NY Times Cohen Gives China an Editorial Reach-Around

Roger Cohen's slathering over how great China is in today's Times comes across as some kind of post-coital euphoria after a night on the town with senior Party cadres. I hope he makes sure to pick up some non-bootleg tetracycline in the hotel apothecary!

Sadly though, he is on to something in that, on their respective current trajectories, China and the US (EU too?) will meet, in the not-too-distant future, at a point called corporatocracy.

Long live Stability!

Google and China - the Big Picture


Is this a turning point? Doubtful. Will 'western' multinationals and their respective lapdog governments begin to reevaluate and reconsider 'engagement' policy vis a vis China? Don't bet on it. 'Engagement' was a fraud from the time the phrase was coined. Corporations had been longing to regain access to cheap Chinese labor ever since China was 'lost' in 1949. When Deng opened the door, corporations quickly discovered a manufacturing heaven; not only was the labor cheap but unable to complain about anything and easily replaced should they have the temerity to do so.
What if the 'West' spent 30 years investing in the USSR after the end of WWII, strengthening its economy and its ability to challenge us around the world? Well, wake up people, China is challenging us everyday in the UNSC(Iran, Sudan), in resource-rich developing nations around the world(laissez-faire FDI, bribes), etc.
'Western' FDI created China. The real danger is that we become more like China than the other way around. Keep a weather eye out for words like 'stability', 'appropriate', 'harmony', 'security' when politicians, controlled by their corporate masters, start making excuses for surveillance laws, anti-union laws, censorship laws, 'free speech zones', obstacles to freedom of assembly. Oh wait, some of that has already happened.