March 8, 2004
SHOULDN'T THIS COLUMN BE DATED 2/29?
Move that big red state into the blue column (Gary LaMoshi, 3/09/04, Asia Times)
The returns are in from China, and the Democrats have won. That's the United States Democrats, the ones the US Republicans have suspected of being communists all along.The policies and programs revealed at the Chinese National People's Congress (NPC), the first under the fourth-generation leadership of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, have a decidedly Democratic flavor, starting with the slogan, "Putting people first". (They might have picked that up cheap from any number of failed US Democratic presidential campaigns.) Beyond the headline of endorsing the right to private property, the economic presentations to this NPC session represent a left turn.
Gone are the days of growth at any price, in favor of more directed economic expansion. Indiscriminate tax breaks for industry are out, tax cuts for family farmers are in.
Yeah, when you think of the Democrats the first things that spring to mind are democracy, tax cuts, and the defense of private property... Posted by Orrin Judd at March 8, 2004 9:14 AM
But there's something so nice about the idea, presented apparently without irony, that by adopting the Democratic platform, the PRC would be moving left.
Posted by: David Cohen at March 8, 2004 9:52 AMThere was an article in The Independent a couple of weeks ago in which the LLL claimed that if the rest of the world voted in the American Presidential race, Kerry would win in a landslide. I thought the author was daft. I think Bush would clean Kerry's clock in China, India, Africa and Eastern Europe.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at March 9, 2004 5:41 PM