Developmental State
Eléments de comparaison politique entre l'Italie et le Japon: les différents = March 1997
L'Anschluß [union] Allemagne-Autriche de 1938 = December 1996
Book reviews and comments
[edited by] Shafir, G., and Y. Peled, The new Israel. Peacemaking and liberalisation, Westview Press, 2000.
(Shafir 2000).
The work edited from Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled offers a more structural approach to the analysis of the Israeli reality. It does not pose the questions of a too small State (and incapable of Roman Empire- or British Empire-style political/State integration and federation indispensable for becoming of at least relatively sufficient dimensions and power for being accepted in the area) and too dependent from the US strategic cover. It presents nevertheless valuable contributions to a deeper understanding of the prodigy represented from the small but powerful Israeli State in an inhospitable land and area.
The Shafir and Peled Introduction analyses the Israel evolution from a State economy to a more competitive and opener one realised from the mid-1980s. What produced, as reaction, an anti-liberal opposition catalysed overall and more openly from religiously fundamentalist political movements. The Israel more liberal currents pursued the pacification with Arabs, while the more Statist ones prospered on the continuation and aggravation of the confrontation against them.
Deborah S. Bernstein offers an historical representation of the creation of a Jew labour movement in mandatory Palestine.
Dov Khenin analyses the 1950s transformation of the Israeli Labours, the Mapai, in a middle class party.
Michael Shalev discusses causes, consequences and problems of the Israel transformations and of its 1990s rapid growth.
Ran Hirschl represents the interaction of the Israeli legal frame with liberalisations.
Uri Ram analyses the redefinition of an Israeli identity in an opener world.
Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled explain the Israeli developmentalism, against all immediate market logic, as typical of all developmental State, where specific incentive systems create the conditions of the accumulation and strengthening indispensable for future competitive development. In Palestine, the Zionist colonisation, with consequent techniques of non-market mechanisms in land acquisition and labour regulation, was indispensable for the same conditions' creation for the establishment of the Israeli State. The liberalisation process started in the mid-1980s was the passage to a further development phase.
The Jonathan Paris essay deal with questions of regional cooperation of the area.
[edited by] Shafir, G., and Y. Peled, The new Israel. Peacemaking and liberalisation, Westview Press, 2000.
Suvorov, Viktor, Stalin, Hitler. La rivoluzione bolscevica mondiale, [Stalin, Hitler. The world Bolshevik revolution], Spirali, Milan, Italy, 2000.
(Suvorov 2000).
With massive direct and accessory evidence, Suvorov explores the immediately defensive nature of the 22 June 1941 German attack to Soviet Union. According the Soviet military theory, for preparing a surprise attack one should concentrate troops and airports nearest than possible to the future front. It was what Soviet Union was rapidly doing when an unprepared Germany preceded of a couple of weeks the 1941 Soviet occupation of Europe.
On 1 September 1939, Germany aggressed Poland. On 18 September 1939, the Soviet government declared that responsible of the war was Poland: what seems historically very doubtful. Anyway this assertion justified the Soviet occupation of eastern parts of Poland and the German-Soviet sharing of Poland. On 17 September 1939, Soviet Union had suddenly attacked Poland. On 30 November 1939, Stalin wrote on the Pravda that England and France had attacked Germany, so becoming responsible of the war: what was historically true since Germany had no intention to lead a western war and only the British and French declaration of war obliged Germany to such a war. The Stalin assertion was anyway a tactical alignment from the German side, even if the removal of an intermediary States as Poland was and the consequent direct bordering between Germany and Soviet Union could only lead, from a strategic point of view, either to forms of integration or to direct confrontation.
Inside the dialectic conflict-cooperation historically characterised the Russian and Germanic spaces, the post-WW1 phase saw the prevailing of cooperation. For instance, Soviet Union accorded to the German Armed Forces all the facilities it could not enjoy on the German territory as consequence on the treaties of the end of WWI. In addition, Soviet Union had favoured in all possible way the triumph of the national-socialist movement. What had the strategic meaning of favouring the overcoming of the situation created in Europe as consequent as WW1. Hitler was secretly defined in Soviet Union, even before he was in office, icebreaker of the revolution. The meaning of "revolution" was clearly, not differently from other metaphors, the Soviet expansion.
The elements (Suvorov 2000) provides show a pre-WW2 Soviet military industry of high technological level (even with US licences), considerable results, impressive productive potentials and, overall, concentrated on offensive corps and weapons. For instance, armoured tanks were specific for the western roads instead than for the Soviet lands for which they were absolutely useless. Also the Soviet military air force had a net technological and fire superiority on the German and western ones. Not casually, the Soviet pilots were not trained for air fighting but only for striking land targets: the background hypothesis was in fact, again, a surprise attack with the immediate destruction of all the German [or other enemy power] aeroplanes. In 1941 the whole Soviet air force was concentrate on the western borders. It was clear that the now prevailing element was conflict.
When Germany was far (without common borders with Soviet Union) there were, in Soviet Union, huge defensive works. When Germany was bordering [after the 1939 Polish war], the previous defensive works were demolished. Landmines were typical defensive weapons. The Soviet landmines production was traditionally enormous. It was suspended just Soviet Union bordered with Germany.
A week after the signature of the pact Molotov-Ribbentrop, Stalin played his first nasty trick. Germany attacked Poland, while Soviet Union declared it was not ready. In this way, the UK and France declared war to the only Germany, which was anyway the only British target and real obsession of the first half of the twentieth century. On the contrary Poland's partition had been decided in Kremlin, present Stalin and not Hitler.
For (Suvorov 2000), Stalin estimated that the year of the destruction of Germany would have been 1942. The German rapid occupation of France and the decision of not landing to England, since the too strong resistance of the British militarism (decision Soviet Union knew at the end 1940), induced Stalin to anticipate his plans to the summer 1941.
On 1 September 1939, the German Army stated the occupation of "its" portion of Poland. On 1 September 1939, the USSR Supreme Soviet approved the general conscription. Some deputies needed 7-10, even 12, days to reach Moscow. Consequently the deputies should have been convoked perhaps even before the signature of the pact Molotov-Ribbentrop. For (Suvorov 2000), on 19 August 1939, during the meeting of the Politburo, the Soviet occupation of Europe was decided. On 13 March 1940, the Politburo approved the full militarisation of the party. The members of the Party Committees were obliged to follow courses of military training. In such way, from May 1940 to February 1941, 90,000 political instructors, included 63,000 functionaries of the Party Committees, were "riqualified" by exams and checking from Commissions. On 17 June 1941, 3,700 exponents of the nomenclature were asked to be at disposal of the Army.
In occasion of the occupation of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, occidental Ukraine and Byelorussia, Bessarabia and Bucovina, the first to pass borders had been the Nkvd frontier guards. When Germany attacked Soviet Union, on the bridges near borders there were the Nkvd frontier guards in attack attitude. In fact they were absolutely unprepared for defence. Not only 47 land units and 6 naval units of the frontier guards, and 11 operational regiments of Nkvd troops were along the borders for a total of about 100,000 men. Also a multiplicity of other units, included divisions, had been rapidly moved on the borders, and an impressive quantity of other ones were rapidly and hurriedly moving in the moment of the German attack. Nkvd, as previously K and GPU, were punitive troops. They were also barrage troops behind the Army, then one Regiment of motorised infantry each Army. And practically all these troops were then near or on the western borders. The Nkvd barrage troops grew rapidly from 1939. The 6 border districts had become 18, and the troops for each district grew rapidly.
