Globalization is the weapon of repression in China
by Wei Jingsheng
Merging markets and opening borders has undoubtedly had great benefits for the world, but not for those nations which - like China – exercise an authoritarian power and economic development. Without democracy and social equity Beijing will collapse. The analysis of the great Chinese dissident.
Washington (AsiaNews) - Where is the way out for China? There are a lot of hypotheses. They
are very reasonable, but most focus on only one aspect. Some friends have pointed out that it should be related to political reform, or the reform and revolution of the whole social system, of which one of the most critical parts is the reform of the economic system. Other friends would immediately respond: Deng Xiaoping has already engaged economic reform 30 years ago, why is not it a way out? In fact, it is because that there are many types of economic systems. When reform is not toward the right type, then the result is completely incongruous.
Putting it simply, although Deng Xiaoping removed the Mao Zedong style planned economy under comprehensive monopoly, he only turned the economy into a semi-market variety that is monopolized by bureaucrats. The Maoist planned economy and the bureaucratic monopoly of a semi-market economy are the two extremes. From the perspective of the economic benefit people receive, or adopting a popular saying inside China, the perspective of distribution, the former contains extreme but stifling equality while the latter is extremely unfair. Both do not reach a goal of balance. In other words, the best economic system should be a balance between equity, opportunity, and efficiency, rather than any one extreme.
To put it bluntly, the social and economic development needs to be efficient to be able to mobilize the enthusiasm of the people, especially of those people whose capacity is relatively stronger.
This situation requires a certain degree of gap between rich and poor, to provide people of more ability psychological and physical satisfaction for needs beyond the needs for living and lives beyond those of ordinary people. This disparity is the positive part of "letting some people get rich first."
The most important lesson for the Westerners in developing a market economy was that they were not paying attention to the unequal distribution and the wealth gap during its early stages. The gap
between rich and poor not only causes social instability, but also hinders economic development directly by not developing a market within their own countries. Despite there were various economic units of corruption and luxury as a supplement, fledgling market economies were unable to regulate the defect aspect of a small market. As a result, early colonial economies became important regulators for the early day capitalism, followed by increasing social instability until the breakout of a world war. Then, the economic development achievements were destroyed by the war.
After two world wars, people gradually woke up. Both fairness and efficiency are two legs of social and economic development. Neither should be missing. A society of unfair distribution would be like a lame person, who could not walk fast and is easily tumbled over. A pure "market economy", would allow the non-rational, non-human nature of the market to dominate the human, instead of letting humanity dominate the market. The result is that the few who dominate the market gradually become non-human, while the rest of the human race becomes dominated, crushed, and exploited, living in a life less rewarding than the cattle and horses as described by Karl Marx.
The way to change this situation is for the governments regulate the distribution, in an effort to control the balance between distribution and development according to the prevailing needs of the local people and economic level; or say to find the balance point between efficiency and equity. This was the democratic approach developed after the war. On the surface, World War II appeared to be the decisive battle between democracy and authoritarianism. However, actually it was a decisive battle between a social and economic system with a balanced development and a social and economic system of tyranny with high efficiency.
The Westerners after the victory, understood more of the importance of democratic politics. Without democratic politics, it will not be possible to regulate the market economy in a timely fashion, and thus it will be very difficult to maintain a balance between fairness and efficiency. The so-called Marxism socialism which was popular after the war, was a system of absolute equality maintained by the dictatorship. History has proved that it is a relatively inefficient system. So it broke down after less than half a century, being unable to compete with freer markets. Half of the initial social experiments in Marxism began walking toward democracy albeit with hesitation, while the other half went to the other extreme directly. That extreme was the bureaucratic capitalism using economic indicators as its sole target, the so-called China Model.
