Democracy is become mob rule. To me oligarchy doesnt look so bad, so long as we’ve got some decent oligarchs.

Fast forward to the late 1980s when China (under pressure from the West) began to abandon communism in favour of capitalism. What form of capitalism did they establish? Between child labour, suppression of workers rights, and the marketing of poison Chinese capitalism seems little different from the type of capitalism that was prevalent in the 19th Century.

The mistake we made when we opened up China to market-based reform (capitalism) was we thought we were establishing a market for our goods when due to globalization we were actually sending our industry to whatever country had the cheapest labour. This turned out to be China. As a result, instead of selling manufactured goods to China, we are now buying manufactured goods from China.

This leads to balance of payments imbalances which means that China owns the US debt.

I think this was a huge mistake.

Melamine and lead-painted toys are just the tip of the iceburg. Chinese industry has done other horrible things just as the robber barons of The Gilded Age did.

The big difference is the people here demanded change and we don’t have the abuses that 19th Century capitalists were known for.

Anyone in China demanding change would be shot.

It’s never acknowledged that while Western media offer the apologists of police states the opportunity to ‘explain themselves’ to Western audiences, the reverse is never true, except under extremely controlled circumstances, or when the Western can be relied upon to be sufficiently self-critical and obsequious.

Frankly China HAS made great strides in the past 20 years, but it may never be an oasis of ‘liberal democracy’. China appears to me to be a very consensus’ type of society and may always be a little more comfortable with a little authoritarianism in its system. Governments in the West have also sometimes arranged to bury ‘unfortunate’ news so this is not just a Chinese thingy. This is not to excuse the mistreatment of its own people who suffered from the poisonings. That is an real affront. But at least they were not treated as deviationists for complaining. Maybe in another 10 years if another problem occurs, justice rather than face will be the more important consideration.

Oh and by the way—- It IS always a good idea to treat nicely those who are loaning you the cash to support an unsupportable lifestyle. Politics has nothing to do with it. America wanted to dance away eternity while never having to worry about that darn piper and his annoying bills and it designed a system where that appeared to be possible. You can but be grateful that China is currently joined at the hip with you, but nothing lasts forever, and at some point China will have to start treating the US as a ‘bonus’ market, instead of as THE MARKET. When that happens I wager you will really have something to complain about, Chinese-wise.