China

George Victor wrote:

I quite give up on expecting to see your position on China NOW, Fidel, today, this RELEVANT moment, without endless comparisons and exculpatory explanation. 

It's a dirty industrializing country, for sure. Whatever we want China produces. They're even beating North America with production and implementation of certain green energy conservation and efficiency technologies.

They're just playing the game according to the rules of capitalism. And they do it really well as far as capitalism goes. The US acts in self-interested ways in the global economy, and so do China and several other countries. But as Hudson says, very many developing countries are not supposed to be protectionist and especially those debtor nations. They are excpected to obey the diktats of a centrally planned system whereby a handful of countries make up the rules as they go.  Polanyi said laissez-faire was planned but planning was not. There is little room for socially and environmentally progressive forces to intervene in a spontaneous way within this centrally planned globalizing economy. The protests at Seattle and Quebec City were natural and spontaneous reactions to the centrally planned "new" liberalization scheme of things. And to insulate themselves from these free market forces, capitalists have scheduled their secret trade talks in ever more remote locations in far away countries in an attempt to prevent protesters from gathering and expressing their democratic right to oppose their private enterprise agenda.

George Victor wrote:

Internationally, they are playing the mercantalist game, Fidel, See Krugman.  See our empty bloody factories.

Yes the Chinese are scooping up resources around the world as are other Asian countries while the US has busied itself making war. Marx wasn't fearful of capitalist expansionism or even capitalist free trade. Marx thought that globalization of markets would break down old feudal barriers and fiefdoms of influence, and paving the way for socialism to take over all that moer swiftly as he predicted corporations would become centrally planned entities supranational in scope. But he predicted that finance would eventually become subjugated to industrial capitalism. Today it's the other way around with financial capitalists having usurped industrialists for control of the economy and even taken over the reins of resource allocation from US government according to some on the left.

What we have now is a dangerous situation with the US heading up a neo-feudalist world order based on dollar imperialism since Nixon took that country off gold standard. Every other country has donated their national savings to the US economy ever since and financing American deficit spending, over-consumption, and military spending and a lot of it overseas. China and other Asian countries are well aware that the US government has been enjoying a free ride and building up military bases on their frontiers. They've been blocked from stripping US assets as financial capitalists in the US and Britain have done over the last 30 years. China's only other option in this unfriendly situation is to join with other SCO countries in a military alliance and mainly for defensive purposes. Now SCO nations and BRIC nations are talking de-linking from US dollar hegemony. And it's because they have watched closely the US Military encroachment on Asian borders. They want a multi-polar world, and I think SCO and other countries may well be collaborating to realize Keynes' financial disarmament. Perhaps Russian and Chinese strategists/central planners have contemplated  currency hegimony for themselves eventually. But what we're witnessing today could well be described as a mercantilisty competition between countries. I think it's economic warfare as usual, and things could deteriorate toward liquid warfare if the countries with the largest militaries begin losing the game so badly that they believe destroying other countries' infrastructure is the only way to resume dominance. Financial disarmament is almost as important as nuclear disarmament imo. It has to unfold smoothly in order for democracy to win the day, whenever that day comes.

I think we are seeing the end of an era for capitalism, George. I see it perhaps like Marx did, in that the rest of the world is working towards its eventual demise. Dollar imperialism has driven the wanton overconsumption here in the west. Those surplus savings nations, like China, are blocked from doing what the US has done to developing world debtor nations, which has been to strip assets, raise interest rates to please globo money speculators, and ditch any spending on social democracy in favour of repaying debts to finance capitalists. Whether the US takes its own dreaded medcine for IMF structural adjustment planning or not, I think we will see a decline in US dollar imperialism. A multi-polar world should create better chances for an outbreak of democracy in the UN, UNSC, WTO etc if SCO and BRIC countries are ackowledged as leading countries with global influence. We need more countries having input to decision making, like a plan to conserve and reduce pollution and consumption. More democracy is better, imo, because the future of humanity depends on it. I'm with scientist Michio Kaku when he says that the next one-hundred years will be the most important period in human history. We either make it or we don't. We have to attain a certain level of scientific and technological advancement, or  humanity will be in more serious trouble than we are now environmentally and democratically speaking.

Chinese workers protest more than any other workers in the world with something like 60,000 protests every year. 

Meanwhile the frontline state of Colombia is the deadliest country in the world for trade union leaders and human rights activists. And our rollover for Uncle Sam stoogeocracy in Ottawa have no qualms about signing trade deals with the US-backed rightwing death squad government in Bogota.

[url=http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/aug2009/gb20090821_005732.... China beat USA to socialized medicine?[/url]

Quote:

While younger Chinese are still spending (as I wrote in BusinessWeek in March), savings rates among older folks are running as high as 50% as they worry about skyrocketing health-care costs.

In March, China's State Council announced an allocation of $123 billion toward health-care reform. Under the plan, by next year 90% of China's citizens will be covered by a universal health-care system and health-care facilities will be upgraded, including construction of 30,000 hospitals, clinics, and care centers across the country

Closing for length. Please start a part 2 if you wish.