the IT angle? surely any IT professional worth his salt will readily admit to enjoying watching Jackie Chan movies. get a number of tech geeks around a pub table and eventually the conversation will end up discussing the merits of Police Story over Police Story 2

I can no longer see China as a pure communist country. As soon as they relaxed the control over privately own businesses allowing them a profit margin (admittedly slim), they lost their ideal purity.

Not that I blame them. Their economy has been booming ever since. However, I think they are just starting to see the down side of capitalism - the little bit of it that they allow. Back in the 1920's and 30's most of the western world had to deal with business owners trying to increase profits any way they could using any method they could think of to cut costs. A lot of these methods harmed the customers. The recent issues with Chinese export quality seems very similar to that era. China will soon have to create quality and safety laws to deal with the issue. Or they could go back to a pure communist view of business. I'm not sure they can do that any longer without facing an armed revolt. Profit can be very addictive.

erm methinks you have been sniffing the joss sticks a bit to much my friend. Having spent some time in the industrial areas of China I have seen a remarkable lack of slave,prisoner and child labor working in the Warehouses and factories, or even as part of the vast numbers of manual labourers building roads offices hotels and houses.

However the greedy native companies would risk using slave,prisoner and child labor. Also the vast gap between the have and the have not's does mean you do get sickly looking children virtualy clinging to you begging for money which is a tad annoying as you basicly have to beat them off you and i do mean beat them!! not particualry pleasent thing to do. Give them RMB and they will follow you begging for more with thier buddies i learnt that one the hard way!!

Whether it's "slave" labour or not, the worker's life there is still much worse than in the West, is it? Otherwise why would we be buying everything from there at a bargain price?

By the way, where did you go, Andy? Were you free to travel or did they restrict you to certain places? I'm only asking because I've heard terrible things about the rural areas, but most Westerners only seem to visit the cities.

No flame intended!

I was in Beijing in August for the 2007 Good Luck Beijing games - 7 sports were holding their Olympic test events. At the Beach Volleyball venue, they were playing this continuously in the public areas. I only ever recognised the "we are ready" bits. Quite catchy. Has JC re-recorded it recently or has the world just taken a long time to realise?

"I'm not sure they can do that any longer without facing an armed revolt."

I doubt that wooden pitchforks and rakes would make for a very long revolt against even the relatively poor-quality tanks, AK-47s, and machine guns fielded by the Communist forces against the Chinese citizens already.

Or has the world forgotten 3-4 June, 1989?

http://www.bearpit.net/lofiversion/index.php/t655.html

Err, no, it isn't slave labour. The guys I work with are all smart Chinese grads (including in IT, so there's a Reg angle) and have worked out that for the 7000 RMB a month they get here (about 500 quid) they live like they were on £50K in UK, and have a better chance of making it really big.

And > China will soon have to create quality and safety laws to deal with the issue.< Umm, sorry again, they have these, big time, and people get sent to jail for breaking them. The Mattel fiasco was, it now seems, a MATTEL fiasco....crap specs.

The answer is the date does not exist here. But wooden pitchforks and rakes? It may come as a shock to you, but China has airlines, TV, cellphones, smart cards, billionaires, KFC, sex shops, online gambling, ATMs, taxis that speak english (sic), subways, skyscrapers, chat shows, free public wifi, five star hotels, rock venues, malls the size of towns, anti-corruption laws, walmart, tesco, IKEA, ......and people own guns.

That date did quite a lot, quietly. And actually, is the US "democracy" (or even the Brownian mendacity) really what you'd expect them to want? Not right now buddy.