Published February 11, 2024
Freed from foreign domination, China has attempted in various ways to consciously craft its own destiny and show the world that there is a way of organizing and developing society other than that charted by Soviet socialism or Western capitalism.
This romantic view is the stuff of radical aspirations not only in the Third World but also in First World countries.
In the late 1960s, as a graduate student in England, I was half-amused to find young British activists on university campuses wearing Mao jackets and caps and spouting quotations from chair Mao Zedong.
China’s communes appeared to inspire in them a vague longing for an idyllic world free from the alienation and pathologies of industrial society.
The image of Red Guard militants challenging entrenched authority seemed to fit the anti-Establishment discourse of the student revolution that was then sweeping major universities in Europe and North America.
Lasting about a decade, the Cultural Revolution was an unmitigated disaster. While it sought to provide young people with a revolutionary experience, it plunged China into political turmoil and mired its economy into a deeper depression. It proved the Marxist thesis that socialism wasn’t meant to be built on the base of a backward economy. But no one among China’s leaders had enough stature to challenge Mao’s directives not to touch the Red Guards as they targeted party elders and bureaucrats for public humiliation.
Professionals, intellectuals, and academics were sent to the countryside for “re-education.” Universities were closed down. With Mao stressing the primacy of revolution as the true engine of social development, scientific research was downgraded, and technological development ground to a halt.
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SOURCE: www.opinion.inquirer.com
RELATED: Devastating impact of Evergrande’s $532 billion collapse
Australia’s economic future is in the balance as the $532 billion collapse of mega developer Evergrande takes hold.
Published February 11, 2024
ANALYSIS
Chinese mega developer Evergrande has been ordered into liquidation owing almost $350 billion US ($532 billion AUD) to its creditors. This is more debt than some entire nations- Thailand, Israel and Portugal – and concerns are high that its liquidation could have some disastrous knock-on effects.
In a recent press conference Treasurer Jim Chalmer’s noted that the Albanese government was “monitoring these developments closely” and that the woes of the Chinese property sector was “one of the reasons why the global economic outlook is uncertain”.
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SOURCE: www.news.com.au
RELATED: Economic Watch: Two cities exemplify vibrancy of Chinese wholesale markets
The train service from the Chinese small commodity hub of Yiwu to the European commodity center of Madrid was officially launched in November 2014, spanning eight countries in Eurasia with a total length of more than 13,000 kilometers.
The train service from Yiwu to Madrid has become a carrier of economic and trade cooperation and cultural exchanges between countries along the railway and has built a new bridge for opening and cooperation between countries and peoples along the line. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)
Published February 11, 2024
BEIJING, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) — Business activities of wholesales markets, a bellwether of economic trends, have returned the bustling levels across China, heralding the country’s broader economic recovery.
Well-known as the world’s manufacturing hub, China is home to a wide range of wholesale markets. Among them, two cities, with their own distinctive features and strengths, stand out from the fierce competition and occupy unique positions in the world’s wholesale trade landscape.
Yiwu, even though just a county level city in east China’s Zhejiang Province, and which was initially built on a barter system, has now positioned itself as a “world’s supermarket” after decades of expansion. Currently, this city offers nearly 2.1 million varieties of goods that are shipped to nearly every corner of the globe, while hosting over 15,000 merchants from more than 100 countries and regions.
About 800 km away, Linyi, a less conspicuous inland city located in east China’s Shandong Province, now features as a notable up-and-comer in the wholesales industry. Hosting almost all categories of the means of production, this city has built the country’s largest professional wholesale market cluster.