Deng Xiaoping may not be a Marxist, but at least he was a Leninist and Stalinist. Maintaining the Communist one-party dictatorship was his goal in life. Therefore, after the failure of Mao Zedong's system, Deng, unwilling to give up one-party dictatorship, would not let China move toward democracy no matter what. Thus, he accepted the only economic model able to maintain the one-party dictatorship -- bureaucratic monopolized capitalism. Deng vainly hoped that his highly efficient competition would defeat democracy, thus keeping the country under the Communist rule. As a matter of fact, this China Model is not really unique. Before World War II, both Germany and Japan had bureaucratic capitalist monopolies very similar to China nowadays. The reason for failure was the insufficient market, resulting in a war vying for the market. The theoretical base for
Adolf Hitler was Lebensraum, to expand for "living space".
So how was Deng Xiaoping to solve this issue? The globalization movement initiated by the capitalists in the USA provided an unexpected opportunity. The theoretical basis of this movement was not new. It was the universal market theory of the traditional and early stage capitalism of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, except to perfect it further. As the motive for capitalists is to pursue maximization of profit, they must need two conditions: the first is cheap labor and the second is high-priced markets. In a democratic environment these two cannot coexist. However, when there is an economy connecting rich democracies with poor tyrannies, then it is possible.
Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang noticed this kind of successful model from the examples of some small countries. They extended it into a larger scale by including both China and the West: thus the so-called China model. The crucial point of this model, or the key to "success", is opening up so-called free trade between democratic and authoritarian countries. Thus, the vast market within democratic countries is able to supplement the market shortage of the "pure market economy" in the authoritarian state, in the same role of the colonies during the early capitalist era. The difference between the social systems of these countries results in a huge drop in commodity prices.
This is the reason for the multinational companies to earn excess profits. It is also the root cause for them to lobby the democratic politics and to protect the authoritarian states. Not only China is at play; just looking at the actions of the democratic countries during the recent Jasmine Revolution in North African countries, it is sufficient to fully demonstrate the manipulation abilities of multinational companies. These actions also illustrate the myth of "businessmen being the natural allies of democracy" to be fully exposed whenever it is related to profit. Yet, the profit in China is far exceeds the sum of the profits in the North African countries. So when there are people claiming that businessmen will support Chinese democracy, they might just as well say that pigs can fly and turtles can climb trees.
Dominated by the huge profits, the businessman in the West will not be bothered by persuading politicians to sell the interests of their own countries, let alone the interests of peoples of the other countries.
This so-called "globalization" and "meeting international standards" is something that I will continue to give you an analysis of in the future.
are very reasonable, but most focus on only one aspect. Some friends have pointed out that it should be related to political reform, or the reform and revolution of the whole social system, of which one of the most critical parts is the reform of the economic system. Other friends would immediately respond: Deng Xiaoping has already engaged economic reform 30 years ago, why is not it a way out? In fact, it is because that there are many types of economic systems. When reform is not toward the right type, then the result is completely incongruous.
Putting it simply, although Deng Xiaoping removed the Mao Zedong style planned economy under comprehensive monopoly, he only turned the economy into a semi-market variety that is monopolized by bureaucrats. The Maoist planned economy and the bureaucratic monopoly of a semi-market economy are the two extremes. From the perspective of the economic benefit people receive, or adopting a popular saying inside China, the perspective of distribution, the former contains extreme but stifling equality while the latter is extremely unfair. Both do not reach a goal of balance. In other words, the best economic system should be a balance between equity, opportunity, and efficiency, rather than any one extreme.
To put it bluntly, the social and economic development needs to be efficient to be able to mobilize the enthusiasm of the people, especially of those people whose capacity is relatively stronger.
This situation requires a certain degree of gap between rich and poor, to provide people of more ability psychological and physical satisfaction for needs beyond the needs for living and lives beyond those of ordinary people. This disparity is the positive part of "letting some people get rich first."
The most important lesson for the Westerners in developing a market economy was that they were not paying attention to the unequal distribution and the wealth gap during its early stages. The gap
between rich and poor not only causes social instability, but also hinders economic development directly by not developing a market within their own countries. Despite there were various economic units of corruption and luxury as a supplement, fledgling market economies were unable to regulate the defect aspect of a small market. As a result, early colonial economies became important regulators for the early day capitalism, followed by increasing social instability until the breakout of a world war. Then, the economic development achievements were destroyed by the war.
