Communism – Page 14 – artdiamondblog.com

Castro’s Reform: Private Restaurants May Now Have Up to 20 Seats

“Restaurants, . . . , offer limited menus.” Source of caption: print version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below. Source of photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A18) HAVANA–A package of capitalist reforms from President Raúl Castro is creating something new for many Cubans: uncertainty.

Since 1959, when Fidel Castro rode into Havana atop a tank, the Cuban state has promised its people the certainty of a job, food, education and health care. No one expected to get rich under the arrangement; the old joke here is that people pretend to work, and the government pretends to pay them.
. . .
On the island, where many Cubans have taken to using the word “changes,” rather than “reforms,” to refer to the restructuring, people remain cautious. Some suspect that once the economy recovers and small businesses begin to grow, the Cuban government will tighten the noose on entrepreneurs with stricter regulation and steep taxes.
A restaurant on Calle Animas offers an example of such frustrations. Opened in 1996 after an effort by Fidel Castro to jump-start the domestic economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has never expanded, because of a law that limits privately owned restaurants to only 12 seats. “It’s the rules, you live by them,” the owner says.
Prices are high–about $20 for a lunch with fish from the fixed menu–largely, the owner says, because she can’t find ingredients anywhere except in underground markets, where prices are steep. Under the new rules, private restaurants will be permitted to have up to 20 seats. Still, the owner complains that state-run restaurants in the tourist district, which don’t face such restrictions, have many more than 20 seats.

For the full story, see:
A WSJ Staff Reporter. “Cubans Dip a Toe in Capitalist Waters; As State Cuts Half a Million Jobs, Future Looks Murky to Some; ‘We’re Being Left to Fend for Ourselves’.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., October 6, 2010): A18.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Chinese Government Fines BYD and Seizes BYD Factory Site

“BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu, left, at a celebration last month in Shenzhen city with Berkshire Hathaway’s Charles Munger, center, and Warren Buffett.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B3) BEIJING–China’s central government ordered BYD Co. to surrender land in a zoning dispute, a decision that is likely to slow the Chinese battery and auto maker’s push to expand in the nation’s growing auto market.

China’s Ministry of Land and Resources also hit BYD with a 2.95 million yuan ($442,000) fine, the ministry said on its website Wednesday. The ministry confiscated 121 acres of land in the central Chinese city of Xian, where BYD executives said the company has been building a car assembly plant. BYD had hoped to start production at the complex as early as next year.
The ministry said zoning for the land was “illegally adjusted” to industrial use from agricultural use but didn’t elaborate. The decision comes as some government officials have shown concern about excess capacity in the auto industry.
. . .
Mid American Energy Holdings Co., a unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., owns 10% of BYD.

For the full story, see:
NORIHIKO SHIROUZU. “China Deals a Setback to BYD.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., OCTOBER 14, 2010): B3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the title “Beijing Halts Construction of BYD Auto Plant.”)

What Cuba Must Do to Welcome Entrepreneurs

“Serafin Blanco is the owner of Ñooo! ¡Que Barato!, a huge discount store in Hialeah, Fla., where recent arrivals stock up on $1.99 flip-flops and other items for relatives to resell in Cuba.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A6) “Things move very slowly in Cuba be-(p. A9)cause they are very, very concerned about breaking the balance of power with economic reforms,” said Jorge Sanguinetty, president of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, a research group. “This is the reality. They don’t want to emulate Gorbachev when he started making reforms in Russia and the whole thing came down.”

Mr. Sanguinetty, who served as a senior economic official with the Cuban government until he resigned in June 1966, said that Cuba might be just beginning the long, painstaking process of rebuilding the most basic economic relationships. He noted that Cuba even eliminated accounting schools in the first decade after the 1959 revolution because officials thought money would be unnecessary, and that many Cubans had no experience with credit cards, banks or checks. Now, he said, the government must move forward — with import-export licenses, with clearer communication about rules — if it hopes to make entrepreneurs a vital element of the economy.

For the full story, see:

DAMIEN CAVE. “Near to Cuba, Wary Kin Wait for Proof of a New Path.” The New York Times (Weds., September 22, 2010): A6 & A9.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated September 21, 2010 and has the slightly different title “Near Cuba, Wary Kin Wait for Proof of a New Path.”)

China’s Continued Growth Requires Reliance on Private Enterprise

(p. A21) No country in the modern world has managed persistent economic growth without considerable reliance on private enterprise and decentralized private markets. All centrally planned economies failed to achieve sustained development, including the Soviet Union before its collapse, China before market reforms began in the late 1970s, and Cuba since Castro’s revolution in the late 1950s.

