Torgun began a discussion (4/11/05) – see latest – on the World in Common discussion forum:

There has been a lot written about China in the newspapers recently.

Some figures, from the Guardian 07.11.05:

In 2000:

an estimated 885m people in the world spoke Mandarin Chinese compared with 332m who spoke English.

In 2004:

3,400 people were executed in China, according to Amnesty International – 90% of all known executions in the world.

From 1997 till 2003:

car ownership in Beijing doubled, from 400,000 to 800,000

From 1998 till 2002:

The percentage of commuters who cycled to work in Beijing decreased from 60% to 20%

China’s Motorway Network

1987 – 0 km

2000 – 17,000 km

2004 – 34,000 km

In 1998:

The World Bank said that 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities were in China.

* China is now the world’s second biggest emitter of energy-related CO2 after the US.

* Each month, China needs to build the equivalent of Manchester to keep up with population growth.

In a more recent edition of the Guardian, there was an article about China’s contribution to the destruction of the Amazonian rain forest. Apparently, the Brazilian rain forest is now being felled at a fast rate to grow soya beans for export to China, to feed their pigs and their chickens, which in turn feed their population. Brazilian exports to China (and trade with China in general)had sky rocketed in recent years.

There was also mention of the way China is safe guarding access to sea ports in countries such as Pakistan and Malaysia and how they are securing trade agreements with oil and gas producing countries (not for them any worries about Hugo Chavez in Venezuela).

Many thoughts spring to mind reading this:

Are we going to be seeing one mighty clash between the US and China sometime in the very near future over energy supplies?

Global warming – with countries such as China and India rapidly industrialising, and the West carrying on down the same merry path of profits and growth before sustainability – have we got any time left to turn the tide?

Torgun

My reply (13/11/05)

Hi Torgun, This is mega-scary and concerning. The cynic in me says, what they need is a communist revolution. The hypocrisy amongst world rulers is astonishing: painting London red in honour of the Chinese president, Jack Straw talking of discussions with Bush, Blair, Putin & Chinese president re Iran's nuclear ambitions, especially in view of Ahmadinejad’s remark re Israel. Whose possession of nuclear weapons is the most scary, do you think? not Iran's surely? love, Chris

Torun's reply (13/11/05)

Hi Chris,

Yes, the environmental impacts are frightening. I just can't help thinking we have gone past the point of no return.

European companies are worshipping at the feet of this emerging, huge market – too eager to be in at the outset and get their feet in the trough to pay any attention to more far reaching issues. And the public at large are too hypnotised and mesmerised with spending to the limits of their credit cards and beyond to pay any attention to dissenting voices. They just want to pull the wool well and truly over their eyes - perhaps we might as well join them?

As regards USA and China – if they don't come to blows, perhaps they'll just join forces, split up the world's energy spoils between them and tell the rest of the globe that they are the only ones allowed to have nuclear energy and the only ones allowed to use it (as the US already have done, with their tests on Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Not too sure what you mean by a “communist” revolution here – I take it you meant in inverted commas? Do you mean the cynic in you thinks they need another state-capitalist revolution? (Torgun, please!)

Torgun

From Jim (13/11/05)

BEIJING (Reuters):

China’s Communist Party plans to spend millions of dollars to revive Marxism in an apparent bid to shore up its political legitimacy and fill an ideological vacuum that has spawned official corruption. The step might seem unusual coming more than 50 years after the Communists swept to power and almost three decades after the end of the Cultural Revolution relegated copies of Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book to storage trunks and shops for foreign tourists. Communist revolution has been replaced by economic revolution and Soviet-style building projects by skyscrapers, while the German economist’s theories have become virtually unread in China after more than two decades of market-oriented reforms.

But the new directive appears to have come from the top. Communist Party chief Hu Jintao was trained as an engineer, but spent his early career as an ideological commissar and has overseen a series of campaigns to harden party orthodoxy. The party, which has monopolised power since 1949 and ruled out Western-style democracy, is borrowing from Marx once again. About 100 million yuan ($12 million) will be poured into the first stage of the “Marxist Theoretical Research and Construction Project”, an academic with knowledge of the plan told Reuters.

“Whatever amount is asked for will be given,” said the academic, who asked not to be identified. “Marxism will be utilised to explain the party’s (political) theories, policies and goals and emphasise the Communist Party’s legitimacy,” he said.

Unlike previous translations, most based on Russian-language versions of Marx’s works from the former Soviet Union, the latest tomes will be taken directly from the German. The government’s 11th five-year development plan covering 2006-2010 calls for “strengthen(ing) Marxist theoretical research and construction”. Under the plan, a 300-strong team will publish 13 new university textbooks on issues ranging from philosophy to political economy, political science, sociology, law, history, news and literature, the Oriental Outlook magazine said. The textbooks will have “characteristics of contemporary Chinese Marxism” and replace earlier versions based on Soviet translations, it said. They need to be approved by the party’s all-powerful, nine-member Politburo Standing Committee before publication, the weekly said, in an indication of their political weight.

A 10-volume collection of works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and a five-volume collection of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin’s works will be retranslated and published by 2007. The Institute of Marxism under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a top government think-tank, will be promoted in status to an academy with the number of staffers expanded to 200 from 75 currently, the academic and the magazine said.

The Academy of Marxism will be formally established on Dec. 26 coinciding with Mao’s 112th birth anniversary, they said. The academy’s president will hold a rank equivalent to a cabinet vice-minister, up one notch in the civil service hierarchy compared with the institute director.

The party established the Institute of Marxism in 1979 to reinterpret Marxism and debunk Mao’s ultra-leftist policies. Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” once served as the bible of China’s revolutionary generation. China’s ruling party is still communist in name but has embraced capitalist tools and given its blessings to private enterprises and property.

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