From: yma@neumann.uwaterloo.ca (William Yan Ma)
Subject: Something about the world, Asia and China
Keywords: Hope
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 02:53:31 GMT


The World

After the collapse of Berlin Wall, the world has changed a lot. Communist
ideology is being thrown away everywhere, from Eastern Europe to Russia,
from China to Vietnam. Although the communist parties are still in power 
in China and the other remaining solialism countries, they are much 
different from those several years ago. Indeed, it's the 
organisation which still survives, not the communism. Ideology has given
place to economy. Reforming is a slogan everywhere in these solialist
countries, from Hanoi to Pyngyang, let alone Beijing. In China, we are
building a new market economy system. It is a remarkable change to the
world. 

The economy is changing in the developed countries. Because of the rapidly
developing communication technique and the flouting of the capital, and
the economy policy in the developing countries which is adjusted to adapt
more and more investment and technology, the western countries are losing
their advantages in the production and technology. Many businessmen are
interested in investing in a countries with cheap labor for more profit.
And they are able to find such a chance easily now. Like a sea flow, money
is transfered out of the western countries. And more and more goods are
transformed into these countries from countries which just accepted their
production before. Go to a store, you will find the clothes are fabricated
in China or Malaysia, the computers are built in Taiwan or South Korea. Do 
you remember that we use IBM to stand for computer several years ago?
Yes, the economy world is changing significantly.



Asia

Japan is leading the economy development in Asia now. But the real motivation 
of the development came from the success of South Korea, Taiwan , Hongkong and
Singapore. At the end of the Second World War, all the countries have the
almost same economy level in this region. But after several decades of 
experiment of defferent economy systems, some of them succeeded, while the
others failed even to eliminate the starvation. The contrast made the leaders
to think about their policies. In China, the ambitious communist party awoke 
from the naive solialist pattern like "great forward". Deng opened the door 
to the western businessmen as a trial to see what was the better way of 
developing. After a decade, the open policy gets the recognition from all the
people in China. That makes the market economy become the economy system
in socialist China.

South Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong are transitting to members of developed group.
That's the principle of economy development. So some old-style manufacturings
need new place to reside. Capital will flow from them to a region with
cheaper labor. And they need new market to sell their production, since
not much vacancy in the American and European market. 

Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand etc, are developing very fast these years, partly
because of the investment from Japan and the newly-developed countries and 
regions. Because of the development gap between them and the developed 
countries, they can achieve a very high GNP increasing rate. While the gap 
becomes more and more small, the increasing rate will slow down.


China 

China is a large country so that it cannot rely on the outside market to
boost its economy for a long time. After the world market is filled with
the cheap goods made in China, it should turn back to its internal consuming
market. The success of the oversea Chinese proved that they can do very good in 
economy. The young generation will not be fond of the abstract ideology. They
are devoting to money. There is no way for them to turn back, except that
a civil war broke up.

So it is not very important that the government is a communist party one or not.
Everyone will care about the economy development. The party will change
as the economy develops. The presure of changing will come from economy,
not oversea human rights group or dissidents.

So the most important thing for China is the stability of this country. This
doesn't mean we should not change anything. Actually, we do need some change
to maintain the stability in the country. This might be some degree of 
democracy within the Communist Party. The party should admit the diversity
within the party, and find a way to maintain the balance of different
interest group. You should know, in China, the interest groups are formed
from the difference in economy development.

Chinese students are everywhere in the developed countries. Although most
of them are not willing to go back because of the poor condition in China now,
they will go back if the economy develops enough. While more and more
students come abroad, the other countries will not want to accept them to
stay too long, partly because of their lowsy economy. Then they have to go
back. The number of them is large. Their returning to China will help this
country build its new political and economy system. Actually, for the point
of science and technology, their roles are not as much as the political 
influence to the society. This should help this country's modernization.

As I see, the level of science and technology  in China is not very low.
we have many excellent scientists and engineers in China.
If our economy changes to market economy, there should be no technology 
obstacle in developing. I don't think we really need the oversea students
and scholars to research. What we need is their experience in the developed
countries to help China know more about what the goal of our development 
is. The market will say more about how to use the the science and technology
to earn more profit. 

Democracy and freedom will come with the development of the economy, as 
a strong middle-class forms in China.

Newsgroups: talk.politics.china