CHINESE CAPITALISM BOOMS

Despite its nonsensical claims to be communist the growth of Chinese capitalism is explosive and inevitably has lead to gigantic differences of wealth. "Growth in China has been spectacular but it has also been unbalanced and has created staggering inequality; the US magazine Forbes identified 66 billionaires on its China rich list last year, their coffers swelled by soaring share prices on the Shanghai exchange. Neither Donald Trump nor Steven Spielberg is rich enough to make it into a table of the top wealthiest Chinese, but most people are still desperately poor, and the Beijing government is worried that rampant food price inflation will lead to serious unrest." (Observer, 20 January) RD