酷我-北美枫

[ericcoliu]

China, Inc. (New Version)

In Beijing, if you get up early on a sunny morning and find yourself jogging along Jianguo Road, you'll see the most energetic and cheerful workers in China, all lined up in their red uniforms. They begin their day gesticulating company cheers:

Give me a W, give me an A, give me a L, give me a M, give me an A, give me a R, give me a T. Cheers. What's that spell? WAL-MART. Whose Wal-Mart is it? Our Wal-Mart. Who's number one? The Customer, always!

They who used to express indifference when working in state-run department stores now sing company songs together, run around in red shirts and eagerly persuade passers-by to go into the store and shop, and more importantly, they answer prickly customers’ questions with big bright smiles.

This cheerful scene reminds the Chinese elders of Red Guards holding The Little Red Book and singing revolutionary songs loudly and uniformly:

Red Guards, Red Guards
Burning with revolutionary zeal
We follow The Party with full devotion.
We are Chairman Mao's red Guards.

A spectre is haunting China -- the spectre of corporate capitalism. All the powers of imperialist America and New China have entered into a holy alliance with this spectre.

If you have leisure time to visit your rural relatives down in the South, you will probably will find most of them not in idyllic villages but working hard in Dongguan, a tiny part of the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, it is booming like scarcely any other region on earth. The streets are lined with export factories producing cheap goods, and these factories are gradually mushrooming from the main streets all along the highway leading to the neighbouring industrial center of Shenzhen.

Early in the morning, the streets of Dongguan are relatively quiet and they are covered by a thick layer of dust. When 7:00 a.m. approaches, all of a sudden, workers, most of them young women aged 17-25, emerge from every corner, and they wear uniforms in every color of the rainbow. After a while, judging from the direction people heading for, you can roughly tell that there are two groups of people: one group is exhaustedly returning to its dormitories while the other group is dutifully walking to its work places. Factories shift as the dust stirs.

One hour later, around 8: 00 a.m., trucks rush along the modern, industrial friendly multilane thoroughfares at the speed of hundreds per hour. They keep the materials coming and get the products loaded up from export factories that line the streets, mile after mile, each resembling a gigantic military compound.

Here, as everywhere in China, workers, surely including your relatives, are united under the Fordist management that international corporations employ. Thanks to international corporations. By matching uniforms and shift changes, ironically, the wild dream -- "Workers of the World, Unite!” -- that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel revealed in their 1848 Communist Manifesto has come to partially realize.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

China, Inc. (New Version)

In Beijing, if you get up early on a sunny morning and find yourself jogging along Jianguo Road, you'll see the most energetic and cheerful workers in China, all lined up in their red uniforms. They begin their day gesticulating company cheers:

Give me a W, give me an A, give me a L, give me a M, give me an A, give me a R, give me a T. Cheers. What's that spell? WAL-MART. Whose Wal-Mart is it? Our Wal-Mart. Who's number one? The Customer, always!

They who used to express indifference when working in state-run department stores now sing company songs together, run around in red shirts and eagerly persuade passers-by to go into the store and shop, and more importantly, they answer prickly customers’ questions with big bright smiles.

This cheerful scene reminds the Chinese elders of Red Guards holding The Little Red Book and singing revolutionary songs loudly and uniformly:

Red Guards, Red Guards
Burning with revolutionary zeal
We follow The Party with full devotion.
We are Chairman Mao's red Guards.

A spectre is haunting China -- the spectre of corporate capitalism. All the powers of imperialist America and New China have entered into a holy alliance with this spectre.

If you have leisure time to visit your rural relatives down in the South, you will probably will find most of them not in idyllic villages but working hard in Dongguan, a tiny part of the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, it is booming like scarcely any other region on earth. The streets are lined with export factories producing cheap goods, and these factories are gradually mushrooming from the main streets all along the highway leading to the neighbouring industrial center of Shenzhen.

Early in the morning, the streets of Dongguan are relatively quiet and they are covered by a thick layer of dust. When 7:00 a.m. approaches, all of a sudden, workers, most of them young women aged 17-25, emerge from every corner, and they wear uniforms in every color of the rainbow. After a while, judging from the direction people heading for, you can roughly tell that there are two groups of people: one group is exhaustedly returning to its dormitories while the other group is dutifully walking to its work places. Factories shift as the dust stirs.

One hour later, around 8: 00 a.m., trucks rush along the modern, industrial friendly multilane thoroughfares at the speed of hundreds per hour. They keep the materials coming and get the products loaded up from export factories that line the streets, mile after mile, each resembling a gigantic military compound.

Here, as everywhere in China, workers, surely including your relatives, are united under the Fordist management that international corporations employ. Thanks to international corporations. By matching uniforms and shift changes, ironically, the wild dream -- "Workers of the World, Unite!” -- that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel revealed in their 1848 Communist Manifesto has come to partially realize.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[星子]

will read tomorrow...

need to rest..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
_________________

[[ANNA]]

will read tomorrow...

need to rest..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
_________________

[星子]

HI Eric,

Interesting and true.

Those two scenes did you observe by yourself?

When I was in China, I worked for a big company owned by a Chinese private businessman. He started the company only a few years, but he expanded it very quickly by his unique management and products.

In his company in the early morning the similar scene presented. Most employees admired him and cheered by this means of management. Though I didn’t feel very comfortable for that kind of cheers, it works for the company.

I think the idea is good, wherever you work, you should be proud and cheerful.
Of course, he also had other creative and novice means to encourage open mind and team work.