The Soviet Osnaz were very aggressive and pitiless assault units. They had replaced the traditional frontier guards. One of these Osnaz units, a battalion of only 502 men, was used from G. K. ukov for purging the territories near the front when he attacked Japan. The Osnaz battalions were the first ones to pass the frontiers, preceding the other troops and occupying bridges, cutting communications and terrorising population, when Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland were attacked. When the army units overtake the Osnaz units, these passed to the task of purging the occupied territories. On 14 June 1941, the Osnaz battalions had deported the frontier citizens for freeing the frontier area for the attack. On the other side of the borders, the SS had realised the same operation, on 2 June 1941. There was a difference of about 2 weeks in the respective [German and Soviet] attack plans.
In preparation of the 1941 Soviet attack, all the Soviet protection-defensive zones had been removed. The same offensive infrastructures built from Germans (bridges, railways, airports, roads) were built from Soviet Union on his side of the common frontier. On the Soviet side, the Nkvd had already started to remove all form of barrage, even the barbed wire.
Actually, who was unprepared for a real long-term occupation of lands which were too cold during the winter and too marshy during the summer were Germans. They had not lubricants for the Soviet temperatures, what blocked both arms and engines and other mechanical parts just the cold season arrived. While in the warm season there were problems since the bogginess of earth. About these key [even if apparently irrelevant] "details", see also war testimonies. I found extraordinary, also since its spontaneity and naïveness (a virtue in this kind of literature), Guy Sajer, Le soldat oublié, Robert Laffond, 1967, the war memories of a francophone soldier forcedly enlisted in the "Russian" German army as consequence of the German annexation of francophone zones of the Franco-German frontier.
In Soviet Union, the productions of defensive weapons and defensive fortification devices were nearly totally stopped, anti-tank canons included. The [defensive] Stalin-line was totally destroyed and replaced from a merely formal Molotov-line built just for being seen from Germans, but without any real defensive strength. It was exactly what did the German troops while preparing for the attack: to build fake defensive structures. In 1939, the German parachutists were about 5,000. Soviet Union had started to train parachutists in 1930 and, at the imminence of WW2, they were about 1,000,000. In April 1941, 5 corps of parachutists were created and all them in the western regions of Soviet Union. Each commander parachutist, overall at level of colonels and generals, had, in his entourage, a soldier or sergeant of German origins, and the learning of the German language diffused, being clear [in Soviet Union] the direction of the war. Before WW2, the USA had sold to the USSR the licence for building the C-47, which, under the acronym Li-2, became the basic aeroplane of the Soviet air force. Some hundreds of old strategic bombers TB-3 were converted in military transport aeroplanes. For using 1,000,000 parachutists, it was indispensable a sudden attack with the total destruction of the enemy air force. In June 1940, the Soviet marines were born.
Germany depended on Rumanian oil. In June 1940, while Germany was fighting in France, Soviet Union occupied a piece of Romania, Bessarabia, and its warships arrived to the Danube delta. For saving its Rumanian oil, Germany ought to attack Soviet Union in another point of the frontline, in addition to the Polish one.
For (Suvorov 2000), the German theory of the Blitzkrieg and the Soviet theory of the deep operation were absolutely identical. There were however scale differences. A Soviet assault Army included an armoured corps of 1,031 tanks. Such an Army was superior to a German armoured group. By 21 June 1941, all the Soviet Armies on the German, Rumanian and the 32nd army on the Finland border corresponded to the standards of the assault Armies, even if formally they were not called such. Germany had 4 groups of tanks, Soviet Union 16 assault armies. Once completed their ranks [the troops and weapons were in rapid moving toward the frontier], the 6th, 9th and 10th Armies near the German and Rumanian borders, and oriented toward the German borders, should have, each one, at least 2,350 tanks, 698 armoured vehicles, more than 4,000 canons and mortars, and more than 250,000 soldiers. The 9th Army should totalise 3,341 tanks. For (Suvorov 2000), it would have been equivalent to the whole Wehrmacht and qualitatively better. The 9th Army were on the Rumanian border. On 13 June 1941, the soldiers of the 9th Army corps received manuals of conversation Russian-Rumanian. Rumania was the main source of the German oil. Without it, Germany would have been annihilated. So, the most powerful Soviet army was on the Rumanian border. Two mountain Armies were ready to participate to the isolation of Rumania and of its oil from Germany.
On 13 June 1941, a TASS communiqué informed that Soviet Union had not intention to attack Germany and that the massive movements of troops were just military exercises. Just emitted this communiqué, the first strategic Echelon, formed by 170 divisions, about 3,000,000 soldiers, accelerated its moving towards the German borders. When, on 13 June 1941, the transfer of the troops started, all the railway traffic was monopolised from that, but the trucks and wagons were insufficient. The transfers were not exactly of the kind consistent with simple military exercises. And reservists were called during harvesting, instead than after it as usual. With the males' mobilisation before harvesting, Soviet Union would have been condemned to famine in 1942, without an attack to west. 56 of the 170 divisions were already near the borders, while the other 114 began to move in the moment of the TASS Communiqué. The transfer of the Soviet troops had started in February 1941, had increased in March and had reached grandiose dimensions in April-May. At the beginning of July there were 47,000 wagons running filled with military transportations. The full accomplishment of the transfer had been planned for 10 July 1941. All the Soviet Armies were lining up on the borders were without defensive plans, what explains the dramatic disbanding and surrender followed the German attach. During the war years, Soviet Union produced 100,000 tanks, what may indicate a since far planned war economy.
In its declaration to the Soviet government at the start of the war, Germany justified the attack with the unjustified concentration of Soviet assault troops at the Rumanian borders. What seems supported by massive historical evidence. The German attack ruined the Soviet plans obliging it to move towards Byelorussia all the troops were lining up on the South borders.
The [planned] Soviet attack to Germany was a replication of the Soviet attack to Japan. In August 1939, ukov suddenly attacked Japan. So, the 6th Japanese Army was defeated, in Mongolia, by a surprise factor. On 19 August 1939, ukov informed Stalin of the success against Japan. And Stalin gave his consent to operate for common borders with Germany, the prologue of the war against Germany. On 13 April 1941, a treaty of reciprocal neutrality with Japan was signed. At the end of WWII, on 9 August 1945, when Japan was weakened from the war, USSR attacked again Japan.
From 24 April 1941, the German diplomatic sources in Moscow officially informed Berlin on insistent rumours, but also on evidence, on a near Soviet attach to Germany. On 5 May 1941, Stalin, speaking to the neo-officers of the military academies, had unequivocally referred to the German Army as the most probable enemy. On 6 May 1941, for the first time, Stalin became the Soviet Prime Minister. Until then, he had always refused all State charges. For (Suvorov 2000), that happened because Stalin wanted that the order of the attack to Germany came from himself. On 15 June 1941, the Soviet Generals of the border districts received a reserved order of being ready to pass to the offensive in whatever moment.
The possibility of a German surprise attack to Soviet Union had been excluded from the Soviet vertexes. When Stalin was informed on the already started German attack, he did not believe that. 11 days after that Hitler definitely approved the war plans against Soviet Union (18 December 1940), the Soviet military espionage knew that. However, Germany was not yet prepared for an eastern war. The GRU Head, the Tenant-General F. I. Golikov, had defined that only when the German Army had started to use lubricants and fuels for Russian temperatures, and to provide his soldiers of ram fur coats, the German Army would have been ready for fighting against Soviet Union. In this way, the GRU knew that on 22 June 1941 there was no German unit ready for an Eastern war. German attacked without the most elementary devices for the normal working of his soldiers and his Army in the Soviet winters. On 17 June 1945, Feldmarschall-General W. Keitel declared, under interrogatory, that the German spring 1941 preparation was essentially defensive in the perspective of an aggression from the Red Army, that all the eastern war was de facto preventive relatively to the in practice already running Soviet aggression. The same declarations came from the interrogatory of Colonel-General A. Jodl, the main author of the German war plans. The Soviet inquirers tried, in all possible way, to get from them a different version. They were unsuccessful. Both were hanged with the accusation of having triggered a war without provocation. Later, Soviet very qualified sources quoted from (Suvorov 2000) confirmed the running Soviet aggression against Germany and that Germany anticipated the Soviet attach exactly of two weeks. For (Suvorov 2000) the planned date for the Soviet attach might have been 6 July 1941.
