China: authoritarianism without the communism

[2strokebloke]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071219...rnetoly2008chn

They've convinced the world that they're nice enough to host the olympics - but they're still pulling these old shenanigans.

I think as China matures we're going to witness how it's possible to turn a third world country into a first world country, without having to issue citizens first world rights.

[BNaylor]

Technically, China is not a third world country. Until it totally dumps Communism and fully embraces Democracy IMO these problems will continue. I believe Russia in a similar situation as far as freedom of the press and free speech.

[2strokebloke]

Originally Posted by BNaylor

Technically, China is not a third world country.

Technically, according to cold war era NATO anyway...
The only reason that china escaped being labeled as 3rd world is because they were communist. For all practical intents and purposes though (political systems aside), China was just as much of a 3rd world country as any other with that label.

Anyway what's happening in China is really very interesting. The soviet union tended to operate primarily within itself, they didn't export a lot of products (and so didn't bring in much foreign money). Quite the opposite of China. China found that by whoring it's people out as cheap labor they can bring a lot of money into their country to keep themselves from collapsing financially like the Soviets did.
It's my opinion that instead of eradicating communism, stepping up trading with China is only prolonging it.

[drunken monkey]

Because China is so big with such diversity of living standards and economy, it's always going to be hard to catagorically label it as any of those terms.