Harmony vs Happiness

One might surmise that harmony equals happiness, or vice versa. Not necessarily so, evidently. China has turned itself away from attentive striving for harmony among its vast population. A population that has miraculously seen a seismic shift from the intolerable and seemingly incurable indigence of the masses, to an emergence of a middle class, an extremely wealthy class, and a smaller, albeit still huge poverty-stricken class.

Aside from the economic success of this giant producer of just about anything that can be produced, manufactured and shipped abroad, the country and its administration has had to grapple with environmental issues largely resulting as a fall-out of its giant strides in manufacturing with coal-fired furnaces smothering the atmosphere in carbon emissions, causing no end of medical-health problems to the people living in a myriad of huge metropolises.

There has been, over the past several decades, an immense shift in population from the traditional countryside and marginal agricultural pursuits to the cities hosting tens of millions of people, seeking improved-remunerated acknowledgements of their work efforts, but those people too live in near-poverty as the working poor. The price of basic foodstuffs has increased world wide, but China maintains a healthy stockpile of grains, far more than required, but as insurance.

Still, the rising costs of basic foods and energy and other consumer goods understandably piques the anger of people whose income is too slender for financial comfort, and they become restive. And there are others in that vast population of clever minds and nimble fingers who believe that there are better systems of political governance and they would like to effect change. The Chinese Politburo is not fond of these people who agitate and create chaos when order is sought.

Order, as in 'harmony'. 'Harmony' as in a population content with their lot. Except, they are not. The government has been kept busy putting down protests that pop up here and there across that great land with irritatingly repetitive determination. And because many Chinese are Internet savvy and connected with the use of electronic devices, inclusive of cellphones they have become aware of the shocking events taking place elsewhere in the world where people labour under firm autocracies.

And where mass street protests have resulted in the unravelling of years of dictatorships. People having become enamoured of the vision of themselves freed from tyranny, becoming part of a great democracy which would automatically bring them the employment that has been eluding them for far too long. For just like the bulging youth populations in the Muslim world, China too grapples with the incessant headache of young people setting out to find their fortunes and finding instead years of frustrating unemployment.

Giving the Government of China one huge headache of anticipatory non-harmony. But the solution is close at hand. The poor who agitate for a fairer distribution of the country's vast wealth and earnings, looking on enviously at the easy grace of living that their wealthy counterparts have inherited pose as an incipient revolutionary problem. Led, needless to say, by idealistic young academics and university students eager to bring 'freedom' and 'democracy' to fruition in a country traditionally allergic to it.

Systemic corruption, endemic poverty, immense income gaps, inadequate housing, rising food prices, environmental health hazards and lack of regulatory oversight in the production of chemical-tampered food and lead-laced baby products are some of the grievances. And the solution is right at hand. The elders of the political elite of the Government of China have come to the brilliant conclusion that the required element to satisfy its people is a good dose of happiness.

All government officials at every level now have the responsibility to ensure that the people are happy. They will henceforth be judged on the quality of their work which will be easy enough to quantify, for their job henceforth is to go forth and ensure that they are able to "make people happy". The National People's Congress has so decreed. And so be it.

China, where harmony and happiness are national attributes.

National Contrasts

China must surely be one of the few countries of the world that encourages its citizens to smoke. The national revenues acquired through taxation of tobacco and the fact that the government itself is inextricably involved in tobacco production as a revenue-retrieving renewable crop seems to be paramount. Incentives are given generously to farmers who grow tobacco. Farmers are able, in China, to make a better living growing food crops than tobacco, but they are encouraged to grow tobacco crops by government agencies.

At times of drought, precious water for irrigation of tobacco leaf growth will be made available through government auspices for tobacco growers, but will be withheld from farmers growing food crops. China is the largest tobacco producer in the world, producing approximately one-third of world output. Most of which is processed into cigarettes meant strictly for domestic consumption. Of a population of roughly 1.3-billion, it is estimated that over 320-million Chinese are smokers, and another half-billion suffer from second-hand effects as 'passive smokers'.

All the dreaded health hazards associated with smoking are visited upon Chinese smokers no less than elsewhere in the world. Elsewhere in the world, however, national governments, in recognition of the deadly effects of tobacco on human health, have taken strenuous efforts to warn their populations of the cumulative and deadly morbidity rates in long-term smoking. Whereas in China that national conscience has yet to emerge.

Reason: representing less than 1% of sown agricultural land, tobacco growing and manufacturing processes, generated about 95 billion in tax and profit a decade ago for the government. Contrasted with less than half that, at 40 billion to tax revenues through the entire agricultural sector. Taxes and profit from tobacco production result in 15% of net income for the government.
Compelling reason for the state to hold back on warning consumers of deleterious health effects.

