Torygraph says that China is facing a subprime crisis

Were it so easy...

I should be more specific. People with full stomachs don't start revolutions, if the leadership has taken the necessary steps beforehand to make revolution undesirable.

Weak leaders don't deserve to hold power, and so, those more deserving shall take it from them.

edited 9th Oct '11 5:25:25 AM by tropetown

All it takes to spark a revolution is an idea. Nothing more, and nothing can be done to prevent such an idea from occurring. If the idea is agreeable and wanted by a large enough section of the populace a revolution will occur and there's nothing a government can do to preempt that.

Indeed. However, if the current system is superior to that which is proposed by the revolution, why would the section of the populace desire the revolutionary idea in the first place? If it is because the revolutionaries have become more popular than the existing government, well, that is a sign of weak leadership, and the revolutionaries will have every right to seize power.

Granted, there will always be those unhappy with the current system; for it to gain popular support, however, there would need to be a problem affecting a large enough subset of the population that could be manipulated to cause them to support a revolution.

edited 9th Oct '11 5:52:07 AM by tropetown

Either as you said weak leadership, or a sufficiently manipulative/agreeable leader behind that idea emerges. For example, Simon Bolivar. He was a nobody in most Latin American countries...until he led revolutions in a half dozen of them against Spain.

edited 9th Oct '11 5:50:32 AM by MajorTom

Again, you're absolutely correct. However, a manipulative leader will still need a platform on which to base his claim for a revolution; if there is no issue that strongly affects the population to cause them to turn against the established order and onto his side, his campaign for the hearts and minds of the populace will fail.

Of course, a sufficiently intelligent leader could simply convince the people that there was a problem...

edited 9th Oct '11 5:55:29 AM by tropetown

That's what Bolivar did. And Ho Chi Minh, and quite a few other revolutionaries throughout history violent and peaceful.

Bolivar I'll have to read more on, so I won't say whether you're right or wrong in that case. Ho Chi Minh, on the other hand, addressed the problem of foreign imperialism and based his revolution on overthrowing the foreign powers that had taken control of what is now known as Vietnam. He didn't simply conjure up a problem out of thin air; he capitalized on the existing problems and gained support through appealing to the nationalistic tendencies that the people were subject to.

My point was that, a government that leaves threats to its power exposed that opportunistic rebels can take advantage of, simply does not deserve the authority that has been given to it. The "people with full stomachs" quote was just a simplification of that idea.

edited 9th Oct '11 6:18:46 AM by tropetown

The Bread and Circuses idea is severely undermined by globalization and mass media.

People have pro-democracy ideas in China all the time. It hasn't turned into a revolution, or even close to it, because unpleasant though things might be, the government makes sure that everything is run in a way that is preferable to the populace to revolution. More than enough people still remember the last one, and China is an old, old country with a lot of violence and disasters in its history. "Luan," meaning "chaos," is the most feared word in their language. As long as the government prevents chaos, the people will not easily be convinced to revolt.

^ Speaking as a Chinese (and this is from someone born in the relatively pro-freedom Hong Kong), I'd say it's definitely part of our cultural narrative that a strong (even if authoritarian) government is preferable to chaos or a weak government that allows chaos to emerge.

A major theme in Chinese history is that weak governments are what allowed foreigners to kick the shit out of us. And this isn't restricted to 18th to 20th century history after sustained contact with the west. Weak Song dynasty government got us bullied by the Jin and then invaded by the Mongols. Weak Ming dynasty got us invaded by the Manchus etc.

This is a major reason why the idea of a "unified China" is so important to many people. The connotation is that a China divided into many pieces is weak and invites others to gobble us up. It's even embedded into the language we use. The break up of the USSR, for example, is described using the same words as dismember. As in "the dismemberment of the Soviet Union."

edited 10th Oct '11 10:17:41 PM by nightwyrm_zero

Well there's another dimension to this. The term bread and circuses is referring to the government doing pointless stuff to distract from major problems. When the current Chinese regime is providing everyone with jobs, shelter, clothing, protection from foreign threats, national unity, food, economic growth etc. etc., that level of "bread and circuses" is getting rather ridiculous. That's like saying "this man is feigning an attack... using his entire attacking force to hit me and is not retreating".

Freedom is just a tool used to make your life better, not the end goal. If you value life sucking so long as you have more freedoms, I guess that's your choice but it's not one that most Chinese would ever make.

Anyway, I suspect that many of these corrupt officials could be caught up in a corruption sweep and subsequent mass execution.

I don't think your opinions regarding freedom are shared by everyone, breadloaf.

