Pure Common Sense

The Falun Gong are a peaceful spiritual exercise organization based in the People’s Republic of China.  They became trendy in the 1990s and now have close to 100 million followers.  Despite the Chinese being economically and socially much better off than they were thirty years ago, the government of China deemed the Falun Gong illegal and treats them as a dissident group.  This seems laughable, as an insecure and fragile centrally planned state resorts to making an example of a peaceful spiritual practice.  I wonder if they’ll be cracking down on the Salvation Army next.  The reason that the Chinese government feels the need to make a fool of themselves is that they are intimidated that anything besides the government could achieve such a massive size.  Yep, a rebellion in the making if I ever saw one (I’m being sarcastic.)  The international community’s been having a field day with this one for years.

It really is infinitely harder for dictatorships to survive in today’s world than in past centuries.  This is because the globalized world lends both an informational and an economic impact.  That is how the world keeps getting smaller – it’s not just referring to traveling or social circles anymore.  Look at the recent Iranian Revolution.  It’s a fine example – although we may not know for years just how successful it was.  The election results sparked a very real rage in the population which prompted them to take advantage of media and internet resources in the midst of their protests.  First off, the very notion of free and fair elections has not always been around, but now that it is, it’s not going anywhere.  People know about it.  The battle is won.  The government of Iran cracked down on the internet, but it was too late – the message was out.  The can of worms is opened.  The same thing is true for China.  They try to crack down on the internet, but it’s a losing battle.  Information has already won!

As for the economic side of the issue, the Chinese people have had a taste of liberal capitalism, having opened the door a notch in the late 1970s.  Since that has now happened, people will want more – and more – and more.  Until the world as they know it is over.  And they have time, information and economics on their side.  It is in the interest of a government to give people economic liberty so they can win bread and taxes.  That’s what African dictators don’t get today.  They see the short-term of nabbing all the resources rather than the long-term of neo-liberal economics.  They are subjects of near-sighted Conventional Wisdom.  Africa can either lighten up like the rest of us and jump on the global capitalist bandwagon or get themselves stuck in a warring stone age with their AIDs.  The choice is theirs.  Grow some Common Sense!