The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Wednesday 15 February 2012

INFORMATION ANARCHY IS GOOD - DEMOCRATIC VIBES IN THE MIDDLE KINGDOM (V)

Continued from:
INFORMATION ANARCHY IS GOOD - DEMOCRATIC VIBES IN THE MIDDLE KINGDOM (I)
(
http://severallyalone.blogspot.in/2012/02/information-anarchy-is-good-democratic.html

INFORMATION ANARCHY IS GOOD - DEMOCRATIC VIBES IN THE MIDDLE KINGDOM (II)
(http://severallyalone.blogspot.in/2012/02/information-anarchy-is-good-democratic_09.html)
INFORMATION ANARCHY IS GOOD - DEMOCRATIC VIBES IN THE MIDDLE KINGDOM (III)
INFORMATION ANARCHY IS GOOD - DEMOCRATIC VIBES IN THE MIDDLE KINGDOM (IV)



THE PROBLEM OF PLENTY



China has probably the maximum number of factories and the largest workforce. The dragon has extracted the maximum possible mileage out of it. Consistently high growth rate over the last two decades tell it. Global economic scenario and a common economic intelligence tell the growth high is already at its saturation level. The only road further is to go down to have the saner and not miraculous growth figures. That would mean less manpower requirement for lowered production targets.

But what would happen to this plenty then? Factories can be closed but what about those dependent on these factories for their livelihoods? And this has started happening. Result – spate of strikes and protests in the last three years.

A Reuters report puts the number of mass incidents consistently above 90,000 per year from 2007 to 2009 quoting a former deputy editor-in-chief of the People’s Daily. 2010 and 2011 are no different stories. We didn’t hear much about 2007-2009 but have good knowhow about 2010-2011 developments.

What is disturbing for the Chinese power elite is the way strikes happened in 2011. The Economist report says, “A report published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) says that, compared with those in 2010, the strikes of 2011 were better organised, more confrontational and more likely to trigger copycat action.”

CAN A SECOND GENERATION HANDLE ANOTHER SECOND GENERATION?

Especially when they are the two extremes - one, from the rugged, deprived countryside - other, from the most privileged  section of the Chinese society - with the later feeding directly on the former in the prevailing political scenario in China! (Its only the matter of growing realization and 'how and when' of it) 

The year of the dragon looks ominous for the Middle Kingdom. Much depends on how the Chinese policymakers are going to handle the crisis at hand that may aggravate to the acidic level by the time the power transition happens. The political thought make-up that China is going to have for the next decade will have its testing times right in the face in the very beginning.

And in this China, strange things are happening; strange as the power elite see it. Certainly it is not strange for us, out of China. Rather, it is a natural consequence of what is happening in the China of the day.

‘Children of the revolution’ is a nice-to-ear term but given the intense amount of news flow and analysis on the next generation of Chinese political leaders, it looks as implicating as the cantilevered term ‘the princelings'. A simple search with the thread ‘China princelings’ would fetch thousands of analytic views and news reports and almost of them sound cautious in nature.

Politics in the Communist China is gradually becoming more and more dynastic in nature, the absolute contrary to the socialist politics ethos. Degeneration of the Communist politics looks to get its extreme level with China joining the bandwagon of the ‘dead-men-walkings’ of the Communist politics like Cuba or North Korea.  

Princelings are increasingly having grown up stature in the politics of the Communist Party of China. The Politburo had nine such princelings during 2000-2007. The most elite body, the Politburo Standing Committee, might have five prinelings on-board out of the total strength of nine after the next power transition. A section of the ‘eight immortals’ that was purged by Mao in the Cultural Revolution has its second generation fully reinstated to run the lives of ordinary Chinese. There are factions of the second generation leadership, from political and military backgrounds, vying for the ‘seats’ of power in the next ‘huddle of change’; ‘huddle’ as politicking in China at top level has become a tedious job of balancing different and differing influencing voices. It is yet another concern area that might add negatively to the efforts to control the rising unrest in the country in the year of power transition.

Yes, how the ‘elite few’ of the second generation of the political leadership handle the frustrated multimillions of the second generation of the factory worker Chinese would write how prosperous and developed China would be in the 21st Century.

The prevailing circumstances are disturbing. There are sections of the ‘children of revolution’ armed with liberal education from abroad and there are sections represented by the likes of Bo Xilai, advocating painting China in Maoist Red, taking it back to the days of the Cultural Revolution. The common base they touch is that they are offspring of a political legacy preserved with utmost ruthlessness.

What is different in China from the other Communist ‘dead-men-walkings’ is the economic model that imitates Capitalism now. And it has elevated hopes of the millions. What was once utterly alien had started looking well within reach. The second generation of the migrant Chinese workers and the burgeoning middle class base are its representatives.

Suppressing them declining political reforms would make them alien to the concept of the Communist Politics of the China of the day. When the political and the military class can have secure lives for their next generations, why can’t an ordinary Chinese aspire for it?

An ordinary Chinese has started understanding it. He doesn’t need the sky but a secure income at the end of the day and even that is not happening with the millions.

The 'economic powerhouse' China can handle the economic crisis but how would it handle the precursor of unrest and a deepening desire of having freedom to express the dissent?

A mass crackdown would only worsen the crisis. China, simply, cannot be a Cuba or a North Korea, given its stakes in the global economics and given its changed demographic landscape.

The Middle Kingdom is not at all in a position to remain forbidden anymore. The world is watching. And most of the Chinese now know it. Social media is happening even as the dragon is furious about it.  


Continued..

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/