= These are links where I found details on arms quoted by (Suvorov 2000):
http://www.inf.upol.cz/~stepanos/museum/bt.html ;
http://www.skalman.nu/soviet/ww2-equipment-tank-bt2.htm ;
http://www.skalman.nu/soviet/ww2-equipment-fast-tanks.htm ;
http://www.nzfpm.co.nz/aircraft/i16.htm ;
http://216.219.216.110/polikarpov/i16.html ;
Suvorov, Viktor, Stalin, Hitler. La rivoluzione bolscevica mondiale, [Stalin, Hitler. The world Bolshevik revolution], Spirali, Milan, Italy, 2000.
Ho, S. P. S., Economic development of Taiwan, 1860-1970, Yale University Press, 1978.
(Ho 1978).
(Ho 1978) well represents a century of Taiwan's economic history. When, in 1895, Taiwan became a Japanese colony, purpose of the colonial government was its development as an agricultural appendage of Japan. That was successfully realised, with Taiwan exporting rice and sugar to Japan. In this way, Taiwan's agricultural structure in the colonial period was more or less the continuation of its traditional structure, although with an impressive and regular development of the agricultural production. In parallel, Taiwan built a small, but significant, industrial base both for agriculture products processing and in other sectors. In the mid-1930, the Japan preparation to war was a further chance for the industrial development in Taiwan. When, at the end of 1949, the KMT retreated to Taiwan and operated there a developmentalist option, the background for its success had already been perfectly created since half a century of Japanese colonisation.
Ho, S. P. S., Economic development of Taiwan, 1860-1970, Yale University Press, 1978.
Cartier, C., Globalizing South China, Blackwell Publishers, 2001.
(Cartier 2001).
(Cartier 2001) is a contribution in the field of regional studies. The whole post-WW2 Southeast Asia progressively became a magic space from the point of view of developmentalism. The same People's China, after some decades of "freezing", joined this long and diffusive wave. North China was historically dominant inside the Chinese space. In the developmental China of the economic and political reform, its South early emerged as the leading space. In a context, not only of rapid economic growth, but also of power decentralisation to the provinces, "regionalism" [in the western meaning of the word] became an important force of new local identities' formation around this developmentalist process. What means, for China's local entities, new ways of looking at themselves, at the outside world and at themselves inside this outside ["global"] world.
For (Cartier 2001, p. 261/262): "On the basis of a geographical specific cultural and economic history, the south China coast has emerged as a globally significant transboundary region, where historic regional characteristics have transformed and reemerged in new regional entities, unbounded and multiscalar, the contemporary world order." Not differently from the Western world, the new internationalisation wave produced also in the developmental China the emergence of local ("regional") entities identifiable around criteria of socio-economic and cultural homogeneity different from the simple formal belonging to political [State] spaces. In a context of rapid economic growth, they inevitably are elements of de facto and formal State restructuring.
In the Western world, regionalism has not transformed until now in a radical alternative to the nationally [from "nation": ethnic-cultural concept] dominated States [what is improperly called nation-State]. For (Cartier 2001, p. 267): "Transboundary and unbounded regions are antithetical to the state in that they do not uphold the nation-state ideal, and, critically, reveal it as a particular rather than as a general historical form." Conceptually, it is certainly true. Practically, State is a very resilient and also self-regenerating device.
In addition, despite images of "new middle ages" [for instance a tautological work on this is: Tanaka Akihiko, The new Middle Ages. The world system in the 21st century, LTCB International Library Selection No. 12, Tokyo, Japan, 2002; decidedly more solid historical knowledge and personal freedom from Western and para-Western idiosyncrasies and stereotypes would be necessary for a really analytic discourse on this point], actually not impossible in a magmatic space as the continental European one is from the point of view of State formation and existence, everything becomes more complex and improbable in State spaces as the Chinese one. With Karl August Wittfogel (1896-1988), what in continental Europe has been called "modern State" has a tradition of thousand years in spaces as the Chinese one, since ecological factors: specifically the imperative of the waters' government in many areas analysed from Wittfogel. Even now, waters' great works, essential for the further development of the whole China, as the Yangtze dam is on the way to be built in the area of Chongqing municipality, would be impossible in a fractioned China. These ecological-historical permanencies are decidedly stronger than current internationalisation phenomena. In cases as the Chinese one, the existence of a strong central State is one of the preconditions for success in a world where militarism (see the Anglophone cases) remains key factor of economic and technological progress and domination. The same presently so exalted "globalisation" is not at all such an extraordinary and intense phenomenon, if seen in an economic history perspective [see, for instance: O'Rourke, K. H., and J. G. Williamson, Globalisation and history. The evolution of a nineteenth-century Atlantic economy, The MIT Press, 1999]. Also regionalism and localism, now re-growing in a world made smaller from easier trade and information communications, are immanent in human history and follow a cyclical movement opposed to cyclical phases seeing the prevailing of macro-spaces' confrontations.
(Cartier 2001) is anyway a precious analytical contribution for understanding China and its future.
Cartier, C., Globalizing South China, Blackwell Publishers, 2001.
Keiji Furuya, [abridged English edition by Chun-ming Chang], Chiang Kai-shek: his life and times, St. John's University, 1981.
(Keiji Furuya 1981).
Despite (Keiji Furuya 1981) be an abridged edition, it is a monumental biography of Chiang Kai-shek.
Chiang Kai-shek was born on 31 October 1887, in Chikow. In April 1906, he went to Japan where he remained six months for studying Japanese. His initial intention was studying military science, in a Military Academy. But he discovered it was impossible to apply for the admission without having previously got a recommendation of the Board of War of the Chinese government in Peking.
In 1894, in Hawaii, the Chinese Revolutionary Party, the Nationalist Party of China, was created as a secret revolutionary organisation under the name of Hsing Chung Hui (Revive China Society). In 1905, it was reorganised as Tung Meng Hui, in 1912 as Kuo-min-tang, and in 1914 as Chung-hua Ke-ming-tang (the Chinese Revolutionary Party). On 10 October 1919, dr. Sun finally reorganized the Chinese Revolutionary Party into Chung-kuo Kuo-min-tang, the Nationalist Party of China. The Chinese Communist Party [CCP] was founded in July 1921, in a meeting in the French Concession in Shanghai.
The decision to transform the Kuomintang [KMT] into a well-organized and highly disciplined political party was taken in 1922, while dr. Sun was still in Shanghai. On 20 January 1924, the First National Congress of the KMT was held. On 24 January 1924, Chiang Kai-shek was appointed Chairman of the Preparatory Committee of the Military Academy. On 3 February 1924, he was appointed to the KMT's Military Council. On 12 March 1925, dr. Sun died.
Japan judged the Manchuria's coal, iron and agricultural resources as indispensable for its further development and for continuing to be a world power. On 18 September 1931, Japan began the occupation of Manchuria, a China's territory. The imperatives of an eventual patriotic war against Japan were complicated from the already running "communist" peasant and urban revolutionary movements against the legal government of the KMT.
