TSI
Socialist Fisti-cuffs - Iron fists, golden medals
The domestic surveillance market in China is expected to reach $33 billion in 2009 (http://thesundayindian.com/07092008/storyd.asp?sid=5532&pageno=1)
Shankar Ray
Senior Political Analyst
As former Far Eastern Economic Review editor Philip Bowring candidly observed, though India has no sports culture, "eight gold medals by Phelps and one gold by India reflects not just maldistribution but feverish nationalistic competition". But his suggestion for a 'radical reform of the medal system and introduction of a few new sports widely played in the developing world' and insulation from 'hugely expensive facilities' is wishful thinking. Let's first congratulate Hu Jintao, General Secretary, Chinese Communist Party, for 51 gold medals won by China and also for the dazzling dexterity of world's first hi-tech digital Olympic. But beneath is a discreet diablerie, woven by the hegemonic CPC through a super surveillance plan to silence dissent. The equipment and integrated security systems used to trample Olympic protesters is to continue, laments leftwing commentator Juan Gonzales, fully endorsed by Naomi Klein and Christian Parenti. The concept of 'terror as big business is borrowed by China from Israel', says Prof IK Shukla, US-based political commentator, in an e-mail to this writer. Beijing deported five international activists for unfurling a 'Free Tibet' banner over the top of an Olympic Games billboard on the inaugural day of the 29th Olympics. The message of mixing state-sponsored terror, hi-tech surveillance and 'barrack communism' was more than symptomatic. The super-sophisticated surveillance system with 300,000 security cameras and an estimated 100,000 security officers in Beijing alone, leave aside 600 'safe' cities on alert, looks implicitly fascistic. "The domestic surveillance market in China is expected to reach $33 billion next year. And some of the biggest beneficiaries of this boom are US hedge funds and corporations," Gonzales told Amy Goodman in an interview.
Shall we forget the epoch of Mao Zedong, when people used to stay in communes with rice bowls as hedge against hunger and famine and applaud the pseudo-socialist system? Klein pensively states, a high percentage of China's 130 million people are afloat due to displacement by mega projects. They involuntarily move towards Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and the like and enter an enveloping penumbra of economic uncertainty, but as temporary migrants. Little wonder, there were 87,000 incidents of riots and protests in 2005 alone, Klein mentions. But not a word about this in the 20,000 word-plus report by Hu at the 17th CCP Congress (October 2007).
"When people are moving across long distances, the technology is replacing that. So 'Police State 2.0' is really about upgrading the surveillance system, with the help of US companies," quips Klein with biting sarcasm. The equipment is worth $43 billion, say Klein and Parenti. Even religious sites are not free from suspicion and are constantly monitored. Entertainment spots, karaoke bars and restaurants, etc., are woven in too. The system was installed by US companies, mostly listed with NASDAQ and NYSE. China, thus, is an integral part of the global $200 billion homeland security industry. The roots of surveillance network were in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, thinks Parenti. But it's been highly perfected to protect the Deng'ist mandarins from people's wrath. China has 'a long history of repression under Chinese communism and, you know, the legacy of the Cultural Revolution', he thinks. The difference is in the new pattern of 'class struggle', CCP aristocracy being on the other side of the barricade against independent labour activists in industrial cities such as Shenzhen, the main industrial city in the south. Robert Weil, author of Black Cat, White Cat, in a recent article in Monthly Review, revealed that over 70 per cent of industrial establishments there are owned by Taiwanese companies.
The nationalistic sentiment, according to Parenti, was whipped up clubbing the earthquake and the Olympics and injecting a defensiveness around people who, in many cases, were actually involved in struggles against local authorities and were very apologetic about it. The countryside is still very, very poor. During the last two decades, the so-called township and village enterprises generated some poorly-paid employments, not much. But there was unbridled displacement of rural people by industry, pushing them to 'chill penury' as they had to leave their hearth and home in the countryside and embrace economic uncertainties. Resentment grows. Last year, a group of villages refused to pay taxes in Anhui, forcing the government to announce waiver. Hu's assurance at the 17th CCP jamboree – the ongoing reform, opening up and socialist modernisation drive undertaken by the people of all ethnic groups under the Party's leadership are a continuation and development of the great cause of socialist construction since the founding of the People's Republic and the great cause of the Chinese people's struggle for national independence, prosperity and strength since modern times – looks like pious platitude. The other side of 'modernisation drive' is an endless penumbra, engulfing the vast majority of people. Can a police state pacify the unstoppable anger and resentment?
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