North Korean regime is the most secretive of the world where every single citizen [slave] is controlled like a pigeon in a cage, where each North Korean home is wired and contains a microphone and all their activities are monitored by a huge army of informants and spies. The heavy drinker Kim Jong IL is really an ILL man. He is unlike his father a moron and thinks of himself as a prince. He is like a spoiled brat who can be equaled with any evil Muslim war lord or a crooked Communist party high command. For him the world is an evil place and his regime is the best, purest and most efficiently governed. Well indeed it is eficient because each and every single human being is a slave. North Korea is the only regime that surpasses Saudi Arabia in mind control and total blind dictatorship.
The ideology propagated by his father is based on nothing but a personal vision of a state that is run like a stable of horses. North Korea is the most horrible place to be for any person who values freedom! If there is HELL on the Earth it is North Korea, yet this hell is bent upon making its neighbour's lives hell too.
We believe that North Korea only has maximum 2 years of life at the most and very surely its time to disassemble the regime has come or nearing. North Korea may cause one of the worst wars after 60 years of "cold War" and this final war will be quick and dirty. China is keeping its tight control over North Korea as a buffer, as a useful weapon against the South Korea and Japan.
North Korean Nuclear arsenal is very questionable and nobody really believes the reality of its installations. It obviously "imports" freely from a powerful friend all its technology. North Korea has helped Pakistan, Iran and Myanmar and may be helping many others to make some nuke money to import some food.
Considering the new stature of China and the herculean image building efforts of Chinese Communist party showing itself as a modern top economic power, the masters of communist party are now reconsidering and reviewing their relationships with client states like Myanmar and North Korea and soon with other hidden client states.
Chinese control Mynamar generals who run the country like a concentration camp but after Beijing's "brains" approval and suggestion they held a mock election to fool the world community. Even lukashenko of BeloRus got encouraged after that:)
Now the next step is how to fix the North Korean Image?
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Ivory Coast - Democracy or Genocide? the latest West African tragedy
West Africa has never been quiet since the times of when the best of African men and women were hounded by Arab Muslim Traders and chained and taken to West African ports where The Dutch, Portuguese and other European "traders" of slaves shipped them to Americas.
Once the old native empires were broken and shattered, West Africa never really recouped its old self. The New colonial West Africa became modern under new dictators or controlling interests. Despite all that West Africa has never come to terms with the realities of life and it still remains between the old slave traders who are now coffee, cocoa, gold, silver and female bodies traders and the new African native controllers.
Liberia and Sierra Leone are gone cases. Ivory Coast among all run down West Africa was always considered stable but that image is shattered and its future is now in shaky hands. One side the president "for life" Laurent Gbagbo and the former Prime Minister.
Ivory Coast is now on the verge of a grand civil war that will surely create news headlines for years to come and the end result will be a genocide and killing of a million people. If however there is stronger intervention from international community and more from the African Union, the chances of bringing back the stability are more.
The presidential elections that should have been organized in 2005 were postponed until November 2010. The preliminary results announced by the Electoral Commission showed a loss for Gbagbo in favour of his rival, former prime minister Alassane Ouattara. The ruling FPI contested the results before the Constitutional Council, charging massive fraud in the northern departments controlled by the rebels of the Forces Nouvelles de Côte d'Ivoire (FNCI). These charges were contradicted by international observers. The report of the results led to severe tension and violent incidents. The Constitutional Council, which consists of Gbagbo supporters, declared the results of seven northern departments unlawful and that Gbagbo had won the elections with 51% of the vote (instead of Ouattara winning with 54%, as reported by the Electoral Commission). After the inauguration of Gbagbo, Ouattara, recognized as the winner by most countries and the United Nations, organized an alternative inauguration. These events raised fears of a resurgence of the civil war; thousands of refugees have fled the country.