And no, that's not what "Bread and Circuses" means. That's the "Circuses" part. Bread is food.

That term is actually pretty applicable. Even setting aside your views on freedom, the CCP doesn't really provide the things in your checklist as fairly as you seem to think.

Working conditions are horrific, and there's no way out. "Safety from foreign threats?" What do you even think that means? Nobody is going to invade. I suppose they're protecting China from exploitation...by doing it themselves.

Not to mention the cultural repression, the expansion of Mandarin and general pro-Beijing bias, and of course the oppression of groups like the Tibetans.

This wasn't meant to be an argument regarding the merits of China's current government. Sorry if I started one. But really, that's a viewpoint I violently disagree with. Oppression may be preferable to chaos. But it's oppression nonetheless.

The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.

Nobody is going to invade because Communist China is united and has a huge army. Just a hundred years ago when the government was broken, China was divided and the military was woefully under-equipped and poorly led, every single country from Japan to USA was occupying the country. There's nothing far-fetched about foreign occupation. Just 60 years ago, tens of million of Chinese died from a massive invasion. Your argument feels way too much like "I live in my awesome rich country, I don't see why these poor people don't just stop being poor!". (Plus there's irony here, since you are American, correct me if I'm mistaken... a citizen of a country which looted China when its military was weak)

Yeah it's certainly not so great in China, but talking about Communist China like it's the worst thing to ever hit China ignores how much better it is there because of them since they got power and how it has improved over their 60 year reign. That's why very few in China are looking to revolt, however bad it is there, it's still 100x better than without the Communists. It's not like there was ever a window of opportunity for democracy to have flowered. That window is only likely to come within the next few decades. Horrific working conditions when compared to just 100 years ago, Tibet was a theocratic serfdom and the rest of China was ruled by the Qing Dynasty and its accompanying class system. That's no way out. You go from that to lifting 600 million people out of poverty since the Communists ruled.

Anyway... the problem here is corruption. Corrupt officials are taking bad loans to give to bed buddies.

edited 14th Oct '11 10:53:23 AM by breadloaf

China's economic collapse, if it were to come to pass, would only serve to drag the world into another Great Recession, or worse. The US and a host of other nations are all heavily involved with China in terms of trade and economics.

Which was a mistake in the first place, getting involved with them.

There's no need to view the world as some kind of zero sum game, where one must win at another's expense.

They're winning at our expense, on the backs of our poor decisions, so why not?

Besides, I'd rather not deal with any illegitimate government, which is, as far as I care, what the PRC is...

^^^ You can chaulk that up to greed, or a desire to maximize profit-margins, take you pick of term. They make stuff for less cost, shipping goods from place to place is fairly inexpensive now that we have Intermodal Containers and all that stuff related to them, and if you want to keep your share-holders happy, you seek to maximize profit.

It's business, pure and simple, made possible by Globalization. And it's not like we have cheap labor only there, it's all over the place. Look at the tags on your clothes, or on the bottom of your keyboard and mouse. Chances are, there made somewhere other than where you live. (I got a Panasonic phone here made in Malaysia, rest made in China).)

Fact is, we helped do this to them, by dumping our money into their economy and getting them addicted to it, just as we're addicted to cheaper labor and gobs of cheap goods at Wal-Mart.

edited 14th Oct '11 12:04:21 PM by pvtnum11

Wow, that is ironic. The constant presence of hostile neighbors helped mold China into the chilly, 4000-year-old behemoth is today. Then, under the guise of cooperation, we get them to lower their xenophobic defenses and stealthy fuck up their economy. Sad, if it's true.

Money, probably a better drug than Opium ever was.

China's chilliness ebbs and flows with history. Typically during peace time and good leadership its borders were open, and the opposite during war time or poor leadership.

Trade is not an addiction. It's exactly what you want. There's no problem here. America's failing industry has nothing to do with China and all to do with poor domestic leadership in not investing in things that China is not building. If industries only last 20 years before being shipped overseas, then get people new jobs every 20 years. Countries like Canada sport a 7% unemployment rate under current economic conditions compared to USA's 10% (and 20% real unemployment if we include people who gave up on job seeking). It's not like Canada does not face shipping things overseas just like USA.

The unemployment rate in the U.S. has just as much to do with squeezing people until they accept China's working conditions, which is an ideological milestone for industry.

Well really, you should... err we should probably spawn a new thread for this but I'll leave one last comment in derail land:

You've an economic system where you've discovered a means to cheapen the cost of producing goods and somehow people have gotten poorer. That's retarded.