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China-bashing is a popular sport. <br>
<br>
I would say that some of Mao's ideas were sound indeed<br>
and some of those who followed had some good ideas too.<br>
My wife is the 6th child in her family and we have 4. I judge the<br>
one-child policy that was once zealously afflicted on the Chinese<br>
as being quite unwise. There is some awakening to that now<br>
that the population age distribution is showing some issues.<br>
The current pop-culture ideal is to have 2 children. We know<br>
a few people with 3 or 4 children and quite a few who have 2.<br>
<br>
I have lived in China for 2 years this time and 5 years beginning in
'96.<br>
I consider the USA to be a far more restrictive and authoritarian
society<br>
but there are things one would point to like freedom of the press,
although actually<br>
one can pretty much disseminate whatever misinfo you like as long as
you are cool about it.<br>
<br>
When I visited Guangzhou in 1991 I saw people eating out of the
dumpsters and garbage cans,<br>
sifting through with bowls and chopsticks. It was already much better
by '96.<br>
Now the Chinese definitely have money and are relatively well off.<br>
There are too many cars. It used to be a sea of bicycles now it's a
sea of cars.<br>
I have a Chinese driver's license. I had to take a test. I dont have
a car here but<br>
have driven here. The expressway roads are excellent.<br>
<br>
I have been pretty much all over the country and into some quite remote
places <br>
working in animal agriculture. There are some serious problems in
livestock production,<br>
and these are all people related problems. We are trying to do
something about it.<br>
Such matters are generally hard work, cost money, and tend to make some
people angry.<br>
I found myself to be a bit perturbed this morning. Better some one
else to be angry rather<br>
than me. It's very important to have good friends. Maybe even to make
new ones, as another<br>
Dr. Johnson suggested. Actually it's going well and we are training
people.<br>
<br>
I dont know about the death rate increase in the <br>
human population. My father in law is 93 and his wife is 89. One of
his cousins<br>
is 105 and pastors a church in their hometown. My father in law fell
and broke his leg<br>
a couple of years ago and almost died of pneumonia but did not. He's
ok now.<br>
<br>
On 2/16/2012 6:54 AM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:E615D5F6-262F-457A-86EA-AD903797628F@illinois.edu"
type="cite">"...the problems China faces are serious. Some are
demographic, reviewed in <i>Science</i>, the leading U.S.science
weekly. The study shows that mortality sharply decreased in China
during the Maoist years, 'mainly a result of economic development and
improvements in education and health services, especially the public
hygiene movement that resulted in a sharp drop in mortality from
infectious diseases.' This progress ended with the initiation of the
capitalist reforms 30 years ago, and the death rate has since
increased."
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<div><br>
<div>
<div>On Feb 13, 2012, at 9:37 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote:</div>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>[The Obama administration is desperate to provide Americans
with a new hate-object in China, to cover over their shilling for the
1% and corresponding failure to improve the declining economic position
of most Americans. (Note the fraudulent bank-fraud deal this week -
very much in the banks' interest and not that of the public.) As
generally in their service to power, academics step forward to provide
a propaganda cover. Here's an important dismantling of recent academic
writing on China. --CGE]
<div><br>
</div>
<div>"Books about China, popular and scholarly, continue to pour
off the presses. In this ever expanding literature, there is a
subdivision that could be entitled ‘Under Western Eyes’. The larger
part of it consists of works that appear to be about China, or some
figure or topic from China, but whose real frame of reference,
determining the optic, is the United States. Typically written by
functionaries of the state, co-opted or career, they have as their
underlying question: ‘China – what’s in it for us?’ Rather than
Sinology proper, they are Sino-Americana. Ezra Vogel’s biography of
Deng Xiaoping is an instructive example. Detached for duties on the
National Intelligence Council under Clinton (he assures the reader that
the CIA has vetted his book for improper disclosures), Vogel is a
fixture at Harvard, where the house magazine hails Deng Xiaoping and
the Transformation of China as the ‘capstone to a brilliant academic
career’..."</div>
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<div>The rest of the article is at <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n03/perry-anderson/sino-americana">http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n03/perry-anderson/sino-americana</a></div>
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