Warp wrote:
>   What I really don't understand is that China is *supposed* to have some
> kind of communist (or similar) government, yet you couldn't see that there
> *at all*.

Well, they went from feudalism to communism. They no longer bind women's 
feet, nor do they disallow women from learning to read. Taxi drivers all 
have little statues of Mao where Americans would be putting St Christopher.

> enormous amounts of beggars living in underway passages (literally!) which
> didn't look like they owned anything else than the rags they were wearing.

I didn't see any of that in the cities. Indeed, I noticed that there 
were *no* homeless or beggars.  (I lie. I think I was once in six weeks 
asked for some money by a little old lady outside a temple in center 
city.)  Out of curiousity, where and when was this that you saw it?

A fair amount of poverty, and a large number of people fighting to make 
enough money at what I'd call menial jobs (selling produce in the open 
markets, etc), but I didn't see anyone that looked like they had no 
place to call home.

I saw a number of communities where jobs consisted of (for example) 
picking the usable bricks out of a demolished building's rubble, or 
washing clothes on rocks, while the city a couple miles away had a 
half-billion-dollar tourist attraction being built (which one could 
argue is a good allocation of funds, anyway). A few places where the 
people didn't have glass in the windows.  So yeah, there's still a lot 
of poverty around outside the cities.

I'm pretty sure I heard the government goes out of its way to make sure 
everyone has a home. You might wind up in a city you didn't want to be 
in, but you'll have a roof over your head. Again, whether it's true or 
not, successful or not, I couldn't say.

>   If China is supposed to be some kind of communist nation, from what
> I saw it doesn't work at all.

My understanding is that it's vastly superior to what it was (say) 75 
years ago, and steadily improving. Whether the people I know who live 
there really have a 100% grasp on this, given the government control of 
the media, is another question. It certainly seems like the government 
is trying to do a good job, unlike some of the other places where it's 
clear the government couldn't care less if everyone died, as long as the 
cronies get theirs.

Of course, the problem with a benevolent dictatorship is that it turns 
into the other type all too easily, and then you're pretty well screwed. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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