By Staff
The point of Naomi Klein's article on China in the May 29 Rolling Stone is that with the help of U.S. defense contractors it is building the prototype for a high-tech police state ready for export.
"Golden Shield" turns every information age tool into ways to repress and control.
But I found Shenzhen itself, the laboratory for "market Stalinism," the most fascinating aspect.
There's an aerial color photo of this almost unimaginably sprawling megacity of 12.4 million people.
The kicker is that it didn't exist 30 years ago.
Guess capitalism works better for the Chinese than Americans these days.
Shenzhen used to be a string of small fishing villages and collectively run rice paddies, traditional temples and rutted dirt roads.
Then the Communist Party chose it as one of China's "special economic zones," one of just four areas where capitalism would be permitted on a trial basis.
Shenzhen made the cut because of its proximity to Hong Kong's port.
Klein writes that China could keep intact its socialist soul – have its cake and eat it, too – while profiting from private-sector jobs and industrial development.
This is a "city of pure commerce, undiluted by history or rooted culture – the crack cocaine of capitalism. It was a force so addictive to investors that the Shenzhen experiment quickly expanded."
In fact, it swallowed the surrounding Pearl River delta, now home to 100,000 factories.
"There is a good chance that at least half of everything you own was made (there): iPods, laptops, sneakers, flatscreen TVs, cellphones, jeans, maybe your desk chair, possibly your car and almost certainly your printer."
Luxury condominiums tower over the city. Many are more than 40 stories high, topped with three-story penthouses, which resonated with the China Wilber Breseman of Marcellus described to me last week as he prepared to make his third trip there.
Many big American players gravitated to Shenzhen, "but they look singularly unimpressive next to their Chinese competitors," according to Klein.
"The research complex for China's telecom giant Huawei, for instance, is so large that it has its own highway exit, while its workers ride home on their own bus line."
There are nine Wal-Mart superstores in the city, but they "look like dreary corner stores," she writes. "China almost seems to be mocking us: 'You call that a superstore?' … It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarian communism – central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance – harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism."
Klein also delves into the story of a Shenzhen yuppie who opened a factory 2 1/2 years ago that has already paid off his investment tenfold. And no wonder. He turns out 400,000 digital surveillance cameras a year.
Half go to places like London, Manhattan and Dubai to meet the global boom in "homeland security," but the other half never leave China.
China's market for surveillance cameras grew 24 percent from 2006, to $4.1 billion.
Seventy-five percent of all income gains from 2002 to 2006 went to the top 1 percent of households making $382,600 a year.
17: Percent of Americans who have already received or are anticipating a 2008 federal tax rebate who say they plan to use any portion of that money to splurge on something they wouldn't normally buy. The vast majority will use the money primarily to pay bills or cover other everyday expenses, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.
We bought a new dishwasher.
Another life cut short by drugs: Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann, who first synthesized LSD in 1938, died of a heart attack April 29. He was 102.
Life imitates art: "CSI" star Gary Dourdan has been charged with felony possession of heroin, cocaine and ecstasy after his arrest last month in Palm Springs, Calif.