China's internal troubles (not the Far West)

[Dayuhan]

Pictures tell a 1000 words!

If you have not started, then you have missed much.

As reliable as the media and think tank analysis! Since everything is but a Maya!

Better that others since one can see it with your one's own two eyes and accept or reject because one should have a mind of one's own!

Video is a medium remarkably well suited to illusion. I could take a camera into a Manila slum and cut together a piece showing that the people are happy and cheerful and loving life, or I could do the same and portray misery... depending on what pictures I use and how. The final product ends up telling the viewer less about the subject than about the prejudices of the person who made the video.

Media and think tank analyses are always suspect; they have to be approached with awareness of the implicit biases of the organization producing the report and countered with information from other sources.

But then, one cannot be cleverer than those who are by profession wordsmiths unless one is self opinionated as say, Churchill who had such a command over the language and its nuances, but still self opinionated. I go by what experts say.

"Experts" say all sorts of things, many of them incompatible with what other "experts" say.

I gave you the interpretation what is believed by the world, but then of course, one will always have one's own interpretation.

Is anything, anywhere ever "believed by the world"? Seems to me there's a fair variety of belief out there on almost every issue.

Production of the irrelevant to the nation growth can be forsaken for the overall social good. Production giving money and riches to the rich and leaving the poor poor, maybe good statistically on the GDP etc, but can lead to social discontent and chaos. And then there maybe no nation!

Nowhere has it been suggested that production should stop!

Who decides what the "overall social good" will be, if not the people themselves? Is not consumption and the personal decision to allocate resources the ultimate "vote"?

Suggesting that consumption be artificially constrained or externally directed implicitly suggests that production and employment must be similarly constrained and directed.

I dislike the whole "crass consumerism" construct because it's built on the idea that the elite have the right or obligation to decide what other people ought to want or have. That doesn't sound like a terribly good idea to me, and I see no reason to assume that it limits conflict. Where have we seen post-communist nations where security is threatened by "crass consumerism"? Certainly growth and the development of opportunities and options raises potential for conflict, but trying to artificially constrain growth and opportunity is going to create conflict too.

Who decides where the legitimate desire for a materially better life ends and "crass consumerism" begins? Would you want the State or some kind of elite telling you what you're supposed to want or how you ought to spend what you earn?

Now, what exactly is this 'westernising' that he referring to?

What are the 'forces' that is causing it so?

Sounds to me like somebody's seriously worried over economic developments and wants to trot out the boogeyman to get people rallied behind the flag.

Why is this 'ideological struggle' necessary when the Chinese people are getting all the want and having all the money in the world to buy such happiness?

The Chinese people aren't getting all they want, they don't have all the money in the world, and an awful lot of them want more than they can have. That's not a stable situation.