After two world wars, people gradually woke up. Both fairness and efficiency are two legs of social and economic development. Neither should be missing. A society of unfair distribution would be like a lame person, who could not walk fast and is easily tumbled over. A pure "market economy", would allow the non-rational, non-human nature of the market to dominate the human, instead of letting humanity dominate the market. The result is that the few who dominate the market gradually become non-human, while the rest of the human race becomes dominated, crushed, and exploited, living in a life less rewarding than the cattle and horses as described by Karl Marx.
The way to change this situation is for the governments regulate the distribution, in an effort to control the balance between distribution and development according to the prevailing needs of the local people and economic level; or say to find the balance point between efficiency and equity. This was the democratic approach developed after the war. On the surface, World War II appeared to be the decisive battle between democracy and authoritarianism. However, actually it was a decisive battle between a social and economic system with a balanced development and a social and economic system of tyranny with high efficiency.
The Westerners after the victory, understood more of the importance of democratic politics. Without democratic politics, it will not be possible to regulate the market economy in a timely fashion, and thus it will be very difficult to maintain a balance between fairness and efficiency. The so-called Marxism socialism which was popular after the war, was a system of absolute equality maintained by the dictatorship. History has proved that it is a relatively inefficient system. So it broke down after less than half a century, being unable to compete with freer markets. Half of the initial social experiments in Marxism began walking toward democracy albeit with hesitation, while the other half went to the other extreme directly. That extreme was the bureaucratic capitalism using economic indicators as its sole target, the so-called China Model.
Deng Xiaoping may not be a Marxist, but at least he was a Leninist and Stalinist. Maintaining the Communist one-party dictatorship was his goal in life. Therefore, after the failure of Mao Zedong's system, Deng, unwilling to give up one-party dictatorship, would not let China move toward democracy no matter what. Thus, he accepted the only economic model able to maintain the one-party dictatorship -- bureaucratic monopolized capitalism. Deng vainly hoped that his highly efficient competition would defeat democracy, thus keeping the country under the Communist rule. As a matter of fact, this China Model is not really unique. Before World War II, both Germany and Japan had bureaucratic capitalist monopolies very similar to China nowadays. The reason for failure was the insufficient market, resulting in a war vying for the market. The theoretical base for
Adolf Hitler was Lebensraum, to expand for "living space".
So how was Deng Xiaoping to solve this issue? The globalization movement initiated by the capitalists in the USA provided an unexpected opportunity. The theoretical basis of this movement was not new. It was the universal market theory of the traditional and early stage capitalism of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, except to perfect it further. As the motive for capitalists is to pursue maximization of profit, they must need two conditions: the first is cheap labor and the second is high-priced markets. In a democratic environment these two cannot coexist. However, when there is an economy connecting rich democracies with poor tyrannies, then it is possible.
Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang noticed this kind of successful model from the examples of some small countries. They extended it into a larger scale by including both China and the West: thus the so-called China model. The crucial point of this model, or the key to "success", is opening up so-called free trade between democratic and authoritarian countries. Thus, the vast market within democratic countries is able to supplement the market shortage of the "pure market economy" in the authoritarian state, in the same role of the colonies during the early capitalist era. The difference between the social systems of these countries results in a huge drop in commodity prices.
This is the reason for the multinational companies to earn excess profits. It is also the root cause for them to lobby the democratic politics and to protect the authoritarian states. Not only China is at play; just looking at the actions of the democratic countries during the recent Jasmine Revolution in North African countries, it is sufficient to fully demonstrate the manipulation abilities of multinational companies. These actions also illustrate the myth of "businessmen being the natural allies of democracy" to be fully exposed whenever it is related to profit. Yet, the profit in China is far exceeds the sum of the profits in the North African countries. So when there are people claiming that businessmen will support Chinese democracy, they might just as well say that pigs can fly and turtles can climb trees.
Dominated by the huge profits, the businessman in the West will not be bothered by persuading politicians to sell the interests of their own countries, let alone the interests of peoples of the other countries.
This so-called "globalization" and "meeting international standards" is something that I will continue to give you an analysis of in the future.
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