China is not a menace By Joost van Steenis

Xiamen, March 19 2008

Dear reader, this is the 97th Letter of an Autonomous Thinker

The elite needs enemies to control the own masses and to persevere its privileged position.

The Russian menace has withered away, so new menaces are created.

The Muslim menace is welcome but the few poor and weak countries of the "Axis of Evil" are not much of a threat. When the Western troops withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Muslim menace will also disappear.

A more lasting menace is needed.

The elite invented the threat of the "booming" economy of China.

India is useless as a menace because this country never leaves the economic morass because of corruption, the caste system, fights between fundamentalist Hindus and Muslims, the secondary place of women and the weak central government, the prime cause of a failing infrastructure.

CHINA has become the target!

"China is growing so fast that it will soon overtake us!"

So what, are only Westerns allowed to be on top of the world?

I cannot imagine that Chinese leaders can be worse than the war-mongering and greedy American leaders.

The Chinese menace is based on lies.

According to figures of the IMF about the per capita GDP based on PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) the distance between the West and the rest is increasing (all figures in dollars).

Land 1980 2000 2005 2006 growth 2002-2006

in % in dollars

China 420 3853 6193 6760 74 2907

India 643 2402 3262 3490 45 1088

Thailand 1366 6202 8542 9166 48 3027

USA 12104 34344 41517 43538 27 9194

Holland 9896 27144 30363 31643 17 4499

China overtook India but the Western economies expanded much more than the Eastern.

The elite emphasizes the growth in percentages. But in real figures the American economy grew three times more than the Chinese.

Is China overtaking the West? Rubbish!

The GDP figures do not say much about the earnings of common people as for example workers with the lowest wages.

The minimum wage of workers in the manufacturing industry (if paid out and if a worker has work) in Bangkok (Thailand) is about 200 bath a day, 100 euro a month, slightly more than the minimum wages in Guangdon, the richest Chinese province, and more than twice the highest minimum wage in India. The earnings in the country side where more than half of the population lives are much lower.

Those earnings are peanuts compared with a minimum of more than one thousand (1000) euro in my country (The Netherlands). And in my country everybody, millionaires as well as beggars, get 1000 euro a month when they are over 65 years old.

The minimum wage in California is about 8 dollar an hour, maybe 650 euro a month. Elsewhere in the USA it is lower - with a minimum in Kansas of only 2.65 dollar. It seems that some parts of China can indeed overtake some parts of the USA.

But I do not see the difference in welfare between the richer parts of the West and the East are disappearing in a short time.

Once more the elite is telling fairy-tales.

The figures tell a clear story. Though the economy of China is growing, the per capita GDP in the West is growing more. In this way China will never catch up with the developed world.

China is not a menace.

The Chinese leaders (by the way much better than the leaders of so-called democratic India) increase the purchasing power of the own masses. But just as in the West most of the growth goes to a small group of rich and privileged people at the top. There is some progress for the masses but it will take ages before the Chinese masses will have a comparable decent life as the Western masses.

The Western elite creates non-existing menaces.

At the same time it supports the coming into being of a Chinese elite that will curtail the own masses.

This globalised elite will rule forever when its basic, safe, prosperous and privileged way of life is not made impossible.

Yours truly, Joost van Steenis

http://members.chello.nl/jsteenis

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