The African Union sent Thabo Mbeki, former President of South Africa, to mediate the conflict. The U.N. Security Council adopted a common resolution recognising Alassane Ouattara as winner of the elections, based on the position of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West Africa States). ECOWAS suspended Côte d'Ivoire from all its decision-making bodies, while the African Union also suspended the country's membership
Houphouët-Boigny administration
Ivorian Civil War
Politically, Houphouët-Boigny ruled with a firmness some called an "iron hand"; others characterized his rule more mildly as "paternal." The press was not free and only one political party existed, although some accepted this as a consequence of Houphouët-Boigny's broad appeal to the population that continually elected him. He was also criticized for his emphasis on developing large scale projects. Many felt the millions of dollars spent transforming his home village, Yamoussoukro, into the new capital that it became, were wasted; others support his vision to develop a center for peace, education and religion in the heart of the country. But in the early 1980s, the world recession and a local drought sent shock waves through the Ivoirian economy. Due to the overcutting of timberand collapsing sugar prices, the country's external debt increased threefold. Crime rose dramatically in Abidjan.
In 1990, hundreds of civil servants went on strike, joined by students protesting institutional corruption. The unrest forced the government to support multi-party democracy. Houphouët-Boigny became increasingly feeble and died in 1993. He favoured Henri Konan Bédié as his successor.
Bédié administration
In October 1995, Bédié overwhelmingly won re-election against a fragmented and disorganised opposition. He tightened his hold over political life, jailing several hundred opposition supporters. In contrast, the economic outlook improved, at least superficially, with decreasing inflation and an attempt to remove foreign debt.
Election results of 2002 in Côte d'Ivoire
Unlike Houphouët-Boigny, who was very careful in avoiding any ethnic conflict and left access to administrative positions open to immigrants from neighbouring countries, Bedié emphasized the concept of "Ivority" (French: Ivoirité) to exclude his rival Alassane Ouattara, who had two northern Ivorian parents, from running for future presidential election. As people originating from foreign countries are a large part of the Ivoirian population, this policy excluded many people from Ivoirian nationality, and the relationship between various ethnic groups became strained.
1999 coup
Similarly, Bédié excluded many potential opponents from the army. In late 1999, a group of dissatisfied officers staged a military coup, putting General Robert Guéï in power. Bédié fled into exile in France. The new leadership reduced crime and corruption, and the generals pressed for austerity and openly campaigned in the streets for a less wasteful society.
Gbagbo administration
A presidential election was held in October 2000 in which Laurent Gbagbo vied with Guéï, but it was peaceful. The lead-up to the election was marked by military and civil unrest. Following a public uprising that resulted in around 180 deaths, Guéï was swiftly replaced by Gbagbo. Alassane Ouattara was disqualified by the country's Supreme Court, due to his alleged Burkinabé nationality. The existing and later reformed constitution [under Guéï] did not allow non-citizens to run for presidency. This sparked violent protests in which his supporters, mainly from the country's north, battled riot police in the capital, Yamoussoukro.
Back Ground:
The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire French: [kot divwa]), commonly known in English as Ivory Coast ) is a country in West Africa. It has an area of 322,462 km2, and borders the countries of Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998,[5] and was estimated to be 20,617,068 in 2009.
Prior to its colonization by Europeans, Côte d'Ivoire was home to several states, including Gyaaman, the Kong Empire, and Baoulé. There were two Anyi kingdoms, Indénié and Sanwi, which attempted to retain their separate identity through the French colonial period and after Côte d'Ivoire's independence. An 1843–1844 treaty made Côte d'Ivoire a "protectorate" of France and in 1893, it became a French colony as part of the European scramble for Africa.
Côte d'Ivoire became independent on 7 August 1960. From 1960 to 1993, the country was led by Félix Houphouët-Boigny. It maintained close political and economic association with its West African neighbours, while at the same time maintaining close ties to the West, especially to France. Since the end of Houphouët-Boigny's rule, Côte d'Ivoire has experienced one coup d’état, in 1999, and a civil war, which broke out in 2002.
