Gerhard B. Wolski The Editor
Practically the entire world economy is more or less in serious turbulences, except for the Peoples Republic of China, the so-called “mainland”. Giving the next business mantra a name. Yes, the hype must go on. Executives of small and big industries fly in, fly out – admiring the economic miracle between the Amur River and Pacific. Dreaming of 1.3 billion potential electronics consumers and for other goods of all sorts. At home, people have it all. Business life is hard and not encouraging. Go West? No longer fruitful – going East evidently has more awards to offer. See in which breathtaking tempo the old centers of Chinese cities have been broken down, and the new temples erected, made from steel, glass and concrete as uniformly as everywhere Sure, that’s impressive, especially for the “modern” mind. Besides hundreds of millions of bitterly poor people – there is a section of the population which has an enormous consumption potential, and there are plenty of millionaires. That’s not propaganda. Every so-called socialist or communist system needs it nomenclature, the pilings on which such a scheme is built.
Yes, in this perspective, the Promised Land must be in the East. The business climate is excellent. Free enterprise – or just a special form of administration-based intervention economy, controlled by apparatchiks and a long-installed bureaucracy of Stalinist origin? The bright side of China is the flowing trade and business. But there are actually dark sides. Its political leaders are off-springs of a tough communist system, untouched by such “awkward” ideas as human rights and liberal concepts as free elections, free speech or free press, etc. etc. Just look at Tibet and what Chinese occupation made out of it, and is still happening. The people of Tibet have become a suppressed minority in their own country, and torture is still daily occurance in Chinese-governed prisons!
To observe the Chinese leaders and what they dole out with scepticism is definitely a good practice. Providing that we want to keep our eyes open. Or take the management of the SARS epidemic crisis. First, there was nothing announced, then just a few dead reported, the following week the number was about 50 – but “everything is under control”. Let’s see how big the controlled figure will be the following weeks. Ancient regimes (as well as other groups of hubris) have difficulties with something what we can call “the public”. They like the old obsolete “shut-up” guardianship. And is this Peoples´ Republic not the God Father of the rotten system in North Korea? Kindred souls? Official Chinese statistics obviously cannot be trusted, be it SARS infection or economical figures (growth rate 8%?), they are apparently glossed over. And bureaucracy can often not properly handle demanding situations such as SARS or demos for human rights.
If there is no trustful information for the public, just varnished official announcements – on which basis will a company executive build his decisions? Characteristically for such a system is that the information on financial conditions may also be not of the quality we normally expect. Public spending is virtually exploding, and the banks have plenty of dud-loans. Nobody can (or will) say whether it is 40 or 50% of the gross national product. We can only speculate as to when this bubble might burst – in 2, 3 or 5 years?
NB. I’m in deep mourning and angry about the journalists and all other non-combatants who have found their deaths in Iraq. It seems that independent, critical voices have become targets.
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