[Marxism] David Matters: Personal observations of China - June 2007

[Walter Lippmann]

Many of the posters to Marxmail are hostile to China, 
but few of them, it seems, actually go there and report 
on what they see. This report is from the the website of 
the Communist Party of Australia, a group supportive of 
China, but by no means unaware of its complexities and
challenges and contradictions.

The author has been to China, unlike many of the critics.
Just physically going and seeing a place doesn't guarantee
the validity (or not) of what someone chooses to write of
when settings ones impressions down in written form, but
an eye-witness account is an eye-witness account, valid
to the extent that the author draws a picture which is
of compelling veracity.

The article itself is much longer than these excerpts.


Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California

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"The hope for China is socialism by the turn of the 21st Century. 
The hope for socialism in the 21st Century must include not just 
mighty Cuba, the defiant Koreans and Vietnamese and the emerging 
democratic revolutions of Latin America but must also include in 
its calculations the rising world influence of China."
===================================================================

The Guardian 
1 August, 2007

Nature, Society and Thought Conference:
Personal observations of China

David Matters visited China as part of a study tour organised by the
Social Journal Nature, Society and Thought, a conference held in
Beijing last month to explore the theory and practice of market-based
socialism. As well as representatives from the Academies of Marxism
in Shanghai and Beijing, the Academies of Social Sciences and other
Chinese social research institutes, there were participants from the
US, Canada, Turkey, Germany, Greece and Australia. David Matters is
the Queensland Secretary of the Bus Division of the RBTU and a member
CPA CC. He participated in the conference and reports on his
observations and experiences there.

Beijing

China has approximately 1.3 billion people or around 1/6th of the
world?s population living in one nation. The economy is growing at 10
percent per annum and the urbanisation of China continues.

Depending who you asked Beijing?s population is somewhere between 17
million and 20 million people. The city has modern roads and a subway
system that is clean and efficient, where travel costs approximately
30 cents. Buses are numerous and subsidised, although they are very
crowded at times. The bus fleet was well maintained and very modern.
Although older buses were to be seen in outlying suburbs there was
not the damage that I have seen on the fleet in Central Delhi or even
the patch-up jobs I have seen in Brisbane.

However, this has not stopped the growth in use of private transport
in the form of motor cars, with 44,000 new vehicles per annum being
registered, a figure quoted by one of our tour guides.

The city?s roads are not at gridlock but they will obviously reach
this point at some stage in the future. Petro-chemical smog is a
major pollutant. The road rules appear to involve any right turning
vehicle having right of way. There are traffic police on some
intersections and they seem to be shown as much regard as the road
rules.

There is constant debate in the media about paying attention to the
rules and there is a public campaign on road safety. Surprisingly
there seem to be few accidents and little road rage despite driving
methods that would lead to riots here in Australia.

In India, it was nothing to see an outraged member of the ruling
class defending their actions in mowing down pedestrians or those
riding bicycles. There were no such reports of poor people being run
over in China.

In Beijing, there were beggars, who seemed to be very well organised
with large shopping bags for collecting money on the sub-way. The
attitude of people to these beggars was in the main generous. There
was only one instance where I saw an act of degradation in the form
of a man lying prostrate on the Great Wall and wailing. The reaction
of many locals was to at first try to help him up and summon medical
assistance. There are others who gather bottles for recycling and
quite a few street vendors.

Life has improved

Life is busy and the work is difficult. Many put in long hours of
work but all who I spoke to said that life had improved under the
reforms. The students I met were practising hard to become volunteers
for the Olympics and many people were pleased to practise their
English skills on me.

Young primary school aged children would come forth and beam, "How
are you?". Proud parents would sit in the background urging their
pride and joy to show off their language skills. English is to become
a second language in China and is being taught now from a very young
age.

FULL:
http://www.cpa.org.au/garchve07/1330nst.html 

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WALTER LIPPMANN
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
writer - photographer - activist
http://www.walterlippmann.com
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