MikeLigalig.com

by Paul Johnson, 02.23.11, 06:00 PM EST
Forbes Magazine dated March 14, 2011


With China's rapidly expanding economy and growing power at sea and in the air, some commentators have taken the view that it's not a question of whether but how soon China will replace the U.S. as the world's leading superpower.

This is nonsense. So long as America retains its freedom and thus its unique powers of innovation, it will continue to lead. Besides, China's elite is too scared to follow in the path of freedom because to do so would risk unity, threatening disintegration and a return to the terrible days of warlords and civil war, as in the 1920s.

Moreover, China has secret weaknesses. Its most serious: gambling and drug addiction. China's new prosperity is already producing a rapid expansion of the country's international gambling class, not to mention an appreciable increase in the number of drug addicts.

Though India was known as the "Mother of Opium" and during the 18th century produced large quantities of it, nearly all of India's opium was exported to foreign markets rather than consumed at home. The Chinese love of opium seems to have originated on a large scale with its 18th-century population explosion, when China grew from about 150 million in 1700 to 450 million in 1850. By that time China had become the world's largest consumer of opium.

This was highly convenient for the West. Although the West bought large quantities of silk and tea from China, the Chinese spurned Western goods, regarding foreign imports as immoral. As the authorities did everything in their power to restrict imports, China ran huge trade surpluses with the West. But then Western governments and trading firms discovered the Chinese appetite for opium and began to export it in large quantities through Canton. By the 1830s China's export surplus had turned into a growing deficit.

Alarmed by the loss of silver and the spread of addiction, especially among the ruling class, the imperial court in Peking sought to ban opium and prevent Western ships from bringing it in. The West--in the name of free trade--responded with naval force. Thus began the Opium Wars, which were fought mainly by Britain, to keep China's ports open. -- http://www.forbes.com/

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Such ferocious campaigns to put down crime ended in failure and were abandoned, especially since it seems they often led to the spread of corruption--at all levels of officialdom.

If, as seems likely, the expansion of the Chinese economy and the rise in living standards lead to further increases in the use of heroin and other drugs, how will Chinese authorities deal with the concurrent rise in organized crime?

The Chinese are learning that prosperity comes at a price. The Communist authorities ruling China today have immensely more powerful and repressive machinery at their disposal than had the 19th-century imperialist bureaucracy. However, experience has shown that mere repression does not work.

Meanwhile, more and more Chinese have more and more disposable income--and a significant proportion of it is going to drugs. -- http://www.forbes.com/






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Currently, 1.2 million people die annually of tobacco-related diseases, of whom a third are aged between 40 and 69. "Tobacco-attributable deaths are estimated to account for 25 percent of total deaths among those aged 40 or older. Among cerebra-vascular patients who survive a stroke, three of four have lost some of their ability to work, with 40 percent suffering severe disabilities. Tobacco smoking has become the top killer of the Chinese population."

The report proposed a 20-year plan to bring out a gradual change in smoking habits. This would include raising taxes on cigarettes, which would cut consumption but maintain government revenue.

"150 million, 50 percent of smokers, buy one pack of cigarettes for five yuan or less and the expenditure for 100 packs occupied merely two percent of per capita GDP in 2009," the authors wrote. By contrast, a pack of cigarettes in Hong Kong costs HK$ 50 (US$ 6.41). In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pushed the price of cigarettes to US$11 per packet of 20.

Last year, more than 300 million of China's 1.3 billion people were recorded as smokers, almost the same as in 2002. Among men, the proportion of smokers last year among workers was 68 percent, farmers 60 percent, civil servants 52 percent, medical professionals 40 percent and teachers 38 percent.

Beijing ratified the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which came into force in 2005, but has failed to meet its commitments under the convention, including a pledge to ban smoking from all indoor public areas.

"China is doing poorly in implementing the FCTC with a performance score of only 37.3 of 100 possible points," the report said. "The intervention of the tobacco industry is the underlying cause of the poor impact of tobacco control. It has distorted the Chinese version of FCTC, denied the scientific conclusions of the health hazards of smoking and claimed smoking as smoker's rights.

"It has abused the public powers of government to counteract tobacco control policies, used 'low tar and low harm' marketing strategies to mislead the public and encouraged tobacco consumption through disguised advertising and marketing effects of sponsorship and promotion."

A survey of adults in China last year found that more than 75 percent did not know the health hazards of smoking and more than two thirds did not know the hazards of second-hand smoking.

The report proposes a restructuring of the government, so that the department that includes the tobacco industry cannot take any responsibility for tobacco control. It recommends the establishment of a National Tobacco Control Bureau in the National Development and Reform Commission to take charge of comprehensive tobacco control nationwide.

"Public agencies are the largest buyers of premium cigarettes, a situation that has to be changed to earn people's trust in anti-corruption. Chinese Communist Party and government officials, civil servants and employees of public agencies must take the lead to ban smoking in public and work places.

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