For Chang Kai-shek, the liquidation of the "communist" forces was the precondition for the war against Japan. Despite perhaps the senseless of a war against Japan, actually Chinese "communism" was not defeatable without realising its bourgeois democratic revolutionary programme, what the KMT was incapable to do. On 12 December 1936, Chang Kai-shek was arrested from officers wanted the suspension of the anti-Communist campaign in name of the immediate war against Japan. On 14 December 1936 afternoon, Stalin instructed the CCP to get the release of Chiang Kai-shek within ten days, because for him China could conduct an effective war against Japan only under the Chiang Kai-shek leadership. And Russia was evidently interested in such option. On 25 December 1936, Chiang Kai-shek was freed and sent to Nanking. On 29 December 1936, in Nanking, Chiang Kai-shek submitted his resignation from the position of President of the Executive Yuan and Chairman of the National Military Council. His resignation was immediately and unanimously rejected. In January 1937, the Chinese government suspended its Communist-suppression campaign.
In practice, inside the United Front KMT-CCP was created, the KMT forces fought against Japan, while the CCP ones reinforced and deployed in the perspective of the final confrontation against the KMT. Certainly, there were more basic reasons for the KMT strategic weakening and the CCP strategic strengthening. The KMT and the Mao Zedong fraction (the non-Comintern fraction) of the CCP were both nationalist forces. The nationalists were prisoners of the landlords' obstruction to the land reform were aligned with the KMT. The nationalists wanting a real land reform, the CCP actually realised in its controlled areas, were aligned with the Mao Zedong fraction of the CCP. Undoubtedly, China was and is a very extended and extremely diversified country, pervaded more by anarchic-style protests and insurrections than by western social-democratic-style organised movements. But finally these two parties were the two great and irreducibly antagonist coalitions of forces. The same mostly authentically nationalist KMT forces, which were not subordinated to the landlords and their conditioning, and free from their previous history (in real history there are inevitably actors who, whatever their personal feelings, remain prisoners of their past), progressively aligned with the Mao Zedong CCP. For instance, if "communists", in China, conquered intellectuals already well before their final success, it was because they interpreted decidedly better than the KMT the basic needs of the Chinese society at the times of the bourgeoisie revolution, alias of the imperatives of the land reform. Different question is the successive condemnation of China to decades of freezing since the US and pro-Western imperialisms embargo and its assignation [from the US and pro-Western imperialisms] to the area of the Soviet sub-imperialism. As different question is the success of the KMT in Taiwan, where the KMT social base of landlords had not any more the paralysing power it could exercise when the Republic of China yet extended to the mainland.
In practice, in Yalta, Roosevelt left Manchuria under Russian influence. On 5 April 1945, in Japan, the Koiso Cabinet tendered its resignation. The same day, Molotov received Sato Naotake, the Japanese Ambassador, informing him of his government's desire to denounce the pact of neutrality concluded on 13 April 1941 between Soviet Union and Japan. On 8 August 1941, Soviet Union declared war to Japan and the Red Army crossed the Manchurian frontier. A Japan annihilated from the first US atomic bomb opposed no real resistance to the Soviet attack. The Soviet Red Army rapidly occupied Manchuria. On 9 August 1945, the USA launched their second atomic bomb over Japan. Japan surrendered, while the Soviet troops continued to occupy Chinese territories even outside Manchuria.
In November 1947, in China, there were general elections. The National Assembly met on 29 March 1948 for the election of the President and vice-President of China. Chang Kai-shek became the first President of China under the 1946 Constitution. He was sworn in on 20 May 1948. On 8 November 1948, the greatest engagements of the entire civil war began. On 11 January 1949, at the end of the 65-day battle, the Chinese government army had suffered 300,000 casualties. The CCP forces had had even greater losses, although they succeeded in controlling north from the Yangtze and expanded in the whole north. On 7 December 1949, the executive Yuan voted to move the capital to Taipei, Taiwan. On 10 December 1949, 2 p.m. the Chang plane took off for Taipei. The only relevant troops he left behind him were those under the command of Hu Tsung-nan. Hu led his troops in the direction of Sichang, capital of Sikang. On 28 March 1950, Sikiang too fell.
On 5 April 1975, at the age of 87 years, Chang Kai-shek died in Taiwan.
Keiji Furuya, [abridged English edition by Chun-ming Chang], Chiang Kai-shek: his life and times, St. John's University, 1981.
Nathan, A. J., and B. Gilley, China's New Rulers. The Secret Files, NYRB, 2002.
(Nathan 2002).
Nathan, A. J., and B. Gilley, China's New Rulers: The Path to Power, The New York Review of Books, 26 September 2002.
Nathan, A. J., and B. Gilley, China's New Rulers: What They Want, The New York Review of Books, 10 October 2002.
(Nathan, 26 September 2002 and 10 October 2002).
(Nathan 2002) and (Nathan, 26 September 2002 and 10 October 2002) are the former the book-length version and the latter the relatively shorter essay version of the same NYRB report written immediately before of the November 2002 CCP 16th Congress when new leaders replaced the old ones, exactly as expected when the NYRB report was published. Presented inside and outside China as a generational renewal, it was actually an alignment of the CCP to the needs of the capitalism development in People's China and guarantee of its irreversibility. The NYRB report is founded on the Chinese book Disidai [The Fourth Generation] (published by Mirror Books, a US-based Chinese-language publisher) whose sources are the secret files of the CCP Organization Department, which assists the CCP Politburo in considering candidates for the highest offices.
There are always reasons when secret materials are diffused, overall where there is an authentic cult of absolute secrecy, although finally the "secret materials" are a first-hand and very useful para-journalistic political information of news would be openly accessible in different cultural spaces. Nothing of really astonishing is revealed on the new and old People's China leaders. The provided information helps to "humanise" in same way the enigmatic faces of the leaders of People's China. Actually, without further information on their representativeness of economic, military and bureaucratic lobbies, it is not even sufficient for determining the real direction of the China's development eventually inferable in very general terms, on the basis of a plurality of considerations, as the irreversibility (if catastrophic events will not interfere) of the developmentalist choice operated with the option of the accelerated capitalist development.
The information on positions expressed by the new leaders reveals concern for the People's China stability, the consciousness of the bottlenecks hampering further development, a not new prudence on strategic questions combined with the deducible awareness that China will finally occupy the space in world affairs now occupied from United States [for me] in irreversible crisis but well decided to try to preserve certain their primacy (for me, really not at all so absolute as sometimes supposed if they, after the Afghanistan failure, are again demonising as their absolute and terrifying enemy a weak even if obstinate and perhaps hard country as Iraq, rich only of oil and just strategically threatening, not alone, some regional superiority of another strategically weak country, but under US cover, of the order of only six million citizens).
It does not seem to me that the age and the formal education of leaders are by themselves key elements for judging them. Even the publicly or privately expressed points of view are not so key elements for defining which anxieties and social forces certain leaders will express relatively to other ones once in power positions. It seems to me that "ethnic" elements emerged in occasions of the November 2002 CCP 16th Congress, as the emergence or re-emergence of Shanghai political personnel strength or reinforcement in key central power positions are a bit more indicative of current trends if one considers the present and traditional Shanghai role in continental China.
