Message from cwatson

[Anonymous]

Here is another post about the Rise of the East from Dr. Chase (?) on NPR 11/19/09 "Fresh Air".
He is the Director of the Asia Society in New York for US-China relations.
He has written 9 books on China and was Dean of the School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.

Dr. Chase believes that our democracy has stalled due to vicious bi-partisan politics whereas China's rapid development had been aided by their autocratic system of government. However, plans can be delayed for decades, just like the US, due to internal strife.
(See article on Mao's Yangze River plan which has been thrawted for decades due to arguments between scientists and engineers "Beneath Booming Cities".)
China had 700 miles of high speed rail, and now it has approximately 7,000 (?) miles of high speed rail.

Tiannamen Square is a near memory as is the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although it took about 50 years for the Berlin Wall to fall, Hu Jin Tau knows about preceding failed peoples revolution in Czech. and in other eastern block countries decades earlier.
It is for this reason Hu Jin Tau fears an Internet infiltration as it may lead to independent thinking and separate organizations who want to operation apart from the centralized government.

China's government must control 1.3 billion people, which is why it is terrified of US style democracy. They believe there would be chaos.

For now, most Chinese are proud of China's rapid advancement and its 10% annual growth, which is why they tolerate their Chinese autocratic government. Decades from 2009, China may settle into an autocratic style of democracy.
Dr. Chase attributes China's explosive growth to its autocratic government. He opines that more can be accomplished with that type of government.

My thoughts about this interview on NPRs "Fresh Air" are as follows:

As Chinese people hear of the freedoms in other countries via email, text, IM or AIM, or though pirated copies of DVDs from the West or from other Asian countries, they may yearn for both economic freedom and political freedom.

If history is to be our guide then consider this, many historians say:
1) WWII happened because WWI was not finished.
2) The Iraq War happened because the Gulf Was was not finished.

Could these principles about armed conflict also apply to the democratization of governments? If that is so then perhaps the Berlin Wall fell because the Soviet Union ignored the basic freedoms of its people.

Then what if democracy happens in China because Tiannamen Square was never finished?

Cheryl Watson