China’s private sector has led its dominance in textiles, electronics, and other consumer and producer goods. It’s followed the model of the “Asian Tigers”–Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan–and relied heavily on exports produced with cheap labor. In the process, China has accumulated enormous reserves, as Taiwan, Japan and other rapidly growing Asian economies did in past decades.
Poorer countries like China need not get everything “right” to grow rapidly through exports to richer countries. They need only have some strong sectors that use world markets to fuel overall growth. Japan’s rapid growth from the 1960s-1980s was led by a highly efficient manufacturing sector. Yet at the same time Japan also had a large and inefficient service sector, and an agricultural sector that was riddled with subsidies and inefficient incentives.
Similarly, China’s economy still has a glut of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with excessive employment and low productivity. Their importance has fallen over time, but Chinese economists estimate that they still control about half of nonagricultural GDP. One crucial example is the state-controlled financial sector that makes cheap loans to other large, inefficient and unprofitable state enterprises. China’s economy also suffers from extensive price controls, restrictions on migration, and many other structural barriers to efficient growth.

For the full commentary, see:

GARY S. BECKER. “China’s Next Leap Forward; The jump from middle-income to rich status is much harder to achieve than the ascent from poverty. But there are plenty of reasons to believe China’s growth prospects remain strong.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., SEPTEMBER 29, 2010): A21.

Cuban Communists to Fire Half a Million Workers, But Will Allow Them to Become Piñata Salesmen

“A Cuban State worker (center) sweeps the streets in Havana.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) Cuba will lay off more than half a million state workers and try to create hundreds of thousands of private-sector jobs, a dramatic attempt by the hemisphere’s only Communist country to shift its nearly bankrupt economy toward a more market-oriented system.

The mass layoffs will take place between now and the end of March, according to a statement issued Monday by the Cuban Workers Federation, the island nation’s only official labor union. Workers will be encouraged to find jobs in Cuba’s tiny private sector instead.
“Our state can’t keep maintaining…bloated payrolls,” the union’s statement said. More than 85% of Cuba’s 5.5 million workers are employed by the state.
. . .
(p. A15) Cubans who decide to go into business for themselves will find a series of obstacles, including very high taxes, lack of access to credit and foreign exchange, bans on advertising, limits on the number of people they can hire, and a litany of small-print government regulations, experts say.
Cuba’s government has a list of 124 “authorized” activities for people who want to employ themselves. Among them: Toy repairman, music teacher, piñata salesman and carpenter. Carpenters are allowed only to “repair existing furniture or make new furniture upon the direct request of a customer.” They cannot make “furniture to sell to the general public.”

For the full story, see:
José de Córdoba and Nicholas Casey. “Cuba Unveils Huge Layoffs in Tilt Toward Free Market.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., SEPTEMBER 14, 2010): A1 & A15.
(Note: ellipsis added between paragraphs; ellipsis internal to paragraph was in original.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the title “Cuba to Cut State Jobs in Tilt Toward Free Market.”)

This particular piñata model is expected to be a hot seller for the new piñata salesmen. Source of photo: http://cdn.smosh.com/smosh-pit/4/pinata-7.jpg

First Castro on “The Simpsons” Repudiated Communism; Now the Real Castro Does the Same

The clip is from the “embed” option of YouTube, and is apparently from The Simpsons episode “The Trouble with Trillions” which Wikipedia says “. . . is the twentieth episode of the ninth season of the animated television series The Simpsons, which originally aired April 5, 1998.”

After viewing the above clip from YouTube, and reading the quote below from the NYT, you may be excused for concluding that the best way to learn what Castro is really thinking is to watch the Simpsons:

(p. A6) Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in his blog for Atlantic magazine that he asked Mr. Castro, . . . , last week if Cuba’s model of Soviet-style Communism was still worth exporting to other countries. “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” Mr. Castro said, according to the report. Mr. Goldberg said that Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, thought Mr. Castro’s answer was an acknowledgment that the state played too big a role in the economy. The comment appeared to reflect Mr. Castro’s support for the economic reforms instituted by his younger brother, President Raúl Castro.

For the full story, see:
REUTERS. “Cuba: Communist Economic Model Loses a Stalwart Defender.” The New York Times (Thurs., September 9, 2010): A6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date September 8, 2010.)

I ran across the Simpson Castro clip on (“The Lede; Blogging the News With Robert Mackey.”)

