Quote Originally Posted by BlueCat
potatoes survived! Ok so I am still worried about espionage and motive. They are buying up the world but then so are we. I really want to talk more on this Fengzi
if you can calm my fears than more power to you! I even considered moving to China at one time so I am no way against China, but I worry about a communist government. Maybe when I know more China I won't be worried.
I need more answers but right now I gotta go eat dinner.....I'll ttyl.

How much do you know about Communism?
Communism as a theory or communism as it exists in China? Communism, as in Karl Marx's version where property is divided up equally, work is shared, and each gets according to his needs and does according to his abilities, does not exist in China. I don't know if it really truly existed anywhere. China certainly tried to make a go of it back in the 50's, 60's and early 70's, however. In fact my mother in law, the daughter of a Bourgeoisie landlord, was sent to a commune shortly after my wife was born so she could be re-educated among the laboring masses.

A lot has changed since then, however, and nothing resembling true communism exists in China today. Take a walk down Shanghai's Huai Hai Street with it's boutiques, cafes, and even Starbucks and you'd have no idea that you were in a "communist" country . Privately owned businesses are as common as State run businesses and some State run ones have even been sold off to private investors. Stores are filled with pricey Western goods and there seems to be no shortage of people buying them. People buy and sell stocks and, just like here, everyone's goal is to get rich.

China today is communist only in that it is run by the communist party. And that, is only a name, like Republican, Democrat, etc, nothing more. The government is not run by strange little men in Mao suits anymore. It is run by intelligent, generally respected, professional politicians. At least the high level, central, government is. It is not a dictatorship as that would imply it is run by one person when, in fact, decisions are made by many. There are both conservative and liberal factions within the government and control tends to go back and forth between the two groups.

Of course the people can not vote so there is no danger to the communist party of it ever losing power. Most people here in the U.S., however, would be surprised to see how much the general population actually influences the government. The government does not want to see unrest and protests like the incident in Tiananmen back in â??89. They understand that the best way to prevent this is to keep the people as happy as can be within the confines of the system. So, they pay close attention to public opinion and play a game where they let the leash out just enough to make people happy and then slowly bring it back in if needed. For the most part it works.

The biggest problem with the government is that it is filled with cronyism and corruption, especially at the lower levels. To make matters worse, China is a huge country with a poor infrastructure outside of the more modern cities on the eastern coast. Many, many cities in Chinaâ??s interior are quite remote, taking a day or more by bus to get to, and the central government in Beijing has little direct control in those areas. It is in these cities where the corruption is the worst . Many of the horror stories we hear about the Chinese government are actually from these areas, not the central government in Beijing itself. Kind of like if they had a story in one of their newspapers stating that American government supported marijuana use and gay marriages. While this may be true here in San Francisco that view isnâ??t held in Washington.

Hopefully this will have answered some of your questions. If you have any specific ones feel free to ask and Iâ??ll answer as best I can. And please donâ??t get me wrong, I have no illusions about China having a perfect government. There is a lot there that is seriously fucked up. Itâ??s just that I have just seen how the American media puts itâ??s spin on any story about China so that most Americanâ??s see China as an evil regime intent on turning the world commie. There are so many misconceptions about China and as we have recently seen certain misconceptions, such as about wmd, can have serious consequences.