The many recent books and commentary extolling China's lightening
fast economic climb are right about the nature of China's spectacular
rise and how the outside world is making it happen. A mere 25 years ago
China was a backward, poverty-stricken totalitarian waste, and for many
just the mention of its name would conjure up images of an iron-fisted
police state hiding behind a bamboo curtain concealing an esoteric
dominion of tyranny and human desperation. Now, thousands of leading
American, Japanese, European, Korean, Taiwanese and Australian companies
have and are racing to transfer plant, technology and modern
manufacturing expertise to China, and in doing so they are quickly
hallowing out the manufacturing bases of their home countries. They are
being seduced and drawn into China by the appeal of extremely low labor
rates, non-existent labor and environmental regulations, the desire to
position themselves within the enormous future potential of China's
consumer markets as well as the oftentimes necessity of just being there
in order to be included on the supply chain of one of the many global
manufacturing and technology giants that have already made the move to
China in a big way.
The Chinese will say about themselves and it's
true, that for every person in China there are actually two people; the
outer personality reflecting tailored conformity, and the inner person
that is not easily, if ever, exposed. China itself is like that too.
Like anything else here, the 'boom' cities one sees are to a large
extent illusory, with 70% unoccupancy rates in quickly constructed
slip-shod buildings meant to impress with architectural flamboyance, but
that will typically last for only about 20 years before falling apart.
Glitzy government shopping malls and highly visible, neon-illuminated
designer boutiques abound and dazzle newcomers, but as I've carefully
noticed, other than tourists no one ever buys anything. More
illusion-it's mostly for show. China's big façade of garish
modernization serves the purposes of bloating citizens with
nationalistic pride and providing them with visible assurance that
things are moving forward, while impressing potential foreign investors
and naïve journalists who rarely bother to dig beneath the surface. The
streets of China's cities are now clogged with traffic and the number of
cars is growing fast, but most of those cars are not necessarily a
reflection of the rising living standards their presence might seem to
convey, and were not purchased privately. They were actually procured
through government purchasing schemes financed by loans from a corrupt
national banking system that is known to be insolvent, with new cars
being channeled to those with connections. Note: Using deception
based on creating illusion is adapted from the ancient, classic text on
Chinese military strategy " Art of War" by Sun Tsu, and is now being
applied by China to great advantage in waging economic warfare.
A
walk down any street in any of the 'miracle' cities of China and many
of the people seen can be counted among the burgeoning hordes of the
unemployed that have been laid off from thousands of shuttered,
inefficient and non-competitive S.O.E.'s, with many more thousands yet
to be closed. For the masses of ordinary people who do have jobs, it's
most probably in one of the huge new factory complexes housing
labor-intensive industries financed with foreign capital. The massive
'city within a city' complexes that are oftentimes surrounded by high
walls ringed with razor wire have a severe though functionally modern
appearance when viewed from without, but from within are more
reminiscent of 19th Century Europe industrial sweatshops. They serve as
homes to untold millions of workers toiling through twelve-hour, six or
even seven day a week shifts, and who have no rights, no protections, no
guarantees, no safety review boards, no benefits in the event of layoff
or injury, no dispute resolution panels, no bargaining power, no
pensions for those retiring and no mechanism for venting complaints,
because no one who needs a job ever dares. The death penalty can be and
is doled out for practically any reason deemed deserving, it's a matter
of judicial discretion, and by official admission there are more
executions carried out in China every year than in all other nations of
the world combined (Amnesty International estimates the actual number of
executions to be much higher than the official rate). The existence of
huge, sprawling, unmapped and unacknowledged prison camps in China's
interior interning millions that are forced to work in harsh,
slave-labor conditions has been well documented. Among their unfortunate
numbers are many (a majority?) who simply held a disapproved religious
conviction, or who spoke or criticized out of turn. Almost all
government support for housing, food, medical care, education,
unemployment compensation and other assistance associated with China's
previous, now mostly dismantled communist welfare system has been
eliminated, and reports of starvation are now being heard from poor,
rural areas. Note: In the past, executions were carried out by
single gunshot administered to the back of the head, with a bill for the
bullet then presented to the next of kin. Following a trend set in
other countries, today things are more humane with a 'modified' form of
lethal injection being used. It's actually only semi-lethal to start
with, and works by rendering the condemned merely unconscious enabling a
waiting medical team to extract generously donated organs for use in
transplants while in the ideal state of viability.
