A Stitch in Haste

There's an old saying that, in order to exercise freedom of the press, it must be legal to actually own a press.

In order words, you can't have political freedom without economic freedom, nor can you have economic freedom without political freedom.

So stop trying to convince me that China is "capitalist" --

China on Thursday rejected a U.S. call to adopt democracy, telling Washington to respect its communist path and brushing off warnings of retaliation for its huge trade surplus with the United States.
...
"The internal affairs should be handled by the government and people of each country," [Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang] said. "We should respect another country's right to chose its own development road."

And if that "right to chose its own development road" includes forced abortions, torture, censorship, slave labor, invading peaceful neighbors, or any of the myriad other atrocities committed -- with unapologetic pride -- by these so-called "market communists," then we should just shrug and focus on the handful of "neat-o" new cities built along a tiny sliver of China's coastline that are mostly accessible only to politically favored elites?

Communist is as Communist does. That will never ever change, and that will never ever be a good thing.

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Meanwhile, China itself is starting to acknowledge that its "market communism" isn't quite the Great Leap Forward it previously claimed it was:

China's official media warned Wednesday that the gap between rich and poor has become alarmingly wide during two decades of economic liberalization, contributing to spreading unrest in towns and villages across the country.
...
Riots and other violent protests, which the government acknowledges are increasing dramatically, have become a major issue for President Hu Jintao's government. Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao have made calls for "harmonious society" and "social stability" watchwords of their speeches over the last year.

The reports on income inequality seemed to attribute violence to economic rather than political causes and warned that more unrest could be coming.

Nonsense. In a free society people don't riot simply because they're poor. For the most part they don't riot at all. And when they do it's because they feel, not impoverished, but oppressed.

In any case, it's a mighty bizarre form of "economic miracle" that results in mass rioting.