A political agreement between the government and the rebels brought a return to peace. Côte d'Ivoire is a republic with a strong executive power invested in the President. Its de jure capital is Yamoussoukro and the biggest city is the port city of Abidjan. The country is divided into 19 regions and 81 departments. It is a member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, African Union, La Francophonie, Latin Union, Economic Community of West African States and South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone.
The official language is French, although many of the local languages are widely used, including Baoulé, Dioula, Dan, Anyin and Cebaara Senufo. The main religions are Islam, Christianity (primarily Roman Catholic) and various indigenous religions.
Through production of coffee and cocoa, the country was an economic powerhouse during the 1960s and 1970s in West Africa. However, Côte d'Ivoire went through an economic crisis in the 1980s, leading to the country's period of political and social turmoil. The 21st century Ivoirian economy is largely market-based and relies heavily on agriculture, with smallholder cash crop production being dominant.
Once the old native empires were broken and shattered, West Africa never really recouped its old self. The New colonial West Africa became modern under new dictators or controlling interests. Despite all that West Africa has never come to terms with the realities of life and it still remains between the old slave traders who are now coffee, cocoa, gold, silver and female bodies traders and the new African native controllers.
Liberia and Sierra Leone are gone cases. Ivory Coast among all run down West Africa was always considered stable but that image is shattered and its future is now in shaky hands. One side the president "for life" Laurent Gbagbo and the former Prime Minister.
Ivory Coast is now on the verge of a grand civil war that will surely create news headlines for years to come and the end result will be a genocide and killing of a million people. If however there is stronger intervention from international community and more from the African Union, the chances of bringing back the stability are more.
Laurent Gbagbo is refusing to step down despite his rival, Alassane Ouattara, being internationally accepted as the presidential election winner.
The UN has accused state media of inciting hatred against it.
Mr Gbagbo has said Mr Ouattara's victory in November was illegitimate. Both men have been sworn in as president.
The presidential elections that should have been organized in 2005 were postponed until November 2010. The preliminary results announced by the Electoral Commission showed a loss for Gbagbo in favour of his rival, former prime minister Alassane Ouattara. The ruling FPI contested the results before the Constitutional Council, charging massive fraud in the northern departments controlled by the rebels of the Forces Nouvelles de Côte d'Ivoire (FNCI). These charges were contradicted by international observers. The report of the results led to severe tension and violent incidents. The Constitutional Council, which consists of Gbagbo supporters, declared the results of seven northern departments unlawful and that Gbagbo had won the elections with 51% of the vote (instead of Ouattara winning with 54%, as reported by the Electoral Commission). After the inauguration of Gbagbo, Ouattara, recognized as the winner by most countries and the United Nations, organized an alternative inauguration. These events raised fears of a resurgence of the civil war; thousands of refugees have fled the country.
The African Union sent Thabo Mbeki, former President of South Africa, to mediate the conflict. The U.N. Security Council adopted a common resolution recognising Alassane Ouattara as winner of the elections, based on the position of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West Africa States). ECOWAS suspended Côte d'Ivoire from all its decision-making bodies, while the African Union also suspended the country's membership
Houphouët-Boigny administration
Ivorian Civil War
Politically, Houphouët-Boigny ruled with a firmness some called an "iron hand"; others characterized his rule more mildly as "paternal." The press was not free and only one political party existed, although some accepted this as a consequence of Houphouët-Boigny's broad appeal to the population that continually elected him. He was also criticized for his emphasis on developing large scale projects. Many felt the millions of dollars spent transforming his home village, Yamoussoukro, into the new capital that it became, were wasted; others support his vision to develop a center for peace, education and religion in the heart of the country. But in the early 1980s, the world recession and a local drought sent shock waves through the Ivoirian economy. Due to the overcutting of timberand collapsing sugar prices, the country's external debt increased threefold. Crime rose dramatically in Abidjan.