At one
point I almost came to believe that any woman in China, married or
single, would be willing to sell sex for money. Although it's a
suspicion I've since come to relinquish, perhaps due to people's purely
atheist* training and upbringing together with the overwhelming tidal
flood of materialistic values and wealth envy that has engulfed the
social consciousness, it does seem that there is a very flimsy
connection linking sexual fidelity to the Chinese version of morality.
Even among married men, 90% visit hookers regularly and it's common
among college girls to spend weekends with businessmen, or anyone with
money, in order to finance their tuition or growing appetite for
fashion, or both. Prostitution is everywhere in China, it's in every
hotel and barbershop, along every street, around every corner and it's
an important industry accounting for an economically significant
percentage of GDP. In business, the practice of offering prostitutes,
oftentimes underage, to clients, partners or potential customers is very
common to being the norm even among small operations, and it's used as a
way of currying favor and clinching the deal, or of expressing
appreciation, or just as often as a bribe-or as bait-the Chinese have
learned well that for many naïve westerners the Eastern female holds an
enticing, seductive allure. Although most women of childbearing age have
had several abortions each, those who can't stomach the procedure or
afford an ultrasound test to determine their child's sex will drop their
new-born baby girls off at giant state orphanages, strongly suspected
by many to be fronts that in actuality serve the dual functions of
extermination centers and clearing houses for the unneeded and
discarded. Owing to the one child policy and a strong cultural
preference for baby boys, it's estimated there could now be up to 100
million young men in China who will never be able to find wives and
start families of their own. The hugely disproportionate levels of
ineligible males do their part in fueling prostitution, but there are
also high rates of homosexuality and even bestiality spawned by this
unnatural imbalance. The widespread practice of bestiality is especially
troubling since it is theorized by some epidemiologists to be the route
of transmission taken by many newly emerging viruses to gain an initial
foothold in the human species, of which HIV, Ebola, SARS, Avian flu and
other particularly virulent flu strains are just some examples. Of
course, like anything else that could reflect negatively on China's
'face', this problem is mostly ignored or denied by officialdom and the
news media. Note: *China is an atheist state that vigorously
promotes and encourages atheism, with all members of the ruling CCP
being avowed atheists.
China's officially cited population of
1.35 billion is known by everyone within China, and strongly suspected
by many without, to be vastly understated. Any children born in excess
of the one child per married couple limit imposed on those living in
cities, or two for those in the countryside, are never able to obtain
national identity cards and so therefore simply do not officially exist
and are never counted. In addition, bureaucrats at all levels of
government responsible for monitoring and enforcing the rate of
population growth often feel pressured to falsify and underreport
population statistics in order to retain tenure, or to gain approval so
as earn perks and promotions. For these reasons and several others the
true population of China has been estimated by independent demographers
using computer generated models based on statistical sampling methods to
be closer to 1.6 billion or even more-a number in excess of the
official rate that's nearly equal to the entire population of the United
States, the third most populous nation on earth! China's 'uncounted'
are often left with few options for survival and turn to criminal rings
as their means of support. Many others drift from city to city in search
of irregular, informal employment among China's floating, transient
worker pool estimated to number up to 150 million, but are otherwise
reduced to a life of servitude tantamount to slavery as members of a
permanent underclass with no other choices. Note: It's feared that
the overwhelming weight and pressure of China's enormous population
could distort rational decision making processes at the highest levels
of leadership. For years Chinese diplomatic personnel have issued
threats to their US counterparts stating that China would be more than
willing to use nuclear weapons against the US should it attempt to
intervene militarily with a mainland invasion of Taiwan. In a twisted
assessment of the risk to benefit scenario of a nuclear exchange with
the US, it might be reasoned that China would be left having taken
possession of Taiwan, while also having greatly diminished the strength
of its US adversary, with the added benefit of having simultaneously
reduced its crushing population burden by 600 million!
