Orrin,

You'll have to flesh out that argument a little more.

In 1965 when the Watts neighborhood erupted in violence, thirty-four people were killed. Not a few people then predicted that racial tension would tear apart the U.S.

This could be the Chinese Watts, an episode along the way that will be forgotten in a future prosperous China.

Eugene S.:

There's one huge difference. Our rioters eventually found out that our political system, imperfect as it is, has the flexibility to accept and implement change. That's why the civil rights movement was able to triumph. That's also why the African-American middle class is expanding by leaps and bounds. Thanks to massive capital investments from the West, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, China has been able to enjoy economic growth. But China is still hobbled by an old-fashioned Marxist-Leninist dictatorship, where the rulers live in daily fear of any real political change. Unlike too many of our China "experts," they understand full well that when this change comes, it will mean that there will be a revolution and that they won't be the rulers any more. Don't be fooled by the simplistic proposition, beloved by both left-wing ideologues and right-wing MBAs, that the economic will inevitably determine the political.

By the way, each year in China, there are thousands of Chinese Watts. But the Communist regime, afraid of admitting that there is turmoil in the vast countryside where three-quarters of China's population lives, doesn't report on those anti-tax and anti-corruption riots.

Eugene:

Just to add to X, the blacks were demanding to be treated as fully American--a request that was easily complied with--no one can be Chinese who isn't ethnically so.

But China is still hobbled by an old-fashioned Marxist-Leninist dictatorship, where the rulers live in daily fear of any real political change.

More accurately, China is still hobbled by traditional Chinese Legalism and Imperial bureaucratic system with Marxist-Leninist stick-on labels.

Mr. X is very close in his response. The economic will not determine the political. Never, never and never.

I'm a Yank thats lived and worked here for close to 9 years now. Matter of fact I'm here now. I'm not sure of Mr X's thousand riots though. I travel (my own ininery and unrestricted) all over this country but I have to admit I've never seen anything close to Watts, in cities or countryside. I find it strange that as much as I travel I've never been shooed away from anywhere, which would happen at the first hint of civil problems. Never happened yet but I guess theres always a first time.

Wherever Muslims are permitted to congregate near non-Muslims, the first thing they do is engage in religious warfare. If it's not an explicit relgious command, then it's certainly in the blood. All civilized states would be wise to remove the Muslim contagion from their midst until such time as Muslims decide that they want to live in peace with others.

Bart:

So do Christians, which is why China's future isn't Communist or Muslim.

Tom:

As you know, China is a vast country. Many of the rural riots take place in areas that foreigners are very unlikely to go to. Those are not areas that are closely tied to the country's transporation system. This also means, of course, that they're also not likely to be part of the current economic boom in the cities and the hinterland of those cities. Each year, the government compiles highly restricted internal reports which list those riots. Not surprisingly, the government does not release the reports for public and foreign consumption.

Tom:

To put things in perspective. There are a million villages in China. You only need to have ten incidents a day out of that million for there to be thousands of riots in a year.

Ken:

I agree there's some validity to the view that in many ways, the current regime is a continuation of the traditional system of rule. But to China's sorrow, Marxism-Leninism also introduced something very new, indeed something revolutionary, into that system. In dynastic China, the number of bureaucrats was extraordinarily small by comparison with the massive size of the population they pretended to rule. It has been estimated, for instance, that during the Ch'ing, there were only about 30,000 imperial officials. Naturally, those officials were supported in their work by hanger-ons and police functionaries. But the point remains that for all its pretensions to power, the traditional Chinese state could not be a pervasive presence in society. The state simply didn't have the political and technological tools. As an old Chinese saying put it, "both heaven and the emperor are far away." In contemporary China, however, the Communist Party has married the absolutist ambitions of traditional imperial rule with the penetrative power of the Marxist-Leninist party-state. I'll give one example of this. A number of years ago, before Tiananmen, a relative of mine hosted a dinner for a Chinese Episcopal bishop who had just been released from a Chinese labor camp. He had been incarcerated for over two decades, and had just arrived in Hong Kong from China. I still remember one thing he said in our conversation that night which still sticks in my mind to this very day. He said, "There's one thing I would give the Communists credit for. They are very good at control. If in Peking, they want to know what's going on in with a particular individual in a particular room in a particular village hundreds and hundreds of miles away, all they have to do is make a single telephone call. Within five minutes, they'll have their information." This would have been unthinkable in pre-Communist China, and this is what separates the "new" China from the old.

OJ,

That is manifestly untrue. Christians live at peace with non-Christians all over the world. There is no place where Muslims with live large numbers of non-Muslims where they are at peace.

Every mosque in America is a fund-raising center for terrorists.

Bart,

India has a large Muslim majority.
By the standards of the developing world, India's Hindus and Muslims can almost be said to be at peace with one another.

Certainly they get along better than the groups in neighboring multi-ethnic Sri Lanka, where there are no Muslims.

Obviously that should have read "large Muslim minority".

If Orrin has his way, Christians will not be peaceful. They never were when they held the civil power, and he wants them to have it again.

We've always been relatively peaceful. America's worst violence--40 million abortions--dates to the brief secular epoch. Of course, the triumph of secularism in Europe brought immediate mass murder.

Eugene,

You don't know too many Indians do you? It was precisely the staggering level of violence between Hindus and Muslims that caused the separation of the Raj into India and the falsehood known as Pakistan. India remains today about 10-15% Muslim while Pakistan and Bangla Desh are essentially Hindu-rein. Which group is the genocidal maniacs?

Inter-ethnic hostility is not the sole property of Muslims, so your point about Sri Lanka seems irrelvant. One thing to know about Sri Lanka is that it is about 10% Muslim and that Al-Qaeda is active in the nation.

Harry, there are psychopathic nutbars in every faith or technically even among those without faith.(I will for this purpose not define atheism or secular humanism or Communism as faiths even if they really look like faiths). The difference is that most people, believers or not, understand that murdering those who disagree with you about spiritual matters is a nonsensical, barbaric behavior. While there certainly are peace-loving Muslims, that understanding has not permeated the Islamic World to any great extent.

Bart:

Most don't understand that without the guidance of faith.

Or with.

Abortions didn't start with Roe v. Wade, Orrin.

Looking at some recent purchases with "Made in China" on the packaging, I would not call a 12" tabletop bandsaw, workbench vise, and 15" floor-model drill press "Trinkets".

Ken:

Yet they are, that's why we can have the primitives assemble them

Let us know when they start breaking, Ken.

I doubt they'll be breaking for a while.

During the Cold War, a lot of Third World countries bought both Russian originals and Chinese copies to restock their armies and air forces. Most every one praised the Chinese copies as very well-made, unlike the Russian originals.