Naomi Klein on China and the Olympics

What with the Chinese Olympics spectacle and "The Shock Doctrine" being the last book club read here, this REAL News interview with Klein, on China and the Olympics might prove interesting...
Is China today, our future tomorrow?

(also, there are some parallels here with Zhou Enla's thread Welcome to the Surveillance Society )

Quote :

Naomi Klein*: "I think this is an incredibly efficient, actually, a scarily efficient way of organizing society that's actually being celebrated here, which is a hybrid of some of the worst elements of authoritarian communism—mass surveillance of the population, total lack of civil liberties, lack of a free press, lack of democratic rights, authoritarian central planning, all harnessed not to advance the goals of social justice, even in name, although there may be some lip service still paid to that, but to advance the goals of global capitalism. So it is Stalinism meets global capitalism.... There are 100,000 security officers just on Olympic duty. And to put that into perspective, the stadium itself, the Bird's Nest Stadium holds 90,000. So there's 90,000 spectators and 100,000 secret police keeping control of things in Beijing. So this is an incredible operation. But when you hear people like Lou Dobbs and other commentators talking about the problems in China, it's always red China, communist China, or the Chi-coms. And it's really this blast from the past of—you know, it's almost as if the Cold War never ended."

interview split over 4 segments,
watch the videos from the links below.

Naomi Klein on China and the Olympics

"The security, central planning, surveillance state is an ideal cocoon for global capitalism" (1 of 4)

China new disaster-capitalism trough


China security tech supplied by US companies


China's authoritarian capitalism a global trend?

*

Quote :

Bio

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Klein's previous book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies was also an international bestseller. Klein is a former Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics and holds an honorary Doctor of Civil Laws from the University of King’s College, Nova Scotia. For more information on The Shock Doctrine visit http://www.naomiklein.org/main

Isn't the case that there was always private enterprise under Mao ? China doesn't seem to have gone through the same shock and trauma as the former USSR states.

Klein gives a good framework to discuss China. A central command capitalist economy - anathema to neoliberals and socialists. There seems to be horrific inequality with a very large working class that is kept in line with difficulty. Would it be true to say that China is caught in a loop to some extent in which its workers are subsidising the living standards of people in the US?

A lot of the profit China generates from profits made exporting to the US are immediately "recycled" into US banks and bonds and this has allowed the US to operate its crazy deficits. These assets have declined with the falling dollar.
On the one hand it allows the US to carry on buying from China, and on the other, so far as I can see, it erodes the profitability of China's economy.

I am not an economist, so if I am understanding this wrongly, please set me straight.

I would also be very interested to here a neoliberal view of this system, since the shine has come off the Friedman vision. Could there be an attraction to this kind of set up to disillusioned free marketeers ?

cactus flower wrote:

Isn't the case that there was always private enterprise under Mao ? China doesn't seem to have gone through the same shock and trauma as the former USSR states.

Klein gives a good framework to discuss China. A central command capitalist economy - anathema to neoliberals and socialists. There seems to be horrific inequality with a very large working class that is kept in line with difficulty. Would it be true to say that China is caught in a loop to some extent in which its workers are subsidising the living standards of people in the US?

I suppose it is a loop, but the argument is that it will be used to lower standards in the US in the long term, which I think it's starting to do already.
RE "A central command capitalist economy - anathema to neoliberals and socialists." I'd agree on the socialist side but wrt neoliberals I'm not so sure, as according to David Harvey and others (Klein obviously) there's no real conflict between neoliberalism per se and such authoritarianism. Once the market is free then that's all that matters it seems. I mean what really is the difference in terms of the authoritarianism of Pinochet's Chile and today's China?

Also this type of analysis feeds into the work on the Psychological and political ideologies of right-wing authoritarianism and the strange parallels to Soviet and Maoist authoritarianism.

Having said all of that, outside of the Party in China there's growing opposition to neoliberal market fundamentalist policies amongst dissidents, students, the poor and intellectuals.

cactus flower wrote:

I would also be very interested to here a neoliberal view of this system, since the shine has come off the Friedman vision. Could there be an attraction to this kind of set up to disillusioned free marketeers ?

Such a view would be interesting, but I'm not sure there's as much a dichotomy amongst mainstream neoliberals-- beyond the usual rhetoric or received wisdom. Klein's analysis is that we can see it creeping up on us here n the west already --with the recent illiberal legislation, the disaster capitalism complex and the increasing global competition stemming from the booming and 'successful' (in a capitalist sense and context) China. A faux or not 'yellow peril' could be used to further introduce such measures here in the same manner as the neverending war on terror.

Pax wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Isn't the case that there was always private enterprise under Mao ? China doesn't seem to have gone through the same shock and trauma as the former USSR states.

Klein gives a good framework to discuss China. A central command capitalist economy - anathema to neoliberals and socialists. There seems to be horrific inequality with a very large working class that is kept in line with difficulty. Would it be true to say that China is caught in a loop to some extent in which its workers are subsidising the living standards of people in the US?

I suppose it is a loop, but the argument is that it will be used to lower standards in the US in the long term, which I think it's starting to do already.

I've just struggled through Stiglitz's chapter (in Making Globalization Work) on reserves and I think the above was his argument too. I didn't follow it well though at all.

Regarding China, Klein and capialism, I think it's a bit convenient for her that capitalism is to blame for all the sinister goings on. Time was when an authoritarian regime didn't need an economic ideology to be authoritarian. I think in The Shock Doctrine, she links the Tiannamen (sp?) Square massacre to something similar.

