China Morality & Economy
In the October 3 Chicago Tribune I read two interesting articles on China.

1. One addressed repercussions of the One-child Policy: Through the services of the so called family planning (euphemism for population control), many Chinese women are forced sterilized & their pregnancies forced aborted by local authorities. These officals are pressured to meet a population quota for their region of governance. There are incidents of couples who have their only child die and because of forced sterilization they could never have a child again. This is the story of millions of lives taken and ruined by this system. Yet it's seen as a necessary and good thing because of the challenges in suppling food, water, clothing, shelter, electricity to a nation of 1.3 billion people. When such women evade authorities, their families are imprisoned and the family businesses shut down to coerce the women to turn themselves in.

Add to this the gender imbalance of men far outnumbering women because of the voluntarily aborted female fetuses after gender idenfication on ultrasound. This speaks of a culture that still values women less than men.

As parents outnumber children 2:1, the generation imbalance become more pronounced. Each member of the future generation has an increasing large elder population to support.

Then there is the Little Emperor/Little Empress phenomenon of only-children spoiled by the parents and grandparents in a period of economic boom as reported by Fortune magazine. They develop a sense of entitlement because they have yet to taste hardship. Entitlement may only be balanced by the family's expectation/pressure to succeed.

2. The other article addressed China's businesses reaching the world: If you didn't already know, Chinese corporations are taking steps to take on the world. They hope to join the ranks of Toyota, Sony, GE, GM, Yahoo in terms of reach and brand reputation. The prime example is the company Lenovo (part of the company Legend Holdings) which purchase IBM's PC division to make it the largest PC seller in China and the third largest PC maker in the world. It has become a marketing member for the 2006 Winter Olympics to get its name out. Lenovo has established a research center in North Carolina's Research Triangle to access new innovations. This reflects the type of rapid expansions occurring with corporate China.

Whereas China loves to tout its economy, it trys to suppress people from reporting human rights violations. Neither do it's own people nor does the world knows the extend of the people's grievances. This new found prosperity has welcomed rapid comercialization and a glut of materialism -- China has already become the 3rd largest car market in the world and is predicted to overcome Japan as 2nd (U.S. is 1st).