People’s Republic of Capitalism

By: Arthur Hu, Aug 06, 2008

Tags: Hu's on First, Opinion |

On the a Discovery Channel, just before the Olympics, Ted Koppel hosted a look at the paradox of rampant capitalism in one of the last bastions of Communism. He showed how an Ethan Allen sofa began with raw materials from the United States, went to textile and woodworking factories in China and then returned to the Ethan Allen factory to be made into an upscale sofa. The finished product was delivered with white-gloved delivery men to an affluent Chinese family that was as proud of their American sofa and refrigerator as their German BMW. China always liked Buicks, but GM now sells more Buicks in China than in America. An American woman laid off due to Chinese labor dutifully shops at Wal-mart, which not only sells Chinese-made goods, but in China is one of the biggest and trendiest shops for affluent Chinese women as well.

A girl asked Koppel if Americans really make much more than Chinese, and he responded, yes, perhaps too much, and added that she should consider becoming a television reporter. He talked to a mother who wanted her daughter to do more than carry mountains of stuff for foreigners. She spent her meager savings on private school for her daughter, something her lazy drunk husband thought was a waste of money. There was the all-male dancing girl show where a guy told Koppel that his father told him that if he wanted to be cured, they’d find a doctor. But if that’s just what he wanted to do, he would be ok with that.

Here we’re banning plastic bags and water bottles to reduce our environmental impact, but Koppel showed cities choking on dirty coal, which supplies 75 percent of energy in China. Health problems aside, 7,000 people died in 2007 just from coal mining compared to 47 for a bad year in the U.S. You’d think it’s just the rich nations that are destroying the planet, but Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency figured out that China dumped 6,200 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) last year, compared with 5,800 for the U.S. On a per person basis, that’s only one-quarter the rate for Americans, but it adds up.

Welcome Africans and Mongolians?
The mainstream papers missed it, but the conservative Worldnet Daily published a story from the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong detailing that the Chinese were so determined to clean up Beijing for the Olympics that the police were quietly convincing bar owners to pledge not to serve Africans and Mongolians, among other undesirables. Police and most bar owners denied the rumors, but one owner who spoke out said authorities have targeted these groups for drug trading and other crimes. Other news stories described an apparent crackdown on Christianity, with the recent expulsion of more than 100 foreign Christians in China in 90 days. That would rank with the original communist campaign to purge religion in the 1950s. Maybe it’s just more anti-Chinese grumbling, but it makes you wonder.

Comments

The World Net Daily? That site in in the same yellow journalism league as Newsmax.com who published a book still claiming to this day that China was the real culprit behind 9-11. I saw on the internet someone had posted a link to a World Net Daily story about how Chinese are racist towards blacks. And it pointed to an incident I read months before where a nightclub in Beijing was raided for drugs. Apparently the son of an abassador of a Carribean nation was caught and the ambassador claimed it was racism. So after reading the story, I go to the World Net Daily homepage and what do I see? The whole page was all stories to get white people afraid of Barrack Obama. Are people that stupid? What they won’t tell you is that for a country that they charged hates blacks, why is that the “black” celebrities from the US are more popular than white celebrities? Yao Ming’s endorsed products don’t sell as much in China as four to five African-American NBA players. I love how the people who never enslaved an African nor occupied one grain of African soil are apparently more racist than the ones that have the notorious history for it.

–Jammer on Aug 06, 2008
Yeah, that’s why I mentioned it was from Newsmax, but they’re often on top of politically incorrect stuff when nobody else will print the stuff. Given that’s it’s sourced from another Chinese paper, unless it’s equavalently dedicated to right wing horror stories, I’d be inclinded to believe there’s someting to it. Maybe not racist if their intent was just to stop crime and drug trafficing and they welcomed, say, US African American or mongolian athletes, but certainly a policy that wouldn’t stand the light of day in our PC country. Chinese don’t have the same bill of rights we do, if you protest or raise a stink, they can do whatever they want to you. Not that people like those folks on the YFZ ranch had much rights either until judges who knew what they were doing had a chance to look at things.