And in Canada, the government has launched through Health Canada, a new set of impressively graphic health warnings to be printed both on the exterior and interior of cigarette packages. "Canada is the only country in the world that actually takes over the inside of the package as well as the outside", explained Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. "This is really innovative."

Under the draft legislation Tobacco companies will be compelled to use four toxic emission messages to be included on the side panels of cigarette packages, along with a choice of 12 new images meant to cover 75% of the outside panels of packages. To be effective and in place by year's end. And the eight new health messages which will be appearing, in full colour,on the inside of packages.

Effectively resulting in Canada's newest efforts to emphatically get the damaged-health message across to the smoking public. To take full effect at the distributor and retail levels by 2012.

In Canada, taxes on tobacco sales were increased years ago, in an effort to make smoking less affordable, to encourage smokers to reduce their smoking habit. And to encourage adolescents to understand that this is an expensive habit, one that will hit their disposable income as well as their future health. Because of the politics involved in dealing with illegal production and sale of unauthorized contraband cigarettes in the aboriginal community, Canada has a severe hiccough in its meaningful attacks on cigarette consumption.

Aboriginal, First Nations communities that advertise themselves as 'sovereign', under their own laws and recognizance, oppose federal government interference in their production and sale of illicit tobacco. The new packaging rules will not, as a result, apply to contraband cigarettes produced on aboriginal reserves, despite their accounting for 20% of the Canadian market. And aimed in large part, at consumption by young people for whom the far lower cost is critical.

The First Nations reserves, in other words, acting in moral compliance and ethical agreement with the Government of China - intent on enhancing their incomes - considering as irrelevant to their larger purpose the impact on peoples' health, well enough recognized through scientific enquiry and medical research.

Impartial, non-subjective values. Submission to the overriding concern of revenue enhancement. Responsible governance. Seen otherwise: people do have the privilege of invoking personal choice, responsibility, pride in the useful virtue of intelligent choices.

The Global Schoolyard

"A Chinese attack on a satellite using a weapon launched by a ballistic missile threatens to destroy space systems that the United States and other nations use for commerce and national security. Destroying satellites endangers people.
"Any purposeful interference with U.S. space systems will be interpreted by the United States as an infringement of its rights and considered an escalation in a crisis or conflict.
"The United States reserves the right, consistent with the UN charter and international law, to defend and protect its space systems with a wide range of options, from diplomatic to military."
Former U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, 2007.

The alpha male in any society, be it human or those of other animals, has been designed by nature to dominate. All others seek to placate the alpha, are cautious not to offend the alpha, remain content to receive what the alpha rejects, and waits for the alpha to give permission to proceed. That is authority.

That is the psychological strength of power, perceived or actual. Power engenders respect - and fear. The second- and third-strings accept the left-overs.

Until such time as age enfeebles the alpha, and new young conscripts into the tribe begin to flex their muscles and perfect intimidation tactics and confront the alpha and there is a stand-off and the power grid re-aligns itself. This is as predictable an infinitely repeated protocol in animal relations as time and tradition repeat ad infinitum.

If it is not the leader of a pack of feral animals, a fiercely determined tribal chief of human origins, it is that of the head of nations which present as the most advanced, wealthy, populous, militarily armed and determined. Nature has imbued all her organisms with the will to dominate, as part and portion of our inexhaustible will to survival.

Dominating dynasties, kingdoms and hierarchies have come and gone upon the world stage. From the ancient world to the present there has always been one or two aggressively dominant nations compelled by nature to authoritatively present as the powerhouse of achievement and dominance.

Some fail, while others prevail. The failures are those like Germany and its Axis allies, like the Soviet Union and its hapless satellites whose design for world domination was flawed and no match in the final analysis for others who out-matched their determination. Each world power as it develops its status prevails along the same pattern; a period of ascendancy followed by a slow decline.

The process by which the dominant force and the challenging force for dominance circle one another and challenge one another is as familiar as the schoolyard. Children's boasts of their fathers being stronger, bigger, fiercer than the others helps them negotiate the byways of social interaction in a world of literal chess; the game of grasping life's advantages, not the board game.

Enter China to confront and challenge the world's current super power. Their game of chess plays out not on the Earth itself, for we have progressed greatly over the millennia, to successfully access the options of the upper atmosphere, sending satellites into vast space, and proving that we can unerringly point a missile to destroy them.

But there is also space and opportunity as financial fortunes flow as others' ebb, to finance new power initiatives grounded on Earth, building immense and powerful aircraft carriers, designing and building advanced jet fighters, even if those designs owe everything to the genius of those being challenged; for another genius is that of emulation.

** FILE ** The nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier USS George Washington leads South Korean warships during joint military drills in the East Sea/Sea of Japan on Monday, July 26, 2010. (AP Photo)

Huaxi - Secret Of China's Richest Village

Huaxi, The Richest Village In China, located in east China's Jiangsu Province. It's a village where everyone has all the luxury that life can offer such as a huge house, a car (Beemers, Benzs, etc.), free cooking oil, clothes, healthcare, etc. All they have to do is work 7 days a week for the village industrial operations, milling steel or some such industry. Only one condition is that you can never leave. If you do, you lose everything. But just to make it easier to stay,the city has built replicas of the Eiffel Tour, the Sydney Opera House, and the Arc de Triumf to bring the world to it's doorstep. This reminds me of the song Hotel California - "You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave".
This amazing 8-minute video will help clear your curiosity.
See the Video after the Jump

"No Enemies and no Hatred"

China managed to urgently and belligerently persuade Afghanistan, Columbia, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sudan, Tunisia, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam to absent themselves officially from the awarding in Norway of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

That award has now taken place, and it did so in the presence of 40 diplomats whose countries defied Beijing's boycott call. Those who chose to boycott the ceremony revealed their own lack of commitment to observing and honouring human rights. In the process ensuring that they would be exempt from a powerful country's wrathful exacting of vengeance through economic disentitlements.

Those countries which mounted an official presence at the award ceremony have been assured by China that it will seek revenge upon them for their perfidious actions, upholding the human rights of a declared Chinese criminal. A man whose mission in life is clearly to embarrass and harass China, in causing unforgivable lack of face for China on the world stage. A man committed to causing that dreaded disharmony in the country.

A man whose statement to those who put him on trial and sent him to prison for 11 years on charges of sedition, was repeated, read out aloud to those present at the ceremony. His heartfelt appeal to China's dictators may not have made a positive impression on them, but it most certainly did to those who heard it during the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremonies.

"I want to say to this regime which is depriving me of my freedom, I have no enemies and no hatred.
"Many will ask whether China's weakness, for all the strength the country is currently showing, is not manifested in the need to imprison a man for 11 years merely for expressing his opinions on how his country should be governed.
Merely for publishing different political views and taking part in a peaceful democracy movement, a teacher lost his lectern, a writer lost his right to publish, and a public intellectual lost the opportunity to give talks publicly."

"I am serving my sentence in a tangible prison, while you wait in the intangible prison of the heart", he wrote to and of his wife, in his absence. "Your love is the sunlight that leaps over high walls and penetrates the iron bars of my prison window, stroking every inch of my skin."

Liu Xiaobo is not overly critical of the manner in which he was handled, only the lengthy and unearned privilege of the first-hand experience of what it feels like to languish in a Chinese prison far from those he loves and who love him, for his sin of entreating his country to live up to its international obligations it committed to when it signed the United Nations Human Rights covenants.

And in his audacity to point out to the country's governing elite that their very own constitution enshrines human rights' entitlement, in the declaration that states "the state respects and guarantees human rights".

Economic changes leaving U.S. behind

The U.S.  economic crisis was severe in part because of the   growth of finance capital as the  dominant actor  in our economy .  Finance was in crisis first, then the production of goods and services collapsed taking some $13 Trillion out of the  U.S. economy and caused a  $ 34 Trillion loss in the world economy.  The extreme  income inequality produced  by the three-decade rise of the financial industry has significant  societal consequences including fundamental changes in employment  and education opportunities .

As a consequence of the last thirty years of  the dominance of finance capital and income stagnation, the U.S. is losing its power in the world economy.

            This is how one author describes the economic shifts,

“The earthquake of the past few years has damaged western economies while leaving those of emerging countries, particularly Asia, standing. It has also destroyed western prestige. The west has dominated the world economically and intellectually for at least two centuries. That epoch is over. Hitherto, the rulers of emerging countries disliked the west’s pretensions, but respected its competence. This is true no longer. Never again will the west have the sole word. The rise of the Group of 20 leading economies reflects new realities of power and authority.” -- Martin Wolf, Financial Times, July 14, 2010 .

            The U.S.  is no longer the  one dominant economic power in the world.  Here is a listing of the major economic powers.

2009.            

