edition=4862&yearID=2009&monthID=12&dayID=16 about 17 hours ago
- Fait intéressant dans ce rétablissement de l’autorité de l’Etat, c’est le
  haut fait d’armes accompli par le 321ème bataillon spécial d’intervention
  rapide. Un nouveau bataillon qui a été mis en place par la Belgique dans le
  cadre de la coopération militaire bilatérale entre la RDC et le Royaume de
  Belgique. Bataillon stationné à Kindu, au Maniema.
  Presqu’au même moment, le Commandement militaire des Etats d’Amérique pour
  l’Afrique, AFRICOM, affirmait sa détermination à apporter son appui à la réforme
  du secteur de la sécurité en République démocratique du Congo.
- En effet, si l’AFRICOM a accepté d’apporter son appui au système de sécurité de
  la RDC, ce commandement militaire américain met avant tout en priorité la «
  sécurité des Etats-Unis ». Pour ce faire, dans un élan de partenariat, il
  revient à la RDC de présenter un programme qui prend à la fois en compte les
  besoins sécuritaires de la RDC et ceux de ses partenaires, notamment les
  Etats-Unis.
- 4 more annotations...
- - Peut-on croire que ce travail de formation qui s’effectue à Kisangani par
    l’AFRICOM a pris en compte cette réalité politico-militaire ?
  - Les Belges viennent de mettre sur pied une brigade d’intervention rapide qui a
    fait ses premières preuves dans la province de l’Equateur. Seraient là les
    étapes du processus de la réforme de l’Armée ? Qu’en est-il de l’Afrique du Sud,
    de la Hollande, de la France, de la Grande-Bretagne qui ont promis le même appui
    au secteur de la défense et de la sécurité de la RDC ?
  - En jetant un coup d’œil sur les pays voisins de la RDC, ils disposent des
    rapports militaires renforcés avec la France, la Russie, la Grande-Bretagne,
    pays qui ont formé les noyaux de leur armée.
  - Il est temps que l’on sorte des vieux sentiers battus de la méfiance, de la
    crainte d’une main invisible d’une puissance étrangère pour des coups fourrés.
    L’AFRICOM demeure l’une de ces belles illustrations que le système de sécurité
    et de défense dépasse les frontières nationales.
    Et ce compte tenu des enjeux économiques, géostratégiques, géopolitiques tant
    sur le plan régional qu’international.
Theses on the class nature of the People’s Republic of China about 18 hours ago
- The First Five-Year plan, drawn up in 1953 in consultation with Soviet advisers,
  virtually ignored agriculture and consumer goods, allocating 70 per cent of all
  investment funds to heavy industry on the Soviet Stalinist model. Despite this
  gross disproportion in the allocation of investment funds, as a result of the
  statisation of all industry and centralised planning, major economic and social
  advances were achieved. Between 1953 and 1957, industrial output grew by at
  least 20 per cent per year; famine, prostitution and opium addiction were
  eliminated; women won equal rights under the law; workers’ wages rose for the
  first time in a decade; and dramatic advances were made in public health and in
  the eradication of unemployment and illiteracy.
- At the same time, the CPC bureaucracy enormously extended the privileges in
  consumption it had institutionalised on a modest scale during its years as the
  ruling stratum in the rural areas under its control in the 1930s and ’40s. In
  1956, the central government adopted a system of ranks for state employees that
  included thirty grades, with the top grade receiving no less than twenty-eight
  times the pay of the bottom grade. In addition to significantly higher salaries
  than ordinary workers, the top state and party officials were provided with
  expense accounts that gave them special housing, cars, drivers, staff (including
  private servants), meals, travel and access to imported luxury consumer goods.
  The ruling clique at the top of the bureaucratic party-state machine, headed by
  party Chairman Mao Zedong, began to enjoy a lifestyle resembling that of the old
  imperial court—living in luxurious mansions, with a vast entourage of private
  servants and guards, personally tailored clothes, extravagantly prepared meals
  etc.
- 7 more annotations...
- - By 1957
  - A sharp conflict arose within the top echelons of the CPC bureaucracy over how
    to deal with this economic and political crisis. A grouping headed by Liu Shaoqi
    and his protege Deng Xiaoping favoured making concessions to the workers,
    peasants and intellectuals along the lines of the post-Stalin regime in the
    Soviet Union headed by Nikita Khrushchev.
  - In December 1958, Mao was forced to resign as China’s president, to be replaced
    by Liu Shaoqi, and his “Great Leap Forward” was condemned at the Lushan plenum
    of the CPC Central Committee in July-August 1959 as “petty-bourgeois
    fanaticism”.
  - the new ruling clique implemented a series of NEP-type concessions to the
    peasantry, granted the first rise in workers’ wages in twenty years and began to
    relax the regime’s rigid control over intellectual life
  - This led to a rapid and massive increase in petty commodity production in
    China’s rural economy and the beginning of a process of primitive capital
    accumulation by provincial and local government bureaucrats.
