| Miguel Murado Miguel-Anxo Murado . |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
......................................................................................................................................... ......................................................................................................................................... The Chinese Sphynx Miguel A. Murado Right after Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Primer Minister, wrote in the official newspaper that to reach real Socialism will take yet another “one hundred years”, Shanghai stock market plummeted almost 9%. If Socialism still needs one century Capitalism might be even greener. China remains a sphinx, a hybrid, some sort of experiment in political genetics as difficult to describe as it is difficult to predict. The old sovietology consisted in a boring profiling of party bureaucrats, modern sinology looks more like the Chinese horoscope: one year a fearful dragon, another year a fat pig and another one a snake, who knows if a snake in the grass… It would be a mistake to see China as undergoing her own “Perestroika”, and to prove it there’s the Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that is taking place in these days. Nothing could be more different to the agony of the late CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union). In fact, party affiliation in China has gone up to 13% in the last decade (while the overall population growth was 5%). Many of this noveau comunistes are also noveau riches, the capitalist entrepreneurs of the One-State-Two-Systems compound. For them, too, the Party remains the shortcut of choice to a successful business deal. Ironically enough, it is this “democratization” in the Party ranks that is in part responsible for the increase of corruption in those Party ranks. For the new moneymen the key point in the agenda of the current Congress is the famous Law for the Protection of Private Property, eight times pushed forward by the courageous greedy and eight times pushed back by the bureaucratic purists. But now everybody believes that the Law will be finally approved in the Congress. If not, it might be enforced all the same through a Presidential decree. After all, since Jiabao has given himself a hundred years to establish “real” Socialism, in the meantime he can give Capitalism a try just for the sake of comparison. The Law will increase investment, undoubtedly; and it will increase the divide between the haves and the have-nots too, now one of the preoccupations of the system. A lot has been said about the increase in the Defence budget too, something around a 17%. Taiwan has got the creeps and a Japanese politician has said that “with such an Army, China can turn Japan into one of her provinces” (bad joke: It was actually Japan that once turned Chine into one of her provinces). More likely, though, the increase will be destined to a better fed Army and to renovate its weaponry, until recently more adequate for a MilitaryMuseum than for a Military exercise. One in ten soldiers is a card-holding member of the Party and their green uniformed presence was apparent among the 3.000 Congress delegates. They want their piece of the cake too. Taiwan can rest assured; China, that two-headed animal (or that two-bodied animal with a single head) is doing too well to think of looking for trouble.
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ......................................................................................................................................... << volver al índice . |
