Homestead mailing list

[Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

Essentially homesteaders are in a holding pattern, trying to get out of 
the line of fire that has by far the strongest effect on their future.

Incoming fire comes from two directions and from two major players, 
China and the Bush Administration.  We know some nasty results from the 
latter on environment, energy, and slavish devotion to corporate 
welfare, rich welfare as apposed to welfare of the creative and working 
class.  The ultimate effect Hu's ascent in China remains to be seen.

The insight  of Sol Sanders is deep, his reasoning power acute---someone 
to follow in trying to figure out the personal future of you and your 
family in the scheme of things.


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_A SENSE OF ASIA_

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 Who's Hu?

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<http://216.26.163.62/2004/s.html> See the Sol Sanders Archive

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*By Sol Sanders*

*SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM*

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Sol W. Sanders

        


October 5, 2004

The invitation to China to this year's meeting of the G7 with the 
world's other economic leaders was recognition of Beijing's growing role 
as a maw for raw materials [and its neighbors' hi tech components] and 
as a lode of cheap but increasingly sophisticated manufactured exports. 
It coincided with an equally important shift in China's leadership, the 
handing on of power from the so-called third generation of the Communist 
revolution to its fourth.

It is a bit too early for the accolades coming from all sides for a 
peaceful transfer of power for the first time in Communist history [in 
China as elsewhere]. Jiang Zemin who refused to go last year from 
chairmanship of the central military commissions, has now relinquished 
his role as guardian of Mao Zedung's dictum "all power comes out of the 
barrel of a gun". It remains to be seen if Jiang will try to repeat his 
mentor Deng Xiaoping's control from beyond officialdom. But we knew Deng 
and Jiang is no DXp!

Hu tiptoes into the leader's role as a virtual unknown at a time of 
great decision-making for China's 1.3 billion people. Even Jiang, a 
pinch hitter after the collapse of the Party structure in the Tien An 
Mien catastrophe when Deng ordered the massacre of protesting students 
and workers on the doorstep of Party headquarters, was better known. He 
was, after all, a leader of the Shanghai clique of arrivistes under 
Deng's "Get rich" mantra.

Hu, and his ally Prime Minister Wen Jinbao only slightly less so, are 
the quintessential Party hacks who reached eminence by going along at 
the proper moment with the twisting Party line.

Lightning has a way, sometimes, of striking opportunist politicians and 
transforming them into statesmen. It could happen to Hu. Certainly there 
is no limit to opportunities for demonstrating ingenuity and leadership. 
For while the G7 coronation - and the arrival of supplicants on the 
doorstep of the emperor such as France's President Jacques Chirac - 
recognizes Beijing's successes, it only dramatizes the challenges: 
Economic.

China's rapid growth has unleashed unknown forces. An overheated economy 
is threatened with inflation. Communist leadership remembers, if the 
world has forgotten, they came to power in the late 40s more through 
Shanghai's counting rooms than on the battlefields. A fragile, 
politically compromised, overextended banking structure, skyrocketing 
regional and class disparities, overdependence on exports, mushrooming 
import bills for energy and raw materials, rising speculation against an 
undervalued and inflexibly managed currency - all require adjustments, 
"A soft landing" to the current boom is required to maintain political 
stability and a continuing flow of foreign investment and technology 
transfer. Earlier crises were surmounted with skill by former Prime 
Minister Zhu Rongji. But the stakes were much smaller and the whole 
apparatus of control was much more in command. One has only to look at 
an energy import bill which has risen almost 40 percent in the first six 
months of 2004 and the hysteria it has produced among the leadership; 
China's Mercantilists see their trade balances turning red.

Political. Despite the best efforts of Washington, Tokyo, the ASEAN and 
EU diplomats to put the best face on relations with China, the rhetoric 
of confrontation is growing louder.

And in no small part it arises from Beijing's own intractability. 
Chinese leadership apparently believes huge and growing investment and 
trade will inevitably lead to basic compromises in others' political 
agendas. [No matter how many times economist determinists get proved 
wrong, the heresy continues.] In fact, for example, Beijing's maladroit 
tactics on the Taiwan issue has only stiffened the Island's resolve to 
maintain its separation, even encouraged radical independence elements - 
all this despite its enormous investments and growing trade with the 
Mainland.

Treading water with [or actively encouraging?] North Korea's 
intransigence over its nuclear weapons and missiles programs has spurred 
Japan's rearmament and U.S.-Japanese military integration, with Beijing 
as well as Pyongyang in mind. [Beijing's alternately turning on and off 
government-inspired anti-Japanese propaganda has now taken root among 
younger Chinese.] Despite Secretary of State Colin Powell's clucking 
noises, the next American administration will be faced with tough 
decisions about China's flouting missiles and nuclear anti-proliferation 
even as Washington sanctions individual Chinese government firms. [Of 
course, these conflicting signals and actions by Washington only add to 
Hu's problems.]

Hu's record - clouded by the miasma of Party propaganda - gives foreign 
observers no real clue to his values. The "optimists" remember he 
suffered in The Great Cultural Revolution, learning by bitter exposure 
the realities of life of the peasantry; his recent world travels after 
decades of isolation must have opened his eyes. [But what to make of his 
participation in the Tibetan 1994-5 repression?]

All this could mean Hu's new found authority and power will introduce a 
new superior level of Chinese governance, even if changes are more 
likely to be slow and minimal in the daedal Chinese environment. But the 
question remains.

/Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders AT comcast.net 
<mailto:solsanders AT comcast.net>), is an Asian specialist with more than 
25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for *Business Week, 
U.S. News & World Report* and *United Press International.* He writes 
weekly for *World Tribune.com*./