The
race toward modernization at any cost has resulted in a China that's
been blackened, fouled and poisoned. It's the most polluted nation on
earth and by far the world's number one polluter (when all categories of
pollution are combined), with 16 of the world's 20 most polluted
cities. Drinking water from virtually any lake, river or well in China
may very well kill immediately, water from the tap brings a slower
death, and on bad days the air is like toxic soup. A huge, continental
sized poisonous haze several miles thick known as 'Asia's Brown Cloud'
perpetually drapes itself over China's cities. The cloud's consistency
includes noxious atmospheric particulates that mix with the rain and are
absorbed into the soil to enter the food chain, and it is permanently
blocking a small but significant percentage of sunlight to all the
nations of East and South-East Asia resulting in the reduction of arable
farmland at an alarming rate, especially in China and India. Long-term
health consequences from the effects of the brown cloud on humans will
not be known until it's too late, when it may come to be called the
cloak of death. Since all sources of information and mass media are
stringently controlled and all negativity that may reflect badly on
government management is minimized, serious national problems such as
pollution issues are only gently mentioned in passing, and always in the
context of how the government is making great strides at solving them. Note:
Moon shiners commonly counterfeit brand labels and sell for big savings
to unethical small retailers, but it can be of poor quality and deadly,
and is responsible for causing thousands of cases of partial to total
blindness and severe liver and kidney damage in those who drink it every
year. No Amazonian or African tribe has a better-attested tradition of
cannibalism than China has. Even today human placenta is a delicacy and
aborted human fetuses fetch astronomical prices (it's said to work
miracles for the skin). In a country with nearly two billion people to
feed, an aversion toward squeamishness (rat fetuses are eaten raw at
exclusive restaurants*), and no moral or religious qualms, fresh human
corpses can easily and profitably represent over 100lbs. of weighted
protein additive each, especially if they're discreetly thrown in with
the mix at small and very poorly regulated beef processing operations.
For those who don't believe-enjoy. (*Rat fetuses are freshly plucked and
still alive when served-"Eat Three Squeals" is the name of the dish for
those who see it on the menu and want to sample. Squeezing with
chopsticks produces the first squeal, sauce dip evokes the second, chomp
down for the third-enjoy again).
To be observed is how
everyone has iron bars installed on their apartment windows, with double
steel doors barricading the entrances that are each triple locked. Upon
entering department stores all customers are usually required to leave
purses, handbags, backpacks, attaché cases and sometimes bulky outer
wear with attendants in an effort to reduce the horrendously high rate
of shoplifting. In most Chinese cities, taxi drivers are isolated from
passengers by being required to sit within built-in steel cages, since
too many of them have been killed, and after dark it's illegal for
passengers to sit in the front seat. Surprisingly, the official, police
reported homicide rate in China is now nearly twice that of the United
States. All the more noteworthy is that this is in a country where gun
ownership is strictly banned and possession can result in imposition of
the death sentence! The appalling crimes of serial killers, mass
murderers and sex criminals occur with increasingly shocking frequency
now so that these aberrations are no longer a western phenomenon, and
China may very well soon out-do the West in this regard. Child abduction
is one of most common crimes and it's much more serious here than
anywhere else in the world. Every week in China thousands of children
are kidnapped and sold, with some Chinese cities reporting well over one
hundred cases per day (this is known and can be verified through
information revealed by individual police precincts as a cautionary
public service to residents, and not reported in the media). Some
kidnapped children are sold into sexual slavery, some as slave workers
to farmers or to underground sweatshops, and there's gathering
credibility to the rumor that some are sold for the harvesting of their
internal organs. Producing babies for sale is a major cottage industry.
As one entrepreneur explained, "It costs a lot to raise a pig until it's
six months old and I can only sell it for $5, but a human baby costs me
very little since I can sell it at birth, and I'll get $50", (I've been
offered children for sale on several occasions, once by a complete
stranger while eating in a restaurant). While China's cities are
stressed, in the countryside deeper cracks can be glimpsed. In 2005
foreign observers witnessed and recorded over 75,000 major
demonstrations by farmers protesting corruption, high taxes, set pricing
on government crop purchases that are seen as confiscatory, and
compliance with WTO mandated policies allowing foreign competition to
enter China's agricultural markets. Note: An hour's walk in any of
China's cities will probably reveal an occurrence. Street fights start
suddenly without any warning and they're almost always between two or
more women. The blood-curdling screams along with the slapping, kicking,
biting, tearing, pulling of hair and gouging of eyes that spills from
out of buildings or store fronts and on to the street would scare
vicious, rabid dogs away. It was unnerving for me to first witness
this-I got used to it.
