Armed Polite Society

Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: ramis on July 13, 2008, 02:26:24 PM

Title: The People's Republic of Capitalism
Post by: ramis on July 13, 2008, 02:26:24 PM

First post. Hi all.

• http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/koppel/highlights/highlights.html

Have any of you seen this documentary? Very interesting.
 

Title: Re: The People's Republic of Capitalism
Post by: thebaldguy on July 13, 2008, 04:29:30 PM

I've watched this program recently as well. I studied China in college 18 years ago. I never thought that China would be where they were today. I wonder where they will be in another 18 years.

Title: Re: The People's Republic of Capitalism
Post by: drewtam on July 13, 2008, 04:44:38 PM

I have a lot of colleague/co-workers who work in China or have worked in China. And I am also taking a class on Chinese culture and business etiquette, while I work very closely with my Chinese engineering teams. (Late evening meetings after working all day is a frustrating thing.)

Its a strange & interesting combination of fascism and capitalism. One can hardly call any of it communist any more. But the vestiges of an extremely powerful central gov't, bureaucracy, corruption, and secret police are still in full force. But with the acceptance of capitalist economies, all thats left is an oppressive fascist state. They no longer take care of the poor like they used to, they no longer care for the sick or old. These are some of the few positive fundamentals of a socialist/communist system that they no longer take responsibility for.

So its a little wild. One of the glues that hold this crazy system together is east Asian culture of "fitting in". In the west, we always glorify the individual. We honor great inventors, or great leaders; we always says it is good to be different or weird. But in easy Asia, like China and Japan, conformity rules. No accepts praise, all praise must be for the team. No one wants to be different, its very important to conform and fit in.

Title: Re: The People's Republic of Capitalism
Post by: MicroBalrog on July 13, 2008, 10:17:02 PM

It's interesting that even though China has moved a looong way from where they were 20 or 30 years ago, it's still far from a really capitalist society.

China is actually only 126th on this year's Index of Economic Freedom.


http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/countries.cfm

Title: Re: The People's Republic of Capitalism
Post by: Sergeant Bob on July 14, 2008, 02:10:58 AM

I caught one installment of the series and it was very interesting. I plan to watch some more.