(Nathan 2002) and (Nathan, 26 September 2002 and 10 October 2002) are anyway very precious sources of information on present People's China and also on US idiosyncrasies on it. For instance, no Chinese Gorbachev (the final and former destroyer of Soviet Union, and for these reasons so exalted as past Statesman and so well paid as lecturer from Western countries as ex-Statesman) is identified from the report/research. Also the delusion that China will not pass to a Latin America- or Central Africa-style political system (but actually it will conserve a political system whose spirit and in part forms are more similar to the Anglophone countries ones, if one looks at them without ideological spectacles) is perceptible. Decidedly more interesting, and fully understandable if put in the context of the China's State history, are details on the capability of self-regeneration of the People's China political direction and bureaucracy. If interested in comparative politics and culture, it would be perhaps interesting some comparison with the Franco-German European Union frequently so prisoner of obscurantist Masonic/"mafia"-style clans of profiteers dominating economy, politics and culture and pursuing just their immediate survival whatever the collective costs. People's China seems, on the contrary, well decided to pursue its collective welfare and greatness.
Nathan, A. J., and B. Gilley, China's New Rulers. The Secret Files, NYRB, 2002.
Nathan, A. J., and B. Gilley, China's New Rulers: The Path to Power, The New York Review of Books, 26 September 2002.
Nathan, A. J., and B. Gilley, China's New Rulers: What They Want, The New York Review of Books, 10 October 2002.
Chen, Hongyi, The institutional transition of China's township and village enterprises. Market liberalization, contractual form innovation and privatization, Ashgate, 2000.
(Chen 2000).
(Chen 2000) explains the key points of the success of the People's China way to market concurrency. It indirectly shows why the privatisation way to market failed everywhere in the world: privatisations do not mean creation of competition but they simply superpose to the pre-existing situation. The conceptual and practical differences between competition and privatisation should be evident, although an insistent propaganda for selling the latter as it were automatically the former was accessory to the destabilisation of relevant world areas, destabilisation was successfully achieved by the apparent panacea of privatisations. It is sufficient to look at the Russian case, but also at the 1990s Italian one.
The way to the economic [self-]destruction was tried from world dominant powers also relatively China. (Chen 2000) remembers that: "[] the Chinese communist government [] has rejected the foreign advisors' suggestions for sweeping privatisations as its fundamental reform strategy." [Chen 2000, p. 213].
For (Chen 2000): "In the reforming practice, the problem in many transitional and developing economies is perhaps that much faith was put on the pursuit of ideal market and governing institutions, but not much attention was paid to the reality of the given existing institutional environment (Ce and Qian, 1998)" [Chen 2000, p. 237].
Aspect generally removed from analysts is that these "ideal market and governing institutions" are not at all what really exists, or tendencially exists, in the centres of economic development and success, the Anglophone area. The same (Chen 2000) seem astonished that the ideal way does not work while a different one does, and it seems to assume privatisations as central instead of accessory aspects of the passage from underdevelopmentalism to developmentalism. In fact it seems to justify that anyway privatisations are achieved: if the point is development, one should check whether development is achieved be it without or with privatisations. China is the exception relatively to the privatisations wave. Not casually, it is the only relevant successful passage from practically stagnating State economy to sustained development and without foreign serfage and colonisation.
Instead of beginning with privatisations, People's China began creating and developing competition. People's China created institutions, including markets, and these institutions led, with proper incentives, to greater competitive pressures:
"[] many small changes induced by the competition may cumulate to result in an 'endogenous reform' in the economy. When fiscal constraints are hard, actors in China's economy have an incentive to innovate. One important way in which they have innovated is by changing the property rights of the firm.
"The co-existence of various organizational forms and property rights in a prolonged period during the reform era in fact serves as a kind of lubricant to reduce the friction caused by replacing one economic system for another. As illustrated in this book, when local community government leaders and firm managers make their decision to select a more appropriate contractual form for a given firm in the various stages of the reform, they are actually making rational response to a changing economic environment with unambiguous objective of efficiency improvement and transaction cost reduction. [] The difference in the economic performance of China versus the rest of the reforming world is in some part related to this fundamental difference in reform strategy." (Chen 2000, p. 209).
Market development leads also to privatisations (where collective property is overwhelming), instead of the opposite. Privatisations are consequently not the illusory way to market but a useful way for overcoming the inefficiencies of direct State and collective management of enterprises, where these inefficiencies verify. Privatisations are not the negation of State and collective intervention in economic development. They are simply the removal of a function not really proper of State and other public entities, function frequently States and other public entities exercises badly. A State has, if it wants, better range of tools for leading economic development than the direct property of enterprises.
Evidently, Chinese developmental centres well understood [or anyway empirically well deal with] these aspects. So, they followed, according (Chen 2000) the way of:
1) creation of institutions (market included), with
2) consequent greater competitive pressure, by:
2a) hard fiscal constraints, which produced incentive to innovate,
2b) the change of the property rights of the firm, change which was an
important way of innovation.
For (Chen 2000), in China, a series of cumulative small changes resulted in an endogenous reform. Actually, also massive privatisations are an "endogenous reform", although at different level, and with different meaning and results.
For (Chen 2000): "Privatization or other fundamental property rights reform has never been the core reform objective of the Chinese leaders. On the contrary, they were resisted by the central government, at least explicitly. To safeguard the authority of the communist government and political stabilisation, the central government affirmed on the dominance of public ownership (state ownership and collective ownership) against private ownership. They declared that markets must function within the socialist framework. Therefore, the substantial rapid growth of the collective ownership dominated TVE sector is a unique experience of China, since 'in no other transitional economy has public ownership played such a dynamic role' (Naughton, 1994b).
"Furthermore, in Eastern Europe and the former republics of the Soviet Union, property rights privatization is a reform strategy pursued by the governments, and in many cases opposed by economic agents at the ground level. This is because the 'insiders' fear loss of income, power, or benefit during such institutional innovation (Brada, 1996). Whereas in China's reform practice, as demonstrated in this book, the property rights innovation in rural collective enterprises is in fact initiated at the ground level by rural community government leaders and firm managers." [Chen 2000, p. 211].
In China, one sees "[] the property rights structure of TVEs as the rationale of local communities in response to the institutional environment with imperfections both in market and in government. During this process, it was the central government which played a passive role. [] The central government's original reform pursuit of letting market forces play a role in stimulating production increase while defending the fundamental features of the socialist system (i.e., keeping the public ownership dominance) was forced to gradually give way to permitting non-publicly owned economic entities compete with publicly owned ones. In the meantime, the government had to reluctantly accept the fact of an evolving organizational form in the direction of privatization in the collective ownership dominated TVE sector." [Chen 2000, p. 212].
"Due to the hierarchy existing in China's domestic industrial sector, enterprises are heterogeneous and exhibit systematic difference in technological capabilities, cost structures, and institutional arrangements. State-owned enterprises enjoying favorable treatment under the centrally planned system have superior technical capacities, but are subject to greater restriction from institutional constraints; at the same time, collective enterprises as TVEs are generally at a disadvantage in technology, but are least affected by institutional limitations. When the Chinese government implements partial reform measures that reduce entry barriers and lower the cost of many types of transactions as observed in China's reform practice, these initiatives have a differential impact on the opportunity sets available to different groups of firms. The state-owned enterprises, on the other hand, were allowed to keep a portion of their profit to augment their efforts in taking full advantage of available resources. Meanwhile collective urban enterprises or TVEs, on the other hand, were enabled to obtain inputs and other resources to adopt new technologies and to produce substitutes that could compete with state-owned enterprises' products on the markets. This is due to the relaxation of restrictions on resources allocation throughout the enterprise hierarchy." [Chen 2000, p. 215].
The relevance and complexity of these questions, and the influx policy decisions have on the evolution of an economic system needing to overcome its backwardness, permit to reflect on the essentiality of preserving political stability and strength. Without it, interested advisors and agents can easily destroy development possibilities, and even the previous levels of welfare reached from countries and world areas, as western colonialism generally did.