In 1990, hundreds of civil servants went on strike, joined by students protesting institutional corruption. The unrest forced the government to support multi-party democracy. Houphouët-Boigny became increasingly feeble and died in 1993. He favoured Henri Konan Bédié as his successor.
Bédié administration
In October 1995, Bédié overwhelmingly won re-election against a fragmented and disorganised opposition. He tightened his hold over political life, jailing several hundred opposition supporters. In contrast, the economic outlook improved, at least superficially, with decreasing inflation and an attempt to remove foreign debt.
Election results of 2002 in Côte d'Ivoire
Unlike Houphouët-Boigny, who was very careful in avoiding any ethnic conflict and left access to administrative positions open to immigrants from neighbouring countries, Bedié emphasized the concept of "Ivority" (French: Ivoirité) to exclude his rival Alassane Ouattara, who had two northern Ivorian parents, from running for future presidential election. As people originating from foreign countries are a large part of the Ivoirian population, this policy excluded many people from Ivoirian nationality, and the relationship between various ethnic groups became strained.
1999 coup
Similarly, Bédié excluded many potential opponents from the army. In late 1999, a group of dissatisfied officers staged a military coup, putting General Robert Guéï in power. Bédié fled into exile in France. The new leadership reduced crime and corruption, and the generals pressed for austerity and openly campaigned in the streets for a less wasteful society.
Gbagbo administration
A presidential election was held in October 2000 in which Laurent Gbagbo vied with Guéï, but it was peaceful. The lead-up to the election was marked by military and civil unrest. Following a public uprising that resulted in around 180 deaths, Guéï was swiftly replaced by Gbagbo. Alassane Ouattara was disqualified by the country's Supreme Court, due to his alleged Burkinabé nationality. The existing and later reformed constitution [under Guéï] did not allow non-citizens to run for presidency. This sparked violent protests in which his supporters, mainly from the country's north, battled riot police in the capital, Yamoussoukro.
Back Ground:
The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire French: [kot divwa]), commonly known in English as Ivory Coast ) is a country in West Africa. It has an area of 322,462 km2, and borders the countries of Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998,[5] and was estimated to be 20,617,068 in 2009.
Prior to its colonization by Europeans, Côte d'Ivoire was home to several states, including Gyaaman, the Kong Empire, and Baoulé. There were two Anyi kingdoms, Indénié and Sanwi, which attempted to retain their separate identity through the French colonial period and after Côte d'Ivoire's independence. An 1843–1844 treaty made Côte d'Ivoire a "protectorate" of France and in 1893, it became a French colony as part of the European scramble for Africa.
Côte d'Ivoire became independent on 7 August 1960. From 1960 to 1993, the country was led by Félix Houphouët-Boigny. It maintained close political and economic association with its West African neighbours, while at the same time maintaining close ties to the West, especially to France. Since the end of Houphouët-Boigny's rule, Côte d'Ivoire has experienced one coup d’état, in 1999, and a civil war, which broke out in 2002.
A political agreement between the government and the rebels brought a return to peace. Côte d'Ivoire is a republic with a strong executive power invested in the President. Its de jure capital is Yamoussoukro and the biggest city is the port city of Abidjan. The country is divided into 19 regions and 81 departments. It is a member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, African Union, La Francophonie, Latin Union, Economic Community of West African States and South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone.
The official language is French, although many of the local languages are widely used, including Baoulé, Dioula, Dan, Anyin and Cebaara Senufo. The main religions are Islam, Christianity (primarily Roman Catholic) and various indigenous religions.
Through production of coffee and cocoa, the country was an economic powerhouse during the 1960s and 1970s in West Africa. However, Côte d'Ivoire went through an economic crisis in the 1980s, leading to the country's period of political and social turmoil. The 21st century Ivoirian economy is largely market-based and relies heavily on agriculture, with smallholder cash crop production being dominant.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers
The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, is a book written by former Financial Times China bureau chief Richard McGregor, and was published by Penguin Books in June 2010.
In the book McGregor explore the central role of the Communist Party of China in governing China and expanding its economy, and the various political links between government officials and corporate interests. McGregor argued that the Chinese political system is "in many ways, rotten, costly, corrupt and often dysfunctional", but also "proved to be flexible and protean enough to absorb everything that has been thrown at it".
Book Review
Richard McGregor's 'The Party' reveals the secret world of China's communists
By Andrew Higgins
"The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers"
Mr. Andrew Higgins is a foreign correspondent for the prestigious The Washington Post who has reported in China and the former Soviet Union.
By Richard McGregor Harper. 302 pp.
At a dinner party in Beijing more than a decade ago, Rupert Murdoch, the boss of New York-based News Corp. and a hard-headed arbiter of global opinion, declared that he hadn't met a single communist during all his visits to China.
With all the noisy debate over China's gargantuan trade surplus with the United States, its currency policy and its censorship of the Internet, one truth seems self-evident: China may do lots of things Westerners don't like, but at least it has dumped communism in all but name. After all, how can a country that so often seems to beat the United States at its own capitalist game be considered communist in any meaningful way?
Yet for all the dizzying change in China over the past three decades, the modern Chinese state "still runs on Soviet hardware," argues Richard McGregor in his illuminating and important new book, "The Party." Unlike the glittering skyscrapers, Starbucks cafes, sprawling factories and soaring GDP figures that so easily catch and dazzle the eye, much of this hardware lies hidden from view. "The Party is like God. He is everywhere. You just can't see him," a professor at People's University in Beijing explained to McGregor.
At first glance, a book about the Communist Party seems curiously old-fashioned, a throwback to a time when scholars and journalists scoured the People's Daily for hints of who was up or down in the Politburo and competed to decipher party gobbledygook. The red flags, the portrait of Mao overlooking Tiananmen Square and the occasional retro-slogan about "workers of the world" can sometimes seem as quaintly removed from present-day reality as the portraits of Queen Elizabeth that grace the offices of British civil servants working for what is, in name at least, "Her Majesty's government." However, it is a measure of how much China has changed that McGregor has been able to write such a lively and penetrating account of a party that, since its founding in Shanghai as a clandestine organization in 1921, has clung to secrecy as an inviolable principle.
Since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, China's ruling party has pulled off an extraordinary Houdini act, shaking off the horrors of Mao-made catastrophe -- including the death by starvation of 35 to 40 million people in the so-called Great Leap Forward -- and disentangling itself from the ideological chains that doomed the Soviet communists. Highly flexible on matters of economic doctrine but fiercely rigid in its commitment to political control, the party has not only survived but thrived. It now has 78 million members, including many multimillionaires. "We are the Communist Party," said Chen Yuan, a senior Chinese banker and the son of a Long March veteran, "and we decide what communism means."
But McGregor points out that "Lenin, who designed the prototype used to run communist countries around the world, would recognize the [Chinese] model immediately." Case in point: the Central Organization Department, the party's vast and opaque human resources agency. It has no public phone number, and there is no sign on the huge building it occupies near Tiananmen Square. Guardian of the party's personnel files, the department handles key personnel decisions not only in the government bureaucracy but also in business, media, the judiciary and even academia. Its deliberations are all secret. If such a body existed in the United States, McGregor writes, it "would oversee the appointment of the entire US cabinet, state governors and their deputies, the mayors of major cities, the heads of all federal regulatory agencies, the chief executives of GE, Exxon-Mobil, Wal-Mart and about fifty of the remaining largest US companies, the justices of the Supreme Court, the editors of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, the bosses of the TV networks and cable stations, the presidents of Yale and Harvard and other big universities, and the heads of think-tanks like the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation."