905 wrote:

Pax wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Isn't the case that there was always private enterprise under Mao ? China doesn't seem to have gone through the same shock and trauma as the former USSR states.

Klein gives a good framework to discuss China. A central command capitalist economy - anathema to neoliberals and socialists. There seems to be horrific inequality with a very large working class that is kept in line with difficulty. Would it be true to say that China is caught in a loop to some extent in which its workers are subsidising the living standards of people in the US?

I suppose it is a loop, but the argument is that it will be used to lower standards in the US in the long term, which I think it's starting to do already.

I've just struggled through Stiglitz's chapter (in Making Globalization Work) on reserves and I think the above was his argument too. I didn't follow it well though at all.

Regarding China, Klein and capialism, I think it's a bit convenient for her that capitalism is to blame for all the sinister goings on. Time was when an authoritarian regime didn't need an economic ideology to be authoritarian. I think in The Shock Doctrine, she links the Tiannamen (sp?) Square massacre to something similar.

There certainly were autocrats before capitalism. I find Klein a bit heavy on examples and horror stories and short on analysis and alternatives. That doesn't mean that the examples aren't worth looking at. What Stiglitz and Klein agree on is that the imposition of neoliberal economics on a weak economy is usually so catastrophic for most of the population, to the extent that it has to be enforced with state violence. I'm just reading her chapter on Russia and I'll be back later.

905 wrote:

Pax wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Isn't the case that there was always private enterprise under Mao ? China doesn't seem to have gone through the same shock and trauma as the former USSR states.

Klein gives a good framework to discuss China. A central command capitalist economy - anathema to neoliberals and socialists. There seems to be horrific inequality with a very large working class that is kept in line with difficulty. Would it be true to say that China is caught in a loop to some extent in which its workers are subsidising the living standards of people in the US?

I suppose it is a loop, but the argument is that it will be used to lower standards in the US in the long term, which I think it's starting to do already.

I've just struggled through Stiglitz's chapter (in Making Globalization Work) on reserves and I think the above was his argument too. I didn't follow it well though at all.

Regarding China, Klein and capialism, I think it's a bit convenient for her that capitalism is to blame for all the sinister goings on. Time was when an authoritarian regime didn't need an economic ideology to be authoritarian. I think in The Shock Doctrine, she links the Tiannamen (sp?) Square massacre to something similar.

Oh true, coordinatorism and authoritarianism exists within capitalism and Chinese centrally planned 'communism'. In fact the comparison are quite similar in terms of managment and elites in some respects.

But I think the dynamic within China (and perhaps without...) could be best explained by Johann Harri's excellent piece in the independent.


Johann Hari: We shop until Chinese workers drop

She was expected to work 360 days a year from 7.30am to 9.30pm with only a half-hour break
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-we-shop-until-chinese-workers-drop-447178.html

Quote :

The Chinese people were showing they did not want to leap from a Maoist gulag to a market-fundamentalists' sweatshop. They demanded a sensible compromise: strong trade and markets to generate wealth, matched by strong trade unions to stop markets devouring them. They want an end to grinding poverty, but one that doesn't kill them as they get there.

But they bumped into a huge obstacle. Groups representing Western corporations with factories in China sent armies of lobbyists to Beijing to cajole and threaten the dictatorship into abandoning these new workers' protections.

The American Chamber of Commerce - representing Microsoft, Nike, Ford, Dell and others - listed 42 pages of objections. The laws were "unaffordable" and "dangerous", they declared. The European Chamber of Commerce backed them up.

This is not the first time big business has militated to prevent basic freedoms from being extended to China. Bill Clinton came to office promising "an America that will not coddle dictators, from Beijing to Baghdad", and at first, he acted on this rhetoric, issuing an executive order that decreed trade with China could only grow if China in tandem increased its respect for human rights. Enraged American business executives subjected him to nuclear-strength lobbying - so Clinton ditched his executive order after a year.

Ever since, Western governments have been justifying business with the Chinese dictatorship by saying our corporations and trade would inevitably and inexorably bring greater freedom to China.....

The same with Burma - western political criticism of the dictatorship whilst western companies are using virtual slave labour there.

its sick the betrayal of chinese peoples' rights by the administration to kow tow to industrialists demands.

i'm an admirer of china and its people, but not the administration.

i have been informed (by a party member who works with me) that the current one party state will never fall because the "networks" and "who you know" environment is too important to the big people. she hated it and left to get a better life here.

zakalwe wrote:

its sick the betrayal of chinese peoples' rights by the administration to kow tow to industrialists demands.

i'm an admirer of china and its people, but not the administration.

i have been informed (by a party member who works with me) that the current one party state will never fall because the "networks" and "who you know" environment is too important to the big people. she hated it and left to get a better life here.

Personally I think there is a big explosion coming in China, in the social sense. China has created an enormous working class very quickly. They are very disciplined in the way they work in factories. If they ever get together and organise (and I am sure they must be trying to) they will be a formidable force.

zakalwe wrote:

its sick the betrayal of chinese peoples' rights by the administration to kow tow to industrialists demands.

i'm an admirer of china and its people, but not the administration.

i have been informed (by a party member who works with me) that the current one party state will never fall because the "networks" and "who you know" environment is too important to the big people. she hated it and left to get a better life here.

She must get a certain sense of recognition looking at Fianna Fail.