IOC officially investigating underage Chinese gymnast

haimoc

doggie750 wrote: »

14 or 16...........she's still good! Why challenge her ability? Congratulation to her.

I agree...

devani

BeRad wrote: »

But should they still be allowed to host the manufacture of the majority of the consumer goods (non food) that you buy?

China makes our lives more affordable! Let them do what they want. If anyone can cheat and get away with it, they deserve whatever they get, good or bad.

It's kind of like pulling of a successful bank robbery. Sure, its wrong, but you gotta respect the dedication and planning.

I am sure that you have one of these cars in your garage....holy :eek::eek: honestly are you a communist??

BeRad

devani wrote: »

I am sure that you have one of these cars in your garage....holy :eek::eek: honestly are you a communist??

No I haven't been able to export one yet . Nothing beats Domestic for personal vehicles (except Japanese, Italian, German, British, Sweedish... well most of Europe I guess) lol

I am not a communist but I do believe in certain aspects of communism. Mainly, I have nothing against Communists or countries that currently use that system. I only hold negative feelings towards people who directly or indirectly affect me in a negative way, not simply because of where they live or what political system they like.

Norm Apter

And while it may be irrelevant to this discussion and a bit of a derail, there's really nothing "communist" about China these days except for the name of the party in control. Even the ideology of communism is more or less irrelevant, not even believed in by the party elite, ever since the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and the death of Mao in 1976.

One-party system, dictatorship, authoritarian regime... take your pick. But when I see the term "communist" I think of a party-state that owns all of the means of production, and thats hardly the case in China these days. Anyone who goes there for the first time might be shocked by the amount of entreprenurial activity going on, from the street vendor up to proprietors of luxurious goods and real estate agents. Not an exact replica of U.S. style capitalism, but much closer to it any pure form of communism would be.

Its kind of a messy system for which there is no blueprint. But to label it communist is to deny the great changes that have taken place over the past 30 years and made China the economic powerhouse that it is today.

Demiurge

It's the People's Republic of China and it's run by the Communist Party of China. Any kind of glossy spin you want to put on it, they're still communist. They are becoming more "westernized," to the dismay of the Chinese government. It's hard to control that many people once they start getting a taste of freedom.

Anyone claiming there isn't anything communist about China just needs to watch the way these olympics have been run and that's enough ammo to laugh that claim right out of the room. I'll give you that they're much more socialist than they are communist, either way neither give the people much freedom or individuality.

Norm Apter

I'm not "putting any spin on it"; nor am I making any excuses for the Chinese government. I've spent a fair amount of time there and I have pretty negative things to say about how the government treats the people.

My point is that "communism" defined as a economic system, in the original sense that Marx and Engels used it, is largely dead in China. As I said, if you're talking politics, it would be more appropriate to use the term authoritarian or single-party regime than communism or even socialism. If you're going to use the term communism to describe whats going on in China you need to go back to the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Thats all I'm saying.

Demiurge

If it's not socialism or communism, what is it...?

Norm Apter

Demiurge wrote: »

If it's not socialism or communism, what is it...?

Thats actually a great question.

As I said in my first post, the party-state is following this historically unprecedented (to the best of my knowledge) path for which there is no blueprint. The state still has large control over key industries, but ever since the early 1980s, an ever increasing number of SOE (state-owned enterprises) have gone bankrupt and the government has not bailed them out or allowed them to continue running at a loss, as it would have in the past. In their place, has been a tremendous growth of private businesses.

