China Calling
Last month the government tried to implement a scheme to pay journalists according to how much Communist party officials liked, or disliked, their articles. In July a political activist was given five years for posting a punk song on the internet deemed to be subversive, and in April a journalist was sentenced to 10 years for sending an email overseas about restrictions on freedom of speech.
guardian
My outrage at the Chinese government’s prosecution of dissidents is tempered with my amusement at the idea of paying journalists based on how much party officials like what they write.
China, for all of the worries about its deep water navy and threat to simply become the sole manufacturer in the world, is virtually crippled by a political system completely out of touch with the wave of modernization which is sweeping parts of the country. The internet is part of it. But the effect of millions of capitalists used to making decisions on their own and taking responsibility for those decisions, not to the party, but rather to the market will drive deeper and deeper wedges between the Communist Party and the people of China. Eventually the facade will break and when it does the shifts in China will leave the old guard wondering where they had been living all this time.
As the emperor - or, realistically, the Dowager Empress - was swept away by Sun Yat San, the Communists are set to be tossed on the ash heap of history by the entrepreneurs who are financing China’s rise to real world power status. And, at a guess, when the shift happens it will be very quick and very incomplete. The north and the west of China may remain under communist, and I use the term loosely, control long after the productive south has left the building.
Written by jay on September 26th, 2005 with no comments.
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