three hungry boys - what a waste of time

[Martyn]

In regards to the old Communist State China has been pursuing a policy of a 'Socialist Market Economy' for a good number of years..

We have Deng Xiaoping to generally thank for that... Communist reform in the 90's was quite common you'll remember Perestroika in the Soviet Union, Doi Moi in Vietnam etc....

The Chinese pragmatically I suppose seem to accept the benifits of a single party state and the benifits of an active Market Economy.

Point taken about China possibly not being as conflicted as I imagine, but can you explain to me what a socialist market economy is? It seems to me like the growing number of people who are driving round in Ferraris while some remain in the paddy fields, is pretty strong evidence of the emergence of a capitalist class and anything but socialist in nature. Sounds more like a good old fashioned dictatorship bolted onto a free market. I cant see how you can be politically socialist, but economically capitalist? You either believe in the equal distribution of wealth from an equal division of labour, or accept that the resulting unequal distribution of wealth in a free market, is right and fair. You cant conveniently separate the economy from the politics, because the economy is the politics.

 

[AndyJDickson]

I think a cook on the wild side is hfw best gig. It's on u tube under 4 of food. Worth c watch

Sent from my HTC Salsa C510e using Tapatalk

 

[Martyn]

Oh the irony.

Sent from my iphone using Chinese children and CO2

 

[johnboy]

Point taken about China possibly not being as conflicted as I imagine, but can you explain to me what a socialist market economy is? It seems to me like the growing number of people who are driving round in Ferraris while some remain in the paddy fields, is pretty strong evidence of the emergence of a capitalist class and anything but socialist in nature. Sounds more like a good old fashioned dictatorship bolted onto a free market. I cant see how you can be politically socialist, but economically capitalist? You either believe in the equal distribution of wealth from an equal division of labour, or accept that the resulting unequal distribution of wealth in a free market, is right and fair. You cant conveniently separate the economy from the politics, because the economy is the politics.

What political system would you advocate for China based on your knowledge of the country and it's people ??

 

[Martyn]

What political system would you advocate for China based on your knowledge of the country and it's people ??

The same one I'd advocate for every country in the world, a free market democracy.

 

[johnboy]

Would, that work in China based on your expert analysis??

 

[Tengu]

No, no no!

What we all need is an Athenian Democracy.

That way the men can vote to go to war with the enemy of the day, the slaves can do the work, and the women sit back and watch the fun.

 

[northumbrian]

To be honest with you, after the original series of River Cottage finished, I found the newer programs to be increasingly more disappointing. The infusion of 'foodie' culture into the whole thing just started to get to me from there on in.

Opinions aside, I did like it when he stood up to Tesco and it did change the way I thought about supermarket food...I still can't afford to buy anything else though...sorry Hugh.

i cant even afford to buy tesco's chickens now after that bar steward put the prices up ! its alreet for rich gits like him to pay a fiver plus for a spuggy but thats 10% of all my food money for a week after the utility bills have been paid ! he lives in a dream world that kidda does !

 

[northumbrian]

in my local cornershop corned beef was £2.59 buy local my a**e

bugger that id rather have a big tin of pink salmon from asda for £1.59 than skanky corned beef and its better for you too !

 

[Martyn]

Would, that work in China based on your expert analysis??

I'm no expert as you are fully aware John, but it worked for Hong Kong.

Or to throw it back at you, every working example of a communist state, is and has been an unmitigated disaster, resulting in horrendous human rights, a severely oppressed people and a profoundly corrupt government. Is there anywhere you know of that communism works? Or is there anywhere you know of where a free market democracy has failed?

 

[mrcairney]

I've always wanted to know if the wages in Chinese factories are low compared to China as a whole.

 

[johnboy]

I'm no expert as you are fully aware John, but it worked for Hong Kong.

HK is an interesting point Martyn,

Prior to 1997 it was influenced heavily by the UK even down to the street signs..

Post 1997 it became a SAR of the PRC there are still border controls in place between the PRC and the HK SAR Beijing treats HK differently to the 'mainland' same deal with Macau.

Beijing has encapsulated HK...

Thats fundmentally a lot different than the Mainland PRC 'abandoning' it's current system for a 'Free Market Democracy'.

The PRC is big with a lot of diversity both economic, social, cutural, ethnic etc..

Take language in the PRC for example.. Shenzhen, Guangdong, HK etc its Cantonese.. Other parts of China Mandarin...

I once worked in a City near Shanghai called Ningbo and learnt a lot of Mandarin there while working but I learnt 'my' Madarin with a Ningbo dialect Ningbo Wah..

Driving out to a supplier 50k outside of the city and my Ningbo Wah is difficult to understand same for my Chinese Colleague the Dialect is different. This is a common problem in a lot of these large factories we discussed earlier where the migrant population comes from Futian or Schzuan, communication is hard.

A question I ask myself and perhaps worthy of reflection by others is how long did it take for us in the 'west' to 'perfect' our political and social system to where it is today? literially hundreds of years.

China prior to 1949 was not a cohesive single state that was 'corrupted' with a despotic communist influence by Mao and his followers. Far from it...

If it takes China 70 years to move from Maoisim to a 'socialist market economy' then as political system development goes they are running pretty quickly... How long has the UK run FPTP as an electoral system??

