Chinese running dogs

[Skye]

The Wall Street Journal Asia on the Chinese lust for free-market capitalism:

 

THOUGH Mao Tse-tung's portrait still hangs in Tiananmen Square, a recent poll shows that the Chinese are crazier about capitalism than the Americans. In fact, they top the worldwide rankings in their zeal for free markets. No wonder Mao isn't smiling. In a poll conducted for the University of Maryland's program on international policy attitudes between June and August last year, fully 74 per cent of Chinese citizens said they agreed with the statement "the free enterprise system and free market economy is the best system on which to base the future of the world." The Philippines, at 73 per cent, and the US, at 71 per cent, were second and third. The poll, which surveyed 20,791 people in 20 countries, seems like a pretty good snapshot of current sentiment, as such things go.

 

Remarkable, isn't it, that residents of the Middle Kingdom have maintained their appreciation of the benefits of free enterprise through six decades of oppression and economic backwardness imposed by their communist cadres? Then again, for a culture where common New Year's greetings include "I wish you happiness and many riches" and "may you make great profits," should we be surprised?

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17863387%255E7583,00.html

[Pangloss]

It's an interesting observation.

 

Of course, the Chinese people only have access to the markets their government allows them to have access too. Just yesterday there was a story making the rounds about Chinese farmers not being allowed to ask for more money for the sale of their land. And just try and do a Google search on "falun gong" from any computer in China.

[Sisyphus]

Still, it's pretty clear things are steadily getting better in China, not worse. It's always interesting to see how they manage to succeed economically when all conventional wisdom says they should succumb to all the communist state's usual problems.

[Pangloss]

I agree, and I'm actually fairly excited by the prospect of a little superpower competition.

[Aardvark]

It's always interesting to see how they manage to succeed economically when all conventional wisdom says they should succumb to all the communist state's usual problems.

 

All the conventional wisdom is saying that China is going to keep on getting a lot stronger and richer.

 

And China isn't a communist state anyway.

[aguy2]

This is a new thing for the Chinese irregardless of their communist interlude.

Historical pre-communist Chinese culture always placed the merchant at the low end of the status scale, with the family farmer, at least theoretically, at the top of the scale.

 

aguy2