Looks to me like they've gone from Communism to fascism. So long as China remains politically a one-party state, they're still not joining the civilized world.

But what is it they say about a journey of a thousand miles...?

The question is, will it be Francoite fascism or Hitlerite fascism?

These are indeed strange times in which we live.

McGehee:

Um, maybe you're joking, but China's actually quite civilized. Open your eyes, or maybe buy a ticket and pay a visit to China. Tickets are currently pretty cheap, and you'd be surprised how civilized things are over here.

Indeed, Chinese communism is fascism - in fact, a purer fascism than either Germany, Spain or Italy could produce. And it currently rules more people than even Hitler could dream.

Criticize the government and your family gets the bill for the bullet the government uses to execute you.

Civilized.

Right.

One question: Would you trust anyone who had such a freaky logo on their site?

It looks like a cross between something from something you would stick on the side of retailers security CCTV systems and the 'do not dry clean' symbol you get in clothing labels.

Quite good writers though.

Mr. Gordon:
Sure, China is civilized. Just as long as you aren't a member of the Falung Gong, or are a Chinese-American activist, or anything like that, it's a great country!

And all those folks in Hong Kong, who are upset about the proposed law to supress dissent there, are all paranoid....

Heh.

In case no one wanted top mention the obvious, capitalism is necessity of survival. Whether you are a democracy, a fascist state, or a communist dictatorship. You will have to trade, you will have to barter, you will have to buy and you will have to sell in order for your country to survive. It is just that simple. No one country can say it has absolutely everything it needs to maintain itslef and its people.

Yeah, I almost choked on my lemonade when I saw the link. And hey, when you see a blog as dug-in-the-heels, stop-the-socialist-advance as Samizdata trumpeting good news, you know there's got to be truth to it.

Considering all the China-is-the-new-Russia paranoid talk from the chattering class, it will be deliciously ironic if they become our allies -- against neo-authoritarianism, Euro-style.

Anyone shocked by this isn't sufficiently familiar with Marx. His main departure from pervious socialists was that he wasn't interested in (his words) "fantasy ideologies", i.e. one's that can't function in the real world do to human nature or physics.

Which is why he advocated that, short of the required preconditions for a revolution of the proletariat, a Good Communist should wholeheartedly support whatever the most advanced capitalist system of the day happened to be.

Unfortunately for his followers, who mostly missed that bit, the required preconditions for a revolution of the proletariat have been dodged. Capitalism within liberal democracies ameliorated it's worst traits with labor laws, unions, and anti-trust.

Marx didn't foresee the novel solutions that would fall out of the marketplace of ideas in liberal democracies as the Industrial Revolution matured.

So in a sense, this development is actually Revolutionary, not Counter-Revolutionary, for the ChiComs to take. (If you don't remember the Cold War, that last bit might not make sense!)

It's true that China's a one-party state. (And I agree that this is not a good thing.)

A blanket statement like "Criticize the government and your family gets the bill for the bullet the government uses to execute you," is also not true. People criticize the government everyday.

In fact, within the one party of the "one-party" state, there is a lot of debate, and impressive reforms have been made. It's also the general consensus of many within the government that China won't remain a one-party state forever. People are hoping and working for change. They've just had enough "revolution" in the past century, so a lot is going on within the established system.

As far as Falungong and Chinese-American activists... I'm with you on this one: the government is being idiotic.

But China is civilized, and I'm a bit insulted when I hear people say otherwise. People work for a living, and have many of the freedoms that we enjoy in the US.

Back to the original post, it is extremely amusing to hear about a communist party embracing capitalism.

Well, come now, this is hardly an overnight development, is it? China's been flirting with the financial benefits of a free market for decades, through the end of the first Bush administration and the Clinton administration. I think it's a great thing, for one: the freedoms and advantages of capitalism will surely transform China over time more effectively than armed conflict.

Well, I disagree with the lot of you in regard to your premises.

I basically don't care that China is and probably shall long remain a one-party state. I don't care about democracy in the the west, and I don't care about it in the east. In any case, a strong central government in China, with its policy of forced abortions and family planning, is the sole factor which has kept the Chinese population at about 1/5 of the world population, instead of the 1/4 or greater that it probably would have reached without such a ruthless policy. That policy also kept China from suffering some of the cycles of mass starvations that had regularly characterized life in that country.

Nor do I care how their government treats the Falun Gong, China-based dissenters, Chinese-American troublemakers who make the mistake of taking their campaigns seriously enough to test the will of the Chinese government, the Tibetans, or any others you would care to mention. Sometimes, for some cultures, dictatorship is exactly what they need. In any case, everyone get the kind of government they deserve, one way or another.

To me, capitalism is everything. A government that takes the long step of recognizing the primacy of the rights of private capital and of private property, has, in my judgement, taken the key step toward the most fundamental reform of their society. All else will follow from this central fact in the fullness of time.

All I know about China is what I have read over a long life time, and what I learned during a few months in the year 1950, when I was a 16-year-old bicycle delivery boy hired by a Chinese take-out food place on Chicago's north side. The folks there were the first real Chinese with whom I had ever had any extended conversations.

The Korean War had just started, and my Chinese employers predicted for me what actually happened in November 1950, when massive Chinese armies swept down across the Yalu river into North Korea, causing the near-destruction of the US Army, Marine Corps, and allied UN-forces which had pushed all the northward through North Korea to the Chinese border.

(It's too bad General Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of USAFFE, didn't have the same quality intelligence available. But then, I'm sure the only Chinese he ever had contact with were servants like "Ah Choo", the amah who served his young son in the Philippine Islands and during the Pacific war. In my experience, servants learn more from their masters than the masters learn from their servants.)

These Chicago Chinese were the most capitalist of businessmen, right to the core. With the added peculiarity that they loved gambling of all types to a degree I had never experienced among the American whites with whom I had been raised, or even the few blacks I had known.

Their personalities were open, frank, direct, and utterly devoid of the kind of half-comical ass-licking that had characterized Chinese and other oriental characters in many a Hollywood-made film.

I had the impression talking with them that despite their distaste of communism of the type practiced by Mao's revolutionary government in mainland China, the overseas Chinese were immensely proud of the fact that China -- after so many centuries of national sloth and disorganization -- had finally stood up in all it might and majesty.

Three years later, I was called to active duty in the US Army (as an enlisted reservist) and listened to many an indoctrination about the Chinese communists, their army, their strengths and weaknesses.

But I will have to tell you that I filtered all of that through the mental lenses of what I already knew about the Chinese. So nothing about what is happening in China today surprises me. Or upsets me. Except for the thought that Chinese families raise their children with a greater deal of discipline and a better approach to their school studies than Americans do. One day we will pay a national price for that.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI