

Children of the Revolution  - bootload
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904491704576572552793150470.html#printMode

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MengYuanLong
<Ms. Chen didn't respond to requests for comment via email and Facebook.>

This reads as a tongue in cheek reminder that Facebook is blocked in China.

< He applied for a permit to tear down the century-old mansion and to build a
new villa...>

The seemingly prevalent distaste for old things continues to frustrate me. So
much history and tradition cast aside.

I'm disappointed the article dwelled almost entirely on Bo GuaGua after an
opening that suggested a more diverse article. While the hypocrisy is
particularly striking in China (due to it's stated values and recent history),
I think the privilege of children belonging to wealthy and powerful families
is well known to be a worldwide phenomenon.

That said, the separation of rich and poor is painfully visible in China.
Glowing shopping centers with carefully planned architecture and spotless
windows stand directly across from tattered shops with merchants huddled
amongst piles of cheap goods and street vendors selling stir fried noodles for
less than 1 USD.

~~~
berntb
>>The seemingly prevalent distaste for old things continues to frustrate me

Sigh, I need to say this about old buildings...

Sweden kept out of both world wars and that was an economic miracle for a
previously very poor country.

But despite not getting the cities destroyed by bombing (or street-to-street
fighting), lots of old building and whole city centers were torn down in the
1950s and 1960s, to build new buildings.

The whole country has sorely regretted it since then. Surviving old stone
houses are generally really expensive.

Please learn from other's stupidity, instead of repeating it; that is partly
why our brains evolved to be big.

Edit: Ah, that mansion wasn't even in China. Sorry for bothering.. :-)

~~~
jseliger
If you want to preserve old buildings, buy them and hold on to them. Prices
depends on supply and demand: if you reduce the supply of something and hold
demand constant or increase it, that thing becomes valuable. The problem with
preserving "old" buildings through legal means it that doing so prevents new
supply (which usually means "more units for an acre of land") from coming
online, thus increasing housing costs altogether. See:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-o...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-
of-two-town-houses/6334/) and [http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-
ebook/dp/B005...](http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-
ebook/dp/B005KGATLO?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957)
for more.

I regret not being able to live in places like Boston and L.A. because poorly
conceived preservation laws remove building rights from owners and prevent
them from constructing dwellings I and many others might actually be able to
afford.

~~~
berntb
The point was, it is a bit late to preserve old buildings in Sweden... :-)

Re Boston/LA -- that is not relevant for Sweden either, since the biggest city
is quite small (ca a million people), so there is space to be used, if it was
handled well. (It isn't, but that is another story.)

------
translocation
"Mr. Bo went to Oxford University... The current cost of that is about £26,000
a year. His current studies at Harvard's Kennedy School cost about $70,000 a
year... A question raised by this prestigious overseas education... is how it
was paid for."

I agree with the article's sentiment. That said, would the Wall Street Journal
express similar outrage at the son of an American senator attending Oxford?
What about the daughter of a German finance minister? Is it really surprising
that a wealthy, well-connected Chinese kid went to school at Oxford? I have to
wonder just how unbiased the author is.

~~~
danmaz74
But the American senator or German finance ministers aren't supposed
communists who should only be earning around $22,000 per year from their
positions. This is all what this article is about.

~~~
_delirium
Chinese ministers barely even claim to be communist these days; anyone in the
government who takes communism seriously is seen as left-fringe. It's true
that they seem to be miraculously making more money than their official
salaries, but that's _also_ true in many countries, including Europe and the
US. Some are shadier than others; it ranges from outright dirty stuff (taking
bribes, insider trading) to gray-area stuff (accepting free trips and gifts)
to semi-legit stuff (giving paid speeches and doing private-sector consulting
on the side). US Senators get paid $174,000/year, for example, yet their
average net worth is $14 million. Some of that is wealth accumulated before
entering office, but a typical Senator also makes quite a bit more than their
official salary when in office. Though I can certainly believe that the scale
of shadiness is much higher in China.

~~~
danmaz74
As a matter of fact, in Europe and the US, when it becomes known that a public
official spends much more money than what he/she should be able to afford, it
is a scandal. I'm not saying that there is no corruption in the West, just
that it is by no mean a double standard to talk about (alleged) corruption in
Communist China, as it was said in the comment I was responding to...

------
balsam
"Do you think in 50 years, 100 years, the world will be any different? It'll
always be kings, Mom, even if we don't call them that."

8:27 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZMWoR4oIc8>

Just give us another 100 years, you'll see. :)

------
briandear
China makes Wall Street look like the Sisters of Charity. 'Serve the People'
-- yeah right Lei Feng would be rolling in his grave.

