11/02/2015, 00.00
CHINA
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Without reforms, the Chinese economy will collapse, followed by the Party

by Wei Jingsheng
For the great dissident, who played a crucial role in the Democracy Wall movement, government policy is useless. In an attempt to renew itself, it is just throwing money and looking internationally without supporting local businesses. Unless it ends state economic monopolies and widespread corruption, “the bitter days of the Chinese are yet to come."

Washington (AsiaNews) – There has been a lot of bad news recently.  The bankruptcy tide in Shenzhen is just a signal.  There are also many individual businesses in the mainland part of Mainland China that went bankrupt yet seem not so noticeable due to the blocked information.  These represent the depth and width of the current economic crisis in China.

Another more dangerous signal is that Xi Jinping has inherited and is even growing the tradition of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.  In order to buy the flattery from foreign politicians, their tradition was to sprinkle a lot of money about.  Xi Jinping has excelled even further - he is not only spending a lot of money to buy things, but even more to invest for other countries.  It was said that Xi threw more than one hundred billion US dollars to the Britons.  He acts as if there is too much money in China and thus he wants to spend that more than one hundred billion US dollars to buy some glory to decorate his own face.

These two signals from both sides indicate that China's economic crisis will soon deepen until collapse.  Of course, the experts will analyze from different aspects with more detail.  We simply just take a look at these two extremes, to see why Xi Jinping will not stop until he has brought down China.

The bankruptcy signal in Shenzhen shows that the biggest difficulty China's economy faces now is the difficulty of economic restructuring, or say transition.  Early on, when China's economy was developing rapidly with a favorable wind from the United States, the Chinese enterprises should have gradually began to transition, to develop into higher level.  That would be a sustainable development, instead of thinking of adjustment only after one cannot sell the low-end products anymore.

Not to mention this word of "adjustment" sounds too understated.  It sounds as if there is not much of a big problem, which could be passed over neatly and quickly, without realizing the seriousness of the problem.  In comparison to buying the face decoration of spending more than one hundred billion US dollars, the Communist Party seems to count the economic development and people's survival as nothing.  But rather, it is the British Queen and the U.K. government that put on a thick skin to fool Xi Jinping, thus making a poor country donate investment for a rich country so the people in the United Kingdom would have a better life.

Is it true that China has so much money and cannot find a place to invest it?  Looking at the bankruptcy tide in Shenzhen, we should know that it requires a lot of money as a base to solve the issue of upgrading these businesses that have been operating in the red for years.  As now, the capital in China is escaping the country at a rate of more than a trillion US dollars per year, plus the hundreds of billions money to buy face for the Communist Party.  How could the Chinese companies find the capital to upgrade into a newer generation?  As the companies accelerate their pace of bankruptcy, the collapse of China's economy is not far away and thus the collapse of China itself is not far away.  As the old Chinese proverb says: "When the skin is gone, where could the hair be adhered to?"  By then, it would not be far away for the Communist Party to die yet without a burial place.

Of course, I do not care whether the Communist Party collapses or not.  Its earlier downfall would be a good thing for China.  But if it involves Chinese people suffering again, I cannot just stand by idly.  So I should point out some basic common sense to walk out of the woods.

First, at the time the companies in China need upgrading into newer generations, the Communist regime should immediately stop its so-called "diplomatic actions" to buy face by spending money.  Not to mention that what the Communist regime bought was not a decoration of its face, but is truly the emperor's new clothes - a stupid action of self-deception.  The Communist media has been gleefully saying that Germany and France are on their way come to Beijing to worship, but in fact it is that the British have sent a signal to the others (as popularly worded in Chinese nowadays): (they are) stupid people with a lot of money, come quickly.

Spending money to buy face would not only get no face as "stupid people", but also will directly affect the confidence of capital inside China.  Whether the capital is Chinese or foreign, who would be willing to put money in the hands of fools?  This is common sense that even a fool would know.  Thus, it will accelerate capital fleeing abroad.

Second, the Chinese government should remove all sorts of trade barriers and non-tariff barriers, and open China's market.  This enables the technology, capital, and management experience that are needed for the upgrading of Chinese enterprises to have unimpeded access to China, to accelerate the upgrading of Chinese enterprises.  Maybe it would avoid a complete collapse.

The developed countries now have excess technology, capital, and management experience, especially a large amount of already obsolete technology and talent.  The backwardness of China is their chance to show their talents and continue to make money.  Over the past more than ten years, the motivation for Chinese bureaucratic capital to make excusive profit has obstructed these favorable factors.  The basic means of obstruction is exactly due to various barriers and the lawless political system.

Third, various forms of monopoly need to be reduced and even eliminated in China, especially the large-scale monopoly in the pretext of state-ownership.  We need to implement a market-oriented economy, rather than a state-owned economy that took the lead.  The monopoly of state-owned enterprises is not only the root cause of the uncompetitiveness of China's economy, but also the root cause of a system that is creating billionaires along with disparity between rich and poor.  Now anti-corruption measures in China is just like stirring the soup in an effort to stop the water from boiling.  Only through eliminating monopolies and restoring the rule of law, can corruption be able to be controlled at minimum at its root.

Fourth, China must be open to have free speech and stop Internet censorship.  The freedom of information transmission is the premise to realize individual free will of expression.  Free exchange of personal ideas is the premise for creativity; creativity is the premise for economic development continually moving upward, as well as the premise for a harmonious society.  Only introducing wisdom without its own creativity has been unable to make up for decades of debt in the upgrading of Chinese enterprises.  For decades now, the lack of creativity in China is proportional to the degree of lack of freedom of speech.  It has nothing to with the IQ score of the Chinese people.

Finally, and also the most important, is to restore fairness and credibility to the legal system, to restore the equal protection of the law for everyone in China.  The current one-party dictatorship protects a small number of lawless people, while most Chinese are treated as inferior, without the protection of law.  Thus, law in China has lost all credibility it is due.  The so-called the Communist Party is a bigger entity than law, and the individual will and interests of the local despots of different levels easily override the law.  Thus neither the Communist Party nor the law is the biggest entity; only those despots who have money and power.

This kind of political system not only hinders the economic development, but also interferes with people's lives in China.  It is the main reason for the Chinese people living in misery.  Without eradicating this primary cancer, without curing the root cause of this biggest illness, China's economic and social development can only be wishful thinking like "drilling the wood to get fish" and "catching the moon from the water".  Even if all other aspects are doing very well, society cannot stand up to the destruction by these despots with money and power - their power being exactly from the lawlessness of the one-party dictatorship.

Therefore, the hope for China avoiding total collapse can only be pinned on the future of reform or revolution.  Until the one-party dictatorship is changed, the bitter days of the Chinese are yet to come.

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