China is certainly not the only place where black people are unpopular, and certainly there are black people who don’t like Asian, particularly Korean Americans, all we can do is do whatever we can for peace and harmony, or get the heck out of the way if that doesn’t work.

–awarthurhu on Aug 08, 2008
BTW, Newsmax was one of MY primary sources for tying together various facts pointing to the probably truth that Obama was, at various times, a muslim, more or less, and was never raised as a christian, which…. makes him a liar, if not currently a muslim. But that probably doesn’t matter to you.

–awarthurhu on Aug 08, 2008
Jammer,

The Chinese have imported African slaves at least as early as the Tang dynasty. Wealthy Tang families bought African eunuchs from Arab slave traders, do your research if you want to know more.

Besides, whatever Chinas has or has not done in the past, it is now the dominant imperialist and colonialist power in Africa, the dark continent is already a de facto backyard of China:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1036105/How-Chinas-taking-Africa-West-VERY-worried.html

–AsianPresident on Aug 08, 2008
Jammer,

that story Arthur posted about the Chinese not serving blacks was out a few weeks ago, and even discussed on black blogs, here’s another article on it:

http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=12796&size=A

–AsianPresident on Aug 09, 2008
Here’s another one on Huffingtonpost, if you want more reliable source:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/19/no-blacks-mongolians-allo_n_113838.html

The reality is, outside the U.S., people are not PC like here. Anywhere blacks go other than the U.S. or Africa, they would often be denied public accommodation of facilities.

–AsianPresident on Aug 09, 2008
“AP”?
Associated Press?
Now, that was once a well-respected source of both “news” and information.
You continue to spew out disinfotainment along with your specific brand of venom, but, my man, you ARE a “man”?, you have yet to “reveal” yourself, forget your “sources.”
Are you, indeed, “Asian”? Do you care about “Asians”? My “read” is all you care about is your “masters,” whoever signs your paychecks.
Unless, of course, you are an authentic “ideologue,” that breed of conned and cowed nonthinkers.
In which case, save your breath, your, er, ah, “ch’i,” as in some “Asian” concepts of life and living.
Your asides on “blacks” is more than insufferable and less than knowledgeable.
I doubt not that EVERY nation and every creed had their own brand of “slavery,” whatever the color. Or sex. Or persuasion. But, may I remind you, the “slave” is as often as not the “master” in truth, because the “relationship” can never be a “one-way” street. Or even boulevard. Bouleverse? That too.
The exec sec who actually runs the office and makes the decisions that count, the “good wife” in the b.g., the substantive “aide” who makes and meets all the appointments, the “enabler” of whatever stripe or cause or persuasion — these are the true “movers” and “shakers,” and not those absurd little boys playing games as captain and admiral and guru and teacher.
The teacher is ever “taught,” and the guru a mere instrument of perception, or lack of same.
There are only the destroyers, of which there are far too many, including you, and the creators, who, though few, are far mightier and far far beyond your pitiful, if destructive, efforts of self-annihilation.
Rotsa ruck, kiddo. We need you like one more hole in the head. Or elsewhere, for that matter.
Frank Eng
P.S.: Way way back in the mists of my time, the then-successful and hugely gastronomical Kowloon Restaurant of Los Angeles did not quite refuse but asked me to please schedule my planned “premiere” banquet for an interracial dance company so as not to discombooberate the feelings of its essentially WASP clientele, and I did. Partly because the operators were somehow related to my own first cousins and also because I had no desire to discombooberate ANYones, including those who kowtow to the PC sensibilities and lack of same. Likewise, in ‘49?, I asked for the return of my “down payment” for an apartment advertised in the Western precincts rather than fight the sub rosa restrictive covenants of that abuilding tenement to be.
Even though, as a half-assed daily “columnist” on the LA Daily News I could have made waves, at the very least. Why? Simply because I choose when and where I “fight,” just as I choose, here and now, to fight the likes of you, my unnamed and unmasked “colleague.” Of sorts.
P.P.S.: Being denied “accommodations” is a simpleminded metaphor for apartheid and oppression. That is why “immigrants” congregate in self-made “ghettos,” and why those of us who have escaped same and understand same empathize rather than point and condemn “victims” for their own victimization.