The tricky thing about analyzing China, in my view, is that there isn't this clear line of demarcation between state and society that we tend to see in the European historical experience. While that line can be blurry even in the West (think of big business relationships to Western governments), in China the connections that overspread these two entities are even more central to how the whole economy works, at least on the top. But, at the same time, there is just this explosion of entreprenurial activity from all sectors (agricultural, industrial, service, technology) that is tremendously exciting and dynamic. Take a walk in the big cities and you might get the sense that they have the capitalist bug even more than Western countries that adhere officially and explicitly to a free-market system. The Communist Party, especially since the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, is aware that communist ideology is completely bankrupt; in its place it has relied on stirring up nationalism and doing it best to ensure continuous economic growth. And thus it has taken great pains to give individuals ever more space to increase their material fortunes. There has been a tremendous growth in the amount of personal space and freedom of choice (the ability to switch jobs, relocate, purchase housing) since that point. Of course that freedom ends abruptly as soon as one chooses to challenge the state's right to rule, either directly or even indirectly.

Well, to get back to your question, I remember reading a book called China Wakes that was written by Nicolas Kristoff in 1994 or so. He proposed the term "Marxist-Capitalism" (as a play on market-capitalism) to illustrate the paradoxical nature of a sort of Leninist one-party model combined with a quasi-capitalist system. I'm not saying that this is the best term to describe whats going on, but it does get at the heart of the oxymoronic tendencies in China's political economy.

Norm

Demiurge

In a way it was really more of a rhetorical question. I don't bite on the cultural relativism and prefer to call a duck a duck. You see, Communism is not really a monolithic philosophy at all. The Chinese have refined Communism greatly over the past few decades, to the point of angering the now former Soviets. Hu Jintao has made open statements calling men like Mikhail Gorbachev betrayers of Socialism.

It's very unwise to assume that Chinese invitation of foreign investment, mainly for the purposes of bolstering Chinese infrastructure, is anything less than a distraction from their unquestionable Marxist goals as a government.

There are also plenty of wealthy Chinese businessmen, a point I don't dispute, however the income gap is artificially generated by the Chinese government. They still oversee who gets what.

Ultimately, China is a still a Communist nation at the government level. I don't believe that the Chinese people are all Communist.

Norm Apter

OK, Demi, I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree.

I understand communism as Marx defined it: state ownership of both the means of production and the relations of production (i.e. labor) which does not exist or, at the most, exists only on a very limited scale in China today. The state does not own labor power as it did from the 1950s to the 1970s, evidenced by the fact that communes, collectives, and state-owned enterprises have been systematically dismantled since the onset of the Post-Mao Reform era. To me, thats a fundamental criterion of communism that is missing in China today.

Again, I'm not sure what you mean by the state's "Marxist goals." To the best of my knowledge, Lenin was the one who introduced the political component of communism such as "democratic centralism"; Marx's ideas were rather undefined on the form of the party-state. I would concur that the Leninist spirit of party control/supervision is very alive today, but to imply that China wants to push back to the days of Marxist ideological imperatives as seen in the economic organization of communes, collectives and state-owned enterprises seems mistaken.

I think a lot of us tend to assume that the Party has this big master plan and has master control over everything. I don't think so at all. Its not just that there are number of wealthy businessmen. There's this huge middle class (hundreds of millions) that has emerged over the past few decades. And most important, the state does not micro-manage the economy the way it used to. Yes, they retain ultimate control (for example if someone crosses the political line the government can easily step in and confiscate their wealth), but there is tremendous economic freedom (though not political freedom) for average people in China today. If you were to spend some time there, this economic activity, as I said, is really striking. You can really do pretty much whatever you like as long as you don't challenge the government.

As I see it, there's no such thing as a "communist nation at a government level" -- to me, without those essential components of communism (state ownership of the means of production and of the relations of production) we best call it an authoritarian regime or single-party regime. I do agree with you that the state has particular goals during the introduction of the economic reforms. I disagree with you though that it plans to adhere to or reintroduce Marxist goals -- its underlying goal is to preserve its own power, nothing more, nothing less. There's nothing Marxist about that. It a "statist" ideology.

Anyway, thats why I take issue with labeling it a communist state. But if you define communism or Marxism in a different way from me, it can be an open question. If you reject my definition of communism or Marxism, then I guess I just don't know how you are defining those terms. That seems to be the sticking point.

shack

All of this BS because of one little "alleged" underage gymnast :rolleyes: