From Each, and To Each

DEEP IN The HALLOWED halls of the central government of mainland communist-capitalist china, there is a concern about economic equality, or inequality, depending on how you look at it. Too much inequality, not enough equality among the masses, the billion and a half? So they think.

"They" being the mysterious inner oligarchial circle of ministers who govern china, still calling themselves the "communist" party. Unless they've changed their names in the recent past, yes, they still call themselves commies. Seems kinda inappropiately funny now.

The ancient kingdom was of course feudalistic, like most of humanity, for thousands of years, with local land owning war lords controlling their little kingdoms, centralized dynasties taking hold and governing widely and uniformly with varying degrees of historical success.

then came the great world war two, the japanese invasion of china, the japenese defeat, and post war scramble for power in china, eventually concluding in nineteen forty nine with victory for mao and the communists.

Absolute economic equality is the backbone of communism, as you may remember from school. When mao reigned supreme, the factory worker and the factory supervisor were bringing down the same pay. And so was mao himself; supposedly.

All that ended with the death of mao in nineteen seventy six. Pretense was made for a few years of the perpetuation of the revolution, but in by the time the nineteen eighties rolled around, american and japanese prosperity at their doorstep, china wanted to become more prosperous.

They did this by inviting foreign investment, moving millions of people from the countryside to the cities for factory work, and subsidising the new industrail economy by the government, as well as opening their ports to forgeign products, to a degree, and sending their own inexpensively made material objects forth unto all the world.

And, to a certain extent, the plan is working quite well. China is wealthier, per capita, and as a whole. It gets along better with the rest of the world too. No more mysterious isolation, or surly breast beating. Peopel from all over the world come and go in china, and chinese travel the world, and more power to us all.

But now, because of capitalism, its natural tendencies, china has a growing gap between rich and poor, as chinese society naturally evolves into a class structure, just like america always has. Maybe someday the world will know a war of rich versus poor, and maybe it will start in china. Or, maybe the world will find a way to address this enormous and growing global problem, peacefully.

Its hard, very hard, to enforce widespread economic equality, to create it by decree. And, as the chinese might soon realize, it aint even the natural order of things in an economy dominated by big businesses. IN the post communist  era, the ideas of communism nevertheless linger, including economi equality, and the current government says it might require successful businesses to invest more in the rest of the country.

China, a land of concentrated wealth and teeming impoverished urban masses, with a government making feeble noises about the perils of grotesque economic inequality, feebly seeking help from the wealthy few, failing miserably. Sounds more like america every day.