BUT THERE ARE A BILLION OF THEM...:

Schoolboy beaten to death as police stamp on Chinese bus fare protest
undefined (Jane Macartney, 3/14/07, Times of London)

China sent in the Army to restore order yesterday after a student was killed and dozens of people were hurt when police in a remote town used batons to beat back 20,000 residents demonstrating against a steep rise in bus fares.

The unusually large and violent protest reflected the difficulties faced by hundreds of millions of poor farmers struggling to eke out a living on the land while market-oriented economic reforms are bringing prosperity much more rapidly to the urban population. [...]

Yesterday Tian Chengping, Minister of Labour and Social Security, gave a warning that the Government would be able to find work for only half of the 24 million people expected to join the labour market this summer, a figure equivalent to the population of Australia.

Strange how folks are so blinded by the size of its population that they are unable to accept that China is a mess and only going to get worse. At some point you have to wonder if it isn't just a residue of those old fears of the Yellow Peril.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 14, 2007 12:00 AM