Day By Day

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Unrest in China

From CNBC:
China's security services have managed for now to curb social unrest in the southern manufacturing city of Zengcheng after migrant workers set fire to government buildings over the weekend. But one economist says the discord is more worrying for markets than the nation’s widely-telegraphed soaring inflation.

"I think that any amount of cracking down is going to be a little bit like in Syria," Enzio Von Pfeil, CEO of the Economic Time Bond Fund told CNBC on Thursday. "You've put out the flame in one section of the kitchen but then another flame erupts in another section of the kitchen."
Read the whole thing here.

The problems are multiplying -- ethnic violence in the western provinces and in Mongolia; riots by transient workers in a number of cities; the flight of China's entrepreneurial class overseas; inflation; widespread corruption; pollution, the list goes on and on. Meanwhile the Chinese government wastes its resources on repression and the construction of silly showpiece projects like the high-speed rail, the world expo and the Olympics. Grandiosity, over-reach, and a disdain for the condition of ordinary people -- the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes everywhere.


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