For the Chinese today, nightly TV
viewing is enjoyed watching ultra-nationalistic programming that
elevates former and current leaders, and the Chinese Communist Party, to
the level of God, and the best of Hollywood couldn't improve on it for
theatrical display. Popular music is oftentimes characterized by
militaristic marching themes meant to arouse intense feelings of
patriotism, or it can be religiously inspirational in singing of the
deep love that the Chinese people feel for each other, and especially
for the CCP. Only persons who can prove their ancestral Chinese lineage
can be accepted as citizens of China. In Hong Kong, hundreds of
thousands of people of Indian, non-Chinese Asian and middle-eastern
descent who had resided there for generations were stripped of their
citizenship after the handover to China from Britain in 1997. The
Chinese pledge of allegiance that all students are required to recite
daily, and all citizens weekly, is so nationalistically and racially
partisan and intense as to be frightening! Note: Recently, museum
curators in Beijing forcibly removed an exhibition surrounding the life
and accomplishments of Albert Einstein from display after a mere 4 hours
of opening. The intensive promotion of nationalism requires that people
be made to feel that practically every invention or discovery of value
in human history, every scientific achievement or medical advance of
note, the most brilliant minds of history, every truly beautiful art
form and all ultimate truth that exists, originated in China.
The
glue that currently holds Chinese society together is comprised of
government promises connected to the hope of a better tomorrow, resigned
submission to authority that is culturally ingrained, an entrenched
fear (with teeth) that is systematically projected by the government
into people in many complex overt and subtle ways, and the aggressive
promotion of a blind form of ultra-nationalism that could have been
plagiarized from Peronist fascists, even Goebbels would approve. China
is a messed up, morally and sociologically confused country that has
completely lost its ancient soul, and whose uncountable, unknowable, God
forsaken teeming masses have been abandoned to the avaricious
exploitations of domestic and world-wide business and commercial
interests, while its own pathologically insecure, prestige and power
hungry aristocratic elite celebrates the process and cheers it along
with vigor.
In pondering China-what it was, what it is, what it
very well may shortly emerge to become and what that emergence will mean
for the human race and the shaping of world civilization and our common
destiny, the most troubling aspect is to realize that the western world
is now to a large degree responsible for lifting China to its full
potential as a world superpower, and at break-neck speed, even though
that country's government and government inspired culture does not
uphold or share any of the West's values, ideals or visions, openly
scorns the West, and beneath the surface feels toward it a loathing
resentment based on envy, as well as for past grievances.
Over the
past century China and her people have suffered possibly as no other
nation and people ever have, or could imagine to have. Today many
hundreds of millions are suffering still, with the worst possibly yet to
come. Pray for China! Entirely aside from its people however, deeply
entrenched within China I have strongly sensed that there is a sinister
dynamic lurking, and if and when that mysterious, monstrous, tortured
albeit angry dragon hiding inside of its box is let out, assisted by the
rest of us in achieving its ambitiously stated goal of world
domination. Pray for the world! Note: Dragon imagery has long played
a prominent role in Chinese culture up to the present, and it permeates
China's cultural landscape. Dragon depictions are seen on buildings,
paintings and murals everywhere, and they're used as decorations on
clothing, calendars and many other objects. The dragon is actually
associated with being the unofficial national symbol of China, supposed
by some to embody the spirit of the Chinese people. The Chinese dragon's
origins can be traced to the ancient Sumerian Civilization (Babylon),
from where mythologies and legends were carried into China and absorbed.
Accepted by most historians as being the first civilization of recorded
human history, Sumeria's rise predates that of Egypt. It is known that
the Sumerians were snake worshipers who exalted their deities through
the artistic creation of fanciful carvings and statues depicting huge,
bizarre and fearsome serpents with wings, sometimes possessing gnashing
fangs and flailing, clawed appendages. As a matter of dark fascination, a
disturbing, arcane connection has been made between this great Eastern
symbol and a prophetic passage taken from the highly allegorical Bible
book of Revelation (Apocalypse), a Christian text usually associated
with Western Civilization: "So down the Great Dragon was hurled, the
Original Serpent, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth. He was
hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him...Woe
for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you,
having great anger". - Revelation 12: 9, 12
Copyright 2006 by Rockland Layne Zeiler Writing as: Lai-En Xyler
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/186108
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