Glory for the few, poverty for the many
"A quarter-century after Deng Xiaoping broke with communist orthodoxy, telling his countrymen 'To get rich is glorious', China has a burgeoning class of tycoons. The country has produced seven billionaires and 400 entrepreneurs with fortunes of US$60 million or more, says Rupert Hoogewerf, a Shanghai-based accountant who compiles the Hurun Report, a list of China's richest people ... Some 200 million Chinese live on less than US$1 a day, according to World Bank estimates." — Hong Kong Standard, May 24.
Inglorious enrichment
"Despite Deng's exhortation, wealth and glory don't necessarily go hand-in-hand in China. Yang Bin, 43, who in 2001 was China's second richest man, with a fortune of US$940 million, was jailed in 2003 for 18 years for defrauding shareholders by inflating profits at his Hong Kong-listed company, orchid grower Euro-Asia Agricultural." — Hong Kong Standard, May 24.
Work choices
"The oligarchs are doing well. They're bandits and now everything they stole (after the Soviet Union collapsed) is legal. Every high-ranking official for the state has enough money, but the people suffer." — Roman Tarusov, 27, a married father of one child who lives on the outskirts of Moscow, quoted in a May 31 US Knight Ridders Newspapers report. KRN noted that Russia now "boasts 33 billionaires, topping all except the United States and Germany", but that most Russian workers now "have no days off, no paid vacations or holidays and no health insurance", and that for some, "such as waitresses, store clerks or security guards, a shift might last 24 hours".
From Green Left Weekly, June 7, 2006.
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