So there I am, sandwiched between Georges Galloway and Monbiot (sounds positively Sheridanesque, Richard Brinsley, not the other guy) sending birthday greetings to the People's Republic of China on Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show. They wanted it kept short, around a minute, and in the form of a birthday card with achievements, hopes and fears, etc.
You can listen for seven days here. Scroll halfway along, it's an hour in.
For those unable to tune in, here's mine.
Happy Birthday, China
Happy 60th birthday, People’s Republic of China. Only another twelve years and you’ll have lasted longer than your Big Brother, the Soviet Union.
Well done. You used to be a decrepit old famine-ridden imperial order, the punchbag of every colonial bully, forcing you to take their opium and biting off chunks of you willy-nilly. But now you’re set to become the world’s Number One superpower. Talk about going from a 10 stone weakling to Charles Atlas. See what a good diet can do for you?
But watch out you don’t go down the same road that they did and DON’T forget your socialist beginnings. The creation of 6,000 billionaires in a decade — mostly the children of the state bureaucrats who once ran the public assets now owned by the Little Emperors — is NOT a good sign. I hope you’re keeping tabs on that.
They say you’re the biggest polluter in the world but you’re still less per capita than the US and other G8 economies. And we invented the Industrial Revolution, after all, belching out carbon emissions for 160 years with no let-up in sight.
So quit smoking or at least change to filter tips. Show the world you have the will, the ingenuity and the means to triumph where we’ve failed, and shame us all into catching up.
A last word — it’ s no good sticking your fingers in your ears and going “La, la, la, la, la, can’t hear you,” whenever anyone tells something you don’t want to hear. It’s not big and it’s not clever.
With 4,000 years of civilisation behind you and a good dose of enlightenment philosophers like Marx to pep you up, we expect you to be the ideal synthesis of all that’s best in World thought.
Don’t let us down. And I hope you’ll be kinder to us than we were to you.
Many happy returns.
Love,
Anna
x
13 comments:
But China's economy only really got going after 1979 when they dumped Marxism. It was a direct result of the state increasingly removing itself from industry and business that China's economy flourished. Previous to that it was the usual Marxist basket case.
Credit were credit due MM, not to some dunce head ideas by a man who spent his life in a library and who neglected his family. Marxism! it's for simpletons.
PS Did you have a nice time in St Ives? Do you have any pictures of that Chinese that you cart around with you.
I will listen to the show later, liked the birthday greetings btw!!
:)
Prior to that, Mr Divine, it was the usual capitalism basket case with famines, invasion and pillaging of national resources by foreign powers, and a nasty civil war.
Th early days of the planned economy gave China the basis where production could erupt. Unfortunately, the wealth is being concentrated in the hands of the emerging ruling class, while workers and peasants have lost out.
Yes, she came with me and had a great time. I shall post extracts from the show she did ASAP. :-)
Thanks, Harpy. I was thinking of posting a video of my birthday greetings at YouTube.
MM, what was the price paid in terms of human rights for the situation in China? How many people for instance were killed by Mao? Isn't it to your discredit that you have completely ignored this issue? Love your blog but I feel an apologia for Chinese authoritarianism lets down millions of Chinese.
MM, what was the price paid in terms of human rights for the situation in China? How many people for instance were killed by Mao? Isn't it to your discredit that you have completely ignored this issue? Love your blog but I feel an apologia for Chinese authoritarianism lets down millions of Chinese.
Paul: "How many people for instance were killed by Mao?"
Fewer than died in India under capitalism during the same period.
No-one's denying Mao's excesses, although Chang/Halidayesque cartoon portrayals of Mao as a one-dimensional Fu Manchu monster have been thoroughly debunked by academics and others — Mobo Gao and Prof Gregor Benton being two worth reading on the subject. Highly critical but without the hysteria.
It's worth remembering that there are millions who were lifted out of poverty and who've seen a doubling of age expectancy, and who's rights are currently being clawed back by an emerging ruling class.
"... apologia for authoritarianism" is a silly and lazy reading of the points I've raised in my missive and elsewhere.
'It's worth remembering that there are millions who were lifted out of poverty and who've seen a doubling of age expectancy, and who's rights are currently being clawed back by an emerging ruling class.' MM, you are surely correct in the regard that rights in China are still being abused. However to say that this is because of China becoming capitalist is disingenuous in the extreme. The human rights situation was far worse under Mao (we don't know exactly how many tens of millions died) and that was authoritarian Marxism. Saying Capitalism killed more in India is also off the mark. But then relativity always is. However I must admit to having a fascination with China.
So far, Paul, you've accused me of being an apologist for authoritarianism, lying ("disingenuous"), and "discredited". Not a bad haul in two short posts.
"Saying Capitalism killed more in India is also off the mark."
Please back that up with facts. There are figures on this, you know, apart from well known corporate horrors such as Bhopal.