I personally dont have the answers but I do to a small degree understand the question...

Cheers

John

 

[johnboy]

I'm no expert as you are fully aware John, but it worked for Hong Kong.

Or to throw it back at you, every working example of a communist state, is and has been an unmitigated disaster, resulting in horrendous human rights, a severely oppressed people and a profoundly corrupt government. Is there anywhere you know of that communism works? Or is there anywhere you know of where a free market democracy has failed?

Hi Martyn,

To reply to your edited post...

Throw it which way you want... Is the current Chinese system a typical Communist state or is it an hybrid of Single party state and free market economy...

Is it working currently??

 

[Martyn]

Throw it which way you want... Is the current Chinese system a typical Communist state or is it an hybrid of Single party state and free market economy...

Is it working currently??

It looks to me as though it had little choice. The oppression of the 80's couldn't go on. Remember Tienanmen square? I think it was a case of reform of face a revolution. The current socialist market economy is a compromise that has been forced on the state. It's eroded their power and I think is pretty clearly a transitional phase in Chinas history. Sooner or later, they will demand a multi party sytem and an elected government, it's human nature. The alternative is to doom yourself to global isolation and totalitarianism, like North Korea - which will implode eventually.

 

[Martyn]

I've always wanted to know if the wages in Chinese factories are low compared to China as a whole.

John is probably the one to answer this, but from what I understand, the wages in factories are much higher than the agricultural sector. Chinas economy is split roughly 1/3 agriculture, 1/3 manufacturing, 1/3 services.

From the CIA world factbook....

21.5 million rural population live below the official "absolute poverty" line (approximately $90 per year); an additional 35.5 million rural population live above that level but below the official "low income" line (approximately $125 per year) (2007).


Unemployment is running at somewhere between 6% and 9%.

China has a population of around 800 million and is the second largest economy in the world behind the US.

Again from the CIA world factbook, it is estimated that around 200 million migrants have moved from the interior, to the coastal regions looking for work in the factories.

 

[mrcairney]

I did a bit of a internet only research and came up with similar results. When I was traveling and working in various countries I had a blokish and not entirely fool-proof way of judging the cost of living. I used to see how many beers I could buy with an hours wage. If my internet research sources are credible a chinese manufacture worker should be able to buy a beer and a half with an hours wage.

I don't mean to be captious, nor an apologist (as I'm not) but their wages might me low compared to ours, but really they seem to be pretty standard for that country.

For what it's worth the country that was top of the pile for the beer/wage test was Czechoslovakia, the bottom being Sweden.

Oh, and I always thought the original River Cottage was a bit of a TV mislead. It's not like HFW was short of a few quid; even at the beginning.

 

[British Red]

Think we are erring into politics on this one - I'm fairly sure thats a no-no on the site - can we leave the pros and cons of political ideology outside the firelight?

I agree the series is far from HFW's best. His early and less "preachy" stuff was far far better.

That said I do wonder if, eventually, people run out of ideas.

One of the best TV series of recent years is "Justified" - but the tird series is very weak compared to the first two.

 

[Martyn]

Think we are erring into politics on this one - I'm fairly sure thats a no-no on the site - can we leave the pros and cons of political ideology outside the firelight?

I'm sure the mods will let us know if they feel it degenerates into something intolerable Red. No need to second guess them.

 

[rik_uk3]

Think we are erring into politics on this one - I'm fairly sure thats a no-no on the site - can we leave the pros and cons of political ideology outside the firelight?

I agree the series is far from HFW's best. His early and less "preachy" stuff was far far better.

That said I do wonder if, eventually, people run out of ideas.

One of the best TV series of recent years is "Justified" - but the tird series is very weak compared to the first two.

Agreed, season three is poo. Go watch 'American Horror Story' (series), best series I've seen in years...Walking dead is back too

 

[Martyn]

I did a bit of a internet only research and came up with similar results. When I was traveling and working in various countries I had a blokish and not entirely fool-proof way of judging the cost of living. I used to see how many beers I could buy with an hours wage. If my internet research sources are credible a chinese manufacture worker should be able to buy a beer and a half with an hours wage.

I don't mean to be captious, nor an apologist (as I'm not) but their wages might me low compared to ours, but really they seem to be pretty standard for that country.

For what it's worth the country that was top of the pile for the beer/wage test was Czechoslovakia, the bottom being Sweden.

Oh, and I always thought the original River Cottage was a bit of a TV mislead. It's not like HFW was short of a few quid; even at the beginning.

That's probably quite a fair test in terms of the basics, being able to feed yourself and so on. It's probably fair in terms of analysing the level of basic commerce too, the beer manufacturer has the cost of brewing, shipping costs, they need to advertise, retail, price competitively etc and make a profit and if all that can be achieved, then the cost of a pint of beer relative to an hours pay, probably does reflect a basic standard of living. The only problem is where you have a society that is massively stratified - a very large number of low paid workers, then a big gap and then a large number of high paid workers. The beer will need to be made and priced to be affordable by the low paid, but what about other things we consider to be "standard"? Mobile phones, LCD TV's. personal transport etc. These are things most of us consider to be everyday items, certainly affordable if you work for a living, and most are owned by the unemployed here too. I wonder if there should be a mobile phone test, or perhaps a moped test along with your beer test?