Chen, Hongyi, The institutional transition of China's township and village enterprises. Market liberalization, contractual form innovation and privatization, Ashgate, 2000.
Gregor, A. J., with Maria Hsia Chang and A. B. Zimmerman, Ideology and development. Sun Yat-sen and the economic history of Taiwan, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, and Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies, USA, 1981.
(Gregor 1981).
From the one side, perhaps it is always at least a bit forced to derive reality from social actors ideology, even if reality dynamics produce the ideologies they need so that social actors' beliefs are not so extraneous to reality developments. From the other side, a research on ideological references of actors having de facto assured a development or developmental process, although with all the peculiarities of the post-1949 ROC/Taiwan, inevitably emphasises some determinant role of ideology. Surely, in the analysis of the Sun Yat-sen ideology role in the ROC/Taiwan development there are the problems both of the ROC success in the post-1949 Taiwan but not when it controlled the whole China and the fact that anyway Sun Yat-sen died in 1925 (the ROC was founded in 1912). It is always arbitrary to assume that supposed epigones continued a thought and a practice. In addition, thoughts and practises of leaders are generally mythicized.
Works and researches on the Taiwan's economic history are not rare. "Socialism" is an all-purpose word without a precise meaning apart from the suggestion of some concern for society perhaps opposed to immediate profit and rent concerns. For instance, all monarchies (and later also Republics) of the European countries became "socialist" just the myopic exploitation of the working force from private interests hampered the provision of normal quality men for armies and military navies. Nearly immediately "socialism" became a consensus' device exploited from different, or apparently different, sides. The practical relevance of socialism was that all regime preferred organised workers so that State and its police services could better exercise social control and keep workers well submitted even when they were formally antagonists of the social order. All Statesmen and social thinkers are spontaneously "socialists".
(Gregor 1981) associates the China renaissance and its coming out from colonialist oppression to a form of socialism actually deeply rooted in the traditional Chinese thought. In my opinion, the interest of the operation made from (Gregor 1981) is its showing long-term cultural determinants in the Chinese history and, indirectly, the non-existence of a real cultural difference from the two main political blocks, both expression of the Chinese nation: contrarily to China, not all States are at the same time a nation or anyway with a clearly dominant nation. Differences in Chinese "socialism", with the formation of different socialisms (specifically the "communist" differentiation from the "nationalist" one, which had represented the alternative to the imperial one) derived from the interactions of Chinese social forces with foreign interferences, inevitable heritage of the colonial dominations.
(Gregor 1981) dates a kind of modern Chinese socialism, in same way contemporary with the affirmation of the 19th European one, with the 1885 critique of the Confucian texts made by K'ang Yu-wei. For (Gregor 1981), the K'ang ideas were a kind of Bellamy and Henry George style socialism. For (Gregor 1981), Liang Ch'i-ch'ao had given K'ang ideas considerable circulation during the period Sun Yat-sen was closest to the major gentry reformers of Imperial China. [(Gregor 1981, p. 1)]. Sun Yat-sen was attracted from that kind of socialism, current in the China of his times. It was a developmental socialism consistent with the intellectual and moral Chinese traditions [(Gregor 1981, p. 9)]. Sun Yat-sen formulated the principle of the people's livelihood, the Min-sheng chu-i, which is informing principle of the Republic of China from its foundation. [(Gregor 1981, p. 1)].
In the evolutionary vision of K'ang, as of most of the advanced Chinese thinkers, from the Age of Disorder (chü-luan shih), through the Age of Approaching Peace (t'ai-p'ing shih), one arrived finally to the Age of Universal Peace (t'ai-p'ing shih) or of Great Harmony (ta-t'ung). Only at the conclusion of the then emerging Age of Approaching Peace, the world could expect the final Great Harmony. The process would have concluded with the realisation of the goals of the minsheng principle, which Sun Yat-sen identified with the Confucius hope of a great commonwealth. [(Gregor 1981, p. 9)].
If one clears everything from the rhetoric aspects, one can easily find the traditional aspiration of passage from a world of conflict (the supposed 'capitalist' one) to a world of harmonic and stable peace (realised 'socialism', 'communism', paradise). What is common to all kind of 'socialism', Christian-socialism, Islamic-socialism, etc or Hegelo-'communism', in their different varieties. Actually, all kind of political vision offers the final image of some paradise justifies an unsatisfying present.
For (Gregor 1981), "For Sun the three economic problems tormenting that age required a comprehensive land policy, an effective developmental program, and a strategy to deal with the threats mounted by foreign imperialisms. By 1897 Sun had already settled on the elements of those policies. In his pursuit of solutions he had probably already become familiar with the work of Henry George. In December 1984 the Review of the Times had devoted its pages to a discussion of "land nationalisation" and the "single tax", themes that George had made popular in his Progress and Poverty, a book that first appeared in a regular American edition in 1880. While in Japan in 1897, Sun read George's work in its entirely for the first time." [(Gregor 1981, p. 10)].
"In his discussion with Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and Chang Ping-lin in 1899, Sun elaborated on his concerns. Chinese agriculture had remained inadequate both to feed the nation and as a base for economic development not only because of the corruption of mandarins officials, impaired transportation facilities, and competition with "imperialist" trade, but because tenant farmers were compelled to pay "half of what they produce to the landlords. In Sun's judgement a more equitable arrangement would render the peasant prosperous and release capital for self-sustaining national development. The best solution, he argued at that time, would be that «all who can till should receive land.»" [(Gregor 1981, p. 11)]
"In April 1906 and March 1907 Hu Han-min, one of the principal spokesmen for Sun's T'ung-meng hui, provided an exposition of the concept of «equalization of land rights.» By equalization of land rights Sun and his followers meant governmental appropriation of «unearned increments» in value rather than the formal abrogation of private land holdings." [(Gregor 1981, p. 12)]
Sun was also for the openness to foreign investments, since the insufficiency of indigenous capitals. [(Gregor 1981, p. 11)]. What is not anyway astonishing. All Statesman is for openness to foreign investments when they procure some advantages without, or without too many, collateral damages. Mao and the CCP too, although concrete historical paths are finally more complicated than abstract wishes.
"In 1912 he reiterated, «China is an agricultural country. Without solving the basic problems of the peasants, no thorough reforms can be possible. In order to solve the agrarian problem, farmers must own their own lands»" [(Gregor 1981, p. 19)].
The creation, in 1921, of the Chinese Communist Party, which perhaps not only for opportunity reasons acted for a long time as a KMT fraction, would not made captious the question whether it was the continuator of the ideas of the then already disappeared Sun, instead of the KMT. Likely, neither the CCP nor the KMT may be fully assumed as such, even if the CCP realised a kind on anarchist-style peasant revolution on the mainland with a democratic land reform (with all the limits and disadvantages of democratic processes, contrarily to the liberal-elitist one when and where they are possible), while the KMT instead, after its Chinese defeat, extraordinarily developed an island representing about 2% of the Chinese population and 0.35% of the Chinese territory.
It is necessary a translation and a translation-reduction for assuming that the Sun ideas were determinant in the Taiwan's development. Actually it would be also necessary the further assumption that, instead of acting in an adaptive way, social actors behave for applying thoughts and theories. The necessary translation would be that when the KMT split in its de facto para-landlords fraction and in its pro-peasant one (the CCP), the para-landlords one (the formal KMT majority) was the follower or continuator of the Sun ideas. The necessary translation-reduction would be that only by the movement and reduction of the supposedly yet Sun party, the KMT, and of its ROC, to Taiwan and connected islands made possible the realisation of his ideas. Taiwan, an island only occasionally, in its history, a Chinese territory, represents only less than 2% of the Chinese population and 0.35% of the Chinese territory. The post 1949 KMT colonised it when, expulsed from China, realised in Taiwan what it was incapable to realise in China. Assuming a Sun thought leadership or influence in such a colonisation, and only in it, means to assume that such thought failed for China while it was successful for a small island of Dutch and Japanese colonisation. The Sun thought is in such way translated to another place (and also to different times) and reduced to a 2%-0.35% of population-territory at the uncertain spatial margins of the political and cultural area actually generated it.