Ranking	Country	Approximate GDP- Purchasing Power Parity
1	United States of America	$13,860,000,000,000
2	China	$7,043,000,000,000
3	Japan	$4,305,000,000,000
4	India	$2,965,000,000,000
5	Germany	$2,833,000,000,000
6	United Kingdom	$2,147,000,000,000
7	Russia	$2,076,000,000,000
8	France	$2,067,000,000,000
9	Brazil	$1,838,000,000,000
10	Italy	$1,800,000,000,000

Of course listing economies as nations is somewhat misleading.  The world economic systems have changed.  Today all of the major economies are varieties of capitalism.  Several strong economies are competing with the U.S.  Multinational corporations ( not national corporations) are  dominant economic players.

Since the U.S. economy is strained and there is no one dominant economic power,  we need to adjust  to this new reality.  We can reduce our burdensome military establishment and leave unnecessary wars.   Why should the U.S. continue to fund the dominant military forces in the world ?  Why should we spend so much of our budget on military forces? While the U.S. has become less of the dominant economic power, we continue to spend more than  6 times more in military costs than our closest competition.

In Afghanistan alone, the U.S. is spending over $100 billion per year in a country whose GDP is only $14 billion.  These costs are not free.  They come from the U.S. taxpayers.

  

Making the economy worse- Robert Reich

Next time you hear an economist or denizen of Wall Street talk about how the "American economy" is doing these days, watch your wallet.

There are two American economies. One is on the mend. The other is still coming apart.

The one that's mending is America's Big Money economy. It's comprised of Wall Street traders, big investors, and top professionals and corporate executives.

The Big Money economy is doing well these days. That's partly thanks to Ben Bernanke, whose Fed is keeping interest rates near zero by printing money as fast as it dare. It's essentially free money to America's Big Money economy.

Free money can almost always be put to uses that create more of it. Big corporations are buying back their shares of stock, thereby boosting corporate earnings. They're merging and acquiring other companies.

And they're going abroad in search of customers.

Thanks to fast-growing China, India, and Brazil, giant American corporations are racking up sales. They're selling Asian and Latin American consumers everything from cars and cell phones to fancy Internet software and iPads. Forty percent of the S&P 500 biggest corporations are now doing more than 60 percent of their business abroad. And America's biggest investors are also going abroad to get a nice return on their money.

So don't worry about America's Big Money economy. According to a Wall Street Journal survey released Thursday, overall compensation in financial services will rise 5 percent this year, and employees in some businesses like asset management will get increases of 15 percent.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is back to where it was before the Lehman bankruptcy filing triggered the financial collapse. And profits at America's largest corporations are heading upward.

But there's another American economy, and it's not on the mend. Call it the Average Worker economy.

Last Friday's jobs report showed 159,000 new private-sector jobs in October. That's better than previous months. But 125,000 net new jobs are needed just to keep up with the growth of the American labor force. So another way of expressing what happened to jobs in October is to say 24,000 were added over what we need just to stay even.

Yet the American economy has lost 15 million jobs since the start of the Great Recession. And if you add in the growth of the labor force -- including everyone too discouraged to look for a job -- we're down about 22 million.

Or to put it another way, we're still getting nowhere on jobs.

One out of eight breadwinners is still out of work. Most families in the Average Worker economy rely on two breadwinners. So if one out of eight isn't working, chances are high that family incomes are down compared to what they were three years ago.

And that means the bills aren't getting paid.

According to a recent Washington Post poll, more than half of all Americans -- 53 percent -- are worried about making their mortgage payments. This is many more than were worried two years ago, when the Great Recession hit bottom. Then, 37 percent expressed worry.

Delinquency rates on home loans are rising. Distressed sales are up as a percent of total sales.

Most people in the Average Worker economy own few shares of stock, if any. Their equity is in their homes. But with all the delinquencies and distressed sales, the housing market has a glut of homes for sale. As a result, home prices are still dropping. So the net worth of most Americans is still dropping.

And even though interest rates are falling, most people in the Average Worker economy can't refinance their homes. They can't get home equity loans. Banks don't want to lend to the Average Worker economy because people in it are considered bad credit risks. They still owe lots of money, their family incomes are down, and their net worth has fallen.

And according to the Reuters/University of Michigan survey of American consumers, expectations about personal finances are at an all time low.

Inhabitants of the Big Money economy are celebrating Republican wins last week. They figure financial regulations will be rolled back, environmental regulations will be canned, the Bush tax cut will be extended to the top 1 percent, and it will be harder for workers to form unions.

Inhabitants of the Average Worker economy aren't so sure. The economy has been so bad they're angry at politicians. They showed their anger at the ballot box. They took it out on incumbents.

But if nothing changes in the Average Worker economy, there will be hell to pay.

Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

This Blogger's Books from

2010 Chinese Spring Festival Magic Trick

Kung Fu biker wins in a traffic accident in China

Why Chinese Restaurants Failed in Dubai!

