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March 09, 2006

Tugging on the Mau Statue

 

 

Apparently in a bid to attract investors and hush the growing democratic movements springing up all over China like springtime flowers, the fat old men in Beijing have decided to pass a law ostensibly granting more recognition of and protection for private property rights.

 

In China you have two sanctioned hemispheres of political thought: left and lefter (sounds like a movie and for good reason). This mock choice rings similar to that offered Soviet citizens in elections held where they had the choice of either voting for Lenin or... voting for Lenin.

 

Those in the Party who oppose the new property law oppose it as if they were the pious guardians of true socialism, according to an article in The Standard, a state-controlled Chinese business publication.

 

 

The conservative argument has fueled opinion that a law protecting private property would speed privatization and exacerbate the widening gap between rich and poor, which is leading to unrest in the countryside.

 

 

Widening the gap between rich and poor is not likely. In the old days, everyone but the communist chiefs was dirt poor, while the Party elite lived in Saddam-like inexplicable luxury - the new royal dynasty of the modern Sino age.

 

Today more Chinese are enjoying a better lifestyle than before - and so this is narrowing the gap between the Party aristocrats in Beijing and the man on the street. Well, there is a catch, as you might imagine. It's all provided the man on the street is a faithful Party member. Yes, you knew there had to be a catch, and, in Communist-run China it's still all about who you know and whether the state has a strategic purpose in allowing you to do your thing. In the same fashion, Hitler's regime as you might recall, much like mafia bosses allowed friends of the party (at home and abroad) to prosper as they helped directly or indirectly to build the Nazi war machine.

 

So, if you are Chinese and happen to be on the poor end of any current economic gap, then you're experiencing nothing new in a country whose ruling party has about as much if not less concern for the life of its citizens than did the Imperial Japanese when they invaded the mainland more than half a century ago.

 

The article goes on to say that "Proponents reject that argument [of the widening gap], saying one of the purposes of the law is to help ordinary people protect their land from arbitrary grabs by officials, which have been a key flashpoint for protests and even riots in recent years."

 

But of course the dirty little secret is that the people have no way to insure that such a law, even if effective, will remain for any length of time. The point of fact is that in such a dictatorship, a law like this one can be repealed just as quickly as it was initially enacted. Here people can just as quickly and easily be deprived of life and liberty as offered a gold Mercedes and a flat with central heat at the whim of their rulers.

 

The Party commissars are granting some small concessions, it’s true. But only in hopes that the people's grievances will be stymied. But freedom is a hunger that only grows the more you feed it, and, like a fire will not be assuaged once it tastes the air.

 

The Hobson’s choice really rests then with the tyrants of Beijing; if they shut it all down now Soviet-style, they awaken more quickly the already awakening West and face a populous almost on the brink of pushing back hard even now. And if the Communist rulers do nothing, the ghost of Tiananmen will blow across the country and sweep out the Communist party in the manner to which the world in recent decades has become fortunately quit accustomed.

 

No doubt many Chinese look forward to the day when the Mau statues topple and red becomes the color of humiliation for the ousted butchers of Beijing. In that moment the good people of China too will relish the fact that freedom is for all men an historically proven inevitability.

 

Posted by Martin at March 9, 2006 12:45 AM

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