The central role of the party is hardly news to aficionados of Chinese-style Kremlinology. It has long been known, for example, that foreign policy is ultimately crafted not by the foreign ministry but the party's Central Leading Group on Foreign Affairs, and that military matters are decided not by the defense ministry but by the party's Central Military Commission. These and other party groups meet in secret. But McGregor adds flesh to dry bureaucratic bones through interviews with Chinese who know the system from the inside, though those who agreed to talk shed little light on the personal and political dynamics at the apex of the party. It is remarkable how little information has leaked from its upper echelons.
Nonetheless, McGregor provides many revealing nuggets, such as the existence of a network of special telephones known as "red machines," which sit on the desks of the party's most important members. Connected to a closed and encrypted communications system, they are China's version of the "vertushka" telephones that once formed an umbilical cord of party power across the vast expanse of the Soviet empire. All governments have their own secure communications systems. But China's network links not just ministers and senior party apparatchiks but also the chief executives of the biggest state-owned companies -- businessmen who, to outside eyes, look like exemplars of China's post-communist capitalism.
As a reporter for the Financial Times, McGregor -- who, incidentally, attended that dinner party with Murdoch -- has a firm grip on economics. Some of the most revealing parts of his book involve what he describes as the party's shadowy role in corporate decision-making and the overlap, as well as tension, between party and business interests. At times, the party's often hidden but decisive hand has served China well, as during the 2008 financial crisis when big Chinese state banks -- all of whose bosses are party members vetted by the Organization Department -- moved swiftly under instructions from the party leadership to pump out loans. But McGregor also relates how the party's orders can trump commercial good sense and even decency. When a dairy company called Sanlu discovered just before the opening of the Beijing Olympics that its milk products, including baby formula, were dangerously contaminated, the head of the company -- and of its party committee -- ruled against a recall and kept selling tainted goods. To announce a recall would have violated a party diktat that nothing should disturb the feel-good pre-Games mood.
The Chinese Communist Party's great success, despite the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and across Eastern Europe, has obliterated Western wishful thinking about the "end of history" and the world's inexorable march toward liberal democracy. "The Chinese communist system is, in many ways, rotten, costly, corrupt and often dysfunctional," McGregor observes. "But the system has also proved to be flexible and protean enough to absorb everything that has been thrown at it, to the surprise and horror of many in the west. For the foreseeable future, it looks as though their wish, to bestride the world as a colossus on their own implacable terms, will come true."
McGregor's analysis does not preclude the possibility that the party might one day evolve into a more open and less secretive organization, as happened to its old enemy in Taiwan, the KMT, a once rigidly Leninist outfit. Indeed, since the publication of this book, the Chinese Communist Party has made a big show of greater transparency, inviting journalists to visit the Central Party School in Beijing and announcing the appointment of spokespersons for previously media-phobic party bodies, including the Central Organization Department.
But there is no sign of the party surrendering its core prerogative: immunity from independent scrutiny of its actions or checks on its authority. Chinese judges, police officers, journalists and others are no longer mere cogs in a vicious totalitarian system. But, for all the relative freedom they now enjoy to act as professionals, not simply as political hacks, they remain firmly subordinate to what has become the Chinese Communist Party's only real ideology: its own survival.
In the book McGregor explore the central role of the Communist Party of China in governing China and expanding its economy, and the various political links between government officials and corporate interests. McGregor argued that the Chinese political system is "in many ways, rotten, costly, corrupt and often dysfunctional", but also "proved to be flexible and protean enough to absorb everything that has been thrown at it".
Book Review
Richard McGregor's 'The Party' reveals the secret world of China's communists
By Andrew Higgins
"The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers"
Mr. Andrew Higgins is a foreign correspondent for the prestigious The Washington Post who has reported in China and the former Soviet Union.
By Richard McGregor Harper. 302 pp.