  - (In 1996-97 the World Bank estimated that Chinese state enterprises’ social
    service payments equalled their “losses”, meaning that they would record profits
    if their workers were not provided with these basic services.)
  - From the point of view of Marxism, the concept of a “socialist market economy”
    is a theoretical absurdity. A socialist economy is an economy in which the
    production and supply of goods is consciously regulated by society to directly
    meet the needs of its members through the socially planned allocation of
    productive resources. The precondition for this is that means of production are
    collectively owned by the dominant social body (the public power representing
    all members of society).
China: is capitalist restoration inevitable? — Eva Cheng about 18 hours ago
- equivalent to about 80 per cent of the money wage.⁴⁶
- The
  state enterprises were also a basic social unit through which a range of
  
  social provisions were delivered, including
  housing, health care, pensions,
  childcare, education, communications and
  price subsidies.⁴⁵ Such a social wage was equivalent to about 80 per
  cent of the money wage.
- 27 more annotations...
- - Since the late 1970s, the planned economy has been progressively chipped away,
    so much so that by 1997, state enterprises accounted for only 27.2 per cent of
    gross value of industrial output,¹ down from 34 per cent in 1995, 55
    per cent in 1990² and 78 per cent in 1978.³
  - but the Asian Development Bank estimated that the state sector in 1990 produced
    less than five per cent of agricultural output in China.⁴
  - Moreover, “state enterprises” in China are not necessarily fully state-owned or
    don’t organically form part of the planned sector any more. Some have been
    partly sold to private-collective interests inside or outside China (through
    stock market listings or as non-listed joint ventures), run essentially as
    profit-making units but carrying the residual obligation to contribute
    financially to the state. Others have been leased out and are operating for
    private profit. Official propaganda strongly suggested that only loss-making and
    smaller state firms would be leased, but there were no safeguards at all that
    this would be the case.
  - Meanwhile, all remaining state firms would be available for leasing or sale
    into private hands.⁶
  - Beijing’s repeated public warnings of the massive “disappearance” of state
    assets—100 million yuan per day according to one estimate,⁸ the
    massive business empire of the military⁹ and the growing private
    sector are powerful indicators of the extent of this process.
  - it even arbitrarily included into the state sector firms on lease to private
    interests
  - Even with this mechanical measure, the “state sector” only accounted for 27 per
    cent of industrial production in 1997
  - Beijing’s justification shifted yet again over the past few years, gradually
    dumping the state sector in favour of the “public sector” as the critical
    reference for its headcount of the “socialist content” of the Chinese economy.
  - Apart from the state firms, the “public sector” also includes collective firms
    and a host of capitalist production units arbitrarily labelled otherwise and
    justified them as an invention of the socialism in China which carries unique
    “Chinese characteristics”.
  - Again, they are stand-alone firms, not part of a planned sector geared to meet
    social needs but to maximise the profits of its “investors”.
  - In capitalist economies, many firms were taken over wholly or partly by way of
    “management buyout”, that is, bought by its managers and employees. But this
    act, on its own, does not change at all the profit-oriented/capitalist nature of
    the firm. The same goes with the companies whose shares were bought by trade
    union, charity, other non-profit oriented organisations or even with workers’
    pension funds.
  - “economic return”
  - Its changing excuses in justifying the “reform” make amusing reading: from a
    planned economy supplemented by market regulation (1979–84), a planned commodity
    economy (1984–87), an economy in which the state regulates the market and the
    market regulates the enterprises (1987–89), an economy with organic integration
    of a planned economy and market regulation (1989–91) and a socialist market
    economy with Chinese characteristics (from 1993).¹⁷
  - The loss of independent identity as a producer hit women especially hard. They
    were forced to earn their existence as part of the family institution which was
    and still is dominated by patriarchy.
  - The profit retention levels and quotas were negotiable, between enterprises and
    local officials, and exchange of favours were common at the expense of treasury
    receipts. This contributed to the historical budget deficit in 1979—17 billion
    yuan²¹—and a 1983 switch to levying by way of tax under the
    “‘tax-for-profit” system.
  - “Prices” in the official market, often for an accounting purpose, were a legacy
    of the planned economy. But the concurrent existence of a capitalist “free
    market”, where prices were higher, opened room for highly profitable
    arbitrages.²⁸ Bureaucrats, who have control over supplies, channelled
    valuable state resources—especially those in short supply—to the “free market”
    for their private gain. This lucrative source of income would dwindle with price
    reform.