(Gregor 1981) writes as "By the end of 1949, after the force of Mao Tse-tung began their final southerner campaign, the Nationalist government transferred its seat to Taipei, animated by a decision to make the island a "redoubt", a fortress that might withstand the military power of the communist forces of the mainland. In January 1949, in anticipation of that decision, Chiang Kai-shek had replaced Wei with General Chen Cheng, in an effort to restore the integrity of Nationalist rule on the island.
[...]
"The selection of Chen Cheng to undertake the reconstruction of Taiwan's economy indicated that the Nationalists contemplated more than the simple restoration of political and military control over the island. It was evident that the authorities appreciated the necessity of providing at least minimal welfare satisfactions to the rural population. On the mainland the forces of Mao Tse-tung had exploited the accumulation of rural grievances. Such grievances had fatally undermined the position of the Kuomintang on the mainland." [(Gregor 1981, p. 25)]
On the contrary, in Taiwan, the KMT could use the positive Japanese heritage: "For half a hundred years the Japanese had controlled Taiwan by forging a connection with the landholders on the island and supplementing that connection with extensive police controls. With such a system the Japanese had successfully dominated Taiwan, increased its agricultural yield significantly, and extracted considerable profit from the relationship. If control and agricultural productivity were its sole concerns, there was no prima facie reason why the Kuomintang could not have simply revamped and revitalized the Japanese system to its own purposes." [(Gregor 1981, p. 27)]
But KMT needed considerably more. It needed to create an industrial base at least sufficient for supporting a demanding military establishment. [(Gregor 1981, p. 26)]. What the KMT was so skilful to realise also since the international conjuncture. The Korea war started in 1950. It favoured Taiwan too as a US strategic logistic base. "Thus, by the end of 1950 and the beginning of 1951 all the elements of a developmental program for Taiwan had been put into place." [(Gregor 1981, p. 29)].
The agrarian reform the KMT could not implement in China was realised and successfully implemented in Taiwan. In addition, "Chiang Kai-shek as heir to Sun's policies, early committed the Kuomintang to a protectionist, import substitution policy during the first phase of industrial development." (Gregor 1981, p. 41). Really, also without Sun, South Korea, before it Japan, and nearly all countries wanted to create an internal industrial and research base and so avoid the comprador-way, pursued the import substitution with relative temporary protectionism.
Hence, finally the Taiwan recent history is that of a classical developmental way in a specific context, with same fortunate heritage made it really possible and in speedy times, some techniques common to all developmental experience (form the British Empire and perhaps even before), high attitude to adaptation. Firstly, the relative insulation of the developmental leadership was a key developmental factor did not exist when the KMT-ROC was on the mainland and on the contrary could exist when it transferred and reduced to Taiwan. Had Sun Yat-sen ever treated this key aspect one finds in all developmental experience?
The (Gregor 1981, p. 9) analysis and narration continue as one of the usual interesting expositions on Taiwan and its development since Chinese-KMT colonisation from 1949.
Gregor, A. J., with Maria Hsia Chang and A. B. Zimmerman, Ideology and development. Sun Yat-sen and the economic history of Taiwan, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, and Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies, USA, 1981.
Gold, T. B., State and society in the Taiwan miracle, M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1986.
(Gold 1986).
(Gold 1986) is written and published at the eve of the political change in Taiwan with the passage from the KMT domination to the de facto progressive Taiwanisation of the political and institutional system. On 28 September 1986, 130 opposition politicians illegally created the DPP [Democratic Progressive Party, Minzhu jinbu dang]. There was however no police reaction. On 15 July 1987, the martial law was finally suppressed and the DPP became an opposition legal party.
The book is interesting from various points of view, in addition to the usual discourses on the roots of the Taiwan's economic miracle. Firstly, it represents a KMT control over society not really different from the one realised from the CCP on the mainland. As degree, it was actually decidedly stronger, considering the scale dimensions of Taiwan. It is also necessary to consider the de facto militarisation of the Taiwanese phase of the KMT and that, on the contrary, the CCP conquered power as consequence of a long para-anarchist peasant war. The "Taiwanese" KMT was economy, society, institutions, politics. It was everything.
In addition, the book well represents the dual institutional structure of the Taiwan of the KMT. There were the institutions of Taiwan, the Taiwan "Province", and there were the institutions of the Republic of China, Republic of China de facto reduced to Taiwan. The ROC National Assembly was the one met in March 1948 in Nanking with 2,961 delegates. New general elections were suspended until the return to the mainland. There was clearly an overwhelming domination of mainlanders.
Since the emergency powers attributed to the President and the martial law, the ROC institutional system was made de facto stronger than the one of the Peoples' Republic. In the People's Republic dominated the usual normality of socialist countries, which actually had and have a weak institutional system and a situation of diffused power, with all the inconveniences democracy [democracy as assemblearism and also certain consequent irresponsibility of the decision centres] has relatively to the efficiency generally characterised and characterises liberal [historically self-defining liberal] States. So, the ROC institutional system, not really different from the weak one of the People's Republic, was made strong essentially since the "emergency powers" attributed to the President of the Republic.
(Gold 1986) also remember, explaining the various elements of the KMT domination, that: "Between 1947 and 1949, Taiwan's old intellectual and political elites had been liquidated. There was no indigenous capitalist or financial class to challenge the regime economically. Taiwan had no warlords. Peasants were not mobilised or agitating for land reform." [Gold 1986, p. 64].
Gold, T. B., State and society in the Taiwan miracle, M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1986.
Berta, G., Il governo degli interessi. Industriali italiani, rappresentanza e politica nell'Italia del nord-ovest. 1906-1924, Marsilio, Venezia, Italy, 1996.
(Berta 1996).
(Berta 1996), an historical work, represents different peculiarities of Liberal Italy and its crisis. For it, the industrialists' world remained substantially extraneous to politics, until everything changed only since 1913, with the crisis of Liberal Italy. So, around WW1, there was the irruption of organised interests into political and institutional life. WW1 slowed the started process. The Mussolini era accelerated it. A part of entrepreneurs intensively exploited politics. While another fraction (actually the most long lasting in the Italian State history: Agnelli-Fiat) exploited instead directly governments, whichever they were, in addition to excellent relations with reformist-"contractualist" Trade Union fractions. In parallel with industrialists' interventionism in politics, also the Trade Union interventionism developed. For (Berta 1996), a direct corporative pact between "workers" and industrialists did not realised after WW1, since the too impetuous and disordered industrial growth. [NOTE: later fascism realised it, even if differently from the "fascist" "corporative" rhetoric]. However, with a too intense organised class conflict, which only the fascist movement could finally manage, even if the 1921 economic crisis had already dissolved organised worker antagonism. [NOTE: "fascism" comes from "fascio", "bundle"/"assemblage", bundle/assemblage of a multiplicity of different components, as it actually was until becoming at least 99%-Italy]. Fascism was only a reply to the chronicisation of a destructive disorder, not at all the repression of a creative one: it emerges in some way from (Berta 1996) even if it does not deal specifically with these aspects. Further peculiarity (Berta 1996) represents is the divarication existed between industrialists and Liberal intellectuals. It quotes the case of Einaudi, the main liberal economist of the period and area (Berta 1996) represents. It was not an exception in the Italian State history. "Liberal" and post-"Liberal" Italy had nothing in common with Liberal and post-Liberal England.
