Tuesday, June 8, 2010

China remembers part of their Marxist educations

Every once in a while, folks prove they were at least awake for a tiny part of their theological indoctrinations.  But yes, China is FAR too proud to be seen as winners in the race to the bottom.
Chinese Media Cites Foxconn Suicides In Calling For New Proletarian Revolution
Gus Lubin | Jun. 7, 2010
Maoists have expressed concern with the growth of inequality in a country that only decades ago paid the same wage to all workers.
Calls for a new proletarian revolution appears today in the state-owned People's Daily.
Although many Chinese enjoy economic liberalization, technically everyone is still a Maoist. Watch what happens to the boom when this opinion catches on.
People's Daily:
Wherever exists exploitation and suppression, rebellion erupts. If the exploited are a majority of the society, the revolt draws even nearer and comes with a louder bout.
For the past 30 years witnessing China's meteoric rise, multinationals and upstart home tycoons have rammed up their wealth making use of China's favorable economic policies as well as oversight loopholes. In sharp contrast, tens of millions of Chinese blue-collar workers who have genuinely generated the wealth and created the prosperity have been left far behind.
Columnist Li Hong points to the Foxconn suicides and Honda strike as a sign of growing worker dissatisfaction -- and part of the global populist movement:
Never expect something like labor strike to happen in China? Please bear in mind that workers on this globe belong to the same group. When the exploited laborers are forced to toil extra time, work under huge pressure and earn disproportional tiny wages -- often at less than 1,500 yuan (US$220) a month in China, the disappointment and frustration gather and grow to anger, and eventually revolts break out. more
 And pay attention, China gets some thing VERY right.
Fantastic Overview Of China And Its Death Grip On Rare Earth Metals
Joe Weisenthal 
Yesterday the world was greeted with the news that China intends to tighten its grip over rare earth metals, the highly valuable commodities that are used in everything from defense to green tech.
That China would do something like this has been fretted about for awhile, and it's why the US government sees rare earths as a matter of national security.
However this plays out, we suspect the subject to get A LOT more attention going forward, so we're going to keep trying to learn more about it.
The big domestic player is MolyCorp, which cites the following presentation from Australia's Industrial Minerals Corp in explaining the economics of the business. It's from 2008, but it's all very pertinent, perhaps even more so. more--hint, view as a single page

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