  - tobacco
  - Hua Guofeng’s demise in 1980 spelled an end to the obstacles coming from the
    Whatever opponents
  - (Most of its core leaders were sentenced to long jail terms that year on
    “counter-revolutionary” charges.) The other main personalities critical of the
    “reform” were mainly elderlies—Wang Zhen, Peng Zhen, Hu Qiaomu, Song Ping—and a
    handful of second generation stooges such as Deng Liqun and later Li Peng. Their
    only noticeable common ground was their defence of the pre-1978 status quo and
    their extreme dogmatism characteristic of Mao’s time. Deng and other reformers
    called these cp opponents, which they never named, the “Leftists” and their
    die-hard elements the “Extreme Leftists”.
  - Chen supported the reforms but until his death in 1995 kept the pressure up on
    Deng in arguing vocally for a real dominance of the planned sector.³⁸
  - It was a broad scheme to “corporatise” state firms, in the name of “modernising”
    them. They were turned into limited companies, with their asset and liability
    system and limits, even accounting methods, brought into line with the standards
    under capitalism. Evaluation of their worth can therefore be more efficiently
    done and their appeal to potential foreign buyers increased.
  - From 90 per cent in 1978, coverage of the system was slashed to 4 per cent in
    1990, according to the March 3–9, 1997, edition of Beijing Review.
  - The state enterprises were also a basic social unit through which a range of
    social provisions were delivered, including housing, health care, pensions,
    childcare, education, communications and price subsidies.⁴⁵ Such a
    social wage was equivalent to about 80 per cent of the money wage.⁴⁶
  - Foreign capitalists blamed this expenditure for the “losses” of China’s state
    firms, saying they would not be attractive purchases until such a “burden” was
    gone. For example, the World Bank estimated in 1996⁴⁷ that the state
    firms’ social service payments equalled their “losses”, meaning they would have
    made a profit if their workers hadn’t been provided with such basic necessities.
    They were speaking the truth from the stand point of their own interests, but
    were also imposing capitalist categories onto a social arrangement geared to
    achieve a totally different objective.
  - For some years, most state firms had the power to fire their workers but few had
    done so on a significant scale, clearly because such a move would be socially
    unsettling. Many of them have made a big number of workers redundant and delayed
    wage or pension payments but they still haven’t dismantled the long-existing
    social welfare system. But that’s true only for workers employed before 1986.
    Those were “permanent workers”. Workers that state firms employed after 1986
    were on a contract, and had to fund their unemployment insurance and pension to
    buy future protection, just as in capitalist economies. But enforcement of such
    new schemes has been difficult—firms weren’t keen on such expenditures while
    workers weren’t confident of the security of these funds.
  - In name, the state sector is still employing about 66 per cent of the urban
    workforce. But an increasing portion of them have been deprived of such
    protection due to the labour contracts, and the partial or quasi-privatisation
    of state firms. Those who are still entitled to the previous more comprehensive
    social provisions are a shrinking minority of the urban workforce.⁴⁸
  - Moreover, joblessness has become a fact of life. Central bank governor, Dai
    Xianglong estimated that in the first half of 1996, seven to eight per cent, or
    12–14 million, of the urban workforce was unemployed though only 5.2 per cent
    was unofficially unemployed in 1995.⁵⁰ This added to the 120–140
    million “surplus” workers in agriculture, or 35–40 per cent of the rural
    workforce.⁵¹
India’s Operation Green Hunt: A Looming Crime « The Marxist-Leninist about 21 hours ago
Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business. about 21 hours ago
- All imports into China face a 17% VAT, but
  only a handful of exports must pay this tax. In recent years, China has made
  moves to adjust this policy, and now selectively provides the VAT rebate to key
  industries, defined as such either by their inclusion into the PRC's 11th
  Five-Year Economic Plan, or industries that have made investments in special
  economic development zones.
- Because the VAT grievance has impact on China's WTO status, Beijing cannot
  simply ignore it. Manufacturers in the US have long known that their Chinese
  counterparts could export at cost, counting on Beijing to pay them back the 17%
  VAT. This, in conjunction with the yuan's fixed exchange rate, has combined to
  force many US manufacturing companies out of business, a concern the USCC has
  long been monitoring and growing increasingly alarmed about.
- 1 more annotations...
- - The report also reflects a political need on the part of congress to begin to
    act more substantively on the question of China, in ways that are perceived to
    benefit American stakeholders more directly and immediately
Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business. about 22 hours ago
- Even more surprising was the report's contention that "The Chinese military's
  more international orientation is not a fundamentally negative development. A
  more activist PLA could in some circumstances provide a 'public good' by
  contributing more to global stability." Given the many criticisms the report
  usually has for China, these points suggest that even the most hawkish forces
  in Washington are being forced to recognize
  that they will have to co-exist with Chinese power, and that doing so need not
  be detrimental to peace or prosperity.
- "By continuing to consume more than is produced, the United States must continue
  to borrow. Meanwhile, China continues to add manufacturing capacity, producing
  more than it can consume domestically."