Steve: “Economic growth in China today is not to the credit of the Communist Party, but because they changed economic policy away from the Communist model.”
Did you mean “Economic growth in China today IS to the credit of the Communist Party, because they changed economic policy away from the Communist model”?
I am not a supporter of the Communist Party, but most people would agree that it was their “open” economic policy that leads to China’s economic success today.
Edwin, the Communist Party rules the country . For forty or more years they held the country back, and caused the death of tens of millions in the name of their ideology. They had no choice but to allow more economic freedom. The country was exhausted. I give them no credit for that.
The Party continues to restrict freedom of expression and maintain a monopoly on social and political organization. The result is a distorted society, increasing inequality, appalling environmental conditions, rampant corruption, and most important of all, a very low level of trust amongst people. This is the legacy of the rule of the Communist Party.
As much as I reject the autocratic one party rule in China one has to acknowledge that these three decades of 10% annual economic growth happened there and not in India even though one is free in India to criticize one’s government. But there are no more low hanging fruits when it comes to growth in China and it all will depend on whether the CCP can truly reform the economic system.
"Also See here http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_… "
This article just summarizes what everybody who has researched the issue knows. I have never come across any “myth controversy”. There is general agreement now that the vast majority of fatalities that night did not happen in the square. I am not aware of any news channel or newspaper potraying it as having been a blood bath on the square.
For those who havn’t stood on Tiananmen it is probably hard to imagine how vast it is and even if one had been on the square that night people could have been killed there without one noticing it depending on ones position. Some witnesses reported about protesters being dragged into the great hall of the the people which is to the west of Tiananmen. Many people could have just disappeared that night.
The fact that there was no large scale massacre on Tiananmen does not make the crackdown less hideous. In fact the Chinese leadership had no interest in any bloodshed on Tiananmen for obvious reasons.