Recent Columns: Latest News Above Business Opportunities in Asia: May 2000 Columns   INDIVIDUALISM VS. COMMUNISM (II) May 25, 2000 As a result of industrialization along the coastal provinces, jobless, able-bodied persons from the rural area, or the interior provinces, have become part of a large influx of labor force into big cities. They are called BLIND CURRENT (of laborers). What they do is to mill around in cities looking for any kind of job, regardless of the amount of pay. Life for them is very miserable - they sleep under any shade and they eat just enough to keep them from starving. Nevertheless, a small portion of them has struck gold--not plumb gold, of course, but in garbage. Two men from Sichuan, over a thousand miles away from Beijing, came to Beijing in 1989. Noting the problem of garbage disposal in Beijing, these two paupers applied to the authorities to allow them to look for any usable materials at the garbage dumps. Environmental authorities welcomed their NEW IDEA in hopes that the volume of garbage might thus be reduced. After 12 years, their initiative has grouped together 82,000 persons and reduced, annually, 3 million metric tons of garbage ! And this army has earned a total of 1100 million RMB =US$130,000,000. Each laborer makes about US$1,500 /a year. What they have achieved, according to these two gentlemen, now owners of a big trash disposal company, is an integrated enterprise including : sorting, buy-in, transporting, trading, and recycling or processing. The two said Sichuanese have developed an idea at the right time, exactly what Victor Hugo (1802-85), a French poet, novelist and dramatist, said : "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world; and that is an idea whose time has come." Do you have any idea(s) whose time is ripe? We may be able to help you make it come true. (to be continued)   INDIVIDUALISM VS. COMMUNISM (I) May 14, 2000 There is a Chinese belief : The antidote of a poisonous plant is usually found growing side by side to the poisonous plant. The communist manifesto was published in 1848. Interesting enough, one of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ contemporaries, a French statesman, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59), coined the term INDIVIDUALISM, which has been an important antidote to communism. Since the fall of mainland China in the hands of the Communists, the Chinese mainlanders had been oppressed, for the first 30 years, with untold sorrows and miseries. As economic development and progress happened in PRC’s neighbors, particularly on the island of their brothers across the Taiwan Strait, the communist leaders had to make a drastic change in their economic stance. That caused the advent of REFORM AND OPENING UP. Credit, therefore, must be given to Teng," the shortie", who crushed the orthodox principles of the communists and followed, instead, capitalism in the guise of so-called Chinatrait socialism. With the resulting speedy economic growth, a large number of individuals have emerged as millionaires or even billionaires. At the sam etime, the production of private sector, which never existed previously, has gradually taken the lead over communism-government-operated enterprises. These latter operations have to be either merged, sold, or declared bankrupt. The most interesting phenomon is that many money-losing enterprises have contracted the whole enterprise to one or a number of their staff who has, subsequently, made the enterprise profitable overnight. Why is it that the same enterprise, which had been losing money can suddenly turn intoa profit center after a sort-of-simple change of management? The only answer is : individualism defeats communism. (to be continued) E-mail: VJCHANG@hotmail.com Tel/Fax USA : (301) 438-7439