The exercise was to write a birthday card encouraging China to do better, acknowledging what they've done well, not send hate mail. There's no point going through a tick box list of what they're getting wrong — I assume we know those. If I was a peasant or worker I'd rather have had the revolution and have had a period of better housing, healthcare, employment, etc, than be stuck in the nightmare of being the starving junkie prostitute of the East (no offence to starving junkie prostitutes).
While many died under Mao (but not as many as the estimated 100 million who died under Victoria's Empire) due to famine, misleadership, civil war/faction fighting (Red Guards were fighting Red Guards), to distort this as one man's psycho mass murder is to distort events and hamper our understanding of what happened, why it happened, and how we can prevent this happening again. I understand that you have an anti-socialist agenda, Paul, but those of us who want a fairer planet for everyone have to develop an analysis and that means being better informed.
Meanwhile, Milton Friedman's acolytes from the Chicago School of Economics are turning this world into a living hell, over a million have died in Iraq, we continue to pollute the world, we're losing our liberty in the West, and all that has a real immediate effect on our lives.
'The exercise was to write a birthday card encouraging China to do better, acknowledging what they've done well, not send hate mail.'
Come on Anna you're being very defensive as I have not accused Mao anywhere of being some kind of Psycho, nor am I against the people of China. The point is about History and whitewashing large sections of it to promote a regime.
The regime in China now and under Mao was despotic. Does that mean Mao was some kind of evil psycho? Clearly not but he was a tyrant. And one problem is that in history we don't yet know how many people died under his regime. However estimates vary from the tens of millions to over 100 million. Either way he was no benign figure. However in spite of my dislike for Marxist tyrannies, I will concede that he was a better leader for China than for instance Chiang Kai Shek.
My point is that in praising any regime or course of political action, it is only right to also cast a critical eye. I'm entirely willing to believe that Communism bought some benefits to many Chinese. However it also killed and tortured many Chinese. The cost of Socialist progress was the liberty of the individual. This price is still paid today by people in China as it is in Cuba.
You're probably right about the Victorians in India. In a similar vein if I was to offer praise for British Imperialism and talk of how its legacy in India, was a modern democratic nation. I would surely expect you to point out the problems with that argument (brutality during the 19th century and Amritsar etc).
Anyway back on topic, I too would wish like to wish China a happy birthday. I hope that it could emerge from Communism to a modern democratic future. I fear however we may see a liberalisation of the economy but not much else. Time will tell. Either way I have no disdain for the Chinese people nor your good self.
Paul. I'm pleased to hear you have no disdain for the Chinese people or myself. But when you open up with personal swipes it can look that way and it makes it difficult to have a debate.
If you don't write off Mao as a one-dimensional psycho then that is good — but you seem to be getting much of your info from the Chang/Haliday hatchet job (and areas where it's seeped into the media) which does assert that.
We'll have to disagree on how many died and through what causes. Was Mao a manipulative bully? Yes, he was. But given the slaughter by the Japanese fascists and Chiang's Kuomintang prior to the revolution, perhaps that was required up to a point in order to defend the Chinese masses. The point at which that should have stopped is where we can argue. When he unleashed the Red Guard drive during the Cultural Revolution it ended up biting him on the bum and they had to backtrack pdq.
If he was so murderous he was a bit inefficient at it. After all, he left old enemies such as Deng Xiaoping alive to fight again. (He didn't bomb innocents from 30,000 feet.)
"My point is that in praising any regime or course of political action, it is only right to also cast a critical eye."
I did indeed raise three areas of criticism in my original piece: socialist principles (stealing from the poor to enrich the new ruling class), pollution, and freedom of speech (human rights by implication).
As I wrote before, Mobo Gao and Prof Greg Benton shed fresh light on this part of Chinese history. Jenny Clegg's new book is also said to be informative but not without controversy.
Lastly, you cite Cuba along with China as examples of despotism, countries where literacy is high and life expectancy longer. I'd rather live there than Chile, Saudia Arabia or Iraq. Or New Orleans or Washington DC if I was a black person.
We should be critical of China but in the light of our own failings under Western capitalism. A lot of the attacks are distorting history in order to instill fear of the ideals of socialism which is a lot more humane than the US currently cutting a swathe throughout the world and which scares the bejezus out of me.
I'm an opinionated northerner Anna, which will always dispose me to be blunt. However I did not intend to offend if I did. With regards to Cuba there is some debate as to how racist the regime actually is. Then again the regime as well as authoritarian is also an example of nepotism.
Being black in some parts of the US is almost certainly harsh. Such an individual however does enjoy constitutional freedom of speech and can criticise for instance their own government. I wonder when the Cubans will get the opportunity to vote in a black man as leader. Still must get back to other things on a separate matter I'm very anti EU and have just cancelled my order for Guinness and Magners.
Magners is a poor fourth to Dunkertons, Brothers and Kopaberg, Paul, especially with their much-vaunted pear cider. Scrumpy is also better than any Magners or Bulmers.
Disturbing news that the Irish have passed the Lisbon Treaty and practically given Blair the EU presidency when he should have been up for war crimes and bad taste.
Good stuff here from Shock Doctrine blog: http://shockdoctrinesummary.blogspot.com/
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