At a dinner party in Beijing more than a decade ago, Rupert Murdoch, the boss of New York-based News Corp. and a hard-headed arbiter of global opinion, declared that he hadn't met a single communist during all his visits to China.
With all the noisy debate over China's gargantuan trade surplus with the United States, its currency policy and its censorship of the Internet, one truth seems self-evident: China may do lots of things Westerners don't like, but at least it has dumped communism in all but name. After all, how can a country that so often seems to beat the United States at its own capitalist game be considered communist in any meaningful way?
Yet for all the dizzying change in China over the past three decades, the modern Chinese state "still runs on Soviet hardware," argues Richard McGregor in his illuminating and important new book, "The Party." Unlike the glittering skyscrapers, Starbucks cafes, sprawling factories and soaring GDP figures that so easily catch and dazzle the eye, much of this hardware lies hidden from view. "The Party is like God. He is everywhere. You just can't see him," a professor at People's University in Beijing explained to McGregor.
At first glance, a book about the Communist Party seems curiously old-fashioned, a throwback to a time when scholars and journalists scoured the People's Daily for hints of who was up or down in the Politburo and competed to decipher party gobbledygook. The red flags, the portrait of Mao overlooking Tiananmen Square and the occasional retro-slogan about "workers of the world" can sometimes seem as quaintly removed from present-day reality as the portraits of Queen Elizabeth that grace the offices of British civil servants working for what is, in name at least, "Her Majesty's government." However, it is a measure of how much China has changed that McGregor has been able to write such a lively and penetrating account of a party that, since its founding in Shanghai as a clandestine organization in 1921, has clung to secrecy as an inviolable principle.
Since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, China's ruling party has pulled off an extraordinary Houdini act, shaking off the horrors of Mao-made catastrophe -- including the death by starvation of 35 to 40 million people in the so-called Great Leap Forward -- and disentangling itself from the ideological chains that doomed the Soviet communists. Highly flexible on matters of economic doctrine but fiercely rigid in its commitment to political control, the party has not only survived but thrived. It now has 78 million members, including many multimillionaires. "We are the Communist Party," said Chen Yuan, a senior Chinese banker and the son of a Long March veteran, "and we decide what communism means."
But McGregor points out that "Lenin, who designed the prototype used to run communist countries around the world, would recognize the [Chinese] model immediately." Case in point: the Central Organization Department, the party's vast and opaque human resources agency. It has no public phone number, and there is no sign on the huge building it occupies near Tiananmen Square. Guardian of the party's personnel files, the department handles key personnel decisions not only in the government bureaucracy but also in business, media, the judiciary and even academia. Its deliberations are all secret. If such a body existed in the United States, McGregor writes, it "would oversee the appointment of the entire US cabinet, state governors and their deputies, the mayors of major cities, the heads of all federal regulatory agencies, the chief executives of GE, Exxon-Mobil, Wal-Mart and about fifty of the remaining largest US companies, the justices of the Supreme Court, the editors of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, the bosses of the TV networks and cable stations, the presidents of Yale and Harvard and other big universities, and the heads of think-tanks like the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation."
The central role of the party is hardly news to aficionados of Chinese-style Kremlinology. It has long been known, for example, that foreign policy is ultimately crafted not by the foreign ministry but the party's Central Leading Group on Foreign Affairs, and that military matters are decided not by the defense ministry but by the party's Central Military Commission. These and other party groups meet in secret. But McGregor adds flesh to dry bureaucratic bones through interviews with Chinese who know the system from the inside, though those who agreed to talk shed little light on the personal and political dynamics at the apex of the party. It is remarkable how little information has leaked from its upper echelons.
Nonetheless, McGregor provides many revealing nuggets, such as the existence of a network of special telephones known as "red machines," which sit on the desks of the party's most important members. Connected to a closed and encrypted communications system, they are China's version of the "vertushka" telephones that once formed an umbilical cord of party power across the vast expanse of the Soviet empire. All governments have their own secure communications systems. But China's network links not just ministers and senior party apparatchiks but also the chief executives of the biggest state-owned companies -- businessmen who, to outside eyes, look like exemplars of China's post-communist capitalism.
