Bill Lear wrote:
On Friday, April 14, 2006 at 15:40:50 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes:
...
I had Elizabeth Economy, a China expert at the Council on Foreign
Relations, on my radio show yesterday - I'll be posting the audio
later today. It was surprising to hear this bourgeois scholar express
alarm about massive inequality, growing protests, and ruinous
pollution. ...
Are you surprised because you/we have grown so used to right-wing
dominance of bourgeois discourse? Was she concerned for moral or
pragmatic reasons? (I suppose I'll need to listen, eh?).
I was surprised because establishment types rarely talk about the
downside of China, because they rarely worry about inequality or
environmental degradation. A couple of times she said that inequality
in China is worse than the US, in a way that suggested she thought
the US was already too unequal. Her concern sounded both moral and
pragmatic.
Doug