–Frank Eng on Aug 09, 2008
Frank Eng, you are to address me as AsianPresident, not AP, you’re my subject, too.

Now, the denial of public accommodations is not apartheid, it’s about safety, public and personal. I’ll give a familiar example.

In Dreams from My Father, Obama complains that cabdrivers won’t stop for him even though he is dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, and cites this as an example of racism. He feels that he should be respected as an individual rather than a black streotype.

Well, any criminal can invest in Brooks Brothers or J.Press suit if the first hit will pay off the initial outlay. Cabdrivers don’t stop for blacks because many blacks kill cabdrivers and cabdrivers value their lives like everyone else. Does Obama know that many cabdrivers are blacks themselves and practice the same “racism” that he complains about?

Many are concerned about Obama’s potential presidency because he has these unrealistic black nationalist notions-like, cabs must pick up blacks even if many blacks murder the cabdrivers- and apparently is willing to put his ideas into practice.

–AsianPresident on Aug 10, 2008
Is that an “order”? As in do it my way or else?
Let’s just stop talking past one another.
I’m sure everyone else will appreciate it too.
November can’t come fast enough.
And if Obama wins, will you still ride cabs driven by a “black”? Or anyone “swarthy”?

–Frank Eng on Aug 10, 2008
“The mainstream papers missed it, but the conservative Worldnet Daily published a story from the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong detailing that the Chinese were so determined to clean up Beijing for the Olympics that the police were quietly convincing bar owners to pledge not to serve Africans and Mongolians, among other undesirables. Police and most bar owners denied the rumors, but one owner who spoke out said authorities have targeted these groups for drug trading and other crimes.” Yet more evidence of the virulent racism of the fascist Chinese authorities. The Chinese Communist Party’s professed commitment to international solidarity, especially with their ostensible brethren in Africa, Asia and South America, is a smokescreen for the most narrow ethnocentrism and Han chauvinism. Ethnic minorities are horribly oppressed in China. Since they have no access to legal redress, some of them (including the Tibetans and Uighars) have now taken up arms against the reactionary claque that dominates the nation. Their struggles are analgous to those waged by black South Africans during the apartheid era.

–Christian on Aug 11, 2008
Absoulte CO2 emissions are what warm the planet, not per capita emissions. China has higher absoulte CO2 emissions than the United States.

–Fusao on Aug 11, 2008
Frank-man,

Let’s revisit the Ying Ma story:

http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.17109/article_detail.asp

If you don’t understand what it’s like for Asian kids to attend black schools, you should visit your nearest black school, and ask to sit and observe a few classes. Doesn’t matter if you’re a 90-year-old gentleman, you will be taunted the same way as Ying Ma, and have rocks thrown at you.

Realize that Asian kids go through that day in, day out for years and years. Now do you still want to vote for that race hustler Obama?

The Asian kids get the last laugh, though: like Ying Ma, they move onto positions of power and influence like those at CFR, and shape and mold U.S. domestic and foreign policy, while the black kids left behind rot in jails and live another generation in welfare, languishing in their drug-infested ghettoes.

