OTHER DEVELOPING LANDS
China, South Korea, and a few other Asian countries have already developed & targeted investment and redevelopment plans. Many were passed and implemented in the past year "while countries like the Philippines are dragging behind the response-curve during this global economic crisis.
On the other hand, many Asian nations "from Dubai to Hong Kong "have had to be bailed out from abroad over the past year.
Nonetheless, China is legging behind in the area of structural reforms. Lack of such reforms will keep China from disentangling itself from the same sort of historical national inequalities and economic bubbles across its geographic and economic landscapes that developed nations are facing today.
In this manner of failing to tackle structural change in 2009, China and the Philippines are quite similar. They are lands divided between (a) economies of the wealthy and (b) economies of the impoverished. This division leads to institutional corruption and cronyism which will continue to hamper growth and progress for these nations as a whole for decades to come.
On the other hand, the USA (which behaves like a developing country these days) certainly has multiple economies as well.
For example, already those who are enamored with the elite American banking and Wall Street way of life are discussing a better economic world but most Americans still suffer and will continue to suffer despite signs that the recession or depression may be over for the upper-level US economy.
In short, as Max Fraad Wolf, author of "One Nation, Two Economies stated recently on Democracy Now this past week, "[E]veryday, . . . mainstream Americans kind of felt like they'd somehow skip [the recovery] it. They had an outlook on the US economy that I would call ˜it's fine and dry down here at the bottom of the hill, but, boy, they've got quite a rainstorm up there on the top of the hill.' And as often happens, when there's a rainstorm on the top of the hill, the water finds its way to the bottom of the hill. And that's what we see with nine-and-a-half percent unemployment, with 350,000 foreclosures a month, and with, you know, crazy stories coming out yesterday of people in California, which has better than ten percent unemployment, not even bothering to look for work anymore, but to get into backyard prospecting for gold that may have been left behind 150 years ago. I think that's a pretty quirky indicator, but it's not a good sign.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/25/one_nation_two_economies_as_obama
In other words, if the developing world (including China) wishes to follow the USA capitalist model "as the Philippines has traditionally done "greater and greater divisions in national development are too be awaited. However, Charles Avila and other reformers in the Philippines would prefer a national revolt to get the political economy properly jump-started for all Filipinos.
This is why Avila concludes his piece for IMPACT magazine with his allusion to the Philippines' People Power Revolt of 1986 "which toppled the then-dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Avila notes, "To be sure, unless people-powered participation is organized by change agents of all persuasions, the plan will be short of details and long in sub rosa appropriations and last minute looting may lead to worse economic misery and heightened social unrest "or, maybe, at last, to real change.
Such a revolt would be the Chinese Communist Cronies' Nightmare.
COMMENT: I know the USA needs a people's power revolt.
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