[liberalgirl]

When Stalin died, the people who were clearing out his desk found twenty years' worth of uncashed salary checks. He was famous for living in great frugality. In fact, one of the reasons Beria fell out of favour with Stalin towards the end of his life was because Stalin disapproved of his lavish, bourgeois lifestyle.

People at the top had what they wanted. Stalin did not need money, he just orders something and it arrives. But he was corrupted by and for power. With power in these types of regimes comes what you want.

Bulgaria was a capitalist country in the late 1990s.

I did not say that Bulgaria was or was not capitalist country officially at that time so I am not sure of that relevance....however..... Bulgaria was getting over its communist system and had not yet done so. The government and the country was still particularly corrupt and government officers were the most corrupt, far more corrupt than private enterprise, although I have heard of corrupt deals with the mafia in the late 90's as well. Communism causes corruption in and of itself, you can in fact have democratic communism in theory but the dictatorial nature of modern large scale communism, ie at the level of a country, often leads towards corruption for power and its trappings at the very top and corruption for earthly benefits for the other minor big wigs. You can argue that china is not a communist country now but a capitalist one also. China may be considered closer to facism than to communism now days. That however would be a long, long debate.

[Vladimir]

liberalgirl yours and the article's attempt at passing workers' discontent as a wish for "democracy" is nothing short of absurd. "Democracy" does nothing to solve any of the problems causing workers' discontent and your grievances. Concentration of wealth is a global phenomenon, and is in fact greater in Europe and America than in China; in Europe and there is no evidence “democracy” reverses the effect; in America and all countries of the world the governments are only helping the rich with bailouts (derived from tax money expropriated from workers), just as China is; Unemployment is growing in Europe, America and the whole world in exactly the same way as in China.
The article's attempt to pass "democracy" as some kind of magic cure for all workers' problems is a pure attempt at deception of the workers, and of channelling their revolutionary energy into a false cause which leads to a dead end, the same result as before with minor differences; it all has been done before - Ukraine, Georgia, Kirigizstan, where workers' energy was hijacked by a certain ruling faction and led astray from real action into support of "democracy" (i.e. a varying form of power faction sharing), with no results or real changes from before. If your good will is genuine, than why don't you learn from other examples and realise that the promises of "democracy" are false, and there is no real difference between "democracy" and any other form of capitalist rule?

[Dave]

However, your arguement that India has a truely independent judiciary and an independent government organisation with sufficient powers that is acting against corruption is just something you have said. You need to back this up with references. There is however evidence that India does not posses these things, eg http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news ... en/238339/
So please provide some kind of evidence in the form of a reference if you wish to present a statement as fact rather than your opinion.

That article references Pakistan. India has a Westminster model of government which includes an independent judiciary by definition, and in the 1970s a judge unseated a sitting prime minister for violating a minor election law.

It can be argued that a country will have corruption if it is poor but there have been many examples of corruption through out history in the relatively richer countries such as the Roman govenment ~2000 years ago where periods of relative prosperity did not equate to the destruction of corruption.

Sorry, how was the Roman government corrupt, and in which period do you refer to? 2,000 years ago in Rome public officials guilty of corruption had their noses cut off their face and the terrors of the late Republic had been ended by Caesar Augustus.

Of course examples can be found today. It can be easily argued that in fact corruption is a cause of poverty and poverty is a cause of corruption. The culture of countries like Finland and New Zealand, worlds apart and yet similar in many ways, have lead to these two countries being the least corrupt on earth.[/quote]
How are these countries worlds apart? They are both white, Western nations. Note that every white, Western nation has low levels of corruption, and the most corrupt is probably Italy.

As for the soviet union, it was as corrupt as it gets. The people at the top had everything and anything they wanted and their family benefited of course. Stalin at the very top killed millions to maintain power. Others took what they could and got away with it because you cant argue with those in power in a brutal dictatorship without the possibility of losing your life. Corruption was instituitionalized/de-criminialized, ie not illegal but it was still corruption.

I'm not sure how any of this qualifies as corruption.

ulgaria was the perfect example, I know from someone who visited there in the late nineties that bribes were constantly demanded by government employee's, eg at the airport, etc and that the government had formally decrimilised it so that it was acceptable for a time. I am giving examples of experience of people I know including bulgarians and not documention, so please forgive my not providing an evidenced link.

As Potemkin stated already, Bulgaria is a democratic, capitalist country.

The perfect example is the New South Wales government in Australia. A state government leader introduced the "Independent Commision Against Corruption" which was so independent it investigated the state government leader that created their jobs and found him corrupt. Now that piece of irony is sooooo funny.

I'm not sure how this is a perfect example at all. Corruption in China is punishable by death, and corrupt officials are indeed executed (e.g. the head of China's food and drug regulatory authority).

As for saying previous forest policies of other countries were wrong or some other policy was just as bad (as the one China has today) when another country tried it out hundred/s of years ago, this is only evidence that others thoughout history with less technology and experience have made mistakes and that we have now learnt from them. This is not evidence that we MUST do the same mistakes, like cut down all the natural wilderness in China but evidence that these other countries have now overcome mistakes and instead of copying mistakes and having to try and deal with them later we can now copy successful solutions. ie your arguement that cutting down all the trees because someone else did that and it led to disaster so we should cut down the trees and create a disaster is a "fallacy of logic". If another country has been successful even if it is only one in a hundred we should learn why that country was successful and copy success, not failure.

Actually my point was merely that China's environment troubles are hardly unique and are the rule and not the exception for industrializing countries. While it would of course be a good idea to emulate Japan's silviculture, I think you have unreasonably high expectations for the Chinese government, and I feel that your belief that democracy would suddenly magically cure everything is absurd. In my liberal, democratic country the government is destroying my nation.

[Lucius]

Western democracy is neither necessary nor sufficient to expand prosperity and reduce corruption.

India claims to be the largest western democratic nation in the world, and no EuroAmerican nation has ever accused India government as authoritarian or dictatorship. But it lacks the amount of prosperity that China enjoys and its government is considered as corrupt as China.

The cleanest government in Asia is neither western democratic Japan, South Korea nor Taiwan. It is authoritarian Singapore and Chinese Hong Kong. Authoritarianism can be more powerful in bashing corruption in Asia than western democracy.

Economic prosperity and clean government can be achieved under both democratic and authoritarian systems. Which one is more desirable depends on the time, place, population, education and overall environment.

Appendix:

Corruption Perception Index:

Authoritarian Singapore has the cleanest government in Asia, second only to Denmark, Sweden and New Zealand in the world.

Semi-Authoritarian Hong Kong is the second cleanest government in Asia, about the same with Germany, Austria and Luxembourg.

Western democratic Japan is as corrupt as the United States.

Western democratic South Korea and Taiwan are as corrupt as Islamic Authoritarian Oman, UAE, and Bahrain

Authoritarian China is as corrupt as Mexico, Macedonia and Peru.

Western democratic India is as corrupt as Islamic Authoritarian Saudi Arabia or Thailand