Putin: Fulfilling the
predilection for a strong man at the helm.
Izvestia, Russia
For Russia, the China Model Fits the Best
"Yes, we have the Duma, political parties, elections
and other democratic institutions. … But there are fundamental differences. We
always need a leader. A commander. A head.
By Alexander Livshitz
Translated By
Yekaterina Blinova
October 28, 2009
Russia
- Izvestia - Original Article (Russia)
In the last century,
Americans were the ones who pulled everyone else out of the Great Depression.
Today, there is another tow truck - and it’s not a diesel. It's not electric.
It's Asiatic - with a Chinese engine.
Their domestic economy is
confidently on the rise. Industrial production is increasing at a rate of 11
percent per year. The world's leading corporations are rushing to curtail their
activities in other countries to relocate in the Celestial Empire. That's not
surprising. The situation there is stable. Inflation is close to zero. Over the
past year the Bank of China has pushed down interest rates five times. So
credit is available. The current rate of growth is several times higher than
before the crisis.
State funds
unleashed a real hunt for cheapened foreign assets - and not just raw
materials. Any assets at all. And this is information I obtained firsthand. In
almost every country one visits, the same phrase is heard: "Now that the Chinese are gone, you're here." And then, "the resources you need
are here. We're walking on them. But we longer possess them. We sold them to
China. … It turns out that China hasn't been weakened by the crisis." On the
contrary, it has been strengthened.
Are these miracles? No. It is
the result of the vitality of a mighty state organism.
The Communist Party ensures the that the blood vessels are open. It turns out
that under crisis conditions, this is a system that works more effectively than
all others. I'll give you an example. One of our companies has a little factory
in China. They had some trouble that was the fault of the local leadership and
were forced to complain to the big bosses in Beijing. The essence of their
answer: “We’ve checked everything. You are correct. Comrade Liu is wrong. We
warned him. Our country is will manages so you can operate in peace.” The
problem was resolved within days.
China
and Russia: The two countries occupy much
of
the earth's surface covering 11 time zones, but
America's
GDP still exceeds the combined GDP of
China and Russia by a large margin.
In the United States
everything is different. They have democracy - which always means there's a
process - a long process. Remember last fall. Visible even then was not only a
fire, but the scale of the impending catastrophe. Bush Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson literally begged Congress to hurry and approve his bailout plan. Over
there … every rules and regulation had to be complied with. As a result, time
was lost. The fire not only caused significant damage to the United States, but
it spread abroad and set the entire global economy alight. Now the country is
slowly emerging from the ditch - along with a heavy load of budget deficits and
public debt.
Russia has its
own methods. Yes, we have the Duma, political parties, elections and other
democratic institutions. The same set as in other states. But there are
fundamental differences. We always need a leader. A commander. A head. Once it
was the czar. He was replaced by a general secretary. Now it’s a president with
a prime minister. That is, there's a person at the top who can do almost
anything - is responsible for everything. There's nothing that can be done about
it; that's the kind of people we are …Which, incidentally, came in handy at the
beginning of the crisis, when we had to act manually to pull the banks out from
under the rubble of the collapsed stock market, or save particularly valuable
assets that were invested abroad by greedy, shortsighted capitalists. As usual,
we overspent, skewed the budget and acted according to the familiar principle
of, “whatever it costs, we will do [мы за
ценой не
постоим]” An expression, by the
way, that is exclusively Russian. There is no precise phrase in any other
language.
Summary: we all got out of
the crisis in different ways. And the most successful of all was - China. It
will soon become the leading economic power in the world. I see no obstacles to
prevent this. So it would be best would be to extract the maximum benefit from
this. Through trade, joint investment projects, etc. All we need is patience.
Negotiating with the Chinese is always difficult because of how ardently they
defend their own national interests. Those able to persuade them to compromise
are worthy of an automatic bonus.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
PEW GLOBAL ATTITUDES PROJECT
The pessimists
insist: we'll become the raw material appendage of our huge eastern neighbor. I
don’t understand this. Working with a nation with such huge demand offers
increased production, wages and taxes. What’s wrong with that? I'll give an
example: the West is a large exporter of meat. We're trying to keep it out. And
were not doing so successfully. That's because the United States is now the
chicken-appendage of Russia, and Brazil - and beef appendage. And why is that
bad?
The Asiatic locomotive has
left the station. We ought to hitch ourselves to it and then we’ll see. Either
we'll uncouple ourselves and go our own way, or move into the front car.
CLICK HERE FOR RUSSIAN VERSION
[Posted by WORLDMEETS.US November 2, 9:42pm]
