Wen Jiabao Worried About the Safety of US Treasuries

Agreed. I hope the harsh reality will force the decision makers and business people in China to rethink about their long-term priorities.

 

China has restrictions on intellectual property rights?

 

Oops, I meant tighten enforcement on IP rights.

 

Ah, that makes much more sense. And here I was thinking I had seen the first person ever to claim that China needed to loosen up a little w/ regard to IP.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve

We have 8133.5 tonnes of gold in reserve. If you use today's gold price of $928/ounce, it worths $244B. We can give the Chinese some of these before we start printing money.

 

If that's the case then why not just allow multiparty elections?

 

Why would CCP allow that? What's in it for them?

 

They will be on the good side of Western countries and clutchfans members.

 

Silencing most of their foriegn critics, removing a sore point with trading partners, providing for more accountability of the government and allowing the population a say in their governance.

 

Do you think what you mentioned above can benefit the CCP members enough for them to relinquish the power they have?

CCP members are like the AIG execs. They care more about what's in it for them as oppose to what's in it for their country/company.

 

There is no social pressure on them to do so. For now. Chinese people, aside from a few lonely dissidents and intellectuals, aren't interested in multi-party elections. You have to understand the current political system in China is really just an adpatation of the millenium-long imperial system, a meritocracy with civil servants rising through the ranks based on performance, with the Politburo replacing the old emperor at the top. This is a system which the Chinese people are familiar and comfortable with, and it can be highly effective, as we have seen in the last thirty years. Whether this is going to change in the future is anybody's guess.

And they really don't give a crap what the West thinks. They have a deep suspicion that everything the West says and does is intended to undermine China and halt its meteoric rise anyway.

However, CCP think-tanks have been reportedly studying multi-party systems and how political parties can maintain long reigns in such systems, such as in Japan or Singapore. Based on its history, flexibility has been the hallmark of the CCP, from Mao's rejection of Marxist dogma with his peasant revolution, to Deng's rejection of Maoist dogma with his reform and opening-up. I suspect that if and when China does democratise, the CCP will be ready too.

 

I think China will eventually embrace democracy but not because the western countries want it to. It will be because vast majority of the people in the countries think it will be a good idea, it might take 50 years or more who knows.

 

I have been speaking to many young Chinese intellectuals on this issue. The old adulation and admiration for the West of the '89 Tian An Men crowd has long gone, replaced by a cool-headed evaluation of the pros and cons of the democratic system. Most of them think that China will eventually democratise because it's the only system that can provide true long-term stablity. However they don't like democracy's inherent inefficiency. They don't think that democracy is necessarily suited for developing countries. They point out that all the established Western democracies became "developed" BEFORE they became "democratic", while the third world "democratic" countries who have done vice versa are littered with failed "banana republics". The incessant in-fighting and economic stagnation on the island of Taiwan, the first Chinese society in the world to adopt democracy, hasn't really helped the cause. I think the general consesus is that China will democratise, but only after China has completed its rise back to superpower-dom. Exactly when that might be depends on who you speak to.

 

Um, any news on my boy Al Franken?