[Artemisia] Event Thoughts

[Diana Hoff]

Morgan Wolf <morganwolf at sofast.net> wrote:

For now, anybody know how
Deng Xiao Ping help multinational corporations get established in China?

Morgan


Ooooo fun! I love history...even when it is pretty recent. :-) And it gives me a break from my Physics homework (tee hee).......and ya gotta love CNN!

Deng XiaoPing 

     His goal was a wealthy, modern, powerful China -- one worthy of international respect. His method was the open door, establishing ties with the United States and other Western nations, encouraging international investment, private enterprise, family farming, and other aspects of a market economy. 
     For Deng -- who never officially took the posts of Communist Party chief or head of government -- the guiding principle was pragmatism. "It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white," he was fond of saying, "as long as it catches mice." The results were immediate and impressive. The standard of living in China shot up. Freed from the shackles of Maoism, the people rediscovered style, music, romance, fun, and hope. 
      But liberalization also led to economic dislocation and to outbursts of public discontent -- tensions which finally exploded on the streets of Beijing in the spring of 1989. 
       It was the most serious challenge to Communist rule since the revolution. But it was crushed, at a cost of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives, on the orders of Deng. Tiananmen Square became a vivid symbol of Chinese leaders' fierce opposition to democracy. 
         But despite his opposition to political liberalization, Deng never abandoned his vision of economic reform. Following the collapse of Soviet communism, Deng concluded that the best hope of keeping the Chinese Communist Party in power -- and avoiding another Tiananmen -- was to deliver the economic goods to the people. 
         And so, in 1992, after a year out of public view, Deng emerged from retirement and launched a campaign for more and faster capitalist-style reform. 
        The country responded with a boom that gave China the highest economic growth rate in the world and left the Communist Party in power but increasingly irrelevant to the daily lives of the people, who became more interested in making money than making revolution. 
        

sigh...now back to my physics homework...interspersed with daydreams of the upcoming Masked Ball ! !  

-Lady Dainya
Chronicler - Barony of Arn Hold