As a reporter for the Financial Times, McGregor -- who, incidentally, attended that dinner party with Murdoch -- has a firm grip on economics. Some of the most revealing parts of his book involve what he describes as the party's shadowy role in corporate decision-making and the overlap, as well as tension, between party and business interests. At times, the party's often hidden but decisive hand has served China well, as during the 2008 financial crisis when big Chinese state banks -- all of whose bosses are party members vetted by the Organization Department -- moved swiftly under instructions from the party leadership to pump out loans. But McGregor also relates how the party's orders can trump commercial good sense and even decency. When a dairy company called Sanlu discovered just before the opening of the Beijing Olympics that its milk products, including baby formula, were dangerously contaminated, the head of the company -- and of its party committee -- ruled against a recall and kept selling tainted goods. To announce a recall would have violated a party diktat that nothing should disturb the feel-good pre-Games mood.
The Chinese Communist Party's great success, despite the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and across Eastern Europe, has obliterated Western wishful thinking about the "end of history" and the world's inexorable march toward liberal democracy. "The Chinese communist system is, in many ways, rotten, costly, corrupt and often dysfunctional," McGregor observes. "But the system has also proved to be flexible and protean enough to absorb everything that has been thrown at it, to the surprise and horror of many in the west. For the foreseeable future, it looks as though their wish, to bestride the world as a colossus on their own implacable terms, will come true."
McGregor's analysis does not preclude the possibility that the party might one day evolve into a more open and less secretive organization, as happened to its old enemy in Taiwan, the KMT, a once rigidly Leninist outfit. Indeed, since the publication of this book, the Chinese Communist Party has made a big show of greater transparency, inviting journalists to visit the Central Party School in Beijing and announcing the appointment of spokespersons for previously media-phobic party bodies, including the Central Organization Department.
But there is no sign of the party surrendering its core prerogative: immunity from independent scrutiny of its actions or checks on its authority. Chinese judges, police officers, journalists and others are no longer mere cogs in a vicious totalitarian system. But, for all the relative freedom they now enjoy to act as professionals, not simply as political hacks, they remain firmly subordinate to what has become the Chinese Communist Party's only real ideology: its own survival.
Is the Super Class concept real?
Superclass - The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making is a controversial book about global governance by US author David Rothkopf, released in March 2008 by publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book claims that the world population of 6 billion people is subject to the immense influence of an elite (i.e. The Superclass) of six thousand individuals. Until the late 20th century, governments of the great powers provided most of the superclass, accompanied by a few heads of international movements (i.e., the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church) and entrepreneurs (Rothschilds, Rockefellers). According to Rothkopf, in the early 21st century, economic clout — fueled by the explosive expansion of international trade, travel and communication — rules.
Further, the nation-state's power has diminished shrinking politicians to minority power broker status. Leaders in international business, finance and the defense industry not only dominate the superclass, they move freely into high positions in their nations' governments and back to private life largely beyond the notice of elected legislatures (including the U.S. Congress), which remain abysmally ignorant of affairs beyond their borders. He proposes that the superclass' disproportionate influence over national policy is constructive but always self-interested, and that across the world, few object to corruption and oppressive governments provided they can do business in these countries.
Further, the nation-state's power has diminished shrinking politicians to minority power broker status. Leaders in international business, finance and the defense industry not only dominate the superclass, they move freely into high positions in their nations' governments and back to private life largely beyond the notice of elected legislatures (including the U.S. Congress), which remain abysmally ignorant of affairs beyond their borders. He proposes that the superclass' disproportionate influence over national policy is constructive but always self-interested, and that across the world, few object to corruption and oppressive governments provided they can do business in these countries.
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