NEWS FROM CHINA: “For Communist Party officials, their worst nightmare is becoming reality. The new middle class often own their homes, and when property values are threatened by some government policy, these middle class Chinese organize and show their displeasure. There have been several recent mass demonstrations by middle class Chinese, usually protesting efforts to put factories, or other property value destroying facilities, in the middle of newly built middle class communities. Local government officials, who control the local police, find that they cannot just use force to disperse the middle class demonstrators, as they do farmers, or poor, working class protestors. The middle class crowd is better organized, and have useful connections themselves. The middle class have cell phones and Internet access. The middle class also has access to the upper reaches of the Communist Party, which relies on middle class administrators and technocrats, to make things happen. If the middle class turns on the Communist Party, the communists will lose.”

Mess with the rising bourgeoisie at your peril!

UPDATE: Bored with socialism?

But today’s China is, in some respects, less socialistic than much of Western Europe, with a moth-eaten social safety net and a wild free-market economy. Students in almost any urban Chinese school can look out their classroom windows and see just about everything but socialism being constructed: high-rise office buildings, shopping malls, movie theaters, luxury apartment buildings, fast-food restaurants, hotels, factories — the whole capitalist panorama.

Socialism is inherently boring, which is why its main enthusiasts are bores themselves people with high boredom thresholds, like professors and politicians.