The impossible is possible - One family (8 people) in a bike - 08 Pics

Mankind's Supremacy Over Nature

China represents a culture whose traditional aesthetic was one of refined delicacy. Traditional poetry, painting, embroidery, stone carving, delicate porcelains and colourful lacquer ware, jade ornaments and jewellery and stone-carved statuary, along with pithy sayings and a tradition of story-telling all representative of fine artistic sensibilities and artisanal capabilities.


The country also built one of the most singular structures other than a geological feature, capable of being seen in outer space, the Great Wall of China. From the delicate refined to the brutalist practical in challenging the primacy of nature, the country turned to taming the third-longest river in the world, the great Yangtze. The world's most gargantuan interference with nature's sublime designs, a particular hubris resulting in the Three Gorges Dam.

Built, most unfortunately, over six active fault lines in the Earth's crust. Representing a stupendous engineering feat, one that multinational engineering companies from Germany and the Scandinavian countries were eager to become involved with, and so was Canada, with its eager bank of consulting engineers. Canada, through CIDA and the Export Development Bank lent a hand by funding a feasibility study.

The official price tag of the enterprise is said to have been $25-billion, but there are rumours that this immense hydroelectric power project ended up costing up to three times that amount. The clever idea that the Yangtze could be harnessed for its hydroelectric potential, and the resulting dam would assist in opening up the interior of the country with greater shipping access to result in economic opportunities never did quite materialize.

But the Chinese government was so besotted with the idea that in building the dam it would enlarge its economic future, it set about expropriating ancestral land from millions of peasants and indigent subsistence farmers, creating a huge demographic of homeless, landless people with the promised compensation never quite materializing. Towns and villages, arable land and ancient archaelogical sites were all inundated in China's surge toward its future.

Mao Zedong never lived to see the Three Gorges dam finished and in service. It was his pet project. The ill people do live long after they have departed. In 2003 Chinese officials claimed that the dam could withstand the worst flood in 10,000 years, were it to occur. And then estimates began to reduce, to 1,000 years until in 2008 it was dropped to a mere 100-year flood.

This year of 2010, the flooding being experienced is severe and engineering experts are concerned.
Cracks in the dam first seen in 1999 are many and growing, some extending from top to bottom of the immense concrete infrastructure. Some hands-width wide, some two metres deep into the dam.

New towns meant to replace the original settlements were constructed on slopes of mountains and geologically unstable areas. Mudslides have already been experienced. Catastrophic landslides could occur causing the riverbank to collapse. Add to that potentially lethal combination that the 24-billion tonnes of untreated human and industrial waste dumped into the Yangtze annually.

China is infamous for the contamination of its rivers with industrial, radioactive and bio-hazardous materials casually let into the waterways wherever industrial plants exist...let alone just plain municipal garbage. It was initially planned that greater seafaring opportunities to accommodate deep-hulled ocean-going vessels would increase trade opportunities, leading to economic development in the landlocked interior. Instead, continual silting has committed the country to expensive and ongoing dredging operations.

Millions of people were displaced by the dam, never compensated, left to fend for themselves, stripped of their worldly possessions. They were given the thrill of their lifetimes, watching as the waters inundated their fields and towns, washing away their homes and whatever possessions they could not carry with them. Fears are that as the dam is overwhelmed by more floodwaters than it can contain, it will collapse.

Fears also that the incredible weight of the overwhelmed dam could precipitate an earthquake with devastating results. Not that China is a stranger to earthquakes. The cost to the people who once lived where the Three Gorges now exists is the world's largest dam, with its spectacular show when the ducts are open, and tourists flocking to see for themselves this modern world wonder of immense-scale engineering.

But the longevity of the dam is an unknown, as is the destabilizing effect of its location (over active fault lines in the Earth's crust), and purpose.

Its promised results have never quite been realized; it hasn't replaced by its output in hydro energy all the coal-fired plants that China planned to decomission. The tonnes of trash that float into the Yangtze river are difficult to contain and they present as a danger of jamming the dam's locks. The incessant need to collect the garbage presents yet another problem yet to be solved.

And while the Three Gorges dam was planned also for the purpose of halting deadly floods in the Yangtze valley, its flood control capacity is far less than anticipated. And Three Gorges power is turning out to be far more expensive than that achieved through high-efficiency gas turbines and co-generation. The clean, inexpensive energy that was originally contemplated with the building of this immense project simply does not appear to be possible.

And in recognition of the seeming failure of the plans that the Three Gorges dam would bring the country quickly into prosperity, government is no longer boasting.