Posted by Sigismund on August 13, 2008, at 18:02:16
In reply to 'Lucy....'splain dis one.'...Sig..Dinah, posted by Jay_Bravest_Face on August 13, 2008, at 16:53:56
Hi Jay
Here's my bit.
The Chinese looked at how Gorbachev and Yeltsin did it to Russia and decided to do the economic reforms first.
It wasn't an easy task, never having been done before.
The Russian transition from communism has been described as 'the greatest larceny in world history', so I'm looking at it from that perspective and with very low expectations.
(30M starved in man made famines, that sort of thing.)I don't think the west loves China, and I don't think the Chinese are fooled that they do.
I suspect the Chinese take the long view of everything, though this is speculation, based as much as anything on Choe En Lai's famous response to the question
'Was the French Revolution a good thing?'
that it was too soon to tell.(I might add that Newspoll here came up with a result some years back that the Australian people thought China more of a force for world peace than the US .
Anyone familiar with Australia knows that this is an extraordinary result.)I agree entirely about Cuba, Jay. I just want to visit there before they get the free market and lose their architecture, not to speak of their charm.
These bien-pensant leftist tourists, but we have to have our holidays, no?
Still, I was lucky to go to Vietnam more than a decade ago.
The people of Hanoi have class, and architecture.
Still, 'sweatshop of the world'?
Absolutely.
Making all this crap?
Only too true.
For the Chinese it may seem preferrable to work in a sweatshop than be a peasant and work like a slave.The modern world sucks, of course.
poster:Sigismund
thread:845465
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20080728/msgs/845999.html