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If you tighten bank credit and restrict investment you are definitely cutting down on spending but as the spending is already at an unacceptably low level--according to government economic experts--why is this being done? Will Xie come out next year or the year after and gloat that these programs have worked and have put the skids to runaway spending?  Wowzer! How utterly like. . .y'know, Skinner cheated on his rat experiments, too, starving them before he put them in his maze. All of this, though, flies in the face of the opening up of foreign banks doing business and the increase in foreign investment, especially in the automotive sector of economic growth standard measuring devices. I don't think anyone read this article with an eye to thinking, for there are no comments. Gosh--it all sounds good! Yup, yup, yup. And then we're going to take you to the cleaners. It has also cracked down on wasteful investments, naming and shaming local officials it says have failed to comply with orders to tighten up planning procedures and observe tougher environmental protection criteria. -- You see. . .the way it works in China is you break the legs of the little guys, calling it a blow against corruption, and leave the big corrupters and blunderers and greed-driven free to continue their non-compliance. Why? Because it's good for business. It seems to me that tougher environmental protection criteria would be less selling of cars, especially SUVs to the rich and powerful. Shanghai has shut off its downtown to bicycles, thus hamstringing the workers, though it does increase spending (on environmentally destructive transportation); Beijing has tightened restrictions on auto emissions for the downtown, leaving the old non-restrictive polluting for the suburbs and countryside--who cares if the poor and working classes sicken and die? As long as the bigwigs continue to do well. After all, there is an almost bottomless pit of replacement resources (people) who will take any employment at any below subsistence pay. So, why worry? Who said that? Alfred E. Newman? What was the name of his magazine? Unveiling the 2006 data at a press conference in Beijing, Xie emphasised that while there were risks he did not believe the economy was yet in a state of overheating. -- Wow! A press conference. A meeting of selected reporters and news agencies who can be relied upon to report what they are told, no questions asked. Like the "agency" reporting the article I'm quoting. What, may I ask, is meant by an economy "overheating"? By juxtaposition, this would imply runaway spending and, therefore, is another truism: there is no possibility of either runaway spending or overheating. Even so, this is an intricately confusing statement. Looking ahead he said he expected the economy to continue "steady and comparatively fast development" in 2007. -- Rein in those horses, Jim Hatfield! Save the runaway stage coach, John Wayne. What "steady and comparatively fast development"? A 10.7% jump is steady development? And, again, we are left to ask where this development is taking place, for it's not in the everyday lives of the everyday people of China. So, whose "economic development" once again becomes the overriding unasked question. Nonetheless, Xie said, government efforts to boost consumer spending were "still not seeing significant results". -- Damn those runaway steeds! How can restrictions on spending boost consumer spending? And why is consumer spending so terribly important? Is China Little America? Contrariness is always good: it confuses and confounds and puts an immediate end to embarrassing questions from people who know better than to ask in the first place. "We're finding it hard to meet the target of changing our economic structure." -- Yeah. Right. 10.7% increase in economic growth is a sure sign of difficulty. What is difficult, however, is to get Chinese to spend rather than save. Since the banks take the money of the people and invest it in their own profiteering way, giving back a spit in the ocean to the people who have made their richness possible, one wonders why the people would be encouraged to spend. Wouldn't that mean less money for the banks to make a killing from? More confusion. . .when you think about it. . .if you think about it. . . Other problems, he said, included a growing imbalance of payments and excess liquidity in the banking system. -- Eh? Too much money in the banking system? Does that mean too many people are saving money or the banks are making opprobrious profits? Is the "imbalance of payments" a dig at the US debt? China's global trade surplus – the measure of money going into the country minus money going out, jumped by a record 74 per cent in 2006 to $177.5 bn. -- The only problem here is in punctuation. Uhh. . .wait a minute. Is this another dig at the US debt? Most of that $177.5 billion is owed by the US. Is this a veiled request for payment of the debt? If China's economy continues to keep growing at the same pace it could leapfrog Germany by 2008, becoming the world's third largest economy after the US and Japan. -- Once again one wonders what in fact a "growing economy" measures and, therefore, means when the greater part of the country is struggling to survive. And I ask you. . .how can the US have "a growing economy" when its businesses are relocating to foreign countries and it owes money? That is, the US is in debt. That is, the US has no money. How can you be growing when you ain't got nuttin' to grow on? Well, you know how the song goes, "I got plenty o' nothin' and nothin's plenty for me." China ain't got nothin', neither, but US IOU's. So, where does this leave us? Oh, yes. . .what does this 10.7% economic growth really mean? Is life really only and all about economics? Isn't there more to life than someone making money and more money? And why is it only a few manage to do this? No. Wrong question. Why is it that only the few who manage to do this trample on those who can't or don't and consider them, these others (often called people), are expendable items (resources)? Yes. That's the right question. In this light, then, economic growth is a measure of a country's Robbie Burns' man's inhumanity to man.  Jimsecor is a freelance writer who has travelled extensively overseas, especially Japan and China. He has published in all genre and produced several plays over the years and has taught theatre, writing and literature. Recommend this article...
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