Blogs in China

[John Simkin]

I am of the opinion that China will eventually replace the United States as the world’s major economic power. The main reason I say this is that it has been able to successfully merge aspects of capitalism and communism. In fact, I would argue that it has developed a new system called state capitalism. Using capital from the western democracies and the state control of the labour force, it’s economy is growing at a tremendous rate. Without free trade unions Chinese labour costs are likely to remain low. This will continue to keep the price of goods lower than their main competitors. Bill Gates recently described what is going on in China as “a brand new form of capitalism, and as a consumer it’s the best thing that ever happened.” What he means of course is that it is the best thing that has happened for capitalists like Bill Gates.”

Gates is willing to do what he can to make the Chinese capitalist revolution possible. Microsoft has joined forces with the Chinese government to prevent freedom of expression in China. It has created software that searches for Chinese websites and blogs that uses words like “freedom”, “democracy”, “communism”, “socialism” and “capitalism”. These are then blocked from Chinese search-engines. A Microsoft spokesman said the “restrictions were the price the company had to pay to spread the positive benefits of blogs”.