–AsianPresident on Aug 11, 2008
Fusao:
Is one permitted to breathe these days, foul as the air seems to be?
Your plaint ignores the fact that the Mainland has for at least three or four generations attempted to curb the Malthusian curse. To scant avail, perhaps, but they did try and are trying still, to the condemnation of those who cite them for befouling and littering, not to mention expectorating. In public yet.
As for geeenies and greening, is it possible that this “closed-box” model of existence we call “earth” may be more resilient and more “adaptable” than the species we call “human”?
And that their plaints and protests are mere pretexts for subjective AND self-serving perceptions?
And, Christian, I had surely hoped you had begun to outgrow your own personal pet peeve of the PRC.
I think you are at least two, three?, generations behind the current times, and are invoking banal and irrelevant “facts” and “figures” herein.
Just compare the Sichuan quake to Katrina. Or the fact that we are the ones in Iraq and haven’t a clue how to get out of Pakistan, let alone Afghanistan.
The PRC may well be in Central Africa, but they are building roads and schools and not merely beating their chests like, “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”
Better focus your fire domestically, where there may even be a “Chinaman’s chance” of arresting this nation’s precipitate fall into self-prescribed second-class statehood in the congeries of nations.
You have not a rat’s-ass hope of influencing others to co0pt the cadres much less influence them. Even Taiwan today is slipping the constraints of our Pacific admirals.
So, just cast your ballot, and hope for the best.
Frank
P.S.: Alex Cockburn today online tweaks the mcCainites for their aspersions on Obama’s “citizenship,” the while their man was born in, gulp, PANAMA. Is that a “state, or merely a “canal”?
And the Clintonistas continue to make like party-poopers.

–Frank Eng on Aug 11, 2008
AP-man:
I shall address you “proper”ly when you properly identify yourself as an individual and not a mere post-signoff herein.
Meanwhile, I find it difficult, if not impossible, to begin to address the subject, not “issue,” you raise about “black” kids and “black” schools.
If they choose to throw rocks at nonagenarians, I DO hope they are not boulders, and, as for the Ying Ma experience, I would like to hear directly from her.
That you bless and praise the “white” gods for the upward mobility of “Asians” doesn’t bother me one bit, since I too have some “whites” I truly admire and would dearly love to see back in “power,” or at least, “influence.”
But your posts continue to bespeak an idee fixe, as in delusional, which is to say, “insane,” which, at heart, means “unhealthy.”
For everyone, and especially yourself.
You seem to have totally forgotten, ignored, the likes of MLK, not to mention Mary Bethune and any number of “blacks” EVERYone should at least try to emulate, if not iconize.
As for Colin Powell and Condi Rice, I find them more like you, and ANY “Asian” American who identifies with the oppressor rather than the oppressed.
In a way, I feel “sorry” for your imprisonment in your own mental, psychic, AND visceral belief systems that, to everryone else, well, make that ‘most everyone else, MUST sound “crazy,” as in megalomanic.
But, at least, I hope, your beliefs are singular, and they appear to be “passive,” as in not going out and assaulting the first “black” you meet on the street, including “kids” of school age, preferably K-6?
Tottering would-be nonagenarian here.
P.S,: Were we back in the good ol’ days of the post-Gold Rush, your logic would place you alongside Dennis Kearny inciting riot against the “heathen Chinee” imported for coolie labor on the transcontinental railroad and in the ghettos. “Blacks” today, far too many of them that is, are still effectually herded into urban bhettos whence there is scant escape, not even an Underground Railroad to an unpromising land.

–Frank Eng on Aug 12, 2008
“while the black kids left behind rot in jails and live another generation in welfare, languishing in their drug-infested ghettoes.”

I do think this stereotype of the “average” or “real black” person being the opposite of an elite Obama who has the priviledge of having one white american parent, and a very educated college student / african official black parent is a problem. Back in the 40s and 50s, average black people had next to no education, lived in dilpidated housing and most did live in poverty. By most measures blacks today are as well educated a whites only a couple of generations ago, and the AVERAGE black person lives a modest middle class, not a ghetto life. One problem we conservatives continue to complain about is the focus on “those poor black people”, and the “race business” that depends on the existence of these people to raise money and conciousness. Asians got out of this business after the Japanese got out of the concentration camps and assimilated, and poor Chinese immigrants were replaced by a new stream of educated students, as much as Asian American studies tries to keep the “poor backward Asian immigrant” image alive.

–awarthurhu on Aug 15, 2008

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