Want a quick, smart, basic understanding of 21st century China? Pepe Escobar!

[Peace Patriot]

China is the deepest of eastern mysteries to most of us. For a long time, I've wished for a sort of magic "decoder ring" to translate the obscure, uninformative blips of news we get from our war profiteering corporate news monopolies about this determined powerhouse of the 21st century. Appalling bits, or intriguing bits, come our way. But what is really going on in China? How is the country of the "Little Red Book" becoming a capitalistic wonderland, with no revolution in between? What do the people think? How do they think? What are the pitfalls of this transformation? (See article 4.) What does it mean for us, and for the world?

I had the same wish with regard to Venezuela, Hugo Chavez and the South American democracy movement--and soon found www.venezuelanalysis.com, a wonderful "decoder ring" for events south. My multiple political and cultural interests have not left me much extra time to understand such a staggering topic as China--a culture I know almost zilch about, compounded by a formidable language barrier (far bigger than the one for Romance language countries). My once intense interest in I Ching (English trans.) and some other readings simply doesn't cut it, especially as to what's happening in China NOW--high speed, volcanic change.

Today I went roaming the internet for enlightenment, and soon found myself at Asia Times (which I had known to be a superb news/analysis site for the Asia/Pacific region), and rediscovered Pepe Escobar (whose reports on travels across the USA, as our fascist coup was consolidating its power--in 2004--I had found inspiring). So, here is Pepe Escobar on China: an eye-opening series that every American, particularly politically active Americans, should read--if for no other reason than to understand what you are seeing on TV, when the Olympic Games in Beijing next year. There are still mountains of things that I don't understand about China, but I feel I've made a start, reading these 7 fascinating Escobar articles. (And, actually, I Ching was not a bad beginning, since Confucianism is back in fashion in its native land.)

SINOROVING
By Pepe Escobar

PART 1: The Great Wall of Shopping
PART 2: Selling China to the World
PART 3: The hottest label: China chic
PART 4: Tiananmen peasant time bomb
PART 5: Guangdong, unstoppable world's factory
PART 6: Never mind the party, let's party!
PART 7: The emperor's new clothes

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/sinoroving.html

[Annces]

1. China is not a country

I will ever visit. Life is cheap there because of the government.

[Peace Patriot]

2. We slaughtered over 2 million Vietnamese and Southeast Asians in the '60s/'70s,

and over half a million in Iraq (according to the British doctors' report). We furthermore--I recently discovered--were complicit in the slaughter of 200,000 Mayan villagers in the 1980s, with Reagan's knowledge and agreement.

And where do you say "life is cheap"?

Then there's Katrina--abandonment of thousands of the poor, many of whom died due to our federal government's murderous neglect. And the poor and the sick with no medical care, all over this country. The price gouging on drugs, the skyrocketing medical insurance costs, the usurious credit card policies (cc's often used for medical care and other basics).

Bush, at a dinner of fatcat billionaires, said, "I'm glad to be here among the have's and the have mores."

You think life is not "cheap" here--to our government, to their corporate puppetmasters and to the super-rich?

I'm not saying things are better in China--by any means. China seems to be going the way of the Bushites. But we DO need to understand this economic giant, which owns a third of the humongous debt that the Bushites have incurred for our children and our children's children to pay off. I did not post this material as a tourist guide. I posted it as a matter of political, economic and cultural importance--and for the benefit of human understanding by the folks here at DU who help shape political opinion. Frankly, I think that both the government of China and the US need to peacefully overthrown, by means of a grass roots democracy movement, such as is happening in South America--not only for the good of poor and middle classes--the vast majority--but also with the goal of saving our planet, which is fast slipping beyond the point at which mitigation can stop its steep decline toward planetary death. These two industrial powers--China and the US--are pushing our planet over the edge.

You may not want to visit China, but your children, or, if you don't have any, the next generation, will bless you for having been a well-informed, politically active American who helped to turn things around.

[Annces]

3. I agree that to some factions in our country

life is cheap. However it is not so blatant. For instance we have some regulations in place such as vaccinations against rabies for dogs. In China last year, the way they solved an outbreak of rabies was to go from door to door bashing in dogs heads.

Then they have prisons where people are sentenced to life with hardly a trial. In America, we have overflowing prisons resulting from poverty. However we don't have political prisoners put away for doing nothing at all (not counting Guantanamo.) There is something especially grotesque to me about China. I may not want to take a walk through a South American country on a whim. However the repression in China seems to be much more of a stranglehold than here or South America.

And yes China is growing economically. However I live bare bones, and have not a wit of care about buying and selling.

[stillcool]

4. I spent years..

immersed in a Chinese community..learned to speak a little bit of Mandarin, and was fascinated by the their stories...the history, the food, the traditions, the medicine, the card games, the superstitions...everything..so I look at the country...the history, very admirably, almost with awe. The individuals I knew were very compassionate people, who had an unusually refreshing trait of personal dignity. Having been raised by foster parents, I think there was a natural tendency for me to seek out people who had adjusted or blurred identities. We were all individuals with our own personal stories...the choices we'd made, and the hand we'd been dealt. But that was a lifetime ago...It wasn't till many years later, that it dawned on me that the politics of my country had an impact on my own course in life, and that our personal stories were part of a much larger picture.