@moet-chan: No harm no foul.

@Q dub: As far as credibility, it would be wrong for me to assume I have any on this subject. So I stand corrected. I did however mean to attach “communism” purely to whatever authoritarian political forces remain. I would never argue with the fact that economically, China is indeed capitalist. I guess as far as China’s economic progress, I wrongly assumed it was purely “capitalism” that brought it success – but indeed the government (Communist aspects or not) had to have been a driving force behind it as well. I definitely should have clarified that in this post so thanks for bringing that up.

And on the other hand, as far as the social ills – I attached those that remain to communism but that is most likely also simplistic. Of course, every government is unique to the people in power within the system.

Last but not least, the *majority* of people are most certainly not oppressed by the government. You only hear about the ones who are. That’s purely a quantitative issue which I’ll leave you to confirm by asking people who have lived in China recently.

The extent to which the Chinese people have been imposed upon by the Olympics is incredible, and would never fly here. In Beijing, only even numbered cars can drive on even numbered days, and vice versa. (Though I think many employees have been given extra vacation to make up for this.) In many parts of Beijing, the left hand lane is closed to ALL traffic except Olympics-related vehicles, at all times. This is pretty minor though compared to elsewhere. We went to a city outside of Beijing, Beidaihe, a seaside town which is usually busy with Russian tourists at this time of year. Now, it was completely deserted- all the tourists who would normally be here this time of year were denied visas because of tightened Olympic security, and the local businesses were suffering.

I’m sure this government will soften over the next decade or two, because you get the strong sense that almost everyone really dislikes the way things are run. We only had one guide speak strongly of Communism, and that was in Beijing. He pointed to all the many skyscrapers around us, and said ‘See all of these? Almost all of them went up very fast, in just this past year! This is the advantage of our Communism!’

In a different setting, sure, we would have been quite impressed. But with the massive earthquake and stories of massive construction corruption fresh in all our minds, this wasn’t impressive. It was terrifying.