Cuban Health Care Checkup

(p. A17) . . . it’s a good time to check in on the state of the Cuban health-care system. That’s just what Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, does in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.
. . .
Slightly more than half of all Cuban physicians work overseas; taxed by the Cuban state at a 66% rate, many of them wind up defecting. Doctors who remain in the country earn about $25 a month. As a result, Ms. Garrett writes, they often take “jobs as taxi drivers or in hotels,” where they can make better money. As for the quality of the doctors, she notes that very few of those who manage to reach the U.S. can gain accreditation here, partly because of the language barrier, partly because of the “stark differences” in medical training. Typically, they wind up working as nurses.
As for the quality of medical treatment in Cuba, Ms. Garrett reports that hospital patients must arrive with their own syringes, towels and bed sheets. Women avoid gynecological exams “because they fear infection from unhygienic equipment and practices.” Rates of cervical cancer have doubled in the past 25 years as the use of Pap tests has fallen by 30%.
And while Cuba’s admirers love to advertise the country’s low infant mortality rate (at least according to the Castro regime’s dubious self-reporting) the flip-side has been a high rate of maternal mortality. “Most deaths,” Ms. Garrett writes, “occur during delivery or within the next 48 hours and are caused by uterine hemorrhage or postpartum sepsis.”

For the full commentary, see:
BRET STEPHENS. “Dr. Berwick and That Fabulous Cuban Health Care; The death march of progressive medicine.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., JULY 13, 2010): A17.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Reference to the Garrett article:
Garrett, Laurie A. “Castrocare in Crisis; Will Lifting the Embargo Make Things Worse?” Foreign Affairs 89, no. 4 (July/August 2010): 61-73.

Lux et Veritas

Source of photo: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EarthPerspectives/

What is the extended island-country on the right side of the photo above?
OK, if you got that one, here’s a harder question: What is the smaller island-country to the left of the extended island-country?
Stumped? Well it’s a trick question. The island-country to the left is South Korea.
But, you say, South Korea is no island.
You are right. (But then ponder why it looks like an island.)

Credits:
I first saw a version of the above photo, and heard a version of the above interpretation, in a wonderful presentation by Tony Woodlief at the MBM University at Wichita in July 2010.
The photo is a satellite composite from NASA.
“Lux et Veritas” is the motto of Yale University and is Latin for “Light and Truth.” (Three years of high school Latin pay off again—thank you Miss Noble and Miss Rohrer!)

Statue of Mass Murderer Finally Removed from Gori’s Central Square

“Georgian authorities, seeking to purge their country of Soviet monuments, on Friday removed a statue of Stalin from the central square of Gori, Stalin’s birthplace. It had stood there for 48 years.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A4) GORI, Georgia — In the predawn darkness on Friday, Georgian authorities carried out a clandestine operation in Gori’s central square. Wrapping thick cables around Stalin’s neck and under one of his armpits, they hoisted him off the pedestal where he has stood for 48 years and set him nose-first on the back of a flatbed truck.
. . .
On Friday, the culture minister, Nikolos Rurua, dismissed reports that the removal was intentionally kept quiet, pointing out that several camera crews were present. He said the vast majority of Georgians shared his view of Stalin as “a mass murderer and a political criminal.”
. . .
Last summer vandals painted the statue’s base with the phrases “Get off your pedestal!” and “Your place is in the museum!”
Mikheil Jeriashvili, a 19-year-old medical student, said that he was delighted at the news and that he would be happier if the authorities “removed this statue completely, or burned it or something.”
“I would prefer if he had been born in another town altogether,” he said.

For the full story, see:

SARAH MARCUS and ELLEN BARRY. “Georgia Knocks Stalin Off His Pedestal.” The New York Times (Sat., June 26, 2010): A4.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated June 25, 2010.)
(Note: ellipses added.)

Cellphones in North Korea Promote Free Speech

“Mun Seong-hwi, a North Korean defector, speaking to someone in North Korea to gather information at his office in Seoul.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

I have long believed, but cannot prove, that on balance technology improves human freedom more than it endangers it.
The case of cellphones in North Korea supports my belief.

(p. A1) SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea, one of the world’s most impenetrable nations, is facing a new threat: networks of its own citizens feeding information about life there to South Korea and its Western allies.

The networks are the creation of a handful of North Korean defectors and South Korean human rights activists using cellphones to pierce North Korea’s near-total news blackout. To build the networks, recruiters slip into China to woo the few North Koreans allowed to travel there, provide cellphones to smuggle across the border, then post informers’ phoned and texted reports on Web sites.
The work is risky. Recruiters spend months identifying and coaxing potential informants, all the while evading agents from the North and the Chinese police bent on stopping their work. The North Koreans face even greater danger; exposure could lead to imprisonment — or death.

For the full story, see
CHOE SANG-HUN. “North Koreans Use Cellphones to Bare Secrets.” The New York Times (Mon., March 29, 2010): A1 & A10.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated March 28, 2010.)