From the Wall Street Journal:
A wave of violent unrest in urban areas of China over the past three weeks is testing the Communist Party’s efforts to maintain control over an increasingly complex and fractious society, forcing it to repeatedly deploy its massive security forces to contain public anger over economic and political grievances…
With inflation getting quite out of control – and don’t believe official numbers; they are bad enough, but don’t even come close to reality – and China’s property bubble in the process of collapsing, things are getting dicey, to say the least, in China. A corrupt, brutal oligarchy has thus far been able to convince the people of China to let them rule…but the deal is that politics is off limits to the masses as long as they continually get better off. That deal is breaking down – and has been for some time now.
The stories that China is some sort of rising super power which will shortly displace the United States are utter nonsense. To be sure, we’re in a bad way right now, but our fundamental strengths far outweigh China, even on our worst day. Most importantly, our government – much as we may be upset with it at the moment – does reflect the will of the people. Obama is President because we elected him; Boehner is Speaker because we voted Republican…there is no one in China outside the ruling clique who had anything to do with selecting China’s leaders. There is a world of difference between a legitimate leader, no matter how much disliked, and someone who was chosen by and answerable to no one.
Chinese dissent, this time around, started in the countryside – which is why it hasn’t been in the news much. Foreigners don’t tend to go in to the large Chinese hinterland. When not discouraged by official action, there is the fact that there is not much for a foreigner to do there – unless you have a hankering to study China in depth, there is no cause for you to get outside Beijing, Shanghai and a few other large, metropolitan areas. But trouble has been brewing there for a long time – spurred on by the way China’s corrupt leaders have been screwing China’s people out of their ancestral lands (something always of great sensitivity in Chinese culture; land is being taken for showpiece projects and even for things as absurd as golf courses…and with little real compensation for the dispossessed). But now it is spreading to the cities – where food prices are fast rising, housing has been ever more expensive and the people watch the well connected piling up vast amounts of wealth while they see little or no direct improvement. This is just the sort of mix which sparks revolutions.
What will come of it remains to be seen – the Chinese security forces have a well-deserved reputation for being able to stamp out dissent. But things may be different now – the troops, of course, are drawn from the very people most angry with the state of affairs. It isn’t some complete stranger who is having his land taken away or seeing his paycheck being eaten up by inflation…it is mom and dad. There could come a situation where the rank and file go easy on the protestors…and that would take the lid right off. In favor of the Chinese government is the Chinese willingness to forgo the personal in favor of societal harmony…there really is a strong disposition to endure in silence rather than rock the boat (and thus endless movements towards liberty in China have been choked off time and time again).
HAT TIP: Mish’s
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