You know a lot of Chinese need some kind of spirits to be strong, those spirits are mostly pouring from outside. Inside themselves they are empty and lost. That is why if you ask a Chinese, what he wants to do or what he likes, he will feel puzzled.
Because he never asks himself. He doesn’t know himself. Sad and bitter.

That is also why some Chinese company such like the above mentioned can be quickly fall.
_________________

[[ANNA]]

HI Eric,

Interesting and true.

Those two scenes did you observe by yourself?

When I was in China, I worked for a big company owned by a Chinese private businessman. He started the company only a few years, but he expanded it very quickly by his unique management and products.

In his company in the early morning the similar scene presented. Most employees admired him and cheered by this means of management. Though I didn’t feel very comfortable for that kind of cheers, it works for the company.

I think the idea is good, wherever you work, you should be proud and cheerful.
Of course, he also had other creative and novice means to encourage open mind and team work.

You know a lot of Chinese need some kind of spirits to be strong, those spirits are mostly pouring from outside. Inside themselves they are empty and lost. That is why if you ask a Chinese, what he wants to do or what he likes, he will feel puzzled.
Because he never asks himself. He doesn’t know himself. Sad and bitter.

That is also why some Chinese company such like the above mentioned can be quickly fall.
_________________

[ericcoliu]

Thank you for the sharing of your work experience in China.

I didn't do the on-site observation of globalization and economic disparity developed in China. But, I have been paying attention to the societal, cultural, and economic changes in China through reading and viewing the works of critical writers and filmmakers. Among them is a documentary entitled Mardi Gras: Made in China, This film examines and analyzes the cultural and economic globalization following the life-cycle of Mardi Gras beads from a small factory in Fuzhou, China, to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, a remarkable visual essay on Karl Max’s concept of “commoditification”.

Two Scenes described in this writing paints a grim picture about the life of workers in a socialist society with Chinese characteristics.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Thank you for the sharing of your work experience in China.

I didn't do the on-site observation of globalization and economic disparity developed in China. But, I have been paying attention to the societal, cultural, and economic changes in China through reading and viewing the works of critical writers and filmmakers. Among them is a documentary entitled Mardi Gras: Made in China, This film examines and analyzes the cultural and economic globalization following the life-cycle of Mardi Gras beads from a small factory in Fuzhou, China, to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, a remarkable visual essay on Karl Max’s concept of “commoditification”.

Two Scenes described in this writing paints a grim picture about the life of workers in a socialist society with Chinese characteristics.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[Lake]

Scene one is very interesting and new to me. Great spirit.
In fact, people in uniforms give me a sense of safety and trust, I like it.

[[Lake]]

Scene one is very interesting and new to me. Great spirit.
In fact, people in uniforms give me a sense of safety and trust, I like it.

[Champagne]

I just wonder what Karl Max, if resurrected from death, would think about your Two Scenes, whose endings are tightly framed by the opening and closing lines of his Communist Manifesto.


Nietzscheian Eternal Recurrence of the Same: wearing uniforms and singing songs together.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[[Champagne]]

I just wonder what Karl Max, if resurrected from death, would think about your Two Scenes, whose endings are tightly framed by the opening and closing lines of his Communist Manifesto.


Nietzscheian Eternal Recurrence of the Same: wearing uniforms and singing songs together.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[Champagne]

I think the main issue behind Scenes from the Rising China is that there is a Dionysian Moment confronting each of us who claims his/her autonomy:

Standing in the empty corridor of an office building, I heard echoing footsteps from the direction of another intersecting corridor. The sound grew louder and louder; gradually, a strange excitement took hold of me. Although they were clearly the footsteps of a single, unseen person, I suddenly had the feeling that I was hearing the footsteps of thousands. It seemed to be a huge procession pounding its way down that corridor, and at that point I perceived the irresistible attraction of those footfalls of that marching multitude. It felt almost like some physical force pushing me towards the unseen marching columns. In a single moment I understood the ecstasy of self-abandonment, the intoxicating pleasure of melting into the mesmerizing crowd.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[[Champagne]]

I think the main issue behind Scenes from the Rising China is that there is a Dionysian Moment confronting each of us who claims his/her autonomy:

Standing in the empty corridor of an office building, I heard echoing footsteps from the direction of another intersecting corridor. The sound grew louder and louder; gradually, a strange excitement took hold of me. Although they were clearly the footsteps of a single, unseen person, I suddenly had the feeling that I was hearing the footsteps of thousands. It seemed to be a huge procession pounding its way down that corridor, and at that point I perceived the irresistible attraction of those footfalls of that marching multitude. It felt almost like some physical force pushing me towards the unseen marching columns. In a single moment I understood the ecstasy of self-abandonment, the intoxicating pleasure of melting into the mesmerizing crowd.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[ericcoliu]

I’ve substantially revised my piece and changed its title to China, Inc., a title I steal from Ted Fishman's popular book on China's economic growth.

China has the world's most rapidly changing large economy, and according to Ted Fishman, it is forcing the world to change along with it. "No country has ever before made a better run at climbing every step of economic development all at once," he writes, in China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

I’ve substantially revised my piece and changed its title to China, Inc., a title I steal from Ted Fishman's popular book on China's economic growth.

China has the world's most rapidly changing large economy, and according to Ted Fishman, it is forcing the world to change along with it. "No country has ever before made a better run at climbing every step of economic development all at once," he writes, in China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[dundas]

[[dundas]]

[东西]

[[东西]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]