Re: Fidel Castro "horrified by China"

[Waistline2]

> HORRIFIED BY CHINA   Western observers said Castro was shocked by the rapid move to capitalism and growing social differences he witnessed in China last year.   "There is no coincidence that a lot of this has happened since he visited China. Many people say he was horrified with what he saw," said a European ambassador. <   Comment   Someone said that Castro said something  . . . and with my dumb ass I thought this thread might be about something that Fidel Castro (the paramount leader) had stated . . . instead of someone saying that Castro said something . . . about China.   From my standpoint the conversation concerning China gets loud because of the lack of concrete economic and political data. Then ideology parades as insight.   Last December insurance giant China Life completed the largest initial public offering in the world, raising US$3.46 billion, after raising allotments and pricing shares at the high end of estimates.   In terms of the "capitalism or socialism" debate around China . . . and I am of the opinion that China has the largest socialist economy on earth in real time . . . and yes . . . the bourgeois property relations also exists in China . . . hard economic data and economic logic and insight is hard to come by.   Dig China Life . . . an insurance company . . . that drew billions of dollars to it in an environment where interest payments from banks can be as small as 1/100 of 1 percent . . . annually.   If China's non agricultural workforce is between 350 and 400 million . . . with roughly 100 million in the NON STATE SECTOR . . . then the question becomes what is the economic meaning of state sector and non state sector in China?   Let's forget about the 800 million in agriculture . . . who under the best conditions of industrial socialism ... can only alienate their products on the basis of exchange . . . no matter what the form of property in land.   What is the non state sector in respects to say China Life?   Check out the following excerpt about China Life . . . and then ponder the question is China socialism or capitalism?   Excerpt . . .  begins here.   China Life, like most companies China opens to overseas investors, is state-owned. It's been sliced and diced to create a Frankenstein offering of selected viable parts in order to pass muster with regulators and tempt investors. Bolted on to the top of this monster as its brain is the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The State Council has many constituencies to satisfy, and foreign investors will never climb very high on its list. That's because no foreign investor can threaten the Communist Party's monopoly on power the way domestic rivals or mass unrest might. Foreigners also get limited respect since investors keep falling over themselves to get a piece of the Chinese dream, as they have for the past century and a half. If the Chinese leadership had a good deal to offer, ask yourself, why would they offer it to you and the rest of the overseas investing public? That view may seem outdated, looking at the China that Deng invented and Zhu Rongji revved into the world's fastest-growing nation for a decade. But two other incidents last week, providing background music for flipping your China Life shares, indicate that the political leadership remains intimately involved with the economy in pursuit of its own interests. China's leading car maker, Shanghai Automobile Industrial Corp (SAIC), wants to buy South Korea's Ssangyong Motor, that nation's fourth-largest surviving car company with a dominant position in sport-utility vehicles. But China National Blue Star Group, a chemical company that provides some supplies to the auto industry, likes what it's seen of China's booming car market enough to make its own bid for Ssangyong. This high-stakes acquisition contest didn't play out in the offices of Ssangyong's bankers or lawyers, but in a Beijing meeting of China's National Development and Reform Commission, a body that reports directly to the State Council. As with any good political decision, both companies apparently left the meeting thinking they'd won the nod to bid for Ssangyong. In a wise saying that anyone tempted to think of China as just another economy ought to frame and hang on the wall, a Blue Star spokesman declared: "The Chinese government treats all companies equally - SAIC is state-owned and we are state-owned. This is a market economy, not a planned system." One with distinctly Chinese characteristics, though. This dispute between Chinese suitors will more likely result in heartaches for Ssangyong's sellers rather than a higher price. Whoever winds up with Ssangyong, the new Chinese State owners probably will continue to play by rules that suit themselves. (State-controlled companies, such as Singapore Telecom, buying assets overseas raise a host of competitive and even security questions to be examined in a future column. That Europe has the most experience with such situations is reason enough for alarm.) It's been that way with China's membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). A report from the US Trade Representative released last Friday charges that China maintains barriers to foreign competition in its domestic markets in contravention of WTO rules. That's hardly surprising, given that China enjoyed wide access to export markets as a low-cost producer before joining. Zhu Rongji pursued WTO membership to strong-arm domestic companies into reform, not because he believed in free trade (see The mystery behind Zhu's miracle, February 22). China is by no means alone among nations in formulating trade and other international economic policies with an eye toward domestic concerns. What makes China different is that economic interests don't merely influence political policies; the two are joined at the hip. Those are the facts of life in China and the facts of China Life.   (Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)   http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/EL23Ad04.html     End excerpt.   Now . . . did Fidel say something about the 800 million in China that is the agricultural population? Now the agricultural population . . . like all agricultural populations during the period of the industrial mode of production do not have it good in relationship to the city dwellers. Getting shot protesting arbitrary laws of the local authorities (tax laws and land confiscation) . . . many which are over turned by the central authority . . .  is most certainly a social problem to say the least.   However killing 100 million people in China . . . does not indicate the economic logic of the various regions in China and the complex mix of property forms. In other words the state can own and control an economic institution or productivity unit and offer it up as an investment vehicle in the world market . . . draw in capital (money US) and pay a return on this money greater than the 1/100 of interest offered in Hong Kong and this can be called capitalism . . . ?   Does the government in China retain the right to expropriate the individual and individual enterprises . . . a right the government in the American Union does not have?   (Check out CB's recent articles on the Poletown ruling in Detroit. I remember the Poletown ruling very clearly because this GM plant replaced Dodge Main . . . the focal point of the formation of what would become the League of Revolutionary Black Workers . . . and the plant that replaced it is where my first wife . . . an accomplished and militant trade unionists . . . and mother of our children still works to this very day. And the kids are 31 and 26 respectively).   Fidel horrified at China . . . OK . . . great lead . . . but where is the beef?   OH . . . I forget . . . in America we have to market everything and win an audience.   Pen-L audience needs to rivet on the basis of some hard economic data . . . especially concerning China . . . because this look like the China century.   Bottom line . . . China for some reason does not conform to anything I read in the book . . . but then again . . . the pictures in books never really look like the real thing in life.   I would love a brad overview of everything in China related to internal consumption as production and exchange and who owns what. That is to say productive activity that has as its primary purpose internal consumption. Then there is this massive army in China . . . that is in its essence production and consumption or reproduction on an expanding scale.   Is their an equivalent of Haliburton in China . . . operating on the basis of profit motive or the bourgeois property relations?   How many members of the CPC are unemployed versus capitalists?   I am deeply interested in question like this.   Pen-L supposed to help me with the economic beef . . . where's the beef?     Melvin P.