A PJTV Special on China: Rising Power and Big Questions By Claudia Rosett
http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/a-pjtv-special-on-china-rising-power-and-big-questions/?print=1
Among the most colossal shifts of our time has been the rise of China, from the black hole of Mao’s ruinous communism, to a power increasingly to be reckoned with around the globe.
But what is today’s China? Is it still communist? Capitalist? Is it friend or foe to the U.S.? Should we fear China’s rise? Resist it? Welcome it? What lies ahead?
These are the big questions tackled by PJTV in a special in-depth series of video reports: “Made in China.” Hosted by PJTV’s Bill Whittle, with Scott Ott, this is a three-part exploration of what China has become, where it came from, and what might lie ahead. You can watch a trailer, and purchase it here [1].
This is not your standard MSM China debate. For insights, PJTV enlisted people who have both firsthand experience with China, and great respect for the principles of freedom and free markets; who proceed from the understanding that China’s model of a quasi-market economy coupled with continuing repression by China’s Communist Party is not — as some would have it — a recipe for stability. It is profoundly unstable.
In the first segment, PJTV focuses on “China: Still Communist, or Have They Gone Capitalist?” Hillsdale College economics professor Charles Steele explains that China is still trying to walk a line between the two: it certainly has markets, but they are hugely subject to government intervention. Coming from utter destitution under Mao’s communism, the result of even limited freedom to do business and own property has been to lift more people out of poverty than has ever happened before, anywhere in the history of mankind. But China’s continuing political repression has left it with enormous and potentially explosive problems, yet to be solved. Terry Jones of Investors Business Daily jumps in to explain why China’s economy is running into growing difficulties, a shrinking work force, and why he believes “What has been called the China Miracle is officially over.”
The second segment addresses the implications of the raw repression with which China’s Communist Party keeps power: “From Mao to Tiananmen Square: Chinese Communists are Murderers.” For a clear-eyed reminder of the real character of communism and its role in shaping the government of today’s China, PJTV turns to Marion Smith, of the Victims of Communism Foundation. More insight comes from Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute, who argues that China today is more fascist than communist, and who along the way explains why evil comes of a system in which the imperative is not equality of rights, but equality of outcome.
Full disclosure: I’m also one of the commentators for this segment on Chinese communism. In 1989, I covered the massive Chinese uprising centered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and its bloody suppression on June 4. I witnessed both the tremendous yearning of China’s people for the kind of freedom that made America great (in Tiananmen they built their own Statue of Liberty), and I saw some of the killing with which they were silenced. This PJTV special was a chance to share some thoughts on what America, today, could or should do to address the continuing repression.
In the final segment, Bill Whittle asks: “Made in China: Will They Attack Us?” He gets disturbing answers from experts Gordon Chang, Yaron Brook and the Heritage Foundation’s James Jay Carafano. Some things depend on what America does next, and with China — as its ruling Communist Party tries to navigate the instabilities and domestic discontent it has wrought — we are entering a dangerous passage.
What comes next in China could greatly affect us all. There’s a lot more I could tell you about this PJTV special, in which Bill Whittle asks all the right questions, and gets answers that take into account the basic principles that shape the course of human events. But even better, you can watch this “Made in China” special for yourself, available here. [2]
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