From Spot-On:
Not to discount all the dizzying growth and change, but it’s often easy to view progress in China as sloppy sublation of the most basic problems. Old issues never die. They just get old.
Take the regular “crackdowns” on corruption. They do little more than lend a wisp of legitimacy to a system that’s endemically corrupt. Rural relief programs succor peasants not deemed ready for the land-use “rights” of city folk. Beijing’s fever for press briefings, post-SARS and pre-Olympics, diverts attention from the real mess in the provinces. And new emissions and energy diets have given the country short-term environmental targets to shoot for, even though China, as a nation, appears bound to keep growing and polluting more than any other.[Full Text]