Berta, G., Il governo degli interessi. Industriali italiani, rappresentanza e politica nell'Italia del nord-ovest. 1906-1924, Marsilio, Venezia, Italy, 1996.
The Iraq war is against China's development
23 March 2003
The running aggression against Iran and the Arab word, for reinforcing the control over the oil markets, seems the classic Anglophone operation for preserving the monopoly of raw materials markets and for profiting from that. If all along the twentieth century, Anglophone war activities were against the German and Japanese development, now their problem and obsession is Chinese and Southeast Asian development, which appears nevertheless unarrestable. Increases in oil prices are anyway drainages of resources from profit and economic development to rents.
The consequences of events are largely unpredictable. Even more now that there is absolute lack of specialists in political and strategic fields, while there is overabundance of agitators and propagandists. Some general elements seem however evident.
Firstly, the Anglophone forces are conducting the politico-military operations in the worst conditions. The first irreparable mistake has been the attempt to mask aggression. Strong militarisms, as the British and US ones, having not the courage to trigger an aggression without long deception activities, risk to damage it. It is what happened and is happening. The aggression started too late, years too late. Politically, without any international cover for governing Iraq, the US and British militarisms risk to be now victims of their same propaganda that their goal was only the removal of an adverse government. They might win the military aspect of the war, and immediately later to let Iraq to other ones without profiting from the aggression. It is extremely doubtful they could find Iraqi Statesmen and Stateswomen disposable to prostitute themselves and their country to foreign powers. From the other side, the British and US militarisms seem not to have any realistic plan on what to do of Iraq, a State which is largely an artificial creation, a colonialism's legacy. The North is Kurd, but bordering with a Turkey traditionally conducting ethnic cleansing against Kurd populations. The South might be easily assimilated inside the Persian space. The same destruction of Iraq, an Israeli obsession, will immediately strengthen Iran and Turkey. A Turkey now aligning more from the side of the EU than of its [apparently] traditional US ally is heavily garrisoning the North Iraqi borders. There might be finally also positive aspect on Iraq or what will remain of it. This war might be anyway the end of a decade and half of uncertainty and aggression, with economic sanctions and daily bombardments from the US and British air forces. A new phase opens for the different parts of Iraq.
Although even from the military point of view, nobody can know what will really happen. There are too many aleatory elements. The Anglophone forces are overwhelming only in ultramodern war techniques. In guerrilla warfare or other unconventional war, everything might be different, if conditions for guerrilla warfare and other unconventional war will create. The Anglophone militarisms are already facing the Afghan failure. There, they have removed a centralised government with which they might have negotiated for instance oil-pipeline works. Now a new feudal Afghanistan is dominating, with Western money, the Afghan space. Will they do the same in Iraq, with finally no profit, but only costs, from the military operations? Or here will they simply destroy a central government, which will be replaced from another one free from economic sanctions and Anglophone military aggression? Victim of their same propaganda that they wanted to overturn a government and not to fight a State, will they be incapable to impose the repayment of the costs of the aggression and, on the contrary, will they finance the defeated [if it will be defeated] aggressed? In the case of a long military occupation, the contemporary US militarism already showed absolutely inept, from Lebanon to Somalia, to deal with civil population: in this case, will Bush ask Italian troops for handling the Iraqi civilian population?
Even from the military point of view, it will depend largely on what other world powers will decide to do, if there will not be an immediate stabilisation of the Iraqi situation. Iraq has been destabilised and de facto cut in different pieces since the Gulf War: it seems now improbable the restoration of the pre-Gulf War Iraq. There will be any Islamic support to unconventional war activities? What will do concretely France, which is traditionally strongly anti-American and anti-British even if with a notorious lack of character and courage? Will limit Russia to verbal disagreement or, even in the conditions of [Western-induced] economic destabilisation since its inaptitude to real economic reforms, will it try now to reconquer positions in Middle-East areas?
The message lunched from Chinese media on Iraq is that of a country amused from the war games. Chinese specialists are limiting, for what concerns predictions, to copy different US specialists evaluations on a war which will last a week or a month. They reflect the temporary apparent absence of any real policy of the Chinese government on the matter. The Chinese government evidently wanted to avoid any confrontation with the USA on the matter. And it is now waiting what will happen on the field for deciding what really to do. The only sure awareness is that the increase of oil prices will have negative effects on its development, although without arresting or dramatically reducing it. While the Shanghai business community showed uneasy with a war dynamics was and is disrupting its businesses with Iraq.
Too many oppose the Anglophone powers, even part of the States officially supporting them (Italy, for instance). But anyone wants to avoid a frontal confrontation since the excessive toughness of the Anglophone militarisms. Confrontation and war against them will assume unconventional forms, with an Anglophone world rapidly, and perhaps unarrestably, decreasing in power and influence on the world theatre.
Does SARS come from the USA for destroying Southeast Asia development?
27 April 2003
Nowadays, if it cannot be proved that a virus comes from the evolution of other ones, that means that it has been artificially built. If the USA does not accuse and prove that a virus has been built in other powers' laboratories, that means that it has been built in US government laboratories. It was perhaps the case of "HIV" a set of mutant viruses, conceptually not different from this not clearly identifiable SARS. "HIV" perhaps went out of control when it was experimented on inferior (for the US government) races. SARS suddenly erupted in the centres of the present and future world development, if the running development will not be stopped from the incumbent world power or other factors.
The strategic policy making centres of the USA are obsessed from the Southeast Asia and China development and overall from the fact that all "Russian-Gorbaciov" solution failed relatively to China. China means a vast sub-continent with 1.3 billion people. Its modern development, in an already rapidly developing area, means that the USA will be rapidly reduced to a tourist area. It is a US imperative to destroy the Chinese State.
For doing that, in my opinion the US regime need to create dramatic law and order problems inside People's China, to find consequently some excuses for having the FBI operational on the People's China territory, and to follow the other steps the "Italian"-solution [in Italy post-WWII politics was destroyed in 1992/93 since the apparently inexplicable intervention of some regime substitute-prosecutors]: [1] from the People's China financial centre, Shanghai [in Italy it was Milan], to destroy the Beijing government, [2] create political disorder in People's China and to paralyse its policy-making centres, [3] fragment People's China along regional basis.
Perhaps the UK would be happy to reoccupy Hong Kong. In Italy, also Jesuits were used again in 1992/93 and later, until nowadays, for influencing some substitute-prosecutors in Milan and elsewhere [there was also FBI influence], and for getting some tactical connection with fractions of the organised criminality in Palermo, Sicily. The FBI had already submitted some other fractions. In Italy, the financial and economic world had a key role in the destruction of the central politics in exchange of relevant rents at State and citizens charge.
Wait and see if and how the USA will try to exploit this apparently Chinese and East-Asian epidemic, just it will fully reach the USA and the whole world. Anyway SARS has immediately stricken the Chinese business community and is provoking the escape of part of foreigners from People's China.
For the moment, for what I can see, People's China seems to react with peasant naiveté to SARS. If there is no defence, and anyway the SARS mortality is low (it seem 3.5% of the contaminated people), perhaps the best defence would be to do nothing and to wish its most rapid diffusion, so that the collapse point of the epidemic be rapidly reached. Facial mask are of no real utility and they may even be damaging the body defences. Disinfecting products, now suddenly used without really cleaning, are generally toxic.
If the SARS-operation will fail [if there is really a SARS-operation], what will the USA (and other co-interested States and entities) do for destroying People's China?