

Unrest in China's cities: Middle-class blues - tokenadult
http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2012/10/unrest-cities

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wisty
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs>

OK, I'm not sure if Maslow is 100% correct. Philosophy might not be the
pinacle of human endeavor, no matter what philosophers may believe. Whatever
the case, people's demands change as they get richer. Engel's law (note the
apostrophe - he wasn't a famous friend of Marx) states that the relative
demand for food decreases with income.

Virtually no-one in China dies from malnutrition. Cancer is now the leading
cause of death. People now care more about pollution than economic growth at
all costs. Corruption isn't a big deal if the land reforms by the corrupt
official stopped you from starving, but that changes when you aren't so hungry
anymore.

And as people get richer, and society gets more diverse, it deepens
conflicting interests. Do you want universal healthcare for the uninsured, or
a larger private health sector? Should poor people be allowed to migrate to
cities? Is corrupt and inefficient public better than greedy private
solutions? Not everyone is going to be happy.

And sometimes people just want the right to have their say.

China doesn't want to go down the same path as Russia - a decade of lost
growth, then a bunch of thugs taking over the government and industry. But
they do want reforms.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Russia went from oligarchs to...corrupt officials and their families taking
over industries. They have basically moved toward the China model. The best we
can hope for in China is something like a Singaporean police state, where the
officials are autocratic and a bit unfair but, at least, incredibly honest.

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bduerst
This seemingly bold unrest for China and the reporting of dissatisfaction
could also be related to the fact that Jintao's term as president is soon
coming to an end. A large portion of the power structure in China is
proportionate to an individuals' degrees of separation from the current
political party in control, and with a switch coming up, I think we're going
to see more unrest in the next year as some power is diminished.

Just my 2 cents.

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seanmcdirmid
I got this from the ToFu blog link in the article:

reporter: 你幸福吗？ (ni xingfu ma? or "are you happy?")

migrant worker: 不，我姓曾。 (bu, wo xing zeng. or "my name is zeng").

It plays on a pun of two words that are pronounced "xing," with different
tones. The idea is that the migrant worker might have purposely misunderstood
the question to avoid answering it with a negative that would have made
someone angry.

